Every year, an estimated 40 million football seats across Europe go unsold. What would it take to turn that empty space into revenue, loyal fans, and a stronger club?

In this episode of Don't Forget Your Tickets, host Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg sits down with Jim McCarthy, founder of Impresario Strategic Growth Service in Pasadena, California. Jim's career stretches back to the earliest days of e-commerce, from managing Amazon's partnership at GeoCities in the 1990s to building Goldstar into one of the leading platforms for unsold live event inventory, helping more than 25,000 rights holders sell tickets to over 2 million events.

This is a wide-ranging conversation about what it actually takes to fill a stadium. Jim traces his path from the dot-com boom through two decades running Goldstar, and explains why he decided, after selling the business in 2021, to found Impresario and focus specifically on the roughly 1,950 professional football clubs in the world that are not among the top 50. He speaks candidly about the scale of the problem across European football, and why filling the stadium matters more than winning.

Carl-Erik and Jim also explore how ticketing technology has changed since the days before apps and APIs, why so many clubs have lost the art of personalisation they once practised, and why a ticket should be treated as raw material rather than a finished product. They discuss revenue per seat as the real measure of success, and why the conversation about unsold inventory needs to reach the owner's desk, not stay buried in the ticketing department.

In this episode, we cover:

• From GeoCities to Goldstar: How Jim's early years managing Amazon's e-commerce partnership shaped a career that would later take him into live event ticketing.
• Building Goldstar Events: Using machine learning to match fans with events, working directly with major ticketing systems including Ticketmaster, and turning unsold inventory into a business that lasted nearly twenty years.
• Then versus now: What ticketing technology could and could not do before apps and APIs existed, and why some of the old lessons in personalisation have been forgotten.
• Why Impresario exists: What Jim learnt from a year of conversations with club owners, and why 40 million unsold seats a year in European football became the problem he wanted to solve.
• Revenue per seat: How Impresario's Match Day Multiplier programme measures success with clubs, and why filling the stadium is, in Jim's words, more important than winning.

If you are interested in ticketing strategy, e-commerce history, or how football clubs outside the elite can build sustainable revenue, this episode is well worth your time. Tune in for a candid, detailed look at turning unsold inventory into full stadiums. Make sure to subscribe.

Guest: Jim McCarthy – Founder, Impresario Strategic Growth Service – jim@impresariostrategic.com
Host: Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg – Don't Forget Your Tickets

Don't Forget Your Tickets is powered by TicketCo, hosted by TicketCo’s CEO and founder, Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg, and co-hosted by TicketCo's CCO Clare Kenny. The podcast was originally launched under the name TicketingPodcast.com. To learn more about TicketCo, please check out our web page ticketco.io or visit https://www.linkedin.com/company/ticketco/

How did English football go from one of the most dangerous sporting environments in the world to the most commercially powerful league on the planet? The answer starts with tragedy, and with a government that told football it had to change or face closure.

In part two of this special two-part episode of Don't Forget Your Ticket, host Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg continues his conversation with Dr. Giambattista Rossi, Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck Business School, University of London. Where part one examined the economics of superstar signings and the structural decline of Italian football, part two widens the lens to England and beyond: the painful history that forced English football to rebuild itself, the wave of American ownership reshaping the Premier League, the Saudi Arabian experiment, and the question of where the global game goes from here.

Giambattista is as direct in this episode as he was in the first. Why did Hillsborough and Bradford change everything about how English football is run? Why did the Glazers get it so wrong at Manchester United while Liverpool and Arsenal got it right? What does a conversation with the chief revenue officer of Ronaldo's Saudi club reveal about the limits of money without culture? And why does he see Multi-Club Ownership as becoming, in his own words, a bit of a curse for the sport?

For a podcast rooted in the commercial and ticketing realities of sport, this episode is where the argument lands. The Premier League's dominance was built on a deliberate reinvention of the matchday experience: who it was for, what it cost, and what it felt like to be there. That transformation carried a price, and lower-league clubs and women's football are now absorbing the fans the top end has priced out. The connection between ownership strategy, community identity and what fans actually experience in the stadium has never been more important to understand.

In this episode, we cover:

How the Premier League was really built: The Hillsborough and Bradford disasters, the Taylor Report, and the deliberate repositioning of English football from a working-class product to a middle-class one, and why understanding that history is the only way to understand the present.

American owners in England: Why the Glazers at Manchester United got it so wrong, why Liverpool and Arsenal got it right, and why Chelsea's new ownership was a total disaster on the pitch, despite deep pockets.

The Saudi Arabia experiment: Why Giambattista calls it a chimera, what a conversation with the chief revenue officer of Ronaldo's club revealed about contracts, culture, and the limits of money without infrastructure, and why empty stands at an Italian Cup Final in Riyadh said everything.

The real England: Why local clubs are the oldest monuments in their communities, why fans are increasingly turning to women's football for the atmosphere the Premier League has priced out, and what English football risks losing if it does not protect that connection.

The future of the global game: Why the MLS is on track to enter the top five, why collective bargaining agreements are coming to football, and why Multi-Club Ownership, for all its financial logic, is becoming, in Giambattista's words, a bit of a curse for the sport.

Whether you follow the Premier League, work in sports business, or are fascinated by how commercial forces and community identity collide inside football clubs, this episode gives you a clear framework for what is actually happening and where it is heading. If you have not listened to part one yet, start there.

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Guest: Dr. Giambattista Rossi, Senior Lecturer, Birkbeck Business School, University of London
Host: Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg, Don't Forget Your Ticket

Don't Forget Your Tickets is powered by TicketCo, hosted by TicketCo’s CEO and founder, Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg, and co-hosted by TicketCo's CCO Clare Kenny. The podcast was originally launched under the name TicketingPodcast.com. To learn more about TicketCo, please check out our web page ticketco.io or visit https://www.linkedin.com/company/ticketco/

What does a football club actually buy when it signs a global superstar? Is it results, a bigger brand, or both? And when that calculation goes wrong, what does it cost the club for years to come?

In this special two-part episode of Don’t Forget Your Ticket, host Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg sits down with Dr. Giambattista Rossi, Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck Business School, University of London and one of the most candid voices in football economics today. Part one opens with the economics of signing superstars, drawing on lessons from American sport, before turning to Italian football: its structural decline, its identity crisis, and the stories of clubs that invested heavily in star power and paid a far higher price than expected.

Giambattista brings an economist’s rigour and an insider’s directness to questions the football world often prefers to leave unanswered. Why is Italian football increasingly irrelevant on the global stage? How did the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo set Juventus on a path from the epitome of stability to the epitome of instability? Why do Inter Milan and AC Milan (two of the most recognised brands in world football) still lack proper owners? And is Como’s rise a genuine model for others to follow, or a story that only works as long as the money keeps flowing?

For a podcast rooted in the commercial and ticketing realities of sport, this conversation addresses something every club must eventually face: the relationship between what happens on the pitch, who owns the club, and what that means for the fans in the seats. When financial decisions are driven by real estate ambitions, capital gains targets, and ownership structures that treat football as a secondary concern, the matchday experience (and the commercial ecosystem around it) pays the price.

In this episode, we cover:

The superstar economics question: What clubs are really buying when they sign a global name, why football’s collective nature makes individual productivity harder to measure than in American sport, and how clubs like Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid have built entirely different strategies around it.

Italian football’s arrogance problem: How decades of assumed superiority, shifting demographics, and a financial model built on media money that no longer exists have combined to leave Italian football in a deepening crisis.

The Juventus and Ronaldo story: Why the signing was a complete outlier in Juventus’s recruitment culture, why their sporting director walked out over it, and how the chain of events that followed brought one of Europe’s most stable clubs to the epitome of instability.

Investment funds as owners: Why Inter Milan and AC Milan are still controlled by financial institutions rather than genuine football owners, and what that signals about the real depth of the crisis in Italian club football.

Como: fairy tale or illusion? Why Giambattista refuses to call it a model, and why the question of what happens when the owner leaves is the only one that really matters.

If you work in sport, follow football, or are interested in the commercial and economic forces shaping how clubs operate and how fans engage with them, this episode is essential listening. Subscribe now so you don’t miss part two.

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Guest: Dr. Giambattista Rossi, Senior Lecturer, Birkbeck Business School, University of London

Host: Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg, Don’t Forget Your Ticket

Don't Forget Your Tickets is powered by TicketCo, hosted by TicketCo’s CEO and founder, Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg, and co-hosted by TicketCo's CCO Clare Kenny. The podcast was originally launched under the name TicketingPodcast.com. To learn more about TicketCo, please check out our web page ticketco.io or visit https://www.linkedin.com/company/ticketco/