Leading Sport is a specialist consulting firm that helps sport organisations worldwide build strong strategies, engage stakeholders, and achieve results.
About the Founder
Maeve has 25 years’ experience working as a consultant to governing bodies, federations, local authorities and organisations on their strategic direction. She acts as an expert facilitator and mentor, as well as an advisor in giving recommendations on best way forward.
She has worked with many of the key stakeholders and organisations involved in European and global sport, events and business, and has advised on areas including governance and administration, participation and engagement, high-performance and commercial development, for organisations such as UEFA and FIBA.
Voted one of the Most Influential Women in Irish Sport every year
Voted as in the top 100 Most Influential People in Global Event Industry
Founder and Board Member of the Irish Sport and Exercise Science Association
MBA from IE Business School, Madrid
Multilingual: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German
Our Story
Maeve Buckley is one of Europe’s leading sports strategy consultants. With over 20 years’ experience, she has advised organisations such as FIFA, UEFA, FIBA, and national governing bodies across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
2017
Founded in December 2017
2017-2021
Most Influential Women in Irish Sport
2018
Judge of the European Sponsorship Awards
2018-2019
Judge at the Irish Sponsorship Awards
2019
Nominated as Best New Sports Business (Irish Sport Industry Awards)
2020/2021/2022/2023/2024
Leading Sport Director nominated asvoted as in thetop 100 Most Influential People in Global Event Industry (Eventex).
2021-2025
Judge at the Irish Sport Industry Awards
Leading Sport partners with a trusted network of expert associates, each with experience in performance sport, governance, marketing, and communications.
Aideen Ward
Senior Strategist
Aideen has partnered with Leading Sport for over 10 years working on multiple projects for Sport Ireland and for national governing bodies of sport. Her contribution includes literature reviews, secondary research and data analysis, as well as planning and executing primary research such as surveys, focus groups and stakeholder consultation.
Fletcher Consulting
Fletcher Consulting is a firm providing strategic and management consulting services. Leading Sport partners with Fletcher Consulting for a number of projects.
Druid Sport
Druid Sport is a company specializing in innovative solutions and services for the sports industry. Leading Sport partners with Druid Sport for a number of projects.
Case Studies
Strategic Development Partner and Strategy Consultant
Leading Sport has for a number of years supported the UEFA GROW team in delivering services to the national associations. This involves work across the entire UEFA Grow service portfolio, and particularly in the development and implementation of the National Associations strategies and strategic projects.
Global Strategy for the Women’s Game (2025-2028)
Leading Sport worked with the FIBA team to deliver the Global Strategy for the Women’s Game. This work invovled updating the previous Women in Basketball (WIB) strategy (and its 5 goals of grassroots, empowerment, competitions, commercial and gender diversity) for the next cycle and to ensure emphasis and priority in the right areas. This work involved engaging stakeholders from both head office and the confederations, and driving the project forward.
Coaching and Games Development
Leading Sport supported theGAA Coaching & Games Development team with the development of an annual Operations Planning process and templates, aligned to the existing monitoring, evaluation and reporting framework, as well as support in developing a specific Coaching & Games Development Strategic Plan.
Leading Sport has worked with Sport Ireland on a range of projects including the Balanced Leadership Framework (2025), the HP Salaries Project (2023), Sport Ireland Strategy (2022), Governance Culture Review (2022), Local Sport Partnership Strategy (2022), Governance Code for Sport (2021), Tokyo Review – Olympic and Paralympic (2021), Gender Diversity on Boards (2020) High-Performance Strategy 2018-2027, HP Self-Assessment 2020, the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Review, amongst other projects.
Let’s build it together.
