Guest · Sport, fandom and entertainment
Kahlen Macaulay
Head of Sports and Media Partnerships, International, Snap
Nearly two decades across sport, media and technology, now leading sports and media partnerships internationally at Snap and making the case for fandom built young.
About
Kahlen Macaulay is Head of Sports and Media Partnerships, International at Snap, where he helps rights holders, teams, athletes, broadcasters and media brands reach younger audiences on Snapchat. He is known for working at the intersection of sport, media and technology, and for arguing that sport now competes in an attention economy.
Macaulay grew up in Vienna and Geneva with ambitions to work for the United Nations. After graduating and a spell in a job he describes as soulless, he reset his career around a lifelong love of sport, starting in an entry-level sales role at Talksport selling airtime to direct advertisers, which led him into sponsorship. He moved into media at ESPN on its digital sales teams, then joined the startup Pulse Live, a digital service provider building websites and apps for the sports industry including, by his account, the Premier League and World Rugby.
He went on to lead the digital partnerships function at the International Olympic Committee, where he ran what he calls a flame to flame strategy to build always-on interest around the Olympics and its move towards a direct-to-consumer product. Macaulay joined Snap nearly seven years ago to lead sports and media partnerships internationally, a role in which he argues that leagues and rights holders must think like media organisations, build fandom early and use tools such as augmented reality to make sport more relevant to younger fans.
Career20 years
- 2023 to now Snowsport England Non-Executive Director
- 2021 to now Snap Inc. Head of Sports & Media Partnerships, International
- 2019 to 2021 Snap Inc. Manager, International Sports Partnerships
- 2018 to 2019 International Olympic Committee Senior Manager, Digital Partnerships
Show earlier roles: International Olympic Committee, Pulse Innovations Ltd - A Sony Company, ESPN, talkSPORT, Premier Group
- 2016 to 2019 International Olympic Committee Senior Commercial Manager, IOC
- 2013 to 2016 Pulse Innovations Ltd - A Sony Company Business Development Director
- 2012 to 2013 ESPN International Sales Manager
- 2011 to 2012 talkSPORT Creative Solutions Account Manager
- 2009 to 2011 talkSPORT Sponsorship & Promotions Executive
- 2006 to 2009 Premier Group Senior Consultant
How Kahlen thinks3 convictions
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Say yes to discomfort
Macaulay credits much of his career to taking risks before he felt ready. He invokes Richard Branson's advice to say yes and figure out how to do it afterwards, and treats discomfort as a signal to lean in rather than retreat. It is a philosophy he pairs with curiosity and a willingness to ask more experienced people for help.
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Sport blurs into culture
For Macaulay, younger fans do not experience sport in isolation. They engage with it where it overlaps fashion, music and food, which is why Snap sends non-sports creators to events and treats the World Cup as a cultural festival. He argues that organisations willing to broaden their positioning unlock a huge amplifier effect.
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Augmented reality's future
Macaulay points to more than a decade of investment and 350 million daily AR users on Snapchat as evidence the behaviour is already there. He frames augmented reality, digital computing overlaid on the physical world, as the next big change in how sport is consumed, from stadium cameras to try-on lenses. His caution is that value, not gimmickry, is what makes it work.
