UP560 What is IMG now?

UP560 What is IMG now?

Today's guest Adam Kelly has been at IMG since 2001, connecting the business back almost to the McCormack era. Now President of IMG within TKO Group — which also owns UFC and WWE — he oversees IMG's media rights, production, digital, brand partnerships, and events businesses. This is his second appearance on Unofficial Partner; the first was in 2022, when he laid out a vision for reimagining IMG as a full-service growth partner rather than a transactional rights broker. Episode Summary Recorded during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, this conversation uses the tournament as a launchpad for a broader argument about where sport sits commercially in 2026. Kelly's central thesis is that the entry of global streaming and technology platforms — Netflix, Apple, Google, Amazon — is the single most important shift in the sports media landscape, and that it is unambiguously good for sport. Richard pushes back throughout: on the financial extraction argument, on the volume fallacy, on whether global streaming actually serves the kinds of sports that real fans love. It's a genuinely spiky conversation. This episode of Unofficial Partner is sponsored by The Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH)  ISH educates sport’s current and future leaders around the world, as the leading independent provider of sports leadership education and insight. Their Strategic Sport Leadership Masters (MA) is for sports industry executives to study alongside their careers – designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport. Applications for the next intake on the 2026 Strategic Sport Leadership MA, starting September, are open. Visit sportshumanities.org [https://www.sportshumanities.org/] for more information 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 [https://linktr.ee/unofficialpartner]and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unofficial-partner-podcast/id1459630823].  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 [https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podcast].  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.

UP559 Revenue-maxxing: How FIFA Changed The Game

FIFA will make $13bn from the four-year cycle culminating in this summer's tournament — nearly $9bn of it landing this year alone. For comparison, the Paris 2024 Olympics, the other Greatest Show on Earth, generated $5.24bn. Total. For the whole Games. It wasn't always this lopsided. The World Cup actually trailed the Olympics financially until 2010, when South Africa's edition pulled in $4.19bn against London 2012's $3.23bn. Since then the gap has only widened: 18% revenue growth from Russia 2018 to Qatar 2022, and FIFA is projecting another 73% jump by the end of this summer. They've already raised the budget for the next cycle to $14bn — before this tournament has even finished. So this episode isn't really about football. It's about how a governing body turned a month of matches into the most lucrative event in the history of sport — and how that changes our relationship with the World Cup. My guests are Joey D'Urso, Times journalist and author of More Than A Shirt, and Carla Bilche of Off-Ball Logic, [https://www.offballlogic.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips] who's spent months tracing the commercial history of the World Cup to understand exactly how we got here. Carla has a name for it: "revenuemaxxing." Once you hear the numbers, the word makes total sense. This episode is sponsored by the Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH)  ISH educates sport’s current and future leaders around the world, as the leading independent provider of sports leadership education and insight. Their Strategic Sport Leadership Masters (MA) is for sports industry executives to study alongside their careers – designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport. Applications for the next intake on the 2026 Strategic Sport Leadership MA, starting September, are open. Visit sportshumanities.org [https://www.sportshumanities.org/] for more information 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 [https://linktr.ee/unofficialpartner]and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unofficial-partner-podcast/id1459630823].  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 [https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podcast].  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.

UP558 Chat_UP: What The Mythos Shutdown Means For AI in the Sports Business

Host: Richard Gillis (Unofficial Partner) Co-host/analyst: Andy Shora (TFG Labs) Three stories this episode: * The Mythos/Fable shutdown — Anthropic ordered by the US government to disable its two most powerful models for all foreign nationals globally, with ninety minutes' notice. First-ever export control action against an AI model. Discussion covers the jailbreak vulnerability cited as justification, the EU's response (calling for "technological sovereignty"), and what abrupt model withdrawal means for any organisation building critical workflows on a single frontier-model provider. * AI slop hits sports marketing — The Manchester Super Giants' AI-generated kit-reveal video (formerly Manchester Originals, 70% RPSG Group / 30% Lancashire) becomes a viral case study in what happens when cost-cutting meets low-effort generative content. Errors included six-fingered batsmen, three batsmen on the pitch at once, bowlers sprinting the wrong direction, and floodlights on in daylight. Conversation moves from "is this actually bad PR or accidental virality" to the deeper implications for trust, craft, and physical/skeletal modelling in sports performance AI. * Yann LeCun and the case against LLMs — LeCun's exit from Meta, his $1.3bn raise for AMI Labs, and his Viva Tech argument that the industry has gone "LLM-pilled." Explains "world models" and contextual intelligence, the stochastic parrot critique, and why LeCun believes open-source, physically-grounded models are a more credible path than scaling language models alone. 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 [https://linktr.ee/unofficialpartner]and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unofficial-partner-podcast/id1459630823].  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 [https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podcast].  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.

UP557 Ed Smith: What Sport Got Wrong About Moneyball

AI commoditises knowledge production and throws judgment into scarcity. In this episode, Ed Smith asks what that means for sport, education and the people building careers in the business — and why the humanities might be the most undervalued edge in an age of machines. About the guest Ed Smith is an unusual hybrid in today's sports world. An academic, he left Cambridge with a Double First in History, and is the author of several excellent books including Luck, Making Decisions and What Sport Tells Us About Life. He served as Chief Selector for England men's cricket from 2018 to 2021, and is the current President of the MCC. In 2019 he co-founded the Institute of Sports Humanities, which offers the Strategic Sport Leadership Master's — a programme designed for ambitious sports industry executives looking to accelerate their careers while continuing to work. Applications for the next cohort, starting at the end of September, are now open: sportshumanities.org What we cover * The Moneyball hangover. Why the lazy reading of Billy Beane — "scouts are idiots, if it's not data it's not real" — was always wrong, and how elite sport has swung back to data as one source among many, not the whole story. * The limits of scientism. Ed on "creeping scientism," the idea that nothing's true unless it can be proved — and why some decisions (COVID policy, selection calls) carry intrinsic radical uncertainty that probability can't resolve. * Can judgment be taught? The case that the entire humanities tradition — criticism, history, weighing competing evidence — is really an apparatus for honing judgment, the skill AI makes scarce rather than obsolete. * Orchestration and the curated platform. What happens when a creative questioner goes straight to a powerful AI platform with curated data — near-instant insight — and why the bottleneck becomes asking the right question. * The apprenticeship gap. If AI absorbs the entry-level rungs of knowledge work (in law, in sport), how does anyone climb to the judgment seat at the top? Ed's two answers: institutionalised challenge, and getting your hands dirty early. * Sport as the last human product. Why Ed is "long sport" in the age of AI — live, embodied, uncertain competition as the most anti-fragile asset there is — and why the Tech Titans buying into London Spirit were buying the green grass, not the gadget. * The purpose problem. As production gets frictionless, meaning becomes the scarce good. Where the humanities, the arts and sport come into their own. * Careers without bosses. Charles Handy's "look for customers, not bosses," the death of the 50-year career path, and what an ideal student looks like: someone who doesn't know what's coming but trusts they can cope with it. People, books & ideas referenced * John Kay & Mervyn King, Radical Uncertainty · Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods * Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things (and his left-brain/right-brain work) * Michael Lewis, Moneyball · Howard Marks, Oaktree memos · Charles Handy * Institute of Sports Humanities — MA delivered with Loughborough University London 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 [https://linktr.ee/unofficialpartner]and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unofficial-partner-podcast/id1459630823].  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 [https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podcast].  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.

UP556 'Serviette Maths': Sky Sports Boss On The Premflix Threat

Jonathan Licht, Chief Sports Officer at Sky Sports, discusses Sky's dominant position in UK sports broadcasting, strategic partnerships, and the future of sports media. Key topics: * Sky's portfolio dominance: 225 Premier League matches, 1,000+ EFL games, 118 WSL matches, Formula 1, cricket, golf, NFL, tennis, darts, netball * The growth paradox: How building sports audiences creates competitive tension at rights renewal time * Sky Labs & The Hundred: Co-creation process that helped develop franchise cricket format and broaden appeal * Money & certainty: Why "our money is good" matters to rights holders vs. global streamers * National champion positioning: Local expertise, bespoke market strategies, and talent relationships as competitive advantages * On-air talent strategy: Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, and the blurring lines between Sky platforms and independent creator channels like The Overlap * YouTube & highlights distribution: Free-to-view content as funnel vs. risk of training audiences not to pay; cricket highlights on YouTube * Women's sport investment: Business rationale + "higher purpose"; WSL growth (20% audience increase), ICC T20 World Cup, position as UK's biggest investor in women's sports * Streaming vs. linear: Resilience of traditional broadcasters; Sky Sports+ adoption; why global scale doesn't equal market-specific value * Competitive landscape: Paramount (Champions League), Netflix, Amazon, DAZN; lessons from Ligue 1 direct-to-consumer failure * Premier League production transition: In-housing away from IMG; operational implications for Sky's hosting role This podcast is sponsored by The Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH)  ISH educates sport’s current and future leaders around the world, as the leading independent provider of sports leadership education and insight. Their Strategic Sport Leadership Masters (MA) is for sports industry executives to study alongside their careers – designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport. Applications for the next intake on the 2026 Strategic Sport Leadership MA, starting September, are open. Visit sportshumanities.org [https://www.sportshumanities.org/] for more information 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 [https://linktr.ee/unofficialpartner]and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unofficial-partner-podcast/id1459630823].  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 [https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podcast].  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.