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.
When Fiona Edwards Murphy applied her knowledge of the internet of things to the problems facing beekeepers in her PhD, demand for her technology emerged before she even had a business. Four years on, she has raised €3 million for her company ApisProtect, launched the product in the US and is getting it ready for the European market. Thomas Hubert meets Edwards Murphy after Forbes featured her in the coveted 30 under 30 list to discuss the transition from academia to entrepreneurship, transatlantic business in a pandemic world and why she never wants to leave Cork.
Four years ago, Kilian Kaminski and two co-founders started Refurbed, an Austrian start-up now selling refurbished electronic products across Europe. Where competitors manage their own stock of second-hand smartphones, his company acts as the consumer-facing marketplace for products ranging from IT devices to coffee makers and electric bikes sourced from specialist technical partners. Refurbed recently set its eyes on Ireland, and Kaminski tells Thomas Hubert that it likes what it is seeing here.
Derek Scally's book "The Best Catholics in the World" examines the nature of catholicism in Ireland and looks at the end of that "special relationship" and what was left behind. In this podcast, Derek discusses what it is in the Irish nature that led to the Catholicism Ireland experienced and, with Catholicism gone, what has that nature embraced now?
Last weekend, some of the biggest football clubs in the world made an attempt to seize control of the game. Where did it all go wrong? Sean Keyes, Stephen Kinsella and Dion Fanning discuss the Super League, the lessons they could have taken from history, why it failed and how there might have been a more successful version of the same idea if the club owners had made a better effort of taking on the status quo.
Having begun his career as a management consultant with McKinsey, Patrick Coveney has spent more than a decade running Greencore. In a revealing interview with Alison Cowzer, Coveney talks about personal ambition, Brexit and his own future with the food giant. He also talks about scaling an Irish business globally, dynastic politics and his views on the Irish response to the crisis.
When the Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu announced her candidacy for the Seanad by-election, it exposed further fault lines within the Green Party. She tells Cáit Caden why she decided to run, even though she believes she cannot win, and her future in the party. Chu also discussed tensions in her party and her views on the contentious topic of CETA. Since Chu has entered public office, she has been a driver for integration and diversity. She talks about what she believes should be done, especially in education, to promote integration and her thoughts on the higher level in Irish requirement to become a primary school teacher.
Bernie Madoff's death this week brought back memories of one of the most far-reaching Ponzi schemes in financial history. Diana Henriques's book The Wizard of Lies told his story. She interviewed Madoff and, even in securing that interview, she experienced in a small way what it was like to trust Madoff and for him to betray that trust. In this podcast, she talked about how Madoff did that and how his Ponzi scheme appealed to people's anxiety rather than their greed.
Sean Keyes asks The Currency’s senior correspondent Thomas Hubert and chief economics writer Stephen Kinsella to unpick Joe Biden’s proposal for corporation tax reform: Why does US tax law matter so much to Ireland? How do American multinationals react to changes in the tax code? How likely is the new US president’s plan to be implemented, and how would its combined impact with ongoing international talks at the OECD affect the Irish economy? The answers are less clear-cut than you might think.
Warren Deutrom is CEO of Cricket Ireland. The past 15 years have contained many glorious moments for Irish cricket but now the game's ruling body in Ireland is looking to appeal to those who understand cricket, those who don't and those who may know that its history in Ireland is a long one. But first, like every sport, they have to try to get back playing in Covid times
One year ago, Suzanne Rigby and Mark Hooper’s business, which focused on display advertising in pubs, evaporated overnight. Within one month, they turned around and launched Clickandcollection.com, a service allowing restaurants to manage online orders for meal kits and takeaway menus. Now joined by John O’Connor, they want to expand beyond their customer base of 250 businesses – including internationally. The three entrepreneurs join Thomas Hubert to discuss their experience and their plans.
