Leaders Worth Knowing Podcast

What does leadership in the sports industry of 2018 look like? How do you maintain a working culture that prizes dedication and industry but fosters creativity and a sense of flexibility too? Joining Leaders' James Emmett and David Cushnan on the podcast this week are Wimbledon's Alex Willis and Octagon's Joel Seymour-Hyde, both previous honourees at the Leaders Under 40 Awards. Willis is Head of Communications, Content & Digital at the AELTC, while Seymour-Hyde is Head of UK at agency giant Octagon. As well as a focus on leadership in sport - the good, the bad, and the ugly - and what the most effective modern-day working practices look like, Willis and Seymour-Hyde, give their perspectives on: - Sports marketing and sponsorship trends and the integration of content into all manner of deals; - Rights holders as brands, and the effort to have brand partners singing the same tune but with different voices; - GDPR and what a new era of data protection and sensitivity means for the sports industry; - The 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia: the positioning challenges associated with hosting the tournament in the country; how to activate partnerships in a range of categories; and what Wimbledon does to respond to a World Cup year; Nominations for the Leaders Under 40 Class of 2018 close on 25 May. Go on - get yourself a gong.

Patrick Pierce is Vice President of Marketing Partnerships at Etihad Airways, and oversees the Abu Dhabi carrier's sponsorship activities across sport, culture and entertainment. Standout partnerships currently include deals with Manchester City, the Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix, the Abu Dhabi Tour cycling race, Major League Soccer, the Special Olympics, and the Washington Wizards and Capitals NBA and NHL teams. Chicagoan Pierce joined Etihad in 2015, having previously held sponsorship roles with McDonald's Allstate, and Aon - where he put together the high profile shirt sponsorship deal with Manchester United. On the conversational agenda: - the differences between the marketing and partnerships approach at Manchester United and Manchester City; - striking a balance between pursuing pure commercial objectives through partnerships and building Abu Dhabi as a global destination; - Pierce's approach to activation tactics; - forging a USP in a competitive regional airline market; - the best way to approach Etihad with marketing opportunities; - the airline's marketing obligation to the Emirate and how it makes its sponsorship decisions; - Etihad's innovative role as both sponsor and rights holder, and the new set of rights that Pierce and his team are marketing. Pierce is one of the industry leaders taking a role in the judging process for the Leaders Sports Awards. Categories include content creation, on-screen experience, live experience, sponsorship and innovation. Nominations close in May. Go on - get yourself a gong.  

Can the Chinese Super League move from flashy transfer spending to sustainable investment and full-house attending? How does the league intend to play its part in youth development across Chinese soccer? And what, exactly, is holding back a nation of 1.4 billion from becoming a genuinely viable and lucrative pay-TV market? In the second of a Chinese football double-header, episode 33 of the Leaders podcast will address all of this, and more. The Leaders Sport Business Summit will return to Beijing for its second edition on 25th and 26th July this year, and the development of the Chinese football industry, and the challenges and opportunities inherent in it, will form a key part of the agenda. In this episode of the Leaders podcast, new Chinese Super League (CSL) GM Alex Dong, and Zhao Jun, the CEO of the CSM agency which holds the rights to China's top-tier soccer league, give their inside takes on how far the sport has come in the country, and the direction of travel it finds itself on. The CSL is, by most objective measures, the number one soccer league in Asia, and its youthful new GM has grand plans for to propel it to a a dominant position. Zhao Jun, meanwhile, is the woman credited with catalysing a period of intense growth in CSL, having signed a deal to take five years' worth of CSL commercial rights for 8 billion Yuan ($1.2 billion) in 2015. That deal turned out to be overly ambitious, but after a period of intense renegotiation, a new agreement worth 11 billion Yuan ($1.7 billion) over ten years was reached in the off season before the current campaign. For more details on the Leaders Sport Business Summit, visit www.leadersinsport.com

Just what exactly are the transfer rules in the Chinese Super League? Is another global player acquisition frenzy around the corner? Will others follow where Wang Jianlin has led in moving money away from foreign assets and back to domestic sports entities? Episode 32 of the Leaders podcast will have a stab at addressing all these questions, and more. The Chinese Super League has come a long way since its foundation in 2004. With China's football reforms having called for a tangible split between commercial and logistical operations at the league and its governance overseers at the Chinese Football Association, the decision-making process across Chinese football is nevertheless still fairly labyrinthine and opaque. In this episode of the Leaders podcast, Beijing-based journalist and presenter Mark Dreyer - the man behind the China Sports Insider sports business news and analysis site - gives his first-hand view on the development of Chinese football, and the direction of travel for sport and sports investments in China. On the agenda: - Wang Jianlin and Wanda's return to Dalian; - Transfer business, player tax, and how it works; - Decision making, and how it does and doesn't happen; - Why Chinese players tend to be late developers; - President Xi Jinping's move to scrap presidential term limits and what it means for sport.

The NBA is so firmly focused on innovation - in the experiences it offers to fans, in its digital engagement strategies, and in its own business practices - that in November 2017 it appointed someone specifically to oversee it. That someone is Amy Brooks, an NBA executive since 2005, and now Chief Innovation Officer and President of the NBA's Team Marketing and Business Operations unit. In this episode of the Leaders Podcast, Brooks discusses her role and responsibilities and pinpoints some of the most innovative practices being undertaken across the league. Also on the agenda: - The advance of technology and league's open-minded approach; - Focusing on the core when it comes to new business opportunities, but why that core is not simply sports; - Why the NBA's global fanbase requires a tech-first media and communications strategy; - The jersey patch sponsorship inventory and how it's being used to further the fan experience; - The NBA G-League-Twitch deal and what it might mean for the future of basketball broadcasts.

What's the biggest misconception about PyeongChang 2018? Will NBC's Total Audience Delivery revolutionise Olympic broadcast monetisation? Why have the San Francisco 49ers joined forces with HBSE and CAA to form a new agency? What distinguishes from competitors like Legends? All these questions, plus many more besides, are tackled in the latest episode of the Leaders Podcast, a double-header featuring SportsBusiness Journal Olympics reporter Ben Fischer, and San Francisco 49ers President and Elevate Sports Ventures CEO Al Guido. In part one, we put PyeongChang 2018 under the microscope. On the agenda: - the key storylines to watch over the course of the Winter Olympics; - the evolution of the IOC's TOP sponsorship programme; - what NBC needs for these Games to count as a success; - the Olympic Channel evaluated; In part two, Al Guido talks us through the launch of Elevate Sports Ventures, explains why the time was right and how the offering is unique, and gives his own SWOT analysis on the agency he's just launched.

Recorded in frosty New York City during Super Bowl week, this week’s episode takes the NFL’s annual glitz and glamathon as its central theme. Ed Horne, Executive Vice President of Endeavor Global Marketing, the cultural marketing agency that includes aspects of WME and IMG’s shared network, is a busy man this week, activating around the Super Bowl for major brand clients including Marriott, Visa and AB InBev. Horne is not your average marketer – an ice hockey referee in the NHL and the Winter Olympics in his younger days, he got the sports marketing bug when he snuck his way into the hospitality tents at the Calgary Games in 1988 and realised that the companies he was cadging off were using sport as a genuine platform for business. As an executive at the NFL, he negotiated the first ever halftime show sponsorship with Frito Lay, and then later, at the NHL, he was central to the negotiations that saw league players allowed to compete in the Olympics.   On the agenda:   - Marriott's Super Bowl stadium-hotel experience and the evolution of experiential activation;   - Is the Super Bowl at commercial saturation point?   - Politics in sports marketing campaigns, the Pepsi protest ad, and why tackling contentious issues might not be a bad idea.

Would you trust the process behind 'Trust the Process'? If you worked with Philadelphia 76ers CEO Scott O'Neil and his indefatigable CMO Katie O'Reilly you would. (Arguably, you'd have no choice.) O'Neil is one of the most forward-thinking senior leaders in sport, and he’s renowned for the inspiring working cultures he builds around him - a working culture at the 76ers that has resulted in the franchise consistently topping various NBA commercial tables even with a historically bad team on the court. As CEO of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE), he leads the 76ers organisation in the NBA, as its Prudential Center arena, the New Jersey Devils NHL team, the new Sixers Innovation Lab, and esports outfit Team Dignitas. On the conversational agenda: - Onboarding and the the working culture at HBSE and the 76ers; - The importance of language in the business of sport, 'Trust the Process', and what it means to be 'palms up'; - The nuts and bolts of an NBA international trip, and what the 76ers did with the 200 people they brought from Philadelphia to London last week; - Building an international content plan around a cosmopolitan team that is finally coming good; - Forging the next generation of sporting leaders; - NBA China trivia; - The Sixers Innovation Lab - what exactly is it? Visit www.leadersinsport.com for the latest sports industry intelligence and the opportunity to connect with senior leaders from across the global sport business.

Giles Morgan left HSBC towards the end of 2017 and now, he says, he's free to say what he really thinks about sponsorship, about sport, about who's getting it right, and, more pertinently, who's getting it wrong. Over his 12-year career leading HSBC's sponsorship activities, Morgan sanctioned the spend of over a billion dollars. Over Christmas biscuits and a cup of strong tea in his kitchen, our conversation covers: - Why he left one of the best jobs in global sport; - Storytelling and a new nomenclature for sponsorship; - Toxic rights holders and risk assessment; golf’s issue with women and how HSBC pressed for change; British Cycling’s governance issue - and how a sponsor’s position can remain tenable in adversity; - Why sponsors need to get edgier in their associations and talk the language of the fan; - Iconic stadiums as marketing collateral and why some - such as the London Stadium - fail to attract the naming rights sponsorship they want; - Why there's a lack of takers for a string of blue-riband sponsorship opportunities across British sport; - When hospitality activation goes wrong - an episode from a Lions tour.  

What better time to talk about cricket than in the bleak midwinter? Should traversability be a fundamental aspect of any cricket ground? With a new short-form competition around the corner and a significant new media rights deal in the bag, what's the future for the sport in Britain? Surrey County Cricket Club CEO Richard Gould is the guest on this week's edition of the Leaders Podcast; the former tank commander and Bristol City commercial executive tackles the full gamut of cricket business topics, including: - In the wake of another Ashes defeat, is the English county system fit for purpose? - The ongoing process to revamp and grow the Kia Oval to a 40,000-capacity venue - The sometimes challenging relationship between Surrey and the English cricket's governing body, the ECB - Iron Maiden - Technology in stadia - Healthy competition with Lord's This episode also includes a look back on 2017 and a glance ahead to 2018 with SportBusiness International Editor Ben Cronin and International Paralympic Committee Marketing Director Alexis Schaefer.