Harlequins Agree Vlast Partnership.

England’s reigning Rugby Union champions, Harlequins, has signed a 3-year deal with VLAST, a global talent management platform, to transform the automation and activation of Harlequin’s player activities.

The ground-breaking VLAST product - created by Pickstar Group - will enable Harlequins internal stakeholders to more efficiently and effectively manage their players commercial, sponsorship and community engagement activities. Professional Harlequins players including Joe Marler, Danny Care, Marcus Smith and Alex Dombrandt will be using the platform to streamline the management of their club appearances.

VLAST uses cutting-edge technology to reduce the internal administrative effort required to manage talent communications and bookings. It reduces human error, improves the experience and outcomes for talent and provides a seamless reporting tool for the customer.

Alex Hay, Global Head of VLAST, said he was excited to take the VLAST product to the UK and support Harlequins in setting new standards in this area of sports administration. “Harlequins is truly changing the game in how clubs and sporting bodies in the UK are managing, measuring and optimising their best assets - talent,” explained Hay. “We are thrilled to work with Harlequins and support their journey to transform their talent activation process using VLAST’S technology”.

Billy Millard, Harlequins’ Director of Rugby Performance said, “VLAST enables us to have more efficient and user-friendly processes to manage our player appearances and commercial activities.

“There is huge demand to interact with our players across our supporter base, for internal marketing activities, charity appearances and commercial activities to name just a few.

VLAST enables us to simplify the administration and tracking of this so we can focus on winning the game of rugby and developing our players,” added Millard.

Harlequins is one of the oldest rugby clubs in the world and a founding member of the RFU. Playing in their iconic Quarters kit, ‘Quins’ is arguably the most famous rugby club in the world. Boasting an array of former and current stars of the game, the Club is currently reigning English champions for both the Men’s and Women’s game.

Pickstar Group offers a simple, online Marketplace that helps people to connect with sports stars, celebrities and personalities. Its end-to-end digital platform enables the fast and effective bookings of talent for any type of commercial arrangement.

Founded in 2016 by two former AFL athletes, James Begley and Matthew Pavlich, Pickstar Group has become the most trusted platform for facilitating paid talent engagements, large and small.

In addition to Pickstar's Marketplace, Pickstar Group offers VLAST, a tool created by athletes, for athletes. The tool offers talent and governing bodies an easy and efficient way to manage all aspects of valuable talent appearances and activations. It improves the talent experience, reduces administrative costs, and removes human error, by empowering talent, agencies, brands, and rights owners to maintain and develop more meaningful relationships and measurement of talent appearances.

VLAST caters to the needs of the sponsorship, activation, and endorsement ecosystem. It offers a centralised dashboard providing automatic scheduling, messaging, and holistic overviews of the most important elements of talent activation.

With offices in Adelaide, New York and London, Pickstar Group's reach is truly global and with expansion into new star categories including chefs, media and wellness influencers, Pickstar can find a meaningful connection for any business and any opportunity.

Go to www.pickstar.pro for more information on Pickstar or www.govlast.com for more information on VLAST.

SMART50 AWARDS

Pickstar was recently awarded the 2021 SmartCompany Plus Innovator award and also ranked #20th in Australia on the Smart50 list for 2021, which is based on revenue growth for SMEs over the past 12 months. More here.