Personar Appoints Internet and Sports-Media Pioneer Mike Slade as Senior Advisor

Tech veteran who helped build ESPN.com, NBA.com and NFL.com - and advised Steve Jobs at both NeXT and Apple - joins the AI sports-audio company as it scales TrackSwift and CoachScribe.

LONDON, July 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Personar Ltd, the AI sports audio intelligence company behind TrackSwift and CoachScribe, today announced the appointment of Mike Slade as Senior Advisor. Slade brings more than four decades at the intersection of technology, media and sport, and will counsel Personar's leadership on strategy, product positioning and global growth as the company expands across elite sport.

Few people have shaped the digital sports landscape as directly as Slade. As CEO of Paul Allen's Starwave in the 1990s, he launched the properties that became the digital backbone of modern sports media - ESPN.com, NBA.com, NFL.com and NASCAR.com - before the company's sale to The Walt Disney Company. He went on to serve as a strategic advisor to Steve Jobs, sitting on Apple's executive team from 1998 to 2004, having earlier been VP of Marketing at NeXT, also reporting to Jobs. Slade began his career at Microsoft, where he helped bring Excel, Works and Microsoft Office to market.

In 2000 he co-founded the venture capital firm Second Avenue Partners and became a co-owner of the Professional Bowlers Association, deepening a lifelong involvement in the business of sport. More recently, Slade served as Senior Advisor to Genius Sports, the global leader in sports data and technology, where he played a pivotal role guiding the company through a period of rapid growth and helping shape its product and commercial strategy across leagues, media and betting partners worldwide. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Colorado College and an MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

That combination, building sports-media platforms from the ground up, scaling consumer technology, and advising some of the industry's most demanding founders, maps directly onto Personar's ambitions. TrackSwift delivers real-time audio analytics to clients including Formula 1, the Premier League and global sports power houses, while CoachScribe brings AI coaching intelligence to coaches, athletes and elite teams in every sport.

"Mike helped invent the playbook for sports on the internet, and he did it by advising founders who set an almost impossibly high bar," said Adrian Jones, CEO and Co-Founder of Personar. "Having someone who built ESPN.com and NBA.com, and who knows what it takes to turn a category-defining product into a global business, in our corner as we scale TrackSwift and CoachScribe is enormous. Mike sees where sport, data and media are heading next, and he's exactly the voice we want in the room as we get there."

"What Personar is doing with audio intelligence reminds me of the early internet days at Starwave - a genuinely new layer of value in sport that nobody else is capturing yet," said Mike Slade. "The team has real products, real clients and a clear view of where the market is going. I'm excited to roll up my sleeves and help them reach the heights this technology deserves."

About Personar

Personar is a London-based technology company specialising in audio analysis and real-time decision intelligence for professional sports. TrackSwift and CoachScribe leverage speech-to-text and AI categorisation to deliver actionable insights for Formula 1 teams, Premier League, and elite sports organisations. With its development hub in Budapest and teams spanning APAC, Europe, and US, Personar powers operations for the world's most demanding sports. Personar was recognised "Best Technology in Sports" by Sports Industry Awards

Media Contact:
Personar Ltd Daniel Oppitz
[email protected]

SOURCE Personar Ltd