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Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. Our guests are a who's who of the international sports industry talking about the big issues.
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Richard is joined by regular Bundle co-hosts Yannick Ramcke and Murray Barnett. Yannick is General Manager of OTT at the streaming service OneFootball and Murray is founder of 26West Sport and formerly of F1, World Rugby and ESPN. Subscribe to The Bundle Bulletin, via Unofficial Partner's Substack Newsletter. Today's topics: Advertising Renaissance: ITV’s Six Nations in-game advertising (worth 20% of total inventory value) signals broader inflation, with technology approaching rea...
Pete Fitzboydon, former CEO of Sussex County Cricket Club, reveals the stark financial realities facing non-Test hosting counties. With only 7 out of 50-60 annual playing days generating profit, counties survive primarily on ECB funding - approximately £3m of a £5-10m turnover. The conversation explores The Hundred's transformative impact, selling the longer game, and the future shape of English domestic cricket in a franchised world. This episode of the Unofficial Partner podcast is brought ...
Sally Munday is CEO of UK Sport, one of the most influential positions in the sports industry. On Friday the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games begins in Milan-Cortina. How many medal will Team GB win? How much will each medal cost? And why does that matter? UK Sport distributors around £100 million annually in public funds from the National Lottery and the Exchequer, supporting high-performance Olympic and Paralympic sports and athletes. For the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic cycle, th...
Ryan Norys is the Chief Revenue Officer at Tottenham Hotspur. This is a candid conversation about the commercial fortunes of the club as it brings the front of shirt sponsorship to market at a time of genuine uncertainty. Spurs finished 17th last season. Commercial revenue grew 40% in three years. That tension runs through the entire discussion. Norys' journey to Spurs was via City Football Group, WME, the LA Dodgers and Miami Dolphins. Now he's navigating the post-Levy era, the post-Son era,...
THE BILLION DOLLAR RACE: WHO WINS SPORTS AI? There's a race on. Bloomberg Terminal for sport. Sports Business GPT. The industry's operating system. Who builds it first? THE LAST FRONTIER "Once you give away that level of knowledge, it's gone. This is the last frontier before all your intelligence is gone." — Craig Hepburn Live from Fuse UK, featuring Craig Hepburn (ex-UEFA), Richard Ayers (Rematch), Sean Betts (Omnicom), Andy Shora & Chris Woodcock (TFG Labs and 21st Group). BIG QUESTIONS...
What if we could fix the conference panel? You know the format—interesting people, good intentions, and about ninety percent of it forgotten by the time you reach the bar. Chat_UP Live was held at FUSE headquarters in London. Rather than just another AI panel, we ran an experiment. Working with the team at TFG Labs, we built a custom AI co-pilot that captured the onstage conversation in real time, took in audience questions, and offered evidence-based responses that pushed the discussion in g...
Welcome to The Bundle, our regular series on the sports media and streaming marketplace with co-hosts Yannick Ramcke, General Manager of OTT at the streaming service OneFootball and Murray Barnett, founder of 26West Sport and formerly of F1, World Rugby and ESPN. This episode of the Unofficial Partner podcast is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport. Sid Lee Sport is the fame-making creative and sponsorship agency for brands in sport. Through exceptional creativity, deep sponsorship expertise, and ...
Nikki Doucet has the most interesting job in British sport and one of the most difficult. Certainly, everyone in the sports business has an opinion on what the CEO of WSL Football should do to capitalise on the potential of women's professional football in England. The role wrestles with many of the conflicts and trade offs currently at play across the sports business - open vs closed leagues, sport as entertainment, the anti-DEI lobby vs progressives culture wars, the changing definiti...
David Cushnan and James Emmett of Leaders in Sport join Richard on the final podcast of the year to review the people, stories and events that mattered in 2025. 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 @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week,...
Richard Gillis is joined by Damian Browarnik from WSC Sports, the content and data platform working with over 650 clients including the NBA, NFL and La Liga, and Rich Johnson, sports marketing strategist and cofounder of End Product, formerly of Man Utd, New Balance and Social Chain. The conversation explores how algorithms now dictate sports content discovery, why millennials remain the commercial core while Gen Z follows athletes over teams, and what winning looks like in an era...
The Bundle is our long running series on the sports media and streaming marketplace with co-hosts Yannick Ramcke, General Manager of OTT at the streaming service OneFootball and Murray Barnett, founder of 26West Sport and formerly of F1, World Rugby and ESPN. This episode of the Unofficial Partner podcast is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport. Sid Lee Sport is the fame-making creative and sponsorship agency for brands in sport. Through exceptional creativity, deep sponsorship expertise, and flaw...
Today's guest is Dan Jamieson, who is chief executive and co-owner of ICONS, the world's biggest signed football memorabilia company. ICONS was founded in 1999, originally starting as an editorial website for footballers to connect directly with fans. The business successfully pivoted to focus on signed memorabilia, a niche subset of the broader merchandise market, valued at hundreds of millions annually within football. ICONS focuses on exclusive partnerships with superstars, hol...
Inside Edge is our cricket business series with co-host Mike Jakeman. Today's guest is Venkat Ananth on the money circling the IPL franchises. Check out Venkat's newsletter and blog, State of Play. This episode of the Unofficial Partner podcast is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport. Sid Lee Sport is the fame-making creative and sponsorship agency for brands in sport. Through exceptional creativity, deep sponsorship expertise, and flawless on-site delivery, they help brands, sponsors, and r...
Olympic marketing pioneer Michael Payne discusses his book Fast Tracks and Dark Deals, exploring how sport became business through the lens of legendary figures like Horst Dassler, Bernie Ecclestone and Mark McCormack. He challenges federations on governance, examines whether the Olympics inhibits innovation, and addresses future issues including AI, implanted technology, and the Enhanced Games debate. Payne reflects on Beijing 2008's legacy, Trump's impact on LA 2028, and warns that politica...
This episode was recorded at the recent Sportradar Connect: Soccer Edition event at the London Stadium in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The podcast divides is in two parts. First is an onstage conversation on the evolution of football data analytics and AI featuring Jamie Carragher, Erik Durm and Nicolo D’Ercole. Jamie Carragher played 737 times for Liverpool and 38 times for England, in career that included the famous 2005 UEFA Champions League victory. Today he is one of ...
Inside Edge is our series on the business of cricket, presented with co-host Mike Jakeman. Our guest is Phil Weston, head of cricket at TGI Sport, the agency owned jointly by George Pyne's Bruin Sports Capital and Quadrant Private Equity. England star Harry Brook is one of an impressive roster of talent across both the male and female games, including Kieron Pollard, Rashid Khan, Jofra Archer and Sophie Devine. In 2024 TGI acquired Insignia to its international network that ...
Mark Oliver was the BBC's first head of strategy before creating Oliver and Ohlbaum in 1995, which remains one of the most influential media advisory boutiques in the market, with clients ranging from sports leagues and federations to media companies, tech platforms, venture capital firms and private equity groups. In this episode, Mark identifies the rationale that sits behind some of sport's most high profile investment stories, from NBA Europe, R360 rugby and World Volleyball through to th...
The story of Brentford is one of the most interesting and quoted case studies in European football over the last decade. The west London club been transformed on and off the pitch, from being saved from extinction by its own fans to a new era under the ownership of entrepreneur Matthew Benham. The club was promoted to the Premier League in 2021, marking a return to the top flight after 74 years. Since then, it has become the go-to case study for smart recruitment and data-driven approac...
This is a special episode of Other People's Money is our regular series on sports investment which was recorded recently in front of an invited audience at the London headquarters of EY, the Big Four accounting and professional services group. Joining Richard and regular OPM co-host Matt Rogan were John Fallon and Vikram Banerjee. John Fallon was CEO of publishing giant Pearson during the white heat of digital transformation. His book Resurgent is an essential counter balance to the cli...
Nike, Drake and Beats have just released cricket themed campaigns. WTF? Is cricket cool? Richard asked Mike Jakeman and Simon Moore to list their best and worst cricket themed campaigns and the result is a conversation about cliches, tropes and cultural relevance. The following ads are referenced in the podcast. Beats by Dre 2025 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/homeground-london_checkshubman-gillshining-bright-in-the-activity-7376572600484782080-MxP2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=membe...
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