PIF takes; LIV for TMRW; Trust and Antitrust; Succession memes; UEFA's league hedge; Being Charlie Marshall; The event from hell; The number's always wrong; Beware the higher ground; Guess the child
Overthinking the sports business, for money
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PIF Takes
A good week for Sportsbiz Succession memes.
Trust v Antitrust
Trust: Would you buy a used car from Jay Monahan?
This was Donald Trump last year.
Game recognises game.
Antitrust - aren’t all sports bodies ‘entrenched monopolies’?
This is why lawyers win.
The tax take
This is a really good piece on the PGA Tour’s tax exempt status and the assumption of a higher moral purpose that goes with it.
The TMRW take
Note McIlroy’s separation of PIF and LIV in his ‘I hate LIV’ press conference line.
Would it be a shock if PIF becomes an investor in Rory and Tiger’s TMRW thing, which was launched in the white hot moments after the LIV launch, and was heralded as the anti-LIV?
The Trojan horse take
Peter Baulderstone goes wider than golf.
Middle East wealth has incrementally built control of soccer leagues – EPL and UEFA and FIFA – through purchase of the most powerful clubs and players (Manchester City, Newcastle United, Paris St Germain) via a fiction of arms length separation from their government owners. Their ‘trojan horse’ strategy has succeeded to the point where they are so powerfully embedded that the governing bodies “have to live with the consequences of the things they can no longer afford to live without”. Much like western consumers with rising interest rates. The piper always gets paid in the end.
The higher ground over reach take
The 9/11 references will be what does for Monahan imho. That’s the bit that breaks people out of their ‘they’re all at it, why bother’ apathy.
Then this:
UP Rule #1: The numbers are always wrong
Something Kevin Roberts said in the Laughing Gravy, the bar below the old SportBusiness office on Blackfriars Road, before the Warburg Pincus money came in and blew the whole thing up.
Which dates it sometime in the early noughts.
Kev was flicking through the magazine, smiling.
‘The numbers are always wrong’.
They are there to stand a story up, to generate a grabby headline, but they’re an odd mix of guesses, partial truths and just plain ol’ PR.
So we started a list of serial offenders; the hardy perennial wrong numbers.
The £ amount going to the winner of the Premier League play-off game.
The number of new jobs promised in a major event bid.
Anything containing the phrase: Economic benefit analysis.
Rich lists.
Every sponsorship deal announcement ever.
Any story appearing in Forbes magazine.
To this list we can add the peculiar pseudo science of brand valuation, that lies below this headline, which has been doing some heavy lifting ahead of the Champions League final this weekend:
Manchester City named world’s most valuable football club brand
Manchester City FC (brand value up 13% to €1.51 billion) has achieved a historic milestone by surpassing Real Madrid CF (brand value down 4% to €1.46 billion) as the world's most valuable football club brand. The club’s brand value has seen a positive increase of 34% growth since the COVID-19 pandemic and has now reached an all-time high. Manchester City FC also boasts the highest revenue in this year’s table, a key driver in its ascent to the top.
So that’s that sorted.
But wait.
In the same piece, we get this reverse ferret.
Real Madrid CF reigns supreme as the world's strongest football club brand
In addition to calculating brand value, Brand Finance also determines the relative strength of brands through a balanced scorecard of metrics evaluating marketing investment, stakeholder equity, and business performance. Compliant with ISO 20671, Brand Finance’s assessment of stakeholder equity incorporates original market research data from over 10,000 football fans in Europe, Brazil, China, and the USA.
So Man City is the ‘most valuable’ brand, and Real is the ‘strongest’ brand.
Keeps everyone happy I guess.
Simon Jordan interviews Gandalf
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When Pods Collide
Two weeks ago, we launched The Product, a deep dive in to competition formats and their relationship with commercial value, in collaboration with TwentyFirst Group.
This week, our star guest is Charlie Marshall, CEO of European Club Association.
We talked about the new UEFA club competition formats.
This took me by surprise.
I’d - lazily, unthinkingly - assumed that it was just more tinkering at the edges.
But it’s not. Across the three men’s competitions the early stages are much bigger leagues, but not every club plays each other.
Two UP Takes.
Beware comparisons with the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup.
My initial response to the new UEFA leagues was to think of 2007. This is not a good thing.
That tournament was later described by Malcolm Speed, the then ICC CEO, as the ‘event from hell’.
The same impulse lies beneath both tournament formats - risk mitigation. In the ICC’s case, they created an interminable round robin type league thing which was a hedge against India going out early, taking its enormous TV viewing public with them. This plan still failed, because India lost to Bangladesh.
Short term curiosity v irritated apathy
Format innovation goes through a hype cycle.
The new thing gets an airing.
Then there’s a third album problem, as the shortcomings overrun the excitement of the new.
Examples of recent new things that already feel old: The Hundred; The European Nations League.
I’m open to other suggestions.
I put the above view to Omar Chaudhuri of TFG.
His response was a good counter to my miserablism:
The current UCL format is even less fair with respect to playing everyone, your success in the competition is so contingent on the draw whereas it’ll be less so now
I don’t think even UEFA or ECA have grasped how exciting the new format will be. Charlie spoke a little about it but the fact you’re watching all results will be chaotic fun, especially in the last couple of rounds.
I’m all for chaotic fun.
Guess the child
Well done to Charlie Boss (The Bundle podcast alumni and Southampton FC CCO).
Charlie has been nudging an idea on behalf of NSPCC, the UK’s leading children’s charity.
People across the sports industry are asked to change their LinkedIn profile pictures to themselves as children.
It’s for Childhood Day.
And there’s still time.
Change your profile picture to you as a child, and help spread the world and support Childhood Day. It costs just £4 for one of the NSPCC's trained volunteer counsellors to answer a child's call for help.
Text the word SPORTSCHD to 70447 to donate £4 to the NSPCC today.
You may know some of these little people as grown ups.
Answers on request.
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