At Assemble, our core focus is to help sports organisations lift their capabilities, especially around their use of technology, which in turn helps with building efficiencies and professionalism in their business or organisation. We get our inspiration from lots of places but we realise how lucky we are in these times to have so much unbelievable content being created on a daily basis to inspire our thinking. 

 

Some of the greatest sources of insight come from the application of broader business content as opposed to directly from content regarding the sports industry. However even when we think we are consuming some content focusing on business - sport regularly pops up.  

 

Here are some of our favourite snippets of recent business content that delve into the business of sport directly or indirectly in some way:

 

  1. Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy:  A business podcast about investing

 

Episode 314 with Carl Kawaja – a pod about investing and the current state of the markets but that touches on sport with some awesome analogies between baseball and business – “the gork”.  And my favourite quote:  “And look how incredibly successful sports investing has been in the last 20 years.  And who would have told you that?” 

 

Episode 313 with Daryl Morey – Systems Thinking in Sport.  Some interesting thoughts on what makes a great game, how the structure of sports defines its success and an American guy's take on what is wrong with the rules of the sport (football / soccer) that is ~8x larger than his own (basketball).

 

 

  1. Acquired – an unbelievably good pod if you have the time as these guys go deep – “Learn the playbooks that built the world’s greatest companies – and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor”.

 

Season 12, Episode 1:  The NFL.  If you don’t believe that a sport can go from obscure to one of the largest in the world – take a listen and have a think.  Could it happen again?  The reference to “communist capitalism” is a cracker.  The recognition of the value of good scheduling and quality stats distribution is very close to my heart.

 

 

  1. Super League: The War for Football on AppleTV+ 

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A sign of the quality that Apple is bringing to the world of sport.  The willingness of the main “players” to use this medium to get their side of the story across was a true differentiator.   I think this is exciting for the ecosystem and looking forward to seeing what they can do with MLS.  The storylines throughout this have been seen around the world in other sports before – but the main question it raised for me was around business and relationships.  The series proves that sport can deliver some of the highest quality human-centric drama both on and off the field.

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We will keep these coming and always keen to hear from others as to where they are getting their inspiration. Send us a message with your recommendations. 

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