Sport is now in the business of entertainment. Fandom is built young, as an investment. And fun is the value.

Macaulay never intended to work in sport. He grew up in Vienna and Geneva and wanted to work for the United Nations, but after graduating and a spell in a job he calls soulless, he decided to build a career around something he was excited about. Sport had always been part of his life. He reset with an entry-level sales role at Talksport selling airtime to direct advertisers, which pulled him into sponsorship, then moved into digital sales at ESPN. A pivot took him to the startup Pulse Live, a digital service provider building websites and apps for the sports industry including the Premier League and World Rugby, his first real technology environment. He then led digital partnerships at the International Olympic Committee, running a flame to flame strategy to build always-on interest around the Olympics and a move towards a direct-to-consumer product, before joining Snap nearly seven years ago.

When Macaulay started in 2008 the App Store had just launched and the iPad did not exist. He cites a Two Circles figure: in 2008 the content being created would have taken about 15,000 years to watch, rising to 115,000 years by 2024. The amount of content has exploded and technology has made it available everywhere, which creates a dilemma and an opportunity in the battle for eyeballs.

Governing bodies used to focus on the sport itself. The ones that are really growing still maintain that, but they now have to think more like a media organisation that is in the game of entertainment. Macaulay argues that too much content is still made for its own sake, disconnected from business objectives, and that the organisations that get it treat this as a long-term competition for attention and integrate that at the core of the business, which lifts rights value, appointments to view and sponsor hooks.

There is a philosophy that younger audiences are not interested in sport, and Macaulay sees the opposite: they are interested, they just consume it very differently. Highlights are everywhere now in a way they were not five years ago. Fans are not always staying for the full 90 minutes, and if they are, they are on their phones messaging friends. Snapchat, he says, is where they come to message the people they care about most and stay for the content, gathering around the moments that drive conversation.

Snap reaches nearly a billion people a month and 90% of 13 to 24-year-olds in over 25 markets, who open the app 50 times a day. Macaulay's argument is blunt: if you are not in that conversation, you are missing out, and so is any brand with a sponsorship it fails to bring to where people spend their time. The organisations that win understand that fandom is created young and treat it as an investment in brand building. He follows skiing and football because he grew up with them, and never took to cricket because he was not exposed to it early.

Even five years ago creators were kept outside the ropes, seen as infringing on IP and winning off the back of the rights holders. That view has largely gone. Macaulay argues that embracing creators is upper-funnel marketing that grows the overall audience and reaches people you would not otherwise speak to. You still serve the core audience, but creators bring new ones in.

He points to Jake Paul fighting Anthony Joshua on DAZN, where the creators are not just making content, they are the content. Snap sends fashion and music influencers, not just sports creators, to events with Serie A, the Olympics and Formula 1, because young people are more interested in the intersection of sports with fashion, culture and music than in sport in isolation, and that overlap creates a huge amplifier effect.

The strength of Snapchat, Macaulay says, is community: close friends and family connecting rather than broadcasting to the world. During live sport, 75% of Snapchatters use the app while watching, talking about the moments on the pitch. He wants brands to insert themselves into those conversations in additive ways, sending a Scotland-top Snap of McTominay's overhead kick rather than a bored 'let's go', or Domino's telling you a pizza ordered now arrives by halftime.

The test is simple. Base everything on the value you are creating and the experience you are adding. If you tip it over and you are not adding value, you are almost better off not doing anything, because it becomes a negative. But if you are adding real value and powering connection, it is seamless and almost easy.

Snap has invested in augmented reality for over a decade, with 350 million people using it every day, from vomiting rainbows to trying on Nike Air Force 1s and swiping up to buy. Macaulay believes AR, digital computing overlaid on the physical world, is the next big change in media. Its lenses now sit inside third-party apps like the NFL and the Olympics, and Snapcam is in over 50 US stadiums, turning the old kiss cam into a viral moment on the big screen.

He argues that we should never underestimate the power of fun in creating value. Sport is meant to be fun, that is why we started playing it, and it can become too serious and tribalistic, intimidating to newcomers. Snapchat, he says, brings it back to fun and lets people be part of the World Cup party even if they do not care about the result.

Personally, he's supporting Scotland, drawn in a group with Brazil. For Snap, the moments are much bigger than the pitch: the kit launches, the squad hype, upsets like Saudi Arabia beating Messi's Argentina. Snap will run AR lenses for fans to show off their fandom, content from partners like Copa90 and Football Co, and a creator program capturing what is happening around the US, while Copa90 tour US cities to meet fan groups from around the world. The ripple effect of those 90 minutes, he says, is sometimes more powerful than what happens on the pitch.

Erling Haaland is a massive Snapchatter because he feels safe using it. On Snapchat there are no followers, likes or comments, a deliberate design from the start, and Macaulay says that freedom lets athletes be themselves without fear of reprisal. That is why athlete use is growing: it is them in an ice bath, having a steak or playing FIFA, rather than their polished public selves.

Leadership is a journey where you never arrive, Macaulay says. He remembers being intimidated starting out and the people who gave him a chance, and sees his job as bringing people up and staying open to new perspectives. He mentors two people and finds that reverse mentorship keeps him fresh, which he ties back to always growing rather than staying in the same place.

For anyone entering sports media, he says focusing on sport is probably a falsehood: figure out what you are good at, double down, then bring that expertise into sport. Be curious, ask questions, and ask for mentorship, which he wishes he had done earlier. His overarching advice is to take risks, because the more uncomfortable he feels, the more he wants to say yes, echoing Richard Branson's line about saying yes and figuring it out afterwards.