Unofficial Partner Podcast

UP448 The 2025 Predictions Episode: 17 Experts, 35 Trends, 25 minutes

• Richard Gillis

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Dame Tracey Crouch on the Football Regulator
Kieran Maguire on Richard Masters 
Fiona Harold on golf's big merger
Jason Siegel on VR
Jenny Mitton on rugby
Steve Martin on brands
Jo Redfern on gaming formats
Nic Coward on India
Rich Johnson on single location challengers
Nathan Homer on Rwanda and Albania
Professor Simon Chadwick on Morocco
Maggie Murphy on entitlement of Lionesses fans
Siddharth Raman on rights holders as digital platforms
Andrew Umbers on mega agencies
Beth Barrett-Wild on the first million pound woman cricketer
Simon Heap on the return of fun
Andy Meikle on monetisation models

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Hello and welcome back to the first episode. Of 2025 is the Unofficial Partner podcast. I'm Richard Gillis. Today, we're all about predictions and What we can expect over the next year in the sports business, so I went to the experts. I went to the Unofficial Partner WhatsApp group, which is the best back channel in the sports business. I gave them two questions. What they think is definitely going to happen and what they think is a bit of an overreach in outlier. A bit of a bet, a pumped. That might come true in 2025. Let's see what they've got to say. They'll explain who they are. I'll see you at the end. Here's Tracy crouch to kick us off.

Dame Tracey Crouch, Hanover Sport:

This is Dame Tracey Crouch, Managing Director of Hanover Sport. And my big prediction for 2025 is that we will finally see the legislation to establish the independent football regulator pass all its stages in parliament. It's been a bit of a torturous process to get to this stage, but all being well, it will continue to travel smoothly through parliament and should be all done by the summer. And then we can start to see the implementation of that legislation. So that's it. It shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone, but that's my prediction for 2025.

Jason Siegel, Greater Orlando Sports Commission:

Hello Unofficial Partner and Happy New Year to everybody listening. This is Jason Siegel, President and CEO of the Greater Orlando Sports Commission. I have two big bets in 2025. Uh, I've got four kids and, uh, certainly expect that technology and the use of AI will lead to another major shift in the way that my kids and young fans engage in sport at home. I could absolutely see more immersive virtual reality events or even holographic replays. Secondly, and I'm definitely not going out on a limb here, women's sports saw an exponential growth certainly in the states in 2024 and around the globe, particularly in women's soccer. We were thrilled that our very own Orlando Pride won the NWSL championship in such a monumental year for women's sport. And I think that that growth will only continue at a much more rapid pace in 2025.

Nathan Homer, Neom Sport:

Hello Unofficial Partner, I'm Nathan Homer, Commercial Director of Neom Sport. Neom is obviously a destination to watch. And in this sector, my big bets and outliers are two places no one would have dreamt to go only a few years ago. Rwanda and Albania. Why? Both have external facing leadership who know that inward investment is critical to the socio economic change they want to achieve, with sport the proven vehicle to help start that off by putting their stunning natural landscapes back on the global stage. But for the right reasons this time, if you get a chance in 2025, try and get to one of them before the crowds.

Fiona Harold, World Netball:

Hello Unofficial Partner, I'm Fiona Harrold, CEO of World Netball. Short, simple, one global, one domestic, each from my former worlds of golf and football. My big bet for 2025 is that ahead of the Ryder Cup, the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and PIF Live Golf will announce their plans to co exist happily ever after, which will involve a global reboot of men's golf and result in record media deals down the line. My overreach prediction for 2025 is that the FA sells more England women's football shirts than they sold men's shirts in 2024, or they'll sell out before they get there. That is simply because the combination of demand for merchandise amongst this community is not to be underestimated, neither is the power of the athlete as it influences in the marketing campaign.

Hello Unofficial Partner,

Steve Martin, MSQ Sport and Entertainment:

it's Steve Martin here. Founding partner of MSQ Sport and Entertainment, and my big bet for 2025 in the area of brands, and I'm going to talk about brands rather than specific sponsorship, is you're going to see brands behaving in a very big way, they're going to be putting very big bets on, and The campaigns that they create will be big brand led campaigns rather than product led campaigns. And I'm talking about the learnings from Nike falling through the floor in their share value because they've not acted like that and Adidas going the other way, creating big brand bets across the year. I think you're going to see more of that and you're going to see sponsors behaving like that around their campaigns as opposed to, you know, Always being on social and always being around digital marketing. I think we're going back to seeing a rise again and above the line and big TV spots almost going full circle again. So that's my prediction and the second prediction in that brand space and particularly in the sports brand space, I think you're going to see some consolidation. There's a lot of big brands making a lot of money. There's some real rising stars like On, Running and Hoka who are doing wonderful things at the moment in terms of their growth and moving with the times with a lot more room to breathe, um, as well. And I suspect that some of the other big guys will come in and try and consolidate in that position. I don't know it, but it's a

prediction. I'd love to

Kieran Maguire, Football Finance Expert:

say

that the

Kieran Maguire, Football Finance Expert:

world of football finance was going to be Quiet in 2025, but I suspect the opposite will be the case. What's going to be overhanging everything will be the commission judgment relating to Manchester City and the 130 charges against the club by the Premier League. If the Premier League is successful, Realistically, I think the only option for the Commission would be to give a huge point seduction which will effectively relegate the club from the Premier League. Can't see City falling down through the divisions given that the Premier League and the EFL are independent entities, but even so it would be fairly, fairly big issue. If Manchester City are found guilty, then. It's effectively corporate fraud instigated by the upper echelons of the club and under those circumstances from a governance point of view it's impossible to see how the board could survive in their present roles so mass resignations would be the outcome. If Manchester City successfully defend their position then the position of the higher executives at the Premier League would be called into question. Because you'll be looking at legal costs running into certainly high tens of millions of pounds, potentially over a hundred million pounds for both parties. Those costs will have to be borne by the member clubs of the Premier League and it would look as if it was some sort of petty vendetta given that there are such poor relations between City and some of the other clubs. In the competition, um, relations will be very frosty. I think Richard Master's role would then be called into question. Um, and again, from a governance point of view, we could be looking at,

changes at the top.

Beth Barrett-Wild, ECB:

Hello Unofficial Partner, I'm Beth Barrett Wild, Director of the Women's Professional Game at the England and Wales Cricket Board. My big bet for 2025 in the women's sport industry is that we could see our first female English cricketer earning close to a million pounds in the calendar year. This is based on her possible combined earning opportunities through salary payments, via recent increases to England Women's Central Contract and international match fees. The rising value of domestic franchise contracts in particular across the big three of the hundred, the Women's Premier League in India and the Women's Big Bash League in Australia. And her chance to have a massive payday at the ICC Women's 50 Over World Cup in India in September following the International Cricket Council's announcement at the end of last year about the equalization of prize money across all men's and women's global events moving forwards. Alongside trends around increasing levels of personal brand and sponsorship deals, all of this equates to the 1 million pound threshold potentially being hit by a female cricketer in this country in the next 12 months.

Jenny Mitton, M&CSaatchi Sport and Entertainment:

Hello Unofficial Partner, I'm Jenny Mitten of MSC Saatchi Sport and Entertainment. My big bet for 2025 is that the Women's Rugby World Cup in England will eclipse the men's lines this summer. Of course, we have all the practical reasons why this will happen, the time difference, lines behind a paywall versus the Women's World Cup on free to air, the fact the Women's World Cup is a home tournament. However, for me, the main difference is the fact the Women's Rugby World Cup provides a taste of the future of the game. Not the past. It's set to be a cultural moment that will trigger a bigger movement in women's rugby in the UK. My overreach prediction is that baller league will become a top three Gen Z sport in the UK in its first year. It's got all the key ingredients that traditional sports fans bulk at, but Gen Zs can't seem to get enough of. I'm talking fast paced format, YouTube stars, personality before, athletic ability behind the scenes, and that sort of magic element of Dugout. Retired players or semi pros having the opportunity to say, I could actually make the squad. Happy New

Jo Redfern, Youth Media Consultant:

Year to all Unofficial Partner listeners. My name's Jo Redfern. I'm an independent media consultant, uh, with a specialism in youth media. And my prediction for streaming in 2025 is that we're going to see a lot more of those YouTuber, influencer, live sporting events and matchups. Whether you enjoyed Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson or not, I know it was very controversial. There's no getting away from the fact that it brought Netflix a maximum of 65 million concurrent streams during the event, I believe. So I think Those are numbers that streamers are gonna want, so they will lean into those much more heavily this year. We've also got Netflix, who are deepening their partnership with the Sidemen, group of UK creators, who have also sold out Wembley in March for their, the third version of their charity football match. I think this is going to be something that we will see much more of in 2025. My overreach prediction, uh, and it's one that comes from gaming. If any of you know me, you know I speak a lot about Roblox. And my overreach prediction for this year would be that we will see a new sporting format emerge from that as a gaming platform. There are 90 million sporting formats. Daily users that play games on the platform and a lot of them are playing sport games, but they're mashing games up. They're putting themes on them. There's a very popular anime themed football, soccer game on there at the moment. So I see no reason that a new sport format could evolve from a gaming platform and scale to such an extent that it hops off the platform and starts being played in number, by people in real life. So, mass participation of an evolved sporting format that hops off a gaming platform such as Roblox would be my overreach prediction for 2025. But, in the meantime, Happy New Year, hope this year is great, uh, and successful for everyone and, and, uh, keep listening to the Unofficial Partner podcast.

Simon Heap, Rugged Interactive:

Hello Unofficial Partner, it's Simon from Rugged Interactive. My big bet for 25 is that sport begins to lean heavily on fun to engage kids and widen the constituency of users. In my business, which uses tech, interactivity and gamification to engage kids and motivate them to be more active, it's clear that without fun, it's so much harder to bring new people into games. My stretch goal for 25 is to use that knowledge of play and fun to boost physical literacy in schools. and begin to create the next generation of active adults. Have a great year! Happy

Nic Coward, Portas Consulting/Sportable:

New Year, Richard. Nick Coward here of Portas Consulting and Sportable. 2025, in addition to being a very big year for both of those businesses, is going to be another Major step forward for the Indian sports market. Not yet at the number one levels of the U. S. Now with added Olympics, World Cups, sports betting, women's sport, and other massive positives. Or the breathtaking progress of Saudi Arabia. But a year of significant change, and I think there's Things pointing to a big leap for the Indian sports market and the one I highlight in particular is that we now have GeoStar the pre eminent sports broadcaster under the Leadership of the peerless Uday Shankar again in combination with the might and drive of the Ambani family and all that that brings Watch this space plus of course Olympic bid as well as lots going on in cricket and other sports longer term prediction In 2035, I think there's a really good chance that people will be looking back at 2025, FIFA Club World Cup in particular as a moment, as the year in which the world order of club football changed fundamentally. Lots going on in England and across Europe, through the Middle East, to Australia, South America, Brazil in particular, and of course in the US, bringing it back there together with Mexico. Major dynamics, major forces in play. I think an unstoppable momentum to seriously change club football across the world. Um, it'll be very different as to how we see it now. Hi, I'm

Siddharth Raman, Sportz Interactive:

Siddharth Raman from Sports Interactive. My prediction for 2025 is that sports organizations like leagues, franchises, teams, I'm going to start thinking more and more like digital platforms. Why do I say that? Because when it comes to revenue streams for sports organizations, media rights and sponsorship have reached a certain degree of saturation. There's only so much inventory you'll be able to sell. Digital is where the next leap of commercialization is going to happen. You're going to start small in 2025, but it's going to lay the building blocks going into 26 and 27. But sports organizations need to start making the move now. And that's what you're going to see a lot of in 2025. What does that mean? more investments, and I'm carefully choosing the word investments and not costs, but more investments in the right kind of digital assets, whether that's websites, mobile apps, games, OTT platform, the right kind of partnerships to be able to build the foundation to have new revenue streams, whether that's In, uh, digital monetization through digital specific sponsorship, incremental value from existing partners or something as simple as director fan and growing that channel. And in the long run, also building enterprise value for your organization on the back of understanding your own customers better, and having meaningful enough conversation with potential suitors like private equity firms and, and a financial. Our financial powerhouses. Hi Unofficial Partner,

Maggie Murphy, Expected Goals:

this is Maggie Murphy, co host of the Expected Goals podcast that looks into the business side of women's football and therefore it might surprise you that I think that for 2025 it's going to be rugby that captures the hearts and minds and the floating fans in the women's sports space. I think that um, Based on an increasing sense of entitlement and distorted expectations and short memories, a lot of fans will think that anything less than a win for the England Lionesses at the Euros this summer means that it's a failure. I think that will also trickle into some of the media commentary and a lot of crisis thinking around it and will basically prove a bit of a dampener, um, as I don't think they're going to retain their crown. And that will be just in time for women's rugby to smash and grab onto the scene. They've got the World Cup, hosted in England, hosted at home, and they've already been doing loads of great planning and marketing, and they've got some brilliant personalities. Key to that will be legacy planning, and if clubs have been prepared, as it looks like Bristol Bears has been, then I think that will prove really good for women's rugby to smash itself onto the stage and capture some of those floating football fans.

Andrew Umbers, Oakwell Sports:

This is Andrew Umbers. Managing Partner at Oakwell Sports. My two bets for 2025 are, firstly, the consolidation across live sports and news programming, across content producers, both in short and long form, with branded content, social and digital, and the pivot to music, culture and politics, growing non live and growing through streaming and through networks. Oakwell Sports. It will involve the creation of super agencies that includes the sports marketing agencies who will be part of this consolidation using data driven strategies across social media and broadcast channels, but they'll need the live sports and news programming, branding content, social and digital. The second, um, bet that I have is as an extension of the. sports revenues and earnings as being seen as investment grade. We'll see, um, and the developments in the reach out and the better understanding of fandom and the consumer. We'll see companies across the media, music, entertainment and high tech, industries, buying franchises, sports franchises in football, cricket, basketball, tennis, Rugby, Paddle, other big tier 1 and tier 2 sports.

Professor Simon Chadwick :

Hey Richard, Happy New Year. The country to watch is Morocco. In 2025, it will host the first of its five contracted women's under 17 FIFA World Cups, which will run to 2029. At the end of the year, Morocco will then host the African Cup of Nations. And we've also got the World Football Summit heading there first week of April, which coincides in Rabat with the staging of the opening of African Basketball's Champions League. In the meantime, you've also got construction of the world's biggest football stadium taking place at a location between Casablanca and Rabat. And what we are going to see is the Moroccan government making moves on FIFA to try and wrestle the 2030 FIFA World Cup final away from Madrid and the Bernabeu. So look out for Morocco.

Andy Meikle, Recast:

Hi Richard, Andy Meikle, Founder and CEO of Recast here. And my predictions for 2025, uh, state in the obvious for anybody who follows me on LinkedIn. Um, I believe that this year we're going to see more flexible monetization models adopted by rights owners. Um, giving access to fans on a Micro transactional basis as well as trying to monetize their content through advertising and offering, um, a subscription or bundled offering as well. And so, I think we'll see flexibility, um, unlocking much more revenue and scale for the rights owners, um, through, uh, through more affordable access for fans. And my second prediction for 2025, I think we'll really start seeing those rights owners leveraging the reach and power of the, the influence of the, uh, of the athletes. And either promoting content to drive audiences back into rights on their own websites and or live streaming themselves and monetizing that and getting an instant share of the transaction themselves as well. So those are my two predictions for 2025. Thanks.

Richard Johnson, Sports3 Group:

Hello, Unofficial Partner. I'm Richard Johnson of Sports 3 Group. My big bet for 2025 in sports marketing is we will see more and more creator. athletes. I don't think this is a particularly new thing, but I think the past few years have probably shown one thing is that not many athletes actually create content. They curate more content. I think we're going to start seeing the tide shift here because of the success of the likes of Ilona Meyer. Bryson DeChambeau, Devin Booker, who've all shown that actually creating, um, original formats and content that's compelling, that's authentic, that's stuff that fans actually want to watch and connect with, can create absolutely huge leverage and huge growth. and I think this is going to be pushed a lot by rights holders, rights holders themselves, because ultimately it can draw huge attention to the, to the sports, that they're in. I'd take Ilona Meyer or Caitlin Clark being great examples of that. And my overreach prediction for 2025 is really around, formats. And the fact that we're seeing a lot of different challenge formats, um, coming through. So. The likes of TGL, for example, just recently launched. Obviously, you've got, Baller League, um, launching in the UK. The likes of Kings League. It's obviously something that's on the mind of, um, of a lot of, um, sports and major rights holders and sports organizations. Um, but I think that we will see more of these challenger formats, um, particularly fixed location challenger formats. We'll be trying to replicate a lot of the lessons from one of the poster, unexpected poster childs of the space, which is Darts. Um, I think we will see more and more, um, of these challenger sports try and replicate the growth of darts that's been experienced here in the UK as not just a cultural phenomenon but also a real experience led event that cuts through when it comes to social and content and a I want to be there type experience. And I can see a lot of sports Um, challenge, particular challenge of sports, not just here in the UK, Europe, but over the pond in America, actually going, is there lessons here that we can learn from darts? You know, it is the, if you take darts and the PDC itself, it's the biggest earner, more than boxing for matchroom sports. And that's just I, you know, European wide level, they haven't even cracked the States. So, um, which I think will be coming soon, but, um, I think ultimately a lot of sports should, and will be looking at darts to go, how do we create that fast paced, social first, cultural excitement, um, around sporting formats, particularly fixed locations, sporting formats.

Thanks. Okay. So that was Richard Johnson at the end there. Good point about darts and there's a phrase in there that I thought I would steal, which is. Fixed location. Challenger format.. Like the TGL nice. And the influence of dance continues. Which backs up my pet theory, which is darts and WWE are the two most influential sports properties of the last 20 years. Discuss. And show your working. That is about it. There's a few things I think we'll miss out there. I would go for. The return or the comeback of crypto sponsorship and how the sports industry deals with that. You've got a lot of people who need money desperately and or think they need money desperately or want to give. Their players more money and we'll ingest. You see how football and other sports deal with. What might be a new opportunity. As Bitcoin returns and crypto and everything that goes with it. That's one point there's another bit, which I think we missed out, or there was a few mentions there of the women's rugby world cup. Coming up in the UK, obviously this summer. And the. Return of the lionesses to. The main stage in the euros. and I thought Maggie Murphy's point was interesting if the lionesses don't win or are perceived to underperform and The. Popularity Of the home nations, women's rugby teams fairs in terms of support And the commercialization of that sport, which is obviously as a business podcast. Very important. There's also a downside. There's going to be something about auntie woke backlash. I think the rise of Trump and Musk and. Populism is going to filter into the conversation. You can feel it already. And I think women's sport was going to bear the brunt of that. Not fairly and needs to be protected. I also will be keeping an eye on brand purpose and companies who. Well, once very keen to associate themselves with powerful social messaging. And let's see if they keep that up or they go quiet in the face of what we think. We'll be. Quite a considerable attempt as people. As I say, feel they have some moral license to, uh, be twats. Let's put it that way. Anyway, that's where I stand, but we'll see, we'll play it out. We'll follow it as we go through. I hope I'm wrong. I don't want to leave on a I'll think of a good one. Uh, balloons, there'll be more fireworks. Lots of good things happening this year. I'm sure I don't want to leave you on a downer. But see you next time. We've got a whole load of podcasts coming out for 2025, as you might expect. If you don't subscribe to the newsletter, get that. There's going to be changes a foot there too. In the meantime, I'm Richard Gillis. thanks for listening to the Unofficial Partner podcast.