Mailman wins La Liga, hires Asia VP, opens Singapore office

Mailman, a sports marketing agency with headquarters in Shanghai, expanded its Southeast Asia footprint with a Singapore office and senior management hires in five countries, on the back of winning La Liga as a client.

Bima Said, formerly of DAZN Group's Goal.com, is now Mailman’s regional VP. He has previously held high-level positions in Asia at ESPN and Fox Sports as well. At Goal, Said was responsible for overall growth in APAC while overseeing content in eight languages across 11 editions.

The company's new dedicated country managers are Edoardo Lipari (Singapore and also regional manager); Agung Harsya (Indonesia); Thana Wongmanee (Thailand); Erick Bui (Vietnam); and Rahul Bali (India). Manila is up next, and local satellite teams for Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan will be managed from the Shanghai HQ.

According to Said, it is the right time for Mailman to be expanding in Asia because the continent is regarded as a key market for sports properties looking for growth, especially in football.

Maurizio Barbieri, Twitter’s head of sports partnerships for SEA and Greater China, said that football and entertainment are two of the biggest conversation drivers on the social-media platform. "In 2018 there were 5.3 billion tweets about K-Pop alone, and on the football side, we saw 115 billion impressions of tweets during the World Cup," said Barbieri.

Apart from La Liga, Mailman clients include NBA, Bundesliga, UFC, Kobe Bryant, NHL, Tottenham Hotspur, Juventus, NFL, Chelsea, and Borussia Dortmund. 

Last year, Mailman made a strategic investment in European sports consultancy Seven League.

The company asserted that no other sports agency is servicing global sports properties across China, Southeast Asia and the UK. "Media platforms and other agencies can provide part of our service, but we go for the whole holistic approach," stated a spokesperson.