Beyond the Noise - the PRWeek podcast

The Line - PRWeek's sports podcast - Episode 1: How big player transfers became a marketing story Hosted by Danny Rogers and Richard Gillis With special guests: Amanda Docherty, Director of Dial Square and former head of comms at Arsenal Football Club and the FA Jim Dowling, Managing Director of Cake, the Havas sport and entertainment agency Tariq Panja, The New York Times journalist and author of Football's Secret Trade The Line is supported by Cake. This week's topic: How big player transfers became a marketing story Premier League clubs spent over £1.5bn in the summer transfer window as across Europe, the market for football talent skyrocketed. Neymar went from Barcelona to PSG for a record €222m fee and the Spanish club then chased and failed to lure Liverpool’s Coutinho for not much less. Spurs fans chuckled as Man City paid over £50million for their full back Kyle Walker and Chelsea manager Antonio Conte tore his new hair out as the Blues missed his targets. Meanwhile, journeyman defender Jonny Evans’ became one of the most sought after players in the Premier League, and nobody quite knew why. But beneath the headline numbers, the football’s transfer economy is a story about media, marketing and the future of the communications industry. How have social media platforms changed how football communicates? What is the potential and the limits of player brand power? Are the lines between sponsor and rights holder still relevant? And what do big brands want from players, teams, leagues and the game of football itself? Danny Rogers and Richard Gillis pose these and many more questions to an invited group of experts on The Line, the first PRWeek sports podcast, available for download.

Hosted by PRWeek editor-in-chief Danny Rogers and author and journalist Richard Gillis, The Line asks "do tribes scale?" as the NFL returns to London this weekend. With special guests: Steve Martin, CEO of M&C Saatchi Sport and Entertainment Garry Cook, former CEO of Manchester City and chief global brand officer for UFC Nicky Horne, former Channel 4 American football presenter and all-round broadcast legend The NFL comes to London again this weekend when the Baltimore Ravens take on the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley. Meanwhile, the big Premier League teams are becoming global brands and rugby's professional clubs are pushing hard to build support in the USA. The commercial benefits to international growth are obvious. But beyond the money men, does anyone really care? What are the comms and marketing challenges underpinning sport’s global ambitions? What’s the difference between selling a one-off event and building regular support for a new club or franchise in London? Danny Rogers and Richard Gillis will be posing these and many more questions to an invited group of experts on The Line, the PRWeek's sport podcast, available for download now. The Line is supported by Cake.

Hosted by PRWeek editor-in-chief Danny Rogers and author and journalist Richard Gillis, episode three of The Line discusses Ben Stokes' off-field boxing career and what it's like when a client is in the eye of a PR storm. Sex, violence, booze and drugs. And that's just before we talk about brown envelopes full of cash and dawn raids in Swiss hotels. Sometimes it feels like sport lunges from one big PR crisis to the next, keeping a whole specialist comms industry busy. Ben Stokes' infamous right hook, Wayne Rooney's drink-and-drive escapades, Joey Barton's betting habit and the end of the Tiger Woods brand via a car crash with a fire hydrant: the list of sports crises is a long one, moving from personal disasters through to the big corporate scandals of recent years, involving Fifa's financial shenanigans, and the money and doping problems that have dogged sports such as cycling and athletics. Communications expert and former News of the World editor Phil Hall has witnessed, exposed and advised on many comms crises first hand. In this episode of The Line, we talk about what it's like when a client is in the eye of the storm. We look at the nature of a scandal, the little moments that define a story and celebrity news management in the age of Twitter. "I used to have a checklist of the dos and don'ts of crisis management", says Hall. "But I chucked it in the bin. Every case is different." Danny Rogers and Richard Gillis will be mulling over this and much more with Hall on The Line, PRWeek's sport podcast, available for download now.

Hosted by PRWeek editor-in-chief Danny Rogers and author and journalist Richard Gillis, episode four of The Line lifts the lid on the phenomenon that is Arsenal Fan TV and discusses how fan-based influencers in sport are changing the game. Special guest, Arsenal Fan TV founder Robbie Lyall, explains how the YouTube channel – which now boasts more than 350,000 subscribers began and what has made it so popular. Should we be treating it as an equal to ‘traditional media’? And what is the future for the ever-growing market of fan channels? Danny Rogers and Richard Gillis will be mulling over this and much more with Hall on The Line, PRWeek's sport podcast, available for download now.

With a few high-profile exceptions, sport sponsorship has long felt like a men-only club. Between 0.5% & 3% of event sponsorship goes to women sport, yet the market for women's professional sport is growing fast, with a higher media profile than ever before. London 2012 created a generation of brilliant new female stars who were embraced by an enthusiastic public. Strong, sexy & smart, women athletes are telling a whole new sports story – so where are the brands? With the assistance of two of the sponsorship world’s most insightful thinkers, Episode 5 of The Line looks at the relationship between sport & big business, to assess how the sponsorship market is responding to rapid change in how we watch & engage with sport. "It’s like sport has had some kind of epiphany," mocks Sally Hancock, managing partner of Y-Sport & chair of Women in Sport. "They suddenly realise they have female customers. Who knew?" Danny Rogers and Richard Gillis will be mulling over this & much more with Hancock and rormer CEO of Synergy Sponsorship Tim Crow on The Line, PRWeek's sport podcast, available for download now.

Brian Moore has made the transition from player to pundit look deceptively easy. The former England rugby star is today one of the most distinctive & authoritative voices in sports broadcasting & news media, working for the BBC & Daily Telegraph & establishing his own rugby podcast Full Contact, which is a cult hit among sports fans of all ages. In the latest episode of The Line, Moore talks to The Line’s regular host Richard Gillis about the sport’s relationship with the media, the rise of the pundit class and the cult of the super coach. Featuring one tale of sponsorship in rugby's amateur era involving ill-fitting shorts and a last gasp run to a Richmond sports store on the morning of the 1991 World Cup final. Moore also discusses the marketing challenges facing today’s generation of rugby stars and the role PR management played in the career of Danny Cipriani, the great lost talent of English rugby. Throughout this exclusive one-to-one encounter, Moore’s trademark bite & wit are never far below the surface. The only time he sounds uncomfortable is when asked whether he considers himself a brand (spoiler: he doesn’t, but he is).

What’s the point of a sports agency? Big Sport sits at the epicentre of content, media & technology, offering fame & engagement to the right brands with the right strategy. But get it wrong & sponsors face the backlash of fans & viewers alike, so the value of good advice comes at a premium. This week, The Line tackles the big questions facing the agency sector, which has evolved from its corner in the comms industry to offer a wide range of services for clients, from brands & media, to rights holders & social platforms. Two leading sports strategists, Henry Chappell & Rupert Pratt, talk about the future of the agency sector, from small specialist shops to the role sport plays in the major marketing networks. We talk content, Facebook, Intellectual Property & the soap opera that is Formula One.

Pochettino, Neymar and the Spurs Jinx Sunday Times best-selling author, journalist & Sky Sports analyst Guillem Ballague talks to Richard Gillis about Brave New World, his new biography of Spurs' highly rated young manager Mauricio Pochettino, the most talked-about sports book of the year. It’s a rare glimpse inside football’s inner sanctum and one which has proved highly controversial: the book was blamed for Spurs dip in form, leading to frenzied - and very valuable - coverage in The Sun and the Daily Mail, and even analysis on Match of the Day. We talk about the role played by the comms industry in the memes and tropes of football media coverage and whether the cult of the football manager is a particularly British trait. Guillem is joined around the podcast table by La Liga global delegate Keegan Pierce, who is tasked with promoting Spanish football to the world. The conversation roams from the post-Messi and Ronaldo era, the strength of the Spanish club game and the brand impact of the Neymar transfer, which saw the most expensive player in the world move from Barcelona to Paris St Germain last summer.

In the new episode of The Line, Richard Gillis & Danny Rogers talk to Jermaine Jenas, the former England & Premier League star who is one of the rising stars of sports broadcasting. The conversation starts in 2006 in Baden Baden, at the England team's during the ill-fated Fifa World Cup campaign, which won more headlines for WAGs, Beckham-mania and tabloid stings than football matches. This summer, Jenas is part of the BBC's team in Russia for the 2018 version. We discuss whether journalists should be patriotic when it comes to covering England matches, whether football is ready for its first gay superstar and what really happens behind the scenes at Match of the Day.