Former EE chief Allera joins team at CVC sports empire
The former boss of mobile phone network EE is taking on a powerful new role at the heart of a sports portfolio which includes interests in Six Nations Rugby, Spanish top-flight football and the women's global tennis tour.
Sky News has learnt that Marc Allera, who stepped down as the boss of BT Group's consumer business earlier this year, has been appointed chairman of CVC SportsCo, a new entity aimed at providing more cohesive support to the buyout firm CVC Capital Partners' investments across the sector.
The establishment of the new operating and investment group concept comes as CVC, the Amsterdam-listed private equity group, continues to diversify its sporting asset base.
Having made billions of dollars from its ownership of Formula One motor racing - one of the most lucrative deals in the history of sport - CVC has bought stakes in leagues and other assets spanning cricket, football, rugby union, tennis and volleyball over the last two decades.
Its investment in the media rights to La Liga - Spain's equivalent of the Premier League - is expected to generate a handsome return for the firm, although a comparable deal in France has faced significant challenges amid broadcasters' financial challenges in the country.
CVC's backing of global sports properties is intended to position it to maximise their commercial potential through new media and sponsorship rights deals, as well as their expansion into new formats aimed at drawing wider audiences amid rapid shifts in media consumption.
In rugby union, its acquisition of a stake in Premiership Rugby's commercial rights was hit by the pandemic and the subsequent financial pressures on clubs which saw a number of the league's teams forced into insolvency.
Sky News revealed earlier this year that CVC had extended further support to Newcastle Falcons as part of a broader financial package aimed at paving the way for the team's sale.
Red Bull is reported to be the acquirer of Newcastle Falcons, with a deal expected imminently.
CVC, which bought into Premiership Rugby in 2019, owns a 27% stake in the league.
Under its stewardship, broadcast audiences and attendances have turned a corner, with total TV audiences up 40% this year - partly as a result of an increase in the number of games being shown.
It recently agreed a more lucrative TV rights deal for the league.
Sponsorship revenues are also said to have nearly doubled since CVC's initial investment, with fan interest among the crucial 18-34 age demographic rising by 30% during the last year.
Its SportsCo strategy will see Mr Allera, who also chaired BT Sport, working across the CVC sports portfolio, with other executives expected to be recruited to assist the effort in due course.
One source likened the initiative to the approach employed by the luxury goods conglomerate LVMH.
They added that there would be parallels with the sharing of best practice used at US basketball's NBA through its TeamBusinessOperations (TeamBO) unit to unlock collective opportunities and drive further long-term growth projects.
CVC's sporting assets will continue to remain autonomous and independent of one another, the source said.
One expected benefit of the SportsCo approach would be the sourcing of new investment opportunities in future years, with another likely to mean CVC remaining a stakeholder in its existing portfolio for a longer duration.
The firm was recently outbid in an auction of major tennis tournaments by Ari Emanuel, the Endeavor founder whose company was also the seller of the assets.
Global sports properties have become one of the hottest growth areas for private capital in recent years, with firms such as Ares Management, Silver Lake Partners and Bridgepoint all investing substantial sums in teams, leagues and other assets across the industry.
Mr Allera already has connections to CVC as chairman of JagEx, the mobile gaming business it bought last year, and as a broader adviser to the private equity firm.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
28 minutes ago
- The Independent
Europeans angry with Musk still aren't buying his cars as Tesla sales drop for fifth month in a row
Europeans still aren't buying Teslas with figures out Wednesday showing sales plunged for a fifth month in a row in May, a blow to investors who had hoped anger toward Elon Musk would have faded by now. Tesla sales fell 28% last month in 30 European countries even as the overall market for electric vehicles expanded sharply, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association. The poor showing comes after Tesla's billionaire CEO had promised a 'major rebound' was coming last month, adding to a recent buying frenzy among investors. They were selling on Wednesday, pushing the prices down more than 4% in early afternoon trading. Musk had said Tesla was sure to get a boost once the company was done retooling its factories to produce a new version of its biggest seller, the Model Y. But that was finished months ago, and the new models are widely available. Investors are now hoping that a cheaper Tesla expected to be out later year will help reverse the sales decline. Overall, battery electric vehicle sales rose 25% in Europe compared to a year earlier. The market for EVs was particularly strong in Germany, where Musk has angered potential buyers by publicly supporting the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party in elections. Overall EV sales there leapt 45%. China's SAIC Motor was the big winner for the month with its European sales of EVs and other kinds of cars jumping 38%. That has allowed the company to leapfrog Tesla, which a year ago was selling more cars in the region. SAIC sold 18,716 vehicles last month versus Tesla's 8,729. The sales drop for Tesla comes at a crucial time for the company as it launches a test run of its driverless 'robotaxis' service in Austin, Texas. Musk says that if goes well, he expects to introduce the service in several other cities in quick succession and have as many as a million of the automated cabs on roads by the end of the year. Reviews so far have been mostly good, but the service is limited to a dozen or so cars and some passengers have circulated videos of problems during their rides, including one showing a robotaxi heading down a lane for opposing traffic. Federal traffic safety regulators said Tuesday they were looking into the videos.
Telegraph
29 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Starmer's gamble has failed. Now Reeves will crucify the middle class
Don't believe the denials, the hubristic promises to fight on, the chest-thumping from deep down in the Number Ten bunker. It's all over for Sir Keir Starmer, a hollow husk of a Prime Minister stripped of his last vestiges of authority and credibility. His final, doomed showdown with his MPs over his plan to trim incapacity benefits will only expose his impotence and lack of strategic nous. His premiership, not even a year old, is already on borrowed time. He will have to surrender again, or suffer total humiliation. He is now beholden to Labour MPs, and survives only on their say-so. There are, for the first time, whispers that he could be ousted as early as after the May local elections. I'm not so sure: I suspect that Rachel Reeves, his beleaguered Chancellor, is likely to be sacrificed first. She has certainly failed disastrously. She convinced herself that her supposed technocratic brilliance and moral superiority meant she could manage Britain's broken economy and welfare state more competently than the Tories. She sought to combine a few cuts with a massive increase in overall expenditure in a crude attempt at 'triangulation'. She lied about Tory 'black holes' and repeatedly broke the spirit of her party's election promises, jacking up National Insurance. Her staggering arrogance has caught up with her. The deficit is too high, and gilt yields have surged. She hasn't fixed housebuilding or anything else. Her tax rises have vandalised the economy. Britain will lose 16,500 millionaires this year, on top of 10,800 last year, according to Henley and Partners. We are now home to just 156 billionaires, down from 165 in 2024. The rich are taking jobs, spending and tax receipts with them. The number of children in private schools is down 11,000; Labour expected its hateful VAT raid to force just 3,000 children to move to state schools. The irony is that Labour MPs still see Reeves as too Right-wing, even though she is the most Left-wing Chancellor since Denis Healey. Her Personal Independence Payments reforms would save £4.5 billion a year by 2029-2030; working-age health and disability spending would still increase by £15.4 billion between 2024-25 and 2029-30. These are not cuts, merely slightly slower spending growth, and yet even this has proved too much. Labour isn't in the mood for nuance, for being sensible. They want to revolutionise Britain, and damn the consequences. Starmer can't pass the buck. The activists who backed him for Labour leader liked his 2020 personal manifesto. He wasn't Jeremy Corbyn, for sure, but neither was he another Tony Blair. He promised to maintain Labour's 'radical values' and hailed 'the moral case for socialism'. His foreign policy proposals explains his choice of Lord Hermer as our worst ever Attorney General. Starmer demanded 'no more illegal wars. Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales.' His other ideas have yet to be implemented. He called for an 'increase [in] income tax for the top 5 per cent of earners', the dismantling of Universal Credit and an 'end [to] the Tories' cruel sanctions regime'; the abolition of tuition fees; massive labour market regulations and powers to the trade unions; a defence of 'free movement'; the lionisation of the 'green deal'; the nationalisation of utilities; and the end of NHS outsourcing. This is what Labour thought they would get when he became Leader, and they are determined Starmer should deliver at least some of this agenda as PM. They accepted he had to pretend to be somebody he wasn't at the election, to fool centrist voters, but will no longer tolerate any deviation from what they believe was the plan all along. Britain is becoming ever more polarised. Some 25 per cent of the public believe taxes on top incomes are too high, close to the highest support for that enlightened position of the past 35 years; 24 per cent think the level is about right, the British Social Attitudes Survey notes. But 44 per cent think they are too low, up from 27 per cent in 2006. The Right is becoming sounder, but the Left is becoming ever more extreme, which is bad for Labour. Whatever it does is never good enough. Today's average activist is a graduate with quasi-communist economic ideas who wants to rejoin the EU, implement woke radicalism, believes in open borders, hates Israel and is soft on crime. They are not happy that Starmer is buying F-35A jets able to carry nuclear warheads. They do not support spending 5 per cent of GDP on defence (including 'resilience' expenditure), as agreed with Nato. They are shocked that Palestine Action is being categorised as a terrorist group. They are ideologically and sociologically similar to the young, prosperous, uber-credentialed New Yorkers who picked the woeful 'democratic socialist' and 'anti-Zionist' Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic Mayoral Primary. The coup de grâce for Starmer will come if a new Left-wing party is launched. If it were led by Jeremy Corbyn, such a venture would attract 10 per cent of the electorate, a poll for the New Statesman suggests, cutting Labour's share to 20 per cent. In alliance with the Greens, a Corbynite party – absorbing the pro-Gaza independents – could poll 15 per cent, overtaking the Lib Dems, and doing to Labour what Reform did to the Tories. To buy time, Starmer will need to concede to the Left on everything. He will start defaming Israel again. He will push through his Employment Rights Bill. He will task Reeves with one final mission: raise even more taxes at a kamikaze Autumn Budget to pay for defence commitments, the U-turns and to splash out even more on Labour's client groups. She will surely freeze tax thresholds, dragging millions more into higher bands. She may impose the first increase in petrol duty since 2010-11. She will slap more taxes on gambling. Such 'soft' measures won't be sufficient. She may also target pension tax relief, or increase inheritance tax, or raid Isas, or revalue council tax, or mull nationwide road pricing, or even consider the nuclear option, a wealth tax. It will be tantamount to declaring total war on the aspirational, on anybody who wants to work, save and improve their lives. The Left will lap it all up, but Britain will never recover.
The Independent
33 minutes ago
- The Independent
When are the Championship fixtures released? Date, time and schedule for EFL 2025/26 season
The 72 constituent clubs of the English Football League (EFL) will find out their journey through the 2025/26 season as the fixtures for the new campaign are revealed. The schedule for the Championship, League One and League Two will be released simultaneously with the three divisions following quickly after the Premier League's matches were confirmed earlier in June. After a play-off final win, Charlton are back in the second tier of English football along with Birmingham City and Wrexham, while Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton dropped down from the top-flight. Barnet and Oldham navigated out of non-league at the end of last season to return to League Two, replacing Carlisle and Morecambe. Here's everything you need to know. When are the EFL fixtures released? The EFL fixtures will be confirmed at midday BST on Thursday 26 June. Every Championship, League One and League Two team will have their schedule confirmed for the new campaign simultaneously. The round one draw for the Carabao Cup will also be made later in the afternoon. Key 2025/26 season dates The 2025/26 EFL season season will begin on the weekend of 1-3 August in League One and League Two, and 8-10 August in the Championship. The second-tier's fixtures take place over 33 weekends, nine midweeks and four Bank Holidays, while League One and Two's match rounds are structured across 33 weekends, five midweeks and eight Bank Holidays and International Breaks. The final games of the season take place on the weekend of 2/3 May 2026, before the play-offs begin: Championship Play-Off Final – Saturday 23 May 2026 League One Play-Off Final – Sunday 24 May 2026 League Two Play-Off Final – Monday 25 May 2026
