Queen of the Pivot 👑 I help people leverage their expertise to change to a new industry. Follow me for tips and ideas. DM me your questions!

The rules of work have changed. The linear career path is dead.

Whether you're an experienced executive feeling stuck in a "perfectly good job" or facing an unexpected transition, one thing is clear: you're craving something more meaningful than what you've been doing.

You've done everything right: 
• Climbed the corporate ladder 
• Built expertise others recognize 
• Achieved financial success

But now you're facing new realities: 
• Industry disruption and uncertainty 
• Concerns about ageism and relevance
• A growing desire for work that truly fulfills you

The problem? You're looking at 5-10 more years of traditional work, but the thought of spending that time in your current situation feels like serving a sentence. You don't know how to leverage your hard-earned experience to create your next chapter—whether that's a new industry, consulting, or something entirely different.

What if those final working years could be your most fulfilling? What if instead of counting down to retirement, you were energized by work that doesn't feel like work?

I've been there. I've successfully pivoted across multiple industries:  Teaching → Publishing → Mortgage → Entertainment → Entrepreneurship → Education

Each transition taught me that confidence is the key to a successful pivot—and confidence comes from having a clear strategy.

My mission: Help accomplished executives like you stop feeling stuck and start taking control of your professional future. No matter what changes are happening around you, you have more power than you realize.

Ready to explore what's possible? 
• Follow for insights on strategic career pivoting 
• DM me to discuss your specific situation 
• Let's turn your experience into your next opportunity

Your best chapter doesn't have to be behind you.

Andrea Wade, MBA

Managing Director | Content and Platform strategy for brands on Roblox, YouTube, TikTok | Host of Kids Media Club Podcast | Exec Producer Cozmo & Friends | Gamer, Sport lover, AI user

Founder/consultant in digital distribution and content strategy to engage Gen Z and A across YouTube, Social Gaming (Roblox) and broadcast.

Clients include The Premier League, The R&A, ITV Studios, RX Global and with previous experience working with Disney, WWE and BBC Children’s including the award-winning CBeebiesLand theme park and Hotel.

Known for insight-led thinking and cross-platform creativity, I turn generational media behaviours into commercial opportunities.

Award-winning IP strategist and creator with global experience, I've helped IP owners and rights holders to scale engagement by leveraging content, platforms, community and emerging tech, and to monetise effectively. 

I specialise in creating agile growth plans that span younger generations’ digital and physical habits and behaviours. It's my prediction that the next billion-dollar IP will come from UGC platforms.

Exec Producer of Cozmo & Friends, a YouTube-first animated series and Roblox experience. 

Podcast co-host of The Kids Media Club and The Attention Shift. 

Strengths:
• Driving engagement cross-platform for audience and revenue growth. 
• Pragmatic, with a holistic approach to planning, data & insight.
• Forging successful and high-performing relationships.

Jo Redfern

Seeing some brutal data in my tracking of sports experiences on Roblox. With 151 million daily users it is one of the best temperature checks of social sports fandom in my view.

I’ve been comparing fan-originated/native games vs official/licenced ones and though I’ll go deeper in my next Substack here are 2 stats that smacked me in the face. 

Over the last two weeks I tracked average engagement metrics for a fan-made volleyball and a football game against the NFL and FIFA official games. 

Brand recognition surely provides competitive advantage, right? 

Wrong.

Whilst the platform saw overall declines as users went back to school and work, the pattern is consistent:

∙ Volleyball Legends and Blue Lock (football) both fan-originated, declined exactly 18.6% - in lockstep

∙ but FIFA Super Soccer declined 27% - worse than the above

∙ and NFL Universe Football declined 27.7% - the worst performer despite playoffs running and American football dominating cultural attention in the US.

Traditional sports IP are competing in a creator economy where legacy advantages don't necessarily help, infact they may hinder. When an unofficial football game is more robust against contraction than the NFL/FIFA it challenges convention and it tells right holders that social-first fans need a completely different strategy. 

If you make assumptions, or don’t understand how they work (or aren’t willing to try), you’re potentially harming your relationship with future fans. 

Read that again:
- Official IP declined 27-28%
- Fan-originated IP declined 18-19%

Fandom is changing.

Jo Redfern 🔜 MIPLONDON

Media consultant and advisor to sports on YouTube, Roblox, TikTok | Engagement and monetisation strategy for Sports & Entertainment | Podcast host and Speaker | former Animation Producer | BBC, Disney, WWE

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Netflix appears to have a three pronged sports strategy - comprising the Slow Burn, the Spike, and the Steady State - and each with its own strategic value.

Between Jan 2024 and Jan 2026, Netflix’s global Top 10 featured 21 sports-related titles which together generated 790 million hours of cumulative viewing. But more than that, the data showed that this sports content can be grouped into three categories showing how Netflix identified three unique spaces in sports media that it could own.

The Slow Burn: These are the docuseries (Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Tour de France: Unchained) which delivered 225.9 million hours across multiple seasons during the 24-month period, with DTS alone accounting for 201 million of those hours. This is sports content with long legs that builds fandom over time.

The Spike: Otherwise known as ‘eventised’ content; short run, infrequent or single live events (NFL Christmas games, boxing, the Netflix Slam) that generate massive single-week explosions.

For example, the 2024 NFL Christmas Gameday doubleheader delivered 84 million combined hours, with both games claiming the 1 and 2 spots in the Top 10 list globally. In 2025, viewers from 200 countries tuned in to Christmas Gameday making the Lions-Vikings match the most-streamed NFL game ever. To wit, Netflix now holds the top three most-streamed NFL games in US history. Netflix does sports Spike better than any other streamer.

The Steady State: This is the ongoing content - WWE Raw - that accumulated 271.3 million hours across 47 consecutive weeks in 2025 with zero breaks outside of the Top 10 list. Steady State content provides Netflix sustained engagement at scale and it is striking. WWE Raw alone represents 34% of ALL sports hours captured in Netflix’s global Top 10 during this 24 month period, despite launching a FULL YEAR into the timeframe. 

This suggests that Netflix has achieved turning what used to be appointment TV viewing into steady streaming engagement.

This is from my first newsletter over on Substack if you'd like to read the rest!

THIS! Football in the UK has over a century of stories, lore, historic events - tons of story fuel and yet still vastly underutilised. This may be a 'The Crown-style' series but there's no reason it couldn't be an animated series, or even vertical drama if that's your thing. As we've seen with the F1 movie, done well this kind of sports storytelling works and does have a halo effect on sports fandom. 

As my friend Simon Pulman says, this has "all the elements of a megahit. Globally known brand, huge fan base, well known stories, many distinctive characters (Charlton, Best, Robson, Cantona, the Class of 92). Obvious cliffhangers and key episodes." 

Already excited to see it.

I like what LaLiga and DAZN have done here. They're zigging whilst others zag.
Together they've sub-licensed one live match per week to public broadcaster RTVE, putting a flagship game back on genuinely free-to-air TV. No subscription, just Teledeporte.

This apparently marks only the second time in 35 years that LaLiga has appeared on Spanish public television, following a brief return in 2015-16. Kudos for testing something new.

It's noteworthy because the economics of fan acquisition are showing signs of strain. DAZN holds LaLiga rights until 2032, so this isn't short-term revenue for them, it's a test: can a FTA window bring casual fans back into the orbit of the league and eventually DAZN? They've learned the hard way in European football that subscriptions alone don't build fandom. And Europe still leans on linear TV more than the US, thanks to older demographics and loyalty to public broadcasters, so their logic seems sound.

In comparison, the Premier League has no such funnel. Sky has 215+ games, TNT Sports another chunk, and zero live free-to-air. The BBC gets highlights. That's it. Youth discovery happens on TikTok and YouTube, not through the league's own distribution. This makes the relevance pipeline look increasingly fragile.

The Bundesliga in contrast, whilst mainly pay TV, appears to have found a balance. Sky and DAZN monetise live games but ARD's Sportschau delivers fast free highlights on Saturdays and ZDF follows up. It's not live, but it maintains mass reach alongside pay TV.

I think LaLiga and DAZN might have hit upon something. According to Oliver Wyman, over 90% of Gen Z fans consume sports content primarily via social media, they like it free. The 2025/26 WSC Sports Fan Engagement Study found that around 40% of fans across all generations discover new players and teams through social, and Gen Z are 30% less likely than Millennials to add another streaming subscription. When they are subscription-resistant and algorithmically native you cannot paywall your way to their attention.

Free-to-air, whether YouTube or broadcast, is not necessarily about giving content away. There's value in prioritising discovery when attention is the scarcest asset.

As demand signals shift and attention fragments, commissioners are increasingly guided by a mix of data, scheduling insight and platform behaviours. This session explores how IP is being developed with longevity in mind, from traditional drama to digital-first formats, and how value is extended through spin-offs, shorts, FAST packaging, games, merchandise, and live experiences.

OTT Question Time Live is back next week, it’s always an intensely informative event and anyone in the steaming business really needs to be there. Come and join us, the agenda is linked in comments, it’s brain expanding stuff I promise you.

Starting to think about trust inversion for my newsletter, and how young, social-first fans are less likely to watch institutional pundits over watching a YouTube or TikTok creator’s opinions even if they lack the finesse, production value and TV diction that we grew up on.

It comes back to the same parasocial relationships that mass phone ownership and YouTube unlocked in the mid 2010s; creators talk TO you, pundits talk AT you.

And now streamers are fighting over who to sign (and trad pundits are busy reinventing themselves as creators, but you’ll NEVER convince my 16 year old that Rio Ferdinand is a creator).

If you’ve not seen Ben Taylor’s YT channel “Thinking Basketball” it’s a great example. He’s a cognitive scientist who got obsessed with basketball and started making YouTube videos. 667k subs and a 10 min video of Steph Curry’s defensive coverage is at 2.6 million views.

ESPN or TNT pundits with 20 years of experience wouldn’t engage a fraction of his audience.

And it comes down to trust, most u25s trust peer creators. For them depth, passion, nerd-dom even, resonates and when your community participates in content, when their comments have chance to shape his analysis they feel invested. It’s an uncomplicated, direct relationship and when we live in media fragmented and saturated world it just makes sense. Kinda obvious really.

taplio

The Battle

Andrea Wade, MBA

Jo Redfern

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Jo Redfern

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