Kelly Sumner (born 29 April 1961), is a director o
ArBa Developments
chairman o
Reactional Music
and chairman o
SonicData
Sumner has run two

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

listed companies. He has 40 years experience in hardware and software, starting as a trainee electronics engineer at Commodore in 1979. He progressed up the corporate ladder becoming managing director of Commodore in the UK. From hardware he moved into entertainment software, joining US based Nintendo and Sega publisher

Gametek GameTek was an American video game publisher based in North Miami Beach, Florida known for publishing video game adaptations of game shows in the late 1980s and early 1990s. GameTek was a trade name for IJE, the owner of electronic publishing r ...

as European MD before becoming CEO. Sumner merged

into the fledgling publisher Take Two shortly thereafter. As

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

he took the company to annual sales of $1 billion, investing in the creation of amongst others,

Rockstar Games Rockstar Games, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in New York City. The company was established in December 1998 as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, using the assets Take-Two had previously acquired from BMG Interactive. Foun ...

, launching products such as

Grand Theft Auto ''Grand Theft Auto'' (''GTA'') is a series of action-adventure games created by David Jones and Mike Dailly. Later titles were developed under the oversight of brothers Dan and Sam Houser, Leslie Benzies and Aaron Garbut. It is primarily de ...

and delivering a four-fold increase in the share price. After Take Two, Sumner became CEO of RedOctane fronting the commercial development of

Guitar Hero ''Guitar Hero'' is a series of Music video game, music rhythm game video games first released in November 2005, in which players use a guitar-shaped game controller to simulate playing primarily lead guitar, lead, bass guitar, and rhythm guita ...

, the video game that went on to become a $1 billion franchise. He sold RedOctane to

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one ...

in 2006 for $160 million. More recently Sumner has been investing in early stage tech companies. During this period he has been chairman of Intent Media, which was sold to Newbay Capital; and Mediatonic ( Fall Guys) which was sold to

Synova Capital Synova is a growth focused investor supporting Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also consi ...

, and a board director of the cloud CRM company, TPoint, which was sold to New York-based private equity company Aquiline Capital Partners. He is currently a director of ArBa Developments, chairman of Reactional Music, and chairman of the intelligent content tech start-up, Sonic Data Limited. SonicData's mission is to enable, understand and track all the world's music and audio content from creation to consumption. Its patented SonicKey™ enables all audio in the world to be identifiable, referenceable and trackable. SonicKey can be easily integrated into both software and hardware. It has multiple commercial applications in music, social media, advertising, TV, streaming platforms, games, voice and news across all platforms, places, media and devices''.'' Sumner is also a former vice president of

Chelsea Football Club Chelsea Football Club is an English professional football club based in Fulham, West London. Founded in 1905, they play their home games at Stamford Bridge. The club competes in the Premier League, the top division of English football. ...

. He resides in

Weybridge Weybridge () is a town in the Borough of Elmbridge in Surrey, England, around southwest of central London. The settlement is recorded as ''Waigebrugge'' and ''Weibrugge'' in the 7th century and the name derives from a crossing point of the ...

, Surrey with his wife, Kirsteen. Appeared as a contestant on the videogame show

GamesMaster ''GamesMaster'' is a British television programme which originally aired on Channel 4 from 1992 to 1998. In 2021, it returned for a new series on YouTube and E4. It was the first UK television programme dedicated to video games. Dominik Diam ...

(Series 2 Episode 12). Winning the Golden Joystick by completing his challenge on The Humans on the Amiga.

References

External links

*http://ir.take2games.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=86428&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=358952&highlight= 22 November 2002 *Take-Two Veteran Leads RedOctan

3 March 2006 *https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/could-this-technology-built-by-a-grammy-winning-producer-blow-up-musics-black-box-once-and-for-all/ 13 July 2021 *https://www.recordoftheday.com/on-the-move/news-press/sonickey-enables-all-music-in-the-world-to-be-identifiable-referenceable-and-trackable-with-100-accuracy 14 July 2021 *https://www.thecreativeindustries.co.uk/ones-to-watch-2021/sonicdata-limited 14 September 2021 *https://www.thecreativeindustries.co.uk/site-content/ones-to-watch-2021-celebrates-growth-and-export-minded-createch-businesses 9 September 2021 *https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/23360/pdf/ 20 January 2021 *https://www.aim.org.uk/#/news/aim-partners-with-sonicdata-to-offer-members-free-digital-watermark-monitoring-technology 2 September 2021 {{DEFAULTSORT:Sumner, Kelly 1961 births Living people British businesspeople