Mike Harris (entrepreneur)

Mike Harris is a Welsh businessman and football chairman. Since the late 90s, he has been involved with The New Saints F.C., becoming the clubs chairman in 2003. In the past two decades, Harris has built one of the most successful clubs in European football. The New Saints broke Ajax's top flight record of consecutive wins, after recording 27 wins in a row in 2016.[1]

Mike Harris
NationalityWelsh
Occupation(s)Football chairman
Entrepreneur

Football

In 2005, Total Network Solutions famously hosted Champions League winners Liverpool in the qualifying round in the defence of their title.[2] Harris sold Total Network Solutions to British Telecom and exited the business he co-founded.[3] At the time, he was serving as both the Managing Director of TNS and chairman of the Welsh football club of the same name. Despite uncertainty over how the sale to BT may affect the future of the football club, Harris confirmed in the media that he was remaining involved with the club and funding had been secured.[4]

Shortly after the sale to British Telecom, Harris announced the football club would be moving to Oswestry in Shropshire, England after TNS merged with Oswestry Town Football Club a couple of seasons earlier.[5] The team was given the new name, The New Saints. Keeping the well-known abbreviation of TNS. Following the establishment of The New Saints in their new Oswestry home, the football club went through a period of unrivalled success. By 2023, TNS had won the Welsh Premier League 15 times in the previous 23 seasons, making them the most successful Welsh football team in modern history.[6] As the team became more successful on the pitch, so did the clubs finances. Harris grew the annual turnover from £40,000 to £2 million a year.[7]

Harris' success at TNS has meant he is often seen as a figurehead of Welsh football, and has been part of the talks for reforming the Welsh Premier League in recent years.[8]

SiFi Networks

Harris and Roland Pickstock co-founded SiFi Networks to provide privately funded open access, city-wide fibre networks in the United States. The aim was to offer an alternative to current telecomms solutions where low speeds and only one provider to choose from was common when the business was founded in 2013. In 2021, The company received $500m in funding from Dutch pension fund, APG.[9] The funding allowed them to expand the roll out of fibre networks in the US, which to date has included Saratoga, New York[10] and Kenosha, Wisconsin.[11]

References
  1. Brown, Tom. "Welsh Premier League: Champions New Saints break Ajax world record". BBC.
  2. "Liverpool 3-0 TNS". BBC Sport. 13 July 2005.
  3. "BT to 'expand' TNS after buy-out". BBC. 31 October 2005.
  4. "TNS survives despite BT buy out". Daily Telegraph. 31 October 2005.
  5. "TNS on the move to Oswestry". Media Wales. 31 March 2013.
  6. Simms, George. "The New Saints on winning a 15th title and transforming Welsh football: 'We want to drag others with us'". i (newspaper).
  7. "TNS owner Mike Harris hypes up quality of Welsh top flight". Shropshire Star.
  8. "Mike Harris wary of 'change for change's sake'". BBC. 4 March 2023.
  9. "APG investment connects 1 million American households to fiber optics". APG.
  10. "Saratoga Reveals 32m High Speed Internet project". ABC News.
  11. Barrett, Rick. "Construction starts of $100 million internet network in Kenosha. The privately built network would be the first of its kind in Wisconsin". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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