Unofficial Partner Podcast

Charlie Sale is a legend of sports journalism, often credited with creating the sports news genre, most famously as the feared and fearless writer of the daily Sports Agenda column in the Daily Mail and before that in the Express. Charlie was one of our early guests on the podcast, following his premature retirement due to ill health in 2018, so it’s great to have him back on to talk about his new book, which in true Charlie Sale style, is already ruffling feathers in the corridors of sport. It’s called The Covers Are Off: Civil War at Lord’s and is about the two decades old dispute over the future development of the Home of Cricket, between the MCC and Charles Rifkind, the property developer who acquired the rights to develop the defunct railway tunnels that lie beneath the ground’s Nursery End. It’s about cricket, and sports business, but also about class, politics and the often painful balance between preserving the traditions of the past in a fast changing modern world. If you like the podcasts you’ll love the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of senior executives across the global sports business every Thursday. To join them, sign up via unofficialpartner.com Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 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 third in our series looking at the formative years of the sports business with industry legend Patrick Nally. The first two episodes are on Fifa and the Olympics respectively, and in this episode we branch out in to athletics, starting in the late 1970s and early 80s, a period of called the golden era of track and field but which saw as much competition behind the scenes as on the track, as the athletes demanded an end to shamateurism, there were plans for a breakaway professional circuit, the inaugural London Marathon and the launch of the first ever World Athletics Championship in 1983. The deals that were done still resonate today, and help explain why professional athletics looks and behaves as it does. It’s a story of brown envelopes, car park bust ups, Bernie Ecclestone, Seb Coe, Horst Dassler and a whole new cast of characters.If you like the podcasts you’ll love the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of senior executives across the global sports business every Thursday. To join them, sign up via unofficialpartner.com Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 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.

Our guest is Matt Locke, whose previous Unofficial Partner appearance remains one of our most popular ever episodes. Matt is the co-founder of Storythings, a consultancy specialising in the understanding of audiences and the entertainment formats that attract them across a variety of spheres from entertainment to cause marketing and the public sector. Clients include the BBC, PBS and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Before founding Storythings in 2011 Matt worked for over a decade in senior digital roles at Channel 4 and the BBC, including as Head of Innovation at BBC and Head of Multiplatform at Channel 4. He also started the Public Media Stack project, and is writing a book about the history of attention metrics, part of which is the focus of today’s conversation. Matt thinks we need a different way of thinking about personal data, starting with the metaphors we use to describe it. As ever with Matt, that’s just a way in to a rabbit hole of a conversation that questions much of how we think about fans, digital platforms and the purpose of a football club.If you like the podcasts you’ll love the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of senior executives across the global sports business every Thursday. To join them, sign up via unofficialpartner.com Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 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 episode 11 of The Bundle, our series on the media and streaming rights market with regular co-host Yannick Ramcke. Topics include the AT&T decision to merge WarnerMedia and Discovery, the state of the international football rights market, the Premier League renewals and we hear the buzz around Buzzer, the new short form mobile streamer which has just done a deal with the NBA. If you like the podcasts you’ll love the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of senior executives across the global sports business every Thursday. To join them, sign up via unofficialpartner.com Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 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 we’re talking to Tim Hollingsworth OBE the Sport England chief executive and former chief executive of the British Paralympic Association (BPA). Tim leads Sport England’s mission to get us all moving, by investing government money in sport and physical activity. This gives him a perspective in to some really important questions, such as what’s the role of government in sport, what does it want sport to do, does the system of national governing bodies work as well as it should, are they able to respond to a fast changing culture in which it’s easier to order a pizza than book a tennis court. I ask him what Park Run has taught Sport England, whether Olympic gold medals are worth the cost and what the success of the Paralympic sport says about us as a country. To find out more about Sport England’s work, I’d point you to their recently published 10-year strategy document called Uniting the Movement, which we reference during out conversation. If you like the podcasts you’ll love the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of senior executives across the global sports business every Thursday. To join them, sign up via unofficialpartner.com Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 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 episode 3 of our regular collaboration with Portas, the global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity. This week’s topic is media strategy with special guests Glen Killane, Executive Director of Eurovision Sport, Andrew Ryan, Managing Director of FIBA Media and Wissam Khalaf, Partner at Portas.The media rights market is central to the sports economy, but we often talk about it in narrow price terms, focusing on how much money has been extracted by the major rights holders and ignoring the nuance and complexity in each particular marketplace.So in this episode we look at the regional variations in strategic approach to sports media, and ask dissect the role of OTT streaming and the impact of the Olympic Channel on the sports rights market.To go further in to the topics discussed you should subscribe to the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes directly to the inbox of thousands of senior sports professionals every Thursday. Sign up via unofficial partner.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.

Andrew Craig is today’s guest, someone whose career in the sports business dates back to the mid-1980s, when he was one of the first recruits to ISL, the hugely influential sports marketing agency that played a central role in the commercial programmes around both FIFA and the IOC. Andrew was in charge during the formative years of the Olympic TOP programme before leaving to run CART, the American single seater motor racing series, taking it public in 1998. Since then, Craig has operated as much sought after consultant to Olympic bids and global motorsport properties.If you like the podcasts you’ll love the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of senior executives across the global sports business every Thursday.To join them, 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.

Paul Nolan was headhunted to The FA by then CEO Adam Crozier, a decision that kick started Nolan’s career as one of the most influential people in the field of sports recruitment, leading to the creation of Nolan and Partners, one of the first specialist sports industry recruitment consultancies.So, this is a conversation about jobs, how to get them, how to keep them and how much you should be paid for them. Nolan and his team have placed many of the people who occupy sport’s boardrooms around the world and he has spent two decades at the sharp end of several regular themes of this podcast, such as digital transformation, diversity and inclusion, performance incentives and the sports industry’s relationship with change.If you ever wonder what it takes to reach the C-Suite and stay there, this is well worth your time.If you like the podcasts you’ll love the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of senior executives across the global sports business every Thursday.To join them, 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 the second instalment in a series of podcasts looking at how the sports business has evolved over the past half century in the company of Patrick Nally, one of a small handful of people who can lay a genuine claim to have created the industry as we know it today.This episode is devoted entirely to the business story of the Olympic Games, starting in the crisis torn era of the 1970s, a period in which the IOC faced an almost existential crisis, moving from the tragedy of Munich in ’72 through to the boycotts and global political battles of Montreal, Moscow and LA.Patrick takes us behind the scenes, in to the conversations with the real powerbrokers of that time, such as Horst Dassler and Juan Antonio Samaranch, and we track the beginnings of the TOP programme, sports most valuable marketing idea, that has helped transform the Olympics from bankruptcy to the financial monster it is today.If you like the podcasts you’ll love the accompanying newsletter, that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of senior executives across the global sports business every Thursday.To join them, 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.

Tom Harrison is a former professional cricketer who now runs the game in the UK. As CEO of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), Harrison overseas every element, from the amateur club game, through to the first class county system and on to the England men’s and women’s teams across test, one day and Twenty20 formats.Harrison’s sport business career started with the launch of PlayCricket.com and continued at IMG, where he managed the agency’s media business in India and where he was responsible for global media rights sales for many international cricket boards and the Indian Premier League. He spent five years living in Asia, working for ESPN Star Sports. He moved over to the ECB’S top job in 2015.It’s been quite a journey and we talk about what he’s learnt along the way and how that frames his view of the job he’s held since January 2015.Expect an honest and thoughtful response to questions on a wide range of topics including: The Hundred, the future of women’s cricket, the role of private equity, football’s Super League problem, the power of superstar players and the changes to come in the sports media rights landscape.If you like the podcasts, you’ll love the weekly Unofficial Partner newsletter that goes to thousands of sports business executives every Thursday. To subscribe for free, head to unofficialpartner.com.Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 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.