[3] His interest in and love for music sowed the seeds for his early career; while working in a record shop he produced a fanzine which caught the eye of the then NME editor Steve Lamacq.

Sports Interactive was founded in 1994 by Paul and Oliver Collyer on the back of the success they had achieved with a game they had originally created in their Shropshire bedrooms in the late 1980s.

Jacobson first became involved in Sports Interactive as a fan of the game, after obtaining an advance copy of Championship Manager 2 in exchange for two Blur concert tickets,[3] offering his services as one of the early testers.

Under Jacobson's management, Sports Interactive has grown from a fledgling start-up employing five people to one of the best-known names in UK game development with a staff of more than 280 and a network of roughly 1,400 researchers across the globe.

[10] Football Manager players have accelerated rapidly in recent years, helped in part by the pandemic and by the studio working with subscription platforms like Game Pass, Apple Arcade, and Netflix.

War Child also receive a donation for each copy of Football Manager sold, raising more than £700,000 to date, and in 2011, Jacobson went on a trip with the charity to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He is also currently working on a charitable project in Mozambique, giving local villages business opportunities whilst also helping the environment by planting fruit trees which thrive in the area.

Jacobson has been involved with the Nordoff-Robbins music therapy charity for a number of years, forming part of a committee that organises the annual Legends of Football dinner.