SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Welcome to the CEO Playbook 2022 – a how-to guide to leading sports businesses in 2022. Throughout the last two years, my Playbook partnership with the team at SportsPro has aimed to offer the sports industry C-suite agenda-free, pragmatic advice, learning and tools to navigate some very stormy waters. It’s gone down extremely well – in fact, 2021’s CEO Playbook was one of SportsPro’s most popular downloads of all time. Building on that success, last year we launched the Playbook Podcast – a series of ‘how to’ interviews from across the to-do list of a future-ready sports leader. From the chair of the ATP on leading change to the BBC’s sports editor on managing the media; from the global inclusion lead at Vodafone to two partners from EY on smart financial management in tough times: we’ve produced 24-plus hours - a whole day’s worth of advice – available for you to manage your year ahead. The CEO Playbook 2022 you are now reading aims to complement and build on the podcast, not only to help you navigate that library of content which remains there for you, but also to curate and pick out some of the real gems of wisdom. We’ve grouped the interviews by theme, and for each episode I’ve picked out the main messages I took away. One of my first Playbook articles for SportsPro, written in the eye of the storm that was the summer of 2020, was titled ‘The World in 2022’. In it, I suggested that: ‘Successful businesses in 2022 will be purpose-led. They will have successfully fused digital and physical into one coherent proposition. They will understand their entire supply chains and be sustainably financed in a way that derives meaning for both shareholders and employees alike. They will feel markedly different to lead, support and work within.’ Now that we are here, that prediction seems to ring true. Two calendar years has seen ten years of change. Nobody has all the answers, but hopefully this guide helps to point you in the right direction. I hope you’ll be able to keep it with you and dip into it when considering how to handle a specific issue.