David Walmsley

Rugby League

Ahead of the 2021 Rugby League World Cup, David Walmsley talks to RLWC2021 chief executive Jon Dutton about the strategy behind England's winning bid and how it secured a ten-fold increase in the value of match hosting rights over the figures achieved when the event was last staged in the UK.
Rugby Union

Rights marketing experts assess the commercial implications of World Rugby’s proposals for a new Nations Championship.
Multi-Sport

Harvesting and monetising athlete biometrics looks to be the ultimate ambition of sport’s obsession with data. Early movers in this space discuss the opportunities and risks ahead.

Open golf championship looks to follow Uefa in trialling blockchain ticketing Experiments are adding weight to the case for more digital ticketing
Football

IMG launches own direct-to-consumer distribution platforms for Italian and Spanish football rights
Horse Racing

Ascot digs into customer data to help double hospitality revenues in five years, adopting a data-driven approach to fine dining.
Cricket

Two years ago the International Cricket Council hired data-driven sports marketing agency Two Circles help meet the rising demand that rights-holders demonstrate measurable impact against brand objectives. David Walmsley investigates how they did it.

3: Clinging to the Cord: Barriers to OTT Growth

2: Audiences and Data: Not Just a Number

2017 was the year in which OTT video became a demonstrably mainstream platform as viewership of its services extended into a majority of US homes for the first time. David Walmsley sets the scene in the first part of our in-depth report into the state of the growing sector of OTT broadcasting.

The next big thing in almost any market is reliably hailed “the Netflix” of whatever sector is being disrupted by its new distribution model. Th
Rugby Union

A deep-dive into how rugby union’s Newcastle Falcons used a new CRM and corresponding data-driven approach to marketing communications as a means of reinvigorating its attendances.

Football

The Football Association of Finland adopted a data-driven approach to increasing player numbers and growing commercial revenue as part of its participation in the Uefa GROW development programme. In this extended report, David Walmsley looks at the way it tried to achieve these objectives.