This morning I was reminded by Riman Verma of our crazy times at Sportal. It's 1998, the dotcom boom is in full swing. Every web site needed to be a 'portal', so as Sportal we'd signed up a number of premier league football teams, along with luxury brands like Ferrari. It seemed a week couldn't go by without Rob Hersov landing another multi-hundred-million investment deal.
They were truly crazy times. A bit crazier for me 'cos the Manchester office was formally part of the Ocean offices, so I was surrounded by memories before I'd even started.My favourite Sportal story was when I was flown out to Tel Aviv with some other guy to assess some funky 3D tech.
After being shown round, we settled in a meeting room to talk terms.There were three Israeli guys, who started talking amongst themselves in Israeli. I later found out they were saying "I think we can rinse these stupid English for at least £1m", "Yeah, they're loaded, let's take them for all they've got!"...and so on.
Their conversation was cut short when the guy I was with spoke to them...in Israeli.
The looks on their faces was priceless.At Tel Aviv airport, coming home, I decided that day to wear my "Couldn't Care Bear" t-shirt, depicting a teddy holding a gun to his head. That got me an escort with some heavily armed guards and a chat with the airport head of security....
A couple of years later Sportal was sold...for £1.