As the Premier League new season starts entertaining the public once more, we started reminiscing on some of the fantastic partnerships Rethink has crafted over the past years within the Professional Sports industry.  

When it comes to supporting a football club to prepare for anew season, team strategy, engaging great talent and ensuring a seamless process from start to finish is essential across the board, not only on the grass.

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Constant learning and development

And like other industries, having the necessary expertise to make a statement and provide excellent services means we’ve learned a thing or two over the years. In essence, we support our partnerships in three specific areas:

1. Building expert teams – Allowing our partners to focus on what matters, we build bespoke teams to find the best talent, across any discipline, based on their needs. As such, we are able to provide access to quality, diverse, on-screen and off-screen talent and aid hiring managers through the entire recruitment process.

2. Casting the talent net wider – By going further than referrals, to ensure skillset variety, we build specific talent pools, bespoke to each partner, to ensure we find the best people for each job. We work with the best companies in the industry and spend hundreds of hours each year searching for talent - so imagine how much we know and who we know? And how that expertise can be deployed for your benefit?

3. Taking care of governance and protection – From insurance, identity checks and contracts, to tax and IR35 - our partnerships with Media powerhouse brands demonstrate our trusted expert status when ensuring compliance and keeping you on the right side of complex tax legislation.

Every partnership comes with its intricacies

As a Managed Service Provider to one of the biggest British Football Clubs, we’ve now entered our third Premier League season and had a very exciting summer so far.  Essentially, we onboard between 150 and 175 workers for them, with 80% of them being traditional freelancers.

What’s the advantage? The ability to see the utilisation of these workers through the Management Information Rethink provides, such as total spend per worker, department, or associated costs. Additionally, not having to process hundreds of invoices monthly also is another headache cured.

Moreover, as football is now more than ever largely based on production, we’re able to showcase even more expertise coming from our partnerships with Production Houses and Studios. What we see happening currently, however, is that ‘everyone knows someone with a fitting skillset and want them for the job’, thus creating barriers for entering the industry and potentially decreasing the quality, variety, and diversity.

As a result, one aspect we have been working to improve with our processes is bringing forward a more robust recruitment process for contractors where quality weighs more than one’s network. However, as an education piece, this is not something likely to be succeeded in a short period of time.

Who else is part of the game(s)?

There are three main categories of roles to be filled, when it comes to getting the team ready for a new season. At the lower end, it’s all about the admin support that goes with facilities, from match day safety to stadium tours.

A big part of the roles we specialise in are within production – anything from commentators and talent to behind-the-camera and postproduction is essential for success.

That leads us to the more traditional, five-days-a-week contractor – which is anything from finance and fan engagement to marketing and digital.

Why use a Managed Service Provider?

As the season progresses, the secret for success is focusing your attention on pressing matters and trusting your partners to take care of the rest. Indeed, this is referred to at times as the ‘boring stuff’ – but your machine must be well-oiled to succeed and day-to-day activities, such as invoice processing, pay queries and types of engagement are our 'bread and butter'.

When it comes to our partners, we are an extension of their HR and Talent Acquisition team and own any query or question related to the contractor population. As such, we own anything that falls under that category with complete autonomy.

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What does our on-site team have to say about our expertise in professional sports?

“It’s all about building trust with your stakeholders and being there to support them at every step. This has led us to reach a point now where we know the space and are able to provide them with what is needed in a way that is quick and seamless. What sets us apart is the process efficiency and managing any noise that can be associated with the contractor population. What also makes a difference is the fact that we are very present on site, so we are able to really be there for our partner.“

The fact of the matter is - size isn’t everything, but reputation is. And Rethink’s advantage in this industry is that we know the market well. With the rise in technology and high-end production requirements, we understand the nuances in the industry because, for years, that’s what we’ve done. Tech, Creative and Sports.  

Get in touch to find out more about how we can help your team get to the next level.