Ey: Overseeing The #btsia Judging Process

Tom Kingsley, Sport Industry Group Leader at EY, reflects on his time as adjudicator of the BT Sport Industry Awards judging process – from the first discussions just weeks after the previous Awards, to the final judging day ten months later…

The BT Sport Industry Awards. The annual glitzy bash in Battersea that brings together the great and the good from across our industry and beyond to celebrate another year of excellence. For all of us it’s a night to reflect on our successes and to be inspired to push for greater glory next year. As the official adjudicator of the Awards, I’m frequently asked what goes on in the lead up to the event. The simple answer is, an awful lot…

My principal role as the adjudicator is to ensure the integrity of the process stands up to scrutiny from you in the industry. To that end, the planning for the 2018 Awards started back in May when I sat down with Alex and his team to review the process for last year and to share the feedback from the judges, and others of you in the industry, who had shared your thoughts with me during the course of last year. Over the following months, the team then built the plans for 2018 – checking in with me from time to time with regard to changes they were making to categories or to criteria and so forth to ensure that I was happy. As ever, the launch in September has generated a number of queries from you in the industry – the team at Sport Industry Group know that they can call on me at any time to provide an independent view of their responses, and this has indeed happened on a few occasions over the past month or so.

Following the close of the submissions period, the work really ramps up after Christmas with steering committees convened for each category. Each steering group has a minimum of four independent assessors drawn from across the industry based on their knowledge, experience and skills specific to that category. Their job is to review each entry and to collectively select a shortlist of entrants for that category. Each session lasts at least three hours to ensure that every entry is properly reviewed. This year, the steering committees will take place across three consecutive weeks. By the end of January we will have therefore clocked up around 60 hours reviewing all the entries, and more than 75 people from across the industry will have been involved in creating the final Official Shortlist.

The final stage of the process is the judging day. And to be absolutely transparent this is in fact a two-day process; one day spent on the road, visiting the shortlisted agencies for Agency of the Year, and one day spent reviewing the shortlists for each category. You will have previously read Chris Grant’s ‘view from the chair’  about the judging day. In that piece he referenced the importance of confidentiality, NDAs and the declaration of conflicts of interest. This is an absolutely critical part of the process; when you bring together 20+ senior industry leaders, it is nigh on impossible that there will be no potential conflict of interest when they are asked to collectively look across more than 100 shortlisted entries. To ensure fair play, we have a very clear and thorough protocol for managing any conflicts of interest, be they perceived or real, considered on a case-by-case basis, and every judge is made fully aware of this protocol ahead of the day.

And so to the final reckoning. The end of the judging day sees the category winners decided. Every judge has a single vote for each category and every vote is studiously counted and transparently announced within the room (hence the need for a strict NDA to be signed by everyone present). The integrity of the process is fundamental to the Awards. When you sit down to enjoy your evening in Battersea Evolution next April you need to be able to do so safe in the knowledge that the winners will have been subjected to a rigorous and fair journey. This much you can be reassured on.

In total, over 80 hours will be spent judging this year’s Award entries. Within that process, over 75 of your industry peers will have decided the shortlisted entries and more than 20 of the industry’s most senior players will have then sat in final judgement to find the ultimate winners.

I look forward to seeing all the entries….and in EY’s case you can rest assured that ‘all’ really does mean all!

Good luck everybody.