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Ant Hayward

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Key Stats

Key Stats

Role: Senior Operations Manager

Office: Wimbledon, London

Year joined: 2009

Deltatre in three words: Collaborative, professional, leaders

Can you tell us about your journey to the company?

I had another career before I joined. I worked in video and TV post-production for 21 years, then I had my own company for a few years in TV and film post-production.

So what made you want to join Deltatre?

Well, I think, through life, you suddenly realize that you prefer some aspects of your job more than others and I didn’t find what I was doing as rewarding anymore. I saw an advert for Deltatre and I didn't know anything about the company at the time but I went for an interview and found it really interesting.

What was it like when you joined the company?

It was a small team of about 20 people in London, I worked delivering commentary on Champions League and Europa League for UEFA. I also worked building some studios for News UK, then also on redesigning post production workflows and studios for The Telegraph newspaper. We are now nearly 100 in the London office and are involved in many more projects worldwide than when I started.

What’s the atmosphere like when you’re working on a live event?

There’s really collaborative teamwork where everyone helps everyone. Where I work in the business it’s all about live so if something is not working, people help you out to fix it.

What’s a ‘standard’ day at work look like for you?

I'm responsible for all the live OTT operations out of the London office so most days, there's some kind of operation going on. At the end of every day, there’s a debrief written about what's gone on during that day. You hope there are no issues, but one of the things I really like about Deltatre is openness. If something goes wrong, you own up and you learn from it.

Can you discuss any stand-out projects?

I think everyone would say to work at Deltatre, you get involved in some amazing sporting properties. Champions League finals, World Cup finals, Rugby World Cup finals, golf tournaments, tennis tournaments, cycling – all kinds of things.

Do you still enjoy watching sport?

I like going to watch live sports. I guess what I like about sports, and I think a lot of the people at Deltatre like about sports, is the data behind it. The facts and figures and all the stuff that we find really amazing as fans, we try and find ways to show that data to fans to make their experience a better one. If we weren’t so interested in data, then we wouldn’t enjoy working here so much and we wouldn’t be so good at our jobs.

What’s your favourite part of your job?

I like running a team. Within Deltatre, the collaboration between different teams is really good and you share knowledge rather than holding onto it. It makes everybody grow.

How do you explain to other people what it is you do?

It's sometimes really difficult to explain to your friends what you do because it’s really not that black and white. In the world, there are so many jobs now that didn't exist 10 years ago and there'll be jobs in 10 years’ time that don’t exist today.

I tell people I'm not stuck at a desk and I work across loads of different sporting properties. I get to watch a day's golf and call it work! The best thing about work is when it doesn't feel like work.