Unofficial Partner Podcast

This is episode 3 of For What It's Worth our regular series in collaboration with Turnstile, the sponsorship valuation service. Today's special guest is Danny Townsend, the CEO of The Australian Professional Leagues, aka the A-Leagues, home of professional soccer, comprising men's, women's, youth and esports competitions. Townsend formerly held global leadership roles at Repucom and Nielsen Sport before becoming chief executive of Sydney FC, and then moving to head up the league.In December 2021, the APL announced that Silver Lake, the private equity firm, had made a significant minority investment in the organisation, which it said would 'drive technology enhancements and innovation aimed at improving the fan experience and driving further development of the game in Australia'. The transaction values APL at approximately USD$300m / AUD $425M.So, what's it like when private equity comes on board? What is the basis of their investment outlook, and how do they put a value on their investment?Joining the conversation is Dan Gaunt, General Manager of Turnstile. For our weekly analysis of the sports business, subscribe to the Unofficial Partner Newsletter, available via Substack or UnofficialPartner.comUnofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

This podcast is a recording of the Unofficial Partner Web3 brainstorm which took place at Emirates Stadium in London, the home of Arsenal Football Club, who were our collaborators on the project. The subject matter covered NFTs, blockchain, crypto and DAOs. To make things interesting, we gave a group of experts a problem to solve over the course of the evening. The conceit of the brainstorm was this: UP FC is a middling Premier League club with ambitions to ‘enhance fan engagement via web3, NFTs and blockchain’.What are the opportunities and problems we'll face? What are the mistakes that are common to sports clubs, leagues and federations when entering this exciting and confusing space?The first person you'll hear is Juliet Slot, Arsenal's Chief Commercial Officer. Juliet's objective is to help facilitate the industry conversation around football's relationship with web3, and we're grateful for her support and the hard work of her team at Arsenal for helping to get the event off the ground. The brainstorm featured the following people:Alex Amsel, SoulcastSunil Singhvi, RaribleTim Mangnall, Capital BlockTom Greene, Martian Premier LeagueIvan Peric, UnagiCarsten Thode, AphetorPreeti Shetty, Brentford Football ClubJames Newman, SociosPet Berisha, Sporting CryptoAlex Balfour, Generate DigitalPeter Hutton, MetaTo follow up on the issues raised by the event, you can get in touch with us by signing up to Unofficial Partner's sports industry leading newsletter, available here. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Ed Smith is one of the most innovative thinkers in sport. The former test cricketer turned author and broadcaster co-created the Institute of Sports Humanities, and in 2018 was made chief selector for England men's cricket. His new book is called Making Decisions: Putting the Human Back in the Machine, in which he asks some very important questions facing sport and business today, offering a framework for identifying and maximising talent, spotting team weaknesses and communicating ideas that lead to stronger leadership, clear judgments and ultimately, improved performances. The conversation took place on stage at the Leaders conference at Twickenham Stadium.Unofficial Partner podcasts has a global audience of people from across the professional sports industry: to join the dots on the various conversations and to keep up with key trends and analysis from across the business, subscribe to the Unofficial Partner newsletter, published every Thursday.   Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Kara Nortman is one of the three founders of Angel City Football Club, along with Julie Uhrman and the actor Natalie Portman, and it’s the first women’s professional soccer team in Los Angeles for over ten years.But the story has been about far more than football. A host of famous people have come on board, Serena Williams, Alexis Ohanian, Mia Hamm, Eva Longoria and Jessica Chastain to name just a few of the club’s investors, who are buying in to one of the sports business’s most intriguing case studies. Nortman brings financial expertise from her role as managing partner of Upfront Ventures, so we talk about how US investors view women’s and men’s football, the opportunities and pitfalls ahead for women’s pro leagues, the questions associated with private equity and the benefit of an outside perspective in growing the women’s game.To keep up to date with all our podcasts, you should sign up to the Unofficial Partner newsletter. It goes to thousands of people across sport, every Thursday. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Our guests today are Ben Nicholas and David Tryhorn, the creators behind a new Netflix documentary, The Figo Affair: The Transfer That Changed Football. The film chronicles a three week period in 2000 when the superstar Portuguese player Luis Figo left Barcelona for arch rivals Real Madrid. The result was a political storm, the legacy of which remains in place today. The deal heralded the beginning of Real Madrid’s galáctico era and with it a shift in how football transfer market works, all told by a cast including some very familiar faces, such as Pep Guardiola and Real Madrid president Florent Perez. We talk about how Netflix works, the problem of sourcing archive footage and the motives of famous sports stars when it comes to making high profile documentaries. This podcast is sponsored by Leaders Week London, which kicks off on Monday 26th September and culminates in the two day Leaders Summit at Twickenham Stadium in west London on the 28th and 29th. See the full Leaders Week agenda via leadersinsport.com/UP and as a listener to Unofficial Partner you can bag a 15% discount on your pass for The Summit, just enter the discount code ‘UP15’ at the checkout.Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

September always has a back to school vibe and with it comes the start of conference season, an opportunity for all us to get away from our computer screens and meet people out there in the real world.This brings with it the subject of networking, the skill of building valuable relationships with people who may or may not be of use to your personal professional development. To talk about the best and worst ways to do this are Laura McQueen, Managing Director of Leaders in Sport, who's in charge of Leaders Week London, taking place from Monday 26th September, and Sean Singleton, the co-founder of Unofficial Partner, who has blagged his way through more conference free lunches than anyone in Western Europe. We talk about how to plan to get the best results, the worst food to eat while standing up and how to avoid getting stuck with boring people who are of no commercial use to you.If you want to extend your own sports business network, join us for Wise UP, the Unofficial Partner Web3 Brainstorm, taking place at Emirates Stadium in London on the evening of Wednesday 21st September. And, sign up for our weekly newsletter, that goes direct to thousands of people across sport, every Thursday. You can find links to both of these at UnofficialPartner.comUnofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Adam Kelly has been at IMG for over twenty years and is now the president of IMG Media, overseeing the four core units of rights sales, production, betting and digital media, the latter part via the recently acquired Seven League.In May this year IMG announced a twelve year strategic partnership with The Rugby Football League (RFL) and Super League Europe, with the headline objective to ‘reimagine Rugby League and its competitions in the UK’. The agreement follows the recent decision for the RFL and Super League to realign and form a new joint venture company.So what does IMG see in the sport of Rugby League and what does re-imagining mean in 2022? This is a way in to a conversation about how the storied agency views the sports landscape today, the pitfalls that await nascent sports, and the challenge of communisation in the sports marketing agency sector. This podcast is sponsored by Leaders Week London which returns this at the slightly earlier than usual date of 26th to 29th September 2022. Over 70% of LW LDN attendees are at Director level or above. From the Premier League to WWE, BT Sport to DP World Tour, they’ll all be there this September. In addition to the talks going on across three stages, there’s networking breakfasts, forums (like the Brand and Sponsorship Forum), think tanks (the Broadcast Disruptors Think Tank for example), tech showcases on the exhibition floor and the list goes on – you can tailor your Leaders Week London experience to best suit you.The two day Summit, part of Leaders Week, will be held at Twickenham Stadium on 28th and 29th September. Even better, you can use UP15 for a 15% discount on your Summit passes. Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information.Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

The acronym OTT has become ubiquitous in recent years, but what does it really mean, and what are the implications of the decisions being made today by sports organisations big and small.  OTT stands for “Over The Top” and refers to the way a streaming service delivers content over the internet. The service is delivered “over the top” of another platform. The term has become ubiquitous across the sports business in recent years, talking to the options now available to fans, beyond the traditional cable TV subscription. OTT comes with a set of questions, about the ability of individual sports federations, governing bodies, leagues and teams to go direct to their customer, mirroring services such as Netflix, Spotify or Disney+.  It’s an appealing idea, enabling sports bodies to capture first party customer data, build competitive tension in the rights market and ultimately, hopefully, make more money. But, as we hear from our guests Mike Emery and Murray Barnett, there’s no one size fits all solution and often a gulf between the idea of ‘going OTT’ and the reality. Mike is CEO and Founder of Joymo.tv, a streaming platform that makes it easy for any sport club, federation, league and event, anywhere in the world, to broadcast their valuable content to fans across the globe. In addition to being a regular panellist on The Bundle, the Unofficial Partner series on the sports media market, Murray Barnett is Director of D2C Sport, specialists in direct to consumer media, and Founder of 26West Sport, a sports commercial advisory consultancy.This podcast is sponsored by Leaders Week London which returns this at the slightly earlier than usual date of 26th to 29th September 2022. Over 70% of LW LDN attendees are at Director level or above. From the Premier League to WWE, BT Sport to DP World Tour, they’ll all be there this September. In addition to the talks going on across three stages, there’s networking breakfasts, forums (like the Brand and Sponsorship Forum), think tanks (the Broadcast Disruptors Think Tank for example), tech showcases on the exhibition floor and the list goes on – you can tailor your Leaders Week London experience to best suit you.The two day Summit, part of Leaders Week, will be held at Twickenham Stadium on 28th and 29th September. Even better, you can use UP15 for a 15% discount on your Summit passes. VisitUnofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Today we're going deep in to football's relationship with NFTs, crypto, blockchain and all things web3, as preparation for our inaugural Unofficial Partner event: Wise UP - the Live Web3 Brainstorm which his being held on the evening of Wednesday 21st September at The Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal Football Club in London. Tickets are £50 each and are available to buy here. Our guests today are two of several experts who will be joining me on stage on the night. Alex Amsel (@Sillytuna) is an award winning game developer, investor, and blockchain expert. After 15+ years running a game studio he moved into the blockchain field in 2012, selling NFT startup Ownage in 2018 before most even knew the term, and made the 3rd highest NFT sale of 2021 via Sotheby's. He's currently co-founder of Soulcast, a customisable NFT platform, and key backer of Clodhoppers, a stop-motion animated multiplayer brawler.Alex is an early stage investor and advisor in numerous NFT, DAO, DEFI and infrastructure projects including being one of Axie Infinity's earliest backers. He is also a partner at Outlier Ventures.Pet Betrisha was formerly head of web3 and crypto at Copa90 and is the creator behind Sporting Crypto, the number 1 Web3 Sports newsletter exploring the intersection of sport and the crypto world.This podcast is sponsored by Leaders Week London which returns this at the slightly earlier than usual date of 26th to 29th September 2022. Over 70% of LW LDN attendees are at Director level or above. From the Premier League to WWE, BT Sport to DP World Tour, they’ll all be there this September. In addition to the talks going on across three stages, there’s networking breakfasts, forums (like the Brand and Sponsorship Forum), think tanks (the Broadcast Disruptors Think Tank for example), tech showcases on the exhibition floor and the list goes on – you can tailor your Leaders Week London experience to best suit you.The two day Summit, part of Leaders Week, will be held at Twickenham Stadium on 28th and 29th September. Even better, you can use UP15 for a 15% discount on your Summit passes. VisitUnofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

The Bundle is our regular deep dive in to the sports broadcast and streaming market with regular guests Yannick Ramcke, head of OTT for OneFootball, and Murray Barnett, Director of D2C Sport, specialists in direct to consumer media, and Founder of 26West Sport, a sports commercial advisory consultancy.This conversation was recorded just after the deadline for broadcaster submissions for UEFA's Champions League rights tender in North America and so much of the podcast focuses on the US sports market, with reference to ESPN's recent price rises, and its potential as an acquisition target for Apple. For the first time, ESPN+ is more expensive in the US than its cable subscription. The streaming service has 22.5million subscribers, which is still dwarfed by the cable bundle that boasts 75.7million paying customers. And Premflix, the oft mentioned Premier League direct to consumer play, is given another airing, in the light of recent comments by new Chelsea owner Todd Boehler. Leaders Week London returns this September - mark your diaries. Slightly earlier date than you may be used to, this year it will be from 26 to 29 September 2022, just 5 weeks away.There's a good stat that talks to the calibre of people in the room – over 70% of LW LDN attendees are at Director level or above. From the Premier League to WWE, BT Sport to DP World Tour, they’ll all be there this September.In addition to the talks going on across three stages, there’s networking breakfasts, forums (like the Brand and Sponsorship Forum), think tanks (the Broadcast Disruptors Think Tank for example), tech showcases on the exhibition floor and the list goes on – you can tailor your Leaders Week London experience to best suit you.The two day Summit, part of Leaders Week, will be held at Twickenham Stadium on 28th and 29th September. Even better, you can use UP15 for a 15% discount on your Summit passes. Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information.Another date to remember is the inaugural Unofficial Partner Live event takingUnofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.