Unofficial Partner Podcast

We’re in the middle of the Olympic Games in Paris so it’s a good time to ask some bigger questions as to the future of the Olympics and mega sports events more generally, with regular contributor Ed Smith, founder of the Institute of Sports Humanities and fellow guest Dr Simon Rofe, a world leading expert in the field of sports diplomacy, and himself a visiting lecturer at ISH, which helps its stu...

A documentary special - UP Productions' Matt Cutler explores the changing relationship between two cultural institutions in the UK: football and the pub. The pub has an important place in both professional and grassroots football. As the place friends and family meet before the game, and dissect a win or loss afterwards.  Where old school friends reserve a table under the big screen to catch-...

Why has the value of the NBA's media rights tripled, from $25billion to $75billion this week? "Purely because of gambling,' says Sam Sadi, CEO of LiveScore Group, the media and gambling platform, referencing the opening up of the US gambling marketplace. 'Nothing else that would drive that. Everything was trending downwards until five years ago, and nothing changed in the envir...

Leadership is one of the most important and yet misunderstood topics in sport.  This summer, it has dominated the headlines. Performances of the England football team have mainly been analysed via the lens of its manager.  So what is leadership and what are the mistakes we make when talking about it.    Ed Smith is renowned thinker on sport, leadership and decision-making. The former professional...

The Buy Side is our regular series talking with brand side marketers about sport and sponsorship.  This week’s guest is Mark Kirkham, the SVP & Chief Marketing Officer of PepsiCo, one of the biggest spenders in the sports industry, whose brands such as Aquafina, Pepsi, Gatorade and Lay’s are associated with a huge number of major events globally across a portfolio that includes official partne...

Bryson Dechambeau heads to next week’s Open Championship at Troon as the reigning US Open champion, having beaten Rory McIlroy down the straight at Winged Foot in New York three weeks ago, confirming the American’s position as one of the very best players in the world today.  But this is a conversation about what he’s done off the course over the last three years, that has changed his public image...

FIFA+ is the global football governing bodies own media platform, created in 2020 and launched two years later. It’s one of sports biggest and most ambitious and expensive direct-to-consumer projects, and so brings together many of the threads we talk about often on Unofficial Partner; a debate that runs across the sports industry, as governing bodies, leagues and teams spend billions creating own...

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 sport...

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 illumi...

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...

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...

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 Rub...

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...

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-fou...

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 E...

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, ki...

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 announce...

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 indi...

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...

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 t...

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,...

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 For...

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 o...

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 psychologi...

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,...