Unofficial Partner

Did you just feel that? It was jeopardy

Today's podcast is about how product innovation has changed cricket's audience and the problems that has created for a game wedded to a 20th century economic model.

'You watching this?'

There’s been an unusual feel to the current ICC T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka, one you don't often get during the early rounds of a major global sports event: Uncertainty.

England felt it against Nepal in their first game. ‘You watching this?’ was the gist on WhatsApp last week. In Colombo, Pakistan were 119 for seven in the 18th over, being dragged to the edge

Idea dump

Data

The tyranny of targets - how we've allowed quantifiable metrics to seep in to every aspect of our life, and the consequences of that. Source: The Score by C Thi Nguyen. Builds on Charles Goodhart of 'Goodhart rule' fame, that suggests metrics become corrupted when 'pressed in to service' as targets. The problem is not just that we contort our behaviour a bureaucratic incentive, it's that we cease to realise that we're contorting our behaviour at all. All metrics are reductive by design and the simplicity changes how we judge what matters and what can be cast aside. The outcome

Sent by Coventry

Communications

Almost a good headline.

The IOC boss throws her comms team under the bus. Tough day for James Pearce, the former BBC reporter who now heads up Olympic PR.

@dwnews
IOC President Kirsty Coventry has lashed out at her PR team during a press conference about not being properly informed about a series of controversial topics. Coventry expressed her frustration after being questioned about Gianni Infantino's involvement with Donald Trump's Board of Peace, Germany's reluctance to host the 2036 Olympic games and a New York Times story on Russian doping.
♬ Originalton - DW News - DW News

Questions arising:

The

🧵 OpenAI's ad pivot

ChatUP

You'll have seen the Anthropic Super Bowl ad.

I did a quick data scrape of this FT article.

Main bits:
'I would just disclose, as a personal bias, that I hate ads, they would be like a last resort for us as a business model. Advertising had its place as a way for the early internet to make money...'but i think they sort of somewhat fundamentally misalign a user's incentives with the company providing the service'

That was Sam Altman in 2024.

OpenAI has asked advertisers to commit an initial £200k in order to appear in ChatGPT results. The

🤖 Unofficial Briefing Note: Barney Francis

🤖 These notes are AI generated (What does this mean?).

Podcast: Unofficial Partner Guest: Barney Francis, IMG (formerly Head of Sky Sports)

Summary

Barney Francis offers an insider's view of the sports media economy, drawing on his experience running Sky Sports and now leading IMG's production business. The conversation spans new sports formats, piracy, streaming disruption, rights economics, the creation of The Hundred, the Premier League's move to in-house production, and the structural challenges facing rugby in the UK. A consistent thread throughout: the consumer should be at the heart of every decision, and the fundamentals of premium

Football creator family tree

The Scroll

Nice post on the connections beneath the football banter industrial complex, as I'm now calling it.

@barnabyslater
An origin story linking Goldbridge to True Geordie and Steven Bartlett?! 🍿 #theclub #thekickoff #thetruegeordie #markgoldbridge #theunitedstand
♬ Looming - Perfect, so dystopian

Did you just feel that? It was jeopardy

Idea dump

Sent by Coventry

🧵 OpenAI's ad pivot

🤖 Unofficial Briefing Note: Barney Francis

Summary

Football creator family tree

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