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Barney Francis is managing director of Sky Sports. In a television career spanning 18 years, he has worked in the multi-channel, terrestrial and independent sectors. At Sky, he was executive producer for cricket, leading his team through two ICC World Cups, two Ashes Tours, England tours to nine nations, and the first Twenty20 Cup. In 2007, he became executive producer for Sky’s Premier League football and in 2008 executive producer for the EUFA Champions League. As managing director, Francis has continued to enhance the Sky
Sports roster of sporting legends, adding the Masters from Augusta and Formula 1 to its rights portfolio as well as overseeing the introduction of 3D — broadcasting the world’s first live 3D sports event in 2010.
DES DEARLOVE The excitement of live sport is that you never know what’s going to happen next. But that must be a nightmare for a manager. What’s it like making decisions in real time — with millions of viewers watching?
BARNEY FRANCIS It means that very often your decision-making process has to be based on pure instinct. When you are producing or directing television programmes, you have to make a decision now. Not in five seconds time, because the viewer at home is thinking what on earth is going on?
So I think very quickly you’re able to understand right from wrong, you’re also able to decide, if you are taking a programme in this direction, whether it be a football match or a cricket match, if that’s wrong, very quickly you need to jump from path A to path B without the viewer at home noticing. So it’s a good grounding for management, in many ways. You go into any live broadcast thinking this is what we plan to do today, but things could change. Who knows? The floodlights could go off in a football match.
