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News

Mon. 29 June 2020

FIFA MASTER ALUMNI - WHERE ARE THEY NOW? - ADAM CROTHERS

Adam Crothers

Current Position: Head of Digital Media Rights at Formula 1

Year of graduation: 2011 (11th Edition)

Nationality: Irish / Australian

What does your current role involve?

I joined F1 from the NBA shortly after the Liberty Media acquisition mid-2017 with the core remit to help transform and build F1’s burgeoning digital media and licensing businesses. The first few years were very much start-up focused as the digital department didn’t exist before Liberty bought the business – an incredibly fun time to join! So initially, my sole focus was on helping to build the wider digital business (with a very lean team!) from the ground up with a specific focus on striking a number of commercial partnerships right across all areas of the digital and licensing ecosystem.

I now specifically head up the Digital Media Rights business at F1, an exciting area of growth for the business. Fortunately it’s a fairly wide remit; the team I manage has direct responsibility for building commercial partnerships with all of the global social media platforms, managing the entire distribution strategy for F1’s global direct-to-consumer business F1 TV, helping build our growing audio business, managing F1’s nascent betting and fantasy business whilst also delivering a robust and dynamic audiovisual digital media strategy that ensures F1’s ever growing fan base get access to all the amazing content we produce on the platforms they love. I’m very fortunate to say no single day is the same, nor very quiet!

Which aspects of the FIFA Master course have helped you most in your career?

The FIFA Master covers every single aspect that is relevant for a career in the sports industry, theoretically and practically, which was the primary benefit for me. I entered the programme thinking I had a fairly strong knowledge of the sports industry but it only took a few days in Leicester for me to be proven wrong! The insights I gathered from the first 3 months of the programme were incredible; understanding the very origins of sport and the passage from the corinthian values to professionalism and how that ultimately underpins the entire industry as it is today was fascinating.

Throughout the 3 modules, the level of immersion into the key verticals of the sports industry was invaluable, largely driven by a very solid balance of academia with relevant industry guest speakers sharing their amazing insights.

On a more personal level; you can’t put a value on the friendships generated from the course and the incredible alumni network. Nearly 10 years on, I’m still in touch with a lot of the class which is a lovely thought and it’s rewarding to see how strong the alumni network is today.

What advice would you give to future students on the course?

Have an open mind and have fun. The sports industry is perhaps one of the most evolving and ever-changing industries that exists today. In relative terms, the industry is still so young and, as a result, there is a massive opportunity to learn from other industries to positively affect its future. Go into each lecture ready to be enlightened and probe each guest speaker to garner as much valuable practical insight as you can. For me, these learnings are the ones that will likely set you apart when it comes to landing the job that you have set your sights on. Secondly, spend as much time as you can socially with your classmates too. The year absolutely flies by so make sure you get out and explore the cities you’re studying in with the class…after all, having fun should be at the core of everything you do on the FIFA Master!

FIFA Master - International Master in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport, ranked No.1 Course in Europe 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019 by the SportBusiness International global rankings.

Organised by CIES in partnership with De Montfort University (United Kingdom), SDA Bocconi School of Management (Italy) and the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland).

Discover more examples of inspiring FIFA Master alumni career paths by clicking here

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