E166: Tim Hollingsworth OBE

Today we’re talking to Tim Hollingsworth OBE the Sport England chief executive and former chief executive of the British Paralympic Association (BPA). Tim leads Sport England’s mission to get us all moving, by investing government money in sport and physical activity. This gives him a perspective in to some really important questions, such as what’s the role of government in sport, what does it want sport to do, does the system of national governing bodies work as well as it should, are they able to respond to a fast changing culture in which it’s easier to order a pizza than book a tennis court. I ask him what Park Run has taught Sport England, whether Olympic gold medals are worth the cost and what the success of the Paralympic sport says about us as a country. To find out more about Sport England’s work, I’d point you to their recently published 10-year strategy document called Uniting the Movement, which we reference during out conversation. If you like the podcasts you’ll love the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of senior executives across the global sports business every Thursday. To join them, sign up via unofficialpartner.com 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 and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. 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. 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.