UP418 Introducing The 3: The Difficult First Episode

We tried to make a short form ten minute podcast and failed. 
It's supposed to be three stories in ten minutes. 
Think of this as a work-in-progress. 
UP's Richard Gillis is joined by James Emmett and David Cushnan from Leaders in Sport. 

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Transcript

The 3 ep1

[00:00:00] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Partner Studios.

[00:00:01] nice.

[00:00:02] Where'd get, where'd you get your little luminous, lit sign?

[00:00:05] It is very, 

[00:00:06] James Emmett: lit's what the kids would say, I'm sure. 

[00:00:08] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: is a lit sign and it is very expensive. This is the sort of thing that you don't buy in the first year of a startup business. Now we're five years in, we thought, you know, 

[00:00:17] but it's, 

[00:00:18] David Cushnan: you don't buy that off the rack.

[00:00:20] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: you don't, the hours I spent on hours and trying to search for an unofficial partner illuminated for in the brand yellow, in the yellow branding, there's so much in green and red. I said, no, I'm going to have, you know, we're going to hold out for the, uh, for the yellow,

[00:00:33] David Cushnan: For some reason it's made me think, bizarrely, of the London 2012 Opening Ceremony, you know the bit where they're sort of forging the iron, you know, from the, it's got that,

[00:00:41] you know, I like to think that you've, you and Sean have really, you know, worked to build that.

[00:00:48] to construct

[00:00:49] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Well, I think like all great brands, people project onto it, don't they? Their own stories, if you will. And we're just, we're just recipients of the stories. We're at the center of people's lives and they say, right, you know, what does unofficial partner mean to you? And it could be a, just a yellow sign illuminated, which is extra by the way.

[00:01:05] David Cushnan: You're the most important thing in some people's lives. 

[00:01:08] Our I think so. Yeah. Which brings us to the three.

[00:01:12] James Emmett: Hmm,

[00:01:13] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: The three, which is a brand, which I am, I was happy with on Wednesday afternoon. And then someone said, why don't you call it the 10? It's 10 minutes long. I said, Oh yeah, that would, that could have worked. But now I've, I've spent

[00:01:26] hours in Canva. I've, you know,

[00:01:29] David Cushnan: why don't we do ten things in three minutes?

[00:01:30] James Emmett: well, that's not, that's not a bad idea. 

[00:01:33] David Cushnan: That's when we decide ten minutes is too long.

[00:01:36] James Emmett: I think the concept, Rich, of three, obviously, three middle aged white blokes, sure but, you know, three things in three minutes. Like, basically, we each have three minutes for our item. So, it's three, three, three everywhere. 

[00:01:50] Maybe just like call it the magic number Rich, just the magic number. We

[00:01:57] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: is now, you know, we can have this 

[00:01:59] David Cushnan: we flagged that, we flagged to read that Richard, it's, it's flagged.

[00:02:02] Haven't quite got round to it yet but, yeah. 

[00:02:04] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: but you know,

[00:02:05] David Cushnan: I like the, I do like the bit at the bottom of the newsletter though, the 

[00:02:08] increasingly 

[00:02:09] James Emmett: click this fucking thing, 

[00:02:10] David Cushnan: It's really making me consider

[00:02:13] liking. 

[00:02:14] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I know and I could give you an extraordinary stat in terms of the level, the impact that that little bit has. The reason I'm putting it in every week, it was a joke and then likes. Went, went crazy.

[00:02:28] James Emmett: really? So swearing at people, shouting at

[00:02:30] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Swearing and shouting at people, get them to do something, make them feel bad, is the way forward in terms of driving engagement.

[00:02:36] James Emmett: For this podcast, I do, I do have something to say, which is going to force you to tick the e box on

[00:02:42] the, uh, Hmm.

[00:02:44] uh, yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe.

[00:02:48] David Cushnan: Something, something happened to you in Lidl.

[00:02:51] James Emmett: No, well, actually, should we talk about what we, what we're doing?

[00:02:54] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Okay. So the format, as we know, it's called the three and we're staying with the three 

[00:02:58] and we've got three stories today and we're going to do it. The order we're going to do it is Cushnon, Emmett, Gillis. In a one, two, three, each. We just spend three minutes on each one. We've got three questions, basically everything. So it's really boring now. I'm bored of it already, but it's, so what happened?

[00:03:13] Why do we care? And where's it going? Oh no,

[00:03:19] James Emmett: Don't ask questions, Richard. So, Rich, 

[00:03:26] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Hang on, I'll have to unplug that. Well, let's see how we get on.

[00:03:28] James Emmett: Yeah.

[00:03:29] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: This is, this is the sort of pilot

[00:03:31] James Emmett: Yeah.

[00:03:32] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: in many ways.

[00:03:33] James Emmett: I don't

[00:03:34] know. Hang on,

[00:03:36] are we, uh, 

[00:03:37] David Cushnan: Oh, you were going, you 

[00:03:37] James Emmett: it, aren't you You're trying 

[00:03:38] to do it, you're trying to do it, Rich.

[00:03:40] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I am trying to do it. I'm trying to get, this is supposed to be a short 

[00:03:43] David Cushnan: He's been recording for 10 minutes, and this is the pre intro, I mean 

[00:03:46] James Emmett: We're obviously not doing this, you're chopping this all off, like you need, you need, like there's, 

[00:03:50] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: There is no difference between me talking on the record and off the record. So, unless you've got voices that you put 

[00:03:55] on to, uh, you know, to, so we're going to go, right, David, I want you to start

[00:04:01] David Cushnan: Mm hmm.

[00:04:01] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: story one. What is it?

[00:04:03] David Cushnan: Story 1 is, uh, some shenanigans in the F1 sponsorship world. So

[00:04:09] Listen carefully long time Ferrari sponsor Santander leaving the team at the end of the 2024 season. Unicredit, uh, Italian bank, Italy's global bank I think, uh, replacing them in 2025. Santander moving from Ferrari to become the new retail bank of F1. So there's a few things to unpack there but why should I, why should I, why should the industry care about this?

[00:04:36] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: there seems to be something odd here. First of all, I didn't realize until you flagged this about the link between Santander and the drivers. So they seem to be following drivers. Carlos Sans has left, and so they, so are they. And they've did that with Alonzo before.

[00:04:50] David Cushnan: Yep.

[00:04:51] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: and now there's also, I guess the broader bit.

[00:04:54] It is to do with teams and leagues and quite often they're in competition with each other for the same sponsor. And we can get into that a little bit. But what, James, why do you care?

[00:05:05] James Emmett: Well, I'm trying to work out why David cares, and I think the simple answer is it's something that's happened in Formula One. So he is

[00:05:12] inevitably going to care about this. I think that an element of why this is interesting is basically the return of Unicredit to kind of big boy sponsorship. Unicredit, a former long time Champions League sponsor. Uh, it's obvious, I think, why any major brand would want to come in and partner with Ferrari. That's like saying, why would you want to come in and sponsor the New York Yankees or Manchester United? I guess, uh, there may be some acrimony over the kind of replacement. Unicredit in, Santander out. Uh, but simply Unicredit's an Italian based bank and, you know, Ferrari, Italian. Let's get rid of the Spaniards, let's bring in the Italians. Yeah, structurally, you're right, Richard, you're onto something. There is, there is bound to be tension between, kind of, team categories and, you know, sort of overall rights owner competition categories. And I'm not sure, David, I don't know whether you know, but what are kind of Formula One's rules on that?

[00:06:11] Do, does the, does Formula One kind of safeguard a few categories for itself, which teams can't sell?

[00:06:17] David Cushnan: Unusually for F1, I don't think there are any rules. Certainly not public rules on, uh, on that. although they do like making rules, so perhaps that could be something that we, uh, that we see. The other thing to throw into this is the Lewis Hamilton factor. He's joining Ferrari next season, and we have seen HP do a big deal with Ferrari, now Unicredit, sport business I think reporting Pernod Ricard, maybe on the verge of doing a deal with Ferrari as well.

[00:06:42] And what those brands are buying, and what Ferrari's commercial team have had a year to sell in, because the deal was with Lewis Hamilton was announced so early, is the opportunity to in effect buy a small slice of Lewis Hamilton's time and his endorsement. Which is something that hasn't really been available before, simply because he's been with Mercedes for so long, and of course Mercedes have a number of corporate brand partners. But a very, very stable crop of partners, there hasn't been much movement, much shift in terms of who has access to Lewis Hamilton, so there's a bit of that at play. I have a little pet working theory on

[00:07:17] Santander. It's not quite a fully formed thought, so don't treat it as such, but I do wonder whether

[00:07:25] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: We took that as read 

[00:07:26] David Cushnan: Yeah, I know.

[00:07:26] I do wonder whether this dynamic of, central leagues in competition with brand partners is something that we're going to see a bit more of in Formula One as Formula One fandom, Drive to Survive, etc, etc, etc, Growth in America, seems to be becoming a lot more tribal, particularly in terms of drivers.

[00:07:49] Drivers more so than teams, and I wonder whether that might play a small part in some of the thinking around Santander, F1 team sponsor, as you said, Rich, with McLaren and Ferrari, 15 years and more, now suddenly deciding to, to take a central deal.

[00:08:05] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Yeah, yeah. , it's a very good point. And it sort of feels Like all good stories feels true. So Ricardo Fort, who we all know, and he was at Visa, wasn't he? He used to run Visa sports program and then Coca Cola. He put on LinkedIn, it's rare to see banks sponsoring global events and leagues as banks operate in one or just a few territories.

[00:08:26] Bank FIFA World Cup. for the U S and now Santander has become Formula One sponsor. Like many sports, a league sponsorship deal delivers mostly visibility and branding, primarily what Santander is buying on this deal. And they have limitations of what they can offer. Formula One has, several limitations on what they can offer teams and drivers.

[00:08:45] This type of deal is perfect for new brands. And he quotes Alibaba and the Olympics, Qatar Airways and FIFA, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a bit of America here.

[00:08:54] James Emmett: I think I would, I think I would build on that, Rich, just to say, uh, the, the difference between the rights that these two would get, you know, the Ferrari sponsor and the central sponsor, , the central sponsorship deal would doubtless include. A lot of hospitality, right? A lot of opportunity, like B2B

[00:09:13] opportunity, opportunity for the bank to host guests at every single race across the calendar, which wouldn't necessarily be the case at the same scale for a team sponsor.

[00:09:22] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: yeah, yeah, absolutely. And also you've got the banking categories is interesting. There's two things. One is it's big. So the checks are big and everyone in sport likes a big check. The other bit is that you've got parts of it. So the crypto thing has changed quite often the way in which banks see themselves and banks, whenever I get a bank on the unofficial partner podcast, they've been apologizing since the banking crisis of, you know, 2007, 8.

[00:09:48] So very CSR led, very purpose led. But I do think also, Banks are strange beasts that, you know, Santander is, is a sort of wrap across lots of things that they bought over the last sort of 10, 15 years. So there is a branding thing.

[00:10:05] Obviously Santander is still very Spanish. Is this a, a route to internationalizing, the brand, 

[00:10:13] David Cushnan: Yes, I think it is. The new F1 deal includes Santander's Open Bank, which is launching in the US later this year, so that's the US link there, ticked. There's also from an F1 calendar point of view A big new street race happening in Madrid in 2026 for the first time which has been created and designed to be on a par hospitality wise a real glamour race like a Miami like a maybe like a Vegas and doing for F1 in Europe what I suppose Monaco used to do, but there's all sorts of limitations on space and rules and, you know, the peculiarities of running a race in Monaco.

[00:10:55] They're going to have a lot more space in Madrid, so there's a bit of that as well, but yes, I think you're exactly right on the internationalization point.

[00:11:01] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Okay, right. Let's go into story two. We've got

[00:11:04] James Emmett: We've taken eight minutes on story one. So,

[00:11:06] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Okay, so we're failing in the brand promise of 10 minutes, but let's see how we get on in the edit. But, uh, James,

[00:11:13] James Emmett: Right. Okay. Story two is Lidl, the value European supermarket chain, 

[00:11:19] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: love Lidl. It 

[00:11:20] James Emmett: a, it was a great shot, Rich,

[00:11:21] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: is a great shop.

[00:11:23] James Emmett: becoming a sponsor of the Europa League and the Conference League UEFA competitions for the next three year cycle. They're essentially expanding, , a deal that they already have with UEFA through team marketing, that saw them sponsor EURO 2024. , and so they are stepping up, , to support UEFA's two, uh, secondary tier, , domestic, competitions. So they are joining, Hang on, I've got, I've got the batch of sponsors here. So in the Europa League and Conference League category,

[00:11:58] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Hankook.

[00:11:59] James Emmett: Hankook, the tyre people, Strauss, the workwear people, JustEat, which is the only sponsor that spans both Champions League and Europa League and Conference League at the moment, Swissquote and Enterprise Rent a Car. So that's what's happened. Why do I care?

[00:12:17] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Well, there's a couple of things. One, again, it's a big category, big spending category, and growing supermarkets rarely got into sponsorship, and then I think around London 2012, Sainsbury's, It started to become a thing and there's a constant battle with supermarkets in terms of Coca Cola is one problem for them.

[00:12:35] Because Coke goes in and buys loads of different categories that that supermarkets sell and then they don't let anyone near them. So it always prohibited that and so the rights holders had to find a way around if they've done a deal with Coke or PepsiCo or whatever. So they had to find a way around that.

[00:12:51] The other bit to this is there's stepping back in terms of sort of primary colors, it feels quite on brand. There's a sort of scrappy underdog element to both of the properties. it's interesting. I was on, and this is not a place I go very regularly, fruitnet. com. It's a fruit based news service.

[00:13:13] And it's talking about this deal and it talks about their leading on fruit in terms of this is, you know, going to be driving fruit consumption in their shops via the property. But there's a quite an interesting little bit about over the next three years, Lidl will also provide Lidl Kids Team, which is the kids in Lidl strips.

[00:13:31] Running onto the European games and it quotes a YouGov study quite heavily that says that the collaboration builds on a successful UEFA 2024 partnership in which Lidl was the most visible brand across the tournament, according to YouGov. So team will be. Pleased with YouGov at this point because YouGov's numbers appear to have encouraged Lidl, that's gonna be worth the fee for YouGov, I would have thought.

[00:13:57] The research found that 58%, given our caveat that the number's always wrong, 58 percent of Euro24 viewers recognize Lidl as a tournament partner, 32 percent increase. The Lidl kids thing I don't know if you've had this experience, but whenever I'm watching a game with muggles from outside of the sports business bubble, they never get that that's, those kids are sponsored.

[00:14:20] And I always think, I always wonder, because you're sitting there in a, in a room watching these things and you think, well, you know, they're dressed in Lidl outfits or McDonald's outfits and they never get it. And I always wonder when you 

[00:14:31] then look at that research, 

[00:14:33] David Cushnan: turned up

[00:14:34] wearing 

[00:14:34] James Emmett: they

[00:14:34] think this is like a kid's team that just like that is their kids. It's just the McDonald's colors.

[00:14:39] David Cushnan: need to get muggles on to

[00:14:41] James Emmett: Yeah. Who

[00:14:42] is this? Muggles. 

[00:14:43] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: The people in this room, they could be the stupidest people I've ever met, but, they are people, that don't think about this stuff all day, every day. So I am skeptical in terms of those numbers, but I'm sure the, you know, Lidl's

[00:14:58] David Cushnan: I always think with deals like this it's Particularly big consumer brands. I guess links back to, uh, banks, if banks exist in physical form now. But I was on the Lidl website, uh, Rich, which is not somewhere I go that often. Particularly to their corporate pages. There are 12, 350 Lidl stores across Europe, and there's 225 warehouses. And I always think, The bit of sponsorships like this that are under reported, under discussed are the employee, you know, the internal engagement piece, the opportunity, there. And if you think to the point that I think you were getting at, James, in terms of the positioning of this deal in the, in UEFA's second and third tier competitions,

[00:15:43] James Emmett: Thanks Dave.

[00:15:43] But I haven't made that point yet, but I will. Don't worry.

[00:15:47] David Cushnan: Okay. Well, if you, if you were to make that point, and it could be a good point there's definitely something in, uh, you know, you think about the, the Europa League, and I guess Brighton were, were experienced a bit of this last year. There's a lot of people who say that the, you know, the away trips are much more fun in some respects and you're going to more eclectic places than the Champions League.

[00:16:11] Yeah. You know, you're probably going somewhere, to a city somewhere in Norway, you're probably going to Bruges, you might end up in Milan or Rome or Lisbon, but you're definitely going to Athens. And Lidl has a huge footprint across Europe, you know, even more so in the UK, so I think looking at this from a genuine sort of continental point of view, uh, probably makes a lot of sense.

[00:16:34] James Emmett: Mm-Hmm.

[00:16:35] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Great nuts and cheap wine. That's what I'm saying.

[00:16:37] James Emmett: Yeah. Yeah yeah, so there's this sort of secondary tertiary competition point that I would like to make and you guys have been doing some exotic web surfing to, you know, fruitnet. com and, uh, Lidl. But 

[00:16:51] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Just putting the hours in 

[00:16:52] James. It's called homework.

[00:16:54] James Emmett: likewise, Richard, I've been on the UEFA website. Thank you very much.

[00:16:57] Uh, yeah but I hadn't realized, You know, we talk about, well you certainly talk about it a lot, Rich, the whole sort of bundling, unbundling concept and I remember for some time now the industry has been talking about, what a big deal it is to, for UEFA, particularly, to unbundle women's rights from their men's rights.

[00:17:16] From their men's rights, uh, and, and how that is a sign that women's sport, women's football is standing on its own two feet and is a commercial proposition in its own right. I hadn't realized that the Euro Europa and Conference League rights have been unbundled from the Champions League for some time. And I hadn't quite realized what a success team marketing was making of this as we just mentioned, uh, previously It is just just eat. That is a shared sponsor between the champions league and the europa league and conference league so Those are obviously the rights are are worth different amounts of money. But I think there is something here in Sponsorship, proposition, positioning. So team marketing are obviously doing a terrific job of positioning the Europa League and the Conference League as different from the Champions League. And I would suggest that perfect fit for an organization like Lidl, which is a challenger brand, a brand that kind of has value at its core. This is a sort of, uh, a supermarket and entity that for a consumer is not going to break the budget and I would suggest that that is aligning very nicely with the fact that the Europa League and the Conference League are budget competitions,

[00:18:33] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: So if, if you're in the Europa League or the Conference League, you're sort of aspiring to be in the Champions League. Like I, when I'm in Lidl, I am aspiring to be in Waitrose. I'm aspiring it to be in, you know, Marks and Spencer's food hall.

[00:18:45] James Emmett: I disagree. You know you're cheap and you're getting what you, you know, and you're getting what you want.

[00:18:53] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Nuts and 

[00:18:53] David Cushnan: and 

[00:18:53] and, to the Away Day's point, it turns out, it's quite good. 

[00:18:57] James Emmett: thing is Rich, everybody who's shopping at Waitrose is laughing at those guys in Lidl, right? That's, and that's what's happening with Champions League and Europa League.

[00:19:04] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: And I am laughing at them for the absurd prices they're paying for coleslaw, for example. I don't, don't get me going on coleslaw 

[00:19:10] James Emmett: my, my, 

[00:19:11] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: in Waitrose is a national scandal. It's up there with the post office scandal.

[00:19:15] James Emmett: wider point on this is that I think that team marketing and the people at, yeah, and the sort of sponsorship teams at UEFA have done a really excellent job, clearly, In building out a portfolio of sponsors for both of these sets of competitions. And I wonder if that sort of separation of the positioning is quite as easy when it comes to media rights because it might be useful to kind of position secondary tournaments as kind of cheaper, more value, more scrappy, more aspirational options for a sponsor.

[00:19:44] But it is not a good idea to position that for a media buyer. And, uh, I, I'm, I'm not sure, uh, I, I would guess that the media rights are still bundled for, most broadcasters.

[00:19:56] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Okay. Right. Story three. We're doing real, packing this into 10 minutes. We're doing really well. The edit is going to be quite, quite tricky. 

[00:20:05] David Cushnan: Play on, could get, play, people 

[00:20:06] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: might put a 

[00:20:06] zero. 

[00:20:07] David Cushnan: surely, that's the

[00:20:08] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I might, exactly right. I might put a zero next to the three in my Canva design and we'll get away with it.

[00:20:14] Um, So my story is the, Okay. Rory McIlroy, Scotty Sheffler to face Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka in a TV battle. Now, on the face of it, this is a, this is a TNT TV product where we, you've got these golfers going against each other. Now, we've had these in the past and they're really boring and there's, they're full of sort of faux beef.

[00:20:39] If that's the right word, confected beef. This one is a primetime special being produced by Brian Zuriff's BZ Entertainment, which developed the Match series, which again has had a, you know, there's been a history of these things that sit outside of the tours, obviously, and they're in that sort of silly season, uh, you know, in December, November, December, when nothing serious is happening in golf and Ever Wonder Studio, which was founded last year by Ian Orifice.

[00:21:05] I bet he got bullied at school, and funded by Redbird IMI and former CNN chief Jeff Zucker. Now, this is interesting only because it's pitching two PGA Tour players, McElroy and Sheffler, against two Liv players. Now, in the current scenario, this is odd, and crazy. It's timing is odd because of what's going on behind the scenes or is not going on behind the scenes.

[00:21:37] You've got these machinations, which is one of my favorite words. We've got big amounts of money, investors, Saudi, PIF, John Henry. You've got all of these private equity funds circling this and the TORS and LIV have for a long time been trying to work out a deal, what it means. And this program or this bit of programming has come out of the blue and surprise people because It feels like a provocation from Rory McIlroy, particularly, but what do you think?

[00:22:08] David Cushnan: If I'm regular Joe Golf fan, if I'm Joe Birdie, let's say, I am being served up here as a special treat, as a special event, made for TV, we've all worked so hard to put this deal together to bring you a match between four players who, three years ago, I would have seen competing every week on the PGA Tour. And now it's being packaged up to me and served back to me as a sort of special, special treat. If I'm Joe Bloody, I'm pretty pissed off with that, surely? for me, it just sums up the mess that golf has got itself into, that, that what was once absolutely, you know, a regular occurrence at tournaments all across the US and beyond, We now only see at the majors and it seems, for the moment, in made for TV specials like this, which I agree with you, we've seen before, it feels like it's been done as a format, you know, miked up, they've done them under the lights before, you know, it must be. It must be well over ten years ago since Tiger Woods was involved in the first of those, I remember him and it was somewhere, you know,

[00:23:18] Vegas, and it was under the lights, and that was quite fun, because it was the first time we'd ever heard a player mic'd up, but that's fairly regular, you know, in terms of broadcast TV coverage now.

[00:23:28] So,

[00:23:29] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: And it turns out that golfers, when they're miked up, are not very interesting.

[00:23:33] David Cushnan: No.

[00:23:34] They 

[00:23:34] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: That's the downside. Yardage 

[00:23:37] and, and, uh, yeah, iron 

[00:23:38] selections. It's sort of, you know, James, 

[00:23:41] James Emmett: Well, if David's Joe Birdie, then maybe I'm Sam Bogey, uh, and

[00:23:44] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: you two ain't golfers, are you?

[00:23:46] James Emmett: no, sir.

[00:23:47] And I look 

[00:23:48] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I 

[00:23:48] David Cushnan: But I watch golf, and I like watching golf, and I like watching the big events, but we've obviously all been watching this whole thing play out over two or three years, and it just seems to me that now we're getting, you know, we should be getting excited about something that used to be absolutely standard combat between four really great players.

[00:24:06] James Emmett: I also think, I don't know, I'd be interested to, for you to sort of unpack a little bit what you mean, Rich, about it potentially being a provocation from McElroy. Because as far as I'm concerned. It just looks like yet another greed play from a bunch of already insanely wealthy golfers. Everything that seems to happen in golf now simply ends up with players, at the very top end of course, being paid ridiculous exponentially more money than they would have been getting, you know, 10 years ago.

[00:24:43] Uh, and who cares? Why, why, as a consumer, why do you care about that? You just don't care.

[00:24:48] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Okay. So in terms of the McElroy question and the provocation point. If you look at what's happening here, you've got these two, Groups. You've got Live have come in and paid, you know, what 150 million. John Rahm, supposedly 500 million. headline deals. The numbers are always wrong, but they're, massive numbers that McElroy, Tiger Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth, they all turned down to stay with the PGA Tour.

[00:25:15] Now, the future then is, are we going to let these people that went, So there's a, there's a question there and there is a division. The further nuances. There is a division on the PGA side. So those players that I've just named are either side of a divide. McIlroy and has a few other allies want to get a deal done with PIF to unify men's golf under the PGA tour.

[00:25:39] Umbrella. Cantlay and most significantly Tiger Woods and Spieth are on the other side. They want to control that. And by Tiger Woods, I'm talking about Mark Steinberg, . Who is the is his agent and is deeply involved in this. And they're driven in part by, they feel blindsided by the tours and Jay Monaghan's behavior around the framework agreement with PIF.

[00:26:00] They want control and particularly Woods has turned down. We think, you know, he's rumored to be close to a billion quid for going to live. So how you write this wrong without live spending even more money and. Are these things going to then just sort of coexist?

[00:26:16] It's really boring at the moment. You've got these two, two things. The PGA Tour is looking pale and weak. Live is just a really boring execution product. Quite a good idea. Teams, all the rest of it. Interesting disruption. But you've, the golf fan is, and across the golf economy, I was at the Open, most people are just really irritated by the whole situation and need it resolved.

[00:26:40] And we had Ben Sharp, who runs Callaway on here a couple of weeks ago saying it just needs to get sorted because it's, you know, even to the down to the level of which player do I sponsor? If you're a club brand, it makes it really difficult. You don't know where anyone is. Media's getting pissed off.

[00:26:55] They want clarity. And so there's a whole Sort of thing going on, which is quite divisive. And so this thing pops up quite out of the blue, broken by Eamon Lynch on golf week, which was fed by Rory McIlroy. It's interesting, you know, that it's worth following

[00:27:13] David Cushnan: Will you watch it?

[00:27:14] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: what the 

[00:27:15] matchup. No, they're, they're always rubbish.

[00:27:17] You know, it doesn't matter. It fundamentally doesn't matter. We always come back to, do we care about what we're watching? And of course we don't. So we can't be manipulated in that way.

[00:27:27] James Emmett: I, I I wonder whether there is a, an element of Yeah, with all of this going on in the background and some sort of resolution or end point to this PIF PGA Tour framework conversation, uh, which has gone on for way too long, it's boring everyone, but I wonder whether this is a step from the parties involved in kind of softening stances, normalizing, humanizing the other side a bit.

[00:27:53] Look, it is perfectly possible to play along together. Uh, you can get deals done. It is straightforward.

[00:27:59] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Yeah, absolutely. I think you're right. And I think there's a bit of that in there. The other bit that you've got to remember is that you've got in January coming up, you've got TGL, the launch of TGL, which is a sort of Monday night, glitzy media product that was originally fronted by Tiger and Rory.

[00:28:17] And it's interesting that, you know, that division that I talked about because This was their thing. This was their counter to live initially. That was how it was positioned. It was supposed to launch in January this year. It got literally blown over in the wind, and they're doing it again in January.

[00:28:33] But underneath the surface of that, you've got some familiar names. So people who are, you know, following the sport investment story, you've got Fenway Sports Group owns a Boston team in that league, you know, which is also intertwined with Strategic Sports Group. Which has put three billion into PGA Tour Enterprises, which is the commercial bit.

[00:28:55] Blitzer, Harris Blitzer, also have put money behind Tiger Woods, Jupiter Golf Links team. Apollo Golf again Josh Harris. They've got a deal with Patrick Cantlay, you've got Goldman Sachs. In and out of there. So you've got a whole load of big financial players who are enmeshed in this. So again, one suspicion or one thought is is their relationship with PIF.

[00:29:23] So if you put golf to one side for a minute, you're then getting into well, whose money is actually in PIF? And, what's the relationship between these big profile, high profile sports investors and the Saudi fund?

[00:29:36] David Cushnan: and we've mentioned him a couple of times in this conversation, but it is, for a man who is really struggling to walk around a golf course, let alone compete at any sort of competitive level, amazing how Tiger Woods still is holding so much sway and actually is, interested enough, I suppose, to be right in the thick of the politics, certainly on the PGA Tour side and, you know, what, what the next 20 years of Tiger Woods life look like, look like from a You know, what he does, what, you know, does he just sort of disappear and fade away, does he have, you know, a continuing prominent role in golf beyond being a sort of elder statesman and a guy doing the honorary start at the, you know, various majors, but it does make you, and of course there's, there's Rory and there's, you know, all the players that you mentioned, but there's still Tiger and still If Tiger is anywhere near a leaderboard in the US, the ratings, the TV ratings absolutely spike, and he's the only one who moves the needle on that despite the fact that he's, you know, quite severely injured and you know, and aging, frankly, in terms of being a

[00:30:50] competitive force. 

[00:30:52] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I mean, I followed him around Troon and he's, he is hobbling and he's not a force anymore but you're right in that what, what Liv has proven is that he's still the most valuable name in the game by, by a long shot. That's, he's the one they really, really wanted.

[00:31:06] David Cushnan: Hmm.

[00:31:07] James Emmett: Can I just say, hopefully to round out this discussion, when I read this story, Rich, I honestly thought it was some sort of April Fool in the wrong time of year, just because of the names involved. It's always funny, I think, to read the name Jeff Zucker. I know he's a huge media figure and he's been around for a while, but it always makes me chuckle. You mentioned your man, Orifice, who's running the studio, but also I hadn't realised that Bryce and DeChambeau's agent is a man called Brett Fuckoff. Did you see that?

[00:31:40] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I'd like to check the spelling on 

[00:31:41] David Cushnan: Yeah. 

[00:31:42] James Emmett: Yeah, fuck off, fuck off.

[00:31:43] David Cushnan: He'd be a good guest on Wedge Issues.

[00:31:46] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: He would, he would. Let's get him 

[00:31:47] on. Right, I'll write that down. Listen, we are, are we over the 10

[00:31:52] David Cushnan: I think we've just

[00:31:53] hit ten. 

[00:31:53] James Emmett: under, just 9. 59 it's reading, 

[00:31:56] David Cushnan: yeah, 

[00:31:56] fifty eight,

[00:31:57] fifty nine, yeah. 

[00:31:58] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Well, we're going to do this. We're going to do this for weeks running into Leaders Week. Six episodes of this as a trial.

[00:32:04] James Emmett: to do it shorter, aren't we? I

[00:32:07] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: shorter. That's the problem. I think, yeah, then maybe gamify it. We just said we have, we, we failed. We failed the brand promise this week, and next week will be better.

[00:32:17] We'll be better 

[00:32:18] people, shorter 

[00:32:20] James Emmett: think, maybe if we just aim to shave ten minutes off each time.

[00:32:23] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Yes. there's no, I don't think we're even going to put music on this. There's no music involved.

[00:32:28] James Emmett: Okay.

[00:32:28] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: This is, this is how severely edited it's going to be. raw.

[00:32:32] James Emmett: mate.

[00:32:34] David Cushnan: Cheers.

[00:32:35] James Emmett: Thank you.

[00:32:36] ​