Raphaël Lestienne: “The more refined the technology, the less fans and organizers feel its presence”
Raphaël Lestienne develops Orange Business’s presence across EMEA for Sport & Live Event, working on the connectivity, security and accreditation systems that sit behind major sports events, from Paris 2024 to Roland-Garros to AFCON Morocco 2025. In this edition of The Pundit’s Seat, Raphäel makes the case for reading matchday technology as a revenue lever […]
CMG’s Maria Karlsson De Cecco on Why Former Players Belong in Football’s Boardrooms
“A boardroom is better for having someone in it who’s been the player affected by its decisions.” That is the verdict of Maria Karlsson De Cecco, who spent over two decades playing elite football across four countries, including a spell at AS Saint-Étienne, before co-founding CMG in Stockholm in 2015, a global agency representing players, […]
Keko Martínez: from second division pitches to planning over €500 million in wealth
Keko Martínez is a former professional footballer and the president and founder of Ariete Sport & Entertainment, the firm that since 2009 has been advising elite athletes on managing their wealth and life, both during their careers and after them. He played in the Second Division while pursuing a degree in Business Administration, a master’s […]
Keko Martínez: de los campos de Segunda a planificar más de 500 millones de euros en patrimonio
Keko Martínez es exfutbolista profesional, presidente y fundador de Ariete Sport & Entertainment, la firma que desde 2009 da consejo patrimonial y vital a deportistas de élite durante su carrera y despues de ella. Jugó en Segunda División mientras cursaba la carrera de Ciencias Empresariales, un máster en Mercados Financieros en la Pompeu Fabra y […]
MATINAL founders on why football needs to “separate culture from performance”
Nacho Asensio and Pablo Alzaga lead MATINAL, a creative studio working at the crossroads of football, fashion and culture, with Asensio as CEO and Alzaga as Creative Director. The studio has built campaigns for brands including Adidas and Airbnb and worked with artists including Aitana and Duki. Matinal first worked with WFS at WFS Madrid […]
Simon Chadwick: “World Cup 2026 will be remembered as a structural tipping point: a US-style operating model is now programmed into FIFA’s DNA”
Simon Chadwick is a professor of Sport and Geopolitical Economy at Skema Business School and one of the most cited voices internationally on the intersection of football, geopolitics and money. In this edition of The Pundit’s Seat, he assesses the raft of commercial and structural changes brought in by the World Cup that has just […]
Common Goal CEO Mary Connor: “If Common Goal was a Federation it would be the third in the World”
Mary Connor spent her career asking what football is really for. As a professional player, as co-founder of Soccer Without Borders, and now as recently appointed CEO of Common Goal — the largest global network using football as a tool for social change — her answer has never changed: the game is most powerful when […]
Kike Levy: “Football is the infrastructure for community, identity and belonging”
“Football is the infrastructure for community, identity, and belonging” – that is how Kike Levy frames the asset he has spent his career building around. Levy is CEO of Gameday by NJF, the sports and media investment platform of NJF Holdings, founded by entrepreneur and investor Nicole Junkermann. Before that, he spent nearly 17 years […]
N3xt Sports CEO Mounir Zok on the AI readiness gap in sports: “AI is exposing structural weaknesses in how data is treated”
While elite sports properties showcase innovation on the pitch, a significant operational gap persists behind the scenes. N3XT Sports CEO, Mounir Zok, argues that many organisations are currently “flying blind,” deploying tactical AI tools on top of fragmented legacy systems rather than building a strategic data architecture. In this interview — the first in The […]
