After many-months of on-line meetings and webinars, UEFA MIP participants finally got the chance to meet again in person and enjoy a five days long hybrid session on strategic marketing and communication at Geneva Stadium.

The first three days of the session managed by Roman Putsch, head of marketing activities at UEFA, showed participants how to practically apply the principles of strategic marketing in the context of sports. By the end of the week, they were familiar with fan preferences, market trends and commercial partner business requirements. Key marketing concepts being brand strategy, consumer insights, the marketing mix, audience development, monetisation have been introduced.

The UEFA MIP group learned from the experiences of a number of different stakeholders from the marketing world such as:

• Adrian Goldthorpe, chief executive officer and owner, LBA Branding
• Kayleigh Grieve, women’s football marketing manager, UEFA
• James Matheson, senior manager, corporate communications, The Walt Disney Company
• Laura Louisy, vice-president, rights optimisation & partnerships, DAZN Group
• Ben Gallop, head of radio and digital, BBC Sport
• Ben Blanco, global sponsorship lead, The Heineken Company
• Dominic Burns, global strategic partnerships & corporate development, Europe, TikTok

The last two days were dedicated to strategic communication and managed by Joël Pinson, UEFA Academy programme specialist. Key principles of communication have been introduced through various case studies and workshops lead by speakers such as, Amanda Docherty, director, Dial Square; Lou Buggy, director, Cakebread Consulting; Raymond Boyle, professor of communications, University of Glasgow and Richard B. Stephenson, founding partner, True North Consulting. Participants could learn in practice how to manage communication around a crisis and how to communicate with impact.

The next session will be organised in December 2021 and will focus on the importance of HR within a sports organisation. In addition, basic principles of finance will be introduced and participants will learn about the key financial tools of a football organisation.

After the first week in Switzerland, the UEFA MIP team travelled to Paris from 3 to 7 February 2020 to host a session about the “Role and skills of the manager”.

Organised by Didier Primault, general manager at the Center for Law and Economics of Sport (CDES), this second session aimed to present the skills that former football players acquired during their career and are directly transferable to the role of a top-level manager and some others that still need to be complemented.
This session gave the opportunity to learn from the experiences of a number of different managers – some from the world of sport (Arsène Wenger, chief of global football developmet, FIFA; Maurizio Gherardini, general manager, Fenerbahçe basketball; Bart Verhaeghe, chairman, Club Brugge KV; Tony Estanguet, president, Paris 2024, etc.), and some with other backgrounds (Julien Cordorniou, vice-president, Workplace by Facebook; Branko Milutinović, chief executive officer, Nordeus; Pascal Boniface, general director, Institute of International and Strategic Relations; Pedro Pinto, founder and chief executive officer, Empower Sports, etc.).

In addition, with the help of various active teaching activities, participants were also invited to reflect on the kind of manager they want to become.

Over the five-day session, the UEFA MIP group was hosted at key locations such as the French Football Federation (FFF), Paris 2024, Paris Saint-Germain FC – Parc des Princes, French Handball Federation – Handball House and International Automobile Federation (FIA).
The next session will take place in Amsterdam from 6 to 9 April 2020 and will focus on the “Format and regulation of competitions”.

The third edition of the UEFA Executive Master for International Players has been launched in Switzerland

The first session of UEFA MIP III was directed by Didier Primault, general manager of the Centre for Law and Economics of Sport (CDES) at the University of Limoges, France.

We welcomed our third MIP cohort, composed of 30 participants from around the world (25 nationalities; such as Chinese, Mexican, Brazilian, etc.) boasting a long list of outstanding achievements, including six FIFA World Cups and FIFA Confederations Cups, three Confederation Championships, five UEFA Champions League titles and 1940 national team caps.

We were honoured to be hosted by UEFA, the IOC and FIBA throughout this amazing week: where the objective was to present the general institutional, legal and economic framework of the European professional sports system and its major challenges; to give concrete examples of management careers of former international players as well as highlighting the key skills acquired by professional players during their sporting careers and how these might overlap with managerial skills.

Parallel to the session, the MIP Alumni Association assembled its annual meeting not only to discuss future challenges and emerging opportunities but also to integrate, as alumni, the newly graduated participants from MIP II.
The fact that the MIP II Graduation Ceremony, the MIP Alumni Association meeting and the MIP IIl session were all held during the same week, meant that around 70 ex-players could get together to share their creative thoughts and ideas on the topic of football management.

The session finale was the UEFA MIP II participants` Graduation Ceremony. During this celebratory evening, hosted by Pedro Pinto, former managing director of communications and media at UEFA, 21 graduates received their master’s degree from CDES, University of Limoges.

Congratulations to all the graduates of the class of 2017 – 2019!!!

The next UEFA MIP III session will take place in Paris from 3 to 7 February 2020 and will focus on the role and skills of top managers.