SportsPro

[upbeat music] You're now listening to the SportsPro Podcast Show.

[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to the SportsPro Podcast.

I'm Sam Carr, head of editorial here at SportsPro, and delighted to be joined, as ever, by SportsPro editor, Steve McCaskill.

Steve, how are you?

business.That it does require a completely different tech stack, a completely different set of expertise.

Um, that feels like, Nic, like that's the whole crux of everything it feels like we talk about at Sports Pro, not just on this series, um, at our events, on our other podcasts.

Like, that is really kind of where we're at as an industry.

A-absolutely, and I think it's one of these things that, um, you know, if, if Ligue 1 had more time, they probably would've taken a different approach, you know-

We're seeing media rights stagnate and go down.

This is not something that's unique to what you're going through in France.

A friend of Sports Pro, uh, Andreas Haden, back when he used to work at DFL, always talked about they were prepared to go direct-to-consumer if they didn't feel the broadcast rights reflected what they thought the value was of their, their IP.

Um, one of my favorite podcasts we've ever done of all time was talking to PAOK FC, a Greek football club, who were in a similar situation that didn't feel that they were getting the value for the rights that they, they wanted.

Nick, my understanding from your LinkedIn post, that's the first time you've been to IBC in seven years.

And despite me being at SportsPro seven years, that's the first time I've ever been at IBC.

And it was quite an overwhelming experience, even for someone that runs events at SportsPro.

And I've been to other events.

I mean, Nick, it was on a completely different scale to, I think, anything I've ever seen from an event.

That feels like, Nick, that's the whole crux of everything.

It feels like we talk about SportsPro, not just on this series, at our events, on our other podcasts.

That is really kind of where we're at as an industry.

Absolutely.

We're seeing media rights stagnate and go down.

This is not something that's unique to what you're going through in France.

A friend of SportsPro, Andreas Hayden, back when he used to work at DFL, always talked about they were prepared to go direct to consumer if they didn't feel the broadcast rights reflected what they thought the value was of their IP.

One of my favorite podcasts we've ever done of all time was talking to Pauk FC, a Greek football club who are in a similar situation that didn't feel that they were getting the value for the rights that they wanted.

You're now listening to the Sports Pro Podcast Show.

Hello and welcome to the Sports Pro Podcast.

My name's Sam Karp.

I'm the head of editorial here at Sports Pro and delighted to be joined by Sports Pro editor Steve McCaskill.

Steve, how are you? Yeah, very well, thanks.

How are you? Not too bad.

let's let's let's not go

there

So from here, I will hand things over for the interview that Nick and I had with Roman.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the second episode of the mini-series that we're running here at SportsPro on the new economics of fandom.

On this episode, we're joined by Roman Push, who is the Chief Marketing and Chief Digital Officer at UEFA.

I'm also joined by my Streamtime Sports co-host, Nick Meacham.

So those are the kind of things that we are increasingly looking at.

But then again, it is a mixture of products that we then are tuning more and more to the needs of the respective sectors that our partners operate in.

Thinking about that fragmentation, I know something that's come up quite a bit and Nick mentioned it at SportsPro London.

You hear people talking about owning the fan relationship, but realistically that feels like, you know, UAF has got your own and operated channels.

They're around.

friends of the show i don't know announced in early september bloomberg reported the deal values hyrux at around 600 million euros roughly 697 million dollars i can't for the reporting founders christian and moritz Come out holding about 51% with Al Catterton as lead minority partner and Jeffrey Katzenberg's Winder Co. also in the group, per SportsPro.

High Rocks ran more than 100 events with over 1.4 million participants in 2025 and 2026.

The founders sold the majority stake to Infront years ago.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the second episode of the miniseries that we're running here at SportsPro on the new economics of fandom.

On this episode, we're joined by Roman Push, who is the chief marketing and chief digital officer at UEFA.

I'm also joined by my Streamtime Sports co-host, Nick Meacham.

So those are the kind of things that we are increasingly looking at.

But then again, it is a mixture of products that we then are tuning more and more to the needs of the respective sectors that our partners operate in.

Thinking about that fragmentation, I know something that's come up quite a bit, and Nick mentioned it at SportsPro London.

You hear people talking about owning the fan relationship, but realistically, it feels like UEFA's got your own and operated channels.

Look, I

remember when I started at SportsPro in probably, I think it was 2010 at the time.

And I was coming from Australia.

I came in and quite quickly worked out that perform was really one of the driving forces in sports, sports rights, sports media, with the relationships they had with some of these platforms and companies.