FOOTBALL
Adherents: Sir Jim Ratcliffe, chair, Ineos; Florentino Perez, chair, Grupo ACS, president, Real Madrid; Sheryl Sandberg, former chief operating officer, Meta
Football should have clear lessons for business, because it is a huge business. But it is also an unusual business, where many big investors seem resigned to losing money.
Perhaps the sport is most relevant regarding team management. “Football is a great laboratory, a great simulator, where we can see what makes humans reach their maximum competitiveness,” former Real Madrid coach Jorge Valdano has said.
Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho and other managers were famed for how they handled different personalities. Mourinho has spoken of freezing out his strong-minded striker Samuel Eto’o until he upped his performance. Paris Saint-Germain’s victory in the 2024-25 Champions League came after they had moved from paying entitled megastars to focusing on building a team of exuberant, youthful talents.
Arguably, football requires more focus on group dynamics than other team sports, such as cricket and baseball, where individual roles are more defined. If nothing else, the sport’s struggle with VAR and financial fair play can certainly remind business people of regulators’ limitations.
These insights are probably best gained from watching football. Does trotting around a five-a-side pitch on a Wednesday evening give the same effect? Debatable.
GOLF
Adherents: Donald Trump; a lot of other executives who are not at their desk at 1pm on Friday
Like tennis, golf rewards individual resilience and intense practice. But its popularity among executives has been more about the networking it facilitates. “I come from a very small country,” said Finnish President Alexander Stubb after a golf game with Donald Trump in March. “To spend seven hours with the president of the US, you don’t do that in a meeting room.” One business lesson from golf is that it is who you know – and how they may let you cheat.
VIDEO GAMING
Adherents: Elon Musk, chief executive, Tesla; Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX
A few years ago Anna Malmhake, chief executive of Swedish beauty brand Oriflame Cosmetics, complained that businesses often hired sports people as motivational speakers, when many in the audience were likely to be more familiar with video games.
Strategy game series Civilization had taught her that: “If you only pay attention to what is urgent, the non-urgent things will cause trouble at the most inopportune moment.” Team-raiding games such as World of Warcraft showed “one negative, energy-draining person can single-handedly kill the performance of a team of 25 people”.
