Serving up success – Alumni Stories, Stuart Watts

Every November, the biggest names in world tennis descend on the O2 Arena in London for the Nitto ATP Finals. York St John alumnus Stuart Watts will join them in his capacity as Chief Operating Officer for ATP Media, the global sales, broadcast production and distribution arm of the ATP World Tour. We recently had the pleasure of chatting to Stuart about his time at York St John, and his successful and varied career.

Stuart came to York St John in the early 1980s to study dramatic arts. ‘Not only was YSJ one of the few places offering a dramatic arts degree at the time, but it had also developed a great reputation for delivering the programme. It was also a good fit for my sporting background. I really enjoyed my time there and will be eternally grateful to drama lecturers like Tom Spencer and Bill Pinner.’
When Stuart graduated in 1987, he left York St John not only with his degree in Drama, Film and Television, but also as the British collegiate tennis champion after winning the national championships in Bedfordshire during his final year – and it was his love for tennis that kick-started his career. After moving to London, Stuart briefly worked as a professional tennis coach. ‘I soon realised that although I was passionate about playing tennis, coaching wasn’t what I wanted to do. Fortunately, a fellow alumnus put me in touch with SKY, who were looking for someone to join their tennis production team on a show presented by Sue Barker and Andrew Castle.’ Stuart soon began to work as an associate producer on other SKY programmes, getting experience of outside broadcasting covering the Premier League, FA Cup, and England internationals. A move to IMG Media as producer of the weekly global selling programme the ATP Show meant a return to tennis and Stuart started traveling around the world filming at the ATP tournaments.

‘In 1997 I decided to move away from sports broadcasting to develop my interest in factual programming,’ Stuart said. ‘Soon I was directing programmes like BBC One’s Holiday and Channel Four’s Shop ‘Til You Drop which explored the psychology of retail.’ At the turn of the century Stuart was executive producer for the worldwide broadcast of the live millennium celebration from Hong Kong, working with stars like Whitney Houston.

Soon Stuart started to make a name for himself as a renowned documentary film maker, working as executive producer of the BAFTA shortlisted and Royal Television Society nominated Muhammad Ali – Through the Eyes of the World which premiered at Madison Square Garden in New York. He was also producer and director of Christopher Reeve – Hope in Motion, which won the Communicator Award for Excellence in Journalism and Documentary making as well as also being BAFTA shortlisted and nominated for a primetime EMMY in 2003 for outstanding non-fiction special.

‘Following those successes, I set up my own production company at Shepperton Studios in order to produce the type of programming which interested me most’. Stuart went onto to produce and/or direct such acclaimed documentaries as: The World of Nat King Cole which premiered at the National Film Theatre in London; John Lennon: Working Class Hero narrated by Gary Oldman; the platinum selling DVD live performance of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds from Wembley Arena; Grammy award winning Jeff Beck Performing this Week – Live at Ronnie Scott’s, featuring Eric Clapton, Keep on Running: 50 years of Island Records narrated by Damian Lewis, Andrea Bocelli: The Story Behind the Voice and Paul Weller: Into Tomorrow.

In 2007, his company helped develop and co-produce a FIFA sanctioned film telling the story of how playing football helped prisoners on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was famously held. The film premiered at the World Cup draw in South Africa before going on worldwide release.
After selling his production company, Stuart returned to sports broadcasting with ATP Media, where he now sits on the Board and oversees the day to day running of the company along with its long-term strategic direction which included the ground-breaking sport broadcasting deal with Amazon. ATP Media have secured eight major industry awards in the last 18 months alone, the most recent of which saw ATP Media recognised at the inaugural Sports Leaders Awards in London.

So, with a career already laden with personal success and accolades, what’s next for Stuart? ‘I’m really happy at ATP Media at the moment, the sports rights arena is an incredible place to work in, we’ve built up a great team here and I’m more motivated than ever to help ATP Media break into further ground-breaking areas of sports broadcasting.’
Stuart lives in Weybridge, Surrey with his wife Elizabeth, who he met at York St John, and two daughters Olivia and Harriet.