Samir Ceric

Samir Ceric is well-known as an investor, serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, guest lecturer, mental health campaigner, and public speaker. He has managed various C-level roles at some of the leading brands, football clubs, and art & design organisations.

Samir has a strong legacy within the creative industry including launching award-winning businesses. He is focused on blockchain technology and innovation in the fields of finance, investment, creative industry (film, music, fashion and art) and sport; aiming to create more transparency and openings in these industries for high-level investments.

Currently, Samir Ceric is the COO of Blocksport.io, one of the world’s leading SportsTech solutions providers. He is also the Chairman of the Board at the Mayfair Investment Club, Chief Strategy Officer of RESULT Sports and sits on the Advisory Board of Waton Group, a cross-asset (crypto & fiat) digital brokerage and asset management firm.

Early Life

Samir’s early education was in Banja Luka, Bosnia (former Yugoslavia). He then went on to complete his A-levels from Esher Sixth Form College in Mathematics and Statistics and a Master's in Mathematics. He is an alumnus of Università di Bologna, University of Sussex, and Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights. He also holds a Master’s in Business Administration degree.

Samir has held top executive-level positions at organisations like 6GDigitial Sweden AB, Made In Agency, All Sports Finance, Mayfair Venture Partners, Active Sports Capital, Zira Telecommunications, and Air Bosnia.

Professional Experience

Fashion

He has co-founded many companies within the finance, investment, aviation, sport, arts, and design sectors. These include Wolf & Badger, where he worked with a vision of developing a concept store showcasing works by talented, emerging designers from fashion and accessories to jewellery, millinery, ceramics, and product design. Wolf & Badger launched in February 2010 and was named one of Britain’s Best Boutiques in the April 2010 edition of British Vogue. It was picked by Time Out as the sixth Best Shop in London. Wolf & Badger was named Sustainable Retailer Of The Year 2020 by Drapers and soon later became a Certified B Corporation.

Sports

Samir’s love for sports and athletics led him to venture into the industry. He has done a lot of work with Formula E Holdings in the UK with the ambition of taking a race to the Balkans region as well as Africa, the two ventures Samir is currently working on. He was also inaugurated in January 2021 as Chairman of one of the best Bosnian football clubs, FK Zeljeznicar, where he served as the Board Advisor after his departure.

Technology/Blocksport

Progressing to the digital world, he has journeyed through advertising, fintech, and the sports industry. He is the COO of Blocksport, a Sports technology company headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. Blocksport is building the largest Sports NFTs aggregation platform in the world. Collectables, merchandise, and other NFTs of sports clubs can be collected by their fans using the NFTs platforms. Also, the company offers an App-as-a-Service platform and launching services for sports clubs, leagues, federations, sports celebrities, and other clients to engage their fans. The platform also collaborates with sports clubs to launch fan tokens for their supporters with the holders having the right to participate in governance. There is also a mobile-based NFTs marketplace where users can buy and sell NFTs.

Investing

Samir is the Chairman of the Board at the Mayfair Investment Club. The Mayfair Investment Club 3S is a “by invitation only” club with the ethos around 3S’s, smart, sensible and sustainable investments hence along the lines of social enterprise ideas and investments with a purpose (impact investment). Their criteria are simple: each admitted member must be serious and interested in becoming a successful professional investor, not an entrepreneur, and he or she must be interested in building a credible investment portfolio.

In their first year of Investment Club participation which is likely to feature 4-7 investment opportunities inside your portfolio, ranging from lower risk (real estate, bonds), medium risk (VCs portfolio of companies, hedge funds) and higher risk (high growth companies, currently in the process of scaling their operations nationally or globally, across different investment rounds, largely from post-seed (Series A & B)), each successful member will gain a unique understanding of investment strategies and unprecedented access to creators, visionaries and masterminds of top hedge funds, VCs, high growth companies and many other industry heavyweights who have walked the walk from the challenging and testing times of the 1970s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 2008 and now COVID-19 and 2020.

Besides contributing to global businesses startups, and brands, Samir has been an active philanthropist, believing in charity and kindness as an inseparable part of one’s character.

Volunteering

Samir has been volunteering since his early professional years. As a Mental Health Campaigner at Mind, he provided advice and support to empower anyone experiencing a mental health problem. He was also an Ambassador at Thames Vallery Harriers where he promoted both the Club and athletics as a whole and raised funds for the Club and the overall improvements on and off the tracks.

He also delivered lectures and mentored entrepreneurs and students at the London School of Business and European Business School. He was also the Special Advisor at London Design Academy contributing to an international accelerator for the creative industry, providing ecological/sustainable solutions to trades, universities, and enterprises.

Publications

Samir has contributed to more than a hundred international publications including magazines, newspapers, and media like CNN for design, art, sports, fashion, business, fintech, culture, and creative industries.

In a recent interview with Dinis Guarda, Samir explained: 

“I’m a great believer that we should celebrate the similarities, but we learn about the differences in the way that helps us do business, help us open opportunities for each other, help us combine interests, and generate success stories as a result of that.”

Samir considers being his moral responsibility to make the right decisions for society: creating innovative solutions that add value to society while empowering and educating them at the same time.

Explaining the unique nature of Blocksport, Samir said that it is the only sports tech company in the world that offers a full ecosystem for sporting entities and their fans.

“The fan engagement and the ability to offer fans even better opportunities to engage with their beloved clubs is something that’s been massively overlooked over the past few years, and it’s still today. So, Blocksport has thought of a full ecosystem for all these sporting entities to be able to help them facilitate opportunities in terms of revenue creation, improvement of their sponsorship, activation missions, and improvements in fan engagement, and has come up with a very smart thing which is a non-speculative fund token.”

Samir believes that educating the sporting community and the senior management within the sports industry is the prime focus of Blocksport. While on one hand the club management is made aware to involve itself responsibly in the crypto space, the fan base is educated about the better content that can be made available at the digitalised platform- never-before experiences, opportunities, and digital assets (NFTs & non-speculative Fan Tokens).

“I think that five years down the line when we look back, we will see that all this buzz that’s been happening in the sports tech industry, majority of the buzz is long gone, and the players like Blocksport are sustained because they held the hierarchy to the utmost importance.”

Speaking of Blocksport’s plans to bridge blockchain, 4IR, and the metaverse, Samir said, “Metaverse is something I’m very excited about and something that Blocksport is very keen to develop in partnerships and corporations at other places.”