FMA recruits Talisman’s Guy to replace general counsel Miah

Football Marketing Asia, the Asian Football Confederation’s Hong Kong-based exclusive commercial rights agency, has recruited Andrew Guy of Talisman Sport & Media, the London-based independent media-rights consultancy, as its executive vice-president, business affairs and general counsel.

Guy took up his new role this week and will move out to Hong Kong at the end of this month, SportBusiness understands.

FMA turned to recruit Guy following the decision by Ronu Miah, the incumbent executive vice-president, business affairs and general counsel, to leave his position.

Guy is well known to Patrick Murphy and David Tyler, FMA’s chief executive and chief operating officer, respectively, having worked under the duo in Switzerland at the Team Marketing agency. Guy spent just over seven years at Team, before leaving in 2012 to become head of legal and business affairs at the Nyon-based CAA Eleven agency.

He went on to become senior vice-president global sports, commercial at Fox International Channels in 2014 but left in 2016 as the broadcaster’s international sports activities continued to decentralise. He exited Fox at the same time as Simon Thomas and proceeded to set up Talisman with the former chief executive at Team.

Thomas became chief commercial officer at Fifa in September last year but Guy continued to operate Talisman, including its main remit of distributing the international media rights to sailing’s SailGP series.

It is understood that the operations at Talisman will be wound down. This will leave the IMG agency free to assume the sole distribution of SailGP’s international media rights, following on from the investment in a minority stake by Endeavor, IMG’s parent group, in a deal that valued the series at $200m (€174.7m).

Miah, who was senior legal counsel at Team between 2006 and 2012, joined FMA (then DDMC Fortis) in September 2018. He was also previously vice-president of legal and business affairs at pay-television broadcaster beIN Media Group and head of rights and content at UK pay-television broadcaster BT Sport.

The rebrand of the DDMC Fortis agency to FMA was announced at the end of last month as the agency unveiled its new branding and logo.

FMA has a wide remit with the AFC, amounting to a commercial overhaul of the confederation’s competitions and rights properties. In the two years since it secured the deal, the focus has been on planning and rights sales. In the second half of this year, the operational phase will begin with marketing campaigns and the launch of new branding for the AFC competitions.

FMA’s rights begin next March with the third round of 2022 Fifa World Cup qualifiers, that also double as qualifiers for the 2023 Asian Cup.

The DDMC Fortis name arose from the fact the company is a joint venture between Chinese sports, media and entertainment group DDMC and Fortis Sports, an agency set up by Murphy and Tyler.

In an exclusive interview with SportBusiness, Murphy expanded on the thinking behind the rebrand and gave an update on the progress of media and sponsorship rights sales.