E193: Re:Thinking Sport - Multi Club Ownership

This is episode 7 of our series Re Thinking Sport in collaboration with Portas, the global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity. The subject is multi club ownership in European football, and our guest is Paul Conway, head of Pacific Media Group, one of the pioneers of the genre. Pacific Media recently completed the takeover of Dutch club FC Den Bosch, which becomes the seventh club in the group, which also includes English club Barnsley, AS Nancy in France, KV Oostende from Belgium, Denmarks’s Esbjerg. So we ask, how does it work in practice, what’s the strategic advantage to each club and what’s the impact of on areas such as player transfers, performance data and the role of managers. Paul Conway gives us an hour of his time for what feels like a genuine inside look at how professional football works today, if you work in sport, it’s one you need to hear. The other voice you’ll hear is that of my co-host in this episode, Patrick Massey, partner at Portas Consulting who really helped to ask the right questions.  As ever, 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.