Today's guest Adam Kelly has been at IMG since 2001, connecting the business back almost to the McCormack era. Now President of IMG within TKO Group — which also owns UFC and WWE — he oversees IMG's media rights, production, digital, brand partnerships, and events businesses. This is his second appearance on Unofficial Partner; the first was in 2022, when he laid out a vision for reimagining IMG as a full-service growth partner rather than a transactional rights broker.

Episode Summary

Recorded during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, this conversation uses the tournament as a launchpad for a broader argument about where sport sits commercially in 2026. Kelly's central thesis is that the entry of global streaming and technology platforms — Netflix, Apple, Google, Amazon — is the single most important shift in the sports media landscape, and that it is unambiguously good for sport. Richard pushes back throughout: on the financial extraction argument, on the volume fallacy, on whether global streaming actually serves the kinds of sports that real fans love. It's a genuinely spiky conversation.

This episode of Unofficial Partner is sponsored by The Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH) 

ISH educates sport’s current and future leaders around the world, as the leading independent provider of sports leadership education and insight.

Their Strategic Sport Leadership Masters (MA) is for sports industry executives to study alongside their careers – designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport.

Applications for the next intake on the 2026 Strategic Sport Leadership MA, starting September, are open.

Visit sportshumanities.org for more information

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