#BehindtheBrandManager: Justine Lee, marketing manager at BevCo

Kevin Fine, executive director at Sports Radio

The idea behind Sports Radio is to democratise access to sports content. According to Kevin Fine, who recently joined the Sports Radio team as executive director, the combination of a global rise in audio listening and the high mobile penetration in South Africa presents an interesting opportunity to reach listeners who want sport content.

“Combined with these factors we have also seen that for years many sports fans have had to pay expensive fees to get the sports they love – live, and now we’ve made that possible,” said Fine.

We spoke with him to find out more about his role, his background, and what the future holds…

I have two focuses in my role – firstly to ensure that we continue to deliver the best content and experience for customers at a fair and accessible price. Secondly to bring brands closer to the products such as the English Premier League because for many years these have been very expensive, and confined to a very specific audience. The role brings all my previous experiences together to ultimately deliver value to fans and brands – it’s a perfect fit.

Well – it’s a person who has spent 25 years in the media industry on ‘both sides of the mic’. A guy who loves sport and media – and wants to share that joy with millions of others. Taking the experience of building sports and radio businesses and applying my knowledge, insight and education to making that happen is also important to me.

I always wanted to be an entertainer. But as I got older, I realised my purpose was to give entertainment to people – for them to enjoy, and to enrich, educate and fill their day with things that move emotions.

I was always fascinated by sport and radio. At the same time, I started Little Champs Sports Academy, I accidentally landed up at Voice of Wits after studying for an Honours Degree.

Little Champs teaches pre-school children physical education and literacy and we ran a private operation as well as multiple Academies in Soweto, Kwa Mashu, Khayelitsha and Duduza which we had funded by corporate partners.

Delivering on my purpose.

Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.

Mostly at home braaing, or out with the family at parks or nature trails walking and riding.

Reading That will Never Work by Marc Randolph (the Netflix story), listening to Reid Hoffman’s Masters of Scale and of course all the soccer action on Sports Radio.

Building out Sports Radio with multiple offerings to entertain, as well as to educate and develop youngsters through sport, not just in South Africa, but across multiple African territories.