MP & Silva

MP & Silva

Formation	2004
Location	London, Miami, Monaco, Singapore, Tokyo, New York, Beijing, Hanoi, Budapest, Warsaw, Dubai, Dublin, Munich, Paris, Madrid, Jakarta, Luxembourg, Taipei.
Key people	Riccardo Silva, Andrea Radrizzani, Carlo Pozzali, Marco Auletta
Staff	100
Website	www.mpsilva.com

MP & Silva (abbreviation for Media Partners & Silva Limited) is a media rights company that owns, manages and distributes sports media rights. The company's portfolio includes premium international sports content of mainly football, tennis and motor sports TV rights.

Description

MP & Silva is an international media rights company based in London,^[1] with 18 offices around the globe.^[2][3] The company manages sports TV rights for a range of international sporting events and distributes around 10,000 hours of programming to some 500 broadcasters globally.^[4] The company's portfolio includes FIFA World Cup rights, Europe's top leagues in football, Grand Slam tennis,^[5] motor racing, handball, baseball, volleyball,^[6] boxing and the Asian Games.

History

MP & Silva began in 2004 with the acquisition of the global rights distribution of selected Italian Serie A football teams.^[7] In 2006, the company acquired the rights for the majority of Serie A teams. The first headquarters office opened in Singapore in 2007. By 2009, the company's portfolio principally consisted of media rights of European football leagues being distributed to Asian TV broadcasters. In 2010, MP & Silva headquarters moved to London and a new strategic partnership with Arsenal FC was established. The company acquired Pan-European rights for Roland Garros, the French Tennis Open in 2011.^[8]

In 2012, MP & Silva launched their corporate social responsibility program called Play for Change.

In 2013, MP & Silva secured the Premier League’s broadcast rights in 51 territories, in a move that grants it the biggest portfolio of contracts among its agency rivals. The agency also recently announced the acquisition of Formula 1 rights to MENA and some selected European countries to its portfolio.^[9][10][11]

In 2014, the company added Formula 1, Belgian Pro League, and Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) to its portfolio, advancing even more in their media rights market leadership. In the last year, the company has also invested in developing production & digital services as well as a newly launched Sponsorship department.

On 20 July 2014 MP & Silva abruptly terminated the broadcast contract with CPBL to distribute Taiwan's professional baseball games in the local media, citing a breach of contract by the league. However, the company did not go into detail what terms of the 6-year, NT$2.04 billion contract — signed just at the beginning of 2014 — were breached. CPBL, in response to the surprise move, maintained that it has not breached any of the terms in the contract and demanded the company to provide an open and clearer explanation of what it called an "ambiguous and unilaterally issued" press statement.^[12]

At the beginning of 2015, the company announced its expansion in the US Market^[13] and the addition of the NFL to the portfolio of properties.^[14]

Management

Riccardo Silva, Andrea Radrizzani and Carlo Pozzali are the founding partners of MP & Silva.

Marco Auletta is the CEO for the whole MP & Silva Group.^[15]

Other top senior managers of the group are Roberto Dalmiglio, Chief Commercial Officer, Jeroen Oerlemans, Vice President of Global Acquisitions, Roland Nikolaou, Vice President of Global Sales, Su Hyeon Cho, Managing Director Japan-Korea, Beatrice Lee, Managing Director (Asia Pacific), Lara Vanjak, Senior Vice President International Sales, Sameer Pabari, Head of Production & Digital, Patricia Fernandez, Head of Global Communications and Daniel Cohen, Senior Vice President Americas.^[16]

Riccardo Silva is the President of the company, a main shareholder, and a Founding Partner. His father’s family owns a chemical industrial conglomerate in Italy and France founded in 1908, while his maternal family Fabbri has been known for its publishing company (Fabbri Editori), now part of the RCS MediaGroup. Born in 1970 in Milan, Italy, Silva completed studies in Bocconi University and Tulane University, before launching MP Web, an internet start-up of the Media Partners Group (now Infront Media), managing sports rights and content for mobile and Internet platforms.^[17] In 2001 he became CEO of Milan Channel, the official TV channel of AC Milan football club, and guided the international development of the channel.^[18] Silva founded MP & Silva in 2004. He was selected as one of the speakers at the Davos Sports Forum 2013.^[19][20]

Andrea Radrizzani is a Founding Partner and main shareholder of MP & Silva.^[21] He is the creative leader, overseeing the company's operations in Asia, Europe and Americas. Born in Rho, Milan's metropolitan area, Andrea Radrizzani got his degree Public Relations from IULM University in 1996. A long-term professional partnership with Riccardo Silva and a sharing passion for sports led them to found MP & Silva in 2004. Andrea has been in the fore front of the media rights company as Group CEO since its beginning. Under his leadership the business has grown to worth $350 million. Andrea Radrizzani is an experienced sports rights specialist^[22] and he has personally committed as media advisor to some of MP & Silva’s rights holders partners such as FIFA,^[23] the BPL,^[24] the International Baseball Federation (IBAF),^[25] Arsenal FC^[26][27] and the Spanish Basketball Federation, Liga Endesa.^[28] Andrea’s opinion has been requested by the international press to comment on sports rights multi-millionaire deals^[29] and new trends in the sports rights global market. He was recently invited to be a speaker at the Doha GOALS initiative.^[30] Amongst his area of expertise, Andrea concentrates on digital media rights,^[31] football international growth^[32] and sports TV growth in the Asian market.^[33]

Carlo Pozzali, based in Miami, is the third Co-Founder and partner of MP & Silva. He is part of the Board of Directors of the Group and also oversees group sales, acquisition and development strategy across the Americas, covering the USA, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. Carlo started to work in his hometown Milan, Italy in the advertising area and after some years has moved in the sport business industry. For over 20 years Carlo has covered senior executive positions working among the others at IMG and Sportfive agencies. Carlo has personally been involved in Latin American media rights deal, such as Brazilian and South American football, MLB, ATP tennis tournaments and Superbike Classic.^[34][35][36] He launched the MP & Silva office in USA in 2005 where he lives with his wife and two kids.

Portfolio

The company’s television rights portfolio includes 2014 FIFA World Cup, Serie A,^[37] Premier League,^[38] La Liga, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Major League Soccer (MLS),^[39] the Brazilian national league (Brasileirão), Malaysia Super League (2016), Arsenal F.C., the A.C. Milan Channel, several Asian football federations, Formula One,^[9] the French Open at Roland Garros, eight ATP World Tour 250 series tennis tournaments, EHF Handball Champions League, Italian Volleyball League, DTM, World Baseball Classic,^[40] National Basketball Association (NBA), FIA Formula E Championship, FIBA Basketball World Cup, Spanish Basketball League (Liga Endesa), Belgian Pro League, the Asian Games and the National Football League (NFL).^[41]

Play for Change

MP & Silva has a corporate social responsibility programme called Play for Change.^[42] Play for Change runs fundraising activities and events to support charity projects globally. MP & Silva works together with Play for Change in order to build lasting friendships with corporate partners, charities and stakeholders to continue to raise awareness and funds for causes that make a difference through empowering the young.

References

External links

• MP & Silva
• Bloomberg
• Global Sports Industry Summit