Why OZ Grows Through Partners, Not Just Sales Teams
Why Partners, Not Just Sales Teams#
Most technology companies expand by hiring. New market, new office, new sales team, new support staff. Baldur has watched that model struggle in infrastructure for thirty years.
"In telecoms, in energy, in submarine cable, the companies that scaled sustainably did it through local partners who understood their market better than any headquarters team ever could," Baldur says. "Every football market is different. The procurement cycles are different. The relationships are different. The commercial expectations are different. You can't parachute a sales team into a new market and expect to understand those dynamics in six months."
OZ's partnership model is built on a simple principle: OZ provides the platform (the hardware, the AI, the remote operations, the software updates). The partner provides the market (the relationships, the local presence, the commercial knowledge, the ongoing customer service). And the economics are designed so the partner captures the majority of the value. That isn't generosity. It's architecture.
"We're not looking for distributors," Baldur says. "We're looking for partners who want to build a production infrastructure business in their market, using OZ as the platform. The distinction matters. A distributor sells a product. A partner builds a business. And we want them to build a very good business, because their success is what drives our growth."
What OZ Provides, What the Partner Provides#
The division is clean. Each side does what they're best at.
OZ handles everything that benefits from centralisation: hardware design and manufacturing, AI model development and updates, the remote Network Operations Centre that monitors every venue around the clock, platform software, and the operational playbooks that codify every lesson from every deployment. These improve with every venue in the fleet, regardless of which partner operates in which market.
The partner handles everything that benefits from local presence: the customer relationship, the sales process, installation support, first-line venue operations during matches, and the ongoing service relationship after the system is installed. That's where the real business lives.
"The partner isn't reselling a box," Baldur says. "They're operating a venue intelligence platform for their customers. They're the face of the service. They handle the quarterly reviews. They understand the league's schedule and the venue operator's priorities. OZ is the infrastructure behind the curtain. The partner is the business in front of it, and it's their business to grow."
OZ centralises what improves with scale (hardware, AI, remote operations, playbooks). Partners own what improves with proximity (customer relationships, local knowledge, ongoing service delivery). The economics are designed so partners capture the majority of the value. Their success drives OZ's growth.
The Economics After Installation#
This is where the conversation shifts. Baldur talks faster when he gets to post-installation economics, because this is where partners build real businesses.
"Most people focus on the installation," he says. "The hardware, the commissioning, the first match. That matters. But it's not where the long-term value sits. The value sits in what happens after, season after season, for years. And that value belongs primarily to the partner."
Once an OZ VI Venue is installed, a range of services becomes available to the venue operator, the league, and downstream customers. Analytics packages that give coaching staff structured match data. Additional programme feeds for different broadcast windows. Data delivery for performance platforms and content partners. Sponsor activation tools. Connectivity services. Each of these is a service the partner can offer to their customers.
"The platform is the foundation," Baldur explains. "But the services that grow on top of it (analytics, additional outputs, data products, sponsor tools), that's where partners build their business. And these services aren't a hard sell. The venue operator sees the system working. They see the match data. Their coaching staff starts asking questions that only the analytics can answer. Their commercial team sees opportunities that the sponsor tools unlock. The demand emerges naturally from using the platform. The partner is there to capture it."
What Baldur describes is a pattern familiar from infrastructure businesses: the initial installation creates a relationship, and the services that flow from it create the real value. A venue that starts with live match production often expands into performance analytics within the first season, not because a salesperson pushed it, but because the coaching staff saw what was possible and asked for it. Sponsor activation follows when the commercial team realises the same infrastructure can deliver dynamic graphics and data overlays. Data delivery follows when third-party platforms (analytics providers, content partners, performance specialists) want access to the structured spatial data the system produces.
The partner isn't cold-calling. They're responding to demand that the platform itself has created.
"I've seen this pattern in infrastructure businesses before," Baldur says. "The installation creates the relationship. The services deepen it. And every season that passes, the accumulated data and the operational integration become more valuable. The partner's customer relationship grows. We designed it that way, because a partner who's building a strong business in their market is the best growth engine we could ask for."
Baldur Stefansson
Executive Chairman
“We've designed the economics, the financing, the operational support, all of it, so that the partner thrives. Because when the partner grows, we grow.”
Financing the Rollout#
The conversation about partnerships eventually arrives at the same question: who pays for the hardware? Baldur's answer draws from his infrastructure background.
"An OZ VI Venue node is a physical asset with a multi-year revenue contract attached to it," he says. "That's exactly the kind of asset that infrastructure financing was designed for. In telecoms, you don't fund every cell tower from your own balance sheet. You work with financing partners who understand the asset, the contract, and the cash flow."
OZ works with local financing partners in each market to structure the rollout. The node is the asset. The multi-year venue contract provides the revenue visibility. The financing partner provides the capital for deployment. The structure adapts to each market (different regions have different financing instruments, different risk appetites, different regulatory frameworks), but the principle is consistent: the node pays for itself through contracted revenue.
"This isn't creative financing," Baldur says. "It's standard infrastructure deployment. Energy companies do it. Telecoms companies do it. Most AI companies haven't thought about their deployments this way, because they don't have a physical asset to finance. We do."
The partner benefits directly from this structure. They don't need to fund the hardware themselves. The financing partner carries the asset. The venue operator pays the contracted fees. The partner earns from the services and the ongoing relationship. The capital requirement for a partner to enter the OZ ecosystem is low relative to the revenue opportunity. That's intentional.
"We design the financial structure so that the barrier to entry for a partner is as low as possible," Baldur says. "We want the best production companies and media operators in each market, not the ones with the deepest pockets. Quality of relationship matters more than size of balance sheet. If a partner has the right league relationships and the right operational instinct, we want the financial structure to make it easy for them to say yes."
How a Market Opens#
Baldur walks through the sequence that OZ follows when entering a new market with a partner. It's methodical.
"Step one is finding the right partner. Not the biggest. The right one. Someone who has existing relationships with leagues and venue operators. Someone who understands live production. Someone who wants to build, not just resell."
Step two is a paid proof-of-value deployment, typically two or three matches at a single venue. The partner and OZ deploy together. The output is measurable: broadcast-quality footage, structured data, operational metrics. The venue operator and the league see exactly what the system delivers. No slides. No promises. Working infrastructure.
"Step three is the rollout conversation," Baldur continues. "And this is where the proof-of-value changes everything. You're not selling a vision. You're selling something the customer has already seen working at their venue, or at a venue they know. The conversation shifts from 'can this work?' to 'how many venues and how fast?'"
The rollout unit isn't a single venue. It's typically a cluster: a league, a region, a group of venues operated by the same entity. Ten venues, fifteen, twenty. Dense deployment in a defined area, because density is what makes the operational economics work for the partner. Dense deployment means their local team can service multiple venues efficiently. The playbooks improve faster. The financing structure is more attractive because the portfolio of assets is larger. The partner builds a real local business, not a scattered collection of one-off installations.
"We learned early that scattered single-venue deployments don't compound," Baldur says. "They look like growth on a map, but they don't build a business for the partner. A cluster of fifteen venues in one market gives the partner real operational scale, real revenue, real customer relationships. That's what we're optimising for."
The rollout unit is a cluster, not a venue. Dense deployment in a defined market builds a real business for the partner: efficient operations, improving playbooks, attractive financing, and a growing customer base. OZ designs the economics so partners succeed at the local level, because that local success is what drives the network's growth.
What Makes a Good Partner#
Baldur is specific about what OZ looks for.
"The best partners are production companies or media operators who already serve leagues and venue operators. They have the relationships. They understand live events. They know what a venue operator needs, because they've been delivering it, with trucks and crews, for years. When they see OZ's infrastructure, they immediately understand what it means for their business: they can serve more venues, at higher quality, with better economics. The upside is obvious to them."
He pauses.
"What we're less interested in is pure reselling. Companies that want to add OZ to a product catalogue and take orders. That doesn't tend to work well for infrastructure. Infrastructure needs a partner who's present at the venue, who owns the customer relationship, who understands the league's season calendar, who can respond when something needs attention. That's an operating business, not a distribution business."
The partner doesn't need to be large. OZ's remote operations and automated playbooks mean that a small, focused team can manage a significant number of venues. What matters is commitment to the market and willingness to build depth.
"A partner with a small, excellent team and OZ's platform behind them can build a production infrastructure business that competes with companies ten times their size," Baldur says. "That's the proposition. We've designed the economics, the financing, the operational support, all of it, to make that possible. Because when the partner thrives, the whole network benefits."
The Long View#
Baldur returns to the theme that connects his interviews: infrastructure thinking applied to a market that has traditionally been a services business.
"Live sports production has been a services business for decades. Every match is a project. Every project requires a crew. Every crew requires logistics. The cost scales linearly with the number of matches. There's limited leverage. There's limited accumulated advantage from having done it before."
"OZ changes that equation, for us and for our partners. Every venue installed is an asset that generates revenue for years. Every season of data makes the system smarter. Every playbook iteration makes the next deployment faster. The partner who installs ten venues this year has a better business next year, not because they worked harder, but because the infrastructure improves underneath them."
He comes back to what clearly matters most to him.
"The best partnerships are the ones where both sides get better over time. OZ gets better because every venue adds data, operational learning, and product insight. The partner gets better because every season deepens their customer relationships, expands their service offering, and strengthens their position in the market. We've built the incentive structure so that our interests are genuinely aligned. When the partner grows, we grow. That's not a slogan. It's how the economics actually work. And it's why we spend so much time getting the partner relationship right."