James Begley: "VLAST was born at a time when the industry needed it most, and we’re now seeing the success of the platform"VLAST
The NFL and talent activation platform VLAST announced a multiyear partnership to improve player activations across the NFL's athlete roster. Marketing firm Pickstar Group launched VLAST, which offers its partners a centralized platform featuring real-time data and key metrics, 12 months ago. The platform's CEO, James Begley, said that VLAST reduces up to 80% of costs associated with traditional activation administration, which has helped it form partnerships with Cricket Australia, the National Rugby League, WME and multiple EPL clubs. Begley believes the efficiency his platform will offer was a key component of the NFL deal. He said, "The NFL was finding facilitating athlete appearances and managing multiple requests from all stakeholders incredibly time consuming, resource intensive, manual, and usually processed across multi-spreadsheet and communication tools." Begley explained that early in the pandemic, "there was a real need in the market for a platform that drove efficiencies and value to rights owners and talent managers." He added, "VLAST was born at a time when the industry needed it most, and we’re now seeing the success of the platform as more and more businesses look to revolutionize and revalue their talent activation with commercial partners."
