UP277 Mo Bobat and the Business of High Performance

Today’s guests are Mo Bobat, Performance Director of the England and Wales Cricket Board, and Omar Chauduri, Chief Intelligence Officer of Twenty First Group.The topic is high performance and its fundamental link to the commercial success of sport. Mo and Omar’s teams worked extensively together on the ECB’s new High Performance Review, chaired by former England captain Sir Andrew Strauss. This aims to improve the quality of both the domestic structure and the men's national side, aided by an advisory board including Sir Dave Brailsford and Dan Ashworth, former FA Performance Director. The review made 17 proposals, each seeking to focus attention on the difficult question of What It Takes To Win (WITTW). You can read the review HERE. But the performance conversation is often put into a silo, and treated separately from the commercial side of sport. As we’ll hear in this episode, that’s a mistake. This conversation, more than anything, is about the product of sport, what’s the difference between a successful sport’s tournament, event or team, and the rest. How does performance data help create entertaining teams and events? What’s the commercial value of jeopardy?These are questions which drive everything; from fan engagement through to media rights income, sponsorship revenue and other forms of investment. The conversation took place at the Clerkenwell offices of Twenty First Group in London against the backdrop of England’s progress at the ICC T20 World Cup taking place in Australia. You’ll hear us reference a previous podcast with Ed Smith, recorded at Leaders London in October. That’s available along with 276 other episodes in the Unofficial Partner back catalogue, accessible via the website, Apple, Spotify, Google or your usual podcast app.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.