Mel Morris

Melvyn Morris CBE is an English businessman and former football club chairman. As a web entrepreneur, Morris gained a large part of his fortune through his successful startup investment in King, the firm behind the mobile game Candy Crush Saga. More recently, he became known for his disastrous tenure as owner of Derby County F.C., which saw debts accrued, acrimony with the EFL, a points deduction, a transfer embargo and the loss of players (including academy products), culminating in the club entering administration in 2021 and being relegated to the third tier of English football for the first time in over thirty years. Business ventures Morris was born and raised in the Littleover area of Derby. Out of school, he first worked as a tile and flooring manager at a company he helped to establish in Spain, before venturing into entrepreneurship. After leaving the flooring firm, he returned to the UK to develop a dating website called uDate, which he went on to sell for £100 million. He used the money secured from the sale to invest in Prevx, an internet security firm, which was later sold to Webroot. He then helped to set up King, which he chaired from 2003 onwards until stepping down in 2014. When King was sold to Activision Blizzard, Morris collected £450 million.