We’re in the middle of the Olympic Games in Paris so it’s a good time to ask some bigger questions as to the future of the Olympics and mega sports events more generally, with regular contributor Ed Smith, founder of the Institute of Sports Humanities and fellow guest Dr Simon Rofe, a world leading expert in the field of sports diplomacy, and himself a visiting lecturer at ISH, which helps its students decode the signals derived from history and interrogate the impact of globalisation on sport. Simon has an international research profile addressing sports diplomacy, with a particular focus upon the relationship of the sporting ecosystem with diplomatic practice, having been instrumental in establishing the field of study since 2010.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.

A documentary special - UP Productions' Matt Cutler explores the changing relationship between two cultural institutions in the UK: football and the pub.The pub has an important place in both professional and grassroots football.As the place friends and family meet before the game, and dissect a win or loss afterwards. Where old school friends reserve a table under the big screen to catch-up on a weekend.And where Sunday League teams - many who operate thanks to patronage from their local pub - congregate, celebrate and commiserate.However, the number of UK licensed premises fell below 100,000 for the first time since records began in 2023 – and in the first quarter of 2024, pub closures increased by 51%.And it's already having a major impact on football fan culture.Leadership in Sport MA 2024 Applications Open  Applications for the next intake on the 2024 Leadership in Sport Masters are open. The Leadership in Sport Masters is designed for sports industry executives to study part-time alongside their careers. The programme is co-delivered by Loughborough University London and the Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH), experts in leadership education. Loughborough University is ranked best university in the world for sports-related subjects (QS World University Rankings by Subject 2017-2023). Find out more sportshumanities.org or contact tom.rann@sportshumanities.orgUnofficial 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.

Why has the value of the NBA's media rights tripled, from $25billion to $75billion this week?"Purely because of gambling,' says Sam Sadi, CEO of LiveScore Group, the media and gambling platform, referencing the opening up of the US gambling marketplace. 'Nothing else that would drive that. Everything was trending downwards until five years ago, and nothing changed in the environment. It can be easily isolated and all of a sudden you see these increases that are much higher than what were projected five years  And the NBA timed it perfectly."We recorded this conversation yesterday at LiveScore's Soho headquarters in London with fellow guest James Liddy, an investment banker with a hugely impressive track record as a deal maker in the gaming leisure and hotel sector, first with Deutsche Bank in London, and now at Jefferies's where he leads on that sector across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This is a conversation that changed my view on what's happening in the macro environment for sport. Hopefully you'll find it as enlightening as I did.  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.

Leadership is one of the most important and yet misunderstood topics in sport. This summer, it has dominated the headlines. Performances of the England football team have mainly been analysed via the lens of its manager. So what is leadership and what are the mistakes we make when talking about it.  Ed Smith is renowned thinker on sport, leadership and decision-making. The former professional cricketer with Kent, Middlesex and England, he was Chief Selector for England men’s cricket from 2018 to 2021.Ed is Co-Founder and Director of the Institute of Sports Humanities which offers the Leadership in Sport Masters degree co-delivered with Loughborough University London. Joining Ed is Dr Eddie Mighten, a Teaching Fellow in the Institute of Sport Business at Loughborough University, with research interests in leadership and professional football exploring ideas that explain the influence leaders have on those they interact with. This field of research emerged from a career in football, media and the voluntary sector. He was a former professional footballer at Nottingham Forest, as is his son, Alex Mighten. Leadership in Sport MA 2024 Applications Open Applications for the next intake on the 2024 Leadership in Sport Masters are open. The Leadership in Sport Masters is designed for sports industry executives to study part-time alongside their careers. The programme is co-delivered by Loughborough University London and the Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH), experts in leadership education.Loughborough University is ranked best university in the world for sports-related subjects (QS World University Rankings by Subject 2017-2023).Find out more https://www.sportshumanities.org/masters-ukor contact tom.rann@sportshumanities.orgUnofficial 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 Buy Side is our regular series talking with brand side marketers about sport and sponsorship. This week’s guest is Mark Kirkham, the SVP & Chief Marketing Officer of PepsiCo, one of the biggest spenders in the sports industry, whose brands such as Aquafina, Pepsi, Gatorade and Lay’s are associated with a huge number of major events globally across a portfolio that includes official partnerships such as UEFA Champions League, the NFL, the Saudi Premier League, the LPGA, WNBA and EA FC or what used to be called the FIFA game franchise, but also a large number of tie ups with individual sports stars, musicians and other creators.  With this type of spend, comes influence and power. How, where and with whom Pepsi spends its money is a signal to every sports rights holder to shape their commercial programmes to catch Mark Kirkham’s eye. What are the implications of this for sport and what does Pepsi want sport to be? The Buy Side is sponsored by KORE Software the global leader in engagement marketing solutions. More than 900 brands, venues, and sports organisations trust KORE’s tools and platforms as a source of truth to manage partnerships, assets and measure impact, with real-time insights. Through Sponsorship Management and Evaluation, Ticketing, Fan Engagement, Data Management and Analytics, KORE unites corporate sponsors, properties, and their fans with solutions that help enhance the fan experience, drive smarter decisions, and enable marketing and operations teams to spend time where it matters.  Learn more at KORESoftware.com or follow them LinkedIn or Twitter. 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.

Bryson Dechambeau heads to next week’s Open Championship at Troon as the reigning US Open champion, having beaten Rory McIlroy down the straight at Winged Foot in New York three weeks ago, confirming the American’s position as one of the very best players in the world today. But this is a conversation about what he’s done off the course over the last three years, that has changed his public image by becoming one of the most followed creators on social media.Brand Bryson is a masterclass in sports digital media strategy, a playbook as to how best to use YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Twitter to build long term value, both for himself and by extension the sport of golf. The bigger question is what the Dechambeau case study means for traditional rights holders such as the PGA TOUR, DP World Tour and the R&A.Our guests are Carsten Thode and  Rich Johnson.Carsten is a former Reuters, Manchester United and Synergy Sponsorship is co-founder of Aphetor, the Creator Games., which connects internet influencers with sports event rightsholders. Rich was formerly head of content for INEOS Grenadier Cycling Team, and the founder of Sports 3.0, which creates specialist agencies at the intersection of sports content, media, and technology. He’s launched a new agency this week, called CAPTAIN, a personal content agency for founders, CEOs & commercial teams in sports.Welcome to Wedge Issues, an Unofficial Partner Production.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.

FIFA+ is the global football governing bodies own media platform, created in 2020 and launched two years later. It’s one of sports biggest and most ambitious and expensive direct-to-consumer projects, and so brings together many of the threads we talk about often on Unofficial Partner; a debate that runs across the sports industry, as governing bodies, leagues and teams spend billions creating owned and operated channels as a mitigation against volatility in the media rights marketplace and the money made from their content by the big social media platforms.The conversation is peppered with phrases such as walled gardens, creative tension in the bidding process, owning the customer relationship, long tail audiences, build and they will come. FIFA+ is a poster child for these theories. But this is a conversation that goes beyond the mechanics of D2C. It’s about what the leaders of big sports governing bodies want to be and the role they will seek to play over the next decade or more.Read this week's UP Newsletter for more on FIFA+ HEREGuests:Dave Roberts was one of the architects of FIFA+ in the run up to launch and in its early iterations. He’s now CEO of XCel Broadcast. Hugo Sharman is CEO of StreamAMG, one of the leading players in video content and distribution for sports rights holders.Carlo Dimarchis is today known as a business media creator, The Guy with the Scarf but previously led strategy and innovation over a 34 year career at Deltatre. Michael Broughton is co-founder of Sports Investment Partners and was an advisor to FIFA on innovation and commercial strategy. Leadership in Sport MA 2024 Applications Open Applications for the next intake on the 2024 Leadership in Sport Masters are open. The Leadership in Sport Masters is designed for sports industry executives to study part-time alongside their careers.The programme is co-delivered by Loughborough University London and the Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH), experts in leadership education. Loughborough University is ranked best university in the world for sports related subjects (QS World University Rankings by Subject 2017-2023).Find out more https://www.sportshumanities.org/masters-ukor contact tom.rann@sportshumanities.orgUnofficial 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.

Welcome to The Bundle, our deep dive in to the sports media rights economy with regular co-hosts Murray Barnett and Yannick Ramcke. Today’s list of topics include trying to decipher FIFA’s media strategy around FIFA+ and the Club World Cup, we dip in to the French market and the challenges being faced by the country’s leading football league, Ligue1, there’s a bit on YouTube and whether the sports industry’s view of it is shifting, and finally we compare the rhetoric around the value of women’s club football with the reality of the media rights market for properties such as the WSL and FIFA and UEFA properties. 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.

Performance data has long played a role in the way sport is presented on television. From football to formula one, we’re familiar with commentators referencing statistics to help explain what we’re watching.  But increasingly, the most sought after data points are those that exist within the body of the athlete. Heart rate and other biometric data is fast becoming a storytelling device to illuminate and augment what we see on our screen. But how does it work? Who is it really aimed at? How much does it cost and who’s paying? To answer these and many other questions we’ve put together the supply chain of the key players who are charged with delivering next generation sports coverage, and who are telling stories that deliver biometric data of athletes in real time. Guests:James Haigh is co-CEO and co-Founder of We Are Sweet, a technology company servicing many leading sports rights holders with content-driven digital platforms. Barry Flanigan is chief strategy officer at Aurora Media Worldwide, sports production company.Sam Renouf is CEO of PTO, the Professional Triathletes OrganisationUnofficial 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.

Sport was a big presence in the annual Cannes Lions Festival last week. The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is the top of the tree when it comes to showcasing the relationship between creative ideas and sport. There were 665 entries from 41 countries vying for the coveted prizes. So what’s winning awards this year, why are they winning, what are the big themes and trends, what does it mean to be Cannes-worthy and what can the rest of us learn from the judging process.We’re very fortunate to have the chair of this year’s Entertainment Lions for Sport jury, Louise Johnson, CEO of Fuse to guide us, along with two of her fellow jury members. Asmirh Davis is founding partner of creative agency Majority from Atlanta, which is backed by NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal.Ben Williams is Global Chief Creative Experience Officer at TBWA\Worldwide. The list of winners is hereUnofficial 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.