E187: Re:Thinking Sport - Mark Bullingham

This is a special episode of Re:Thinking Sport, our collaboration with Portas, the global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity.  Our guest is Mark Bullingham, who is the Chief Executive of The FA, the governing body for football in England, one of the biggest jobs in sport. His remit covers the entire game, from England teams to grassroots, the Women’s Super League to Wembley Stadium. Bullingham was promoted to the top job in March 2019 following the departure of Martin Glenn, the man who recruited him to The FA as the commercial director. Before that he ran Fuse, Omnicom’s sport and entertainment agency and was marketing director of the America’s Cup sailing race. It’s a conversation that covers a lot of ground, including The FA’s relationship with the commercial sector and innovation, the future funding model for the Women’s Super League, what he thought of The Hundred and what he’s learning about politics and politicians from Euro 2020 and The FA’s joint bid for the 2030 FIFA World Cup. 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.