Vicky Gosling on what war taught her about sport and business
Vicky Gosling OBE is one of those people that make you think you could’ve done more with your life. Twenty one years in the RAF, serving in war zones, advisor to the Secretary of State, then on to setting up and running the Invictus Games for Prince Harry and now leading a revolution at British Snowsport among several other things.
And not to be overlooked, she’s very nice.
I tend to push against the marketing industry’s pitch that sport is the antidote to all social ills, mainly because it’s not true. But the work done using sport in the area of rehabilitation to traumatic injury is awe inspiring and heartwarming in equal measure.
This bit of our conversation gives a flavour:
I was deployed all around the world really, but the two defining moments for me are probably my deployment to the Gulf in 2003 and then setting up what became the Combined Services Adapted Sports Association, a response to having taken all the casualties that we sadly did over that decade,
I was visiting Headley Court to see some friends and I was looking out over the balcony and there were twelve double amputees playing sitting volleyball at the time, which is a pretty interesting sight to see, with an age range between about eighteen and thirty two. And it was apparent they were loving life far more than when I'd seen them in hospital the year before.
I happened to be a commodore of a watersports centre just down the road, between Henley and Marlow, so I asked the consultant if I could set up a watersports day there for guys and he said yes. So we did that and it went on to be successful, so we set up a wheelchair tennis day at RAF Holton, so we got the Air Force Royal Engineers in to build the ramps and we did a tennis day and I became very much known as a guru for adaptive sports, and we set up the Combined Services Adaptive Sports, getting the military to care for these injured men and women.
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The clever thing to say about the future of sport’s media When in doubt, go with the following quote, attributed to Jim Barksdale, the founder of Netscape.
“There’s two ways of making money in business. First you bundle things together, then you unbundle them”.
Read more about bundling and unbundling here https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundling-and-unbundling
What happens to those data models when sports fans go dark? This point came up while reading an advanced copy of Seven League’s seven trends thing, launched this week. Of the seven themes they picked out, the point about 'fans don't want to be owned' was the most interesting imho, and echoed part of the conversation we had with Richard Ayres in episode 29 of the podcast (here: Richard Ayers' Bellwether Beard).
Here's a screenshot from the report.
For further reading, I strongly recommend Matt Locke's piece on Storythings, which is not about sport but making the same point, jumping off Apple’s ‘Privacy Matters’ campaign, positioning themselves as the anti-Facebook/Google.
They’re pushing hard on their pro-privacy policies at the moment, and clearly feel that this gives them a competitive advantage, especially over competitors who are facing anti-trust proceedings in the US driven mainly because of their exploitation of user data.
So is this a sign we’ve reached Peak Data? After one hundred years of slowly measuring audiences through sampled ratings and surveys, then 15 years of exponential growth of ‘big data’, are we finally reaching the point where the tide turns, and ‘just enough’ strategies replace ‘just in case’?
Well, maybe. But only for a privileged few. If there’s one constant in the economics of audience data over the last 100 years, is that we only get free services if we pay for them with our attention. This has been true for commercial radio and television, free newspapers, mobile games and digital content. If we want privacy, we have to pay for it, and not everyone can afford this. Will the right to become a ghost only be for the people with money to buy premium products?
(If this is interesting to you, then Matt's newsletter How To Measure Ghosts is worth your time https://howtomeasureghosts.substack.com)
Sublime > Ridiculous
John Hockey’s legendary Xmas drink takes place upstairs at Langan’s, and was back on the schedule this week after taking a Glastonbury type fallow year in 2018. John has the best Spurs stories from his days as the agent to most of the 1980s team, so it was fitting that Steve Perryman and Ossie Ardiles were there. Perryman has a book out and was signing copies and George Graham turned up looking more like George Graham than any man of his age has any right to do.
Hockey’s other former clients, such as Jim Rosenthal and John Motson were also in attendance.
See photo of Rosenthal with Charlie Sale, who continues to be Unofficial Partner’s biggest advocate, pushing people in his vast black book to do our podcast. We’re even mulling an idea of Charlie hosting his own show for us, interviewing the sports biz big shots he met and didn’t hate. That’s the pitch anyway. Could be a short series, but fun while it lasts. (Charlie's Unofficial Partner debut is still available here)
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Unofficial Partner is owned and run by Richard Gillis and Sean Singleton. You can contact us on Richard@UnofficialPartner.co.uk or Sean@UnofficialPartner.co.uk