Unofficial Partner Podcast

Today we talk to Gundeep Anand, who is the force of nature behind The Last Stand, the UK street football tournament created to unite communities and break down cultural and religious barriers through sport. It’s a great story and Gundeep’s a brilliant communicator, offering a perspective on sport, politics and media you very rarely hear in the sports business conversation.  I really recommend list...

This is the second episode in our series created with Portas, the global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity. The conversation today focuses on the specific opportunities and challenges faced by sport rights holders in women’s football and motorsport. Our guests are two of the most influential leaders in women’s sport. Kelly Simmons MBE is The FA’s Director of the women’s...

There’s never been a week like it in the football business. So we’re talking about the launch, the short life and the excruciating collapse of The Super League with guests Sujit Jasani, managing director of Vero Communications and sponsorship expert Tim Crow, adviser to a growing roster of very unhappy football club sponsors. If you like the podcasts, you’ll love the Unofficial Partner newsletter,...

Today sees the launch of ‘Closing the Visibilty Gap’ an important piece of new research in to the commercial future of women’s sport in the UK.It’s been carried out by the Women’s Sport Trust in partnership with the Two Circles agency which suggests that revenue generated by women's sport in the UK is set to grow from £350m in 2020 to £1bn by 2030 and makes the point that this growth is predi...

The conversation today uses the upcoming UEFA Euro 2021 soccer tournament as the way into a debate about the value and best use of social media content. Our guests are Daniel Kirschner, co-founder of Greenfly , the content collaboration and distribution platform, Manu Leroy, director of marketing and communications for the Royal Belgian Football Association and JB Alliot, startup mentor and adviso...

This is the next in our series where we talk to women about the sports business, with regular co-host Laura Weston, the global pr consultant who’s a Trustee & PR lead Women’s Sport Trust and Trustee of the Liverpool FC Foundation. Our guest today is Ebru Koksal, the former investment banker who has been chief executive of leading Turkish football club Galatasaray for more than 15 years. Ebru b...

This is a conversation about how the digital economy is changing how football clubs define themselves, either as digital platforms or ecommerce vehicles. And we look at how the financial markets encourage this trend, and whether or not its feasible or desirable for big clubs like Manchester United, with huge global followings, to seek to be seen in the same company as the stars of Silicon Valley s...

Today we’re talking about job of public relations and communications in sport, how it works and when it doesn’t, how it’s evolved and where its going, as sport increasingly becomes a digital content product, what do agencies and in house comms departments do. To answer these questions, we have Alun James whose career has taken him from Alan Pascoe Associates in the early nineties, through the Inte...

This is the first episode in a new series in collaboration with Portas, the leading global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity. Portas has surveyed more than a hundred chief executives and leaders working across the sports sector to take the temperature of the industry in this extraordinary year. This episode sets the scene by  talking to two people facing very different...

This is an episode of What Just Happened? our regular news review series, where we take apart a recent story from in or around the sports business. This week, it’s the announcement of Manchester United’s new shirt deal with TeamViewer, the German based remote desktop software company which is reportedly worth in the region of £47million a year to the Premier League club. We invited Tim Crow, the s...

This is episode 10 of The Bundle, our regular deep dive in to the media rights markets around the world with co-host Yannick Ramcke. The current conversation is dominated by the huge new NFL domestic rights deals, which were announced formally a few hours after we recorded this episode. We ask the pros and cons of longer rights contracts and the difficulty facing many OTT streamers in getting stuc...

Until last month, Ricardo Fort had the job of deciding where Coca Cola’s vast sports marketing budget was spent.  This is one of the most powerful roles in sport, because the soft drinks giant is omnipresent across major events, tournaments, leagues and athlete endorsements, from Olympics, FIFA World Cup, Euros, Premier League and McLaren F1 through national leagues and teams, personal endorsement...

What is Facebook’s plan for sport? The social media giant chose not to bid for live NFL rights in the US and recently announced they were backing away from their existing UEFA Champions League and La Liga agreements in Latin America and India, respectively. A recent statement, via Sportico, has made waves: “the reality is that traditional media rights deals like these aren’t compatible with our cu...

Perhaps the biggest, most interesting, surprising sports business story of the last year has been the takeover of Wrexham football club by Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. Like you, I saw the announcement and the social media campaign and wondered, why? What’s their plan, are they serious about investing in the third oldest professional football club which now resides in the lowe...

The market for sports memorabilia and collectibles has grown rapidly during the pandemic, and is currently a $10billion industry and our guest today is at the centre of it. Ken Goldin is founder of Goldin Auctions which was recently the subject of $40million dollar investment from The Chernin Group and a number of celebrities from across sports and entertainment. Peter Chernin, an investor in Bars...

This winter, Channel 4 has been broadcasting the test series between India and England live in the UK. It’s the first time test cricket has been live on UK television since the 2005 Ashes, one of the most celebrated moments in the game’s recent history. It also marked the end of the Channel 4’s award winning cricket coverage, as the ECB, England cricket’s governing body controversially sold all ri...

Today we’re talking about Pele, the greatest footballer ever, discuss. And specifically the new documentary film of his life, released on Netflix this week. The film chronicles Pele’s life on and off the field from his first World Cup appearance in 1958 through to the great final of 1970, a period in which Brazil moved from democracy to dictatorship, and Pele himself from an unknown teenager to th...

Today’s conversation is about the role of agencies in helping clients be culturally relevant in fans lives across sport, music and esports. And we ask why some brands seem able to build a bridge across those cultural divides, and some don’t. Our guests are Richard Adelsberg and Owen Laverty from the independent creative agency Ear to the Ground, where something seems to be going right. Despite the...

Ralf Reichert is one of the true pioneers of esports. He co-founded ESL in 2000 and has seen it grow in to one of the biggest and most influential event rights holders in the world. As will become clear, I come to this conversation with all the misconceptions of someone who never got in to gaming. But by the end, I’m a bit of a convert. I still don’t know much, but an hour with Ralf Reichert has p...

We’re talking about where audio fits in to digital strategy, with guests Sophie Hind of Voiceworks.ai and Charlie Beall of Seven League. We start on FIFA Sound, the governing body’s new collaboration with Universal Music, fronted by Liam Payne of One Direction, and move quickly through Alexa Skills, voice commerce, official club podcasts and of course, Clubhouse. To go deeper in to this topic and...

Mark Williams has spent his career studying expertise and is one of the world’s leading authorities on skill acquisition in sport. His book, co-written with journalist Tim Wigmore, is called The Best, How Elite Athletes Are Made and includes stories and interviews with many leading sports stars including Marcus Rashford, Steph Curry, Helen Glover and many more. So what can we learn from these peop...

This is episode six of Money Talks, our regular series that looks at sport through the eyes of the finance and private equity sectors. Our guests today are Rob Tilliss and Michael Broughton, and the conversation is about how to value a professional sports team or franchise. Rob Tilliss is CEO of Inner Circle Sports and the former MD of JP Morgan’s sport advisory group. Inner Circle is a global inv...

Today’s podcast is the first in a new series in which we talk to women about sport and the sports business more generally. Joining me on this trip is Laura Weston, the global communications consultant and board member of Women’s Sports Trust, as well as being a two time former guest on the show herself. Laura’s going to be my regular co-host in this series, helping us to ask better questions about...

There’s a very small group of people who have genuinely shaped what is today called the sports marketing industry. Patrick Nally is one of those, and is often bracketed together with Mark McCormack and Horst Dassler as the genuine architects of today’s sports business. It’s hard to think of a major event or sport  that doesn’t bear Nally’s handprints, from the Olympics and FIFA World Cup through t...

Today we’re talking to Nick Bitel, one of the most influential people in British sport as chair of Sport England, board member of UK Sport and chief executive of the London Marathon. The timing of this podcast coincides with the launch of Sport England’s new ten year strategy, called Uniting The Movement. The conversation covers a bit of ground, from the image and reality of sports governing bodie...