Interview with Les Tan, Founder of RedSports.SG

Sports is a favourite pastime for most Singaporeans. We have heard of local start-ups in areas focusing on food (HungryGoWhere) and maps (GoThere) but what about sports. Recently while watching a match in the Asean Basketball League featuring the Singapore Slingers in the Indoor Stadium, I caught up with Les Tan, founder of Redsports SG and we have a short and crisp interview talking about his start-up, RedSports.SG, the opportunities coming from the Youth Olympic Games 2010 in Singapore and which sports content are popular in Singapore.

BL: Hi Les, great to have you here on SGE. What did you do before starting RedSports.SG?
Les Tan: Before I started REDSPORTS.SG, I did a few things: I was a sports presenter on the old sports-only channel called SportsCity on MediaCorp, I worked in marketing for Nike and Heineken.

BL: What inspired you to come up with RedSports?
Les Tan: Red Sports is meant to tell the Singapore sports story. We think this story is worth telling since this is where we were born and where we grew up. It is a meaningful story and reminds us of where we come from.

BL: Can you briefly tell us about RedSports and how does it help to serve the sports community in Singapore?
Les Tan: We focus on school sports because there is a lot of passion at that level. We also provide a live platform for interested young Singaporeans who want to be sports writers and photographers. We are currently heading into our fourth batch of interns.

BL: How does RedSports work with the schools and sports council in Singapore? What are the important lessons you learned collaborating with them?
Les Tan: We help train young people for the industry and the Singapore Sports Council hires us to do that from time to time.

BL: What are the top 3 most popular sports content in Singapore that people come to read on your site?
Les Tan: Depending on the time of the year, readers enjoy the basketball, football, netball, volleyball stories the most. Team sports are a big draw. The other popular content is the reader-generated polls of athletes.

BL: How does RedSports generate revenues?
Les Tan: We are advertising-driven.

BL: RedSports covers the ASEAN Basketball League. What other leagues do you cover in Singapore?
Les Tan: Red Sports covers the S.League, and the Netball Super League, besides the ASEAN Basketball League.

BL: The Youth Olympics Games will be in Singapore next year. What will be the role of RedSports during this exciting period?
Les Tan: With YOG, we’ll be deploying a large team to cover Team Singapore like how we covered the Asian Youth Games. We had the highest number of Team Singapore stories for the AYG when compared to the mainstream English media.

BL: What are the three most important traits of an entrepreneur?
Les Tan: I’m not sure I can comment about that but for me, I’m driven by the need to do something meaningful for society. Telling the sports story of my fellow Singaporean makes this website worth doing for me. Without meaning, I can’t get excited about the work I do. Of course, starting is the easy part. Now is the other struggle – persevering, focusing on the next step. The other thing that works for me is just keeping things simple and executing well. There are a thousand and one ideas out there but executing well and repeatedly is the hard thing to do.