Home/What we do/Sports
Industry
Sports
The commercial operation behind the fixture.
Rights, venue economics and the back office of organizations whose revenue is concentrated into very few days.
The sector
We work on the commercial operation behind the fixture — rights, venue economics and the back office of organizations whose revenue concentrates into very few days a year.
The operational profile is unusual: extreme peaks, a small permanent staff, and a large contingent workforce that changes every event. Most of the cost problems in sport are capacity problems wearing a different label.
Start here
Most cost problems in sport are capacity problems.
The operating profile is unusual: extreme demand peaks, a small permanent staff and a large contingent workforce that changes every event.
That produces cost behaviour which looks like overspending and is usually a capacity design issue. The economics increasingly depend on the days there is no fixture, and very few operating models were ever built for those days.
- Commercial operating model
In scope - How the commercial operation is structured and run.
- Venue & matchday
In scope - Operations, staffing and cost on event and non-event days.
- Back office
In scope - Finance, procurement and shared services.
- Data & fan systems
In scope - Joining up identity across ticketing, retail and broadcast.
- Player recruitment
Not us - We do not scout, recruit or advise on playing matters.
- Rights valuation
Not us - We do not provide valuations for a transaction.
What is changing
Three shifts we are working against.
01
Rights value is fragmenting across buyers
Distribution moved to a wider and less predictable set of buyers, which changes how the rest of the business should be planned.
02
Venues became year-round businesses
The economics increasingly depend on the days there is no event, which most operating models were never built for.
03
Data and fan identity matter commercially
Knowing who attends and who watches changes what can be sold, and very few organizations have it joined up.
Where we work
Across the sector, not one corner of it.
Clubs & franchises
Venues & event operators
Rights holders & media
Sponsorship & agencies
What we bring
Every service line, applied to Sports.
Our thinking
What we pride ourselves on.
True of every Taidou engagement regardless of sector — and the three things we are most often told are unusual.
The person who scopes it runs it.
There is no handoff between the team that wins the work and the team that does it. If you met someone in the first conversation, you will still be dealing with them in the last one. This is the single thing clients tell us they notice first.
We write down what we are not doing.
Every engagement starts with a scope that names the things we have deliberately excluded and why. It makes the first conversation harder and every conversation after it easier.
We stay past the point it is comfortable.
Most firms hand over when the design is agreed and the change has been announced — the moment of maximum fragility. We hand over to named owners after it is running, and we come back to check.
Common questions
Before you call us.
No. Nothing we do touches recruitment, scouting or playing matters.
Not for a transaction. We work on the operating model around whatever the rights deal turns out to be.
Both, though not on the same question at the same time — and we will tell you if a conflict exists before it becomes one.
Related thinking
What we have published on this sector.
Research
Interoperability isn't a compliance deadline. It's a business model.
CMS-0057-F is being treated as a date to survive. The organizations treating it as an operating decision are the ones still compounding on it in three years.
ResearchWhy transformation programmes stall at month nine
WorkBack-office migration across three delivery centres
Taidou Answer
Bring us the problem, not the category.
Taidou Answer takes the question in your words, indexes it across 11 industries and 8 service lines, and routes you to the person who has solved it before.