14 January 2026

This Sporting Planet: Creating a Global Digital Network

Sport is universal. Every region of the world has a voice and an opinion, and those voices are valuable. That belief is why This Sporting Planet exists.

When I launched LCA, I knew a consultancy could not survive on theory alone. I did not want to advise clients on digital transformation; I wanted to prove we could execute it. And I had seen the opening. Most sports creators compete hard in their own domestic market, the US, the UK, and India, each fighting for a share in a crowded pond. Almost no one was serving the global fan: the viewer who follows sport across borders and understands that the Australian Open means something different in Mumbai than it does in Miami or Manchester, let alone Melbourne, where it lives. That space was wide open.

We built TSP as a multi-platform digital network. The editorial idea was simple: if I had the budget to travel the world watching sport, where would I go this week? To make it authentic, we rejected the London Studio model and used our network to bring regional voices to the screen. If we cover a cricket tour in India, we use an Indian host.

This remote production model lets us achieve diversity naturally, not just in gender, since we cover men's and women's sports equally, but in accent and perspective.

TSP also became the proving ground for the LCA Associate model. Rather than hire a single agency, we built a bespoke team of independent experts. We partnered with IMG for broadcast-quality remote recording. Tony Harley at Media 219 built the brand and the website. Hollie Mills drove the social and digital marketing. Ross, Giles and Gary supported the commercial, investment and communications strategy.

There were reality checks and a lot of trial and error. With over 3,000 new podcasts launching every month, we learned that organic growth is essentially a myth. Even high-quality content gets lost in the noise, so we shifted our mindset and our budget towards targeted marketing just to cut through. We also learned how unpredictable audiences are. During the European summer, our YouTube views dropped sharply as people went on holiday, yet our podcast figures rose over the same period. That confirmed diversification is not a buzzword; it is the only safety net against platform volatility.

Our most useful lesson was that agility often beats production value. Through a partnership with SNTV, we accessed raw news clips to supplement our original content. A single timely quote from Novak Djokovic about Carlos Alcaraz drove over 2 million views, proof that being part of the now often matters more than being perfectly polished.

By the end of the first year, the numbers had started to validate the strategy: over 25 million views across all platforms, more than 270,000 subscribers on our primary video channels, and over 10,000 followers across wider social media. We had built a remote network of hosts who had never met in person, yet had real on-screen chemistry. That was not accidental. It came from mutual respect, and from the fact that they are all excellent journalists, broadcasters and storytellers.

There is a commercial reality to all this. The audience growth has been strong, but commercialisation is the hardest challenge of all. We are now in the active phase of brand outreach, and the picture is stark: brand budgets are tight and cutting through is difficult. Cold outreach on platforms like LinkedIn often goes unanswered, and the market is full of fluff, services that promise high returns and deliver very little.

We have learned to be careful with every pound. That experience is invaluable because it means LCA can now steer clients away from expensive mistakes and towards strategies that actually deliver a return.