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, 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 LiveSco ..read more

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 w ..read more

The Buy Side is our regular series talking with brand side marketers about sport and sponsorship.  This week’s guest is Mark Kirkham, the global CMO 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, musi ..read more

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 Twi ..read more

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 p ..read more

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 F ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

This is the second episode of Other People’s Money, our regular deep dive in to the world sports investment, with my regular co-host Matt Rogan, one of the co-founders of Two Circles and a serial adviser to sports organisations.  Today the conversation is about private equity. We went to the Victoria offices of Phoenix Capital to talk to Tim Dunn, a partner in the firm. Tim and the company have no interest in sports as an asset class and that’s why we wanted his opinion. It’s an opportunity to look through the eyes of a private equity expert whose view is not coloured by skin in the game ..read more

Tom Beahon created the Castore sportswear brand with his brother Phil in 2016. Today, their shareholding in the firm is valued at around £500million following a recent capital round, led by US merchant bank and investor The Raine Group, which values the company at £950mn.  This investment will contribute to Castore’s attack on the sportswear industry dominated by Adidas, Nike, Puma and Michael Rubin’s online retailer Fanatics.  This week, Castore added to its portfolio of around fifty team partnerships across football, cricket, rugby and formula one, when it signed new deals for ne ..read more