How to get ahead in sports.

“How do I get into sports?”

We are all getting asked that one these days. So many want to break into our industry, or find a different job within it. Others are just scared about what could happen to them, mid-career, and need to talk.

Today’s Sunday Column is an apology to all those who have reached out to ask for some advice or mentoring. People just can’t reply to everyone, and this is some kind of attempt, in my case, at a batch-reply.

The sport’s business is part of the creative sectors of “special” products that sell passion and emotion. It operates with different rules to the mainstream corporate world, and over 30 years I’ve collected a handful of axioms that are useful in general, but especially within this industry.

 

1) Play the player, not the game.

The greatest asset Silvio Berlusconi ever had was to project himself very differently depending on his audience in that moment. He was convex when faced with concave, and vice versa.

Who do you have in front of you? Work that out, and present a mirror image back to them. People want to hire, be around, and do business with, others they think as similar to themselves.

It’s the rather obvious, but real, Principle of Likeability.

Think of yourself and your personality as a graphic equaliser, with slight adjustments to each component possible every time. This flexibility may be criticised as being “all things to all men”, so don’t exaggerate. But do slide those knobs up and down, as needed.

In the creative industries, more than say in the engineering or manufacturing sectors, you will need to do this more, as the variety of character you meet is wider, and they are certainly more eclectic.

Sport has always been a pally intermediary business, mainly populated by operators who are objectively rather average, likely not having wide corporate experience, or honed vertical skills. Think about why and it’s not even anyone’s fault. It’s just a fact.

They were rules and regulations people, like the famous club secretary, an ex-player, a willing overly-pedantic amateur. They are ex sponsorship and perimeter board salesmen, rights brokers (when that was a thing),  or even agents.

They, likely, won’t have a Master in FMCG Strategic Marketing for the Modern Digital World.

So, to be liked and desired by these people, you would do well not to scare them too much.

Few people warm easily to “new”, and fewer still like “change/progress” thrown in their face as absolutely necessary.

One of the clear and undeniable trends in sport has been the evolution from a fuzzy “relationship” approach, to a request for harder more scientific validation data. This is as true in player recruitment and tactics, as it is in sponsorship and performance marketing, and is an animated debate in our industry that never ends. Fact is you need both soft and hard skills, as long as they are excellent.

I like to call this evolution more simply as a raising of the quality bar. Sport’s love of “gut feel” as a decision-making process is no longer enough, but the incumbents still like to tell you that it’s the secret sauce. Because that’s all they’ve got to offer. Only they can “see” a player straight away.

So if you are an A operator, with serious knowledge and skills, this will present you with a conundrum in trying to enter our industry. Forgive the harsh pithiness, but you will need to dumb down a bit, because As hire A+s; whereas Bs hire Cs and Ds.

This is the real world. So, play smart. Play the player.

 

Jobs here, dropping real truth bombs, is really not so different to what Roy Keane is always trying to articulate. The ex United man was undoubtedly an A player, and today his whole pundit shtick can be well described as angry intolerance of Bs and Cs.

For him it’s a form of cheating.

We need to get the bluffers out of this club.

Some readers may lament that we need to get the bluffers out of the sportsbiz industry in general. Probably. But the fact is they will exist for a while yet.

Events at United have proven Keane absolutely correct but It should be noted that his truculent inflexibility has failed him in management. He just can’t ever accept lower standards, or to fake it for political or diplomatic reasons. Souness said much the same when retiring from the game; he didn’t have the patience to hand-hold the less-than-elite.

Never lose sight of your objective. There is no success in feeling superior and not getting the job, or winning the deal.

Steve Jobs tells us that teams of A+ people self-police and demand standards, but conversely organisations not blessed with these elites types find a different way to survive. They tend to keep serious quality at a distance, as the juxtaposition is too uncomfortable for them.

Let that sink in.

Sport, for the reasons above, is not short of the Bs, Cs, and Ds, and they won’t willingly hire you if you are an A+. The jolly G&T rugger bugger who is good in the bar after midnight is not going to bring you into his cosy club just because you understand deep-learning and data lakes. 

Play the player in front of you. Be smart and shrewd. That’s the greatest management skill of all.

Let’s be clear, sport isn’t Apple under Steve Jobs, and this is exacerbated even more by its love of committee structures and impossible governance. These places are best described as the sanctuary of the timid and harmless; a nice place to hide in a banal talking shop, creating an inevitable breeding ground of compromise, all with no transparency and accountability. 

Nota bene: Jobs had zero committees. No coincidence.

If you want to hire great people…

All this is exactly where we are as an industry, and explains the biggest challenge for sport in Europe.  And it’s the same hurdle for anyone wanting to work in it, with ambition. There aren’t enough of what Jobs calls “great people”, so my advice, the first axiom, needs to be summarised like this:

Learn to fake being mediocre if needed.

If, instead, you bring all your talent into the interview room, and have a hard opinion, you will likely scare them. Assess well the job/deal you want, and work out who will be deciding if you get it. Do full research on that person and their career. If it’s a top performer, an A person, then bring all your studies, skills and ability into the meeting. Dazzle. But if it’s one of Keane’s bluffers, stealing a wage, then I can recommend flattery as an alternative.

 

2) Elegant sycophancy.

Under-powered people are always insecure. Deep down they know the truth, and whatever façade they have used in their lives hides the reality that there will be some element of Imposter’s Syndrome. Sport is well populated by these people.

They will, therefore, always love external praise and validation, and you should give it to them. All humans, with some exceptions, love to have their ego stroked, and get their dopamine fix. The best “sycophants” stroke it really well, with intelligence. They will, for example, reach out in the tough moments, offering private sympathy, because that’s when the room is less packed with other suitors, and when the target is feeling most vulnerable.

Celebrate all these wonderful leaders at their conferences, on LinkedIn, at your interview, over a Prosecco. Tell them how much you admire them, what a great deal they’ve just managed to sign, how you looked up to them as players.

Like in any talent, honourable or less so, it takes skill to do it well. With class and credibility.

We have some choice sycophants operating in sport; truly world-class operators, and they (we) all know who they are. But it absolutely works. Kudos to them. They have had better careers than you or me in the main. 

Compliments and encouragement are a key part of man management, but it’s usually most elegant and efficient when being pushed down the way, to subordinates. In the other direction, it can be false and ugly. Don’t exaggerate or you’ll end up in Dante Alighieri‘s Inferno.

The “Sommo Poeta” puts these types of people in the eighth circle of his Inferno, placed even worse than the murderers. An explanation is here, I thoroughly recommend this article. 

So are we really just an industry of underwhelming mediocre flatterers?

This is, of course, a generalisation for effect, but, my God, there are so many datapoints around us to suggest we are guilty as charged. And that is key if you really do want to make your way in our industry.

The leadership of golf has, for example, absolutely no mitigating factors to its mediocrity. We have a European Tour turning itself into a pathway league of irrelevance, and the PGA is…

…well, let’s leave that to Victor.

The PGA has been torn apart by a deficit of vision and leadership. So much so that it would be so ironic if McIlroy would indeed go to LIV. He won’t, but Rahm was also equally vehement in denial. Who knows?

The real point is that the PGA has just been so poor, paying its leader $20m each year to preside over a collapse into fratricide. One even doubts if an eventual defection of Rory would be a resignation event for the CEO: if he is still there today, after his merger with the people he accused of insulting 9/11 families, there is clearly no shame in the governance of the Tour.

But does all that make Jay Monahan a C or a D? Not necessarily. It just means he’s a bad man.

To succeed in the sportsbiz, the main talent you need is to work out if the person in front of you is a lucky plodder, a narcissistic sociopath, a ruthless assassin, or Captain Kirk. And then, play that player.

 

3) Hustle, hustle, hustle.

The jobs aren’t going to come to you. Not in this sexy sector. You need to make it happen. Build your brand.

People will always notice who can be relied on to have done the hard yards in prep, to deliver on tasks, and all that goes a long long way. Football has the best example.

Gianni Infantino, is a very capable operator. He is neither a genius nor a C or D, but he has certainly overachieved. He was (and is) a master flatterer.

I knew him briefly when he was a very personable and available manager at the Swiss League. At European Leagues meetings, he wasn’t a big beast in the room, but he worked it superbly, offering his league to do so much of the grunt research and communication for the Leagues. He made friends and earned respect with those who could progress his career. He then joined UEFA in a mid-manager role and always made himself visible and available. Despite he and I being peers and colleagues, when I sat on the Professional Football Committee he treated me like the Aga Khan. Nothing too much trouble. His reverence was a bit cringe tbh, but I’m sure it worked in spades with others.

A few years later, my colleague and frenemy at the Scottish FA, David Taylor, was chosen by Michel Platini as his CEO at UEFA. A huge job. He struggled there politically, as David was a good man thrown into a viper’s nest, and was moved sideways into the separate commercial arm of UEFA, and then evermore marginalised. I went to see him in those days, and over a (very) quiet dinner in Nyon, I asked for the story.

Infantino, at this point, had risen to take David’s old job of UEFA CEO! Go figure, as the Americans would say.

How did Gianni do that? He wasn’t the obvious next choice. He came from nowhere.

I listed the names of others at UEFA who should have got that job. David explained…

Gianni works very very hard, and makes himself indispensable to those in power. He flatters very well and is the go-to guy who will read all those tenders and committee docs, and be there 24/7. 

This is how you get ahead. Usefulness and reverence to power. With hustle and drive.

David Taylor keeled over on a football pitch and died a short while after this meeting. Carpe Diem folks, coz you never know the minute.

 

4) It’s Politics. Read “The Prince” and “The Art of War“.

Gianni isn’t just a likeable delivery boy who gets shit done. How does he go from being Platini’s campaign manager for the FIFA presidency, to ending up getting elected himself? This is Frank Underwood stuff, Nicolò Machiavelli played to absolute perfection.

Sport is political war, make no mistake. Its democracy and governance is similar to trying to get elected as leader of the Conservative Party. You need to avoid slippery poles and to read early the winds of ambition. You will likely at some point need to hook your wagon to one horse or another, and backing the right one at the right time is crucial to your own promotion. The great political operators manage to even change horse, and jump successfully onto the winner’s bandwagon, seamlessly. These are outlier talents.

So we need to be all things to all men, sycophants, and lacking any consistent political conscience?

This is the Realpolitik I’m afraid.

 

5) Think Different. Less is Always More.

Better to be known for something small, but of quality, than one of the many interchangeable suppliers of “mediocre”.

Twin the Principle of Likeability with that of Scarcity.

Prefer “niche” to “ “low cost commodity” as a positioning, because AI will be brutal to the latter.

At very least you/niche will be more memorable.

The value of being unusual and different, being scarse, is poorly understood in general, but certainly in sport.

The really hard bit is to be the rebel, the misfit, the square peg in the round hole, and still get ahead in organisations who are de facto the exact opposite.

The answer is maybe to use your “difference” sparingly. Less is more.

Ferrari understands it perfectly. As does the NFL. But the Principle of Scarcity is maybe understood best by the Masters.

Nothing is like the back nine at Augusta on Sunday, and indeed the Georgia Major stands well above all the LIV PGA warfare, is not sullied by Jay Monahan, and lives by its own code and standards. It doesn’t sell its soul.

Don’t run, don’t wear garish sweatshirts for a few extra bucks, and don’t think about asking it to change its traditions.

Quality, quality, quality, above all.

Look here at how they approach the media and broadcast deals.

 

There is always such a premium on the alternative approach. The thinking differently. Especially if linked to intelligent risk-taking.

The importance of understanding risk in sport, finance, and life, is the core of Sport’s Perfect Storm and doesn’t need explanation today.

In Como this week I met, for the second time, Victoire Cogevina, the founder of Mercury 13, the new conglomerate investing solely in women’s football. She has just bought the team here. 

In London, the first time with her, I’d gone into the meeting with a “good luck with that” attitude. Not for long. She was not the culture warrior I thought she would be, and had a very clear and different vision for women’s sport. Her backstory is very Argentina “gaucho”, and she very much has that Cholo “eye of the tiger”.

Mercury 13 is really a branding vision, where her multi-club strategy has each team and location marketing to a different female audience. Exactly like an LVMH, a fashion house with different offerings. A Valentino handbag doesn’t have the same audience as a Stella McCartney.

The financial play is on increasing franchise values (she is getting them dirt cheap today) once she has built a serious loyal audience. It may or may not work (I am not involved, with no financial interest), but it’s credible and different, and she seems someone to back. A better use of capital than a minority stake in PSG, IMHO.

Here is her job description for CEO of Como Women, and even in this you can see a difference. She is setting out very clearly her non-negotiables, and expectations.

I read this and it reeks of “only A people should apply”.

And they should! This role, in this town, with that brief, in that group, is sensational. Check it out.

We need more of this in our industry. A clear vision and mission, and an honest assessment of the skills needed, compared to what is already in the building.

Victoire is someone to whom you should NOT dumb-down. Bring your A game with confidence.

Here is an interesting question: does my description here all count as deliberately elegant sycophancy for return? Work that one out and you’ll be on your way to getting ahead in sport.

 

6) Humility and not hubris.

 

In conclusion, our industry is about to undergo what is called a skills gap analysis (SGA).

It will face major challenges in the rest of this decade, and will need to have a really good look at itself.

If all of the sport industry, in Europe, had to re-apply for their current jobs, how many of the incumbents would even make the short-list? Not many. The skills required are much wider, and the level of excellence demanded has moved up significantly.

You too will need to have a cold assessment of where you sit in all that.

I, in my career, haven’t been good at Axiom 1,2,4. I’ve done ok at 3,5 and even 6 (on a good day). The point is, I have a clear view of my own skills gap analysis (SGA).

The real answer to getting ahead in sport is to ask yourself where your gaps are in axioms 1-6. And address those deficits.

Work hard, make yourself visible in hustle, try to think different from the pack to stand out, stay humble when you’ll want to brag, and just learn that business is all about humanity. Play the Player.

We, and all companies, need to do a regular SGA and ask, “Hey Kid, Hey Kid, how good are you really?”.