Chief Financial Officer – Transformation — Sports-Media Business

The mandate

This sports-media business holds premium rights and reaches valuable audiences across broadcast, streaming, social and venue-linked channels. Demand from advertisers remains strong. Packages are assembled across systems and sales teams, audience guarantees require careful management, and sponsorship rights must be reconciled with what production and distribution can deliver.

The group is appointing a Chief Financial Officer – Transformation to rebuild the economic and control system behind advertising. The CFO will own finance, planning, revenue assurance, deal economics, working capital, reporting and a cross-functional transformation spanning sales, inventory, data, production and technology. The objective is not to turn finance into a sales gate. It is to give commercial leaders reliable inventory, price, obligation and contribution evidence before a commitment becomes difficult to reverse.

This planned succession occurs ahead of major rights and advertising cycles. The incoming CFO must protect near-term delivery while changing definitions, incentives and systems. Yield recovery must come from better use of genuinely available audience and sponsorship assets, not from overbooking, unsuitable formats or a volume reduction that damages strategic advertiser relationships.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in London, the role influences approximately 725 employees and material partners across the United Kingdom and a wider international region. The perimeter includes commercial finance, planning, controllership, revenue operations, treasury, tax and transformation delivery. Essential interfaces reach into advertising sales, sponsorship, rights, audience measurement, ad operations, production, streaming product, distribution, legal and customer service.

Sports inventory is perishable and uncertain. Match progression, schedule changes, production choices, audience delivery and platform availability affect what can be sold and fulfilled. A premium position during a decisive event cannot be replaced economically by a large quantity of lower-value impressions later. Finance therefore needs to understand quality, timing and contractual substitution, not merely total volume.

The market also mixes direct, agency, programmatic and partnership channels. Each carries different fee, data, guarantee, cancellation, credit and cash terms. Revenue may look comparable while net contribution and risk differ sharply. Global clients and local market commitments can compete for the same rights and audience assets.

First-year agenda

The first ten weeks will establish a reconciled inventory-and-obligation baseline for priority competitions and platforms. The CFO will connect rights granted, production assets, forecast audience, sellable positions, booked campaigns, sponsorship entitlements, guarantees, exclusions, makegoods and billing. A sample of completed campaigns will be reconstructed from proposal through cash to identify leakage and disputed delivery.

A common yield taxonomy will follow. Inventory will be classified by competition, event, market, platform, format, placement, audience quality, timing and restriction. Gross price, agency and technology fees, production cost, data cost, makegood risk and incremental delivery will be visible. The purpose is not to impose one rate card, but to make trade-offs and discount authority explicit.

Deal governance will be redesigned around material risk. Standard packages within inventory and price guardrails should move faster. Complex guarantees, category conflicts, custom production, data use or cross-market substitution will receive specialist review before signature. Every non-standard promise must have a deliverable owner and a quantified downside. Executive relationships will not exempt an agreement from operational evidence.

Makegood exposure will be treated as a liability and operating problem. Finance, sales and ad operations will record the cause, contractual entitlement, proposed remedy, inventory cost and customer outcome. Patterns involving forecast bias, trafficking, measurement or production will trigger root-cause action. The business will avoid remedies that satisfy nominal impression volume while damaging campaign purpose.

Pricing and allocation will use controlled experimentation. The team will test floors, packages, upfront versus scatter allocation, audience segments and direct versus programmatic routes, measuring net yield and advertiser response. Automated decisions will operate within rights, suitability and frequency controls. Short-term price improvement that raises concentration or leaves unusable remnant inventory will be assessed honestly.

Sponsorship economics will be integrated with media inventory. Naming, on-screen, digital, talent, hospitality and content rights must be mapped to delivery capacity and rights-holder restrictions. Custom activation work will be costed and scheduled. Finance will ensure that multi-year agreements recognise contingent obligations and do not consume assets required for another contracted partner.

The transformation will also improve order-to-cash. Contract terms, campaign setup, delivery evidence, invoice, dispute and collection will share identifiers and ownership. The CFO will prioritise changes that reduce manual reconciliation and accelerate clean billing. Technology investment will follow agreed commercial definitions; system implementation will not be used to postpone basic control.

Incentives and forecasts will change with the model. Sales measures will balance net revenue, yield, contract quality, collection and customer outcome. Forecasts will separate pipeline, reserved inventory, signed obligation, delivered value and cash. By year-end, the board expects higher net yield in priority inventory, lower makegood exposure, faster billing and greater confidence in rights-cycle economics.

Leadership responsibilities

The CFO will report to the Group Chief Executive and relevant board committee, serving as steward of rights capital and commercial integrity. They will present advertising performance by price, volume, quality, obligation and cash, explaining where apparent yield improvement reflects mix or deferred liability. Material commercial exceptions will receive timely decisions rather than retrospective criticism.

They will co-lead the transformation with the chief commercial and operating executives. Finance owns economic definitions and control; sales owns customers; operations owns delivery. The CFO must prevent those boundaries from becoming gaps and must resolve contested data with evidence from the campaign lifecycle.

The role will develop a finance organisation comfortable with audience, rights and advertising operations. Commercial finance staff will spend time with sales and ad operations while retaining independence. Succession, control ownership and transformation capability must remain after external support leaves.

Measures of success

The board committee will track net yield by inventory class, sell-through, price variance, agency and technology deductions, makegood liability, campaign contribution, sponsorship fulfilment and rights return. Forecast accuracy will be assessed for revenue, delivery and cash, not only signed orders.

Control measures include inventory reconciliation, non-standard commitments, billing interval, dispute, collection, revenue recognition and contract completeness. Advertiser outcomes include campaign delivery, substitution quality, repeat business and escalation. Transformation progress will be judged by adopted working practices and retired reconciliation, not milestones alone.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring 22–28 years in sports media, broadcast, streaming, advertising technology or another rights-and-inventory business. They must have held senior CFO or transformation-finance authority and improved advertising economics across sales and operations. Direct exposure to rights cycles and audience guarantees is strongly preferred.

The board will seek examples of quantifying makegood liability, changing commercial incentives and recovering yield without weakening advertiser value. Candidates should understand sponsorship, programmatic and direct sales, audience measurement, revenue recognition, working capital, data rights and technology-enabled order-to-cash.

The successful CFO will combine control discipline with respect for the pace and relationships of sports sales. They must challenge a deal before it is signed, remain constructive during a live event and explain uncertainty without hiding behind accounting terminology.

Compensation and appointment terms

Annual base compensation is expected from GBP 250,000 to GBP 340,000, with annual incentive and long-term participation in addition. Reward will balance rights return, sustainable advertising yield, cash, control integrity and leadership development. Final arrangements will reflect the appointee's commercial-finance scale, international exposure and verified forfeited awards.

Confidentiality

The business remains unnamed because rights terms, advertiser commitments, audience forecasts and makegood exposure are commercially sensitive. Detailed information will be released only after identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Applicants must not submit campaign records, rights agreements, agency terms or proprietary audience data from another organisation.