Welcome to The Bundle, our deep dive in to the sports media rights economy with regular co-hosts Murray Barnett and Yannick Ramcke. Today’s list of topics include trying to decipher FIFA’s media strategy around FIFA+ and the Club World Cup, we dip in to the French market and the challenges being faced by the country’s leading football league, Ligue1, there’s a bit on YouTube and whether the sports industry’s view of it is shifting, and finally we compare the rhetoric around the value of women’s ...
Jul 05, 2024•1 hr 9 min
Performance data has long played a role in the way sport is presented on television. From football to formula one, we’re familiar with commentators referencing statistics to help explain what we’re watching. But increasingly, the most sought after data points are those that exist within the body of the athlete. Heart rate and other biometric data is fast becoming a storytelling device to illuminate and augment what we see on our screen. But how does it work? Who is it really aimed at? How much d...
Jul 02, 2024•51 min
Sport was a big presence in the annual Cannes Lions Festival last week. The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is the top of the tree when it comes to showcasing the relationship between creative ideas and sport. There were 665 entries from 41 countries vying for the coveted prizes. So what’s winning awards this year, why are they winning, what are the big themes and trends, what does it mean to be Cannes-worthy and what can the rest of us learn from the judging process. We’re ver...
Jun 28, 2024•1 hr 4 min
This is the second episode of Other People’s Money, our regular deep dive in to the world sports investment, with my regular co-host Matt Rogan, one of the co-founders of Two Circles and a serial adviser to sports organisations. Today the conversation is about private equity. We went to the Victoria offices of Phoenix Capital to talk to Tim Dunn, a partner in the firm. Tim and the company have no interest in sports as an asset class and that’s why we wanted his opinion. It’s an opportunity to lo...
Jun 24, 2024•53 min
Tom Beahon created the Castore sportswear brand with his brother Phil in 2016. Today, their shareholding in the firm is valued at around £500million following a recent capital round, led by US merchant bank and investor The Raine Group, which values the company at £950mn. This investment will contribute to Castore’s attack on the sportswear industry dominated by Adidas, Nike, Puma and Michael Rubin’s online retailer Fanatics. This week, Castore added to its portfolio of around fifty team partner...
Jun 16, 2024•1 hr
Steve Martin and Jamie Wynne-Morgan created and developed the award-winning M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment agency over a 20-year period. Six months ago they resigned, and there's been speculation ever since as to what they'll do next. Today they answer that question. It's called MSQ Sport + Entertainment. We went to meet the pair at their new London office to find out more. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking...
Jun 11, 2024•42 min
What does sport look like from the money side of the equation? What’s the investment rationale behind buying a football team, cricket franchise, the new sports tech thing or a sports agency? What are assumptions about how the market will develop? Who’s going to win, who will lose out? These are just a few of the questions we’re looking to explore in this series, with my co-host Matt Rogan, co-founder of Two Circles, C-suite consultant and someone who’s sat on either side of the sport and money d...
Jun 04, 2024•44 min
Wedge Issues is a new series focused on the business of golf. Our first guest is the BBC's voice of golf Iain Carter, who leads the corporations coverage of the sport across audio and online at a time of unprecedented upheaval. The traditional men's game has been attacked by LIV Golf, backed by Saudi's PIF money, which is attempting to disrupt the monopolies enjoyed by the PGA and European Tours. Carter has had a ringside seat from which to study the power games, greed and political machinations...
May 28, 2024•53 min
Let us take you inside the Great Hundred Franchise Sell-Off The Hundred is the England and Wales Cricket Board’s controversial short form format. This week, the ECB has secured an agreement on a funding model between the host and non-host counties - those counties who have a Hundred franshics and those who don’t. This could have seismic ramifications for the domestic game in England and Wales, kickstarting a process that will see a large injection of private capital into teams presently owned an...
May 24, 2024•43 min
Jack Buckner is the former two Olympic Games athlete and 5000 metre European Champion who is now CEO of UK Athletics, the governing body for track and field in Britain. Buckner has held the same position at British Triathlon and more recently British Swimming. This followed a career in sports marketing at Adidas, in the UK, Germany and the US. The impetus for our conversation was a recent announcement that UKA was entering a three way partnership with London Marathon Events and the Great North R...
May 20, 2024•53 min
Our regular deep dive in to the latest happenings in sports media, with regular co-hosts Murray Barnett and Yannick Ramcke. The episode covers a variety of topics starting with the NFL's strategic move to stream Christmas Day games on Netflix and the broader implications for live sports streaming. They delve into Sky Sports Plus' new streaming options for the EFL and how it impacts individual sports leagues and traditional linear broadcasting. The conversation further touches on Serie A's ongoin...
May 17, 2024•1 hr 3 min
NBC has built an audience for the Premier League in North America, creating a broadcast home for English club football for more than a decade. The television giant's latest six year deal is worth $450million-per-season to the league, more than five times the size of their original US rights deal, in 2013. Does that money buy them the right to host Premier League games in the USA? Adam Crafton of The Athletic/New York Times has just moved over to the US to cover the run-in to the 2026 FIFA World ...
May 14, 2024•52 min
Sportradar is one of the big beasts of the sports business, providing software, data and content through subscription and revenue share arrangements to sports leagues, betting operators and media firms. It serves more than 1,600 customers across 120 countries, including DraftKings, Twitter and ESPN, and is an official partner of the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and the NASCAR. In 2001, it went public with an IPO on the NASDAQ , which valued the company at $8billion...
May 10, 2024•47 min
Live from Madrid, The Billion-Euro Club Football Brainstorm. Big ideas discussed by great panelists from across the European club game, courtesy of ECA Club Connect, the inaugural business summit convened by the European Club Association. Over 350 directors and operational leaders from more than 200 clubs met at the Meliá Castilla Hotel over 24-25 April. This podcast features 12 experts, 4 topics, 1 hour. What decisions will we make today to build a robust and sustainable football club of the fu...
May 07, 2024•1 hr 10 min
The Buy Side is our regular series where we talk to brand side marketers about sport and sponsorship. Today's guest is Anneliese Mesilati, Head of Brand Activation and Sponsorships, Americas at UBS, the private banking group and wealth management business. We talk about the brand's extensive sport portfolio and its role within the marketing of the company, which includes the Mercedes Formula One team. Last year, UBS took over Credit Suisse Bank, posing the question as to the future of many big n...
Apr 23, 2024•48 min
Everyone agrees the current sports ticketing market doesn't work. It rips off fans, is vulnerable to touts and is an inefficient way to manage supply and demand. But is regulation the answer? Labour will cap the resale prices of tickets and regulate resale platforms if the party wins the next general election, Sir Keir Starmer said recently. The plans will clamp down on ticket touts who rip off music and sports fans going to live events, Sir Keir said. The party says it will address ticket touti...
Apr 23, 2024•49 min
What is the Invictus Games Foundation and why is it still relevant, ten years after the creation of the first event for injured servicemen and women in London in 2024? A powerful and important conversation with Dominic Reid OBE, the CEO of the Invictus Games Foundation, the international governing body for the event that promotes sport's role in recovery from traumatic physical and psychological injury. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining an...
Apr 19, 2024•34 min
In the UK 500 pubs closed in 2023. By the end of June it’s predicted 750 will have closed in 2024. It’s stark, there’s no two ways about it. We asked YouGov again to help us make sense of what’s going on. They found that one in four sports fans – equivalent to 3.4m people – are going to the pub less than they did a year ago. And more than half (55%) of sports fans (7.8m people) said at the moment, sport doesn’t form part of their pub experience at all. Shit. Maybe a partnership under strain is p...
Apr 16, 2024•36 min
In 2017, Laura Youngson led a group of women to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro to play a record-breaking football match with the campaigning group Equal Playing Field to highlight gender inequalities in sport. During this experience, Laura discovered the women were all wearing boots made for men (or kids) which left their feet in pain long after the final whistle blew. That's the origin story of IDA Sports, the company Laura co-founded with Ben Sandhu, a former professional cricketer from Melbourne....
Apr 09, 2024•42 min
Cause and effect. If this then that. Attribution is the holy grail of marketing. The quest to provide evidence of the impact of a sports sponsorship on the sponsor's business. The digital era was supposed to solve this puzzle. But it might have made it worse. To discuss this big question are Tom Smith and Charlie Boss. Tom is Chief Product Officer at Datapowa , the sponsorship analytics company. You'll hear him reference datapowa VENN , which measures customer acquisition by securely matching pa...
Apr 05, 2024•51 min
The Bundle is our popular long running series that unpicks the latest news to emerge from the sports media and streaming marketplace. A new feature is The Bundle Bulletin, an accompanying newsletter that goes to Unofficial Partner subscribers, featuring thought starters and strands from the conversation. Each month, before we record, Richard and co-hosts Murray Barnett and Yannick Ramcke share possible topics, random thoughts and possible storylines that make up the episode. I’ve always found th...
Apr 02, 2024•55 min
Football shirts are front page news in England and Germany in the last week, so this is a timely conversation about our relationship with sports jerseys, and the nature of their commercial value. Guests are Mike Fordham and Kylie Bishop. Mike has worked for IMG and the ECB and played pivotal roles in the set up of both the IPL and The Hundred, and was more recently CEO of Rajasthan Royals. Kylie is Head of Sponsorship Valuation at Turnstile, having previously worked at The Boston Consulting Grou...
Mar 25, 2024•56 min
The Saudi Question permeates the global sports business conversation from top to bottom. Billions of pounds has been across multiple layers of the industry, including buying players, purchasing foreign clubs, developing domestic clubs and buying or developing tournaments at home and abroad. These deals have been pursued by the government itself, the PIF sovereign wealth fund, and Saudi Aramco, the oil firm that is the world’s most profitable company. The scope is enormous, with at least $10bn sp...
Mar 19, 2024•42 min
This a live podcast recorded at the London HQ of LiveScore, to commemorate the company's 25th anniversary. It's a conversation with Sam Sadi, CEO of LiveScore about our relationship with tech, from colour television to AI. To mark the occasion, LiveScore has created the Evolution of Fan report which delves into the last quarter-century of football fan culture amidst the dynamic backdrop of technological progress. Download the report from the LiveScore Group website . Unofficial Partner is the le...
Mar 15, 2024•45 min
You might know Utilita Energy from the front of Luton Town's shirt, the journey of the newly promoted club is one of the stories of the Premier League season. But there's so much more to the company than that. Luton and Utilita have partnered since 2015, back when the club was still in the fourth tier, becoming front-of-shirt sponsor in February 2022. It is just one part of a comprehensive and wide ranging sponsorship strategy that uses football to educate fans and club owners about how to tackl...
Mar 12, 2024•52 min
More Than Equal's mission statement is to find, nurture and develop female racing drivers, while identifying and removing the systemic barriers they face. It was founded by 13-times Grand Prix winner David Coulthard and the entrepreneur and philanthropist, Karel Komarek. Their website explains why having a woman as an F1 World Champion matters. "Imagine the rewards for our sport and for women everywhere when the chequered flag comes down on that first female champion. Every girl deserves an equa...
Mar 08, 2024•57 min
Thomas Hitlsperger is the former German international footballer who played for several leading British and European clubs during a career that took him to Aston Villa, VFB Stuttgart, Lazio, Everton and West Ham, culminating in over 100 Premier League appearances and 52 caps for Germany. He was director of football and then CEO of Stuttgart and now balances media work with a business career that combines football and food. He is part of the ownership group of Danish club Aalborg, having bought 2...
Mar 05, 2024•53 min
Manchester City are in the process of extending their most important and lucrative sponsorship deal, with Etihad, the Abu Dhabi-based airline, whose brand is synonymous with the club following the takeover by Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), which bought 90 per cent of the club from Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand, in 2008. But, for obvious reasons, this is not just another sponsorship renewal. The City-Etihad relationship plays a central role in a much b...
Feb 27, 2024•1 hr 13 min
The Bundle is our regular deep dive news analysis podcast on the sports media marketplace, with co-hosts Yannick Ramcke and Murray Barnett. 00:27 Discussion on Discovery Fox, Warner Brothers, JV 00:58 Deep Dive into the Raptor Project 01:52 The Great Rebundling: A New Era in Sports Broadcasting 03:19 The Uncertainties and Challenges of the New Model 05:20 The Future of Sports Streaming and Bundling 11:13 The Impact of the New Model on Rights Holders 17:31 Apple's Venture into MLS Season Pass 18:...
Feb 23, 2024•51 min
Jason Stockwood grew up in Grimsby, became a hugely successful tech entrepreneur and came back to his home town to buy the local football club, Grimsby Town FC. One of the best articulations on the reality of the football business, the mistakes and myths, the role and limits of private equity in sport and the ineffable magic that makes football so very different than any other industry. We recorded the podcast at L'Escargot, the legendary Soho restaurant now owned by Thomas Hitzlsperger and we t...
Feb 20, 2024•56 min
