Sport, Purpose & Global Change: How Neill Duffy Is Redefining Leadership in Sports

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavloski. Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast where we shine a light on those who are committed to leaving the world a better place than they found it. I'm your host, Alan Pavloski. Today I'm joined by a true innovator in the world of sports, sustainability and social impact. Neil Duffy happens to be joining us from the countryside in France. Today, Neil has made it his mission to use the power of sport and entertainment to drive positive change. As the CEO of Seventeen Sport, the world's first integrated sports impact company, Neil is redefining how brands, rights holders and athletes think about their legacy. From helping global organizations align with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals to building values led partnerships with major sporting events, Neil's vision is clear. Purpose is not just good for the world, it's good for business. In this episode, we will explore Neal's journey from working with the Americas cup and the super bowl to founding a movement that places impact at the core of sport. Get ready for insights on leadership, innovation, and how we can all play a part in building a better future. So let's dive in. Neil, good to see you, my friend. How are you?

Very well, thank you, Alan. Good to see you too.

Yeah, it's been too long.

It has been. How are things in Berkeley?

It is great. It's great. The weather is off and on here. A little foggy today, but we had a great sunny day yesterday, so I'm feeling good.

Good to you.

Neil, you've had such a fascinating journey from South Africa to the global sports stage. What sparked your initial interest in using sport as a platform for good?

I love answering this question. I was fortunate to live in South Africa at a period of time where there was huge transformation and change underway. I don't know if you saw the movie Invictus, which really tells the story of how Nelson Mandela used rugby world cap back in 1995 to heal a divided nation and to launch the rainbow nation. I experienced that firsthand and every time I talk about this, and now included, I get goosebumps on my legs. But that's when I really realized the power of sport to bring people together, to use all its superpowers to make the world a better place. And it was kind of an aha moment for me that sport had a bigger role to play than just entertainment. Making some people wealthy, maybe helping to make some people fit. It has this transformational ability to Heal and.

Set up humanity for progress. So that for me was the turning point.

Yeah, that's great. You've worked with world class organizations like the America's cup and Super Bowl 50. What did those experiences teach you about purpose living, purpose driven leadership?

I think what's core to purpose driven leadership is intention.

We all have the choice as to how we want to operate. We all have the choice as to what values we want to prescribe to, as to what outcomes we want to see from the work that we do. And so purpose led leadership is really about having that intention to, to use whatever opportunity you have to drive not just positive outcomes for your business or your bank account, but at the same time for society and the environment at large. And I think it's as simple as that, really. It's a choice at the end of the day. Yeah.

Let's talk about the purpose driven Model 17 sport is all about integrating purpose into every aspect of sport. How do you define impact in the sports context?

Impact can mean lots of different things. For us at seventeen Sport. It's really about trying to find ways to use sport as a vehicle to solve a problem in the world.

We needed some kind of framework to hang that off. So we decided to align with the sustainable Development Goals. And each of those 17 goals is really highlighting a challenge or a problem that the world has that needs to be solved in order to lead towards a more positive, thriving society. And so for us, that's what purpose or impact in the context of sport is about is. How do you use sport as a platform to solve a problem in the world and drive to positive social and environmental outcomes as well as commercial ones? For us, it's not about philanthropy, it's, you know, it's a business model.

Yeah. I mean you've spoken all over the world in different contexts. You've spoken at some of my events, in my nonprofit sports days as well. What does it take to get stakeholders, teams, sponsors, athletes truly aligned around sustainability and purpose?

It's interesting when I first decided to really double down into this the work that I've now been doing for the like the last 20 years.

I can't believe I was so naive now when I look back on it. But when I started off, my message was we need to do this because the world's in trouble and it's the right thing to do. And everybody was interested in listening to that story. But very few people were ready to engage and to actually do something about it. Because the prevailing often talk about the innovators dilemma. And in Sport. Sport has been the model that sport has applied for the last 40 years and is still applying today. In the main, has been very successful from a commercial perspective. And so when you're doing well, there's no real need to change. And so people really don't. People really didn't have the. There was no, no incentive to change. There was no motivation to change. And then for me, one day the penny dropped, is that I. What I need to do is I need to show people how this is good for business. And so, you know, that movie Jerry Maguire.

Is not fiction. It's based on reality. You know, Show Me the Money is the moniker in sport, right? And so as soon as we were able to start showing, you know, the teams, the leagues, the bra, all the stakeholders in sport, that actually being purposeful in your activation or your management of sport leads to positive and improved commercial outcomes, suddenly they all become very interested.

And I'm okay with that, right? Because I'm a believer in the philosophy of abundance, not of scarcity. And so if we can create more for everybody, of everything, then that's good.

Powerful message.

So that really, I think is the key insight that I can share with people after having spent many years in the space, is until such time as we were able to show the business rationale for being purposeful.

Very few people were interested in engaging in a serious way.

And unless you do that, doing good will always be on the fringes of whatever you do as a sports organization or any kind of IP and sport. So, yeah, I think that's probably the key thing.

Can you share a story where aligning sport with impact created real world change?

Yeah, there's several of them. I mean, the.

One I like to talk about.

The most, and it's probably because it's the most recent of the work that I've done is a project that we did for Adidas called the Adidas Breaking Barriers Project. The background to this was that Adidas purpose is to improve people's lives through sport. And they do that through two pillars, people and planet.

They approached us specifically on the people side of things because they recognized that they could be doing maybe a better job of using their power, influence, resources, expertise to improve people's lives through sport, and asked us to help them to design a program to do that. So built on an insight that we uncovered, that girls drop out of sport at a younger age than boys because they face many barriers that make it difficult for them to stay in sport beyond the age of 13, 14. That would be a really logical space for Adidas to kind of lean into and to try and solve. And so out of that initiative, the Breaking barriers project was created. It started off as a five year commitment to improve the lives of 50,000 girls by providing them with opportunities to participate and to stay in sport. Recognizing that in order to do that, we needed to work at an ecosystem level to change the sport for good sector to be better positioned to serve girls, because most of sport is set up to serve boys and not girls or women. And so in order for 50,000 more girls to have access to sport, we needed to change the system within which they can play sport. So we also made a commitment to directly work with 15 nonprofit organizations across Europe to build their capacity to better serve girls and also to support 100 champions. So these are local girls and women in the community, in the communities where this project ran, that could become role models to inspire girls to stay in sport. And so, instead of just sponsoring the big A list athletes, Adidas sponsored 100 of the community level role models who could be used as inspiration to keep girls in sport. The program was a huge success. And after five years, I think the number was something like 70,000 girls went through the program.

I think there were 16 nonprofit organizations that benefited and over 100 champions. And so for me, that's a. And what's amazing, Alan, came out of that is there are so many stories of girls whose lives have been changed as a consequence of that initiative, you know, and girls that I met on year one that are still involved in the project in some capacity in year five, and just to see how they've flourished and grown and matured and built their confidence and are now taking on the world.

And I ascribe that to the fact that they were able to stay in sport and benefit out of many of the superpowers that sport offers by being given that opportunity. So I love that example because it's kind of like a real life example of, you know, people's lives really being changed as a consequence of this.

Yeah. Well, let's dovetail right back into the business side, though. Did Adidas communicate the business success of that program?

Yeah, it's been. I mean, the fact that they've done it for five years, I think is one of the proof points. Right. And it's been a big success for them in terms of not only building.

The aspects of the Adidas brand that needed. Needed attention in terms of, you know, that commitment to improving people's lives through sports. So the Breaking barriers project became an authenticator of that commitment because there's like real life examples of where Adidas is doing that. So a lot of communication around that, a lot of storytelling externally. But what was really interesting was to see the impact that it had internally amongst the Adidas employees. You know, a mentorship program grew out of it, a volunteering program grew out of it, and it became the most popular program at Adidas in Europe. From an internal perspective and in today's day and age, where both retaining and recruiting talent is one of the biggest challenges that many corporations face, it's another example of the power of sport and a purpose driven program to actually drive value not only from a brand perspective, but also from an internal employee engagement perspective. Adidas never, never used the program to drive sales directly. So they didn't have a breaking barriers range of clothing.

It wasn't designed to serve that purpose.

You know, it had a different goal. And yep, the fact that they, you know, that they supported it for 6 years now, have supported it for now 6 years is proof of that. It must be working.

Proof of concept, always good.

Let me ask you another question about that. I mean, you had success with Adidas. What are some of the biggest challenges you face in getting traditional sports organizations to embrace this purpose? First model?

I think again, it's that innovators dilemma and it's just the stickiness of the status quo. Not everybody is a believer in the power of purpose.

I would say that people are generally divided into or three camps. There are those people who think that the purpose of business is to make profit for its shareholders and that no money should be spent on anything that doesn't lead to a direct return on investment for the shareholders. There are others who take a more of a stakeholder approach and think that, you know, what's good for society is good for the business. And then there are people in between who think, well, you know, the right thing to do is to maybe give 1 or 2% of our revenue or our profits to some philanthropic cause. But it's shouldn't be tied to the business because it should be at arm's length to what the business does. So in every organization that we work with, we find those three different groups of people. And it really just depends at the end of the day, you know, who's the promoter internally. Every good successful project needs to have a sponsor internally who's prepared to go to bat for it, prepared to, you know, fight the battles, play the politics, do all that stuff, secure the budget.

And, you know, it's understandable because as you know, in every single corporation Every dollar has 50 different ways in which it could be spent. And so it's really about, you know, showing, convincing the decision makers that there's value in this purpose driven approach. And as we do it, more and more, you know, when I first started doing this 25, whatever years ago, there were very few proof, very few proof points. But over time, now we're starting to build the case studies, we're starting to build the, you know, as you said, the proof of concept that gives people confidence, you know, that this is something that they should be doing as part of their overall mix. But we always love working with the organizations where the leadership is really committed to being purposeful and understands the value of doing so. It's just so much easier then you don't have to waste time fighting those internal battles.

Yeah, most definitely. Have you noticed a shift in the acceptance of these kinds of initiatives due to some of the generational changes in the way that young people are desiring to be more purpose driven rather than the older generations?

Yeah, 100%. And you know, I think it's, I think it's definitely, what we definitely see is that the younger generation, a bigger percentage of the younger generation care about this stuff. But having said that, there's a percentage of a sector of the older generation, you know, people like you and I, that also care about this stuff. So I think it's more of an attitudinal thing than an age demographic. And so it really, it really depends on which product category you're talking about and that kind of stuff. But generally, you know, what we're seeing is younger people care more, you know, younger people, it matters to younger people what a brand stands for. They want to work for organizations that stand for something. They want to buy their stuff, they want to advocate the them and they want, they want to become supporters of them. So we're seeing that more and more and brands that recognize that and lean into that are seeing the benefits of it. It's an interesting time right now, politically right, on this topic.

Right.

And I don't know if you want to get into that on, on the show.

Probably not, but I, but I, but probably not, but I, I do want to make sure that people know that we, we focus on the positives and we try to make sure that we make a difference here. And that's the bottom line. But yes, it is a very interesting dynamic going on right now.

But you know, Alan, I think it's, we can't, we can't sweep it under the carpet. And it's real and right. The encouraging news is that we, we in our business have not seen any fall off in terms of what we're doing given the political climate. And in fact, you've seen the opposite, right? And it's been quite interesting because what we're seeing happening is that there are those that are.

Disconnecting from purpose. And for us, that's actually, we think that's helpful in terms of highlighting where their real intentions were. But those that really care about the stuff are leaning into it and actually doing more. And so we don't see any of this stuff dropping off, to be honest. We still see it being embraced. And if you look at some of the environmental stuff, some of the sustainability stuff, it's just good business to reduce your waste, right? It's just good business sense to, you know, be more efficient with your energy use. It's not a political thing, it just makes business sense. So, so all of the stuff's carrying on. It's. Maybe some of the language is changing, maybe some people are more out in the open or less in the open than they were before about what they're doing, but we're certainly not seeing a drop off in this. You know, women's sport is case in point, right? I mean, women's sport is just exploding.

And it's standing up on its own two feet. Why? Because it's offering a different experience. It's offering a different thing to what, you know, people are used to with men's sport. And so despite everything that's happening politically, women's sport is surging ahead. And you know, we're seeing increased audiences for, you know, women's football, women's soccer and increased sponsorships. And so yeah, it's really interesting how all these dynamics are playing together and. But I think for me, the encouraging thing is that purpose is not, I don't think purpose impact led sport is going to in the long run suffer at all as a consequence of what's happening now.

You know, it's funny responding to that. I've been around sports a long time, over 30 years of working right in the middle of all the sports events and organizations. I've noticed that the evolution of, of sports in terms of what is the pure sports love for the love of the game. Like you talked about women's sports standing on their own and offering a different product. Well, ultimately some of the, the dollars change that. But what it seems to me right now is that women's sports is, is offering something that college sports used to offer and that is the Love of the game aspect. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a very astute insight and I think. And you see that in, in women's soccer, right. The, the, the, the level of engagement from the players. The. They, they are, they're there because they love the game. They wouldn't have carried on playing if they didn't. They've had to. And again, coming back to the breaking barriers project, I mean they had to overcome a lot of barriers to continue to stay in the game and to be in a position where they're able to compete at the highest level now. But also I think what's an interesting dynamic around women's sport generally is.

This notion that it's a different type of experience to what men's sport has become. Right. So you go with the family.

You can't really do that with a lot of men's sports today. I wouldn't feel safe taking my young kids to a lot of men's sports, particularly football today, especially here in Europe.

Put your life at risk. Right.

Without stretching it too much. So that's the other thing that's just kind of like this natural environment where the players want to be there, they're there to play the game and the fans want to be there because they want to be part of that experience. And there's just a different level of intimacy that sits all around that. And we're seeing with things like unrivaled and love volleyball and these types of things, I mean it's just different, it's refreshing, it's new, it's, it's what people, people are looking for something different.

Yeah.

Old traditional models. So that's super exciting. And a lot of those things are by their nature purposeful, Right?

Absolutely.

Women's soccer of itself, the fact that it's is providing opportunities and you know, inclusion and equity and all that stuff, it's kind of built into what it is by definition. There's a great case study of, you know, purpose leds, sports disciplines that are succeeding despite the environment.

Yeah, great stuff. Let me dovetail a little bit into a different subject. What's one piece of advice you'd offer to younger professionals who want to build a purpose aligned career in sports or business?

I always think it's important who, whatever you do in life to support surround yourself with people who are going to help you to get to where you want to get to. I mean if you surround yourself with a bunch of gangsters in a hood, you're probably going to end up becoming a gangster. So my advice would be to seek out those individuals, organizations, teams, leagues, athletes, whatever it might be, that kind of have demonstrated a commitment to just be more intentional about acting in a purposeful way and just do whatever you can to, to get hooked up with them and to become part of the, part of the ecosystem. And just by being in that company, you're going to start to be, you know, you're going to be exposed to new thinking, you're going to be exposed to new people, you're going to expose, exposed to new opportunity.

So I would say that, you know, you can obviously more. I think more and more schools are now offering purpose as a track so you can go and do a sports degree and as part of that they'll have a track around purpose. I haven't seen a pure, I don't know if you've seen one standard, you know, pure purpose led sports marketing diploma yet. I think it's a matter of time before one comes. But right now I don't think they exist. So, you know, if you go the mainstream, you're going to end up with purpose just being one of several things that you do. And as a junior person in an organization, it's very difficult to drive change.

You know. So yeah, I would say find places, just, I mean, find places where you can surround yourself with people who think the same way and then that'll just create open opportunities for you to grow into that space.

Yeah. I recently interviewed my good friend Lisa Delpi Narotti who runs the Sports Philanthropy Certificate program at George Washington University. And I think that's a good example of somebody doing exactly that from a perspective of allowing people to have a purpose driven education as well.

They're now, I forget the exact number, but it's something like 6,000 B Corps in the world. And B Corps are organizations that have made a commitment to run their organizations in a certain ethical way. So there's so many more opportunities today for young people to work with purpose driven organizations. It doesn't have to be in sport, but start off somewhere. I think that's the first criteria. Find a place that's purposeful, get yourself in there and then once you're in the family, you'll find the pathways will open up.

Yeah, in the States we call the, we call those social enterprises. They're called different things all over the country. But yeah, for sure. I like to do something on the show called the Legacy round where we talk about. Because this show is all about legacy and building a legacy. Let Me talk to you about that. When you think about your legacy, how do you hope people will. What do you hope people will say or see you, or how will they see you about the impact you've made?

Yeah. So my partner at seventeen Sport, Fabian Paget, and I, when we started the company, we said, we don't want to start another sports marketing agency. The world has enough of those. We want to actually solve a problem. And the problem we decided to lean into was that we don't believe that sport is contributing towards building a positive future at the level that it could be, should be, given its superpowers. So we decided that our purpose as an organization would be to transform the business of sport into a force for good. And so I hope that's the legacy that I leave. I hope that I've been able to inspire more people to think about doing sport in a different way, doing the business of sport in a different way. One that doesn't just default to the Jerry Maguire model, but one that more defaults to the, you know, Nelson Mandela Invictus model, where sport is kind of harnessed and the power of sport is harnessed to solve the world's toughest challenges without sacrificing any of its ability to deliver the commercial returns that people need to make this all work from a financial point of view. So I hope if we can change the way business operates, that'd be great, for sure.

What's next for you and 17 sport?

Yeah, it's an exciting time for us. We continue to grow.

Beyond our expectations. You know, we, we. When we started, we decided to focus on building our presence in Europe. We've now decided it's time to try and replicate that in the US So we've got a couple of projects that we've already got going in the US we're working with Deloitte to help them with their purposeful activation of sport. We're working with the Ocean Conservancy. We've launched a program called Protect where we play last year. So for us, it's really leaning into the opportunity that the next couple of years in the US present, you've got World cup, you've got LA28, you've got all the other things that are coming to the US over the next several years is probably the epicenter of world sport. And probably the two biggest events in history of mankind are going to happen in the US in the next four years. So what we really want to do is try and lean into that and try and influence how those two events are leveraged from a purpose perspective to make sure that the legacy from both of them is as big as possible and as lasting as possible.

Yeah. I hope you will lean on me to help you, my friend. I love what you're doing. How can our audience stay connected with your work and get involved in using sport as a force for good?

Without wanting to sound too like a car salesman, I think our website, our website is a good place to start. We've got a, you know, we see part of our responsibility being to also educate and inform and share and we've got a lot of.

Great content on our knowledge hub on the website. So that's a good place to go if you just want to learn and, and see what we're up to and, and get, you know, get inspired by some of the work that we're doing. It's www.17th, the number 17sport.com.

We've also got a LinkedIn page. Follow us there.

And I think that's probably the best place to start.

And if you want to get in touch with us, there's a, you know, you can contact us through the website.

Absolutely. Look, I want, I want to thank my good friend Neil Duffy for coming on the show today to share his insights. He's just a very knowledgeable and purpose driven person. I've known Neil for quite some years and I'm grateful for his contributions to the betterment of all of the world in sports in general, but in business as well. So thank you, Neil.

Thanks, Adam.

Yep. Until next time, I'm Alan Pavloski encouraging you to grow your legacy and make a difference.