Across three eventful decades, TEAM Marketing has established itself as one of the sports marketing sector’s most dynamic and respected businesses. Now, determined to take the company to the next level, CEO Simon Crouch is re-energising the firm by focusing on its talent. Following a strategic review in 2022, TEAM’s new guiding vision is to hire the best people in the world, then retain them by providing world class training, outstanding career opportunities and tailored work-life balance. Speaking to The Long Game, Crouch explained how new cohorts of diverse, high-performing and ambitious talent are already helping realise TEAM’s ambition.
In a business sector characterised by convulsive change, sports rights agency TEAM Marketing has proved remarkably durable. Formed in 1991, the Lucerne and London-based operation has established a unique track record of working with best in class clients including UEFA and UEFA’s commercial partners MasterCard and Heineken over an extended period of time.
TEAM Marketing CEO Simon Crouch, who took up his post in 2022, says the secret of TEAM’s longevity is that it has become “more than just a sales agency. While media, sponsorship and licensing rights selling is at the heart of our business, we have also developed strong capabilities in commercial consultancy and post-contractual delivery.”
The company has also proved very adept at moving with the times, says Crouch. “In my 15 years at TEAM, we’ve seen the emergence of digital technology, which has changed both the way fans consume content and the way we deliver rights. That was a big shift that required us to invest in new capabilities. And then there has been the evolution of the media rights market, with PayTV facing competition from telcos and then streamers. We have come through all these changes much stronger.”
Crouch stresses, however, that TEAM is not complacent about its status – particularly in the wake of the highly-disruptive Covid-19 pandemic. “Our leadership team is constantly asking itself ‘what we are doing to build on the service we provide?’.”
In answer to that question, Crouch’s big drive since becoming CEO has been to ensure that TEAM employs a world class team – and is perceived as a great place to build a career: “We presented a new corporate vision in December 2022 where the strategic focus is primarily on our people. We’re a service business, selling the quality and expertise of the people we hire and train. So, by attracting and retaining terrific talent, we want TEAM to be the first choice for developing a sports marketing career.”
Crouch’s fundamental proposition is that TEAM will do “the best work for our partners if we employ and train the most talented people in the business.”
In terms of integrating this bold vision into the company’s DNA, TEAM has set up an innovation and inclusion department, says Crouch: “This new division is partly about ensuring our commitment to DEI is as rigorous as possible, but it is also about how people at TEAM work. What innovative tools can we bring in to automate mundane tasks, for example, and give our people more interesting careers?”
After almost a decade with TEAM, Louise Cullinan was named director of insights, innovation & inclusion in early 2023 – to spearhead the department. She is “a firm believer that small, positive rippling effects can result in major change. It starts with conversations that might seem uncomfortable, but after enough repetition, become comfortable”.
Cullinan’s use of data-driven insights has helped make UEFA’s research programme among the most sophisticated in the sports industry – with valuable reporting made available to UEFA’s commercial partners. Now, she says, that expertise is a critical dimension in challenging the status quo at TEAM: “Innovation and inclusion are not just initiatives within the company, they’re strategic priorities. They feed into our ambition to be the best place to develop a career in the sports marketing industry.”
The creation of the innovation and inclusion department is a manifestation of this mantra: “Ideas are constantly circulating around the business, but until the creation of this division there was no central place to take them or processes to drive those ideas forward. Now we can take key topics and investigate how they might look in the future.”
Ideas are constantly circulating around the business, but until the creation of this division there was no central place to take them
Since its inception, Cullinan and her team have helped drive key projects surrounding internal communication, staff development and staff recognition. “This past year has been one of the most rewarding,” she says, “I love the opportunity to collaborate, bringing together diverse strengths to create truly game-changing solutions.”
Alongside the launch of the new division, TEAM has introduced several operational initiatives to bolster recruitment and training, says Crouch: “We have doubled down on our graduate talent programme (GTP), a very successful scheme that we introduced in 2019. That has already surfaced some extremely talented recruits and changed the complexion of our workforce. We’ve also broadened the net in terms of where we go to discover talent. If you focus too much on a specific region, ethnicity or gender, you only come into contact with a tiny percentage of the potential talent pool.”
For example, says Crouch, TEAM participates in #Merky Football Careers, a dynamic programme backed by sportswear giant Adidas and grime artist Stormzy, which is committed to enhancing and protecting diverse representation in the football industry.
The programme involves blue chip companies offering work placements spanning operations and community to creative and marketing, in a bid to change the game for Black and Black mixed heritage youth. From January 2024, says Crouch, TEAM’s second #Merky FC recruit will start a year-long placement, based in the London office.
At the same time the company has meticulously reviewed all of its recruitment materials – to ensure nothing in the language it uses dissuades people from applying. “We went through everything line by line with diversity and inclusion experts to ensure nothing we said put people off,” says Crouch. “Even the introduction of subtle changes can make sure our company is attractive to the widest group possible.”
The advisory panel do a terrific job of holding senior leadership to account
Analysing the impact of such initiatives, Crouch says a steady stream of success stories have come out of TEAM’s GTP – such as Eliana Amboni, now a strategy manager at the firm. Hailing from a small town outside Milan, Amboni studied management at Bocconi University, during which time she worked on a project at AC Milan. After outshining 200+ candidates, she secured a place on the 18-month GTP, during which time she worked across TEAM’s strategy, marketing partnerships and digital teams.
In addition to these immersive rotations, she secured access to training courses, conferences and events that enabled her to grow both within and outside the company.
After completing her GTP rotations in 2020, Amboni was offered a permanent position as a strategy analyst, where a key project was supporting the development of the 2024-27 UCL format. Working at TEAM has given her many “pinch me moments”, says Amboni, but one of the most memorable was her involvement in the UCL, UEL and UECL group stage draws. “Growing up, I never missed a UCL draw, now I’m part of it. Together with UEFA, I’m one of only a few people in the room and play a key part in scheduling the matches. I can watch matches on TV and say, ‘I contributed to that’.”
Crouch says Eliana’s progress is “an embodiment of TEAM’s core values of ambition, diligence and connection. In addition to her day-to-day role, she has been involved with TEAM’s sustainability committee from its inception and has led the committee for the past year. She is also part of TEAM’s advisory panel, created to ensure staff voices are heard. As part of the panel, she is one of eight members who represent staff, collect feedback and meet quarterly with the leadership team. They do a terrific job of holding senior leadership to account, reinforcing TEAM’s open and receptive culture.”
In terms of progressing people beyond recruitment, Crouch says TEAM offers a mixture of both informal and formal training: “The informal piece is about working with experienced people and learning from them – so we ensure that managers pay attention to the development of their staff. We restructured the business recently so that managers could spend meaningful time looking out for people and mentoring them, planning their career progression. It’s very easy when you get stuck into the day to day to get very operational and lose sight of where you’re trying to go.”
Crouch says it is expected that TEAM’s employees will “stretch themselves”; but he also recognises that securing great talent requires the provision of a work-life balance that suits individual needs. “We offer as much flexibility to our staff as we can, which reflects the fact that we are a highly international organisation with staff from all corners of the world. We trust our people to find the right balance between personal preferences and the needs of the business, whether this relates to working remotely, or identifying which of our two offices acts as their working base.”
You can approach anyone no matter how senior and they are happy to help
Recent alumni from the GTP endorse Crouch’s claims about TEAM’s commitment to building a culture of transparency and mentoring. Marketing sales associate Benedetta Introna says: “Even though I’m young, everyone is open-minded and supportive. Our leaders value fresh opinions and want to hear what I have to say.”
Introna has been especially vocal on the subject of gender balance and representation in sport. A core member of TEAM’s DEI working group, she says: “I really consider it my personal mission to improve the conditions for women in sport at all levels: on the pitch, in sports fandom, in society and in business.”
Media rights sales associate Laurin Weiland, another GTP graduate, agrees: “You can approach anyone, no matter how senior and they are happy to help. The graduates are valued – they aren’t just seen as trainees to do repetitive tasks. They are given important projects, can challenge line managers, and that’s appreciated.”
CEO Crouch says it is already possible to see how TEAM’s focus on people and culture is transforming the company. “It provides us with the tools we need to keep raising our game for UEFA and its family of commercial partners. At the same time, it also puts TEAM in a strong position to secure new business opportunities.”
Pursuing new business is a relatively recent objective for TEAM. For Crouch, securing new business is an obvious way to grow TEAM’s revenue-base, leaning into the company’s well-honed strategic and operational capabilities. But he also views it as the natural extension of TEAM’s new people-powered strategy. “It’s a way for us to offer existing employees and future recruits exciting career progression opportunities. We know some of our talented people will go on to forge amazing careers in other segments of the sports sector, but new business opportunities will provide our people an additional pathway towards leadership within TEAM.” ☒
