Challenge
The Sports Consultancy provide a comprehensive advisory service for all aspects of bidding for, planning and delivering major international sporting events.
Their clients include governments, national governing bodies of sport and host cities. Their sponsorship division helps rights holders maximise revenues and commercial and marketing benefits from brand sponsorship. This includes sponsorship strategy, asset and rights auditing, rights structuring and sponsorship architecture.
We were flattered, therefore, when we were asked to work closely with them to help grow their in-house capability in a number of areas. Including three key appointments – Senior Consultant, Partnerships Manager and Senior Business Development Manager.
Solution
Crucial to talent identification for The Sports Consultancy is a thorough appreciation of the type of person and experience that fits their organisation. Our Research team spent time with the company to build profiles and analyse where high performers internally have come from. We conducted a full market map, both in terms of career and academic experience. Once we were able to overlay this key information, we started to identify and approach highly talented individuals. Finding people who not only matched this profile but could bring a new level of skills and experience to the role.
Result
The Senior Consultant role demanded someone to help rights holders maximise their value proposition and efficiently structure their sponsorship programmes. Our in-depth search found someone who was classically trained in FMCG and worked for the Paralympics during London 2012, before moving to The Football League as part of a team delivering Sky Bet as title sponsor. When we approached them they were working with Baku, Azerbaijan, helping deliver the commercial programme for the inaugural European Games.
The Partnerships Manager role is all about developing and growing sponsorship portfolios and bringing major brands to rights holders. We found an ideal match with four years experience with the organising committee for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. As well as managing sales of multi-venue hospitality programmes, they had worked closely with a commercial team to onboard and deliver rights programmes for Games sponsors.
At a critical time when The Sports Consultancy was launching an innovative new data and insights product to sports rights holders, we were tasked with identifying a Senior Business Development Manager to lead this exciting project. Following an intensive search, we successfully headhunted a high-calibre individual. This individual had a wealth of experience selling predictive data insights and analytic solutions into global markets.
We have very specific demands but they always deliver. They know the consultancy world and have given us some of our best people.
Managing Director
