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.
With Offr, Robert Hoban intends to streamline the arcane and often stressful business of buying and selling property for the 21st century. Ian Kehoe takes a deep dive with the proptech innovator promising to revolutionise real estate.
Larry Bass is a Board Member of Screen Ireland and producer of some of the biggest shows in Ireland - think Dragon’s Den and Dancing with the Stars. But television is not his only passion. He is also the Chairman of Cabinteely FC and involved with the new look FAI. In this podcast, Bass talks about the need to reflect who we are on our television screens and argues that the “League of Ireland football is the beating heart of Irish football".
On the doorsteps, voters ask politicians “what are you gonna do for me?” Politicians get the message. They (usually) shower voters with tax cuts, spending promises and other goodies. In this podcast, Sean Keyes sits down with Stephen Kinsella to talk about the economics of electoral politics. Stephen covers Ireland’s long history of auction politics, the options for reform, and the problem with too much democracy.
A slayer of dragons before judges and a white knight before parliament, Sam Smyth meets barrister and Senator Michael McDowell to talk politics, policing, power, bravery and freedom of the press. On the Progressive Democrats, he said: "We weren’t neoliberals. We just wanted to liberate Ireland from the dead hand of a half-century of State control of the economy." Having ruled himself out of contention for the next Dåil, might he run as Dublin’s first directly elected mayor?
Brian Lee is co-founder of Chopped, the health conscious salad chain that keeps on growing. A fitness entrepreneur and self-proclaimed wheeler-dealer, Lee knew setting up the first store on Baggot Street that he wanted to sell the kind of food he enjoyed eating. "Our ambition was to be everywhere in Ireland. We’d no appetite to just be one store," he tells Alison. His is a story of a personal vision realised, and a booming franchise.
The 15th of August 1971 was a turning point in modern history – the day the Nixon Administration severed the link between the dollar and a specific quantity of gold. In this conversation with Sean Keyes, John Looby draws a line from 1971 to the global financial crisis, the rise of China and our boom-bubble-bust financial system. He explains why Nixon was forced to abandon gold, how the decision affects ordinary people, and how the system might be fixed.
After a career spanning 25 years, the former minister of state and MEP Brian Hayes bowed out of politics, preferring a new challenge as Chief Executive of the Irish Banking and Payments Federation. In an in-depth interview with Ian Kehoe, he talks about his transition to the private sector, Fintech's role in the future of Irish banking and the long shadows still cast by the recession. "It's important we get this industry back up and working again," he tells Kehoe.
Sam Smyth meets the pop svengali from Kiltimagh whose fame has long since eclipsed the boybands he represented. "I started at the bottom," Walsh says of his early years booking warm-up talent for showbands in the west of Ireland. Now he is a multi-millionaire with property investments in Ireland and Miami, and an enviable art collection. He talks to Smyth about his breakout years with Eurovision winner Johnny Logan and why Simon Cowell changed his life.
Ted Cunningham is the only person who went to jail in relation to the Northern Bank heist. Fifteen years later, he maintains his innocence and wants to clear his name. So why did he plead guilty and how did £3m in cash end up in his house? This is his story.
Declan Taite, the managing partner and joint country lead of Duff & Phelps, has been at the coalface of Irish restructuring and insolvency for more than two decades. In a wide-ranging discussion with Ian Kehoe, Taite talks about the cases he has worked on throughout his career, and shares his thoughts on the sectors that he believes will struggle in the future. He also discusses the sale of FGS to Duff & Phelps, and the firm’s ambitious growth plans for Ireland.
