Chris Gore Named Finalist in the Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2026

Chris Gore, co-founder of SPOR Group, has been named a finalist in the Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2026 Technology Entrepreneur of the Year category.

SPOR Group

---

Sometimes things happen that stop you in your tracks. Being named as a finalist in the Great British Entrepreneur Awards is one of those things.

Chris Gore, co-founder of SPOR Group, has been shortlisted in the Technology Entrepreneur of the Year category for the South East of England at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2026, often called the Grammys of Entrepreneurship. He is one of eight finalists vying for the South East title. The ceremony takes place in November 2026.

The nomination was covered by the Maidenhead Advertiser, the local paper serving the town where SPOR Group is based. For a business that started at a kitchen table in Maidenhead in 2019, seeing that recognition in the local paper carried its own particular weight. Read the full feature at maidenhead-advertiser.co.uk.

What the Great British Entrepreneur Awards Are

The Great British Entrepreneur Awards, supported by Allica Bank, is one of the most respected entrepreneurship recognition programmes in the UK. Often referred to as the Grammys of Entrepreneurship, the awards recognise founders and leaders across a range of sectors and categories, with regional finalists competing for national recognition. The Technology Entrepreneur of the Year category recognises founders building significant, innovative technology businesses. The awards ceremony takes place in November 2026. Find out more at greatbritishentrepreneurawards.com.

Where SPOR Group Started

In August 2019, Chris Gore and Chris Spence founded SPOR Group from a kitchen table in Maidenhead. The starting point was a combined £100,000 of personal savings, a house on the line as a personal guarantee to open supplier trade accounts, and a conviction that the market for meeting room AV technology was not being served properly by the existing options.

Both had come from AVISPL, the largest AV company in the world. Both had seen organisations with genuine budgets and genuine needs being turned away because the projects were too small for the enterprise team. The gap was obvious. The decision to fill it was straightforward, even if the execution was not.

The business launched six months before COVID. The pandemic accelerated demand for exactly what SPOR Group did. Several NHS trusts came to them to modernise meeting rooms and remote working infrastructure. That work, delivered at pace, established SPOR Group as a serious operator in the market.

Where SPOR Group Is Now

Today SPOR Group employs 35 staff across offices in Maidenhead and Southampton. Revenue sits at around £10 million annually. The business manages over 1,500 meeting room sites across the UK, Europe, Singapore, Sydney and Hong Kong, with further expansion in progress.

Every site is monitored through SPORTrack, the remote monitoring platform that watches every device in every room in real time, catching faults before they affect meetings. The senior leadership team now hold equity in the business through an EMI scheme launched this year.

The Great British Entrepreneur Awards nomination comes at a moment when SPOR Group is in its most ambitious phase. An acquisition is in progress. The team is the strongest it has ever been.

What This Means to the Team

Chris was clear about this when he spoke to the Maidenhead Advertiser. The recognition does not belong to one person. Every member of the SPOR Group team contributes to what the business is and what it has become. The engineers on site. The helpdesk team. The account managers. The operations function. Every client who has trusted SPOR Group with their meeting room estate.

That is what a nomination like this actually represents. Not a single founder achievement but the collective output of a team that has consistently delivered for clients across some of the most demanding corporate environments in the world.

The nomination is for the South East of England Technology Entrepreneur of the Year category.

Chris Gore is one of eight finalists. The Great British Entrepreneur Awards ceremony takes place in November 2026.