Intelek

Sports Interactive Ltd.

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Video game industry Football
Founded	1994; 23 years ago (1994)
Founder	Paul Collyer Oliver Collyer MBEs
Headquarters	Islington, London, United Kingdom
Products	Football Manager series Championship Manager series NHL Eastside Hockey Manager series
Owner	Sega Sammy Holdings
Number of employees	+100
Parent	Sega Games Co., Ltd.
Website	sigames.com

Sports Interactive Ltd. is a British video game development company, who is best known for the Football Manager series. Based in Old Street, Central London, the studio is wholly owned by the Japanese video game company, Sega. In addition to its work on Football Manager, the studio has also created a number of other sports management simulations including NHL Eastside Hockey Manager and Championship Manager Quiz, and is the former developer of Championship Manager.

Founded by Paul Collyer and Oliver Collyer, the company is commonly abbreviated to "SI" amongst fans of their games.

In 2003, Sports Interactive split with former publisher Eidos Interactive, and signed a deal with Sega, to continue their flagship sports franchise under the new name, Football Manager. After the split, both parties kept their intellectual property. Sports Interactive kept the base code, the game database and programming of the game, whilst Eidos kept the rights to the Championship Manager franchise.

On Thursday, 28 June 2012, Miles Jacobson and Ian Livingstone revealed why they split from Eidos Interactive and joined Sega. In a fireside chat with GameHorizon, Jacobson thought that Beautiful Game Studios was brought in to take over Championship Manager, whilst Livingstone thought that Eidos Interactive brought Beautiful Game Studios to protect the firm in case Sports Interactive jumped ship. Miles Jacobson commented saying “I’m sure there are two sides to this story, at the time we felt there was a lack of respect that we did for our work from Eidos. There seemed to be an attitude at the time in the industry that anyone could make games”. Miles Jacobson continued by saying “Eidos wanted more control. We wanted more control. We were asking for high royalties. Eidos set up Beautiful Game Studios nine months before Championship Manager 4 was due to come out. They told me that BGS were making a platform game. I thought our number was up.”