Ep 46: Sophie Goldschmidt, Matt Porter, & Miheer Walavalkar

The birth of GolfTV | the death of MP & Silva | the charm of Shahid Khan | equal pay & Facebook ups and downs in surfing | the Phil Taylor-shaped hole in darts | the future of the sports consumption experience.

David Cushnan and James Emmett reflect on another fortnight of change across the global sports industry, including the launch of the Discovery-PGA Tour joint venture OTT vehicle GolfTV, the final demise of rights agency MP & Silva, and Shahid Khan's withdrawn offer to buy Wembley Stadium from the FA.

Later, we hear from three CEOs with very different challenges ahead of them: Sophie Goldschmidt (starts at 14.31), the former WTA, NBA, RFU, and CSM executive who has been CEO of the World Surf League (WSL) for the past 13 months; Matt Porter (starts at 27.16), the Matchroom Sport Director who has been CEO of the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) since 2008; and Miheer Walavalkar, the co-founder and CEO of LiveLike, which launched in 2015 as a VR company in sport but has evolved to provide full immersive broadcast experiences without the need for headsets.

On the conversational agenda:

- Making changes at the WSL: new formats, new calendar, new broadcast products, and a new, equal pay structure;

- Working through live streaming technical challenges;

- Ten years of globalisation at the PDC;

- Why the Phil Taylor-shaped hole isn't as big as it once would have been;

- The future of sports broadcasting and media consumption and why what we have today is not sustainable.