Unofficial Partner Podcast

PREM Rugby’s chief executive is preparing to take English club rugby to US investors. Richard Gillis asks him what the pitch is, and what it leaves out.Simon Massie-Taylor has run PREM Rugby since January 2022, after five years leading the RFU’s commercial and marketing work. He arrived just as Worcester, Wasps and London Irish were heading into administration. Since then the league has ended automatic relegation, introduced a salary floor and financial monitoring, and brought in new owners: Red Bull at Newcastle, Sir James Dyson at Bath and Black Knight at Exeter.In this conversation he is candid about R360, about CVC’s experience in rugby, and about how little of the league’s media income comes from outside the UK.Key themesNFL envy and fragmentation: why the American one-door model can’t be copied in a sport with an international game, a grassroots base and the Lions.The squeezed middle: the average Prem club ranks 476th in global sport by revenue; as a collective, the league would rank 58th.Central against local value: why a pound earned by the league may be worth more to investors than a pound earned by a club.Selling to American capital: overcoming the view of rugby as a “challenger” sport, and making the case on salary caps, no relegation and growth.R360 and breakaways: the £300m problem, why teams matter more than stars in rugby, and “dancing on the grave”.Players as promoters: Henry Pollock, Matchroom, and a generation that grew up “in the war years”.Media after Paramount: the TNT deal to 2031, cheaper access, overseas rights in single digits, and the trouble with big audience numbers.CVC: harder than expected, its role in creating the Nations Championship, and what its stake means when clubs are valued.Marketing physicality: selling the hits while protecting player welfare and the grassroots game.This episode is brought to you by Turnstile, from Gemba.What is your sponsorship really worth? Most valuations focus on counting logos on screen. Turnstile values the whole deal: the intellectual property, the exposure, and every benefit in the contract.Built on more than five and a half billion dollars of real world benchmarks, Turnstile shows you how the market actually trades. That's why Turnstile has been adopted by the world's leading brands, clubs, leagues and events.Before you buy, sell or renew, know the number. Reach out to the Turnstile team at Gemba.Visit the gemba 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 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Daniel Kirschner, co-founder of Greenfly, returns to talk about the craft of short-form sports content. The hook is the Short-Form Content Showcase, Greenfly’s joint project with SportsPro. We recorded after meeting at the SportsPro AI event at the London Stadium. We ask whether highlights have trained a generation to expect constant excitement, and what a career in digital content now looks like.AI slop and authenticity (~00:03). Because anything can be generated, generated content is worth less. In sport, what people value is what actually happened. AI is accepted for the work around the footage, such as graphics, editing and scorelines, but not in place of it.The phone is not a miniature broadcast (~00:11). The 90s Nike ad looked perfect, but on a phone it’s rough footage that gives a sense of being there that works. Content is shot on phones and watched on phones. Leagues that worried at first about making their product look cheap have accepted that social and broadcast are different products that work together.Where the craft lies (~00:12). Kirschner names three skills: getting creators into places fans can’t go, choosing what to capture, and adding personality afterwards with graphics, text and music. The NFL’s live creator programme is his main example.Tone of voice, and TV borrowing from creators (~00:16). Short-form can be irreverent and provocative. Sports TV keeps borrowing creator tropes with mixed results, and next to them it can look pompous. Richard cites rugby.Who’s doing it well (~00:20). The NFL for sideline footage that puts you in the action, the NBA for arrivals and shootarounds, and MLB for slow motion and dugout access. Athletes get the footage of themselves through Greenfly and post it to their own followers.Explaining versus celebrating (~00:22). Can international clips teach the game to newcomers? Richard compares Channel 4’s cricket coverage and its 1980s NFL broadcasts, back when American football felt exotic. Kirschner’s view is that short-form is mostly about the moment, not the explainer.Stakes and jeopardy (~00:29). A strike only looks like a strike until the context makes it matter. Miguel Delaney’s argument that highlights have conditioned young fans is answered by the case that creators’ real job is to build investment in the outcome.Drive to Survive as the last of its kind (~00:32). The documentary boom mostly failed to repeat its success, partly because the scroll now supplies the access. The more stage-managed it is, the more people switch off.Central versus club production (~00:34). Premier League Studios and the Bundesliga produce footage centrally for clubs and athletes to build on. The US leagues are more centralised, but fans’ loyalty is still to their team.Big numbers versus building fans (~00:37). How rights holders balance chasing reach for the biggest clubs against storylines that turn casual viewers into committed fans.Careers (~00:39). The work used to be done by interns. Some of the people Greenfly worked with at entry level ten years ago are now senior executives. The function still reports into different departments from club to club. The advice is to start at a club, where small teams mean early responsibility.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 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Richard Gillis is joined by regulars Murray Barnett, founder of 26 West Consulting, and Yannick Ramcke, general manager of OneFootball OTT, for the monthly look at the sports media market. Fresh from Sportel, they ask what a record $65.8bn rights market really tells us, the risk of the streamers and what happens to sports budgets when Big Tech has AI to pay for.In this episodeThe $65.8bn headlineSportBusiness gave us a new numberWhy does the US now account for 54% of global rights value?How useful is a number this big if you run a league, a federation or an agency?Are buyers risk-averse, spending more on proven properties and leaving the middle tier behind?Has seasonality replaced the old assumption that rights values only go up?Are the streamers reliable partners?Does what Netflix, Amazon and Apple do in the US read across to smaller markets?Is Netflix’s reported $100m for the World Cup in Spain simply cheap programming?Can incumbents such as Sky be taken for granted, or will they eventually settle for being the platform?Is the idea of streamers owning a major European league exclusively a myth?Channel 4, Disney+ and what “free” means nowWhat does consolidation among buyers mean for rights sellers?Do carriage deals repair fragmentation, or remove the competitive tension that rights owners rely on?Is free-to-air defined by price or by accessibility?Could free-to-air broadcasters and streamers start bidding for rights together?Scotland and the 3pm blackoutFrank Dunne of SportBusiness broke the storyIs the SPFL tender a test case for the Premier League?The Premier League sold 35% more matches for about 4% more money. Would all 380 games add much?Do owners care about anything except the headline number?Is piracy a real argument for abolition, or just a convenient one?Did AI eat the budget?What does Amazon’s $220bn capex mean for sports rights?If affordability isn’t the issue, has the hurdle rate for sport gone up?Why is Netflix’s position different from Amazon’s or YouTube’s?Is senior management attention now the scarcest resource?Relevent and the agency businessWhat does it mean that one agency now sells UEFA’s club and national-team rights?Is Relevent still an agency, or something closer to a partner?Why is agency life getting tougher, and is in-housing already going into reverse?Is it data that wins business, or still relationships?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 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Two Circles are saying sport and entertainment fandom generates nearly $2 trillion of economic activity a year. That makes it bigger than motor manufacturing and bigger than coal mining.  If it were a country, it would be the 15th largest economy in the world.But remember the Unofficial Partner rule: the  number’s always  wrong. So this episode is about what lies underneath the headline. Joining Richard are Harry Hawkins, managing director of Two Circles, EMEA and Mel Chapman, Group executive  director. 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 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

The Premier League has won the facts. Manchester City were found guilty of 114 of 115 charges, with £830m of revenue inflated through sham sponsorships. Now the fight is over the story, and everyone has a different audience.Dan Johnson, the Premier League’s former director of communications, and investigative journalist Nick Harris of Sporting Intelligence join Richard Gillis to pull apart the playbooks. They cover the League’s long silence and why it left a vacuum, City’s network of former players, ambassadors and friendly voices, and the question of who should declare who pays them. Then Andy Burnham’s unforced error, Number 10’s clean-up job, and whether City was ever really a private investment rather than a state project.They also cover what the sanction should be, and whether punishing the champions damages the Premier League or strengthens it.GuestsDan Johnson: Premier League director of communications for over a decade, later at DAZN, and was chief communications and marketing officer at Whisper.Nick Harris: investigative sports journalist, founder of Sporting Intelligence, who has covered the City story since 2011.Chapters00:00 Narrative or substance: where the City case stands02:30 The Premier League’s silence and the regulator’s dilemma06:00 A leak-proof process, a July verdict and an uncertain timeline10:00 Should pundits declare who pays them?13:00 Pundits as proxies and the “third-party endorser network”17:00 Guardiola’s tweet, Yelland and Romano: who’s speaking for City?22:00 Comms doing a comms job: City’s playbook since 201426:00 Andy Burnham’s interview and Number 10’s clean-up29:30 The 14 September Downing Street meeting32:00 Private investment or state project?35:00 The trouble with “sportswashing”37:00 What should the punishment be?40:00 Does this damage the Premier League product?44:00 The Premier League as regulator, and why its success isn’t an accidentUnofficial 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 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Alan Gilpin is chief executive of World Rugby. He spent nine years at IMG negotiating the commercial rights to the 2003, 2007 and 2011 Rugby World Cups. So when he says next year’s tournament in Australia brings him full circle, he means it literally: he’s selling the same tournament from the other side of the table.The men’s quadrennial World Cup brings in around 85 to 90 per cent of World Rugby’s total income. And he’s set himself a big number. World Rugby’s plan targets a surplus of more than a billion dollars from the 2031 World Cup in America, in a market where it can’t make FIFA’s demands of NFL owners and where, as he admits, putting on an event is far more expensive.But the most striking thing is how candid he is about his own sport. Rugby’s biggest problem, he says, is self-inflicted: “we’re competing amongst ourselves.”We talk about FIFA, R360 and LIV, private equity, the women’s Lions, what the streamers want, and whether sevens can ever pay its way.Chapters00:00 Football, North America and everything else01:50 What rugby learned from FIFA’s World Cup summer in the US04:30 Hiring FIFA’s people and the host-city process05:40 Narrow NFL pitches and the venue shortlist07:00 Why rugby can’t demand commercially clean venues08:50 Margin over revenue, and 68,000 in Baltimore10:00 The NFL owners and “should the NFL buy rugby?”11:00 Why the US: the Japan 2019 precedent12:00 France 2023’s losses and the end of the outsourced hosting model16:20 A £1bn tournament: six revenue streams, one dependency18:40 The federated model: who gets the money23:30 Private equity, Prem Rugby and institutional capital28:00 “We’re competing amongst ourselves”: rugby’s fragmentation problem30:00 R360, LIV Golf and “disrupt from within”31:20 The player welfare pitch and the national-team moat35:00 Player wages and the professional women’s game38:40 Same or different? The women’s British and Irish Lions43:00 Streamers, eventisation and rugby’s product suite48:00 RugbyPass, digital numbers and the wrong metrics49:50 Clips, grazing and going the wrong way up the funnel52:00 Sevens, T20 and the Olympic effect57:30 What’s next: the shape of the game and the road to 2031Unofficial 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 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Gen Z has a new insult for anything that looks cheap: “that’s so AI”. Richard Gillis and Andy Shora of TFG Labs ask what that means for a sports industry selling AI to investors, sponsors and fans all at once. They cover who should own AI inside a club, what happens when the shirt sponsor is also your infrastructure, and why autonomous agents have changed the risk profile from bad copy to switched-off turnstiles.In this episodeWhy fans discount AI content, and why craft and effort still win attention. Trump’s “super intelligence” rebrand at the UN is the backdrop.[1]The funnel in UK sport: 81% of rights holders use AI, but only a third use it strategically.[2]Who owns AI inside a sports organisation: the chief AI officer, budget fiefdoms, and accountability when things go wrong.Microsoft’s “humanist AI” and the rest of the new prefixes, and how AI became a sponsorship category as gambling leaves Premier League shirts.[3][4]The painful divorce: what happens to a club’s tech stack when the AI shirt deal ends.The ROI question arrives. Hyperscaler capex passes $1tn, and clubs are now being asked what their AI spend has returned.[5][6]Anthony Gordon’s Spanish at Barcelona, and why translation by machine won’t buy you fans.[7]US unilateralism, Macron’s “vassal” warning, and the supply risk of a model that can be switched off by a government.[8][9]OpenAI agents escape a sandbox, and an agent breaches an Australian government site: what that means for match-day operations, scouting and the Champions League.[10][11]Going local: open-weight models and Jev, the decision model that does the job of an LLM for a fraction of the cost.[12]SourcesTrump wants to rebrand AI as “super intelligence” (Axios)PTI Digital, The Sports Leadership Benchmark 2026Microsoft drafts feel-good AI model guidelines (The Register)AI partnerships in the Premier League (Sportcal)Global AI investment forecast to exceed $1 trillion in 2026 (Goldman Sachs)AI demand and capex (J.P. Morgan Asset Management)Anthony Gordon speaks Spanish at his Barcelona unveiling (Goal)US rejects international AI oversight at the UN (NBC News via AOL) and Trump renames AI as leaders jostle over dangers (AFP via Yahoo)Anthropic on restoring access to Fable and MythosAustralia’s prime minister criticises OpenAI over government website breach (AP)OpenAI agent swarm exposes a blind spot in AI containment (CIO) and The RegisterTypeSafe AI, Jev and Arize’s review of JevUnofficial 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 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

A conversation about sponsorship effectiveness, creativity and the price of chasing vibes.Richard is joined by Mike Grumbridge and Peter Wilson of Sid Lee Sport to talk about Mike's recent Marketing Week piece: "Stop confusing vibes with sponsorship effectiveness" which took the Levi's Stadium ambush at this summer's FIFA World Cup as a starting point in to an argument about the value of official and unofficial sponsorship.From there the conversation widens: why sponsorship still can't prove impact the way advertising can, why media value remains such a slippery number, why "cultural relevance" has become this generation's brand purpose, what happens to a brand when you hand it over to creators, and why so much sports marketing now looks identical.Summary: The long and short of sponsor effectiveness, with a hat tip to Binet and Field.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 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Recorded live in front of an invited audience of senior sports-industry figures at Teneo's London offices overlooking St Paul's Cathedral, this Unofficial Partner event asked a deliberately awkward question about the summer of 2026: not what happened, but what actually changed. Three set-pieces framed the conversation — the men's FIFA World Cup in the United States, the European Athletics Championships, the ICC Women's T20 World Cup and the Commonwealth Games — and the panel picked apart what worked, what didn't, and what will still matter next year. Beth Barrett Wild steps away from the ECB after running the ICC Women's T20 World Cup 2026 and leading on the women's game, having help build the competition side of The Hundred since 2018.Jon Dutton OBE is chief executive of the British Olympic Association, formerly CEO of Rugby League World Cup 2021 and CEO at British Cycling.Miguel Delaney is chief football writer at The Independent and author of States of Play, the award-winning investigation into how state money and sportswashing reshaped modern football.Unofficial Partner is grateful to our friends at Teneo for hosting the event at its offices overlooking St Paul's in London, and to Neil Daugherty and his team for their hospitality and expertise. This episode is sponsored by Leaders in SportNext week we're heading to Stamford Bridge with the global sports industry for Leaders Week London, and this is your final call to join us.Over two days you can hear directly from the leaders behind some of sport's biggest organisations, get in front of the people you've been chasing all year, and turn a few packed days in London into months' worth of business.It's a rare chance to have that much of the industry, and that much opportunity, under one roof.We're there every year, and we can vouch for the value of having the right people in the same place. Come and find us at Stamford Bridge and say hello.If you haven't secured your place yet, now's the time.Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information, and use code UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass.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 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Wimbledon didn't ban influencers. It said it wouldn't create a creator accreditation category and would confiscate ring lights and selfie poles under existing rules. The headline ran anyway, and it tells us more about sport's gatekeepers than about creators. Richard Gillis is joined by two people who sit on opposite sides of the creator deal. Jo Tongue is CEO of Tongue Tied Management, representing athletes, broadcasters and content creators. A former BBC sports reporter, she edited 5 Live's 606 for a decade and is a director of Women in Football. Lisa Parfitt is co-founder of The Space Between, the sports marketing agency for challenger brands whose work includes the ECB's women's cricket campaigns and FIFA's Women's Champions Cup launch. She previously co-founded Engine Sport. They discuss who is responsible when creators misbehave, why rights holder channels are underdelivering for sponsors, and what sport now demands of its elite athletes.Key discussion points02:30 The US Open ring lights and the "Wimbledon bans creators" headline: what actually happened04:00 Jo argues the blame lies with whoever invited the creators, not the creators themselves06:45 Lisa on snobbery, gatekeeping, and why influencers didn't invent annoying tennis crowds10:00 Unilever shifting 50–70% of activation budgets to creators11:30 How agents match talent to the outcome a brand actually wants16:00 Lisa's research showing rights holder channels reach about 27% of a sport's fans20:00 Creators versus journalists, and paid versus earned23:30 Who controls creator behaviour: rights holders, sponsors, or hosts29:30 Brand risk after Callaway and Good Good, and the cost of heavy approvals34:30 Jazmin Sawyers and the pressure on athletes to become creators41:00 Rehab programmes, insurance and tunnel selfies: which rules actually matter45:30 Women's sport and whether there are enough women's football creators48:00 Women's T20 World Cup: a 70/30 split between sport and lifestyle52:30 Taking first-timers to Lord's, and the value of the outsider's questionUnofficial 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 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.