Appointing a Chief of Staff to help drive TGI’s transformation

TGI needed a Chief of Staff who could help turn an ambitious transformation strategy into action. Working alongside the CEO and Board on the wider transformation gave Global Sports Talent a deeper understanding of the business need — and allowed us to run a search shaped by the strategy TGI was trying to deliver, not simply a job description.

The challenge

TGI was entering an important period of growth and transformation.

As a private equity-backed global sports media rights and broadcast business, the CEO and Board were working through the next phase of the company’s strategy — and needed someone alongside the leadership team who could help turn that ambition into action.

The challenge was that this wasn’t a conventional Chief of Staff brief. The role needed strategic horsepower and analytical rigour, but also commercial judgement, the ability to operate across functions and the credibility to work with senior stakeholders. Just as importantly, the successful candidate needed to move comfortably between strategy and execution.

We understood that challenge from the inside. The search formed part of a broader consultancy assignment working with TGI’s CEO and Board on the company’s transformation strategy, giving us a much deeper understanding of the business, its priorities and the leadership capability required to deliver them.

Our approach

Rather than start with a fixed view of what a Chief of Staff should look like, we used the search to test different answers to the underlying business need.

We mapped broadly across strategy consulting, private equity and value creation, sports and media, rights-holders and adjacent industries. We explored candidates ranging from sports-native strategists and investment specialists to strategy consultants with transformation experience and individuals who had already operated alongside senior executives in Chief of Staff-style roles.

Those conversations gave us more than a candidate pipeline. They provided live market intelligence that allowed us to compare different capability profiles, challenge assumptions and continually sharpen the brief.

And because we were already working with the CEO and Board on the wider transformation, we could assess candidates against the strategy TGI was trying to deliver, not simply against a job description.

The outcome

Global Sports Talent already had a deep understanding of our business, our strategy and what we were trying to achieve through the wider transformation. That made this feel very different from a traditional search process. They challenged our thinking on the profile, explored the market broadly and ultimately helped us find someone with the combination of strategic capability, commercial thinking and drive that we needed.

James Ruston, CEO, TGI

TGI appointed a top-tier strategy consultant with experience spanning transformation, private equity-backed value creation and commercial strategy, alongside previous experience operating inside a high-growth technology business.

The successful candidate also brought relevant sports and media exposure, including strategy work around the European expansion of a major US sports league.

It was the combination the process had shown mattered most: strategic horsepower, commercial judgement, analytical rigour and an operator’s mindset — someone capable of working alongside the CEO and leadership team to help shape priorities and then drive them through to execution.

Because the best executive search doesn’t start with a job description. It starts with understanding where the business is going — and finding the person who can help get it there.