Who we work with
Media groups, publishers, broadcasters, platforms, producers, live businesses and rights investors, when growth, a new business model or a stronger market position depends on how the audiences, partners and investors who decide what the assets are worth understand them.
Clubs, leagues, federations and rights businesses, with the collecting societies, broadcasters’ unions and institutions that set the sector’s rules, when a new competition, a rights cycle, a reform or a vote has to carry its members, partners and constituencies.
Artists, authors, athletes and founder-led creative businesses, with their estates and foundations, where commercial interests, public standing and legacy meet.
Relevant experience
Our work in the sector has included music-rights investment, collective licensing, a composer’s career across art music and popular culture, the sale of a founder-owned company to a European media group and a national daily’s move to paid digital news. Assignments have covered market positioning, investor narratives, business-model change, licensing initiatives, leadership counsel, stakeholder engagement and reputational matters.
It builds on our founder’s earlier work in media, entertainment, entrepreneurship and sports governance, including media relations and difficult moments for Nordic media groups, entertainment companies and artists. We work alongside the rights, financial, legal and commercial specialists an assignment needs, never instead of them.
When clients call us
When an asset or an audience has more potential than the business captures. A catalogue, a format library, a masthead, a competition or a creator’s name earning less than its following suggests. We establish where value is made and what holds it back, how audiences and partners decide and which propositions, partnerships and channels turn interest into subscriptions, attendance, licences or repeat demand. Reach is a starting point. Durable demand is the business.
When the company has changed faster than its market position. Acquisitions, new formats, a new market or a changed business model have left customers and investors with an outdated view, or no view at all. We establish what is demonstrably different, what must still change before the rest can be claimed and which propositions, evidence and relationships make the next position true.
When the business has to be explained to the people financing it. A fund raised on a thesis, a listing or a merger, a change of ownership, a club or a group whose investors must price more than one business in one share. We establish what the capital provider has to verify, then build the case from that evidence, alongside the bank and counsel. Most of the people pricing the rights do not read the trade press.
When technology or the rules change the economics and several constituencies must agree. A new licence, a distribution rule the members must approve, a media rights sale the clubs contest, a platform’s policy on machine-made content, a reform that reaches investors, talent, employees and partners at once. We map whose support decides, test the proposal before it is tabled and sequence the announcement so that those who decide hear it first. Communication will not carry a decision the constituencies do not support. It can keep a close one from being read as a revolt.
When ownership, leadership or scrutiny changes what is at stake. A transaction, a succession at the top of a newsroom, a club or a society, a dispute over a name, a season or a conduct question that becomes the story. We establish the facts, anticipate how fans, members, sponsors, investors and the press will respond and prepare the position alongside leadership and counsel. Sometimes the right posture is to say nothing yet, and we say so. A statement will not win a case or bring a sponsor back. It can stop one season’s problem becoming the institution’s reputation.
Our perspective
In media, entertainment and sports, what is owned and what is valuable are not the same thing. Each is tested by different audiences on different evidence. Fans, readers and listeners test the work and the price. Creators and partners decide what can be built. Investors price the rights and the people who hold them. Members, regulators and courts test whether the rules were followed, and the press decides what to call it. Between what a company owns and what those audiences have confirmed lies what we think of as the realisation gap: the distance between a right, a reach or a name and the demand, relationships and returns it has produced. It shows in a catalogue priced on its past, a title read by millions and paid for by few, a competition whose rights sell for less than its following. Most of our work in this sector is closing it.
Content is unlimited and attention is not
Content is almost free to produce, so attention, not supply, is the scarce input. Machine-made tracks now make up a large share of what is uploaded to the streaming services that count them and a small share of what is heard. An answer at the top of a search cuts the chance that anyone reaches the publisher beneath it. Fewer than one in five people in rich countries pay for online news. What remains scarce is a direct, paid relationship: a masthead people subscribe to, a competition they turn up for, a tour priced by the seat. In the most mature music markets growth comes more from price than from new subscribers. The strategic task is to turn discovery into a reason to return, and a return into a reason to pay.
Rights are worth what is built around them
Owning rights is the starting point, not the result. A new release earns most of what it ever will within months, so a catalogue’s value rests on the few titles that keep paying and on how the owner works them: on stage, on screen, in licences and brands. For a publisher the same work is distribution, subscriptions and the data that follows a reader. For a format house it is keeping the rights to the shows it makes. For a federation it is selling media rights as a portfolio of picks and windows rather than whole. Artists own their masters more often than counterparties expect, and conceding the point loses the negotiation and the story. A thesis nobody has written is not legible to investors, nor to the AI assistants that summarise a company before anyone meets it.
AI, copyright and platform rules are argued at once
AI, copyright and platform rules are being argued in courts, contracts and consultations at the same time, and a position has to hold across all three. Collecting societies stand between members, regulators and AI companies. Public service media answer to the governments that fund them. A governing body’s authority rests on being seen to apply its own rules consistently, and courts and competition authorities now test whether they are transparent and proportionate. A rights holder’s case travels when it is argued as industrial policy rather than special pleading, nationally, in Europe and globally. Policy asks without a narrative rarely get a hearing, and a narrative without policy depth wins attention and nothing else.
Constituencies cannot be managed from outside
Creators, members, fans, employees, platforms, investors and public institutions hold different powers: members vote, fans and readers leave, artists take their names with them and regulators intervene. Judgment starts with where they align, where they conflict and what the company can change. The same test applies to giving: a foundation set up by an artist, an athlete, a club or a company is read for its purpose and governance before its size. The answer is not always a better story. Sometimes it is better evidence or plainer language. Sometimes the position needs a different proposition, a partner or a smaller promise, and we say which. Our founder leads the work, inside the owner’s logic and outside its bubble, alongside the bank, counsel and the rights and commercial specialists, never instead of them. A name is lent by the people who care about it. The first judgment is what not to ask of them.
How we help
- Market intelligence and growth
- Establishing where a media, entertainment or sports business can win, the audiences and partners that matter and the propositions and initiatives that would turn reach into durable demand.
- IP, audience and commercial strategy
- Strengthening the case for content, rights, formats, franchises, distribution and new experiences, from what fans, partners and investors can verify, alongside the operators who deliver it.
- Corporate positioning and investor narratives
- Making business-model change, acquisitions, portfolio development and investment theses legible to the people pricing them, at a fund launch, a listing or a merger and between them.
- Relationships and institutional engagement
- Mapping the members, clubs, artists, employees and partners whose backing decides a vote, a rights tender or a reform, testing the proposal with them and preparing the people who will defend it.
- AI, copyright and public affairs
- Building the fact base, the argument and the relationships that earn a rights holder, a federation or a broadcaster a hearing on copyright, media policy, competition and sports governance.
- Creator, leadership and legacy counsel
- Advising artists, athletes, authors and founders independently on commercial interests and public standing, with the purpose, governance and narrative of a foundation, an impact initiative or a legacy evidenced rather than claimed.
- Reputational risk and defining moments
- Handling media relations, announcements, successions and the difficult call, and crisis management when a name or a season becomes the story, across Europe’s main markets and language areas.