In 2001, Peter McKenna was on the corporate fast track at Smurfit in the publishing business. But a conversation with mentor Paddy Wright planted the seed for a dramatic career pivot as stadium director of Croke Park. When he took over, the stadium was under construction and loss-making. Last year, it had annual revenues of €132 million and paid a €16 million dividend to the GAA.
McKenna still serves as stadium director but he is also in charge of the GAA’s commercial arrangements and corporate partnerships.
In this episode of Sports Matters, he talks about making the stadium as a financial contributor to the GAA, the decision to take control of the association’s streaming service, and the lessons from his career.
Sports Matters is sponsored by the law firm Whitney Moore.
Andy Reid's career became a symbol for the debate that still surrounds Irish football when he was exiled from Giovanni Trapattoni's Ireland squad following a late night argument with the manager in a hotel bar. As he makes a career as a coach, he says Ireland needs to accept that it has talented players and why the media and social media today can be so damaging for young sportspeople.
In 1983, Ciaran Rowsome quit his job with the IDA to launch Flextime, a Dublin company that helps businesses manage their employee time and attendance. Today, 400 customers and 200,000 users across Europe use Flextime to manage the time and attendance of staff. The company's solution is used by the Oireachtas in Ireland and the UK passport office. In this podcast with Cait Caden, Rowsome talks about his entrepreneurial journey and how he got it off the ground through “hard graft and an overdraft”. Rowsome spoke about the company's expansion into Britain, where it trades as Multitime, and his plan to open a new office in Manchester in the coming months. He also reveals how he is working with Enterprise Ireland to develop a new product to export into new markets. Rowsome talks about the rise of flexible working, the future of the office, and how Covid-19 has changed the relationship between employers and employees.
Rebecca Moynihan has made important interventions in the housing debate but can the Labour party be heard above the noise? She talks to Dion Fanning about why the state must take control of the housing crisis, the Dublin Bay South by-election and why the Labour Party still has to deal with the austerity legacy.
Ursula Von der Leyen called it a "state hijacking", President Biden condemned it and Ryanair called it "aviation piracy". Belarus's decision to divert a plane carrying the opposition leader Roman Protesavich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega and force it to land in Minsk has been condemned around the world. But who is the president Alexander Lukashenko and is this the death rattle from Europe's last dictator or can he hold onto power. Andrew Wilson has written the definitive book on Lukashenko and in this podcast he talks to Dion Fanning about his rise and how his handling of Covid led to the mobilisation of a new opposition.
John Looby's new book is "In Search of Returns: Making Sense of Financial Markets". Its an investors field guide, aimed at showing ordinary people how to take part in the financial markets. In this conversation with Sean Keyes, John discusses the most common investing mistakes, the payoff for getting it right, how his views have changed lately, and the route to 10 per cent returns. It concludes with a "spirited" discussion of the merits of cryptocurrencies.
Trevor Ringland doesn't believe the violence of the Troubles can ever be justified. As a former Ireland rugby international, he has experienced the support and affection from people all over the island but he's not sure if the speed at which some are talking about a united Ireland can ever make unionists feel welcome.
Ecocem, the green cement manufacturer founded by Donal O’Riain in 2000, has just raised €22.5 million from Bill Gates’s climate-focused fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures. From Paris where he has been working remotely since long before Covid-19, the Irish entrepreneur tells Thomas Hubert about his quest to decarbonise a heavily polluting industry, pouring concrete from the Aviva Stadium to European high-speed rail lines and dealing with impact investors.
In 1989, Michael Knighton agreed a deal to buy Manchester United. The deal was for £10 million but it never happened. Instead he took a seat on the board and he says provided the club with the blueprint for its future commercialisation. But Knighton doesn't approve of what the club has become under the Glazers and says the resistance to the Super League signals another turning point in football
The Sackler family were great philanthropists. Galleries and museums had wings named after them. They were easily associated with their acts of generosity. But they were less public about their role in Purdue Pharma, the company that brought OxyContin to the market in 1996 and a drug whose availability was central to the opioid epidemic in America over the past twenty years. Patrick Radden Keefe has written the story of the family and how over three generations they shaped the way medicine and prescription drugs were marketed in the US and how that led to addiction and denial.
The idea for Eppione came in the back of a taxi. David Kindlon was an insurance specialist, while his friend Neil Fallon was an employee benefits expert. They decided to combine their talents to build a fully integrated HR and employee benefits software solution that could service companies employing between 50 and 2,000 staff. To help them build it, they brought on board a third founder, Ernest Legrand, a former IBM executive. Four years later, their HR software company has 900 clients in Ireland, the UK and Australia and is planning to enter the US market later this year. In this podcast with Sean Keyes, CEO Kindlon talks about the firm’s business model, its global ambitions and why it is different from other HR software tools. Kindlon also reveals how he convinced high net worth individuals, including Blue Insurance founder Ciaran Mulligan, to invest €1.25 million in the business, and details when he expects to go back to the market for further backing. He also talks about Eppione’s latest product, Screenin.me, which helps employers manage compliance with Covid-19 requirements.
