rEvolution has named Kenny Ager Head of WePlay, as founder Luca Massaro steps away from the business. Kenny looks back on ten years at WePlay and sets out where it goes next.
Five of us and a book
Ten years ago, Luca Massaro and I bonded over a bowl of pho and an idea to achieve something special together. I had no idea it would change my life.
When I joined WePlay in 2016, there were five of us. No process, no safety net. Just Gary Vee’s Crush It! and the belief that if you really understand fans, you can grow any business through sport.
This week, rEvolution named me Head of WePlay, as Luca steps away from the business he founded in 2012. It’s by far the proudest moment of my career. It also feels like the right moment to look back at how we got here, and to share where we’re going next.
We played different
So we built it. The services, the team, the pipeline, the work, the standards and the culture. All from scratch.
We took risks, we hustled, and we chased every opportunity, because we played to win.
And we did. We won the biggest prizes in sport: awards, and accounts like Yokohama Tire Corporation, The IRONMAN Group, LALIGA, ESPN, AC Milan and DP World Tour.
All on a fraction of our competitors’ funds. Cheap hotels, long nights, everything into the work.
That passion, that grind, that attention to detail is what made us different. We didn’t play by anyone else’s rules.
We played different. Today, that’s one of our values.
Losing half the business overnight
Then lockdown hit, and we lost half our business overnight.
I won’t pretend that wasn’t scary. But we stayed close to our clients. We adapted our services, proved our ROI and shared risk with our partners.
That’s what landed us agency of record retainers with FIFA, UFC and Paris Saint-Germain along the way.
A seat at the top table
In 2024, rEvolution acquired WePlay. John Rowady and his leadership team gave us what we’d always been fighting for: validation, credibility, scale, and the resources to take WePlay where it was always capable of going. A seat at the top table of the sports industry.
Since then, my focus has been building a senior leadership team strong enough to run this business without me in every room. They now do exactly that, brilliantly.
Thank you
To Luca. We always said WePlay would deliver on three promises: a place to work on the biggest, most ambitious brands in sport; a centre of excellence, where Experts Lead Experts; and a platform for personal growth.
We’ve delivered on those promises. WePlay is a recognised global sports marketing name. Our interns now sit on our senior leadership team. Our execs are now industry leaders. And our team today is the strongest group we’ve ever had.
Thank you for the ride, the journey and the memories, my friend.
To John Rowady and rEvolution. Thank you for backing the vision, for backing me, our incredible leadership team and all our Players around the world. You’ve given this business and my family the chance to keep growing, and me the room to keep developing as a leader.
To the WePlay team, past and present. Your growth is how I’ll measure this job. You’re the reason any of this works. In a world of AI and diminishing differentiation, you are the difference-makers: in the work, in our culture and for our clients. How we show up in the industry is how you show up every day.
To my wife Rachael and our two little ones. For every early flight, every missed bedtime, every time I was home but still on the phone: thank you. None of this happens without you.
What’s next for WePlay
The next episode is a global one.
Fans now watch, engage with and consume sport all over the world, every minute of the day. A match kicks off in Madrid and is watched live in Mumbai, debated in Miami and clipped in Riyadh minutes later. Fans don’t stop at borders, and neither should the brands and rights holders trying to reach them.
As I said in our announcement, WePlay was built on understanding fans and turning that understanding into measurable business impact for our clients. Now we take that further: into new markets, on a global scale, and into more of what our clients need to grow through sport.
Here’s where we’re focused.
Global expansion. We’re growing our presence in the US, getting even stronger in Europe, where so many of the world’s biggest rights holders are based, and building across the Middle East from our team in Dubai.
Services for rights holders that drive real growth. Fans follow the teams, leagues, federations and athletes they love. We’re developing our rights holder services to deliver meaningful, measurable marketing performance and commercial growth, not just activity.
Connecting brands, fans and rights holders at global scale. Digital is how fans live their sport now. With rEvolution, we connect brands to rights holders and the fans who follow them, wherever in the world those fans are.
Understanding fans better than anyone. Our proprietary data and technology show us where fans are, what they care about and how they behave. That knowledge drives better investment, sponsorship and marketing decisions, and better decisions drive growth, and faster growth, for our client partners. Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing what that data is telling us.
The three missions that won’t change
As we grow, some things stay exactly as they were over that bowl of pho ten years ago. WePlay will always be:
- A place to work with and on the biggest, most ambitious brands and rights holders in sport.
- A centre of excellence for our clients, where experts in their field and craft lead the work. Experts Leading Experts.
- Above everything, a platform for continued personal development and growth.
That’s how we started, and it’s how we’ll keep growing. We still play different, and we’re still playing to win.
Here’s to the next episode.
