Unofficial Partner Podcast

If you work in the sports business, you’ve probably heard of Nick Keller . He's the driving force behind Benchmark, the BT Sport Industry Awards, Beyond Sport and several other prominent sports biz ventures. But you won't have heard him talk in such an honest and candid way as he does in the latest Unofficial Partner podcast. It's an hour's conversation about life and career, f...

As Managing Director of Hearst UK’s Health and Lifestyle titles, Alun Williams sits at the centre of the multi-billion pound fitness and wellbeing market, with a direct line in to the trends shaping the lifestyle choices of men and women of all ages. The magazines in Hearst’s portfolio are among the biggest selling titles in the UK, offering direct feedback between the choice of cover star and sal...

In a famous speech in 2008, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown proclaimed London 2012 as the start of a ‘Golden decade of sport’ in Britain, which will leave a lasting legacy from ‘elite to grass roots’. This week’s podcast asks, was he right, and what was the commercial legacy of the last ten years? Which governing bodies, sponsors and agencies have prospered and which have seen their star wane? Wh...

Sport’s missing billions Global brand spend on sports sponsorship will grow four per cent this year to £35 billion (US$46 billion), according to recent findings from Two Circles . But the report made the controversial claim that sports properties are missing out on an extra £14 billion due to unsold inventory, unreported engagement and outdated rights packaging. We ask the report’s author Phil Ste...

Rory is Vice Chairman at advertising agency Ogilvy in the UK and author of a new book: Alchemy, The surprising Power of Ideas which don't make Sense . He has variously been President of the IPA, Chair of Judges at Cannes, and his TED Global talks have been downloaded seven million times. He writes regular columns for The Spectator and is married to a vicar. Our interview took place in a cupbo...

This week’s guests are sports biz guru  Tim Crow and  Derek Pringle , the former England test cricketer turned journalist and author. We explore the links between the original breakaway ‘cricket circus’ of World Series Cricket in the late 1970s and later innovations including the emergence of Twenty20 in the noughties, the IPL and the ill fated Stanford debacle through to the ECB’s new brainchild,...

Groundbreaking sports editor Alison Kervin talks about The Mail on Sunday’ s award winning concussion campaign, from the early resistance of sports governing bodies to the role of the media and sponsors in pushing important issues to the top of the news agenda. www.unofficialpartner.com Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking...

The Three Ages of Brand Tiger Richard Gillis is joined by the sports marketing world’s Tim Crow and token millennial  @eoinfconnolly , editor at large of SportsPro . They start out with a plan to discuss three moments that shaped the Tiger Woods story, asking questions such as why didn’t Accenture know? Did Tiger really cause a boom in golf media rights? And, how did Tim Crow get a car park space...

As founder and editor of Loaded magazine in the 1990s, James Brown ( @jamesjamesbrown ) was the architect of Lad culture, the influence of which pervades the football media landscape today. A lifelong Leeds Utd fan, he’s now back in the world of magazine publishing at the helm of FourFourTwo . We talk about his plans for world domination, whether The Damned United was any good, what makes a great...

There's a bit in the podcast with Paul Hawksbee when he talks about how much previous knowledge you have to assume in the reader for a joke to work. This is a point that many people get wrong and it ruins everything. Hawksbee's mantra came from his days in magazines, when he created 90 Minutes, back in the days before Italia '90. There were jokes and cultural references in the mag t...