Today’s podcast is episode 4 of The Buy Side, our regular series of conversations with brand marketers about sport and sponsorship.

Our guest is Nick Read, Managing Director of the Vitality programme, the health and lifestyle insurance company which has become a very visible presence around sport, receiving plaudits for its approach to sponsorship of a variety of women’s sport properties, Parkrun and more latterly Premier League football clubs.

We talk about the health insurance category and the challenge of commodification in a world where many of us choose our insurance via comparison websites, the role of incentives in tackling obesity, the decoupling of women’s sport sponsorship rights by federations and teams, the issue of category creep and then on to Vitality’s support for men and womens’ cricket, from the Vitality Blast to The Hundred, and I ask Nick what he thought of the ECB’s decision to align The Hundred so closely with KP, the crisp and snacks brand.

If you enjoy our podcasts, you’ll love the Unofficial newsletter, which goes deeper in to the themes covered in the conversations. You can subscribe to that on UnofficialPartner.com where you’ll also find our back catalogue of over 130 podcasts with leading people from across the sports business.