Unofficial Partner Podcast

This is Unofficial Partner’s news analysis series, where we look in depth at one recent story impacting the sports business.Today we look at the role of The FA following the publication of its Strategic Plan covering the next four years to 2024.If you work in sport, it’s worth ten minutes of your time to read.The FA is the governing body for football in England, with a remit that goes from the England teams, World Cups and Euros, St George’s Park and Wembley Stadium to the grass roots, coaching, youth football and safeguarding.We invited two people to come on and dissect the strategy document. First of all, Alex Horne who held a number of leadership roles within The FA including CEO, COO and General Secretary. And then following Alex, we have Matt Rogan, one of the co-founders of Two Circles, the agency that works with many governing bodies both in the UK and around the world.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.

Nic Coward currently chairs UK Athletics and England Golf and several other organisations both in and beyond sport. He began his career working as a lawyer for The FA and has since held leadership roles at many of the UK’s biggest sports rights holders including the Premier League, British Horseracing Authority and he advises an array of international rights holders across motorsport, football and a host of others. So it’s fair to say he’s thought long and hard about how sport works and when it doesn’t. This is a conversation about many different things, including people’s relationship with change, the effectiveness of sports organisations and the day to day job of leadership.If you like the podcasts, you’d really like the weekly Unofficial Partner newsletter, which goes in to greater depth on the topics and themes raised in the podcasts. You can sign up to that via UnofficialPartner.com where you can also delve in to the back catalogue of around 130 previous podcast conversations.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.

Today’s podcast is episode 9 of The Bundle, our regular series of conversations about sports media and the streaming market with co-host Yannick Ramcke.We start in France by picking apart the ongoing saga in the country’s top football league following Mediapro’s premature exit from its huge domestic rights agreement, which leaves a trail of uncertainty among clubs, players and fans, with Canal Plus seemingly the only entity ready to pick up the pieces and at a fraction of the price promised by Mediapro.Secondly, another regular appearance on The Bundle for DAZN, this time using them as the way in to a conversation about how the new generation of streaming sports sites are pricing their products and repackaging their OTT content for linear channels.Then we look at the metrics around Amazon’s recent streaming of NFL games in the US, BeIN’s recent rights acquisitions and look ahead to the upcoming Serie A rights auction.As ever, if you like the podcasts, you’d really like the weekly Unofficial Partner newsletter, which covers many other sports business themes in more depth. You can sign up to that via UnofficialPartner.com where you can also delve in to the back catalogue of around 130 previous podcast conversations.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.

Today we unpick the recent incident involving England footballer turned media pundit Karen Carney and Leeds United, the newly promoted Premier League club.The story starts out as just another Premier League matchday, with football pundits lined up to give their opinions ahead of the game between Leeds United and West Bromwich Albion which was being aired on Amazon Prime. One of those match analysts was Karen Carney, an England international with 144 caps to her name. She offered view the Leeds social media team didn’t like, so they clipped the video to the club’s official Twitter feed. Up in the director’s box, Leeds United’s owner Andrea Radrizzani saw this and retweeted the clip a couple of times, and which remain on his feed today.What happened next was depressingly obvious. Karen Carney’s Twitter account was trolled by hundreds of anonymous Leeds fans hurling some really vile misogynistic abuse, to the extent that Carney later deleted her Twitter account, cutting off her valuable communication platform enabling her to talk directly to her 67000 followers.So this podcast is an opportunity to ask some questions about what just happened. First up, we talk to Laura Weston, a board member of the Women’s Sport Trust and a former director of the sport and entertainment agency Iris.Second is Dan Johnson, former Director of Comms at the Premier League, because another thread running through this story is the question of how club social channels coexist with other forms of comms, each of which have different agendas and incentives, and particularly in this case the role of corporate comms given the role of the owner of the club.The final bit of the jigsaw is to get in the heads of the people running those club social media channels, so we talk to Dan Ayers, consulting partner at Seven League, who has advised several Premier League clubs including Newcastle, Leicester City and Fulham.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.

Today’s podcast is episode 4 of The Buy Side, our regular series of conversations with brand marketers about sport and sponsorship.Our guest is Nick Read, Managing Director of the Vitality programme, the health and lifestyle insurance company which has become a very visible presence around sport, receiving plaudits for its approach to sponsorship of a variety of women’s sport properties, Parkrun and more latterly Premier League football clubs.We talk about the health insurance category and the challenge of commodification in a world where many of us choose our insurance via comparison websites, the role of incentives in tackling obesity, the decoupling of women’s sport sponsorship rights by federations and teams, the issue of category creep and then on to Vitality’s support for men and womens’ cricket, from the Vitality Blast to The Hundred, and I ask Nick what he thought of the ECB’s decision to align The Hundred so closely with KP, the crisp and snacks brand.If you enjoy our podcasts, you’ll love the Unofficial newsletter, which goes deeper in to the themes covered in the conversations. You can subscribe to that on UnofficialPartner.com where you’ll also find our back catalogue of over 130 podcasts with leading people from across the sports business.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.

Dr. Augustine Fou is a world renowned expert in digital advertising fraud who consults to major advertisers and publishing groups. He was formerly Group Chief Digital Officer of Omnicom’s Healthcare Consultancy Group, a $100 million group of 8 agencies serving pharma, medical device, and healthcare clients.So today’s conversation is about what has gone wrong with digital marketing and how the rise of adtech has undermined the potential of the internet as a marketing channel. This will change your view on topics including the Long Tail, behavioural and hyper targeting and the reality of programmatic media buying.A generation of marketers have been conned in to expecting massive audiences for their content, says Fou, but the reality is very different, bringing in to question the real returns sponsors get from branded content, mobile video and performance marketing.We reference some of Augustine’s published work on the topic, which I’ll include in the next Unofficial newsletter, where we go in to greater depth on the conversations and themes raised in the podcasts.If that sounds useful, head to UnofficialPartner.com to sign upUnofficial 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 Financial Times has always had an on-off relationship with the sport sector over the years, with some very good journalists covering the beat in a brief that also included other sectors such as Leisure, Hotels and Gambling.That’s changed and under the leadership of Murad Ahmed, the paper is treating sport as a standalone asset class, with a dedicated transatlantic team and a set of sport specific products from newsletters to events, in addition to greater coverage in the paper and online.So today’s conversation is about the relationship between sport and the finance sector, the impact of private equity’s interest in teams and leagues, and we ask, what defines a FT sport story?If you enjoy our podcasts, you’ll love the Unofficial newlsetter that’s delivered weekly to the inboxes of thousands of senior people from across the sport business sector. You can sign up free by heading to UnofficialPartner.com.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.

This is episode 5 of Money Talks, our series on sport’s relationship with finance, venture capital and private equity. Our guest is Marcus John, CEO of Sports Capital Advisors based in Singapore, who was an early stage investor in Formula E and Extreme E and advises private equity funds and family offices on sports investment strategy and execution.Marcus was previously at IMG, during the Teddy Forstmann buyout in 2004 and so we talk about the impact of that moment both on IMG but on the sports industry as a whole. Then we talk about the market for sports investment advice as new money in Asia’s largest economies chases high value European and North American sports IP and we ask what the challenges and the implications of sport’s ever closer relationship with private finance.If you enjoy our podcasts, you’ll love the weekly Unofficial Newsletter that goes deeper in to the themes and topics we talk about in the pod. Head to UnofficialPartner.com and sign up.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.

This is episode three of The Buy Side, our series of conversations with senior brand marketers about sport and sponsorship.Today’s conversation is about life at the top end of the global sports market with Stephen Day, Vice President Sponsorship, Visa Europe. The Visa brand has become part and parcel of the big event experience for millions of people around the world. The company’s partnership strategy includes long term deals with the biggest events rights holders in the business, from the Olympics, Paralympics, FIFA World Cup and the NFL Super Bowl. Most recently, Visa became the first ever UEFA sponsor dedicated to women's football, following the unbundling by UEFA of sponsorship rights from the men's game.Stephen Day’s background in sports marketing includes stints in charge of sports sponsorship programmes at Guinness, RBS and NatWest, covering events such as the Rugby World Cup, The Six Nations and the England cricket team. So there’s a bit about Fred the Shred Goodwin, the tyrannical RBS boss, Billy Connolly and Paul Gascoigne as unlikely ambassadors for Kaliber, the Guinness non alcoholic lager, in addition to the commercial value of women’s sport and the future of the payment card category as we move toward a cashless future. If you enjoy our podcasts, you should sign up to the weekly Unofficial newsletter, where we go in to greater depth on the topics and themes discussed. Head to UnofficialPartner.com to register. 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 IPL is one of only two professional sports leagues in the world where all of its franchise teams are profitable. Twelve years since launch, the IPL is valued at $6.3billion, accounts for over 30% of global cricket revenues and over 60% of India’s sport economy.These numbers are why every rights owner and governing body seeks to learn lessons from both Twenty20 cricket and the IPL.But what are those lessons?How much of it is about sporting format, or is it specific to India, its culture and media economy, and how much credit should we give the league’s creators and the group of entrepreneurs who put their money in to building the franchises.We talk to Manoj Badale OBE, the sport and tech entrepreneur who has been the lead owner of the Rajasthan Royals franchise since the birth of the tournament.  Many of the regular themes of our podcasts are here: sport as entertainment, the role of private investment in sport and the implications of globalisation.During the conversation, we reference Manoj’s book, A New Innings, co-written with journalist and former cricketer Simon Hughes. It’s aimed squarely at the Unofficial Partner sports business audience, deciphering the lessons of the IPL for the rest of us, it’s really good and you should buy it, via ANewInnings.com, not least because the money goes to Covid relief in some of the poorest areas of the world.If you enjoy our podcasts, you should sign up to the weekly Unofficial newsletter, where we go in to greater depth on the topics and themes discussed in the podcasts. Head to UnofficialPartner.com to register.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.