Unofficial Partner Podcast

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...

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 Roga...

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 d...

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 th...

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 exp...

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...

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...

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. Tha...

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 a...

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 obv...

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 abo...

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 themsel...

This is a deep dive in to the relationship between sports fans and teams, with Ben Phillips and Mike Brady from InfrontX.  And specifically, we break down the component parts of the value exchange that exists between a football club and a fan, particularly when the relationship is conducted almost entirely via digital channels. I’ve written about this topic in this week’s UP Newsletter,   so you c...

Today we talk about the launch of PickGuru, a new social gaming disruptor app launched by Oli Slipper, the Stats Perform and DAZN Co-Founder, who recently completed a seed funding round, securing an enterprise investment of £2.6 million, which values the company at £6million. Slipper leads PickGuru’s enterprise team formed by Paul Cobley the ex founder of Matulo Software as CTO and former Sportsqu...

Next week is the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, the first city to host both a Winter and Summer Games. Go back to 2008 and the story the IOC was telling was one of engagement and the power of the Olympics to open up China to the West. By contrast, the run up to this event has been dominated by human rights violations in Hong Kong, the appalling treatment of Uighur Muslims and...

This is number 15 of The Bundle our series on the broadcast, streaming and media rights market with regular co-host Yannick Ramcke and special guests Murray Barnett and Charlie Boss. Charlie is Chief Commercial Officer at The Jockey Club and has Disney ESPN, The FA and England Rugby on his cv.  Murray is another ESPN alumni, who was CCO at World Rugby and Head of Global Partnerships at F1. His 26W...

Today we’re talking about web3, blockchain, NFTs, fan engagement tokens and the metaverse.  Our guests are sports investor and former advisor on tech and innovation to FIFA Michael Broughton and Carsten Thode, founder of Aphetor, the games for creators and influencers who was formerly strategy head for Synergy Sponsorship and Manchester United. Every episode of Unofficial Partner can be found by u...

Steve Perryman MBE is a legend of Tottenham Hotspur FC, whose 17 years at the club began as a teenager in the late 1960s before becoming one of the clubs longest serving and most decorated captains, winning The FA Cup twice in the early 80s.  But that’s just a part of this conversation, which takes us inside the business of football at the sharp end.  Perryman’s love affair with Spurs ended unhapp...

This is episode three of our series on the business of esports, created in collaboration with Nielsen Sport, the world’s leading source of sports measurement and analytics. Today’s conversation moves the focus to the market for mobile gaming in the Asia Pacific region and our guests are Ajay Jilka Director of Regional esports partnerships of Moonton Games, and Mike Wragg, Nielsen Sport’s Managing...

Today’s guests are Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson and Ben Rogers, co-founder of Hong Kong Watch , the lobbying group  The topic is sport’s relationship with China, the value of diplomatic and sporting boycotts, the role of sportswashing, the limits and opportunity of athlete activism, the IOC’s handling of the Peng Shuai situation and ultimately we ask, what is the purpose of the IOC and the Olympic...

This was a bit of a moment for Richard and Sean as its the first in person recording we’ve done since the lockdown forced us online. Newer listeners won’t remember but the first fifty or so podcasts we did were face to face at various locations, and we’ll be looking to do more through 2022, virus permitting. So, we met up at the London headquarters of Omnicom Media Group for the second in our seri...

Today’s guest is Tom Fox, the former chief executive of Premier League club Aston Villa during the ownership tenure of fellow American Randy Lerner. So this is a timely conversation about the economics of the Premier League, the power and limitations of the CEO’s job and the potential impact of government regulation following the Tracey Crouch review in to football governance.  Fox’s career has mi...

The National Hockey League is made up of 32 teams and 750 players, and the story of the league is increasingly told by the players themselves across their owned social media platforms.  Today’s conversation is about the implications of this shift for the league, the team owners, the fans and the players themselves.  Our guests are David Klatt, director of social media platforms for the NHL and Dan...

The subject of today’s conversation is racism and sport’s relationship to it. And our guests are Sanjay Bhandari and John Amaechi.  Sanjay is chair of Kick It Out , the charity campaigning to end racial and ethnic discrimination in English football.    John Amaechi OBE is a psychologist and founder of the APS Intelligence consultancy.  The context for the podcast is English cricket and specificall...

Mia Stellberg is an esport psychologist. She’s employed by some of the world’s most successful teams to help them win and keep the best gamers in the world happy and focused on being the best they can be.  Stellberg wrote recently that “Esport is chess at warp speed. It’s strategic, you need to be really clever, several steps ahead of your opponent, you need to have good strategy, you need to prac...