Kevin McCullagh

Multi-Sport

Documentaries going behind the scenes with sports teams and athletes are riding a wave of popularity. SportBusiness interviewed Mike Antinoro, senior vice-president at IMG Original Content, executive producer on series including Being Serena, First Team: Juventus and All or Nothing: Manchester City, to find out what’s behind the surge in interest and how the shows are put together.

The world’s population is ageing, with profound consequences for society and the economy. And yet serving older fans, participants and customers is barely mentioned in conversations within the sports industry. Kevin McCullagh spoke to sports marketers and ageing industry experts to find out why, and what opportunities may be being missed.
Basketball

Title sponsorship is first and foremost a way of making consumers aware of a brand name, putting the brand into the mouths of fans as they talk about a team, competition or other property.

Over the last five years the hackathon has been adopted by several major rights-holders. Kevin McCullagh discusses the impact of hackathons on sports businesses.
American Football

US major leagues are tweaking their rules to make sure fans stay tuned in as concerns build about distracted audiences. Data is playing a critical role, with leading rights-holders employing sophisticated, data-led decision-making to make the changes.
Cycling

SportBusiness spoke to Dimension Data chief marketing officer Ruth Rowan about the genesis and evolution of the partnership, which started in 2015 and will run to cover the 2019 Tour.

Football

When Pearse Connolly set about revamping the marketing of Norwegian national team home matches he didn’t expect to use the Catholic church as inspiration.
Baseball

Major League Baseball’s relatively small global footprint provides the league’s great challenge in international rights sales. But in its favour are a handful of markets where baseball is extremely popular and some of the most storied imagery in world sport.

Football

Ferran Soriano is CEO of Manchester City FC and City Football Group, and winner of The SportBusiness Award at the 2017 Globe Soccer Awards. We caught up with him to talk about his approach to running a football club, his thoughts on football in the Middle East, and more.

Sport in Saudi Arabia is on the cusp of enormous change. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – the heir to the kingdom’s throne and one of the two most powerful men in the country along with his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz – has targeted sport as one of the vehicles of his ambitious plan to transform the country.

Artificial intelligence and DIY content were the major themes at Mindshare’s Huddle 2017 conference. Kevin McCullagh reports from the event.

Silva International Investments and SportBusiness Group are delighted to announce that the process of SBA Limited acquiring SportBusiness Group has now closed. SBA Limited, managed by Silva International Investments, becomes the parent company of SportBusiness Group with immediate effect.

Silva International Investments and SportBusiness Group are delighted to announce that the process of SBA Limited acquiring SportBusiness Group has now closed. SBA Limited, managed by Silva International Investments, becomes the parent company of SportBusiness Group with immediate effect.

Fan Tracker: Sports and Properties, a product containing data on the popularity of sports and properties in 13 markets.

SportBusiness International partners Nakono have prepared this report on the outlook for virtual reality technology in sport. It assesses the current state of the market, how long it will take for the technology to mature, what sort of eventual use cases we can expect, and more. Download the report here.

Download a PDF of the 2017 edition of our ranking of postgraduate sports business courses.

Olympic Games

A free report, commissioned from SportBusiness by the Budapest 2024 Olympic Games bid, surveying attitudes to, and media consumption habits around, the Olympic Games.

The 2017 GSMA Mobile World Congress (MWC) took place in Barcelona last week. MWC is the world's biggest mobile industry conference, and the place to look for sports executives wondering what's coming down the track in mobile and connected technology. Journalist Adrian Pennington was there, and picked out the key developments the sports industry should be looking out for.
Esports

A growing group of blue-chip brands are sponsoring esports, but the majority remain on the sidelines. Why? Matt Cutler reports.

Esports

It's still early days for esports and sponsorship. 'Non-endemic' brands are starting to dip their toes in the water, and the values of deals are starting to rise.