Unofficial Partner Podcast

Luis Vicente began his sports career as a lawyer working for toy car company, where his job was to haggle over the price of IP with well known Formula One teams. Then he became a football agent, with a player roster that included Luis Figo, Ronaldo and Andriy Shevchenko.Since the mid 2000s however, Vicente main role has been to foster a culture of innovation within some of the most famous sport’s organisations in the world, from Real Madrid and Manchester City to Fifa and now, as Group CEO of Eleven Sport, the broadcast platform which forms part of Aser Ventures, the investment vehicle of Andrea Radrizzani, the owner of Leeds United. With a CV like that, it’s perhaps inevitable that a conversation with Luis Vicente covers a great deal of ground, from the nature of innovation, the role of private equity and the business of model of football super agent Jorge Mendes. If you enjoy our podcasts, you should head over to UnofficialPartner.com and sign up for our weekly newsletter, where we go deeper in to the issues and themes that arise from our podcast conversations. It’s free too. 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.

There’s been a major sports agency acquisition this week as Two Circles bought the rights sales house TRM Partners for what the Wall Street Journal estimate to be in the region of $45million, a number that is roughly equivalent to the price paid for Two Circles last year, by George Pyne’s sport and entertainment holding company Bruin Sports Capital.So, this podcast is going to unpick what this means, with first Gareth Balch, founder of Two Circles and then with Leo Thompson and Harry Horsley, co-founders of TRM. To read more about this deal and what it says about the post-Covid economy of professional sport, head over to UnofficialPartner.com and sign up for our weekly newsletter, where we go deeper in to the issues and themes that arise from our 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.

This is Episode 8 of The Bundle with regular co-host Yannick Ramcke, where we go deep in to the world of sports media rights and distribution, asking the questions that  everyone in the sports business wants answers to.This week we cover the following stories:* Overthinking Amazon’s Italy UCL play* F1’s YouTube experiment* Premier League PPV RIP* Money v Morals. Sport’s Saudi dilemma* Infront’s warning over private equity in Serie AIf you enjoy the podcast, make sure you sign up to the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes in to greater depth on the themes we’re covering each week. You can get that by signing up at Unofficialpartner.com where you can also access the first seven episodes of The Bundle and all the other 122 Unofficial Partner podcasts.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.

We’re talking about the various sports markets across Asia today with one of the region’s highest profile entrepreneurs, Marcus Luer, who founded Total Sports Asia as a 28 year old in 1997 based Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Since then the business has generated $500million in commercial revenue for its portfolio of clients including Premier League Football Clubs, Formula One teams, WWE, US Open Tennis and a host of Olympic Sports Federations. Beyond that however, it’s a story about the ups and downs in the life of a serial entrepreneur in a region that has seen financial crises and pandemics come and go over the course of the last three decades.If you enjoy our podcasts, make sure you sign up to the unofficial partner newsletter where we develop the threads of the 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.

Robbie Lyle created Arsenal Fan TV (now AFTV) in 2012 as a platform for fans to have their say. And they did, in enormous numbers, making it one of the biggest fan networks in world football, and its mix of controversy and raw post-match reaction is much copied across both unofficial and official club channels.We talked about the reaction of mainstream media to this new upstart genre, the commercial future of fan based media channels and what the pandemic has revealed about the distance between the people in football boardrooms and the people who pay for tickets.  Despite being an Arsenal fan, Robbie’s a nice bloke, and one of the smartest media operators out there.If you like our podcasts you should sign up to the Unofficial Partner newsletter which develops the threads of the conversations. You can do this via unofficialpartner.com where you can also explore the back catalogue of over 100 podcasts covering every area of the global 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.

Today we’re talking about leadership with the founding members of a new initiative, The Professional Body of Sports Leadership (PBSL) which has just launched as a network for current, and aspiring, senior executives, high performance specialists and non-executive directors in the sports industry. It aims to drive the development of a new standard in sports industry leadership and governance, safeguard mental health and wellbeing and actively promote inclusion and diversity in all its forms. Alongside this, it will harness the collective knowledge of the sports business, creating an industry dialogue and representative voice.To talk about this, we have three guests. Tom Sears, the founder of the PBSL who many listeners will know from his senior roles in sports bodies internationally and who in 2017 founded the sports executive search specialists Kinsey Sears based in London.Joining Tom are Chris Brindley, Chair of Rugby League World Cup 2021, and Zarah Al-Kudcy, Head of Commercial, Partnership Development, Formula 1. To become a member for PBSL, please click here.If you enjoy the podcasts, sign up to the unofficial partner newsletter where we go deeper in to the themes arising from the conversations, sign up via 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.

Today we’re talking about the business of European football with one of the most experienced and respected people working in the industry today. Phil Carling started his career as Arsenal’s first ever head of marketing before moving to head up the commercial department of the FA. Since 2004, Carling has been head of football for the sports marketing agency Octagon, managing their clients relationship with clubs, leagues and governing bodies around Europe and beyond. So Phil was my first call when the story broke revealing a plot among some of Europe’s big clubs to launch a European Premier League initially at least endorsed by Fifa and underwritten by $6billion of JPMorgan’s money. This is the latest of many threatened rebel competitions to have appeared over the course of the last three decades. I want to why the story has become such a regular feature of sports business conversation, why this one appeared now, what happened to the previous incarnations and where was Phil Carling the first time he heard rumours of a European breakaway. 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 pick over the remains of Project Big Picture, the controversial report in to the future of English professional football, that was instigated by the owners of two of the Premier League’s biggest clubs, Liverpool and Manchester United. Our guests are Dan Johnson, former Director of Communications for the Premier League and Joel Seymour Hyde, the UK managing director of the sports marketing agency Octagon.If you enjoy the Unofficial Partner podcasts, you should sign up for the weekly newsletter via the website, where we develop the threads of the conversation in more depth. 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’re talking about the NFL and specifically its relationship to the international market.To do this we have Neil Reynolds, who has created a niche as the face and voice of the NFL in the UK, fronting Sky Sports tv coverage and the Inside the Huddle podcast, all alongside his own show The Neil Reynolds Podcast. So we talk about that hardy perennial topic of the sports business, the long discussed London franchise, and the nature of fandom outside the core US market. If you enjoy Unofficial Partner, please rate and review us on Apple or via your favourite app, and sign up to the weekly newsletter via 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 is the second in our series called The Buy Side, conversations about the reality of sport and sponsorship with CMOs and other senior brand side marketing decision makers. Today’s guest is Peter Markey, CMO of TSB Bank.Peter is responsible for all of TSB’s marketing and digital sales activity including brand, analytics, research, effectiveness, strategy, social media and marketing communications managing a team of over 100 across multiple sites.He was formally Marketing Director of Aviva, the insurance company and CMO of the Post Office, RSA and More Than.To find more conversations about every facet of the sports business, just search Unofficial Partner in your favourite podcast app, and sign up to our weekly newsletter via 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.