Ali ElFakharany got hooked on sports data as a university student, and the blog he started to analyze the Egyptian Premier League blossomed into a company in 2017. But the local market was not ready for Arqam’s services, and so Ali turned to Europe. In 2019, Arqam was acquired by UK-based Statsbomb in a share swap agreement that retained Arqam’s team and Ali leading the data product.

Today, Arqam’s data collection center in Egypt has become an essential service to 42 European and US clubs, including teams from the English Premier League, Germany’s Bundesliga, and the MLS, providing data analytics services to every level of a sports franchise. We discuss the ups and downs of going from a local luxury to a global essential service and how owning the value chain of data collection and analysis made Arqam FC a viable investment for Statsbomb.

** Subscribe to Enterprise, our 6am briefing on business, finance and economics in Egypt (also free) at www.enterprise.news.

Making It is grateful for the generous support of:

CIB, Egypt’s number-one private-sector bank and the partner of choice for CEOs and leaders of businesses at all stages of their growth stories.

The United States Agency for International Development, which has a 40 year history of inspiring Egyptian success in partnership with the Government and people of Egypt.

You can check out Arqam FC here: arqamfc.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.