The Big Interview: Jack Sullivan

Sullivan became the Managing Director at West Ham United at just 17 years old. In an open interview, he reveals why he took it on and the perceptions he had to shake off going into the role.

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Jack Sullivan became the youngest Managing Director of a football club in 2017. Image: West Ham United

It is perhaps part of being brought up in a cut-throat, business-orientated world that led to a teenage Jack Sullivan asking his dad [current West Ham United owner David] if he could take over the running of the club’s women’s team, having just watched them lose 4-0 to Tottenham Hotspur in the lower tiers of the pyramid.

Sullivan, just 17 at the time, would go on to lead the club into a new era which saw them jump into the Women’s Super League, dealing with the scrutiny and scepticism all while trying to run a club which had to build a new squad, new staff and have the eyes of the world on them through an all-access BBC documentary, focused largely on Sullivan himself.

“I remember the first day every single reply [on social media] was ‘This is stupid’,” he recalls. “But at the same time that’s when you have to back yourself and I always thought it best to do what you want to do and in a year they can turn around and say ‘actually, he’s done a good job’.

Sullivan stepped away from his role at the end of 2020/21 season after three campaigns as the women’s team’s Managing Director, but has recently returned in a consultancy role to aid things off the pitch.

“I don’t think anyone would say I did a terrible job when I left and that was a big achievement,” he says. “There was immense…I wouldn’t say pressure? I was incredibly lucky. We had a Premier League club behind us and an unbelievable marketing, commercial and finance department.”

He’s now a director at the club overall, part owns a company called Supply Life and recently invested in five in a recruitment firm a few weeks before we speak. He also part owns five care homes, so it’s fair to say he’s a busy young man, still at the age of just 23.

Sullivan is one of the richest people under the age of 30 in the UK and while he was born into an extremely rich family, he has never set back and decided to put his feet up by the pool.

He admits he “loves going away and doing F all” but adds “if that was my life I’d find it incredibly boring”, so much so is his desire he says to grow something from the bottom up.

“I think a lot were like ‘you’re nuts, how are we going to fund it?’…”

That meant a West Ham United women’s team was the perfect role for a Sullivan who over the course of our hour-long chat is refreshingly honest, open and reflective on the challenges the role threw at him, as well as bullish about his decision to take it on in the first place.

“I did a year’s work experience around the club,” he recalls. “I did everything from the ticket office to HR, to player care, to marketing, to commercial. I was selling tables for the end of season dinner and I was like ‘this is fine, this is cool’, but it wasn’t long-term.

“I asked my dad ‘how can I do something with a proper role?’ I wanted to be there every, to plan something every day and he asked if I had any ideas. The women had just been brought in-house and it was a great opportunity for me to understand how football works. I was 17 but he said ‘crack on’.”

Little did he know less than a year after taking on the role the chance would come for the Hammers to propel themselves into the top tier of the women’s game when the Football Association opened up the bidding for licences for the start of the 2018-19 season, the biggest shake-up of the top two tiers to date.