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 themes
NFL 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.
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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, 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 @UnofficialPartner

We 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 episode
The $65.8bn headlineSportBusiness gave us a new number
Why 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 story
Is 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 @UnofficialPartner

We 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 @UnofficialPartner

We 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.
Guests
Dan 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.
Chapters
00:00 Narrative or substance: where the City case stands
02:30 The Premier League’s silence and the regulator’s dilemma
06:00 A leak-proof process, a July verdict and an uncertain timeline
10:00 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 2014
26:00 Andy Burnham’s interview and Number 10’s clean-up
29:30 The 14 September Downing Street meeting
32:00 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 accident
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, 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.