Nick Robinson has become one of the respected voices in the sports industry. He is the owner of Robinson Sports Group, the holding company for a group of sports business, charity, education and apparel ventures including International Sports Consulting (ISC), The Game Plan, DFY Sports and Athletes by Design.Primarily through ISC, Nick has built 18 years of experience in sports management, marketing and sponsorship. A registered agent with FIFA, the FA and the RFU, he manages some of the most talented and influential athletes and agents in the world, advising on contracts, commercial strategy and careers. He has led and negotiated over £250m in elite sports deals to date.Alongside ISC, Nick runs The Game Plan, a sports business accelerator that helps athletes, coaches and operators build serious, sustainable sports businesses. He also writes The Game Plan Weekly, a newsletter read by over 3,000 subscribers, sharing sports business insights, trends, practical tools, job openings and notable deals.In late 2025 Nick founded Athletes by Design, a sports apparel brand co-designed with ambitious athletes just below the traditional top sponsorship tier. Tired of seeing only the top few percent supported by the global brands, he built a label that creates performance kit tailored to real athletes’ needs.He also founded DFY, a UK registered charity that levels the playing field for the next generation by improving opportunities for over 1500 children from disadvantaged backgrounds in person every week. He hosts the DFY podcast Becoming Unstoppable, sharing honest stories from athletes and operators worldwide of resilience and achievement. DFY Academy runs youth football and basketball teams for boys and girls, as well as a structured mentorship programme that connects young people with role models and long-term guidance.Nick regularly shares his experience as a guest lecturer at institutions including Harvard Law School, New York University, Florida State University and Loughborough University, and through ongoing content on sports business, negotiation and leadership.📧 For enquiries: hello@weareisc.com

Everyone wants to be a beast.
Until it’s time to do what beasts do.

Michael Jordan punched a teammate in training.
Still think leadership is about being nice?

You didn’t slack off with Jordan, Kobe or Brady.
You didn't cut corners with Serena Williams, Jonny Sexstone or Michael Phelps. 

The genuine greats all have that aura.
Not everyone liked them.
But everyone respected them.

Every high-performance culture has that one presence.
The standard-setter.
The tone-raiser.
The one who makes everyone lock in.

A 2022 Harvard Business Review study found that high-accountability leadership, the kind that demands more than it praises, leads to 22% higher team output and stronger trust (when paired with clarity).

Greatness doesn’t care if you’re comfortable.
It believes in you, and challenges you to rise to your full potential.

♻️ Share if someone’s ever pushed you to a level you didn’t know you had in you.
📈 Follow Nick Robinson for more insights on high-performance mindset, leadership and sports business.

Nick Robinson

Sports Business Leader | Over $250M in Contracts | Charity Founder | Keynote Speaker | Follow for Insights on the Sports Industry

Paris, London, Madrid. The NBA is coming to Europe

And the financial numbers are extraordinary

The National Basketball Association (NBA)’s next major expansion will be in Europe, not the US. 

Here's the story behind the exciting venture ⤵️ 

For years, the idea sounded impossible.
Travel, arenas, league politics, scheduling… everything got in the way.
But the landscape isn’t the same anymore.

Euroleague Basketball has grown into a serious commercial player.
Bigger crowds, rising media value, strong club identities.
It’s become competition to the NBA.

So when the NBA explored partnership and acquisition routes, 
EuroLeague didn’t blink...
...the NBA’s response was to build their own.

Current discussions outline a 12–16 team European conference launching around 2027:
Paris, London, Madrid, Milan, Berlin, Istanbul, 
the markets are already being scoped.
Franchise fees could pass $500 million. Yes, for one team. 💰

This is about owning the entire value chain of basketball.

📺 CET prime-time media rights
🏟️ Arena investments
🎟️ League-controlled sponsorship inventory
👟 Pathway systems shaped by the NBA brand
📲 Direct access to a continent that already loves the product

Even football investors are circling.
Manchester United's Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been linked to interest in securing a European NBA franchise, attracted by the commercial upside.
Cross-sport portfolios are becoming the next big trend.

💡 The bigger story:
Sport is becoming an increasingly bigger ecosystem strategy.
Teams. Venues. Content. Fan data. Global distribution.
All connected. All monetisable. All under one umbrella. 

♻️ Repost if moves like this fascinate you.
📈 Follow Nick Robinson & The Game Plan - Sports Business Accelerator for sharp insights on business, leadership, and high performance.

As the founder and CEO of International Sports Consulting (ISC) and DFY, Nick has over 14 years of experience in leading a sports management, marketing, and sponsorship business across multiple sports. A registered sports agent with the FIFA & the RFU, he represents some of the most talented and influential athletes in the world across multiple sports.

Nick is also passionate about using sports as a tool for social change and empowerment. That is why he founded DFY, a UK registered charity that aims to level the playing field for the next generation by improving the opportunities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and enabling them to realise their full potential. With the help of some of the best sporting talent in the country as their programme coaches and ambassadors, DFY provides unrivalled coaching, leadership, and mentorship both on and off the pitch. Additionally, Nick enjoys sharing his knowledge and insights on sports management and leadership as a guest lecturer at prestigious universities, such as Harvard Law School, New York University, Florida State University, and Loughborough University.

National Basketball Association (NBA)

Euroleague Basketball

Manchester United

The Game Plan - Sports Business Accelerator

Jayis Jaxson  H.

I once negotiated 3 football transfers in 4 days 🤝 
Over £50M exchanged hands that week. 
If you’re interested, l can show you how ⤵️ 

They all had serious hurdles to overcome:

⛔ One of the players split with his agent weeks before & I didn’t know 
🦵 Another was half way through a 6 months knee injury rehab
✈️  The other’s club made him fly back from England after the medical to play in 1 final game before signing the paperwork.

Three deals. Three completely different dynamics.

And the best lawyer in the game, Daniel Geey, advising on all three of them while on a boat somewhere off the French coast with patchy WiFi.

It was a reminder that negotiation is never just player + club.

It’s alignment across agents, families, tax teams, relocation plans, image rights, sporting expectations… and the emotional and PR pressure that sits over all of that.

What got these deals done was the art of negotiation, capitalising on structure, timing, and the ability to keep momentum when everything slows to a crawl.

In tomorrow's webinar, I’ll show you how to master the art negotiation, I'll share the detailed mechanics behind each negotiation…the sticking points, the moments that nearly derailed everything, and the tools and levers that eventually unlocked the deals and can be used in all walks of life

🚨 If you work in sport, ever want to, or use negotiation in your job but want to improve, this webinar is a must-attend.

🔪 Sharpen your negotiation skills with me tomorrow:
 📆 Wednesday 26th November, 6–7pm UK time / 1–2pm EST
 💻 Register here: https://lnkd.in/eqyB5kV7

Yesterday I taught 100 students to negotiate
How to win those important moments
Tonight I’m live and online for everyone

Thanks to Alex Thurston, PhD for the invite to speak at Loughborough University again. We ran past the two-hour slot because the students were very locked in & the questions kept coming!

I focused on the principle idea: negotiation is not a shouting match. 
It's two people trying to solve problems without losing their footing. 
You're not a boxer, you're a deal architect.

Tonight i'll be live & online 6pm UK time / 1pm EST 
Session open to anyone and we're going deeper on the tools behind that idea:
💻 https://lnkd.in/eqyB5kV7

I’m breaking down:
- How real negotiators prepare
- Reading the market and building a clear plan
- Playing weak cards with confidence
- Timing, sequencing and who to speak to
- Anchors, silence and credible numbers
- When to trade and when to wait
- Staying calm when pressure rises
- Avoiding the mistakes that cost people deals
- Everyday uses: rent, salary, friends and family

If you want to learn how to use these in your own negotiations, join the live session tonight.

This was the first 8-figure deal I negotiated solo.

It taught me that information imbalance is power.

I moved Sofiane Boufal from Lille to Southampton in 2016.
It was a club-record £16 million transfer at the time.

We worked on it for over four months.

To say there were speed bumps would be an understatement.

Sofiane suffered a knee meniscus tear halfway through.
Out for at least five months.

In most cases, that kills a deal.

(the injured medical was one of the most tense moments of my career).

Finally, we went to Lille to negotiate the deal.

The Southampton executives went into the boardroom and negotiated for two hours and came out without a deal.

It seemed like the deal was over.

But during those two hours, I found out a crucial piece of information:

Lille were obliged to enter their financial results to the FFF a few weeks later, and without the sale of Sofiane they would fail and be fined and/or docked points.

It changed the balance completely.

Once they realised we knew this, I managed to close it within half an hour.

Information imbalance was their trump card until it was removed.

Then everything changed.

But that is only one of 5 main levers that move a negotiation:

1️⃣ Information imbalance
2️⃣ Leverage / BATNA
3️⃣ Value and structure
4️⃣ Positioning the process
5️⃣ Psychology

If you want to see how to use all 5 in real deals, and learn how to use them yourself in everyday life, I am breaking them down inside my negotiation masterclass.

Sharpen your negotiation skills with me on 
📅 Wednesday 26th November, 6-7pm UK time / 1-2pm EST.
💻 Register here: https://lnkd.in/eqyB5kV7

Every club has two budgets: one for survival, one for the drop.
The difference is who admits it early enough.

Relegation looks emotional from the outside but inside the boardroom, it becomes financial surgery. 💸⚽

Every season, a few clubs face the same brutal question:
“How do we survive the drop without collapsing the balance sheet?”

Behind the headlines, relegation planning starts months before it happens:
🧾 Contract clauses such as wage reductions and release triggers to protect cash flow.
💰 Asset sales identifying which players can be sold quickly to bridge lost TV income.
📉 Scenario modelling where CFOs run two full budgets: one for staying up, one for going down.
🏗 Cost re-engineering slims operational spend without losing the core of the organisation.

The Premier League’s parachute payments buy time.
The clubs that treat them as a runway instead of a rescue are the ones that bounce back.

Look at Burnley in 2022 or Newcastle in 2016: both treated relegation as a restructuring window.
They came back stronger because they used finances to properly rebuild systems.

Relegation is an extreme stress test for your business model.
And like any test, it reveals who was built on stability, and who was gambling on survival.

♻ Repost if you’re more interested in football’s boardroom battles than its scorelines.
📈 Follow Nick Robinson & The Game Plan - Sports Business Accelerator for sharp insights on business, leadership, and high performance.

A guidebook to surviving relegation

Every football club has a hidden hierarchy 👑 
(when the job titles don’t match reality)

Most people think negotiations happen between the agent and “the club”.
It’s never that simple.

Real decisions come from the people with actual authority:
• the CEO who signs off budgets
• the sporting director who shapes the plan
• the head coach whose view can swing a deal
• the board member whose vote matters more than anyone expects

Every club is different. Every structure is fluid. 
Who you speak to matters more than what you say. .

🃏 If you don’t know who genuinely holds the power cards, you’re at a disadvantage.

Top agents spend years mapping internal power.
↗️ ↘️ They track who is rising, who is under pressure, who blocks deals, who pushes them through, and who carries trust inside the building.

Once you understand the hierarchy, you can tailor your approach financially, emotionally and strategically to the people who decide the outcome.

The best deals come from speaking to the right people, not hoping a message survives the communication chain.

Influence is a competitive edge.
Agents who master relationships outperform the rest.

📩 For deeper insight into the agency world, club strategy and career pathways in sport, follow The Game Plan - Sports Business Accelerator.

📈  If you want to become part of the Game Plan community, sign up here:
🔗 https://lnkd.in/eZCmDrWj

Your Sports Business cheat code 🎮
Learn the business. Master the hacks.
Find the opportunities that move you forward

📈 Sports Business Hack of the Week:

When you run into a brick wall, it’s still far from the end
Knowing who holds the real power and testing the waters can turn a stalled negotiation into a done deal.
Read below for a real football negotiation where bypassing the blocker made all the difference 

🔦 Job Spotlight of the Week:

Liverpool FC are looking for a Player Administration Executive, someone who can keep every registration, transfer, and contract precise and compliant.
From WSL to the academy, you’ll be the person who ensures players are fully eligible and operations run seamlessly.
Do you back yourself to take that on?

🧐 Sports Business Trend of the Week:

Neymar just bought Pelé’s full brand rights.
He now controls Pelé’s name, image and archives, giving him the power to launch merchandise, media projects and fan experiences around one of football’s biggest icons.
Sports business is changing. Success is now beyond what happens on the pitch, owning the story off it is what matters.
Learn what this means for the future of sports business 

💼 Jobs of the Week:

Senior Leadership:

Partnerships Manager (Manchester City Football Club)
https://lnkd.in/etzitG4V

Player Administration Executive (Liverpool Football Club)
https://lnkd.in/eh2p8brS

General Manager at MLS Next (Major League Soccer)
https://lnkd.in/enkurg6W

Mid level & Specialist:

Production Manager Europe & Middle East (National Basketball Association (NBA))
https://lnkd.in/efHgkF7J

Graduate & Early Career:
Social Media Intern, Challenger Tour & Next Gen (ATP Tour)
https://lnkd.in/eyQBGRxe

Event Management Intern - UK (Ballers)
https://lnkd.in/e2TbSNMD

If you like this content sign up to The Game Plan - Sports Business Accelerator newsletter and it will be delivered straight to your inbox plus special features, sports business webinar invites and more. 
📲 https://lnkd.in/em_7Vt_2

The Game Plan Weekly

Football’s transfer window is a financial chess match 

Accounting has become the new competitive edge 

Behind every “deadline day” deal and "here we go" 
are clubs are balancing more than tactics and talent

They manage cashflow amortisation and compliance 
balancing the impact of emotion

Here is how the smartest operators play it:

 ⏳ Timing
Deals late in the financial year can defer spending into the next cycle
That is why so many “final day” transfers happen - smart accounting

 📊 Amortisation and structured wages
A £50m signing on a 5-year deal hits the accounts at £10m per year
Bonuses and wage deferrals help reduce the annual burden
Chelsea stretched this idea until UEFA limited long contracts like Enzo Fernández’s 8.5-year deal

🔄 Player trading as cash management
One well-timed £20m home grown outbound can unlock three upgrades without breaching rules.
It is more than squad building
It is balance sheet building

 🛂 FFP set the initial rules of the game
Costs must align with sustainable revenue
Clubs got creative with revenue deals and player revaluations to stay onside
FFP became a test of timing and financial skill not spending power

🔃 Now the rules are changing again
The Premier League has introduced Squad Cost Ratio
All spending on wages amortisation agent fees and add-ons must stay within a fixed share of club revenue
Most clubs must stay under 85%
Clubs in UEFA competitions must stay under 70%

SCR ties spending growth directly to what you earn, 
not what an owner can inject.
Instead of a salary cap, a hard ceiling now reshapes strategy
The biggest reset since FFP

 🧾 Creative accounting and financial engineering with a football accent

The smartest clubs now scout accountants as aggressively as they scout #9s
Clubs who understand risk regulation and leverage as competitive advantages

♻️  Repost if you geek out on the sport & finance intersection
⚽ Follow Nick Robinson & The Game Plan - Sports Business Accelerator for sharp insights on business leadership and high performance

Sports Business Leader | Over $250M in Contracts | Charity Founder | Keynote Speaker | Follow for Insights on Sports Business, Leadership & High-Performance Mindset.

The Finance behind the Game ⚽️

📍Want to negotiate like an expert?
In my newsletter this week i show you how ⤵️

We negotiate every day - with bosses, clients, partners, children - yet nobody actually teaches us how to do it properly. We're left to figure out one

Open article: Master the Art of Negotiation  by Nick Robinson • 2 min read

Your Sports Business cheat code 🔑
Learn the business. Master the hacks.
Find the opportunity that moves you forward 

➡️ Sports Business Hack of the Week

Silence is pressure. It makes people reveal what they really want or what they’re willing to give up.

Used well, it can shift the entire deal in your favor.

Read below for a real football negotiation where silence changed everything 

➡️ Job Spotlight of the Week

Crystal Palace are looking for a Head of Academy Operations, someone who can bring Premier League standards to every detail of the academy.
From logistics to player experience, you’ll be the person who keeps everything running at the highest level.

Do you back yourself to take that on?

➡️ Sports Business Trend of the Week

Manchester United is taking basketball to Europe.
Football clubs are no longer just about football. They are expanding into new sports, new markets and new fan experiences.
What this means for the future of global sports business is bigger than you think.

➡️ Jobs of the Week:

↪️ Senior Leadership: 

Directors, Business Ventures (U.S. Soccer Federation)
https://lnkd.in/ehaDujgj

Head of Academy Operations (Crystal Palace Football Club)
https://lnkd.in/e4qUC-u6

↪️ Mid level & Specialist: 

Marketplace lead (OneFootball)
https://lnkd.in/eU5nYKti

Academy kit assistant (West Ham United FC)
https://lnkd.in/eePhHEWN


↪️ Graduate & Early Career:

Game Analyis Intern (Hertha BSC GmbH & Co. KGaA)
https://lnkd.in/e2z9vheB

Internship at the DFB Press Office – National Teams & Academy (German Football Assocciation – DFB)
https://lnkd.in/e4QztCeJ 

To sign up for the newsletter straight to your inbox:
https://lnkd.in/em_7Vt_2

I miss the weird 90s era goalkeeper kits
They looked more like a Glastonbury headline
Here’s the throwback ⬇

There was a strange period in football where goalkeepers dressed like they’d escaped from an art school rave 🎨

The 1990s gave us neon spirals, geometric chaos, acid-wash zigzags, paint-splatter sleeves, shirts that looked like abstract canvases.

And then, almost overnight, it stopped.

So what happened?

In the early 90s, GK kits were one of the few areas untouched by strict brand guidelines. 

➡ Outfield shirts had to follow club identity. 
➡ Keepers needed contrast for referees, 
↪ and that technical loophole opened the door for designers to go a bit wild.

Adidas, Umbro, Reebok… they all treated the GK jersey like a mushroom trip.

Bright colours made sense too, the thinking was that they intimidated strikers, made the keeper look bigger, and caused momentary hesitation.

It worked for culture as well. Kids bought them because they didn’t look like anything else in the sport. They became rebellious identity pieces, rather than uniforms.

So why did they disappear?

📉 Brand centralisation:
From the 2000s onwards, global kit sponsors standardised templates. 
Clubs pushed for consistency across all visual assets, and the design freedom window closed.

📉 Performance science:
Modern fabrics emphasise clarity for teammates over confusion for opponents. High-visibility tech became subtle, not psychedelic.

📉 Risk-averse marketing:
Shirts became global products with strict commercial guidelines. The 90s chaos didn’t scale. Mass market appeal over niche culture.

But here’s the interesting part:

As retro football culture grows, don’t be surprised if the goalkeepers become the style pioneers again.

What kits have we had recently that hark back to these rebellious days? 

♻ Repost if you enjoyed this retro goalie kit era.
📈 Follow Nick Robinson & The Game Plan - Sports Business Accelerator Plan for sharp insights on sports business, leadership, and high performance.

Football Kits Unleashed

You can do months of work perfectly 
and still lose the deal if you don't map the power. 
I found that out in brutal fashion ⤵️

I spent three months convincing the Sporting Director about my player. He liked him. We travelled to watch his games together. We discussed the transf

Open article: Find the real decision maker  by Nick Robinson • 2 min read

The Premier League is a well oiled global content machine. Here's what most people miss⤵

The Premier League has become the world’s most reliable entertainment product because it engineered reliability into the business model.

📌 The Premier League sells certainty...of drama.

Broadcasters are not buying “the best teams”. They are buying a product that delivers storylines every week, in every time zone, across the table.

That reliability comes from structure.

Three levers explain the gap.

📍 1) The breakaway created commercial control
In 1992, the top division resigned from the Football League and formed the Premier League as a separate company, built to control its own broadcast and sponsorship deals.

📺 2) Rights are sold collectively, in multi season packages, built around specific broadcast time slots. Predictable inventory. Predictable scheduling. Predictable value.

💷 3) Money is shared to protect weekly drama
Domestic broadcast revenue is split 50:25:25
50% equal share
25% league position
25% televised matches

In 2024/25, every club received an equal share of £29.8m (UK) and £59.2m (international) before merit and facility payments.

International revenue has historically been shared equally, and in 2020 the league agreed that future increases in international revenue would be distributed based on final league position.

🎬 And the product control is tightening again
From 2026/27, the Premier League will bring international content production and distribution in house, ending the long IMG run. That is a not insignificant move towards owning the full media layer, not just selling match rights.

Put it together and you get the model:

The Premier League is predictably compelling.
Broadcasters reward predictability with bigger cycles. Sponsors follow suit.

Meanwhile the rest of Europe is held back by legacy models, municipal stadiums, governance limits, and an unwillingness to restructure for international markets.

💡Other leagues can copy parts of this but copying the system end to end is much harder. And unless that changes, the gap is only going one direction.

♻ Repost if the Premier League floats your boat
📈 Follow Nick Robinson and The Game Plan - Sports Business Accelerator for more insights on the sports industry

The EPL's Unassailable Lead

Without doubt DFY Sports is the most purposeful of my ventures. 
So excited about the 2026 plans....

📣 We’re excited to welcome Aaron Hercules to DFY Sports as our newest trustee.

A creative strategist with a track record of building bridges across sport, music and business, he’s joining us at a pivotal moment in our growth.

🎵 Aaron spent over three decades in the music industry, working with and managing major artists, shaping culture and opening doors for talent across the world.

⚽ He has also made his mark in football, bringing creativity and strategy together to drive opportunity, partnerships and ideas. He is known for his network, his instinct for collaboration and his ability to spark momentum.

🟢 Built high profile careers and partnerships in the music industry
🟢 Connected sport and culture through creative strategy and business development
🟢 Advised on projects that blend entertainment, community and commercial growth

And now, he is bringing that perspective and energy to DFY.

“Thank you for having me. DFY is exactly the kind of organisation I’ve always wanted to give back through, so when Nick Robinson mentioned it, it was a no-brainer. I’ve spent over 30 years across music and sport and I know I can bring something valuable to the table. I might not live up to being called a legend, but I’m here to add real value and help shape what comes next.”

DFY Sports is in a period of rapid growth, with new mentorship work in schools, a growing Academy, and more young people coming through our programmes every week. Voices like Aaron’s help shape where we go next.

We’re proud to have him with us at this stage of the journey.

Big things ahead 🌱

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