Appointment to View: The FA's Mark Bullingham

The pressures of leading one of the most historic sports bodies in the world | Rights re-packaging for new consumption habits| Adapting to the challenges that came with the pandemic.

Appointment to View is a series from the Leaders Sport Business Podcast that features conversations with rights owners, broadcasters, creators and innovators at the epicentre of the shifting sports media landscape.

The series will examine how sport is packaged, produced, consumed, distributed, and monetised.

In the first episode, we heard from Bo Han, the US-based media entrepreneur and former Twitter executive who is reimagining search and discovery for sport with his new notification-based streaming app Buzzer.

This week, our guest is the chief executive of one of the most historic and preeminent rights owner organisations in sport, the FA.

Mark Bullingham succeeded Martin Glenn in the role of CEO at English football’s governing body in July 2019, having served as Glenn’s Chief Commercial Officer since joining the FA in 2016. He was recruited to the FA following five successful years as CEO of the Fuse Sport + Entertainment agency.

Bullingham spoke to Leaders founder and chair Jimmy Worrall a few weeks before the start of this summer’s European Championship. The conversation covers Bullingham’s career journey and his rise to one of the top jobs in world sport, touching on his evolving leadership philosophy, the challenge of growing into the role during the pandemic.

The FA has been developing its own D2C media offering for some time, and this year made headlines with eye-catching rights deals in women’s football: signing the richest rights deal in domestic women’s football for the WSL with Sky and the BBC, and signing up ITV to broadcast England women’s national games from this year.

Bullingham is a shrewd commercial operator and his views on market consolidation, rights re-packaging for new consumption habits, and monetising media in non-traditional ways are required listening.

To join CEOs like Bullingham and over 1,000 other sports industry leaders at Leaders Week from 5th to 7th October, visit www.leadersinsport.com.