In 2012, Tom Thirlwall co-founded COPA90 with a single YouTube channel and a thesis that the football industry had largely ignored: that the most compelling stories in the world’s most popular sport were being told by fans, not institutions. Thirteen years later, COPA90 is the world’s most effective football fan engagement company — and the thesis has been proven right at scale. COPA90 has always been ahead of its time. It was building creator-led storytelling before the term existed, partnering with talent who are now global household names and pioneering shortform video formats and IP that have since become standard in brand storytelling worldwide.

Today the company is an indispensable part of the global football ecosystem — working with some of the biggest names in the sport and beyond, from the Premier League, Adobe, EA and AB InBev to Nike, Adidas, Pepsi and Google, across a creator network of more than 3,000 talents worldwide. Its campaigns have been awarded at Cannes Lions, BAFTAs, Clios and Webbys. The Sunday Times Fast Track, Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Sports Businesses and British Media Company of the Year have each recognised what Thirlwall and his team have built: a profitable, scalable, multi-award-winning global business with creators and fans at its centre.

The commercial achievement is significant. But Thirlwall’s larger ambition is cultural. COPA90’s founding principle — Fans First. Always. — remains the lens through which every decision is made: protecting fan culture in an era of consolidation, championing women’s football, and deploying technology and data to better understand what drives passion in a worldwide audience. His mission is to ensure football continues to “find its soul”, and the creator-first model is both COPA90’s business engine and its point of principle.

Before COPA90, Thirlwall built a career across brand strategy, advertising and interactive gaming — leading global accounts at Leo Burnett and IPG, and launching I Am Playr with Nike, Red Bull and Gillette. That background shaped his instinct for the intersection of culture, commerce and audience — the instinct that COPA90 was built on.