10 Minutes with Conrad Edgar

Can you give our readers a bit of background on yourself and when you knew you wanted to work in sports?

I have always played rugby to a good level and knew I wanted to work in the sports industry. Still, I always questioned what type of role I wanted as you only really see the coaching and analyst-related roles widely spoken about.

What has your journey into the sports industry looked like?

First, I did a master’s in Sports Management, and during my master’s, I did a placement as a Sports & Physical Activity development officer for Active Enfield (Enfield Council). I also helped out a friend who started a sports management group called Built Different Sports as a sponsorship specialist, supporting in finding sponsorship for their athletes. 

My first full-time job in the industry was at Octagon ( a global sports agency) as an Account Executive on the Mastercard UEFA Champions League account, where I was the asset management lead. That consisted of managing ticketing, merchandise, UCL trophy appearances, promotions and player mascots.

What does your current role as a Partnerships Executive at Six Nations entail?

My role consists of several things, including:

• Account support of and rights tracking for Sage, our official insights partner.
• Ticket and hospitality management and tracking for partners, broadcasters and internal distribution.
• Purchase order management and budget tracking
• Championship asset specifications – each rugby union has its own specifications for LED boards and programme ads. I collate all the information for partners and quality assures the assets before sending them back to the unions.
• Managing photography briefs – each week, we have a photography brief for our photographers, which consists of asking for partner-related imagery.
• Management of signed merchandise and trophy appearances.
• Supporting the new Tiktok partnership, they are the official fan of the Guinness men’s & Women’s Six Nations.

What has been your favourite part of the job so far?

The benefit of being on the rightsholder side is that you get to talk to many different people and always learn new things about the industry.

What are three skills are essential to your role within the sports industry?

• Communication skills – A crucial part of stakeholder management is knowing how to talk to them—for example, knowing how to deliver a message clearly and concisely as some stakeholders like information shared in various ways, i.e., written, verbal, or visual.
• Computer Literacy – Understanding the software you need to use and being efficient will help you cut down time to do specific tasks.
• Multitasking – You’ll rarely have the opportunity to concentrate on just one thing at a time; you’ll have multiple deadlines and projects running simultaneously. Being able to multitask and prioritise your time is critical.

How did you learn about this opportunity to work at Six Nations Rugby? If you had an application process, what did it involve?

I was lucky to be approached on LinkedIn about the role. I had spoken to a few members of the commercial team at Six Nations and was offered the role shortly after.

One of the biggest challenges for young people who want to work in sports is the lack of knowledge about available opportunities. Do you know of any opportunities or initiatives that Six Nations (or past companies you’ve worked at) runs to help young people gain industry experience?

Octagon has an excellent internship programme in their athlete representation team. You tend to find people who are part of the internship programme end up coming back for a full-time role a year or two later. Six Nations recently put out an intern role that also had a lot of traction.

What are some misconceptions people have about your role or working in the sports industry?

People don’t realise that there are office-related jobs in sports, for example, commercial and sponsorship teams in brands and rights holders that look after partnerships from rights tracking and content creation to match day activations.

Did you face any challenges trying to get into the industry? If so, how were you able to overcome them?

I overcame them by putting myself out there. I was happy to email and message people on social media if they did something I thought was cool, and I wanted to find out how and why they got to where they were.

What is one piece of advice you would give to a young person who has a similar background as you and is looking to enter into the sports industry?

Keep trying and asking questions; ask people for some of their time to talk and get advice.

What more needs to be done to improve the diversity and representation in the sports industry?

I think having the roles more openly spoken about at the university level will give people the opportunity to investigate different roles within the sports industry.

If you were to choose one person to shine a light on in the industry, who would it be and why?

Simbi Sonuga – I worked with her when I was Octagon; she was on the Football Blacklist 2021 and is a Sports Industry NexGen Leader.

Want to connect with Conrad? Head over to our Networks page to find out more!