The idea that the business world can be learned from sports is old and useful. That means that a day away from work is filled with fun activities. Retired athletes can charge large businesses for motivational talk, allowing business personnel to meet sports heroes.
But which sports (traditional physical activity and mind-based games) can actually assert a close link to work life? This introduces candidates who are regularly advocated by executives and investors.
poker
Supporter: Jeff Yass, co-founder of Susquehanna International Group. Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist
Poker is the source of corporate phrases such as “the board above” and “be handed over.” The game itself has the most obvious connection to the trader. Susquehanna, a quantitative trading company, accepts links. “Before you become a Susquehanna trader, you learn how to play poker,” says Jeff Yass, who co-founded the company with a poker friend. “In poker, being a poker player and a trader is very similar.”
Success in poker is derived not only from understanding probability, but from understanding luck, but also from accepting other players’ intentions and uncertainty.
Jo Living runs Aces High London, a company that hosts corporate poker workshops. She argues that poker should be taken seriously as a way to reveal and improve business skills. “The way people appear in the real world is how they appear at the poker table,” she says.
The game rewards “deep listening” and punishes the lack of claims, she adds. Investor Chamath Palihapitiya says he teaches to be “emotional but stubborn.”
Incomplete information scenarios reflect real-world negotiations. So poker is even a tool for evaluating recruits. (Gary Stevenson, the world’s self-proclaimed best trader, says he won a Citibank internship in a poker-related game.)
Poker addiction is a potential drawback. “The worst possible outcome is if everyone comes out here and starts playing internet poker and starts gambling with bots in Eastern Europe,” the Aces High instructor warned participants at a recent workshop. Other card games are available. Some of them involve teamwork. Warren Buffett played Bridges at least eight hours a week.
chess
Supporter: Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google Deepmind. Rachel Reeves, British Prime Minister
Chess is synonymous with thinking ahead, encouraging players to see the world from the enemy’s perspective. British Prime Minister Rachel Reeves said she prepared for politics. Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google Deepmind, has become a 13-year-old chessmaster. He believes his early interest in AI is playing chess and is “trying to improve my thinking process.”
Billionaire investor Peter Thiel was also a master of chess. However, he sometimes downplayed the similarities between his board and boardroom success. Competitive chess may be too focused on beating a particular opponent and not enough to do something “important or valuable.” (Tielle himself is very competitive, so when he loses, he will “shatter every piece.”)
Chess is not a resolved game. Despite advances in computing, there is no known perfect way to play it. But for some, it’s an environment that’s too controlled to provide a window into the real world. How much can you learn about life from sports where the machines play much better?
tennis
Supporter: Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO
The lessons of tennis about business stem from its ruthless individual nature. At least in the diversity of singles, it embodies independence. “Tennis is very meritocratic,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO. “I don’t like you. There’s no politics. I’ll win or lose based on my performance at the moment.”
Tennis fans see another useful similarity. What appears to be natural talent is actually a result of practice. “No one was born with a great serve,” says Andre Sokol, managing partner at Akira Partners, M&A advisor. Similarly, “The number of times a player sees them moving in the right direction to return a serve is not the result of a superhuman response. It’s an experience.” Do the same skill for senior employees.
football
Supporters: Ir Jim Ratcliffe, Chairman Ineos. Florentino Pérez, Chairman, Grupo ACS, President of Real Madrid. Cheryl Sandberg, former Chief Operating Officer, Meta
Soccer is a huge business, so you should have clear lessons for your business. But it is also a rare business that appears to have resigned to losing money with many big investors.
Perhaps the sport is most relevant when it comes to team management. “Soccer is a great lab, a great simulator and you can see why humans can reach their greatest competitive edge,” said former Real Madrid manager Jorge Bardano.
Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho and other managers were well known for how they treated different personalities. Mourinho spoke about freezing strong-minded striker Samuel Etoau until he made his performances up. Paris Saint-Germain’s victory in the 2024-25 Champions League came after a shift from a qualified payment of the Megastars to focusing on building a team of enthusiastic, youthful talent.
Without a doubt, soccer should focus more on group dynamics than other team sports, such as cricket and baseball, where individual roles are more defined. Without anything else, the battle between sports VAR and Financial Fair Play certainly can remind businessmen of regulatory restrictions.
These insights are probably best obtained from watching football. Does running around five pitches on Wednesday evening have the same effect? There is debate.
golf
Supporter: Donald Trump. Many other executives who are not at their desks on Friday at 1pm
Like tennis, golf rewards individual resilience and intense practice. But popularity among executives is about the networking that it promotes. “I came from a very small country,” Finland President Alexander Stubb said after a golf game with Donald Trump in March. “I don’t do that in the meeting room to spend seven hours with the US president.” One of the business lessons from golf is that it’s someone you know.
video game
Supporter: Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX
A few years ago, Anna Malmhake, chief executive of Swedish beauty brand Oriflame Cosmetics, complained that companies often hired sports people as motivating speakers when many of their audiences are likely to be familiar with video games.
The civilization of the Strategy Game series had taught her that “if we pay attention to the urgent matters, what is not urgent will cause trouble at the most inappropriate moments.” Team riding games such as World of Warcraft have shown that “one negative energy-emissioner can kill the performance of a team of 25 people on its own.”
However, the game is notoriously time-consuming. Multitasking Elon Musk has been accused of exaggerating his performance in Diablo IV. Before the collapse of Cryptocurrency Exchange FTX, his ability to play League of Legends and Storybook Brawl during a business meeting of co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was spoken as a sign of his genius. But perhaps the bigger genius would have paid his full attention to his lawyer.
