I’m a Manchester United fan and marketing expert but Arsenal are cool Sport Business Arsenal’s long-awaited success on and off the field has been earned with smart, patient planning, says Pitch founder (and Man Utd supporter) Henry Chappell. As a Manchester United fan since before the Fergie years, Arsenal’s march to Premier League glory and a Champions League final is a tough watch. And it’s just as hard to [...]
Formula 1’s reaction to season disruption a lesson for Fifa World Cup Sport Business Formula 1 is firmly back on track but the consecutive Bahrain and Saudi Arabian race cancellations, the result of events in the Middle East, have highlighted how quickly established sporting fixtures can face significant disruption. The cost of the decision to cancel both races, given the potential risk to safety of staff working in the [...]
World Cup no longer has global audience – and that’s a marketers challenge Sport Business The domestic football season is hurtling towards its conclusion and, despite England’s drab international break and talk of boycotts, World Cup fever is starting to build. Soon, wallcharts will be pinned up, vintage England kits pulled out from the back of the wardrobe, and Three Lions will find its way onto office playlists. However, this [...]
Exclusive: Former Man United CEO’s firm partners with CVC volleyball league January 14, 2026 Former Manchester United chief executive Richard Arnold’s sport commercial consultancy has entered into a partnership with the CVC Capital Partners-run Volleyball World, City AM can reveal. Red Tiger Marketing will today announce a deal with the league, owned by the private equity giant thrusted into the sporting world through Formula 1, which will “drive the [...]
Why 2025 in sport marketing was the year that changed everything December 30, 2025 For much of the last decade, sports marketing followed a familiar script: globalisation, digital scale and steadily inflating rights fees. In 2025, that script broke. This year forced brands, rights-holders and investors to confront harder truths about attention, technology and value, and in doing so, it reset how sport is bought, sold and measured. From [...]
Why mascots are the next branding opportunity for sports teams December 26, 2025 Mascots aren’t just tacky costumes anymore, they’re the next frontier in the world of sport branding, writes Mike Perry. Surveying today’s sports brand landscape, one striking fact stands out. Teams aren’t just competing on the pitch anymore, they’re competing for hearts, thumb-scrolls and wardrobe space. For younger fans the experience of fandom is increasingly about [...]
Badging isn’t dead: In defence of a sports marketing fundamental November 30, 2025 Sports marketing may have come a long way but let’s stop pretending that brand badging doesn’t matter, says Matt Riches. In modern sports marketing “badging” has become a dirty word, seen as outdated, inefficient, maybe even lazy. “This isn’t a badging exercise,” has become the opening gambit to many a sales pitch. But in the [...]
How sport can take tackle Gen Z’s problem with gender polarisation October 21, 2025 Gender is as becoming as divisive as race, politics and economics among but sport can play its part in fixing a growing problem among Gen Z, writes Matt Readman. It’s been 25 years since Nelson Mandela famously said that sport could “unite people in a way that little else does”. While sport has sometimes mirrored social [...]
Why the NBA has reinvented All-Star Weekend in a bid to revive it February 14, 2025 The NBA has made drastic changes to its All-Star Weekend in an attempt to breathe new life into a spectacle that has lost half of its audience. Todd Boehly and his consortium of US investors didn’t waste any time in ripping up the rulebook after they took over at Chelsea in the summer of 2022. [...]
Keely Klassic: Why I’m rooting for Hodgkinson’s ambitious showcase February 13, 2025 What the Keely Klassic lacks in spelling, Hodgkinson’s mash-up of athletics and entertainment makes up for in forward thinking, writes Ed Warner. “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Keely Hodgkinson may not have nailed greatness just yet, but if she does secure that status it will likely [...]