Building ITG’s founding sports commercial team

Independent Talent Group was building a new sports commercial capability from the ground up. Global Sports Talent worked alongside its leadership team to shape the structure, define the capability required and build a founding team with complementary strengths across sport, brands, rights-holders and commercial execution.

The challenge

Independent Talent Group was making a significant move into sport, building a new commercial capability alongside its established entertainment business.

But in a greenfield build, the first challenge isn’t always finding the people. It’s defining what you actually need.

There was no existing sports team or established structure. We worked with ITG to shape the roles, challenge where responsibilities should sit and think about the capability of the team as a whole — not simply three hires in isolation.

Our approach

We combined deep sports market knowledge with senior CPO experience to operate as an extension of the ITG leadership team.

That meant going beyond search: helping shape the organisation design, benchmarking compensation and advising on how to position and land candidates in a highly competitive market.

We mapped broadly across agencies, rights-holders, sport, entertainment and adjacent industries. Just as importantly, we listened to the market. Conversations with high-quality benchmark candidates gave us live intelligence on the opportunity, compensation and available talent — allowing us to challenge assumptions and continually sharpen the brief.

Running the mandates together created another advantage. Rather than optimise each appointment independently, we could build for complementary strengths across the team.

The outcome

“We weren’t simply looking to fill three roles; we were building a new capability from scratch. Global Sports Talent understood that from the outset. They helped us think through the structure, challenged us on the profiles we needed and, importantly, considered how each appointment would complement the others. The result is a team with a really strong mix of experience, perspectives and commercial capability.”

Simon Oliveira, Director of Growth, Independent Talent Group

Three appointments created ITG Sport’s founding commercial team.

A senior commercial leader and builder brought decades of experience across sport and entertainment, major deal origination and the experience to create and scale commercial teams.

A sports and rights-holder specialist added elite football and Formula 1 experience alongside strategy, data and global partnerships expertise.

And a brand partnerships specialist brought a different commercial lens, spanning sponsorship, culture, entertainment and premium brands.

Together, the appointments gave ITG complementary capability across leadership, rights-holders, brands, data, culture and commercial execution.

Because building a new team isn’t about finding three great individuals. It’s about understanding which three individuals will be great together.