British & Irish Lions CEO Ben Calveley: the art and science of incentivizing stakeholders

British & Irish Lions CEO Ben Calveley reflects on a record-breaking tour of Australia in 2025, and looks ahead to the inaugural women's Lions tour of New Zealand in 2027.

The Lions - one of the most idiosyncratic entities in world sport - is the organization set up to manage the occasional rugby union side of the same name. Players are drawn from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland to compete for a touring team historically every four years.

The rugby unions of those same nations co-own the Lions.

This episode may well have been subtitled 'how to turn a profit on tour', because since taking on the top job at the Lions in 2018 - first as MD, and then as CEO in 2022 - Calveley has ripped up the model that underpins the Lions and started again with a robust new framework that incentivizes the many stakeholders involved in making - or allowing - a tour to happen: from the competing unions, the host nation, the players and their agents, to the leagues and clubs that they're contracted to.

The new model ensures a balanced share in the success of any tour, and revenues have ballooned.

Calveley goes into depth on how the model works; puts his neck on the line by declaring the first women's Lions tour will be profitable; and talks leadership and life in this comprehensive episode.