Crowd Community (Crowd), the house of UK athlete-owned podcasts, has signed Darragh Kelly as Director of Strategic and Industrial Partnerships.
Darragh joins Crowd from Platform Media, the place he executed the industrial development technique of The Good, The Unhealthy & The Rugby, reworking it into one of many UK’s most commercially profitable sports activities podcasts. There, Darragh was pivotal in spearheading and dealing with vital manufacturers.
Previous to Platform Media, Darragh led model partnerships at Pitch Worldwide, Takumi, and was the worldwide technique supervisor as DAZN. He has a wealth of expertise in evolving monetization pathways throughout podcasting, social media, and experimental platforms. Darragh can be keen about boosting funding in girls’s sports activities and has labored with manufacturers to provide genuine girls’s rugby content material.
In his new position, Darragh will form Crowd’s industrial model partnerships technique and determine companions that align with its community of reveals and expertise. He can even develop Crowd’s girls’s sports activities providing, partnering with manufacturers which are dedicated to investing in its development.
Alongside Darragh, Crowd has additionally welcomed Sam Sheringham as an Government Producer to construct on the success of its newest chart-topping sports activities podcast For The Love of Cricket, hosted by Jos Buttler and Stuart Broad. An SJA Awards profitable journalist, Sam was previously the audio lead within the BBC’s Sport and Documentaries division. Phoebe Road has additionally joined Crowd as a Producer, beforehand at England Rugby. Phoebe might be answerable for content material manufacturing throughout Crowd’s girls’s sports activities choices.
Mike Carr, CEO of Crowd, mentioned: “It’s basic that manufacturers we associate with are authentically aligned with our reveals and hosts. Our athlete-owned podcasts have big potential for industrial development and I’m wanting ahead to seeing how Darragh’s experience will help us supercharge our partnerships. His monitor document of commercially rising a few of the greatest sports activities podcasts within the trade might be an unimaginable asset to our workforce, constructing on the names already in our community, and pushing boundaries of artistic model choices.”
Darragh Kelly, Director of Strategic and Industrial Partnerships at Crowd, added: “The artistic and industrial alternatives for athlete-owned podcasts are nonetheless huge, particularly with new multi-channel partnerships and the roster of sporting expertise that Crowd works with.
“Crowd’s present partnerships stand out for his or her authenticity. I’m bold about how we will take these to the subsequent degree and provide artistic and advantageous options that profit our reveals and our model companions, particularly with the large potential in social media and dwell occasions. Ladies’s sports activities particularly nonetheless lack real funding, and I’m passionate concerning the affect that onboarding new model companions can have on closing the gender hole that also exists.”
Crowd is among the fastest-growing unbiased podcast networks in Europe and works with a number of nationwide manufacturers and sport expertise. The workforce produces reveals with former Lionesses Jill Scot and Karen Carney, in addition to rugby stars Ben Youngs, Dane Cole, and Joe Mauler, and biking legend Geraint Thomas.
