This is an episode of ReThinking Sport, our series created in collaboration with Portas, the global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity. This week we went to Wimbledon to talk to Jamie Baker and Alex Willis. Jamie was a professional tennis player, British number two and Davis Cup player who is now Tournament Director and Head of Professional Tennis at The All England Lawn Tennis Club. Alex is Wimbledon’s Communications and Marketing Director, responsible for the brand v...
Jun 24, 2022•48 min
The Bundle is our regular deep dive in to the sports broadcast and streaming market with regular guests Yannick Ramcke, head of OTT for OneFootball, Charlie Boss, chief commercial officer at The Jockey Club and Murray Barnett, director of the D2C consultancy and formerly of F1, World Rugby and ESPN. Today’s conversation covers MLS and Apple; IPL, Disney and Viacom18; Rugby League and IMG; why is innovation so hard in sport and why do people love the Netflix for Sport story. Today’s episode is sp...
Jun 21, 2022•51 min
This is the second of our For What It’s Worth series in collaboration with Turnstile and is an opportunity to pick apart the reality of the sponsorship sales process on both sides of the negotiation table. To do this we’re pleased to welcome Celine Del Genes and Rob Grenville Jones. Celine is Global General Manager of Specialist Sports at Adidas and Rob is Commercial Partnerships Director at the English Rugby Football Union (RFU). Joining us is Dan Gaunt, General Manager at Turnstile. This is a ...
Jun 14, 2022•55 min
Welcome to the 250th Unofficial Partner sports business podcast. To mark the occasion, we've been going back into the archive and re-listening to many of the conversations we've had over the last three or more years. What we found were a mass of interconnecting threads, each telling a part of the bigger story that is the sports industry's past, present and future. This episode pulls at some of these threads with the help of a host of guests including Claire Enders, Lesa Ukman, Barry Hearn, Patri...
Jun 07, 2022•37 min
The Tour de France is one of the great sporting moments of the year, with a storied history and cultural heritage that is both international and uniquely French. Journalist Alex Duff has written a book called Le Fric, which uncovers the business story of this great French institution and its ever changing relationship with money and power; the secretive family who own it and the multiple attempts to wrestle control by rival groups keen to make the Tour the centre of a world cycling league. Today...
May 31, 2022•25 min
Today's guest is Andy Gardiner, the man behind the Premier Golf League, the self-styled Formula One for professional golf whose promising to generate $1.8billion of annual revenue and $10billon of equity value by 2031. This comes a week after our podcast with Sean Bratches from the rival disruptor league, Saudi backed LIV Golf. Since we spoke, Bratches has resigned. As you'll hear in our conversation, Gardiner is bullish on the PGL's chances of breaking the current stalemate with the PGA Tour, b...
May 24, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Welcome to The Bundle, our regular series on the sports broadcast and streaming market with regular guests Yannick Ramcke of OneFootball and Murray Barnett, former ESPN, World Rugby and F1. The conversation takes us from Formula One in Miami to soccer in Mexico via FIFA+, Disney+ and the questions facing Discovery’s direct to consumer future. You’ll hear us reference various articles and stories, all of which are available to read in the Unofficial Partner newsletter, which goes out every Thursd...
May 20, 2022•48 min
There’s a lot riding on 2026 FIFA World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico. It’s often sold as the moment America finally gets it: When the game catches fire as a professional entertainment product, justifying the investment money flowing in to the MLS and the accompanying franchise valuations , which don’t seem to make sense unless something transformative is about to happen. So 2026 as catalyst: No pressure. But as ever when it comes to FIFA, there are subplots… We still don’t know where the gam...
May 16, 2022•29 min
Lorraine Ugen's story is a must listen for anyone interested in the personal and commercial reality of professional sport. Ugen is an Olympian who competes in her own brand; one she designed, manufactured and models, and who's building a community of fellow athletes who face the dilemma of competing at the highest level without personal sponsorship from the big sports apparel and equipment manufacturers. Ugen competed in the long jump at the Rio 2016 Olympics and captained the Great Britain team...
May 10, 2022•34 min
We went to the NFL’s London office to talk with Brett Gosper, the former head of World Rugby who leads the sport’s push in to the UK and Europe. We discuss the NFL brand, the German sports market, what he’s learnt about private equity’s role in sport, the conversation around the big tech platforms and why Mad Men was not far from the truth when it comes to the early days of the advertising world, which is where Gosper started his business career while in Paris, while playing rugby for the famous...
May 06, 2022•33 min
Sean Bratches spent close to 30 years with ESPN, and then became Managing Director of Commercial Operations at Formula 1, following Liberty Media’s acquisition of the race series from CVC, the private equity group. In November last year, Bratches announced he’d joined Greg Norman at LIV Golf, the organisation behind the Golf Super League, backed by funding from PIF, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. So this is a conversation about an attempted disruption to the status quo in a major global sport....
May 02, 2022•47 min
Dave Roberts is one the primary architects of FIFA+, the football governing body’s newly launched global streaming service. It’s an opportunity to peak below the surface, at what the initial plan was; how it works and how that’s evolved; who’ll watch it and what they’ll watch; how and when it will be commercially viable; and what it says about how sports governing bodies view themselves in 2022. If you like the podcast, you’ll love the Unofficial Partner newsletter that goes to thousands of subs...
Apr 29, 2022•37 min
This is episode of ReThinking Sport, our ongoing series created in collaboration with Portas, the global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity . Today’s topic is girls participation in sport and our special guest is Baroness Sue Campbell of Loughborough , one of the most influential sports administrators of the last thirty years. A former PE teacher, she was made chief executive of the Youth Sport Trust in 1995, having played a key role in setting it up. In 2003 Campbell ...
Apr 26, 2022•50 min
This is the first of a series in collaboration with Turnstile , looking at alternative ways of valuing sports sponsorship and other commercial inventory. The conversation took place at the Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal Football Club and our guests are Juliet Slot, Arsenal’s Chief Commercial Officer and Dan Gaunt, general manager of Turnstile. We talk about what a football club is selling, the hidden value of Intellectual Property, the role of the No More Red anti knife crime campaign and the...
Apr 22, 2022•45 min
What is the state of Rugby League today? Who has the commercial and political power in the game and what impact will this year’s Rugby League World Cup have in the game’s major heartlands of the UK and Australia. These are just a few of the questions I put to today’s guest, Jamie Peacock MBE, who brings a lifetime of insight and expertise to the conversation, courtesy of being the most successful Rugby League player in Super League history, winning nine championships and four Challenge Cup winne...
Apr 11, 2022•37 min
The subject today is club ownership in English football and the ongoing debate about the need for an independent regulator following the UK government review in to the governance of the game led by Tracey Crouch MP. Our guests are Nick Harris, John Scales and Niall Couper. Nick Harris is chief sports news correspondent for the Mail on Sunday newspaper and has recently published an extensive report asking fans what they thought of their club’s owners. The results are fascinating and are available...
Apr 05, 2022•1 hr 24 min
Today’s conversation is about Olympic sports federations and the challenge of building and sustaining audiences for their sports on social media platforms. Our guests are Jonny Murch and Stéphane Schwander. Jonny is Chief executive of Red Torch, the award-winning research, digital and social media agency. Stéphane is head of digital at the FEI, the world governing body for equestrian sport and a member of the Olympic movement for over a century. Since 2017, Red Torch has tracked the performance ...
Mar 31, 2022•49 min
Our deep dive in to the sports media market with regular co-host Yannick Ramcke and guests Murray Barnett and Charlie Boss. Murray is founder of 26West Sport and formerly had senior roles at World Rugby, F1 and ESPN. Charlie is chief commercial director of The Jockey Club and was formerly at the Walt Disney Company. We talk about Buzzer, IPL, Discovery and HBO, Genius Sports and Pixellot; CVC and Ligue 1; sporting monocultures; Barstool and betting; Amazon, Looper, Facebook and the IPL auction. ...
Mar 29, 2022•54 min
This is episode 12 of ReThinking Sport, our series created in collaboration with Portas, the global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity. Today we’re asking what does 777 Partners, a Miami based private investment firm, see in professional British basketball? The company has recently bought 45% of the British Basketball League for $7million, having already bought up the London Lions franchise. This is part of a bigger move in to sports investment. 777 recently paid US$13...
Mar 21, 2022•1 hr 2 min
The most eye catching deal of this week was the announcement that Spotify, the music streaming company is buying almost the entire sponsorship inventory of FC Barcelona, including the shirt of the men’s and women’s teams, the training kit and a title partnership of the famous Camp Nou stadium. To get to what’s really happening here, we’ve brought together Tom Gray, Joel Seymour Hyde and Matt Rogan. Tom Gray is a founding member of Mercury Prize winning band Gomez and a board director of PRS For ...
Mar 18, 2022•50 min
The price of television advertising is spiking rapidly and has big implications for the value of sport and the market for sponsorship, whether you're buying or selling. More broadly, the events of the past two years have led to significant disruption to the advertising landscape. People's media habits changed considerably as their physical location was altered and advertisers were driven to adopt new investment strategies as audiences changed and physical channels were limited. Consumers sought ...
Mar 15, 2022•44 min
This is an episode in our Re-Thinking Sport series in collaboration with Portas, the global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity. Today, we're talking about the business of rugby union with our guest, Nick Garcia, the former City Football Group executive who is now CEO of Welsh club, Ospreys and Head of Team Sports at Y 11 sport and media, the Hong Kong based group that bought a 75.1% stake in the club in May, 2020. The other voice you'll hear is that Nick Rawlinson, sen...
Mar 08, 2022•46 min
The obvious context to today’s conversation are the terrible events happening in Ukraine, which has brought in to sharp focus sport’s role in the political landscape that surround them, in particular the role of governing bodies and the supply chain of professional enablers that are part and parcel of sportswashing and the soft power strategies beloved by autocratic regimes. My guests are two experts in the relationship between business and geopolitics. Robert Barrington served as Executive Dire...
Mar 04, 2022•38 min
Former professional cricketer Patrick Foster has written a searingly honest memoir about how he became addicted to gambling while at university, developing a habit that cost him £4million and ruined his relationships and career. So this is an opportunity to discuss sport’s commercial relationship with the betting industry, something that’s often couched in abstract terms, of new deals being struck by rights holder, team shirt sponsorship and Ray Winstone at half time. We don’t tend to hear from ...
Feb 28, 2022•36 min
This week the US Soccer Federation (USSF) and the US Women’s National Team settled a six year fight over equal pay. The players will receive $24m. The USSF has promised to equalise pay between men’s and women’s national teams for all competitions, including the FIFA World Cup. Why is this happening now? Next week the USSF elects its next president, whose tenure will include the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico. The two candidates are former president Carlos Cordeiro and today's g...
Feb 25, 2022•28 min
One of the biggest sports business stories of the past year has been in golf where the two major tours - European and PGA Tour - are in what some have called an existential battle for control of the game at the highest level. A new rival, the Golf Premier League led by Greg Norman and backed by Saudi money, is attempting to disrupt the tours, by offering enormous sums to the very best players. That story is moving as we speak, as major stars such as Dustin Johnson and Bryson Dechambeau back away...
Feb 21, 2022•53 min
Today’s conversation is a masterclass in sports sponsorship strategy prompted by recent changes to the way FIFA is packaging its commercial rights. Our guests are two people whose views I go to first whenever a major deal is done, so I’m very pleased to be able to get them around the microphone at the same time. For two decades, Ricardo Fort was in charge of the global sports programmes for Visa and Coca-Cola, overseeing relationships with FIFA and the IOC among many others. He now runs his own ...
Feb 18, 2022•41 min
Today's episode was prompted by a question posed by author, journalist and regular listener Mike Jakeman: How do you market test cricket successfully? " The national cricket boards have figured out that the big money comes from success in the shorter formats. And certainly in England, their focus has been on building success in one day in 2020. It's been very successful. England obviously won the 2019 ICC World Cup and they reached the final of the T20 World Cup late last year. But test cricket,...
Feb 15, 2022•55 min
This week, sports agency Two Circles bought Livewire Sport, a content production company that works for clients including the Premier League, Wimbledon, World Rugby, ECB and the International Paralympic Committee. This follows on from last year’s buyout of TRM Partners, the commercial sales agency. So Sean and I went to Two Circles headquarters in London to find out why and to ask what it says about the way the sports business is evolving. Our guests are Two Circles founder Gareth Balch and Pran...
Feb 11, 2022•49 min
This is episode 10 of ReThinking Sport, our series created in collaboration with Portas, the global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity. The focus today is on the idea of professional sport. What does it mean when a sport is professionalised. And what are the trade offs in terms of access to opportunity, competitive balance and for the well being of the athletes themselves. It’s a conversation that talks to the very nature and broader purpose of the sports business, whe...
Feb 08, 2022•45 min
