How much for Tottenham's Stadium; Stop promoting the CCO; Aneurin Bevin's guide to sports politics; The Greater Good; Diversity by Degrees; Sports PR genres; Handsome footballers; Unstoppable Anstiss

Overthinking the sports business, for money

Jun 01, 2023

Statesmanship sounds boring.

It’s a history book word.

Palmerston, Disraeli and all that.

But it’s an elusive commodity, noticed more in its absence.

It’s often - clumsily - used as a synonym for leadership.

This isn’t quite right.

Statesmanship relates to statecraft. Wisdom. An ability to see beyond personal and corporate goals.

The greater good.

Sport has a statesmanship deficit.

Name an elite sport and you’ll find a seemingly intractable problem caused by entrenched groups with conflicting agendas.

Big clubs v Small clubs; Club v Country, Money in v Player burn out...

Premier League parachutes. The 1% v The Pyramid. Open v Closed.

Etc.

To move forward, someone has to give something valuable up.

Time in the schedule; A valuable piece of commercial inventory; Access to star players.

A sacrifice for the greater good.

The historian Kenneth O. Morgan described Aneurin Bevin as ‘an artist in the use of power’ - great phrase.

Bevin created the NHS.

He wouldn’t get away with it today.

He’d be McKinsey’d out. Too radical. Inefficient.

The problem is the impact of ‘an artist in the use of power’ is hard to measure.

So we don’t bother.

We measure what’s easy to count.

Which is money.

So the judgement as to ‘is s/he a good leader?’ is very narrowly defined: What was in the bank account when they came in compared to when they left.

Which is part of it. But not all of it.

Build: Stop promoting the CCO

Many (most?) sport CEOs come from the commercial side of the organisation.

Their job is to get the money in.

This gives them a big lever at the job interview.

It’s how they define themselves. The rainmaker; the grown up in the room.

Getting the money in is a zero sum game.

Winning means we get the sponsor and you don’t.

We protect our interests over yours.

This is great until you’re asked to sacrifice something:

The CCO as CEO is not very good at that.

Selfishness is built in to the system.

The culture rewards it.

Which is useful until it isn’t.

Stop demanding a degree

The sports business has a diversity issue.

Part of the answer is corporate ego.

The phrase ‘We only hire graduates’ is one of my tells.

A Harvard Business School report “Dismissed by Degrees,” found more than 60 percent of employers rejected otherwise qualified candidates in terms of skills or experience simply because they did not have a college diploma, and that the imperfect BA proxy had many negative consequences for workers and companies alike.

Naming rights are too complicated for headlines

This week’s podcast goes very deep in to the value of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, using it as the way in to a broader conversation about this part of the sponsorship jungle.