The Buy Side is our series of conversations about sport and sponsorship with brand marketers. Our guest is Kevin McNair, Marketing Director of KP Snacks, whose career includes previous senior marketing roles at Unilever and PepsiCo. We discuss the high profile sponsorship of The Hundred, the ECB's controversial short format cricket competition and discuss the work of Professor Byron Sharp and Ehrenberg Bass Institute for Marketing Science, which shapes the decision making of KP Snacks and other ...
Sep 29, 2023•58 min
Every market has a top, middle and bottom. The Premier League is among a small global elite of sports rights holders which is doing just fine, thank you. Billions of dollars in media revenue chases must-see content. But even within the league, different business models apply. The elite 'top four, or six' are chasing European football, and with it an additional pot of TV money flowing from UEFA competitions. Then there's the rest. The clubs that exist outside that bubble, for whom life is harder,...
Sep 26, 2023•52 min
The Price of Football is the hit podcast that talks about the finances of the beautiful game, and today we're joined by its creators: comedian Kevin Day, football finance academic Kieran Maguire and former BBC producer Guy Kilty. Now they've written a book. It's called Unfit and Improper Persons, An Idiot’s Guide to Owning a Football Club. It's good, and can be pre-ordered on the Bloomsbury website. This episode of Unofficial Partner is sponsored by Leaders Week London, taking place on 16th to 1...
Sep 19, 2023•55 min
Manchester United's famous red shirt is a prime piece of sporting real estate. So why is TeamViewer ending its deal early? What do you buy when you buy the United shirt? And what does it say about the relationship between football and the commercial sector? Welcome to Sports News Upload, with Richard Gillis and Matt Cutler. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To joi...
Sep 15, 2023•31 min
How to get ahead in the sports business is our series on talent, leadership and professional development. Today we get the perspective of two young people at the start of their careers in sport, and discuss the challenges they faced to get a toe in the door, what mistakes they made that could be of use to others in a similar position, and what surprised them about the industry they now call home. Katharine Curran is Senior Metaverse Manager at City Football Group and Nikhil Waugh is Tournament D...
Sep 12, 2023•35 min
The Commonwealth Games is in crisis, without a host city for 2026 and possibly beyond. The last Olympic Games bidding process received just two hosting bids, with Paris and Los Angeles awarded 2024 and 2028 respectively. Beyond that 2032 has one current bidder. Five potential host cities for the 2022 Winter Olympics withdrew after voter referendums and public polling indicated a lack of local support. So where are we in sport's relationship with its hosts? Have sports events become just too big?...
Sep 04, 2023•49 min
Major General Bill Wright CBE, is the senior British Army officer in charge of Career and Talent Management across the entire British Army, responsible for running and transforming the Army’s Career Management organisation covering c.110k personnel from the rank of private soldier up to 3* General. Previously, Bill was Chief Executive/Commander of The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He joins Richard and Ed Smith to talk about talent, leadership and decision making, with a focus on what links t...
Aug 27, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Occasionally a story breaks that reveals the direction of travel for the rest of sports business. One such story is Disney-owned ESPN's move in to the US gambling market, courtesy of a $2billion, ten year deal with betting operator Penn Entertainment, which sold back its ownership stake in Barstool, with which it was previously building a sports and gambling offer. “We are confident that the combination of our unparalleled audience along with Penn’s operational expertise and state-of-the-art tec...
Aug 26, 2023•50 min
"With men, with FIFA, you will find open doors. Just push the doors. They are open." That was Gianni Infantino, FIFA President, in the run up to last Sunday's Women's World Cup final between England's Lionesses and La Roja, Spain's national team, the tournament winners. But how open are those doors, really? New research from Women in Football sheds light on the reality that lies below the rhetoric and PR spiel. In many ways, far from welcoming women in to football, the professional game remains ...
Aug 22, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Manchester United and Adidas are two of the sports worlds most iconic and valuable brands. So the new £900million, 10 year deal, signed recently, has a significance that goes beyond the two organisations and offers a glimpse as to how the sports economy might evolve over the next decade. What are the ripple effects of this deal, on other football clubs and other sports? Did Man Utd benefit from Adidas' recent acrimonious split with controversial hiphop star Kanye West and the costly ending of th...
Aug 15, 2023•40 min
The Pirates vs The Premier League is a new, standalone podcast documentary series, in to the illicit world of illegal sports streaming. It's the first project to emerge from Unofficial Partner Productions, led by Matt Cutler, former SportBusiness Editor and Two Circles communications director, who has joined UP to lead on this new venture, with a brief to create interesting stuff for business and broader sports audiences. In this conversation, Matt joins Richard to talk pirates, criminals, footb...
Aug 11, 2023•41 min
What's the role of a National Governing Body for sport in 2023? Is the NGB business model relevant or sustainable? These are questions running through this episode of The Squeezed Middle, our series created in collaboration with PTI Digital, the technology and strategy consultancy. Our focus is on the hugely popular sport of cycling, which at an elite level has been one of the great British success stories over the past two decades, creating a cast of superstar athletes and a haul of Olympic gol...
Aug 08, 2023•51 min
The Buy Side is our regular series on creativity in sports marketing, with regular co-host Simon Moore, award winning Creative Director. Joining us for this look at creative work around the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup are Jane Purdon, former Premier League, Sunderland FC and author of The Homecoming: The Lionesses and Beyond, Sarah Batters, of P&G and more recently Southampton FC and Charlotte Thomson, head of women's football at Copa90. The Work: Les Bleues - Orange Watch Women’s Sports - J...
Aug 04, 2023•58 min
The Buy Side is our regular conversation with brand side marketers about sport and sponsorship. This week's guest is Eike Doerte Burgel, Global Head of Olympic & Paralympic Programme at German based insurance giant, Allianz. Joining the podcast are regular Buy Side collaborators, Sally Hancock and Shaun Whatling. This week’s episode is brought to you by our friends at the Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH) and Loughborough University London. ISH and Loughborough University recently launche...
Aug 01, 2023•40 min
The Big Idea is our series on creativity in sports marketing with regular co-host Simon Moore , award winning Consulting Creative Director. Our guest is David Proudlock , Chief Strategy Officer at Crispin Porter Bogusky London. The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is home to the world's most prestigious advertising awards. The blurb says that Cannes celebrates 'creativity, effectiveness and innovation in the global advertising, marketing and communication industries'. An award i...
Jul 18, 2023•1 hr 5 min
A few months ago Unofficial Partner was invited to join The RugbyDAO WhatsApp group. As of today, the group consists of 232 people from across the sport, made up of some famous ex players, administrators of governing bodies, club owners and coaches, grassroots activists and other interested parties from around the world. It felt like a good time to ask, what is RugbyDAO? Why does it exist, and what does it say about the state of the rugby business, that its founder Nick Riggall felt he needed to...
Jul 14, 2023•36 min
Today’s guest are Mervyn King and Ed Smith. Lord Mervyn King, Baron King of Lothbury, was formerly Governor of the Bank of England and is an Expert Lecturer at the Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH). Ed Smith is an author, journalist and former National Selector for England cricket. As a professional cricketer, he played for Kent, Middlesex & England and is the Founder of ISH. The conversation builds on the themes of Mervyn’s book, Radical Uncertainty: Decision Making for an Unknowable Fut...
Jul 07, 2023•1 hr 30 min
What is a football club? Bohemian FC (Bohs) has a different answer to that question than most. The story of the Dublin team is an antidote to the usual diet of Super League ambitions, big money transfers and private equity buy outs that populate much of the football business conversation today. Bohemians compete in the Premier Division of the League of Ireland, and are the oldest League of Ireland club in continuous existence. This conversation demonstrates that other stories are possible. That ...
Jul 07, 2023•51 min
Unofficial Partner and DAZN Present…The Billion Dollar Women’s Football Brainstorm. An invited audience and VIP guests build the future of women’s football, live on stage at DAZN's London headquarters. What if...we create: The IPL of Women's Club Football. A closed league of the best players from around the world. Angel City, Barcelona, Arsenal and new teams that don't yet exist. Outside of FIFA and UEFA control. Limited 'NFL-type' season. Funded by enormous amounts of money, think Sovereign Wea...
Jul 04, 2023•1 hr 23 min
Alex Amsel is better known as SillyTuna, the award winning game developer, investor, and blockchain expert. He was one of the stars of the Unofficial Partner Web3 Brainstorm Live event at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium last September, which was the absolute peak of NFT mania. Now the hype around web3, blockchain and NFTs has dissipated, so we've asked Alex to give us an update on where we are, what we learnt and where it's going next. After 15+ years running a game studio Alex Amsel moved into the b...
Jun 30, 2023•50 min
How is sport impacted by the cost of living crisis? The answer depends on where you are in the marketplace. The small global elite of sports rights holders are doing just fine. Billions of dollars in media revenue chases must-see content, from the NFL in the US, Premier League in England, the IPL in India through to the major quadrennial extravaganzas such as Olympics and World Cups. Likewise, there are clubs and institutions in the lower reaches of the sporting pyramid for whom not much has cha...
Jun 27, 2023•55 min
Likes, Followers, Shares, Video Views: these are the currency of digital publishing. But as Matt Locke argues in today's conversation, change is coming. The importance of the Like as a metric of audience engagement is quickly diminishing. As the dominant social platforms are converging to become video-led TikTok clones, engagement metrics have shifted from clicks to viewing. From TikTok to Netflix, the most important numbers now are not the big ones, but the long ones - it's all about how long s...
Jun 23, 2023•1 hr 1 min
This is an episode of The Bundle, our regular deep dive in to the sports broadcast and streaming market with regular guests Yannick Ramcke, head of OTT for OneFootball, Murray Barnett, director of the D2C consultancy and formerly of F1, World Rugby and ESPN. And we welcome Carlo De Marchis for his first appearance. Carlo spent 35 years building Deltatre until recently, where he's developed an independent consulting portfolio, which includes an excellent newsletter, A Guy With A Scarf. Conversati...
Jun 19, 2023•57 min
Ed Smith returns to the Unofficial Partner podcast. Ed is the former National Selector for England cricket. He is an author (including What Sport Tells Us About Life and Making Decisions), academic and journalist (New Statesman, BBC and Sunday Times). As a professional cricketer, he played for Kent, England and was club captain of Middlesex when they won their first major title for 15 years. Ed is Co-Founder of the Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH) which has a mission to nurture and inspire s...
Jun 13, 2023•1 hr
Today's guest is Michael Bond, author of a new book exploring the nature of fandom, a fascinating and entertaining investigation in to worlds of obsession, belonging and human connection. We talk about what connects Spurs fans with Potterheads, Trekkies, Swifties and MAGAs. We ask whether fandom fills the gap left by the decline of organised religion, what happens to the club-fan relationship when it is too obviously commercialised, the rise of the celebrity activist and what happens when your i...
Jun 09, 2023•41 min
Today's guest sits at the epicentre of the football business. Charlie Marshall is the CEO of The European Club Association (ECA), the hugely influential organisation, which is the only group officially recognised by both UEFA and FIFA as the sole, independent body for football clubs at European level. We talk about the big issues facing the game in the post-Super League era, as ECA seeks to balance the sometimes conflicting objectives of its constituency of members, from the biggest clubs in the...
Jun 06, 2023•1 hr 27 min
In April, 2019 Tottenham Hotspur football club opened a new £1 billion state-of-the-art stadium, built on top of the old White Hart Lane ground in North London. One of the sports business stories since then has been the club's aspiration to deliver a naming rights sponsorship deal that surpasses those traditionally seen in Europe. Reports in media outlets claim the club is looking to strike a deal in the region of £25 million a year. Since then the club is augmented the stadium's content offerin...
May 30, 2023•54 min
Why do we care about some events and not others? Why do some tournaments capture our imagination and interest, while others seem contrived? Will an expanded 48 team FIFA World Cup work in 2026, or will it lead to a boring tournament? Where do you stand on closed leagues? Does the 'Super League' idea of Best v Best work in the real world? Why do we cheer for underdogs, but only in the early rounds? In the tennis Grand Slams, what are the commercial implications of three sets for women and five se...
May 23, 2023•50 min
Joanna Coates started her career as a fashion buyer at 16 and became CEO of two of UK sport's major governing bodies. From 2015 to 2019, Joanna Coates was England Netball's CEO and worked with the governing body for almost ten years. She was part of the team during her time in charge which led the Vitality Roses to victory at the 2018 Commonwealth Games where they won their historic gold medal. The sport was also experiencing record growth during her tenure. Coates took on the CEO job of UK Athl...
May 19, 2023•1 hr 9 min
The Buy Side is our regular series in which we talk to brand marketers about sport and sponsorship. This week's guest is Stuart Wareman, SVP of Sponsorship, Events and Experiences for Accor , the French multinational hotel group that owns, manages and franchises hotels in over 5300 locations in 110 countries and is the biggest hospitality company in Europe, the sixth biggest in the world. Its booking platform brand Accor Live Limitless (ALL) has become a familiar presence in sport. The brand's s...
May 16, 2023•52 min
