The glass of whisky that shaped an industry and other big ticket items from Leaders Meet: Innovation 2026

0:04James Emmett:Hello and welcome to Leaders Worth Knowing, the sports business podcast from us right here at Leaders in Sport. My name's James Emmett. I'm the editorial director here at Leaders and with me is dot, dot, dot. Content director David Cushnan. Hi, James. Hello, David. It sounds like we're, I don't know whether this will be audible on the edit, but it sounds like we're in a discotheque.

0:26David Cushnan:Yeah, we're having a great time, aren't we? We're having a groom. Coming to you from the disco. It will sound very strange as saying that if there is no background pick up on the mics.

0:36James Emmett:Yeah, I don't think there will be. We are at 180 Studios here in London in the dying embers of a two-day event that we've been running for Sports C-Suite, Leaders Meet Innovation. Two days of idea exchange, strategising, getting to the nub of some of the biggest issues facing sport and sort of corollary industries. We've been sprinkling in quite a lot of outside expertise, leaders from all sorts of different organisations. It's been good fun. We're going to talk very briefly about what we've seen, what we've heard. It's Chatham House rules here. So it's tricky

1:17David Cushnan:because we can't sort of assign quotes to people, but we'll do our best to bend the Chatham House rule.

1:23James Emmett:And then we're going to hear from Sean Stewart, who is the VP of open distribution at Viagogo and StubHub North America, very smart guy who was speaking here across the last two days, who is going to talk to us about the history of ticketing. Some fascinating stuff in there, airline inventories, hotel systems, sort of IBM's role in the whole thing, and a sort of madman-esque story of a glass of whiskey shared between folks on a plane that changed the course of ticketing history.

1:56David Cushnan:Yeah, he was really good. And as you say, somebody who really got the idea of this event, which was to tease out some of the transferable lessons from outside of sport into the sports industry. So we have had experts talking about topics from artificial intelligence. We've had people from the retail industry. We had the Met Police Transport for London on stage as well. And lots of discussions that we've helped to nudge along and facilitate along the way. So, yeah, it's been really good, really good fun. The highlights from you, Dave? Well, talking of that session, we worked really hard as we were programming this event to try and come up with a new and interesting way to talk about how to bring data to life.

2:42David Cushnan:obviously the sports industry, as we all know. We talk about data a lot, think about data a lot, and there's a lot of very good case studies from within the sports industry about that. But we wanted to delve into two of London's largest institutions to understand a little bit more about how they do data. So we had Darren Skates, the outgoing and outgoing chief data officer at the Met Police, the Metropolitan Police Service here in London, come and talk about some of the remarkable data initiatives that he has been front and centre of within the Met. And we also had Lauren Sager-Weinstein, who is Chief Data Officer at Transport for London, who gave a really lively presentation talking about real-time data collection to keep London moving, but also to keep Londoners informed as they try and move around the city.

3:31David Cushnan:And she was really good talking about pattern spotting and how in amongst this huge wealth and volume of data, they are getting ever better at spotting, predicting. Inevitably, there's a lot of talk about AI and how it's coming into that sector, that transportation sector. But yeah, pattern spotting, pattern identification to be able to better inform, better serve anybody who's using London's rails, roads and buses. Yes, great.

4:01James Emmett:And actually, from a personal perspective, this event is arguably the most interesting for us to work on because it's a chance to leave the day job behind a bit and look into other industries and find transferable lessons for the sports industry. And I think both you and I really enjoy talking to and hearing from these experts from outside of sport. And one of the highlights for me was a really engaging and energetic session with Paula McKenzie, who's the chief executive of Pizza Express. Honestly, I genuinely thought at one stage she was going to tap into that sort of viral meme that's going around there, you know, the McDonald's bloke eating the burger.

4:41James Emmett:I thought she's the type of character that might just bring out a pizza box and get going. But no, she was fantastic. She described herself at one point as the Daniel Day-Lewis of the restaurant business, because she goes fully method and she's painted her house in Pizza Express colors. She embodies the brand. She's a really magnetic personality and clearly a very compelling leader and someone who's really affected a turnaround inside the Pizza Express business. But she had a lot of transferable lessons for the audience on leadership, career development, communication, something that really stood out, actually, a real actionable point.

5:19James Emmett:And she's been in leading positions, it's worth saying, for the last 20 years inside the restaurant business. She said a key reason for her success and her progression was that she was given responsibility, P &L responsibility early in her career. And she said for women, particularly who want to progress in their careers, being given P &L responsibility is something that is often overlooked and is absolutely critical for developing accountability and skill. So as a young woman in any industry, she would sort of urge people to look for that P &L responsibility. And for men looking to be good allies, give P &L responsibility where you can.

5:57David Cushnan:Yeah. And I wasn't able to be in the session, but I know that she touched on revenue diversification as well. And Pizza Express as a business, for people who aren't that familiar with it, over 360 restaurants across the UK and Ireland, but also operating in 12 markets internationally as well. It's got a very big and growing retail range. So it's in supermarkets with its branded products. And it's also got its live music events brand over 1500 shows across many of its restaurants.

6:26James Emmett:It's called Pizza Express Live at that live music bit. So I think it's four of the restaurants. There's not actually that many. Four of the restaurants, including a couple here in London, are Pizza Express Live restaurants. She reckons they're the number one live music booker in Britain because it's four restaurants, nine acts a week, which adds up across the year, of course.

6:49David Cushnan:A couple of other sessions. I just wanted to point out a couple of other speakers who I thought were really great and brought an interesting perspective, again, from outside of sport. We tried to, as you would imagine, program a fair bit about content and what that looks like both from a monetization point of view. And I know you would want to talk about a fantastic session that you helmed with The Guardian. A shout out, though, to Mario Doogie, the design and media director at Unilever, Unilever's home care brands. And he gave a super presentation demonstrating, detailing how Unilever and how he has created an AI-powered network of content studios around the world to effectively to be able to, at speed, feed the algorithm, feed the incessant algorithm and localize products, more personalized content that can be produced in very short spaces of time, hours rather than days and weeks.

7:46David Cushnan:And he was particularly excellent on some of the changes that he foresees in specific skill sets for designers and creatives and marketeers, but also for the way that projects are briefed in and how they may be in the future. And yeah, some really interesting nuggets for the people who were lucky enough to be in the room.

8:06James Emmett:I think the doogie is a dance, isn't it? That's a dance trend. I think so. Doing the doogie. Yeah. You mentioned the Guardian session. So Liz Wynn, who's the chief supporter officer at The Guardian, gave a fantastic presentation, an even more fantastic Q &A session with me afterwards, on the extraordinary success that The Guardian has had through its reader supporter scheme, a fundraising pillar that has amassed revenues of around 120. Well, I think the publicly available figures are 100 million over the course of its lifetime. I think the supporter scheme has been going for almost 10 years now.

8:38James Emmett:And it's only growing. The momentum is growing. She pointed to different geographies. She pointed to the sophistication with which the Guardian has identified behavioral science techniques that push people's buttons. They've realized how to articulate their mission and their purpose in a way that will resonate with readers to the extent that readers are willing to support them. They have a very sophisticated approach to asking readers to give in a way that is going to be most comprehensive for The Guardian. So the old second cheapest bottle on the wine list type thing. And yeah, borrowing techniques from subscription services, from philanthropic organizations, from massive charities in the US.

9:22James Emmett:Lots of transferable lessons for sports organizations that consider themselves as growing media entities. First of all, trying to obviously monetize content, but second of all, a step removed from that, looking at audience acquisition techniques, strategies, the underlying thing that has driven The Guardian's capability to do this is a huge push to add detail to their database, which has been sort of facilitated by a newsletter strategy. strategy. Basically, The Guardian has added tens of new, I don't know how many newsletters they do now, Liz did say. Probably can't say for Chatham House Rules.

10:01James Emmett:It's way more than 10. It's way more than 10. But honestly, it's driven their database in the last two years from something like 800 ,000 to something like 8 million, which is extraordinary and yeah, huge success story.

10:12David Cushnan:In amongst all the outside of sport perspectives, we did want to make sure because we had a really high level audience who were also part of the discussions here over the last couple of days, we wanted to make sure that we put a couple of big ticket items, literally in one case, for the sports industry on the program. We will talk to Sean Stewart on ticketing from Viagogo in a moment. But there was also a really good session, James, that you were in and running on piracy, the old chestnut that is piracy.

10:40James Emmett:Yeah, it's tricky with piracy because it's tricky to do a session on piracy at an event like this for the industry because complacency is the wrong word, but a kind of... Resignation? Yeah, resignation, NUE. I feel like we're at a stage now in the evolution of IP theft and how it affects the sports industry where there aren't that many folks in the sports industry who aren't alive to the issue that is piracy. But what can be done that's going to have any kind of serious impact, that is less clear. And we actually had a little polling function that we used within the session to try and gauge the sports industry's approach to piracy.

11:19James Emmett:And we found that those assumptions absolutely bang on. Yes, most people consider piracy to be a big threat to whatever sport they were representing. It's split pretty much down the middle on whether they can have an effect on piracy. Just as many people said, no, they can't do anything to personally affect the situation as yes, which I think goes at that kind of thing of resignation. Luckily for those folks, we had some world-leading experts with us on stage. We had Stéphane Ledrault, something like that. I don't know how to pronounce it. We had Stéphane from Nagra with us and also Tim... Tim Cooper, the Director of Content Protection at the Premier League.

12:00James Emmett:That's right, who were sort of acknowledged as world-leading rights holders in how they combat piracy. And they were both fantastic on articulating an up-to-date set of tools for different sized rights holders, broadcasters in the fight against piracy. You don't have to have all the resource of the Premier League. So they detailed the latest things that you can do in tech, the latest things that you can do in terms of litigation and different jurisdictions in which it is easier to litigate. note the Premier League's emphasis on Singapore as an area in which it likes to have media operations and also sort of moral societal.

12:43James Emmett:And I think this is the key thing. It's sort of messages that will land with the general public, yes, but also with the sports industry on quite how serious this issue is, quite how serious a crime it is and what the ramifications are if you don't do anything.

12:59David Cushnan:And I think based on that point and the point you made earlier, I think one thing that I will take away from this event and something that will maybe inform what we program as we get. You're not going to watch pirated content anymore. I'm going to stop. You know, I'm going to stop. Actually, for the purposes of the tape, I'm not going to start. But what I'm going to take is behavioral science, I think, is something that the sports industry should maybe be thinking about and doing more of. And I think there's probably some ideas that we have about how we can inform future programming that we do on that front as we head towards, for example, Leaders Week London in October.

13:30David Cushnan:Ticketing, as we mentioned, was the other big area of focus. Our idea here really was to have a step back. Ticketing is one of those items that is near universal as a necessity and a critical part of pretty much most sports organizations thinking. And we had Sean Stewart with us from Viagogo, as you mentioned. And the brief we gave Sean was to almost take a step back and to some extent, give us a bit of a history lesson, which he did absolutely superbly.

14:02James Emmett:Yes. And here's Sean sort of recollecting that history lesson and seeing how much of his presentation he could trot through with us. This is Sean Stewart from VirgoGo. Goodbye. Sean Stewart. Now, let me get this right. You are the VP of Open Distribution at VirgoGo and also Stop Hub North America.

14:22Paula MacKenzie:That's correct. That's right. Thanks, James.

14:24James Emmett:Very good. Thanks very much for being with us, Sean. you've literally just come off stage where you've been talking about ticketing and already I've had I didn't see the presentation but I've already had a few people come up to me at lunch and say oh my god that was amazing the history bit as well the history of ticketing yeah I've got a friend who works in sport now who used to work at well for Iron Maiden okay and he was in here watching this and he said incredible loved hearing the history there are so many parallels obviously between the music industry and the sports industry, he's in football.

14:57James Emmett:Yeah. It's like hearing about the detail in which an organization like Fear Gogo goes into, like how much they're able to give to sports organizations where it doesn't necessarily hold true in the music world. Okay. It's like, it's totally fascinating. Yeah. Anyway, give us a little potted presentation, if you will. What were you talking about here?

15:16Paula MacKenzie:Our initial objective was to inspire conversation amongst the audience about all the innovation and disruption occurring in ticket distribution and pricing, which is there is more happening in this space right now than there ever has been in regards to changing the landscape of how tickets are sold and priced. And to take a step back and inspire that conversation, we thought we'd walk them through the history of two different industries and how their distribution strategies and infrastructure evolved over the course of 70, 80 years. And so the one I thought was the most interesting as an analogy or a comparison was the flight industry, starting with the travel segment.

15:50Paula MacKenzie:We walked them through was this chance interaction in 1953, where C.R. Smith, who was the CEO of American Airlines at the time, happened to sit down on a flight from LAX to JFK next to Blair Smith. Blair Smith was a sales executive at IBM at the time. Now, other than the same last names, which probably stroke up conversation, they somehow get into a dialogue about how hard it is to sell an American Airlines ticket today. Back then, this is 53. A single flight was managed by eight full-time employees. Just one flight in regards to allocating seats, selling tickets. They use cue cards and chalkboards and phone calls across the country.

16:26Paula MacKenzie:And the average reservation process was like an hour and a half. C.R. Smith complains to Blair Smith about this. And he says, you know what? I think we're developing technology at IBM that originally was targeted for warehouse inventory allocation systems of tracking pallets in a factory. But we think this technology potentially could be applied to your problem. Five years later from that discussion over what was most likely a bourbon or two flying across the country. And you have Sabre, the semi-autonomous business research environment. And that becomes Sabre, this company that 60 years later, IPOs at a$4 billion valuation.

16:59Paula MacKenzie:But what they create was this underlying piping system that allowed flights to be sold around the world. It started with just American Airlines agents being able to use this system to query inventory. Then they decide the most difficult decision, which is let's use non-employees access these terminals. And they start giving away and selling terminals to people who want to be travel agents. You can earn a commission on every flight you sell. Once you put it in the hands of the travel agents, the next demands are put other airlines on this thing. We want to see Lufthansa and BA and American and United all on the same inventory system.

17:34Paula MacKenzie:And we'd like cars and hotels. And that's what was added to the system in the 80s. And so by the time you get into the 90s, the dot-com boom starts. I was actually there at 2000 at Expedia. And as we launched new markets, we didn't have to start with an empty store. We could connect into the GDS, source hotels, car rental, anything that needed about that market and sell it at a standard travel agency commission. Don't negotiate with the airlines. They don't even know who we are. You're patching into the same pipe and selling under the same terms and conditions. But the rights holder, in this case, an airline, not a stadium selling tickets, still had entire control of their product.

18:11Paula MacKenzie:They price their product, they manage the inventory of their product,

18:14James Emmett:and everybody patches into their system, maintaining incredible control over the years.

18:19Paula MacKenzie:By the time you get to the 2000s, the science of yield management is invested in. And that's where we get today, where there's no such thing as face value of an airline ticket. You and me get a different price based on so many different factors. The average 747 has 200 economy seats. You're probably seeing 100 to 120 different prices paid for those 200 seats. So that was chapter one. We jumped into chapter two, which is how does this compare to the ticketing evolution and live event distribution? And it's a very different story. Nothing happens in the 50s and 60s. People are buying tickets to Elvis at box offices and in record stores.

18:54Paula MacKenzie:They get a paper ticket. The seller of the ticket makes a commission, a net rate versus a sell rate. No major infrastructure developed, no technology advancement through the 50s and 60s. But in 76, Ticketmaster is founded in the US and becomes the first major technology evolution of how tickets are sold. But instead of developing this piping system globally that sends airline tickets everywhere, they go with a walled garden approach. An exclusive primary relationship where essentially the venue says, I'm going to outsource ticketing and distribution and pricing. I'm going to give it to this company.

19:25Paula MacKenzie:They're going to do my marketing. They're going to run a call center that sells my tickets. And most importantly, they're going to build the inventory system where my tickets live. So the primary system, the primary source, the source of record in the flight example is owned by American airlines. In the ticketing example, it's owned by Ticketmaster, an incredibly significant divergence in the overall strategies. And so So as that expands over time, they go from the 70s. These agreements just get longer, 10-year agreements, sponsorship checks, and they expand in the components of the deals. Suddenly, Ticketmaster owns your ticket scanning equipment when you walk into the venue.