Unofficial Partner Podcast

What's the point of major sports events? Ten years on from London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we talk about legacy, promises, over claims and returns on investment. As the UEFA Women's Euros ends and the Commonwealth Games continuing in Birmingham, it's a subject that's ever more relevant to the business of sport, which makes ever more ambitious claims as to the short and long term returns of big events including economic benefit, participation booms and other categories of societal impact. We talk to Tim Hollingsworth and Alex Balfour. Tim is chief executive of Sport England, who held the same role at the British Paralympic Association at London 2012. Alex was the London Organising Committee's head of new media, a role he's carrying out currently on secondment in Birmingham. He co-founded cricket website Cricinfo, now part of ESPN, and runs the Generate Digital consultancy.One thing to mention before we start the conversation is the inaugural Unofficial Partner Live event taking place on Wednesday 21st September at The Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal Football Club.  Tickets have just gone on sale and you can buy them via THIS LINK.You’ll find more detail about the content and format for the evening and keep up to date with guest announcements via the Unofficial Partner Newsletter that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of people across sport, every Thursday. Sign up via UnofficialPartner.comUnofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.

The market for soccer simulation games is dominated by EA Sports' FIFA franchise, a licensing agreement that is in its 23rd and final year. It's a very lucrative market. Last year EA made around $1.6billion in net revenues, with 150million players. FIFA makes around $150million from the license. So what happens now? How will EA and FIFA move forward in this new era and is EA's market dominance vulnerable to new entrants, in a world where millions of young people have grown up playing free to play mobile games rather than on expensive consoles.  These are some of the questions tackled in this conversation with Eugene Nashilov, CEO and Founder of Strikerz Inc, creator of the UFL soccer simulation game, due to launch this year. This is a deep dive in to how the gaming market works, the reality of the player and team license agreements that underpin the games and how the rise of games like Fortnite and League of Legends has shaped the behaviour of the elusive and much sought after Generation Z audience. If you're interested in the sports business, you should subscribe to the Unofficial Partner newsletter that goes to thousands of people across sport every Thursday. This is where you'll find details of the first Unofficial Partner Live event, taking place on Wednesday 21st September at The Emirates Stadium in London, home of Arsenal Football Club. Tickets are £50 plus VAT and can be bought via 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 @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.

Match tickets are the point at which the promise of new technology meets real life. And the results are mixed. Some of the biggest football matches in recent times have been blighted by claims and counter claims of ticket fraud and technology failures, most notably at the 2022 UEFA Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool in Paris, the start of which was delayed amid frightening and chaotic scenes outside the Stade de France as thousands of ticket holding Liverpool fans were stuck outside where police deployed pepper spray and tear gas on supporters holding legitimate tickets. The French government's initial response was to deflect failures in policing by putting the blame on what it called "industrial-scale" ticket fraud, pointing at similar scenes at UEFA's other showcase event, the Euro 2020 final at Wembley last year between England and Italy. So what's gone wrong with the humble match ticket? Has the shift to digital and mobile technology made it easier for the fraudsters, or is ticketing just an easy scapegoat for other problems. This is a conversation about where we are in the evolution of mobile ticketing in particular, and what it reveals about sport's adoption of new technology more generally. Our guests are Mike Bohdinek and Cris Miller. Mike is Founder & Chief Executive Officer at PTI Digital, an expert in sport stadium and venue delivery with 15 years experience including stadium transformations and deployments into more than 30 global sport and entertainment venues. Cris is global Business Director of Stubhub and Viagogo, the largest ticket marketplace in the world. One thing to mention before we start the conversation is the inaugural Unofficial Partner Live event taking place on Wednesday 21st September at The Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal Football Club.  Tickets have just gone on sale and you can buy them here. You’ll find more detail about the content and format for the evening and keep up to date with guest announcements via the Unofficial Partner Newsletter that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of people across sport, every Thursday. Sign up via UnofficialPartner.comUnofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.

This is an episode of ReThinking Sport, our series created in collaboration with Portas, the global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity.  Today’s guest is Baroness Sue Campbell of Loughborough, the former chair of UK Sport who is now The FA’s Director of Women’s Football. We talk about the UEFA Women’s Euros, currently taking place across England. We use this as a jumping off point to ask, what are The FA’s hopes and plans for the women’s game, how will the Women’s Super League evolve, why has The FA decided against developing a relationship with private equity and what are the implications of these decisions. Sue Campbell is as ever, a straight talker and the result is a fascinating insight in to the game’s present and future.One of the big ambitions of this series has been to look at the football market through the eyes of the people who own and control the clubs and the people in charge of the leagues and the sports’ governing bodies. So previous episodes have featured Rick Parry, the chair of the EFL, Mark Bullingham, CEO of The FA and Kelly Simmons, head of the women’s professional game at The FA and the WSL.On the club ownership side, we’ve had guests including Andy Holt, owner of Accrington Stanley, and Paul Conway, head of Pacific Media Group, one of the leading proponents of a multi-club ownership model, which is a feature of today’s conversation with our guests Brett Johnson and Fabrice Bocquet. Every episode of ReThinking Sport can be found by searching Unofficial Partner via the big podcast providers, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via your favourite podcast app. Alternatively, you can go direct to unofficialpartner.com and search ‘Portas’ and you’ll find series one and two in their entirety. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.

Michael Beloff QC is often described as ‘the godfather of sports law’ and the person who Chambers legal directory said ‘more or less invented sports law’ as a discipline. As a result Beloff is one of the most influential people in world sport over the past three decades. He’s written a memoir about his life and career in and out of sport. It’s called MJBQC and we recommend it highly. Beloff was called to the Bar in 1967 and became a Queen's Counsel in 1981. He’s been a Member of the Court of Arbitration for Sport ("CAS") from 1996 and in that capacity has been an arbitrator at the Olympic Games including Ethics Commissioner at London 2012. He has been on the CAS Panel for UEFA and the FIFA World Cup, chairman of the International Cricket Council’s Code of Conduct Commission and was elected as one of the judges of the FIA’s International Court of Appeal. Every sport has been influenced by Beloff in some way, and so the topic of conversation is broad, ranging from corruption, doping and sports washing to how money changed the role of governing bodies and the people who run them. We talk about the image of lawyers, human rights and whether sport leads or follows society; Nike's Vapor Fly super shoes and his long time friendship with the author and former politician Jeffrey Archer. If you’re interested in the business of sport, you should subscribe to the Unofficial Partner newsletter that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of people across sport, every Thursday. Sign up via UnofficialPartner.comUnofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.

Today’s guest is Lucas Von Cranach, the founder and CEO of OneFootball, the global media platform based in Berlin with regional offices around the world. The company recently announced it had raised a $300 million Series D funding round led by blockchain investor Liberty City Ventures, creating a web3 joint venture, One Football Labs, with blockchain games firm Animoca Brands and Dapper Labs known for its sports NFT deals with the NBA and NFL.This follows last year’s acquisition by OneFootball of Dugout, which brought with it relationships with several leading soccer clubs as shareholders, including Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Olympique de Marseille. So this is a conversation about football, digital platforms, web3 and money.  If these topics are of interest, you’ll want to join us in London in September for the first Unofficial Partner event. You can register your interest for the event via the Unofficial Partner newsletter. Sign up at UnofficialPartner.comUnofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.

We can file this podcast under the banner heading of Web3 WTF, an occasional series in which we talk to a wide range of people about sport’s relationship with the next iteration of the internet. Future episodes will talk to people on every side of this subject, from new blockchain, web3 and metaverse startups to financiers, agencies, fans and sports rights holders. Unofficial Partner’s position on this topic is that nobody knows everything. Each conversation is a partial view in to this fast evolving and exciting space, with opportunities for experimentation and mistakes.  Today’s guest is Joey D’Urso, the investigations writer of The Athletic. And the subject is fan engagement tokens, crypto currency and football clubs. D’Urso has written a series of deep dives in to Socios, the most prominent and controversial of a new generation of self styled ‘fan engagement’ apps, which promise to tokenise the relationship between clubs and fans by creating digital assets that can be exchanged for real life benefits. This ‘Ultimate App for Superfans’ has numerous valuable licensing deals in place with clubs and star players around the world.So we use D’Urso’s reporting as the context for our conversation, specifically a story he wrote on the transfer of Lionel Messi from Barcelona to Paris St Germain in August 2021. If you want to join us in asking more questions about sport and web3, you should come to our first Unofficial Partner event, taking place in September in London. You can register your interest for the event in the show notes to this podcast or via the Unofficial Partner newsletter. Sign up via the UnofficialPartner.comUnofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.

This is an episode of ReThinking Sport, our series created in collaboration with Portas, the global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity. This week we went to Wimbledon to talk to Jamie Baker and Alex Willis.Jamie was a professional tennis player, British number two and Davis Cup player who is now Tournament Director and Head of Professional Tennis at The All England Lawn Tennis Club. Alex is Wimbledon’s Communications and Marketing Director, responsible for the brand vision for The Championships. So we talked about the tennis product, the decision of the ATP and WTA Tours to remove world ranking points from this year’s event, what LIV Golf would look like in tennis, the challenges of domestic stars such as Emma Raducanu and Andy Murray and we talk about whether the grass court season, so important to the Wimbledon brand, is under threat. Every episode of ReThinking Sport can be found by searching Unofficial Partner via the big podcast providers, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via your favourite podcast app. Alternatively, you can go direct to unofficialpartner.com and search ‘Portas’ and you’ll find series one and two in their entirety. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.

The Bundle is our regular deep dive in to the sports broadcast and streaming market with regular guests Yannick Ramcke, head of OTT for OneFootball, Charlie Boss, chief commercial officer at The Jockey Club and Murray Barnett, director of the D2C consultancy and formerly of F1, World Rugby and ESPN. Today’s conversation covers MLS and Apple; IPL, Disney and Viacom18; Rugby League and IMG; why is innovation so hard in sport and why do people love the Netflix for Sport story.Today’s episode is sponsored by our friends at Turnstile, who are asking a good question: do you know what your sponsorship is really worth, or are you guessing?Turnstile uses real market rates to quantify the value every single sponsorship right within a deal, looking beyond the traditional media metrics to calculate the value of the Exposure, Intellectual Property and Direct Benefits.This enables Turnstile to deliver a recommended transaction price that’s comprehensive, accurate and defensible.So don’t pay too much. Don’t leave money on the table. Know the fair market price, and buy and sell with confidence. If you value your sponsorships, value them properly.Get in touch with Turnstile at turnstilegroup.comAnd if you like sports business newsletters, you’ll really like the Unofficial Partner version, that goes to thousands of people across global sport every Thursday, sign up via UnofficialPartner.com or via Twitter @UnffclPrtnr.  Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.

This is the second of our For What It’s Worth series in collaboration with Turnstile and is an opportunity to pick apart the reality of the sponsorship sales process on both sides of the negotiation table. To do this we’re pleased to welcome Celine Del Genes and Rob Grenville Jones.Celine is Global General Manager of Specialist Sports at Adidas and Rob is Commercial Partnerships Director at the English Rugby Football Union (RFU).  Joining us is Dan Gaunt, General Manager at Turnstile. This is a conversation about trust - how is this cultivated? How quickly can it be established? Ego, both personal and corporate. Intangibility - the role of gut feeling v rationality, head v heart; the role of emotion, and the under rated job of selling the deal to the board, and finally, how is a deal communicated to the general public via the media. How reliable are the prices quoted and what are the games that are played on both the buy and sell side of the equation.The first episode in the For What It’s Worth series (UP240) featured Juliet Slot, commercial director of Arsenal and is available to download for free, in the Unofficial Partner archive. And if you like sports business newsletters, you’ll really like the Unofficial Partner version, that goes to thousands of people across global sport every Thursday, sign up via the 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 @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.