Unofficial Partner Podcast

1. UP581 PREM Rugby CEO: Paramount, Eddie Hearn and What R360 Got Wrong

   10.11.202659 Min.Als Nächstes

   PREM Rugby’s chief executive is preparing to take English club rugby to US investors. Richard Gillis asks him what the pitch is, and what it leaves out.Simon Massie-Taylor has run PREM Rugby since January 2022 …

   Shownotes

   PREM Rugby’s chief executive is preparing to take English club rugby to US investors. Richard Gillis asks him what the pitch is, and what it leaves out.

   Simon Massie-Taylor has run PREM Rugby since January 2022, after five years leading the RFU’s commercial and marketing work. He arrived just as Worcester, Wasps and London Irish were heading into administration. Since then the league has ended automatic relegation, introduced a salary floor and financial monitoring, and brought in new owners: Red Bull at Newcastle, Sir James Dyson at Bath and Black Knight at Exeter.

   In this conversation he is candid about R360, about CVC’s experience in rugby, and about how little of the league’s media income comes from outside the UK.

   Key themes

   • NFL envy and fragmentation: why the American one-door model can’t be copied in a sport with an international game, a grassroots base and the Lions.
   • The squeezed middle: the average Prem club ranks 476th in global sport by revenue; as a collective, the league would rank 58th.
   • Central against local value: why a pound earned by the league may be worth more to investors than a pound earned by a club.
   • Selling to American capital: overcoming the view of rugby as a “challenger” sport, and making the case on salary caps, no relegation and growth.
   • R360 and breakaways: the £300m problem, why teams matter more than stars in rugby, and “dancing on the grave”.
   • Players as promoters: Henry Pollock, Matchroom, and a generation that grew up “in the war years”.
   • Media after Paramount: the TNT deal to 2031, cheaper access, overseas rights in single digits, and the trouble with big audience numbers.
   • CVC: harder than expected, its role in creating the Nations Championship, and what its stake means when clubs are valued.
   • Marketing physicality: selling the hits while protecting player welfare and the grassroots game.

   This episode is brought to you by Turnstile, from Gemba.
   
   What is your sponsorship really worth? Most valuations focus on counting logos on screen. Turnstile values the whole deal: the intellectual property, the exposure, and every benefit in the contract.
   Built on more than five and a half billion dollars of real world benchmarks, Turnstile shows you how the market actually trades. That's why Turnstile has been adopted by the world's leading brands, clubs, leagues and events.
   Before you buy, sell or renew, know the number. Reach out to the Turnstile team at Gemba.
   Visit the gemba website.
   
   
   
   

   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 @UnofficialPartner
   
   We 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.

   
   
   

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2. UP580 Under Appreciated? It's Time to Celebrate the Craft of Short Form Content

   06.11.202645 Min.Als Nächstes

   Daniel Kirschner, co-founder of Greenfly, returns to talk about the craft of short-form sports content. The hook is the Short-Form Content Showcase, Greenfly’s joint project with SportsPro. We recorded after …

   Shownotes

   Daniel Kirschner, co-founder of Greenfly, returns to talk about the craft of short-form sports content. The hook is the Short-Form Content Showcase, Greenfly’s joint project with SportsPro. We recorded after meeting at the SportsPro AI event at the London Stadium. We ask whether highlights have trained a generation to expect constant excitement, and what a career in digital content now looks like.

   • AI slop and authenticity (~00:03). Because anything can be generated, generated content is worth less. In sport, what people value is what actually happened. AI is accepted for the work around the footage, such as graphics, editing and scorelines, but not in place of it.
   • The phone is not a miniature broadcast (~00:11). The 90s Nike ad looked perfect, but on a phone it’s rough footage that gives a sense of being there that works. Content is shot on phones and watched on phones. Leagues that worried at first about making their product look cheap have accepted that social and broadcast are different products that work together.
   • Where the craft lies (~00:12). Kirschner names three skills: getting creators into places fans can’t go, choosing what to capture, and adding personality afterwards with graphics, text and music. The NFL’s live creator programme is his main example.
   • Tone of voice, and TV borrowing from creators (~00:16). Short-form can be irreverent and provocative. Sports TV keeps borrowing creator tropes with mixed results, and next to them it can look pompous. Richard cites rugby.
   • Who’s doing it well (~00:20). The NFL for sideline footage that puts you in the action, the NBA for arrivals and shootarounds, and MLB for slow motion and dugout access. Athletes get the footage of themselves through Greenfly and post it to their own followers.
   • Explaining versus celebrating (~00:22). Can international clips teach the game to newcomers? Richard compares Channel 4’s cricket coverage and its 1980s NFL broadcasts, back when American football felt exotic. Kirschner’s view is that short-form is mostly about the moment, not the explainer.
   • Stakes and jeopardy (~00:29). A strike only looks like a strike until the context makes it matter. Miguel Delaney’s argument that highlights have conditioned young fans is answered by the case that creators’ real job is to build investment in the outcome.
   • Drive to Survive as the last of its kind (~00:32). The documentary boom mostly failed to repeat its success, partly because the scroll now supplies the access. The more stage-managed it is, the more people switch off.
   • Central versus club production (~00:34). Premier League Studios and the Bundesliga produce footage centrally for clubs and athletes to build on. The US leagues are more centralised, but fans’ loyalty is still to their team.
   • Big numbers versus building fans (~00:37). How rights holders balance chasing reach for the biggest clubs against storylines that turn casual viewers into committed fans.
   • Careers (~00:39). The work used to be done by interns. Some of the people Greenfly worked with at entry level ten years ago are now senior executives. The function still reports into different departments from club to club. The advice is to start at a club, where small teams mean early responsibility.

   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 @UnofficialPartner
   
   We 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.

   
   
   

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3. UP579 The Bundle - AI Capex vs The sports budget; Scotland vs 3pm; Relevent vs CAA

   03.11.202657 Min.Als Nächstes

   Richard Gillis is joined by regulars Murray Barnett, founder of 26 West Consulting, and Yannick Ramcke, general manager of OneFootball OTT, for the monthly look at the sports media market. Fresh from Sportel …

   Shownotes

   Richard Gillis is joined by regulars Murray Barnett, founder of 26 West Consulting, and Yannick Ramcke, general manager of OneFootball OTT, for the monthly look at the sports media market. Fresh from Sportel, they ask what a record $65.8bn rights market really tells us, the risk of the streamers and what happens to sports budgets when Big Tech has AI to pay for.

   In this episode

   • The $65.8bn headline
     • SportBusiness gave us a new number
     • Why does the US now account for 54% of global rights value?
     • How useful is a number this big if you run a league, a federation or an agency?
     • Are buyers risk-averse, spending more on proven properties and leaving the middle tier behind?
     • Has seasonality replaced the old assumption that rights values only go up?
   • Are the streamers reliable partners?
     • Does what Netflix, Amazon and Apple do in the US read across to smaller markets?
     • Is Netflix’s reported $100m for the World Cup in Spain simply cheap programming?
     • Can incumbents such as Sky be taken for granted, or will they eventually settle for being the platform?
     • Is the idea of streamers owning a major European league exclusively a myth?
   • Channel 4, Disney+ and what “free” means now
     • What does consolidation among buyers mean for rights sellers?
     • Do carriage deals repair fragmentation, or remove the competitive tension that rights owners rely on?
     • Is free-to-air defined by price or by accessibility?
     • Could free-to-air broadcasters and streamers start bidding for rights together?
   • Scotland and the 3pm blackout
     • Frank Dunne of SportBusiness broke the story
     • Is the SPFL tender a test case for the Premier League?
     • The Premier League sold 35% more matches for about 4% more money. Would all 380 games add much?
     • Do owners care about anything except the headline number?
     • Is piracy a real argument for abolition, or just a convenient one?
   • Did AI eat the budget?
     • What does Amazon’s $220bn capex mean for sports rights?
     • If affordability isn’t the issue, has the hurdle rate for sport gone up?
     • Why is Netflix’s position different from Amazon’s or YouTube’s?
     • Is senior management attention now the scarcest resource?
   • Relevent and the agency business
     • What does it mean that one agency now sells UEFA’s club and national-team rights?
     • Is Relevent still an agency, or something closer to a partner?
     • Why is agency life getting tougher, and is in-housing already going into reverse?
     • Is it data that wins business, or still relationships?

   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 @UnofficialPartner
   
   We 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.

   
   
   

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4. UP578: What’s It Worth? Two Circles put a big number on fandom

   27.10.202655 Min.Als Nächstes

   Two Circles are saying sport and entertainment fandom generates nearly $2 trillion of economic activity a year. That makes it bigger than motor manufacturing and bigger than coal mining. If it were a country …

   Shownotes

   Two Circles are saying sport and entertainment fandom generates nearly $2 trillion of economic activity a year.
   That makes it bigger than motor manufacturing and bigger than coal mining.

   If it were a country, it would be the 15th largest economy in the world.

   But remember the Unofficial Partner rule: the number’s always wrong.

   So this episode is about what lies underneath the headline.
   
   Joining Richard are Harry Hawkins, managing director of Two Circles, EMEA and Mel Chapman, Group executive director.

   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 @UnofficialPartner
   
   We 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.

   
   
   

5. UP577 Spin Class: The Premier League, Man City and the battle over the story

   23.10.202646 Min.Als Nächstes

   The Premier League has won the facts. Manchester City were found guilty of 114 of 115 charges, with £830m of revenue inflated through sham sponsorships. Now the fight is over the story, and everyone has a …

   Shownotes

   The Premier League has won the facts. Manchester City were found guilty of 114 of 115 charges, with £830m of revenue inflated through sham sponsorships. Now the fight is over the story, and everyone has a different audience.

   Dan Johnson, the Premier League’s former director of communications, and investigative journalist Nick Harris of Sporting Intelligence join Richard Gillis to pull apart the playbooks. They cover the League’s long silence and why it left a vacuum, City’s network of former players, ambassadors and friendly voices, and the question of who should declare who pays them. Then Andy Burnham’s unforced error, Number 10’s clean-up job, and whether City was ever really a private investment rather than a state project.

   They also cover what the sanction should be, and whether punishing the champions damages the Premier League or strengthens it.

   Guests
   Dan Johnson: Premier League director of communications for over a decade, later at DAZN, and was chief communications and marketing officer at Whisper.
   Nick Harris: investigative sports journalist, founder of Sporting Intelligence, who has covered the City story since 2011.

   Chapters
   00:00 Narrative or substance: where the City case stands
   02:30 The Premier League’s silence and the regulator’s dilemma
   06:00 A leak-proof process, a July verdict and an uncertain timeline
   10:00 Should pundits declare who pays them?
   13:00 Pundits as proxies and the “third-party endorser network”
   17:00 Guardiola’s tweet, Yelland and Romano: who’s speaking for City?
   22:00 Comms doing a comms job: City’s playbook since 2014
   26:00 Andy Burnham’s interview and Number 10’s clean-up
   29:30 The 14 September Downing Street meeting
   32:00 Private investment or state project?
   35:00 The trouble with “sportswashing”
   37:00 What should the punishment be?
   40:00 Does this damage the Premier League product?
   44:00 The Premier League as regulator, and why its success isn’t an accident

   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 @UnofficialPartner
   
   We 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.

   
   
   

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6. UP576 World Rugby Chief on Private Equity, Disruptor Leagues and Following FIFA in to the US

   20.10.20261 Std. 2 Min.Als Nächstes

   Alan Gilpin is chief executive of World Rugby. He spent nine years at IMG negotiating the commercial rights to the 2003, 2007 and 2011 Rugby World Cups. So when he says next year’s tournament in Australia …

   Shownotes

   Alan Gilpin is chief executive of World Rugby. He spent nine years at IMG negotiating the commercial rights to the 2003, 2007 and 2011 Rugby World Cups. So when he says next year’s tournament in Australia brings him full circle, he means it literally: he’s selling the same tournament from the other side of the table.

   The men’s quadrennial World Cup brings in around 85 to 90 per cent of World Rugby’s total income.

   And he’s set himself a big number. World Rugby’s plan targets a surplus of more than a billion dollars from the 2031 World Cup in America, in a market where it can’t make FIFA’s demands of NFL owners and where, as he admits, putting on an event is far more expensive.

   But the most striking thing is how candid he is about his own sport. Rugby’s biggest problem, he says, is self-inflicted: “we’re competing amongst ourselves.”

   We talk about FIFA, R360 and LIV, private equity, the women’s Lions, what the streamers want, and whether sevens can ever pay its way.

   Chapters

   00:00 Football, North America and everything else
   01:50 What rugby learned from FIFA’s World Cup summer in the US
   04:30 Hiring FIFA’s people and the host-city process
   05:40 Narrow NFL pitches and the venue shortlist
   07:00 Why rugby can’t demand commercially clean venues
   08:50 Margin over revenue, and 68,000 in Baltimore
   10:00 The NFL owners and “should the NFL buy rugby?”
   11:00 Why the US: the Japan 2019 precedent
   12:00 France 2023’s losses and the end of the outsourced hosting model
   16:20 A £1bn tournament: six revenue streams, one dependency
   18:40 The federated model: who gets the money
   23:30 Private equity, Prem Rugby and institutional capital
   28:00 “We’re competing amongst ourselves”: rugby’s fragmentation problem
   30:00 R360, LIV Golf and “disrupt from within”
   31:20 The player welfare pitch and the national-team moat
   35:00 Player wages and the professional women’s game
   38:40 Same or different? The women’s British and Irish Lions
   43:00 Streamers, eventisation and rugby’s product suite
   48:00 RugbyPass, digital numbers and the wrong metrics
   49:50 Clips, grazing and going the wrong way up the funnel
   52:00 Sevens, T20 and the Olympic effect
   57:30 What’s next: the shape of the game and the road to 2031

   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 @UnofficialPartner
   
   We 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.

   
   
   

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7. UP575 Chat_UP: 'That's So AI', Rogue Agents and Superintelligence

   13.10.202657 Min.Als Nächstes

   Gen Z has a new insult for anything that looks cheap: “that’s so AI”. Richard Gillis and Andy Shora of TFG Labs ask what that means for a sports industry selling AI to investors, sponsors and fans all at once …

   Shownotes

   Gen Z has a new insult for anything that looks cheap: “that’s so AI”. Richard Gillis and Andy Shora of TFG Labs ask what that means for a sports industry selling AI to investors, sponsors and fans all at once.

   They cover who should own AI inside a club, what happens when the shirt sponsor is also your infrastructure, and why autonomous agents have changed the risk profile from bad copy to switched-off turnstiles.

   In this episode

   • Why fans discount AI content, and why craft and effort still win attention. Trump’s “super intelligence” rebrand at the UN is the backdrop.[1]
   • The funnel in UK sport: 81% of rights holders use AI, but only a third use it strategically.[2]
   • Who owns AI inside a sports organisation: the chief AI officer, budget fiefdoms, and accountability when things go wrong.
   • Microsoft’s “humanist AI” and the rest of the new prefixes, and how AI became a sponsorship category as gambling leaves Premier League shirts.[3][4]
   • The painful divorce: what happens to a club’s tech stack when the AI shirt deal ends.
   • The ROI question arrives. Hyperscaler capex passes $1tn, and clubs are now being asked what their AI spend has returned.[5][6]
   • Anthony Gordon’s Spanish at Barcelona, and why translation by machine won’t buy you fans.[7]
   • US unilateralism, Macron’s “vassal” warning, and the supply risk of a model that can be switched off by a government.[8][9]
   • OpenAI agents escape a sandbox, and an agent breaches an Australian government site: what that means for match-day operations, scouting and the Champions League.[10][11]
   • Going local: open-weight models and Jev, the decision model that does the job of an LLM for a fraction of the cost.[12]

   Sources

   1. Trump wants to rebrand AI as “super intelligence” (Axios)
   2. PTI Digital, The Sports Leadership Benchmark 2026
   3. Microsoft drafts feel-good AI model guidelines (The Register)
   4. AI partnerships in the Premier League (Sportcal)
   5. Global AI investment forecast to exceed $1 trillion in 2026 (Goldman Sachs)
   6. AI demand and capex (J.P. Morgan Asset Management)
   7. Anthony Gordon speaks Spanish at his Barcelona unveiling (Goal)
   8. US rejects international AI oversight at the UN (NBC News via AOL) and Trump renames AI as leaders jostle over dangers (AFP via Yahoo)
   9. Anthropic on restoring access to Fable and Mythos
   10. Australia’s prime minister criticises OpenAI over government website breach (AP)
   11. OpenAI agent swarm exposes a blind spot in AI containment (CIO) and The Register
   12. TypeSafe AI, Jev and Arize’s review of Jev

   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 @UnofficialPartner
   
   We 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.

   
   
   

8. UP574 Vibes vs Effectiveness: 'Cultural relevance is this generation's brand purpose'

   06.10.202648 Min.Als Nächstes

   A conversation about sponsorship effectiveness, creativity and the price of chasing vibes.Richard is joined by Mike Grumbridge and Peter Wilson of Sid Lee Sport to talk about Mike's recent Marketing Week …

   Shownotes

   A conversation about sponsorship effectiveness, creativity and the price of chasing vibes.

   Richard is joined by Mike Grumbridge and Peter Wilson of Sid Lee Sport to talk about Mike's recent Marketing Week piece: "Stop confusing vibes with sponsorship effectiveness" which took the Levi's Stadium ambush at this summer's FIFA World Cup as a starting point in to an argument about the value of official and unofficial sponsorship.

   From there the conversation widens: why sponsorship still can't prove impact the way advertising can, why media value remains such a slippery number, why "cultural relevance" has become this generation's brand purpose, what happens to a brand when you hand it over to creators, and why so much sports marketing now looks identical.

   Summary: The long and short of sponsor effectiveness, with a hat tip to Binet and Field.

   
   

   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 @UnofficialPartner
   
   We 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.

   
   
   

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9. UP573 The Summer That Changed The Sports Business - Live

   29.09.20261 Std. 3 Min.Als Nächstes

   Recorded live in front of an invited audience of senior sports-industry figures at Teneo's London offices overlooking St Paul's Cathedral, this Unofficial Partner event asked a deliberately awkward …

   Shownotes

   Recorded live in front of an invited audience of senior sports-industry figures at Teneo's London offices overlooking St Paul's Cathedral, this Unofficial Partner event asked a deliberately awkward question about the summer of 2026: not what happened, but what actually changed.

   Three set-pieces framed the conversation — the men's FIFA World Cup in the United States, the European Athletics Championships, the ICC Women's T20 World Cup and the Commonwealth Games — and the panel picked apart what worked, what didn't, and what will still matter next year.

   Beth Barrett Wild steps away from the ECB after running the ICC Women's T20 World Cup 2026 and leading on the women's game, having help build the competition side of The Hundred since 2018.

   Jon Dutton OBE is chief executive of the British Olympic Association, formerly CEO of Rugby League World Cup 2021 and CEO at British Cycling.

   Miguel Delaney is chief football writer at The Independent and author of States of Play, the award-winning investigation into how state money and sportswashing reshaped modern football.

   Unofficial Partner is grateful to our friends at Teneo for hosting the event at its offices overlooking St Paul's in London, and to Neil Daugherty and his team for their hospitality and expertise.

   This episode is sponsored by Leaders in Sport

   Next week we're heading to Stamford Bridge with the global sports industry for Leaders Week London, and this is your final call to join us.

   Over two days you can hear directly from the leaders behind some of sport's biggest organisations, get in front of the people you've been chasing all year, and turn a few packed days in London into months' worth of business.

   It's a rare chance to have that much of the industry, and that much opportunity, under one roof.

   We're there every year, and we can vouch for the value of having the right people in the same place. Come and find us at Stamford Bridge and say hello.

   If you haven't secured your place yet, now's the time.

   Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information, and use code UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass.

   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 @UnofficialPartner
   
   We 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.

   
   
   

10. UP572 Creators: What Are They Good For?

    25.09.202657 Min.Als Nächstes

    Wimbledon didn't ban influencers. It said it wouldn't create a creator accreditation category and would confiscate ring lights and selfie poles under existing rules. The headline ran anyway, and it …

    Shownotes

    Wimbledon didn't ban influencers. It said it wouldn't create a creator accreditation category and would confiscate ring lights and selfie poles under existing rules. The headline ran anyway, and it tells us more about sport's gatekeepers than about creators. Richard Gillis is joined by two people who sit on opposite sides of the creator deal. Jo Tongue is CEO of Tongue Tied Management, representing athletes, broadcasters and content creators. A former BBC sports reporter, she edited 5 Live's 606 for a decade and is a director of Women in Football. Lisa Parfitt is co-founder of The Space Between, the sports marketing agency for challenger brands whose work includes the ECB's women's cricket campaigns and FIFA's Women's Champions Cup launch. She previously co-founded Engine Sport. They discuss who is responsible when creators misbehave, why rights holder channels are underdelivering for sponsors, and what sport now demands of its elite athletes.

    Key discussion points

    • 02:30 The US Open ring lights and the "Wimbledon bans creators" headline: what actually happened
    • 04:00 Jo argues the blame lies with whoever invited the creators, not the creators themselves
    • 06:45 Lisa on snobbery, gatekeeping, and why influencers didn't invent annoying tennis crowds
    • 10:00 Unilever shifting 50–70% of activation budgets to creators
    • 11:30 How agents match talent to the outcome a brand actually wants
    • 16:00 Lisa's research showing rights holder channels reach about 27% of a sport's fans
    • 20:00 Creators versus journalists, and paid versus earned
    • 23:30 Who controls creator behaviour: rights holders, sponsors, or hosts
    • 29:30 Brand risk after Callaway and Good Good, and the cost of heavy approvals
    • 34:30 Jazmin Sawyers and the pressure on athletes to become creators
    • 41:00 Rehab programmes, insurance and tunnel selfies: which rules actually matter
    • 45:30 Women's sport and whether there are enough women's football creators
    • 48:00 Women's T20 World Cup: a 70/30 split between sport and lifestyle
    • 52:30 Taking first-timers to Lord's, and the value of the outsider's question

    
    

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

11. UP571 The Bundle: Warning signs from the top of the market; IPL and NFL the same but different; DAZN's IPO; The Anti-Netflix

    22.09.20261 Std. 4 Min.Als Nächstes

    Unofficial Partner's regular series on the sports media and streaming marketplace. Host: Richard Gillis. Co-hosts:Murray Barnett, founder of 26 West Consulting (formerly F1, World Rugby, ESPN); Yannick …

    Shownotes

    Unofficial Partner's regular series on the sports media and streaming marketplace. Host: Richard Gillis. Co-hosts:Murray Barnett, founder of 26 West Consulting (formerly F1, World Rugby, ESPN); Yannick Ramcke, general manager of OTT at OneFootball.

    The rights ceiling: NFL and IPL as warning signs on rights inflation

    Exclusivity in question: co-exclusivity, mixed packages and "intelligent auctions"

    India: JioStar's monopoly, monetisability, and football's stalled growth

    DAZN's EverPass deal and the pivot to sport's "operating system"

    DAZN and the road to a 2027 IPO

    BBC cuts: Ski Sunday, the Women's Football Show, and the death of the magazine show

    What free-to-air and public-service broadcasting is for now

    FIBA Women's World Cup on TNT: laddering rights across platforms

    Fox and IndyCar: broadcaster enthusiasm as a value driver

    Local vs global: why sport resists the Netflix model

    This episode is sponsored by Leaders Week London

    2 Weeks To Go

    Leaders Week London is now just two weeks away.

    On 7 and 8 October, Stamford Bridge will become the meeting place for the global sports industry, bringing together senior leaders from across teams, leagues, brands, broadcasters, investors and more.

    With three stages of insight, dedicated forums, masterclasses and plenty happening beyond the stages, it's two days built around the conversations, connections and opportunities that are much harder to create from behind a desk.

    We'll be there, and if Leaders Week London is still on your radar, now's the time to make it happen.

    Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information and use UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass.

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

12. UP570 Spin Class: Here We Go! Premier League Transfer Window Special

    15.09.202649 Min.Als Nächstes

    Spin Class is our regular series with experts in sports communications, PR and reputation management. Football's transfer window is one of the definitive sports business stories. Its cast of characters …

    Shownotes

    Spin Class is our regular series with experts in sports communications, PR and reputation management.

    Football's transfer window is one of the definitive sports business stories. Its cast of characters include players, agents, managers, club owners and a small number of journalists cum influencers with massive social media followings and the power to impact the market via insider intel and gossip.

    At the centre of all this is the clubs' PR teams seeking to control the narrative.

    Context: This summer's transfer window saw Premier League clubs break their all-time summer transfer record with spending reaching £3.49bn, compared to £1.13bn spent by clubs five years ago.

    A total of £506.5m was spent on deadline day itself, up from £391m last year.

    The total amount spent during the window considerably dwarfs the and underlines the power top English clubs have to attract talent, according to figures provided to BBC Sport by Paul Macdonald, founder of FootballTransfers.com.

    Three of the 10 most expensive signings in the history of football have happened this summer – with all of them being Premier League signings. In fact, this summer window featured four of the top flight's five most expensive ever deals.

    Kate Miller — Chief Communications Officer, Tottenham Hotspur

    Dan Johnson - former Premier League communications director

    Neil Daugherty — Senior Managing Director and UK Sports Sector Lead, Teneo

    
    

    This episode is sponsored by Leaders in Sport

    Women's Sport at Leaders Week

    Women's sport isn't short on momentum; the bigger question now is what the industry does with it. At Leaders Week London this October, that's where the conversation will go next: how to turn growing audiences, investment and attention into lasting commercial growth.

    Across the main agenda, the Women in Sport Breakfast and Women's Sport Lounge, you'll hear from the people building what comes next, and get closer to the ideas, partnerships and decisions shaping the market.

    If women's sport is part of your business, Leaders Week London 2026 is one you'll want to make time for.

    Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information and use UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass.

    Leaders Week London tickets are available on this link.

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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13. UP569 Rushman's Rules: Deals, Woke and the Lost World of Langan's

    08.09.202655 Min.Als Nächstes

    Nigel Rushman is one of the most effective operators in the modern sports business — a fixer and dealmaker who spent four decades at the delivery end of major events, building a parallel international career …

    Shownotes

    Nigel Rushman is one of the most effective operators in the modern sports business — a fixer and dealmaker who spent four decades at the delivery end of major events, building a parallel international career brokering deals across governments and industry.

    After a start in restaurants — London, Paris, a Michelin three-star kitchen — he built a catering company, sold it, and moved into commercial events and then crisis-management PR. His breakthrough sporting client was Peter de Savary's 1992 America's Cup challenge, and de Savary went on to take a 20 per cent stake in the business. In 1991, Rushman's company won the media-management and accreditation brief for the Rugby World Cup across five nations — a complex, pre-internet logistics operation that, for a good few years, almost nobody else could deliver. That became Rushmans: accreditation, media services, security consultancy and event delivery for major tournaments, later including the 2007 Cricket World Cup across nine Caribbean countries, where he was Event Director.

    In the mid-1990s he bought a two-page photocopied newsletter called Sport Business from its founder, installed Kevin Roberts as editor, modelled it on PR Week, and later swapped it out of his business in a share deal — a transaction from which, by his own account, he made £7 million. The title went on to become the sector's best-known trade brand.

    Rushman also served as a strategic adviser on Qatar's successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup, and did significant business in Cuba, selling the country's baseball rights. He now lives between Monaco and Dubai and runs Rushmans Decision Intelligence, an AI-assisted advisory platform he pitches as faster, cheaper and sharper than the big management consultancies.

    This conversation ranges across his career, the vanished world of the sports-rights "pirates and bandits", the financialisation of football, diversity and inclusion, the future of clips and betting, and what he is building now.

    The recording took place in Soho at the offices of Spectacle Partners, thanks to Scott and Richard for their help.

    
    

    This episode is sponsored by Leaders Week London

    There's a new home, a new set-up and plenty more to get excited about at Leaders Week London 2026. The move brings The Summit into central London, with a new campus-style experience designed to make it easier to move between the people you want to meet, the conversations you want to hear and the business you're there to do.

    There'll be all-new agenda formats, three stages of insight, and more ways to connect throughout the day. When day one finishes, Leaders After Dark takes the networking into the evening across Stamford Bridge. It's a proper evolution of Leaders Week, and one we're looking forward to this October.

    Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information, and use UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass.

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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14. UP568 Real Time Economics: When the Clip is the Product

    01.09.202656 Min.Als Nächstes

    Few people sit closer to the epicentre of the sports digital economy than Daniel Kirschner. As co-founder and CEO of Greenfly, he oversees the connective tissue running between rights holders, athletes and …

    Shownotes

    Few people sit closer to the epicentre of the sports digital economy than Daniel Kirschner. As co-founder and CEO of Greenfly, he oversees the connective tissue running between rights holders, athletes and fans; the infrastructure that turns a moment on the pitch into content on your phone within seconds.

    Creator strategy and the platform deals. How rights holders selectively route content to favoured creators (Goldbridge as proxy) and to TikTok/YouTube. Richard presses the FIFA-TikTok/YouTube deals as a "tax" to stop leakage; Kirschner reframes winning as getting the highest-quality version out first.

    Clips as crown jewel vs top of funnel. The central tension. Richard argues clips are now the product, not the trailer; Kirschner holds that short-form is top-of-funnel for fandom and complements rather than cannibalises live—but concedes it should be a meaningful revenue pillar, not something dumped on social.

    Who pays. If not the broadcaster, then who? Discussion of separate short-form rights deals (NFL–Bleacher Report), YouTube revenue-sharing, and sponsors/brands paying to attach to viral moments (the Messi Smartwater example) with earned-media-value tracking.

    US vs Europe market structure. Centralised US leagues vs fragmented European clubs with promotion/relegation instability; more friction means more need for the technology. College sports as the closest US analogue to the European model.

    Athlete economics and authenticity. Athletes get content free, aren't paid, yet treat access as a favour. Editorial-versus-commercial distinction, and the authenticity question when agencies get involved.

    Measurement, impressions and AI slop. Richard's scepticism about impression numbers and the YouTube view-counting change; Kirschner on transparency of measurement, the coming flood of AI slop, and live sport's authenticity as the hedge against it (Kushner/Lakers).

    How the platforms see sport. Whether an eyeball is just an eyeball—Kirschner argues sports content is undervalued because of its emotional resonance and, distinctively, its joy: fans relive wins, not losses, which makes the content more valuable to advertisers.

    The SportsPro short-form showcase. Closing plug for the awards recognising ~40 short-form producers, and the broader argument that the craft has shifted from throwaway to a properly valued discipline attracting serious marketing budgets (Unilever's 80% shift toward short-form creators).

    This episode is sponsored by Leaders in Sport

    The 2026 Leaders Week London agenda is live, and there’s already plenty we’ve got our eye on. Across three stages at Stamford Bridge, Leaders in Sport will bring together senior figures from across the industry to get into the questions, challenges and opportunities shaping where the business of sport goes next. From leadership and commercial growth to creativity and technology, there’s a lot packed into the two days and no shortage of sessions worth making time for. We are looking forward to hearing Gary Lineker talk about The Art of the Story: Pitches, Publishing and Podcasts.

    We’ll be there on 7 and 8 October, hopefully we’ll see you there too.

    Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information and use UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass.

    
    

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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15. UP567 Spin Class: Infantino's fightback; Saudi post-LIV; AJ v Tyson, Hearn v White

    25.08.20261 Std. 1 Min.Als Nächstes

    Spin Class is Unofficial Partner's series on sports comms, PR, reputation and crisis management.Three stories:A FIFA president everyone's written off who isn't going anywhere. A billion-dollar …

    Shownotes

    Spin Class is Unofficial Partner's series on sports comms, PR, reputation and crisis management.

    Three stories:

    A FIFA president everyone's written off who isn't going anywhere.

    A billion-dollar golf breakaway running out of road.

    And a heavyweight fight that keeps getting made and unmade in public.

    What connects them? In every case the sport is almost beside the point — the real contest is the spin.

    This week's guests: Jon Tibbs OBE, JTA and Henry Chappell, Pitch Marketing.

    This episode is sponsored by Leaders Week London

    Leaders Week London returns this October with a new home for The Summit: Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea FC.
    On 7 and 8 October, Leaders in Sport will bring together senior figures from across the global sports industry to exchange ideas, build relationships and tackle the biggest opportunities shaping the business of sport.
    With the 2026 agenda now live, you can get a first look at the speakers, sessions and themes shaping this year’s Summit.
    We’ll be there, and you should join us.

    Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information and use UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass.

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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16. UP566 Chat UP: I never want to hear the phrase 'Palantir for Sport' again

    18.08.202653 Min.Als Nächstes

    Chat UP is Unofficial Partner's series on AI in the sports business.Today's guest is Mike Bracken CBE. He built the UK's Government Digital Service, became the country's first Government …

    Shownotes

    Chat UP is Unofficial Partner's series on AI in the sports business.

    Today's guest is Mike Bracken CBE. He built the UK's Government Digital Service, became the country's first Government Chief Data Officer, and now runs the consultancy Public Digital, advising governments and institutions worldwide. Richard sits him down to test a simple, uncomfortable idea: that most of sport's "AI problem" isn't about AI, isn't even about data, and can't be bought from a vendor. What follows is a masterclass in why change management fails, who really holds the power, and where the genuine prize for sport is hiding.

    • The two questions that come before any tech decision
    • "Why are you asking the question about AI?"
    • The standards argument: airports, not algorithms
    • The Palantir for Sport question
    • It's about power, not technology
    • Open v closed, and the wall of money
    • Why the single customer view is "a marketeer's wet dream"
    • CRM v VRM: the extractive trap
    • The bogus-metrics problem
    • The trick sport is missing

    Chat UP is made in collaboration with TFG Labs.

    ⁠⁠TFG Labs is the centre of innovation within the Twenty First Group and is truly the testing ground for groundbreaking sports intelligence. Their team of dedicated AI engineers are using the power of emerging technologies to deliver powerful changes to organisations across the whole sports ecosystem.

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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17. UP565 The Buy Side: Unilever on FIFA, creator budgets and the new World Cup playbook

    11.08.202656 Min.Als Nächstes

    Ben Curtis is Global Brand Vice President of Sure/Rexona at Unilever, and is just back the US where he ran the brand's first-ever Men's World Cup as a FIFA official partner. He came on Unofficial …

    Shownotes

    Ben Curtis is Global Brand Vice President of Sure/Rexona at Unilever, and is just back the US where he ran the brand's first-ever Men's World Cup as a FIFA official partner. He came on Unofficial Partner before the tournament to talk about what he was walking into; this is the debrief — what worked, what didn't, and what a global personal-care brand actually gets for the money, from the armpit branding on the fourth official's board (a Rexona first at a World Cup) to the New York activation built around creators rather than TV spots.

    Joining him is Mayowa Quadri, head of brand at the football-and-culture publisher Versus, a creator and consultant who worked on Rexona's campaign from the other side of the table.

    What does a global brand actually get for a World Cup sponsorship? Ben breaks down how Rexona measured return in near-real time — from brand mentions, to creator content earning 10x that, to cultural moments running into the millions of engagements — and where the brand ranked against Adidas and Coca-Cola.

    Was the fourth-official armpit branding a gimmick or a strategy? The Rexona sign held up at every substitution was a World Cup first. Ben argues it's a durable strategic position rather than a one-off joke; Richard presses on whether the idea has legs beyond its novelty.

    How much of the marketing budget now goes to creators rather than TV? Ben's answer is the headline number: a decisive swing away from traditional advertising in the space of a single World Cup cycle.

    Has the way we consume a World Cup fundamentally changed? Mayowa on clip culture, the Americanisation of the tournament, and a younger audience watching through creators and streamers rather than buying broadcast packages — and why broadcasters are now behaving like creators themselves.

    What makes a brand-creator relationship work, and when does it fail? Both sides on the shift from prescriptive deliverables to briefing intent, the trust a brand has to extend, and the fast route to losing an audience by looking like you've sold out.

    Is football still a sport, or is it now a culture? Mayowa's case that the footballer is a human being with interests beyond the 90 minutes — and how brands are buying into fashion, music and identity rather than match results.

    What is the media agency actually for now? How Unilever identifies communities and maps creators against them, the rise of nano-creators as word-of-mouth amplifiers, and why the direct brand-to-creator connection still matters.

    Can the controversies around FIFA stay 'priced in'? With Infantino in the headlines, whether the noise around the governing body touches the sponsors who fund it — and Mayowa's argument that player power, not sponsor pressure, is the variable that could actually move things.

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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18. UP564 Other People's Money: Andrea Radrizzani and Alistair Brownlee OBE

    28.07.202641 Min.Als Nächstes

    A conversation recorded at the recent SportsPro Investment Summit, bringing together two very different investors: Andrea Radrizzani, media entrepreneur and former Leeds United owner, and Alistair Brownlee OBE …

    Shownotes

    A conversation recorded at the recent SportsPro Investment Summit, bringing together two very different investors: Andrea Radrizzani, media entrepreneur and former Leeds United owner, and Alistair Brownlee OBE, double Olympic triathlon champion turned investor. The through-line is what actually makes a sports asset worth owning — and where the value really resides.

    Leeds United and the weight of history. Radrizzani reflects on the Bielsa era, the club's identity as the sole footballing focus of a proud Northern city, and the burden of expectation rooted in the 2004 Champions League semi-final side (then the sixth-biggest club in world football on £90m revenue). Brownlee, a lifelong Leeds fan, adds the fan's perspective — pride and connection to the city matter as much as trophies.

    Turnaround clubs vs. trophy assets. Radrizzani's core investment lens: the difference between a turnaround play like Leeds (high appreciation, but one relegation can wipe out value) and buying a top club, now the preserve of sovereign wealth funds and private equity. Football as a luxury/brand asset that appreciates like real estate (the PSG example), but where capital cushions mistakes that a smaller club cannot afford. Relegation as a genuine financial cliff-edge.

    The new generation of sport and the media-rights problem. Why Super Tri, PTO/T100 and others built on media-rights revenue have pivoted toward mass participation. Only premium rights are growing; the rest is flat or declining. The value of affluent, avid participant communities over passive viewers.

    Mass participation economics and the HYROX model. Buying a hardcore, high-spending community; defining who your true fans are and how much more they'll pay. The customer-acquisition-cost vs. lifetime-value case, and the adjacent-business boom (apparel, nutrition, training, sports tourism). The open question: consumers now hop between HYROX, Ironman and marathons rather than staying loyal to one ecosystem — and Ironman's acquisition strategy as a response.

    Owning the ecosystem. Radrizzani's thesis that value lies not in any single point but in connecting the dots across a vertical.

    Athletes on the cap table. What a famous name is actually worth to a company. Consumer cynicism toward over-endorsing stars (the Neymar/Ronaldo "promiscuity" problem), the premium on authenticity and genuine expertise, and the shift from passive sponsorship fees to equity stakes that drive real ROI. David Beckham cited as the model done well.

    Brownlee's path from athlete to investor. The solitary, self-reliant nature of individual-sport careers, and how he built an investment practice alongside competing.

    How much athletes should earn. The 55% wage-to-revenue sustainability benchmark (and Leeds' notorious 120%). Salary caps as what makes US leagues attractive asset classes. The IOC's position on not paying athletes directly. Why economic incentives alone fail to lure athletes to new leagues — Olympic qualification and heritage tournaments still outweigh money.

    Private equity moving down the value chain. PE consolidating athlete and football agencies to capture player earnings; players themselves becoming more sophisticated investors (the Courtois family-office example).

    Concentration, unionisation and league design. "Big get bigger" dynamics, UFC-style overpayment at the top, gig-economy pressures on the athlete pyramid, and the collective-bargaining logic of leagues vs. the pure capitalism of boxing.

    LIV Golf's lessons and what's next. LIV as an early iteration of these themes, the surprising strength of the incumbent (PGA Tour) and heritage/"playing for the shirt," and a look ahead to NBA Europe and how it collides with basketball's existing strongholds. Radrizzani closes on nearly buying a London basketball franchise a decade ago — and why football and media remain his real passion.

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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19. UP563 Jude Inc: 'I don't suppose you've got any Bellingham?'

    20.07.202646 Min.Als Nächstes

    Dan Jamieson secured exclusive rights for Jude Bellingham the week before the FIFA World Cup. The ICONS CEO takes us inside the complex world sporting memorabilia, where fame, fans and intellectual property …

    Shownotes

    Dan Jamieson secured exclusive rights for Jude Bellingham the week before the FIFA World Cup. The ICONS CEO takes us inside the complex world sporting memorabilia, where fame, fans and intellectual property collide.

    The Bellingham bet — talent-spotting as a business model

    • Icons approached Bellingham three years, eight months ago while he was still at Dortmund — long before the World Cup made him a global name. The signing model is a venture bet: identify the X-factor early, earn the entourage's trust, lock in exclusivity before the price moves.
    • Jamieson's read on Bellingham is the whole thesis in miniature: "treat him like he's a foreign footballer." His fame was built overseas, his value is that he transcends Englishness — the opposite of "yeoman-like" Harry Kane, who doesn't sell to kids in Macau, Australia or the Philippines.
    • The signing itself is prosaic: roughly an hour of his time at Real Madrid's training complex, filmed for content. The value is manufactured afterwards through framing, licensing and authentication.

    
    The rights stack — why one player requires three deals

    • A single Bellingham product sits on top of a layered set of rights: the player (exclusive deal via a tight, family-run team), the club (Real Madrid takes a cut on image rights — their argument: the halo of the shirt inflates his global value), and the tournament (FIFA / Champions League licences).
    • Notable: Icons pays Real Madrid as well as Bellingham, but does not pay the FA for the England shirt.
    • The signing was split ~50/50 Madrid/England on the bet that Madrid would globalise better — but post-tournament it's England fans doing the buying. A live demonstration of how a World Cup rewrites demand in real time.

    
    "Official, authentic, exclusive" — the three buzzwords

    • The entire proposition rests on these three words. The FIFA licence buys the right to use the marks, access official channels, and — revealingly — instruct Google to stop directing buyers to unofficial sellers.
    • Sharp detail on enforcement: the party responding most effectively to takedown requests is the Chinese, who ask for official IP letters so they can clear out counterfeit listings. Western platforms, by implication, are slower.

    
    Triple Lock — authentication as the core moat

    • Icons' answer to a "Wild West" market: film the entire signing, edit it, attach an NFC chip to the shirt so a phone scan surfaces the exact geolocated, timestamped, verifiable moment of signing.
    • The honest tension underneath: Richard presses whether authenticity actually matters to a buyer who just wants Bellingham on the wall. Jamieson concedes there's "a world of slop out there" far cheaper than Icons — the business model only works if enough buyers pay a premium for provenance. Authenticity isn't a feature, it's the entire value exchange.

    
    Retailtainment — the media/retail convergence

    • Richard's coinage-to-steal of the episode: "retailtainment." Icons has turned itself into live commerce for the eBay "Summer of Soccer" — footballers interviewed for an hour in-studio while an Icons "World XI" is auctioned live. Effectively "QVC for the modern age."
    • With three months' notice, Icons stood up a studio, trained staff into on-camera talent, and now broadcasts every three days. But Jamieson is disciplined about scale: live is ~10% of World Cup activity — a high-profile experiment, not the engine.
    • The Gary Lineker / Rest Is Football anecdote is the episode's best illustration of guerrilla marketing: a Messi shirt hand-delivered to reception, an invite upstairs, then a Bellingham frame — which ends up on-screen in the show's England opener. Product placement earned, not bought.

    
    Fanatics — the elephant, as platform and as frenemy

    • Icons' relationship with Fanatics is deliberately pragmatic: it's a distribution partner (15 years with the memorabilia team) and a subcontracting client (Icons signs players for Topps and Panini, but doesn't produce cards itself).
    • Jamieson's framing of Fanatics' ambition is the sharpest strategic line in the conversation: they want to "build a multi-story car park of tents" — own "all the goodies in the sweet shop." Fanatics Live is "Comic-Con for sport,"and the model is league rights plus individually-contracted superstars who also do PR, events and the "white party in the Hamptons."
    • The Topps/FIFA card rights deal gets a diplomatic "let's say it was a surprise" — Jamieson can't see how you award a licence five years out (it reverts to Fanatics/Topps at the 2031 Saudi World Cup). Read: a big cheque, future-proofing, and Infantino goodwill from the on-site deal.

    
    The trading-card vs. memorabilia distinction — two different markets

    • Crucial clarification of where Icons sits. Trading cards are a "free-flowing frictionless" tradable commodity — American-centric, increasingly international (Ohtani, Pokémon, Japan), an asset class with whales and secondary markets.
    • Icons' product is deliberately not tradable. Jamieson refuses to call it an investment: "you are a fan, you love this guy... put it on your wall and enjoy it." He's wary of the unrefereed secondary market. He acknowledges Icons is "thinking about" making its product tradable — a live strategic question they haven't resolved.

    
    NFTs — the dog that didn't bark

    • Jamieson stood on the sidelines through the NFT boom by instinct — a "real world tangible product person."Tellingly, no one ever came with a big cheque, so Icons was never tested.
    • His one genuinely interesting idea: the Maradona shirt with a cigar burn — a true one-of-one that could pair a physical artefact with a blockchain-owned digital twin. But the digital-native builders "were obsessed by the digital nature of it" and never bothered with the physical/digital combination that would have interested him.
    • On digital signatures: blunt dismissal — "I hate that stuff. It's just rubbish." Worth maybe £2 on a merchandising cup, meaningless to a collector.

    
    The supply-chain reality — where the money actually gets made and stuck

    • The least glamorous, most revealing theme. Icons believes it's the biggest buyer of football shirts in the world — thousands at a time, "round the back of the bike sheds" at Classic Football Shirts.
    • The Messi 2022 lesson: three years' revenue in three days, but entirely on pre-orders, because there were no Argentina shirts left on Earth. Adidas took six months to remanufacture; customers waited until summer. Right now Jamieson is "buying Argentina shirts" pre-emptively to avoid a repeat. England shirts are easier — the market is so vast Adidas "produce billions"

    The through-line question — what is a media outlet now?

    • The thread Richard keeps pulling: retail, media, rights and IP are collapsing into one space. eBay Live, Fanatics Live, Netflix moving from Rest Is Football into live FIFA rights (the Women's World Cup in Brazil on Netflix), and Icons building its own broadcast studio — all point the same way.
    • The strategic uncertainty left open: is the American World Cup an outlier or the new template? Jamieson is inside it and still can't fully call it — which is the honest and interesting place to leave it.

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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20. UP562 The Bundle: Hydration Economics; Sky's ITV portfolio; Survive to Survive; DAZN, NRL and Bundesliga

    17.07.20261 Std. 5 Min.Als Nächstes

    The Bundle with Yannick Ramcke of OneFootball and Murray Barnett of West26 Sport. Agenda:1. The Commercialisation of the Hydration Break2. Did the Ratings Success Change US Football Broadcasting?3. Sky's …

    Shownotes

    The Bundle with Yannick Ramcke of OneFootball and Murray Barnett of West26 Sport.

    Agenda:

    1. The Commercialisation of the Hydration Break

    2. Did the Ratings Success Change US Football Broadcasting?

    3. Sky's £1.6bn ITV Takeover: The Return of the Full-Funnel Broadcaster

    4. Is the Sports Doc Gold Rush Over?

    5. DAZN's A$5.3bn NRL Bet

    Cross-cutting threads

    1. Reach vs revenue
    2. Commercial innovation is a ratchet
    3. Everyone's paying not to lose
    4. The access era is ending

    The Unofficial Partner Scholarship - Applications Now Open for the Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH)

    🎓 Five 50% scholarship places are available for Unofficial Partner applicants in the upcoming Strategic Sport Leadership MA cohort, in September.

    The Unofficial Partner Scholarship is designed to support ambitious sport industry professionals.

    • Five (5) scholarships available to successful applicants
    • Amount: 50% off tuition fees for those starting September 2026
    • Eligibility: applicants must come through the Unofficial Partner network, and work in the sports industry
    • Application procedure: Candidates will automatically be considered for the scholarship on the basis of your application. No separate scholarship application is required. You must reference Unofficial Partner in your application

    Please contact Emma Rota at [email protected] to learn more and secure your place in the September cohort.

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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21. UP561 Is your name on the list? The winners and losers in Two Circles' $174bn sports IP revenue league table

    14.07.202658 Min.Als Nächstes

    The Two Circles Sports IP Revenue League 2026 is full of numbers. The headline is that sports IP is worth $174billion. But the story is more interesting and nuanced than that. Richard went to the agency's …

    Shownotes

    The Two Circles Sports IP Revenue League 2026 is full of numbers. The headline is that sports IP is worth $174billion. But the story is more interesting and nuanced than that.

    Richard went to the agency's offices in Holborn to hold the report up to the light.

    Joining him is Gareth Balch, CEO of Two Circles, and Charlie Dewhurst, Chief Commercial Officer of SailGP — the race sailing property founded by Larry Ellison of Oracle fame.

    Who's in, who's out and why should you care?

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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22. UP560 What is IMG now?

    07.07.202653 Min.Als Nächstes

    Today's guest Adam Kelly has been at IMG since 2001, connecting the business back almost to the McCormack era. Now President of IMG within TKO Group — which also owns UFC and WWE — he oversees IMG's …

    Shownotes

    Today's guest Adam Kelly has been at IMG since 2001, connecting the business back almost to the McCormack era. Now President of IMG within TKO Group — which also owns UFC and WWE — he oversees IMG's media rights, production, digital, brand partnerships, and events businesses. This is his second appearance on Unofficial Partner; the first was in 2022, when he laid out a vision for reimagining IMG as a full-service growth partner rather than a transactional rights broker.

    Episode Summary

    Recorded during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, this conversation uses the tournament as a launchpad for a broader argument about where sport sits commercially in 2026. Kelly's central thesis is that the entry of global streaming and technology platforms — Netflix, Apple, Google, Amazon — is the single most important shift in the sports media landscape, and that it is unambiguously good for sport. Richard pushes back throughout: on the financial extraction argument, on the volume fallacy, on whether global streaming actually serves the kinds of sports that real fans love. It's a genuinely spiky conversation.

    This episode of Unofficial Partner is sponsored by The Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH)

    ISH educates sport’s current and future leaders around the world, as the leading independent provider of sports leadership education and insight.

    Their Strategic Sport Leadership Masters (MA) is for sports industry executives to study alongside their careers – designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport.

    Applications for the next intake on the 2026 Strategic Sport Leadership MA, starting September, are open.

    Visit sportshumanities.org 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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

    Transkript

23. UP559 Revenue-maxxing: How FIFA Changed The Game

    03.07.202636 Min.Als Nächstes

    FIFA will make $13bn from the four-year cycle culminating in this summer's tournament — nearly $9bn of it landing this year alone. For comparison, the Paris 2024 Olympics, the other Greatest Show on Earth …

    Shownotes

    FIFA will make $13bn from the four-year cycle culminating in this summer's tournament — nearly $9bn of it landing this year alone. For comparison, the Paris 2024 Olympics, the other Greatest Show on Earth, generated $5.24bn. Total. For the whole Games.

    It wasn't always this lopsided. The World Cup actually trailed the Olympics financially until 2010, when South Africa's edition pulled in $4.19bn against London 2012's $3.23bn. Since then the gap has only widened: 18% revenue growth from Russia 2018 to Qatar 2022, and FIFA is projecting another 73% jump by the end of this summer. They've already raised the budget for the next cycle to $14bn — before this tournament has even finished.

    So this episode isn't really about football. It's about how a governing body turned a month of matches into the most lucrative event in the history of sport — and how that changes our relationship with the World Cup.

    My guests are Joey D'Urso, Times journalist and author of More Than A Shirt, and Carla Bilche of Off-Ball Logic, who's spent months tracing the commercial history of the World Cup to understand exactly how we got here. Carla has a name for it: "revenuemaxxing." Once you hear the numbers, the word makes total sense.

    This episode is sponsored by the Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH)

    ISH educates sport’s current and future leaders around the world, as the leading independent provider of sports leadership education and insight.

    Their Strategic Sport Leadership Masters (MA) is for sports industry executives to study alongside their careers – designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport.

    Applications for the next intake on the 2026 Strategic Sport Leadership MA, starting September, are open.

    Visit sportshumanities.org 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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

    Transkript

24. UP558 Chat_UP: What The Mythos Shutdown Means For AI in the Sports Business

    30.06.202647 Min.Als Nächstes

    Host: Richard Gillis (Unofficial Partner) Co-host/analyst: Andy Shora (TFG Labs)Three stories this episode:The Mythos/Fable shutdown — Anthropic ordered by the US government to disable its two most powerful …

    Shownotes

    Host: Richard Gillis (Unofficial Partner) Co-host/analyst: Andy Shora (TFG Labs)

    Three stories this episode:

    • The Mythos/Fable shutdown — Anthropic ordered by the US government to disable its two most powerful models for all foreign nationals globally, with ninety minutes' notice. First-ever export control action against an AI model. Discussion covers the jailbreak vulnerability cited as justification, the EU's response (calling for "technological sovereignty"), and what abrupt model withdrawal means for any organisation building critical workflows on a single frontier-model provider.
    • AI slop hits sports marketing — The Manchester Super Giants' AI-generated kit-reveal video (formerly Manchester Originals, 70% RPSG Group / 30% Lancashire) becomes a viral case study in what happens when cost-cutting meets low-effort generative content. Errors included six-fingered batsmen, three batsmen on the pitch at once, bowlers sprinting the wrong direction, and floodlights on in daylight. Conversation moves from "is this actually bad PR or accidental virality" to the deeper implications for trust, craft, and physical/skeletal modelling in sports performance AI.
    • Yann LeCun and the case against LLMs — LeCun's exit from Meta, his $1.3bn raise for AMI Labs, and his Viva Tech argument that the industry has gone "LLM-pilled." Explains "world models" and contextual intelligence, the stochastic parrot critique, and why LeCun believes open-source, physically-grounded models are a more credible path than scaling language models alone.

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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25. UP557 Ed Smith: What Sport Got Wrong About Moneyball

    26.06.202653 Min.Als Nächstes

    AI commoditises knowledge production and throws judgment into scarcity. In this episode, Ed Smith asks what that means for sport, education and the people building careers in the business — and why the …

    Shownotes

    AI commoditises knowledge production and throws judgment into scarcity. In this episode, Ed Smith asks what that means for sport, education and the people building careers in the business — and why the humanities might be the most undervalued edge in an age of machines.

    About the guest

    Ed Smith is an unusual hybrid in today's sports world. An academic, he left Cambridge with a Double First in History, and is the author of several excellent books including Luck, Making Decisions and What Sport Tells Us About Life. He served as Chief Selector for England men's cricket from 2018 to 2021, and is the current President of the MCC. In 2019 he co-founded the Institute of Sports Humanities, which offers the Strategic Sport Leadership Master's — a programme designed for ambitious sports industry executives looking to accelerate their careers while continuing to work. Applications for the next cohort, starting at the end of September, are now open: sportshumanities.org

    What we cover

    • The Moneyball hangover. Why the lazy reading of Billy Beane — "scouts are idiots, if it's not data it's not real" — was always wrong, and how elite sport has swung back to data as one source among many, not the whole story.
    • The limits of scientism. Ed on "creeping scientism," the idea that nothing's true unless it can be proved — and why some decisions (COVID policy, selection calls) carry intrinsic radical uncertainty that probability can't resolve.
    • Can judgment be taught? The case that the entire humanities tradition — criticism, history, weighing competing evidence — is really an apparatus for honing judgment, the skill AI makes scarce rather than obsolete.
    • Orchestration and the curated platform. What happens when a creative questioner goes straight to a powerful AI platform with curated data — near-instant insight — and why the bottleneck becomes asking the right question.
    • The apprenticeship gap. If AI absorbs the entry-level rungs of knowledge work (in law, in sport), how does anyone climb to the judgment seat at the top? Ed's two answers: institutionalised challenge, and getting your hands dirty early.
    • Sport as the last human product. Why Ed is "long sport" in the age of AI — live, embodied, uncertain competition as the most anti-fragile asset there is — and why the Tech Titans buying into London Spirit were buying the green grass, not the gadget.
    • The purpose problem. As production gets frictionless, meaning becomes the scarce good. Where the humanities, the arts and sport come into their own.
    • Careers without bosses. Charles Handy's "look for customers, not bosses," the death of the 50-year career path, and what an ideal student looks like: someone who doesn't know what's coming but trusts they can cope with it.

    People, books & ideas referenced

    • John Kay & Mervyn King, Radical Uncertainty · Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods
    • Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things (and his left-brain/right-brain work)
    • Michael Lewis, Moneyball · Howard Marks, Oaktree memos · Charles Handy
    • Institute of Sports Humanities — MA delivered with Loughborough University London

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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26. UP556 'Serviette Maths': Sky Sports Boss On The Premflix Threat

    23.06.202658 Min.Als Nächstes

    Jonathan Licht, Chief Sports Officer at Sky Sports, discusses Sky's dominant position in UK sports broadcasting, strategic partnerships, and the future of sports media.Key topics:Sky's portfolio …

    Shownotes

    Jonathan Licht, Chief Sports Officer at Sky Sports, discusses Sky's dominant position in UK sports broadcasting, strategic partnerships, and the future of sports media.

    Key topics:

    • Sky's portfolio dominance: 225 Premier League matches, 1,000+ EFL games, 118 WSL matches, Formula 1, cricket, golf, NFL, tennis, darts, netball
    • The growth paradox: How building sports audiences creates competitive tension at rights renewal time
    • Sky Labs & The Hundred: Co-creation process that helped develop franchise cricket format and broaden appeal
    • Money & certainty: Why "our money is good" matters to rights holders vs. global streamers
    • National champion positioning: Local expertise, bespoke market strategies, and talent relationships as competitive advantages
    • On-air talent strategy: Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, and the blurring lines between Sky platforms and independent creator channels like The Overlap
    • YouTube & highlights distribution: Free-to-view content as funnel vs. risk of training audiences not to pay; cricket highlights on YouTube
    • Women's sport investment: Business rationale + "higher purpose"; WSL growth (20% audience increase), ICC T20 World Cup, position as UK's biggest investor in women's sports
    • Streaming vs. linear: Resilience of traditional broadcasters; Sky Sports+ adoption; why global scale doesn't equal market-specific value
    • Competitive landscape: Paramount (Champions League), Netflix, Amazon, DAZN; lessons from Ligue 1 direct-to-consumer failure
    • Premier League production transition: In-housing away from IMG; operational implications for Sky's hosting role

    This podcast is sponsored by The Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH)

    ISH educates sport’s current and future leaders around the world, as the leading independent provider of sports leadership education and insight.

    Their Strategic Sport Leadership Masters (MA) is for sports industry executives to study alongside their careers – designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport.

    Applications for the next intake on the 2026 Strategic Sport Leadership MA, starting September, are open.

    Visit sportshumanities.org 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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

    Transkript

27. UP555 The Lord's Question: What Does The MCC Brand Stand For?

    16.06.202654 Min.Als Nächstes

    The £295million sale of London Spirit franchise was one of the big sports business stories of the last year. Some of Silicon Valley's most successful and famous leaders buying 49% of The Hundred's …

    Shownotes

    The £295million sale of London Spirit franchise was one of the big sports business stories of the last year. Some of Silicon Valley's most successful and famous leaders buying 49% of The Hundred's Lord's based franchise, in partnership with The MCC, one of the most storied names in cricket.

    So what is the MCC today, and how is that changing in one of the most important years in the great ground's history?

    In this episode, Richard Gillis is joined by Katie Maier, Chief Marketing Officer at MCC, and Ellie Roach, Senior Consultant at InCrowd, to ask that question directly.

    The conversation moves through the central tension of the brand — a 200-year-old members' club, still 97% male, now sitting alongside a 51% stake in The Hundred, a property built on the language of inclusion.

    Who is an MCC digital follower? What does the MCC look like from India? What's the thesis behind the Silicon Valley investment

    We go in to, the data-led case for not chasing vanity metrics in overseas markets, and a content strategy built on six pillars that runs well beyond the cricket itself.

    The episode lands just weeks before the most significant summer in the ground's history for women's cricket: the first ever women's Test at Lord's, alongside the Women's T20 World Cup final, fifty years after the first women's international was played there.

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

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28. UP554 The Bundle World Cup Special

    12.06.202653 Min.Als Nächstes

    Richard, Murray Barnett and Yannick Ramcke convene for a World Cup special, using the 2026 tournament as a lens on how sports broadcasting is shifting beneath the surface. The conversation moves from …

    Shownotes

    Richard, Murray Barnett and Yannick Ramcke convene for a World Cup special, using the 2026 tournament as a lens on how sports broadcasting is shifting beneath the surface. The conversation moves from Qatar-to-2026 comparisons (more accelerated change, more fragmentation, but a still-basic mainstream default) through the "AI slop mountain" that the expanded tournament and unfriendly European kickoff times will generate, into the rise of creator- and personality-led shoulder programming — anchored by Goalhanger's Netflix deal for The Rest Is Football.

    The panel pushes back on the easy consensus. Yannick's central argument: free-to-air, creator-led distribution cannot sustain the economics FIFA needs, and the real risk isn't broadcasters losing matches — it's the complement becoming a substitute. The trio then dissect FIFA's failed India and China deals, separating intrinsic value from negotiating theatre (the "aspirational vs delusional" exchange), and the structural mismatch between billions of eyeballs and uncertain monetization in "numbers markets" rather than "willingness-to-pay markets."

    They close on FIFA's designation of YouTube as a "Preferred Platform" — which Yannick reads not as value creation for broadcasters but as a short-term revenue-maximizing tax on platforms that hadn't paid before, a net new nine-figure sum with little practical change to the ecosystem. Throughout, the recurring tension is reach versus revenue, and whether risk-averse broadcasters will actually use the first-10-minutes rights they've been handed.

    This episode is sponsored by The Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH)

    ISH educates sport’s current and future leaders around the world, as the leading independent provider of sports leadership education and insight.

    Their Strategic Sport Leadership Masters (MA) is for sports industry executives to study alongside their careers – designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport.

    Applications for the next intake on the 2026 Strategic Sport Leadership MA, starting September, are open.

    Visit sportshumanities.org 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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

    Transkript

29. UP553 Live: The Business of Horse Racing

    09.06.202657 Min.Als Nächstes

    A first for Unofficial Partner: six years and 550+ episodes covering every sport going, we'd somehow never devoted an episode to the sport of horse racing. So we fixed that — live, in front of an audience …

    Shownotes

    A first for Unofficial Partner: six years and 550+ episodes covering every sport going, we'd somehow never devoted an episode to the sport of horse racing. So we fixed that — live, in front of an audience at The Big Belly Comedy Club, London.

    We had as a starting point Spotlight Sports Group's new report, The Horse Racing Audience Opportunity. Compiled by the Racing Post's parent company, a deep dive in to the commercial future of the sport.

    Panel 1: Charlie Boss (Bristol City CEO, formerly CEO of The Jockey Club), Josh Apiafi (ex-Betfair, founder of Rewards4Racing), Tom Kerr (Editor of The Racing Post / SSG).

    Panel 2: Brant Dunshea (CEO of the British Horseracing Authority), Sharon O'Regan (CEO, Weatherbys), Sam Houlding (SSG).

    Where's the money coming from beyond betting? Does the product fit the audience? How do investors look at racing today? All that and more.

    
    

    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 @UnofficialPartner
    
    We 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.

    
    
    

30. UP552 Chat_UP: Google's AI pivot and the end of the subsidised era

    02.06.202658 Min.Als Nächstes

    Chat_UP is Unofficial Partner's AI series created in collaboration with TFG Labs.The brief: cut through the AI firehose, work out what matters, and bring it back to the business of sport. Three stories …

    Shownotes

    Chat_UP is Unofficial Partner's AI series created in collaboration with TFG Labs.

    The brief: cut through the AI firehose, work out what matters, and bring it back to the business of sport. Three stories this week.

    Story One — Google I/O 2026

    Google used its developer conference to reposition from "a search company that does AI" to an AI infrastructure company. Headlines: Gemini 3.5, Gemini Omni (real-time processing) and Gemini Spark, a proactive always-on agent that brings agents to search. Plus "Ask YouTube" — pulling answers out of videos rather than watching them.

    Why it matters for sport: if fans send agents to fetch scores and highlights rather than searching themselves, the SEO-built internet shifts under everyone's feet. It raises hard questions for the sponsorship measurement economy (it's an agent engaging, not a fan) and for anyone building on someone else's land — Google can devote a team to your idea and eat your company. Andy's takeaway: get your house in order, own and structure your own data so you can switch foundation models at will.

    Story Two — The End of the AI Subsidy Era?

    A cluster of cost stories: Microsoft cancelled internal Claude Code licenses over token-based billing, Uber reportedly burned through its 2026 AI budget in four months, and US AI software prices jumped 20–37% in six months. Is the bill finally landing?

    Why it matters: SaaS-era seat pricing is breaking down as agentic systems do the work of many. The in-housing dream — replacing agencies with "two smart people and a model" — looks shakier once you absorb the price volatility the vendor used to carry. For low-margin, high-volume businesses (betting being the obvious one), a few percentage points on cost-per-inference is existential, not a line-item. Andy's counter: much of this can run locally on open-source models, and Chinese models are catching up fast at a tenth of the price.

    Story Three — Bryson DeChambeau & the Athlete Creator

    The golfer-turned-YouTuber, in contract talks with LIV, is a proxy for the athlete-creator question. He's been on the AI train for years — using and then leading an eight-figure acquisition of AI coaching start-up Sportsbox AI.

    Why it matters: the collapse of production cost liberates the wannabe Brysons, but the real change is top-line — launching clothing lines, apps and realistic content without occupying an athlete's training time. The deeper thread is disintermediation: leagues being routed around by their own star athletes, and the old rights-holder puzzle of making space for personalities while selling exclusive TV deals.

    About the co-host

    Andy Shora leads TFG Labs. His background is QuantumBlack, McKinsey and BCG Gamma — a wealth of experience from outside sport, brought to bear on the sector.

    About TFG Labs

    TFG Labs is the innovation engine of TFG, a business evolving from data-and-insights into an "augmented intelligence" company serving sports organisations. Labs was set up to get ahead of AI and build practical agentic systems that solve real problems in sport — deliberately not chasing the hype cycle.

    Got questions or voice notes? Send them to Richard via the Unofficial Partner Substack newsletter.

    
    

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