UP420 The 3: The Big Swinging Dick Episode

The journey to creating a ten minute podcast is not a linear one. That's fancy talk for saying that rather than cut last week's half hour episode, this one went one for 45 minutes. 
Three stories:
James Emmett reports from IMG's breathing and finance retreat.
Richard Gillis on the big agency bun fight over UEFA rights.
David Cushnan on the launch of Juventus Creator Lab. 

An Unofficial Partner x Leaders in Sport Collaboration.

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Transcript

The 3 - Episode 2 Unofficial Partner x Leaders in Sport

[00:00:00] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: And I was just saying that David's lying. He sounds like he's next to of Hammersmith bus station type scenario. Not that he lives in Hammersmith.

[00:00:05] James Emmett, Leaders: Last week, or this

[00:00:07] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Last week, I thought, well, we'll turn this around quickly.

And I was editing David's line. It was very, um, busy.

[00:00:13] James Emmett, Leaders: David famously, has white noise on wherever he goes, so it's a sort of, it's his own

[00:00:19] David Cushnan, Leaders: Yes, I have. I have listened to your podcast this week, James. Very helpful.

[00:00:23] James Emmett, Leaders: Mm hmm.

[00:00:24] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Picasso had that. He used to work with white noise apparently. So that's not the first time that David has been compared to Picasso. The Picasso of the sports industry b2b vertical

[00:00:33] David Cushnan, Leaders: time it's happened

outside of a you know, an appraisal from Lauren McQueen.

[00:00:38] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Talking of Laura McQueen, Very quick feedback from last week's episode. So obviously we failed, fundamentally failed to get it to 10 minutes, but we're seeing this as a six week journey, aren't we? A six week journey to 10 minutes. And the last one I think will, will be very, very quick and, efficient, but I've got two bits of feedback.

One is from Laura saying, A bit sponsor heavy. You lot talk too much, get it down. Basically that was the, that was the thing.

[00:01:02] James Emmett, Leaders: And that is that's, that's about the subject matter, not the fact that the episode is riddled with sponsor shoutouts, right?

[00:01:08] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: That's absolutely, there are no sponsor shout outs apart, other than we are talking about sponsorship. So we talked about Lidl and Uefa and, you know, so, so there's that. And then I've got another bit of feedback from, Ian McIntosh, who is the athletics podcast guru. He does the 10 minute athletic thing.

And essentially he agreed with my newsletter. I said, but we were fanning around at the beginning and we're just sort of just generally chitchat and we, he said, get rid of all of that, get rid of all that personality, all of that, all of the color and get to the hard nub of the stuff. So, there's that, and then there's a bit, a bit in it about, Because I'm worried about why people would listen to this.

So I think either you do 10 minutes every day, or you do a half hour catch up on a Friday. I'm torn between, so I've already gone off the three as a concept. In week two of six, I'm now, this is self sabotage. Sean always accuses me of self sabotage. But I, I am now attacking us from the inside like a maverick.

[00:02:08] James Emmett, Leaders: Well, I'm free tomorrow at 9 30, Richard, if you want to go daily. And then, and then Sunday, obviously, there's the big North London Derby, isn't there? So we can

[00:02:16] David Cushnan, Leaders: The weekend is, the weekend is a, is a gap in the increasingly crowded sports business audio market, I think, for perhaps

good reason. 

[00:02:25] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: It needs to be filled with noise, white noise. What would, I like brown, actually David, I like brown noise in my, when I'm writing, when I, if I'm doing anything and I have to really concentrate, brown noise is quite good.

[00:02:37] David Cushnan, Leaders: Yeah. I'd like you to define brown noise, but perhaps not now.

[00:02:40] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 10 minutes, 10 minutes has gone, right, okay. So we're gonna, let's get, let's cut to the chase then, as we say on a, you know, a short podcast. we've got three stories, we're gonna bring a story each. I think we have to start with James Emmett.

[00:02:55] James Emmett, Leaders: Oh, Richard, actually, Richard threw it four minutes in, and actually, it's a false start. There was another bit of feedback from Laura, which was, wouldn't it be useful to introduce yourselves? Do you remember that bit of feedback?

You don't? 

[00:03:07] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I'm Richard Gillis from the Unofficial Partner podcast. Who are you two Herberts?

[00:03:11] James Emmett, Leaders: Well, I'm James Emmett from Leaders and this is my great good colleague, David Kushner. David, how you

[00:03:16] David Cushnan, Leaders: Hello, James. I'm David Cushman from Leaders.

[00:03:18] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: See, I took that as red and then Laura said, I don't think they're as well known as you think they are. And I thought, yeah, you're probably right. So they probably do need to be name checked and maybe, you know, we'll, we'll do that in the in the podcast. I forget how much bigger Unofficial Partner is than leaders.

And I think it's sort of important that I bring you up, I bring you up to our level. So let's consider that done. That's a box ticked. Right. We've got three stories. And we have to start with James Emmett's adventures with IMG this week. So Soho Farmhouse, 

[00:03:53] James Emmett, Leaders: Yep. 

[00:03:53] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: someone has called Butlins for and I just can't get beyond that.

I'll bleep the, that word out. 

[00:03:59] David Cushnan, Leaders: wetlands. 

[00:04:00] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: that's the, take us inside. I want to know why you were there, what it was, and why, why on earth? You were there.

[00:04:09] James Emmett, Leaders: Well, the, that latter bit of the question, I mean, I don't know, but the, the, the first part, this is the second, , edition of IM, they're calling it a summit, the IMG Summit, and this year it was the IMG X Redbird Summit. Um, and actually, amusingly, branding was everywhere around Soho Farmhouse and, you know, IMG X Redbird Summit. And Natasha Beddingfield, the the singer songwriter who's having a bit of a renaissance at the moment, performed on one of the evenings and very smoothly, quickly turned round on stage to look behind her. At the branding to check who she was performing for before before giving a shout out to IMGX.

Redbird. How you doing which was fabulous. Yeah, so it's the second iteration of this event. It's a summit. It's sort of a convening of around between a hundred and 150. leaders from across the world of sports, media, entertainment, a large kind of finance investment element this year, I think with Redbird's involvement. And it's sort of part leadership retreat and kind of getting touch with with you in a kind of communications master. And

[00:05:23] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: All of this is leading to the other question of why on earth you were there.

[00:05:26] James Emmett, Leaders: bring a bit of pizazz. I couldn't do that.

[00:05:37] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: There's a, so I've got, I've seen clips that you've got Ari Emanuel in the room and you've got Jerry Cardinal and, and

[00:05:44] James Emmett, Leaders: and me.

[00:05:45] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: and you. So, and then, you know, various other Natasha Bedingfield. And I'm just imagining you four in a lift. You know, what are you talking about? And so, Ari Emanuel, what's, what's he like?

I know you've, you've, you've interviewed him in the past, but

[00:06:01] James Emmett, Leaders: Yeah,

[00:06:02] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: there's a sort of he's, I imagine he's like, he's a very big swinging dick. He's like a sort of, that's the phrase that the Tom Wolfe phrase from Bonfire of the Vanities is this sort of macho, cock short, it's all penises. It's just On stage waving his massive penis around.

Is that, is that, is that the vibe?

[00:06:20] James Emmett, Leaders: no, I wouldn't say so actually and I think there's an element of Misconception about Ari Emmanuel in

[00:06:28] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: we're getting the real Ari Emanuel 

[00:06:29] James Emmett, Leaders: the sports media landscape at the moment he's a I mean, obviously in the past, I think he was a sweary, ranty, kind of on the phone at every hour of the day, up at 4. 30 in the gym, absolute machine of a

[00:06:45] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Isn't he walking? He's walking, he's always walking on a 

[00:06:47] James Emmett, Leaders: Yeah, yeah, he's very busy. He's sort of physically busy, yes. But I think he has chilled out considerably and learned to master his his inner rage. and a 

[00:06:57] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: million will do that.

[00:06:59] James Emmett, Leaders: bit more than that, I think, but but, you know, he's. He's considered now and

[00:07:06] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: he's on his best behavior? I mean, I, I, behind the scenes, Ari, do you think he's still a bit of, you don't want to get on the wrong side of Ari Emanuel, do you?

[00:07:12] James Emmett, Leaders: Well, I don't, I honestly not sure whether he is the sort of shouty sweary guy anymore. Sure, you don't want to get on the wrong side of him because he is Mr. Hollywood and he's a very powerful guy. But I imagine if you got on the wrong side of him, you'd simply be ignored and you wouldn't, you wouldn't be relevant.

So, he just dropped you. But actually at one of the elements of this this event, it was sort of part Future gazing, industry, big picture content, parts, nitty gritty. Let's have the people who are actually involved in running Wimbledon, running a broadcaster, running whatever to come and talk about what they're doing and part sort of human performance to help people be better leaders and better people. And one of the, keynotes was Ari's Breathing Guy. A guy called Brian McKenzie he was very good in, you know,

[00:08:00] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: He, he breathed, he, he's absolutely top level breathing. 

[00:08:04] James Emmett, Leaders: you know what, as he said at the outset, breathing's been around for about 5, 000 years and I thought considerably longer than that, probably,

Brian. 

[00:08:12] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I mean, I thought, I thought podcasting, I thought I was stealing a living, but Jeebus,

[00:08:16] James Emmett, Leaders: no, it's very good. And actually I, by all accounts, he has transformed Ari into a calmer presence and therefore transformed the entire endeavor and IMG business which he

actually did say on 

[00:08:33] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: he's, he's, the guy that, Are you ready. Ari, breathe. Breathe Ari.

[00:08:36] James Emmett, Leaders: Yeah, I guess so.

[00:08:37] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Is it Ari? It's Ari Redknapp, isn't it? It's Ari. It's 

[00:08:40] James Emmett, Leaders: he's actually being positioned as Arielle a bit more,

um, 

[00:08:44] David Cushnan, Leaders: So

James, why were you there?

[00:08:46] James Emmett, Leaders: well Dave I was there, I, partly because we, as you know, David, have a longstanding partnership with IMG, a part of which is that we produce a monthly sort of high production quality interview with them, usually in their Stockton Park studios, but this time we did it on location at their summit so that we could have a bit of output for the rest of the industry from there.

And I went along to interview Dan Rosamondo, Rosamondo, as he calls himself, who's the CCO of MotoGP.

Um, 

[00:09:20] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: get Ari.

[00:09:21] James Emmett, Leaders: for this interview series, no, but we do have Mark Shapiro the President of TKO and Ari's right hand man, speaking at Leaders in a few weeks, and I will be having a flirtatious conversation on stage with him with him there, but no, it didn't get Ari this time. But that's,

[00:09:38] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: And the head, the headline was, I saw Gerry Cardinal and, so, Matthew Garahan was there, did a piece today on the, the, So this is Jerry Cardinal, you know, Redbird. He's, he's an interesting figure because he was one of the sort of people initially saying private equity in sport. This is going to, you know, it's going to be great.

And now he's saying private equity in sport, they've driven up the price. So it's sort of, if anyone's driven up the price, it's Jerry Cardinal, isn't it?

[00:10:01] James Emmett, Leaders: Well, it's interesting that he would say that. One thing I've always found with Jerry, I love listening to Jerry and I, you must have interviewed him before, which like, I think the first time I came across him was early days when I was at SportsPro, I would guess 2010, 2011, and he was just setting out on the Redbird journey the partnership with George Pine.

And I've always found talking to him, he always says that he's going to do something and then he does it, like he matches his actions to his words, which is

surprisingly rare in the sports industry. But he always makes me feel, weirdly, at the same time, very smart and very stupid because he's got this amazing way of describing quite high level financial strategic work and thinking in a very simplistic way that suddenly makes you think, I've never thought about it that way before.

It makes entire, you know, complete sense. It is amazing. It's like light bulb kind of moments. But equally, he peppers what he says with finance language where, I mean, 99 percent of the people in the audience are looking up words that he's saying.

Um, 

[00:11:20] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: which is part of it. You know, that's part 

[00:11:22] James Emmett, Leaders: it's maybe, it's maybe part of it. Yeah. But yeah, to get to what you were, what you were sort of driving at. He did say one of the many things that he did say was that institutional investment into sports clubs, specifically soccer clubs. has driven the valuations up to a completely overinflated and unrealistic level. And yes, of course, he recognizes that he's part of that and his guys are part of that, but he's got a problem with Uh, obviously he's got a problem with other investors.

He's got a problem with his fellow finance bros who are going into sport because he believes that the age of investment in sport is over and it's all about asset management now and there is a key difference for him there. So investment is about putting money in and transforming a business one way or another doing things, you know, actively managing. An entity so that it moves forward, grows, becomes something else, whatever, and asset management, which is putting money in and just sitting on it and waiting for something to happen. 

[00:12:28] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: So that's what he's doing now. He's 

[00:12:29] James Emmett, Leaders: no, no, he's he's obviously positioned himself as an investor and he sees others in the market putting money into sports entities as asset managers.

[00:12:39] David Cushnan, Leaders: So is he looking there in part at, for example, what's going on in the NFL at the moment, where the the rules on private equity have been much discussed over recent months, but they have come to a decision to allow minority investment with a lot of rules placed on that investment and this pre approved list of people who can buy a slice, a small slice of, I think it's up to six teams.

[00:13:08] James Emmett, Leaders: Yeah he, he did talk about that and perhaps his position. He's partly covered by the fact that Redbird is not amongst those private,

uh, 

[00:13:16] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: the,

walled garden within the walled garden 

[00:13:18] James Emmett, Leaders: No, indeed, but he did, but he, but he made a couple of really good points on that. And it's worth saying that he is, of course, Jerry Cardinal and Redbird. Own a bit of almost everything. And it is worth saying that he is partnered with the NFL across multiple different kind of business lines. He is invested into Everpass which commercializes NFL Sunday Ticket now and has a really interesting business model around convening people around that game. pubs, clubs, parties, etc. So it's sort of trying to bring a bit of physical a physical business model to a broadcast 

[00:13:56] David Cushnan, Leaders: and perhaps those are conflicts that prevented him being part of this pre approved.

[00:14:01] James Emmett, Leaders: yeah, perhaps, but I'm not sure. The way he sort of talked about what that NFL proposition is and He caveated by, by saying that, you know, it's the NFL, so they will get it right. But he said that in, in what other world would you put money into something where the terms were that you get no control, no IP and no exit? 

[00:14:24] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: But you get, it's impossible to lose money, isn't it? I mean, you can't lose money by investing in NFL team. He has had his fingers burnt by AC Milan and European football, and we all know that there's, you know, it's chaos versus control. The money wants security. The NFL is the perfect model.

 I get it, but I think, I think it's really interesting that on the money side and we've obviously, we, we've got other people's money, which is a sort of series that we're running. It's really interesting how they're now set against each other on the money side.

So again, in sport, there was always the cliche of, you know, we always use these big abstract nouns, sport and private equity and sport and finance and whatever. It's really interesting getting into the detail of that and penetrating actually what they're talking about, it's fascinating and they make mistakes and it's important to, you know, call them out.

[00:15:15] James Emmett, Leaders: who

makes, who makes

mistakes? 

[00:15:16] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Well, investment

[00:15:18] James Emmett, Leaders: Yeah, maybe,

maybe. 

[00:15:20] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: very, very cleverly and eruditely.

[00:15:22] James Emmett, Leaders: So just, just a final word on, on Jerry's thoughts on on the NFL. He, he, he thinks that the structure that they've got set up is problematic but he's sure that the NFL will benefit from it. And he thinks it will bring liquidity, but Obviously artificially inflate valuations. It's all about valuations now and kind of watching your assets increase in value, but apparently 10 billion, a team being worth 10 billion is the kind of target, uh, that people are looking at. He did

make the point that 

[00:15:55] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: when you look at stuff like, you know, Matthew Benham can't get anyone to buy a bit of Brentford, which again, at the valuation is the, is the question. He's put it at 400 million pounds. So I can see that there's a sort of Sportico aspect to this, where they just list valuations.

It's a very, you know, Forbes type model of rich lists, and that becomes the focus. It's almost like, you know, as soon as you create a table, we all look at the top and the bottom, it's like school tables, you know, all of anything, football divisions, you look at the top, the bottom, and you work out, okay, how do I get from one to the other?

As soon as that becomes the frame, then all the other objectives of investment in sport go out the window. So you just got a whole load of people who just want to put their money from over here into that. That might as well, if it goes up, you know, it's an asset just in the same way as putting it into energy or some other category.

[00:16:46] James Emmett, Leaders: but something like Brentford, it's a, I mean, and I know very little about finance, but for, as a, as a sort of prospect. Brentford's in a really difficult position because you'd imagine that they're at the top end of their potential in a sporting sense at the moment. It's very difficult to see Brentford breaking into the next level and becoming a kind of elite level club regularly in European

[00:17:11] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Yeah, no, I completely 

[00:17:13] James Emmett, Leaders: So the only way is down for them and it's an intoxicating proposition for big finance to go in obviously at the elite level, the super league clubs. And it's an intoxicating proposition in a different way to maybe pick up a club that is, you know, down in the dumps a bit you know, a big story, something like Sheffield Wednesday that's kind of, a

few tiers down. Yeah, maybe even Ipswich but like a club that there could be some upside from if it gets promoted. But yeah, Brentford's a tricky proposition.

[00:17:44] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: think that, you know, the, the only reason I mentioned it is that if it's the Green Bay Packers, your money's going up 

[00:17:49] James Emmett, Leaders: Your money's, but, but, Rich, you're in the, for the institutional capital element, the money's only going up if the buyer seller dynamics and kind of, selling structures are there to create a market for that asset at some stage. Like your money's not going up if no one's going to take that off your hands. So the next stage, if they are going to 10 billion, whatever valuations, the next stage, surely for the NFL is widening the pool. They have to make it limited to begin with so that they can at some stage widen it and increase valuations even more and get a little bit of liquidity in the market.

[00:18:26] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: David, it's like talking to Jerry Cardinal, isn't it?

[00:18:27] David Cushnan, Leaders: It really is. It really, a sort of a weird combination of Jerry and Ari. Now, do we, 

[00:18:34] James Emmett, Leaders: Jerry's got such a lovely voice as well. He's got a caramel voice.

[00:18:37] David Cushnan, Leaders: It's 

[00:18:38] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: know. Well, you know,

sounds like he seduced you. You were seduced by the Cardinal voice.

[00:18:43] James Emmett, Leaders: good looking guy. Have you seen his clothes, Richard?

[00:18:47] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: What's not to like?

[00:18:48] James Emmett, Leaders: Honestly, such a fine weave on on everything he wears.

[00:18:51] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I think the sports business weaves is a whole genre that we could really get into. I think, 

[00:18:57] James Emmett, Leaders: sure we want to go near that, to be honest, Richard, as a prospect. Yeah,

[00:19:05] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: yeah, possibly.

[00:19:06] James Emmett, Leaders: 22 minutes in, Rich. 

[00:19:07] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I know, but it's, it felt like, it feels like, you know, James into the inner sanctum just felt too good to, you know, it is a compelling narrative. And he, you know, it's his, his love of Jerry Cardinal. It just needs to be, you know, it needs to be given a platform. So I think so story two, I think you go from that.

So we've got, I'm wondering about where to go and I'm thinking my story here fits in quite, I know we can do this quite. Quite quickly, did this in the newsletter yesterday, this week, the story of the week is the UEFA bid and the tender for agencies of which IMG is one. And I think we've got this

[00:19:46] James Emmett, Leaders: according to the story and sport business,

[00:19:49] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: accordingly. Well, you were, was it the talk of the, you know, in the, in the farmhouse?

[00:19:55] James Emmett, Leaders: some people were talking about it. A

[00:19:58] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: So he's gonna, he's gonna, he's gonna call you suddenly.

[00:20:03] James Emmett, Leaders: lot of it was off the record, Richard. Strictly, strictly industry chat for industry people, you know,

[00:20:08] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Well, you know what, you know, Alistair Campbell always used to say, nothing is off the record. So, off the record is a sort of something that people say. I'm not saying that, you know. But it will out, the chat around the farmhouse will eventually come out. Cause people are gossips. People just like, I'm not saying you're going to do it now, James, but there is a um, over time that inner, that chat will emerge into the 

[00:20:33] James Emmett, Leaders: I'm just saying in terms of the, UEFA agency tender, I'm not sure that it's necessarily clear cut that IMG are involved. In, in a orthodox

[00:20:44] David Cushnan, Leaders: But 

[00:20:44] James Emmett, Leaders: they might be, they might be

[00:20:46] David Cushnan, Leaders: some agencies are.

[00:20:47] James Emmett, Leaders: definitely, do you know

which ones? Team, relevant, should we say what the news is, Rich?

[00:20:53] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: okay, sorry. Right. So AXA and then we'll talk about them in a minute. So UCCSA bids went in this week, UEFA Club Competitions SA, which is what AXA is. It's a commercial joint venture between UEFA and the ECA, European Club Association. So it's a 51, 49%. Split, all of which is just noise, but essentially what's up for grabs is the, the media and commercial rights for UEFA's major champions, men's championships, so Champions League, Europa League, and whatever the other one's called, the Lidl Conference League I don't think it's called the Lidl Conference League, but we talked last week, we talked about Lidl sponsoring that level.

Anyway, so there's three big, that's where the money is coming from. And Jerry Cardinale will be watching this very you know, as, as AC Milan are looking at this and say, right, we want that money. That money needs to go up. Team marketing is, you know, and we all know has been there since the beginning, created the best, Champions League model, which often gets referenced both directly and indirectly.

We're going to create a champions league like model is it says everyone that comes on a podcast, very few get, get to do it because it's a brilliant model and has worked fantastically for UEFA created enormous amounts of money. So that's a big tick for team marketing. However, the clubs always want more money.

And the accusation is that team hasn't innovated the market, the, the, the model. sufficiently for the owners of, you know, people like Jerry Card now to to make more money from it's the UEFA pot. So that's the question. And then they've opened up the bid. They did it last time, 2022. They let Relevant in, which is owned by Steven Ross, who owns the Miami Dolphins.

So he's a, another big swinging dick, another penis related reference. They then went into, they got the rights to the American market for Champions League and UEFA properties, and they did well. They've upped the American market. All of this is in the context of UEFA is looking at something like Formula One and saying, well, okay, well, Formula One has made a big splash over the last five years, done interesting things, grown its Presence in the US.

Why don't we do the same? And that's the, you know, that's one question. The other question is, well, what do you, what's being sold here? 85 percent of UEFA revenue comes from media rights. So TV rights, the old bundle argument. And one of the things about The last few years, and particularly we're sitting here in the UK, or I am anyway, it's gone dark.

UA for Champions League for most of the time. I don't subscribe to TNT, so I don't get it. And you know, it's, it's, that's the old cliche of, of money versus scale of audience and over time relevance becomes a problem. So you've got this declining Sort of sense of this is a fantastically valuable and important competition, but the audience is a problem.

So you've got this going on and we've got the agencies that are going to come in and we've said that IMG may or may not be there. You've got people like Sportfire in front. Two Circles is an interesting one. We'll sort of caveat that. , they picked up media rights for UEFA women's tournaments.

I put, I made a mistake in the newsletter yesterday saying it was in the US market. Actually, it's, it's global. They've got the women's rights for. So they, that's tempting to look at that and project onto that what's happening. But essentially, you've got a tender bid, the model, Okay, let's continue business as usual team have done a great job for the last 30 years.

Let them continue or we break it up. We do it geographically. We say, right? Okay, give. One chunk in front another, and you take it around the world and go back to that model, or you maybe break it in terms of media sponsorship and licensing and do it again differently. So there are different ways of doing it.

And then the last thing I'll say is that it gets back to AXA. What is it? Actually, it's not much at the moment. It's a committee, and it's Seferin and I called yesterday the most conflicted man in sport, Nasser Al Khalafi, Chair of ECA, UEFA Exco member, owner of PSG and Chair of BeInSport, which is one of the big funders of UEFA.

So he's buyer and seller in the process. He is in charge of AXA. What does AXA become? It could be just a committee that oversees this process. Or again, when you talk to people up unofficial sources, unofficial partner sources, of which there are many, There is a network out there, they're in there, they're in rooms where you are listening, talking, feeding back, don't trust anyone.

But is the scenario where AXA becomes a sort of de facto in house agency replacing team and or taking the talent from team and or other places and doing it in house? Questions, questions, 

[00:25:43] David Cushnan, Leaders: Yes, This is going to be, this is going to be a big one, isn't it as it plays out. New format as well to throw into that, of course, which

we've, uh, we touched on last time. And the Champions League new Swiss model begins next week. So we'll get our first taste and actually most people who have, don't follow the intricacies of format changes will probably discover the change.

very much. Next week for the first time in the UK market, there is a little bit more in theory aware breadth to Champions League coverage this year. 'cause Amazon have a, a live game each match week and there's some BBC highlights as well. But completely, take your point, certainly less accessible as a free to air product than it once was.

We had Gil, Lauren Epstein from UA for the, the marketing

director there on the podcast.

a legend of the game. And we actually asked him it was just before the draw was made a couple of weeks ago, what he's looking for in an agency. And he said first of all, and the key thing is trust. And you can sort of see the history of that in terms of the relationship between UEFA and team. Uh, but he also said we need to be challenged. He hopes to be challenged. Um, and the third thing he said was he's really looking for agency partners who understand that commercial partners have a duty to help UEFA build the UEFA Champions League brand, whether that's sponsors, whether that's broadcasters.

And I think you probably see that playing through in terms of what CBS has done with its coverage in the U S and the viral clips that you see. It's all good news and positivity and likes and clicks for the UEFA Champions League in a market where games are played. at business hours on a Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon.

So there's there's a lot in play, as you say. The other thing to say about Relevant, who have come in in this, in this last cycle as the U. S. sellers, they've recently hired Sean Bratches. And you mentioned Equan and Sean Bratches, XESPN. Then was at F1 through the Liberty acquisition really sort of running the show on a day to day basis from a commercial point of view, had a brief spell at Live, but now he's come in as chairman, and I think his, his knowledge and expertise and probably ambition for Relevant is going to be something to, to monitor as this process plays out.

[00:28:03] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: excellent summary. that's the sort of summary you want on a 10 minute podcast.

[00:28:08] David Cushnan, Leaders: 31 minutes into the recording.

[00:28:11] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: know, but James, anything to add 

[00:28:13] James Emmett, Leaders: Yeah, I would just add, you know, there's a way that you could read between the lines for what Gilo was saying on our podcast the other day. He did say that he wanted to be challenged by an agency partner. And I think whenever anyone says what they want for themselves, I think that is usually a good indicator of Uh, what they also want to give to someone else.

If I say to you, Richard you know, a gift I'd like to receive is a bottle of red wine. You it's a fair bet that if I'm ever in a position where I'm going to give you a gift, it's going to be a bottle of red wine. Um, so

I, 

[00:28:47] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: this is, deep psychology. I've never really picked 

[00:28:49] James Emmett, Leaders: Well, I've just been on a leadership retreat, haven't I?

I've really looked within myself.

yeah, You'll be breathing soon.

So, so I do think there is an element that you UEFA also want to challenge you. Their agency partner. And I think a key issue in this is guaranteed fees. So, relevant when they came in and took the US rights in the last tender process. did provide a guarantee for the amount of fees, 250 million a year reports would have it. Um, they then sold six years worth of those rights to Paramount and CVS for 1. 5 billion. So you can see, How much extra they are making there.

[00:29:34] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: And that talks, I think it's a really good point that the guarantees because

[00:29:38] James Emmett, Leaders: cause team don't provide one currently.

[00:29:41] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: they don't. And that was always the You know, a question. There's two things that you team have been a human shield for UEFA for a long time. They, you know, whenever the people come in and question UEFA and from, is it Gilo? I didn't realize that.

That's quite a nice shortening. Is it Gilorant? I'll call him Gilo for now. The, so there is that element, you get a kicking, you're the part of the consultant's job or the agency's job is to get a kicking from other people. And you know, on behalf of the client. So there's that. The guarantee thing is really interesting because it gets to what is an agency now, and what the role of private equity and other money is.

And We've had in the Italian market, obviously a load of, you know, big private equity groups, CVC, Bain, going and trying to bid for, for media rights for Serie A. That didn't work out, but you can't, the question then becomes, well, what is the difference between Bain, CVC, IMG, Infront? They're a mixture of money and, expertise in sports rights marketing.

And that's a very sort of niche area. So again, I mentioned 

[00:30:50] James Emmett, Leaders: a, I honestly think there's a critical difference there, Rich, which is why you'd see that CVC and Bain haven't necessarily succeeded

yet 

[00:30:57] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: in collaboration, if, if you're going to go in,

[00:31:00] James Emmett, Leaders: You have to go in with, in collaboration with expertise, experience and relationships in the market. 

[00:31:06] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: So, I mean, you know, so it will be interesting to see, and I think you're right to pick out the guarantee question. Cause obviously that's a, a central bit of it. It was last time it will be next time and, or. What the sort of relationship is and then what the plan is. So I think there's loads in it. We won't, you know, it's one that we'll all follow.

And when we get to leaders in October, there will be fevered gossip. We will probably know by then 

[00:31:31] James Emmett, Leaders: just, we can't go into it in any more depth than a 10 minute podcast, can we?

[00:31:35] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I know there's 10 minutes of stretching. Right. Which takes us to David and his final story,

[00:31:41] David Cushnan, Leaders: Yeah, this is a sort of and finally story, I think. Slightly, slightly quirky, maybe not the biggest story of the week. I always have a bit of a list at any one time of, of just sort of things I'm keeping an eye on that are slightly, slightly off base.

Yeah, maybe not, maybe not quite left field. Here's my list.

Do you want to hear my list at the moment? The America's Cup British basketball reforming after the 7 7 7 debacle the Kansas City Chiefs in the movie that they're doing with Hallmark for Christmas Cosm, obviously, although quite bored of seeing, stop posting clips on LinkedIn of Cosm.

We've, we've all seen it. It's spectacular. But that list is definitely the Juventus Creator Lab, which is something that they they launched in May. Mike Armstrong, the CMO at Juventus, very much the brainchild of this. And it's their, it's their approach to content and creativity coming out of the club. So it's a smart bit of branding, I think. It's a physical space based in Turin. It is very much based on not on TV production studios, but on sort of LA gaming. and creator houses, I suppose. And it's basically the the umbrella for all of Juventus's digital content offerings. And they've done an interesting thing this week where they've, um, They've launched some original documentaries. First interesting thing about it, they've premiered them at the Venice Film Festival, which they say is a first for a sports organization. And I think that's quite interesting in terms of brand alignment and how you take how you take a, you know, a football club content division and you know, make it feel very much spruced up. And the second interesting thing they've done, I think, is they've subject of the documentary is actually the story of one of their players Niccolo Fagioli, who was banned for initially seven months for gambling related offences, betting related offences recently, just last year, and they have,

[00:33:46] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Now they're making a 

[00:33:46] David Cushnan, Leaders: and they're making a film of it, and I think the interesting thing is, and of course, We can talk about,

[00:33:51] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Zero to 

[00:33:52] David Cushnan, Leaders: well, we can talk about editorial integrity, but I, and, and sort of the,

the nature of in house productions.

But I do think it is interesting that they've decided to lean in on what is a fairly recent and ultimately bad news story for the club. And

[00:34:08] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Do you think there's a, there's an element, okay, so there's so many things, this is a great story, and, and, I think it's a bad idea, so I'll put that out there. I think the whole thing is a bad idea.

[00:34:19] David Cushnan, Leaders: the, the, the film or the

[00:34:21] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: the lab,

[00:34:23] David Cushnan, Leaders: Tell Me

[00:34:23] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: All of it, because I think I'm wondering what the return on investment is going to be. There's going to be a marketing aspect to it.

It feels like just on the, on that last story, it feels like a very sophisticated way of resurrecting his transfer valuation and. It wouldn't be a massive shock if he was sold in the next year or, you know, to recover that, but just stepping back, I mean, this talks to what a football club is, what a sports entity is.

And one of the threads is, and we go back to the great Jeff Goldblum, obviously he's overhanging this conversation from Jurassic Park, which is just because you can, doesn't mean you should. So you've got all of 

[00:35:02] David Cushnan, Leaders: which I'd be a bit wary of making any sort of reference to dinosaurs. Because

[00:35:05] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Lovely. I love it. I love a bit of repartee. I love a bit of badinage. There's a, there's a I think this, so this is a conversation, as you know, we had at the ECA event in Madrid earlier in the year. And one of the questions was, well, what is a football club today? And you, you get to, is it? Netflix, which is what this part of the story is.

Is it sort of a content creation hub, Ryan Reynolds esque is it Amazon? Is it a data led hub, merchandise? You're a retail. Is that the future of a football club? Is that you're turning fans into customers or are you a football club? And you are really, really good at football and you then trade players and you go back to winning things.

And that's where the focus is. Can you be all these things? The investment. Community wants various things and is pushing in different directions. I just think this, there's all sorts of reasons. You mentioned editorial integrity. This is a marketing PowerPoint sort of brainstorm session, which I think when it touches reality, doesn't fare well, because I think as soon as this stuff comes in and you expect a general audience to reach this, going to reach all sorts of problems.

The other, but I have also have a problem with the brands creating long form format and trying to be film studios and long form documentary makers. We had the same conversation about Cannes. So if you look at the Cannes Lion lists of this summer, the line between what is an advert and what is a documentary is.

is so blurred and it's so dishonest in many ways because you're sort of, you're, you're, you're subsuming the the, the brand into the story in a way that , it makes me deeply uneasy. So I go back to Rob, best, best book on this is Rob Walker, Marketing, really, you know, about the merging of marketing.

It's obviously been a trend for 20 years or more, but

[00:37:06] David Cushnan, Leaders: I was going to say.

[00:37:07] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: those are my reservations.

[00:37:08] David Cushnan, Leaders: your view on that extend to what a Red Bull does, for example?

[00:37:15] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Yeah,

[00:37:16] David Cushnan, Leaders: Red Bull Media House?

[00:37:17] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: yeah, yeah. I think that's more obvious. It's a red bull being red bull. I can see that's a more honest way of doing it. Just, you know, people, I, again, the questions in terms of the escalating danger that they put people in and, and because just to sell, you know, fizzy unpleasant sound, you know, tasting drinks, but that red bull model.

I have very little truck with that. That's fine. I have a problem with the merging and the, and the sort of dishonesty that, of brand content is now moving into. So it's, it's taking product placement and saying, well, actually let's do the thing ourselves. And okay, people will quote Barbie and, you know, The Lego movie.

But again, we're sophisticated and we can make our decisions in terms of what we like, but I don't think football clubs, I don't see it. The other bit is the, you've got an agency sector out there is wondering, you know, where, where we start and stop. What's the, there's a lot of people providing this stuff.

Why do it in house? Why take that cost on blah. 

[00:38:20] David Cushnan, Leaders: Well, that's that's to some extent where Manchester City, City Football Group has gone with its studios and interesting to note that they're effectively just in the process of launching studios, a new division in New York, as well as Manchester, as they sort of grow that, but effectively what they're doing is positioning themselves as effectively the digital agency for their partners and the content creation hub for their partners.

So there's there's work being commissioned. from sponsors, um, that's being delivered by the club itself through its various media activities. James, it's not looking good for the Unofficial Partner movie, is it?

[00:39:00] James Emmett, Leaders: I don't know how long is a movie, but I mean this, we're almost there in terms of feature length with this, with this podcast, turn it into a script. Can I just come back very quickly on your, to give you an opposing view, Rich, on your assertion that the UVA's creator labs and everything that comes from it not a good idea. and I would say that I sort of agree with you. The big question is what's the business model? And I'm sure they absolutely will have a methodology for measuring the success of creative labs and what comes out of them. But actually, I think in totality, it is a good and interesting move and it will be attractive to investment.

So just leaning back into more stuff that the perfect Cherry Cardinal said this week. Basically, his investment thesis is he looks for. World class IP that can be rejuvenated and pretty much all of his major properties can fall into that category. AC Milan the Telegraph, Paramount it's all sort of heritage stuff that can be reinvented. And I think Juventus, in Cardinal's terms, would definitely fall into the category of IP, IP owner. And the thing is, with world class IP, it does keep on rejuvenating itself. And I would say that an interesting way to rejuvenate IP is to install a creative lab. into it to start churning out new stuff for new audiences in new markets.

Sure, some of it's going to miss, but some of it's going to hit. And it just absolutely is in the center of this wider trend that's happening, the convergence of, of sports and entertainment. So I would say it's a bet. It's probably not a massive bet from UVA's perspective, you know, in the grand scheme of things. And ultimately I think it's going to be, it's going to be net positive for them.

[00:40:56] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: There's a, I mean the other bit to it again to argue against myself, you've got the Angel City case study is interesting. You're seeing stuff in women's football and we're seeing it with the London Lionesses in terms of what are these things, you know, and Again, if you're looking at it from an investment lens, 

if you frame it as a football club, you go down the route of media rights, attendance, merchandise, licensing, and that's, there's a ceiling on those areas. And I can see that reframing, trying to reframe it as an entertainment brand. So Angel City, what is Angel City is a sort of, I think a PhD question at this point.

So you're looking at it and say, right, okay, it's roots in football, but it's about lots of other things. It could be lots of other things I can get. I get that. So that there's a bit of me that I can see that argument, but I do have deep reservations in terms of just the way in which I just don't think there's enough money in the system for them to start.

This is an, I think this feels like a bullish period bet doesn't feel like a bet where you're looking at future revenues and particularly them about the bundle and the media rights and the appetite of television for stuff. It doesn't feel like that's. A concrete ROI 

[00:42:09] David Cushnan, Leaders: I think a sports team will win an Oscar in the next 10 years.

[00:42:12] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Yeah, you're probably right. And then I think that's more about the Oscars than it is about

sport.

[00:42:17] David Cushnan, Leaders: There.

[00:42:18] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Right. 10 minutes. We got it under 10 minutes.

Perfect. So next time we will we will reconvene and the plan was to bring this down. We've gone up, but this is just a journey. We're on a journey. And we'll get there and get, you know, we go back to Ian Macintosh at the Athletic and we'll say, look, there's discipline here.

There's dis if you see there's, there's below the surface, there's discipline.

[00:42:42] David Cushnan, Leaders: It's the journey, isn't it? It's the journey. 

[00:42:43] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: It's the journey. Bre, we've had breathing. I'm gonna go and breathe for the rest of the day. I'm gonna breathe.

[00:42:51] James Emmett, Leaders: I think Ian McIntosh also said in that feedback, Rich, that he spends pretty much the whole of Sunday scripting that podcast.

Who's got time for that?

[00:43:01] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I know. The man's an idiot. The, the the, I mean scripting, that's the other thing that no one wants to hear us script. I mean, this stuff, you couldn't script this stuff.

[00:43:10] David Cushnan, Leaders: that's

what we like 

[00:43:11] James Emmett, Leaders: you know, honestly, Richard, we need, we need this to exist. We need this output to exist to mess with the AI models. When

they scan the podcast, the pod sphere,

And they're looking, and they're looking for succinct

10 minute podcasts, which this is. They're gonna, yeah,

[00:43:30] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: We're fighting the robot.

And on that, I'll say farewell. I've got a name check you to keep Lauren McQueen happy. So David Cushman and James Emmett of the Leaders Group or whatever you're called.

[00:43:41] James Emmett, Leaders: yeah. Interesting to introduce us at the end, but yeah, let's go

with that. Thanks

[00:43:45] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Well, people, people, still, you know, people still listening. They want to hear who the hell was that?

[00:43:49] David Cushnan, Leaders: credits at the end. You've been watching. You've

been listening to. 

[00:43:55] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: You're like, yeah.

Okay. Bye bye.

[00:43:57] James Emmett, Leaders: thanks Rich. Bye.