African Collaborations Group (ACG), a strategic project origination and collaboration platform focused on the industrialisation of sport in Africa, has appointed hospitality investment specialist Jonathan Worsley to its Advisory Board. The appointment is expected to strengthen ACG’s capacity to develop large-scale, bankable sport and entertainment district ecosystems by bringing deeper expertise in hospitality investment, hotel development, tourism infrastructure and international investor networks.
Worsley is Chairman of The Bench, a global hospitality investment platform known for convening major investors, developers, financiers, hotel operators and other stakeholders across the international hospitality sector. The Bench’s portfolio of events includes the Future Hospitality Summit (FHS), a leading hospitality investment forum staged in Riyadh, Dubai and other major global hospitality hubs.
Worsley Brings Decades of Hospitality Investment Experience
Worsley has built a career spanning more than two decades in the global hospitality investment and advisory sector. He began his professional career with Forte and Holiday Inns before moving into senior hotel advisory positions at PKF and CBRE. In 1997, he co-founded IHIF Berlin, a benchmarking company serving the hotel industry. The company later merged with STR in 2008 to create STR Global, further expanding its role within the international hospitality investment and intelligence landscape.
Over the course of his career, Worsley has played a significant role in bringing together investors, developers, operators and financiers and facilitating relationships that have influenced hospitality investment across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
His experience extends beyond executive leadership. Worsley serves on the advisory boards of several hospitality organisations and startups and has supported initiatives aimed at encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship within the sector. Among those initiatives are the FHS Startup Den and Lead the Change, which seek to promote new ideas, investment opportunities and transformation across the hospitality industry.
Hospitality Seen as Core Infrastructure for Sport Districts
ACG said Worsley’s appointment is strategically important to its approach to developing sport and entertainment districts across Africa. The organisation’s model goes beyond the development of individual stadiums or sports venues. Instead, it focuses on integrated urban precincts that bring together hotels, hospitality, food and beverage outlets, retail, entertainment facilities and public spaces.
According to ACG, the success of such districts depends on the integration of these different components into a commercially viable and experience-driven ecosystem. Hotels are particularly important to this model because they can convert visitors attending sporting events and entertainment programmes into overnight guests and additional tourism spending. They can also help maintain economic activity in a district on days when major sporting or entertainment events are not taking place.
By connecting accommodation, tourism, business travel, hospitality and entertainment with sporting infrastructure, ACG believes such districts can become sustainable urban destinations rather than facilities dependent solely on match-day revenues. Worsley’s appointment is therefore intended to ensure that hospitality considerations are incorporated into ACG projects from the earliest stages of planning, rather than being treated as an additional component after the core sporting infrastructure has been designed.
Global Hospitality Network to Support African Projects
Worsley is expected to bring extensive relationships with global hotel operators, investors, developers, financiers, and tourism authorities to the ACG Advisory Board. His experience in convening investment communities could help ACG establish partnerships required to originate and structure large-scale sport and entertainment district projects across Africa. Through The Bench and the Future Hospitality Summit, Worsley has developed a broad network connecting stakeholders across the hospitality investment value chain.
ACG said these relationships are particularly relevant to its ambition to create bankable district-scale projects capable of attracting both public and private investment. The company also highlighted Worsley’s involvement with FHS Africa, which brings together hospitality investors, developers, operators and other stakeholders with an interest in the continent’s growing tourism and hospitality market.
ACG Seeks to Transform Africa’s Sport Economy
ACG’s broader strategy is based on the view that Africa’s sport economy has significant growth potential but requires a shift away from isolated venue development toward integrated, commercially sustainable ecosystems. The continent’s sport economy is projected to reach $20 billion by 2035. Despite this growth potential, ACG argues that Africa continues to lack the integrated sport and entertainment district ecosystems necessary to support large-scale investment and long-term economic development.
Rather than focusing on stadiums as standalone infrastructure, ACG seeks to develop mixed-use districts that combine sporting facilities with hospitality, tourism, retail, entertainment, and other revenue-generating activities. This approach aims to diversify income sources, improve project viability,, and generate economic activity beyond major sporting events.
Building Bankable and Investment-Ready Districts
ACG’s project origination model brings together a wide range of stakeholders required to take a major project from concept to implementation. These stakeholders include governments, public-private partnership authorities and regulators, development finance institutions, private investors, developers, designers, engineers, legal and transaction advisers, hotel and hospitality operators, sport federations and leagues, event promoters, media and broadcast companies, academic institutions and host communities.
By bringing these groups together at an early stage, ACG aims to establish a structured pathway covering project conceptualisation, feasibility assessment, financial structuring, bankability, and eventual delivery. The approach is designed to ensure that sport and entertainment developments are supported by the necessary commercial, tourism, hospitality, and urban infrastructure.
Leadership Welcomes Strategic Appointment
Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard, Founder and Executive Chairman of ACG, said Worsley’s appointment reflects one of the organisation’s core beliefs that sport and entertainment districts must be developed as integrated urban ecosystems. He noted that hotels represent an essential component of such developments and highlighted Worsley’s experience through The Bench and the Future Hospitality Summit.
According to Pompigne-Mognard, Worsley has created a major global platform for hospitality investment and, through FHS Africa, has brought together the community of investors, operators, and developers that ACG needs as it works to originate bankable sports and entertainment district projects across Africa. He described Worsley’s presence on the Advisory Board as a strategic asset for the organisation.
Strengthening the Link Between Sport, Tourism and Investment
The appointment comes as African countries increasingly seek to use sport and entertainment as catalysts for tourism, infrastructure development, urban regeneration, and investment. For ACG, integrating hospitality into sport and entertainment districts is central to achieving those objectives. Accommodation, food and beverage, retail and tourism services can create additional revenue streams while increasing the length of stay and spending of visitors attending sporting and entertainment events.
The model also provides opportunities for districts to remain active throughout the year, rather than relying exclusively on major competitions or events. Worsley’s hospitality investment expertise is expected to help ACG further develop this model by connecting district projects with international hospitality capital, operators, and development partners.
A Platform for Africa’s Next Generation of Sport Infrastructure
African Collaborations Group describes itself as a strategic project origination and collaboration platform focused on the industrialisation of sport in Africa through the development of bankable sport and entertainment district ecosystems. The organisation aims to bridge the gap between sporting ambition and commercially viable infrastructure by coordinating the public and private-sector stakeholders required to develop major projects.
Its collaborative model is intended to create structured pathways that transform early-stage concepts into feasible, investable and deliverable projects. With Worsley joining its Advisory Board, ACG is seeking to further strengthen the hospitality and tourism dimension of this strategy and establish closer links with the global investment community.
The appointment ultimately reinforces ACG’s vision of sport as more than an entertainment product or venue-based industry. By combining sport with hospitality, tourism, retail, entertainment and urban development, the organisation aims to create commercially sustainable districts capable of generating economic value and attracting long-term investment across the African continent.
:::
