MN2S secured former Republic of Ireland international Kevin Kilbane as a guest speaker on the EY Ireland Entrepreneur Of The Year CEO retreat in Toronto, Canada a masterclass in why sports talent resonates with senior business audiences.
Why Business Brands Are Turning to Sports Talent
The most compelling speakers at senior business events are rarely career keynote speakers. Increasingly, forward-thinking brands are looking to elite athletes and former sports professionals to bring something that polished corporate presentations rarely deliver: lived experience of high-stakes performance, resilience under pressure, and the ability to hold a room.
EY Ireland’s decision to partner with former Republic of Ireland international Kevin Kilbane as a guest speaker on its 2026 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year CEO retreat in Toronto is a strong example of this trend in action. MN2S managed the booking and coordination for the activation, and the partnership reflects a broader shift in how prestige brands approach experiential programming for executive audiences.
Inside the EY Ireland EOY CEO Retreat
The 2026 EY Ireland Entrepreneur Of The Year CEO retreat brought together this year’s finalists and a community of EOY alumni for an immersive week in Canada. The programme combined high-level business content with cultural experiences designed to inspire, connect and challenge a group of Ireland’s most ambitious founders and business leaders.
Attendees took in a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game, visited the MaRS Innovation Centre for executive learning sessions, and made a special trip to Niagara Falls. The speaker lineup was genuinely exceptional. Beauty entrepreneur and investor Aimee Connolly shared entrepreneurial insights in a session hosted by Eimear McCrann. Renowned Canadian astronaut and explorer Chris Hadfield delivered a special address. Telecoms and media entrepreneur Denis O’Brien led an entrepreneurial masterclass hosted by EOY Lead Partner Roger Wallace. EY Ireland Managing Partner Frank O’Keeffe provided a strategic overview of the firm.
Kevin Kilbane rounded out the week as a guest speaker, bringing the retreat to a close with the kind of personal, high-performance perspective that only someone who has competed at the very top of international sport can deliver.
The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Platform
EY Entrepreneur Of The Year is one of the most prestigious business recognition programmes in the world. It celebrates the founders, operators and leaders of high-growth companies across global markets and brings together an audience of C-suite executives, investors and ambitious entrepreneurs who measure themselves against genuine excellence.
For a programme built on ambition, resilience and exceptional achievement, the bar for event talent is correspondingly high. Placing Kevin Kilbane alongside speakers of the calibre of Chris Hadfield and Denis O’Brien signals the seriousness with which EY Ireland approached the retreat experience. This was not a token entertainment booking. It was a considered programme decision.
Kevin Kilbane: The Right Fit for a High-Performance Audience
Kevin Kilbane earned 110 caps for the Republic of Ireland, making him one of the most capped players in the nation’s football history. He played at the top level for clubs including Everton, Sunderland, Wigan Athletic and Hull City before transitioning into broadcasting, where he has built a second career as a respected analyst and commentator.
That dual identity matters deeply in a B2B context. An entrepreneur audience does not simply want a famous name on the agenda. They want someone who understands what it means to compete at the highest level, to face failure publicly, to reinvent a career and to build something over time. Kilbane offers all of that, wrapped in media fluency and a natural ability to engage a room.
His profile also travels exceptionally well internationally. The Toronto setting is significant. Football’s growing cultural footprint in North America, combined with Kilbane’s decades of visibility across Irish and British media, made him a timely and strategically considered choice for this audience. Additionally, the Irish business community that forms the backbone of the EOY Ireland programme has a strong affinity with his story, his authenticity and his public profile.
Sport, Entrepreneurship and the High-Performance Parallel
The crossover between elite sport and business leadership is not a new idea, but it has never been more commercially relevant. Entrepreneurs and athletes share a common vocabulary: goal-setting, pressure, adaptation, teamwork, failure and recovery. For an Entrepreneur Of The Year audience, hearing those themes articulated by someone who has genuinely lived them at international level carries a very different weight than a rehearsed motivational script.
This is, fundamentally, what well-matched talent partnerships do. They close the gap between a brand’s values and the audience’s lived experience. EY wants its Entrepreneur Of The Year community to feel seen, challenged and energised. Kilbane, as a closing guest speaker after a week of high-calibre content, helped create that sense of completion and reflection in a way that corporate content alone cannot.
The retreat format itself reinforces this dynamic. CEO retreats are designed to shift perspective, not simply to inform. Combining innovation visits, cultural experiences, world-class speakers and personal storytelling builds a cumulative emotional arc. Kilbane’s appearance at the end of that arc, following an astronaut and a major entrepreneur, was positioned for maximum resonance.
The Strategic Logic of Live Event Talent Bookings
MN2S managed the end-to-end coordination for this activation, including pre-event briefing logistics and scheduling between Kevin Kilbane and the EY client team. That process, often underappreciated from the outside, is central to the quality of the eventual experience. A well-briefed talent appearance lands differently from an unrehearsed one. The alignment between what the brand needs and what the talent brings requires structured pre-event communication, and that preparation directly shapes what an audience feels in the room.
For brands operating at EY’s level, that attention to detail is non-negotiable. Their audiences are sophisticated. They notice when a speaker understands the room they are walking into, and they equally notice when someone does not.
Why B2B Brands Are Investing in Talent-Led Experiences
Corporate event programming has evolved substantially. Where once a panel of industry figures or an internal executive presentation would have been the default format, brands now recognise that live events are among the most powerful tools available for building community, reinforcing brand identity and creating lasting impressions.
Sports talent, in particular, occupies a distinctive space in that landscape. Athletes carry trust, aspiration and narrative in a way that most brand spokespeople do not. Moreover, they are perceived as sufficiently neutral to engage diverse audiences without polarising them commercially or politically. For a global professional services firm hosting founders and executives from multiple sectors and backgrounds, that neutrality combined with genuine high-performance credibility is a near-ideal combination.
The EY Ireland retreat programme also illustrates something important about how leading brands now think about event curation. The mix of innovation, exploration, peer connection and inspirational speakers is deliberate. Each element serves the same underlying objective: reinforcing EY’s position as the partner of choice for Ireland’s most ambitious entrepreneurs.
Talent That Travels Beyond the Consumer Market
One of the persistent misconceptions in brand partnership strategy is that sports and entertainment talent is primarily a consumer-facing asset. The Kilbane-EY Ireland partnership challenges that directly. Some of the most commercially valuable talent appearances happen entirely away from cameras, in rooms full of decision-makers who leave an event feeling genuinely connected to the brand that curated the experience.
That kind of association builds over time. The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year audience is not simply an audience at a single event. They are long-term brand relationships in development, and the experience they have shapes how they think about EY as a business partner, advisor and community. Talent choices, therefore, are strategic communication decisions, not just entertainment logistics.
Kevin Kilbane’s appearance on this retreat reflects that understanding clearly. His presence added dimension to an already premium programme, reinforced EY Ireland’s positioning around leadership and ambition, and gave attendees a point of connection that was personal, cultural and memorable.
What This Partnership Signals for the Industry
As more global brands invest seriously in live event quality, demand for talent with genuine authority, strong personal narratives and broad audience appeal will continue to grow. Athletes and former sports professionals, particularly those who have built credible second careers in media or public life, are exceptionally well-positioned to meet that demand.
MN2S works across exactly this space, connecting brands with talent whose credibility travels across sectors and geographies. The Kevin Kilbane x EY Ireland activation demonstrates clearly how the right individual, placed in the right context, amplifies what a brand is already building rather than distracting from it.
For organisations planning executive retreats, leadership summits or high-value brand experiences, the question is no longer whether to invest in talent. The question is how to identify the talent whose story genuinely serves the audience in the room.