Who we are
Director, Major Events
Simon began his career at Sport England in 1999 where he worked in the Lottery Strategy Unit, monitoring and evaluating the company’s progress against the 1999-2009 funding strategy. In 2002, he moved into consultancy with PMP. During his time at PMP, he worked on a range of high-profile projects, including an 18-month secondment with Elmbridge Borough Council project managing the Elmbridge Xcel Centre leisure PPP and three-month secondment with World Cup Barbados Inc. In the latter role, he spent three months as Cricket and Facilities Manager for WCB’ 2007 Cricket World Cup Bid submission.
In 2007, Simon moved to Capita Symonds Sport & Leisure, where he was primarily responsible for major event work, as well as delivering business planning and procurement support to local authorities. He has delivered projects for high profile clients including UK Sport, London & Partners, the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the Olympic Delivery Authority, UK Athletics, British Swimming and many local government client.simon@thesportsconsultancy.com
uk.linkedin.com/pub/simon-molden/12/b69/9a4
Managing Director & Co-founder
Angus is a lawyer by training specialising in multi-jurisdiction litigation at a major city of London law firm. However, Angus's passion has always been sport and his career started out at the sharp end of sport as a professional sportsman. He was the youngest crew member on Sir Peter Blake and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston's world record breaking non-stop circumnavigation of the world in 1994. Angus now heads up our brand and rights holder consultancy. He established a successful rights holder consultancy in 2000 and is proud to have been advising clients like Volvo since 2002 in the development of their sports events and creating ground-breaking sponsorships such as Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean in the Volvo Ocean Race. Angus has consulted brand and rights holder clients on properties ranging from Formula One to the Olympic Games and now works with our rights holder clients such as FEI, Volvo Ocean Race and ISAF, led the Madrid 2018 Ryder Cup bid and liaises with our brand clients such as AMD.
angus@thesportsconsultancy.com
uk.linkedin.com/in/angusbuchanan
Tom Pinnington
Director, Venues & Events
Tom began his career at Sport England, where he worked initially on the development and assessment of sports facility projects. From Sport England he moved to the Big Lottery Fund where he was a programme manager leading the development and delivery of the £750m Physical Education and School Sport Programme.
He then moved to consultancy, rising to become an Associate Director within Capita Symonds Sport & Leisure Consultancy. Tom is responsible for leading the growth of the Sports Consultancy’s venue development capability, establishing the team as a leading consultancy in the development of significant sports facilities and venues. He also works with clients on major event feasibility projects. He has delivered projects for many clients including UK Sport, UK Athletics, British Basketball, the Government of Malta, the Government of the Isle of Man and many local government clients across the UK.
tom@thesportsconsultancy.com
www.linkedin.com/in/tompinnington
Senior Consultant
Lucy has been planning and implementing highly successful sponsorship campaigns in a wide range of sports ranging from distance running and football to motorsports for corporate clients such as Flora, Egg and Computacenter since 1993. Lucy is now responsible for our sponsorship consultancy and marketing communications projects, working with clients such as AMD on their sponsorship of Scuderia Ferrari and most recently promoting Madrid's bid to host the 2018 Ryder Cup. Lucy is happiest spending her downtime from work and family serving aces on a grass court or mogul bashing in the Alps.
Senior Consultant
Ashley is a qualified lawyer with extensive experience advising clients in the sports, entertainment and media industries. He assists The Sports Consultancy's clients in relation to commercial legal and strategic matters across a number of projects, including event bidding, venue procurement, sponsorship and the production and exploitation of media rights. Ashley has previously worked in the sports group at international law firm Bird & Bird as well as within the in-house legal teams of global media and entertainment organisations Modern Times Group (owner of Viasat Broadcasting and Bet24), the Financial Times and HMV Group. Ashley is also a keen water polo player and can be found in his spare time treading water in swimming pools around the country.
ashley@thesportsconsultancy.com
uk.linkedin.com/pub/ashley-blake/7/834/730
Director, Venues & Events
Chris began his career in the City, working in management buy-outs and corporate acquisitions for Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest financing. Completing a number of sport and leisure related deals sparked a professional interest in sport and he moved to a specialist leisure consultancy PMP in 2003.
Before joining the Sports Consultancy Chris was an Associate Director with Capita Symonds Sport & Leisure. He led the consultancy’s management and procurement work. In 2011 Chris completed the procurement of an operator for Guildford Spectrum - the largest public leisure centre in the UK - as part of the first ever joint procurement process on behalf of Guildford and Woking Borough Councils.
Chris focuses on two key areas of consultancy work: leisure management procurement and venue facility feasibility. He has delivered projects for many clients including UK Sport, the English Institute of Sport Sheffield, The Government of the Isle of Man and the States of Guernsey, as well as numerous local authorities across the UK.chris@thesportsconsultancy.com
uk.linkedin.com/pub/chris-marriott/36/269/641
Account Executive
Kirsten is a qualified lawyer and trained at a magic circle law firm in London. She gained valuable experience as part of the legal team at the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games working on a range of matters including commercial rights agreements and procurement of transport and accommodation for the 2012 Games in London. At The Sports Consultancy, Kirsten assists with and advises on the contracts necessary to stage major events, in particular, supply, sponsorship, management and hosting agreements. In her spare time, Kirsten can often be found on the football pitch making crunching tackles or in the park playing a spot of touch rugby.
Director, Legal
After practising at leading international law firm Freshfields and boutique sports law firm Townleys, David joined Collier Bristow as a partner and Head of Sport in 2003. Consistently ranked as a leader in the field of sports law by Chambers and Legal 500 in the years that followed, David joined the International Cricket Council in 2007 as Senior Counsel (Commercial) and was promoted shortly thereafter to Head of Legal. During his tenure at the ICC, he oversaw the prosecution of the Pakistani cricketers for spot-fixing, the legal programme for the 2011 Cricket World Cup and Lord Woolf's extensive governance review for international cricket. Through his continuing private practice, David has advised a host of sports federations, athletes, rights holders and brands both in the UK and internationally, including International Sailing Federation, NIKE, Ben Ainslie CBE, Ernie Els, Lee Westwood, Louis Oosthuizen, Rory Mcilroy and Steven Pienaar. A trustee of Beyond Sport and author of "The Essential Legal Guide to Events", David has appeared frequently on BBC Breakfast and Five Live commenting on a range of legal issues within the world of sport. Like his colleagues, David is a keen endurance athlete and has competed in the Sahara Ultramarathon, the World Memory Championships and the Mind Sports Olympiad.
david@thesportsconsultancy.com
uk.linkedin.com/pub/david-becker/61/176/7ba
Managing Director & Co-founder
Robert trained at one of the world's largest law-firms, Linklaters and qualified and practised there as a litigator for 4 years. He joined the British Olympic Association as its head of legal through the Sydney Olympic cycle and the early days of the London 2012 bid. Robert then became a partner at the international law firm Farrer & Co., where he headed the firm's commercial sports group (ranked no.1 in the UK for 5 consecutive years for its sponsorship work) advising sports rights holders and international federations. Robert became global director of the Laureus Sport for Good foundation before establishing The Sports Consultancy with Angus in 2006. Robert leads our rights holder bidding team and our commercial legal team consulting to international federations and major sports event clients. Robert's recent work includes advising the Volvo Ocean Race, the America's Cup, the International Equestrian Federation and the International Sailing Federation. When Robert's not running bids for major federations, he's out running the streets of north London, clocking up the middle distance training miles to scrape a few 10ths off his 800m time for the GB masters team.
robert@thesportsconsultancy.com
uk.linkedin.com/pub/robert-datnow/a/233/46a
Senior Consultant
Ben has extensive experience in the marketing and commercial side of sport. Before joining The Sports Consultancy, he spent six years at Chelsea FC where he was responsible for marketing and sponsorship. An agency man at heart, Ben has worked at Octagon and Redmandarin, the strategic sponsorship consultancy and has consulted to brands such as Philips Electronics, Carlsberg, GlaxoSmithKline, Toshiba and Microsoft. In his spare time Ben is an avid student of esoteric history, undeterred golfer and fan of most sports. He has run the London Marathon twice and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
Account Executive
Holly is a qualified lawyer and trained at Freshfields, a magic circle London law firm. She gained valuable experience as part of the legal team at the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games working on a range of matters including brand licences and co-operation and grant agreements for the Cultural Olympiad of the 2012 Games in London. At The Sports Consultancy, Holly assists with and advises on the contracts necessary to stage major events, in particular, supply, sponsorship, management and hosting agreements. Holly also volunteered for the Ceremonies of the London 2012 Games and could be spotted in the drumming section if you looked very closely!
holly@thesportsconsultancy.com
uk.linkedin.com/pub/holly-alexander/51/153/b52
Consultant
Sean came to The Sports Consultancy from Deloitte Consulting’s Operational Excellence team based in London during which time he consulted to a large variety of clients including the BBC, Goldman Sachs, Shell, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse. During this time he gained a broad understanding of a number of complex businesses and functions, consulting to his clients on operational strategy, end to end process analysis design and improvement, operating model design, requirements analysis and mapping, business performance measurement, regulatory control model design and the management of multi-workstream global projects.
Sean's passion has always been sport and he now brings his consulting skills to The Sports Consultancy's clients working with rights holders and host cities on a number of different areas across the major events lifecycle.
In the unlikely scenario of a dry weekend during the British Summer Sean can be found batting for the HAC and bowling very mediocre off spin or taking in a few laps of Richmond Park on his bike.
sean@thesportsconsultancy.com
uk.linkedin.com/pub/sean-parry/62/3b6/2b/
Analyst
Chris joined The Sports Consultancy following the completion of his BSc Hons in International Management and Spanish from the University of Bath. A one year work placement with Deloitte in Madrid and another in Buenos Aires developed a major interest in the commercial side of sport which led him to pursue a career within the sports industry.
At the Sports Consultancy Chris' official title is analyst, however he is happy getting stuck in at all levels of work including event bid management, sponsorship consultation and host city tendering. Like many of his colleagues Chris is a sports enthusiast, lending his hand at hockey, tennis and off piste powder skiing. He is a big Liverpool fan and self proclaimed guru in the kitchen.
Accounts Manager
Chrissy has over 20 years' experience working as an accountant, mainly in the educational and charitable sectors. After graduating in Modern History from Oxford University, Chrissy remained in the City of Oxford for her accountancy training and went on to become Assistant Accountant at Magdalen College for many years until a move brought her to London. When not managing the books, Chrissy enjoys live music, cycling, walking and swimming in the sea whenever the opportunity arises.