The Business of Sport - Mike Buckley
The Business of Sport
Born and raised on Cape Cod, MA, Buckley was introduced to sailing by his single mother who worked multiple jobs and sports became both an outlet and a foundation for discipline, resilience, and drive. What started as an unexpected extracurricular pursuit quickly grew into a defining passion that shaped his personal and professional trajectory. From high school waters to global competition, Buckley’s career ascended quickly. He went on to become a 2-time world champion sailor, competing at the highest levels of the sport and earning recognition for his strategic sharpness and relentless...
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The Business of Sport - Isabella Bertold
The Business of Sport
A multiple world cup medalist in the sport of Olympic Sailing, and an athlete on the Canada SailGP team, Isabella Berthold also leads a Next Gen Legacy Fund, focused on providing financial support to youth athletes in British Columbia. Isabella is also a professional cyclist, racing a European focused UCI Road Calendar. A former venture capital analyst, Isabella believes that responsible business, is good business. She believes that sport and sustainability can work side-by-side to develop innovative products and business models that drive real change, fast-tracking our journey towards a...
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The Business of Sport - Ursula Romero
The Business of Sport
From having Olympic Games accreditation at the age of just 4, to leading one of the world's biggest broadcast operations, Ursula Romero has a fantastic story to tell. The daughter of early pioneers in major event broadcasting, Ursula is the CEO of ISB, International Sports Broadcasting. With over 20 years experience providing coverage of global sporting events, Ursula and ISB are now transitioning away from mainstream sports to providing a platform for emerging sports and events.
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The Business of Sport - Michael R. Payne
The Business of Sport
Michael Payne has been at the forefront of Sports Marketing for over 40 years, most of that time spent leading and advising on deals around the Olympic Games. Payne has brokered over 25 billion dollars worth of deals and sold his first sponsorship package at the age of just sixteen! He worked alongside all of the great leaders who built the industry – from two decades at the IOC with President Samaranch, and in those early days Horst Dassler of adidas, to over a decade with Bernie Ecclestone at F1 as his right hand person, to now Chairing Volleyball World - a joint venture between FIVB and...
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The Business of Sport - Hugo Inglis
The Business of Sport
Hugo Inglis is a four-time Olympian with New Zealand. For over a decade, he scored goals at the very top of international elite Field Hockey. Nowadays, Hugo is a co-founder of High Impact Athletes (HIA), a global movement empowering athletes to fund the world’s most effective climate and social solutions. Under his leadership, HIA has grown to over 220 athletes across 48 sports and 34 countries, collectively driving almost $2 million in donations, improving almost half a million lives, protecting nearly 7 million animals and mitigating more than 600,000+ tonnes of CO₂e. ...
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Her Business of Sport - Lindsey Eckhouse
The Business of Sport
Lindsey Eckhouse is the Chief Revenue Officer at Mercury 13, a multi-club ownership group focussed on acquiring controlling stakes in professional women’s teams in Europe and Latin America. Lindsey has previous experience in sport with the NFL and Maclaren Racing.
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Her Business of Sport - Sally Sheppard
The Business of Sport
With the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 in full swing, the RFU’s Head of Consumer Engagement, Sally Sheppard, joined our Her Business of Sport podcast to assess the success of the tournament so far and to reveal an insight into England Rugby’s plans to harness new supporters in the future.
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Her Business of Sport - Emily Heath
The Business of Sport
After more than 15 years with Unilever and over a decade as Global Lead of their Rexona/Sure brand of deodorant, Emily has led numerous high impact global campaigns and strategic partnerships. The Sure brand, known as Rexona globally, is over a hundred years old, but Emily’s focus is very much on the future, developing on-going partnerships with Manchester City FC, the reigning World Club Champions, Chelsea Football Club and the UEFA Women’s Euro Tournament, recently won by England. This is part of a broader strategy to drive brand growth, global visibility and deeper consumer engagement....
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Her Business of Sport - Thayer Lavielle
The Business of Sport
Thayer Lavielle says she is never afraid of a blank page, something she has proven over the last 6 years, by leading the development of The Collective, a women-focussed division of Wasserman, designed to bridge gaps in gender equity in sport and music through community, insights, events, tools and services. Since 2019, that “blank page” has grown to include The Collective Think Tank, The Goal Post and the Collective Marketplace. Thayer has negotiated over $250m worth of deals across talent, brand, property and venues and has extensive experience with leading female-focussed brands...
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The Business of Sport - Justin Papadakis
The Business of Sport
A year out from the next FIFA World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico, one man is leading the charge to create a sustainable platform for soccer in the USA. For over 50 years, American soccer has relied on importing players from around the world, mostly at the end of their careers, to play in stadiums designed for more popular American sports. Now though, a former college goalkeeper turned entrepreneur is trying to change all that. Justin Papadakis is the Chief Real Estate Officer and Deputy CEO of the USA’s fastest growing pre-professional and professional soccer organisation, which is...
info_outlineHannah Brown is the co-CEO of Women’s Sport for DAZN. With over 20 years of experience in finance, sports media, pay TV, corporate venture and business transformation, Hannah now has the task of developing DAZN’s investment in women’s football rights globally, into a significant business opportunity.
Together with Esmeralda Negron, she founded ata football, a streaming platform and community for women’s football fans. ata football was acquired by DAZN in 2023 and the pair now share joint CEO status of Women’s Sport at DAZN.
Hannah on DAZN:
“DAZN is a really interesting platform because it has grown, solely in a digital environment. So when we think about how DAZN has got it’s products to market, it has done that through really one delivery system, it’s not had to worry about legacy technology or distribution platforms.
It is wholly a digital business, which allows us to do a number of things. It allows us to turn up in all markets around the world simultaneously. There are big streaming challenges in order to do that, which DAZN has tested and met as an 8 year-old business.
What “digital solely” platforms allow you to do, is, yes, turn up in lots of markets at the same time, but it also gives you lots of flexibility when you think about the business models. We want to be the global home of sport. We are doing that vertical by vertical. If you ask football fans outside the UK, we are already the home of football for them.”
Hannah on the DAZN FanZone:
“We run Fan Zone on a multitude of our properties, not just women's football and we are getting pretty decent engagement rates, around 20 to 30% of fans on premium sports events. But when we put it on women's football, that average goes up to 40% and when Barcelona played at Manchester City in the UWCL recently, that FanZone engagement went up to 60%. It was really encouraging to see big match-ups, big story-telling moments. A similar thing happened when Arsenal played Juventus and when big team take part, fans have got a lot to say.
The fans are very positive about that experience too because they are coming into an environment which is not aggressive, they are allowed to say what they want and negative chat in those groups is basically non-existent.
There’s a lot of fun in the FanZone with quizzes and polls, but we integrated that into the broadcast environment in a really serious way, with commentators talking about what the fans are saying, getting their feedback, voting for Player of the Match. So its really nice to be able to say you can get involved and have fun, but we are also going to take your views and perspectives seriously from a broadcast perspective. We have seen a lot of success with FanZone and I think we have only just got started.”
Hannah on the future of Women’s Sport:
I think from a sponsorship perspective, the uniqueness of women’s sport is definitely valuable. How do you get to an audience with a unique message and positioning.
I was a biologist back in the day at University and my analogy is that when men's football put it’s head out of the ecological pond from a commercial perspective in the 90’s, the content landscape was not cluttered and it was coming out as a big and strong fish. It had a big fandom and lots of people cared deeply about it and came out with a strategy to grow and prosper in the environment it found.
Women’s football put it’s head out of the ecological pond into a concrete landscape of content and competition, and that’s not just from men’s football, its from everything that people want to do with their weekends. The ease with which content is made available is so different now. So how does women’s football lean into what makes it unique and allows it to go and compete at the product level? Because I think the challenge you have is that if you are a music artist, you are either good or you’re not. People don’t buy a ticket for Ariana Grande or Taylor Swift, thinking they will be good in three years time….they buy because they are good now. So, Women’s Football can’t ask for forgiveness on fandom for a long time, it’s got to create a unique position in the market which then becomes valuable to a sponsor, with kit apparel or broadcast rights. For football, scale is critical. Running teams and rosters isn’t a cheap business and therefore everyone pushing that bar as high is possible is critical, because mediocrity is not going to win.”