The real cost of Infantino's duff bluff; The absence of marketing; UP x ISH; Ed Smith on optimism; The (Rob) Key to Bazball; NBC v USGA; Anatomy of a Wrexham rumour; The Athletic lay offs
Overthinking the sports business, for money
FOMO Alert
Here’s something we’re doing that you can’t come to.
It’s a closed room, invite only.
Some real velvet rope shit.
Smart people gaming alternative futures for women’s football.
We’ll put out the podcast after.
Let’s just say, it’s timely…
The damage has already been done
You’ll recall Gianni Infantino’s attack on European broadcasters.
He wanted more money for this summer’ FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
An end’s in sight, in the UK at least.
Let’s take the numbers in this story at their word*.
*See UP Rule: The numbers are always wrong.
£8million or thereabouts.
One UP source tells me:
ITV/BBC offer for Women’s World Cup is identical to the one table months ago that Infantino derided as pitiful… All the posturing got FIFA nowhere (in the UK). He should focus on “partnership” with his commercial business partners rather than shitting all over them.
So. It took a few months of negotiating in public to get to somewhere close where they started.
There’s a point here about value versus price.
Sitting in the UK, you’d be hard pushed to know the biggest festival of women’s football is taking place this summer.
This is because no broadcaster has been marketing the event in these crucial pre-tournament weeks.
We’re in a World Cup summer, and it’s nowhere.
Because FIFA didn’t sell the rights, the broadcaster hasn’t invested.
Because the media platform is unknown, the brands don’t know where to spend their budget.
The absence of TV marketing has a cost, and I bet it’s more than any incremental rise extracted for the rights in the stand-off over the last six months.
Now multiply that cost across the big European media markets.
What’s it done to the longer term value of the FIFA Women’s World Cup among the major European broadcasters, the ‘partners’ who are expected to foot the bill for the professionalisation of women’s football over the next decade?
A couple of builds:
The value of a major event broadcast partner is two fold.
It’s where we watch the games. Duh.
It’s also where we get excited about the games. The pre-tournament period is where we project on to the thing, our hopes and expectations.
I can be made to care.
But nobody’s telling me the stories, of the players and the rivalries blah blah.
(Little known fact: The concept of Storytelling was created in 2017 by the marketing industry, it didn’t exist before then).
Which leads to this:
The shortcomings of rights holder OTT channels
FIFA+ has been used as the negotiating tool in the stand-off, the hammer in Gianni’s pocket.
‘Pay up or we put it out for free on our own channel’.
They’ll point to the case study of Brazil, where they gave the digital rights to the 2022 Qatar World Cup to an influencer.
But FIFA can put what it likes on FIFA+.
It’s not the right place for this tournament, in these markets, at this time.
The 2023 Women’s World Cup is disproportionately important to the momentum of the women’s football story.
Infantino chose to make a stand.
Depending on your view, he was playing hard ball or showboating.
I’m just not sure that Infantino would’ve been so cavalier with the men’s event.
See also:
‘Do we have enough optimism?’
Former England cricket selector Ed Smith returned to the UP podcast this week.
Smith: I used to say in selection meetings and probably was quite annoying. I'd always think that we have enough batting. Did we have enough bowling? Did we have enough optimism?
I didn't care how old people were, as long as they thought their best days were ahead of them. And I think we know in life that having an inquisitive mindset that you're gonna go out and get it rather than try and cling on is more closely correlated with winning.
UP x ISH
The podcast marks the start of a more formal relationship between UP and the Institute of Sports Humanities.
Ed co-founded ISH as a place to ‘nurture and inspire sport’s current and future leaders around the world’.
I’ve had the chance to sit in on some of the guest lectures and I came away envious of the students on the course, who gain access to some of the best brains in sport, finance and academia.
ISH and Loughborough University recently launched the new Leadership in Sport Master’s course, running from Autumn 2023.
Students on the MA Leadership in Sport programme will join an amazing ecosystem of sports experts – Loughborough University has been ranked the #1 university for sports-related subjects for the past 7 years. So the world’s top sports university is working in tandem with a unique sports network at ISH.
The NEW intake STARTS IN October 2023 and applications are currently open.
Find out more at. www.sportshumanities.org
Anatomy of a rumour
A line from this newsletter a few weeks ago:
Last week, Wrexham announced a new shirt deal with United Airlines.
Maybe the stadium bit was wrong, or it’s just coincidence.
Or there’s another deal to come? (The club has just signed a coffee firm as stadia partner, so unlikely).
The other bit is about the number.
UP sources put the United Airlines fee at around £3million for the Wrexham shirt.
With the obvious caveat - The numbers are always wrong - this would be a stratospheric valuation for a club moving in to the bottom rung of the EFL.
‘Luton would take £3m’ whispered one UP source.
‘There are mid table Premier League clubs looking for sleeve and - in the Championship - the back of shirt, for less than £500k’.
Spoiler: Golf fans don’t like TV ads
NBC’s rights fee for the US Open golf tournament (plus other USGA events) is in the $100million range (*the number’s always wrong).
To make that fee back, they bombard the golf viewer with ads, including ‘Playing through’ ads, where the ads appear in a pop up box on screen during play.
Viewers hate it.
Cue a pre-event press conference.
USGA CEO, Mike Whan announced this year’s weekend coverage on NBC would feature “30 percent fewer commercial interruptions,” a landmark agreement aimed at bringing more live golf to fans during 21 hours of live coverage over the tournament’s final two days.
Playing Throughs are where this circle is squared.
They represent 40 percent of the overall commercial burden for NBC, a number consistent with last year.
‘Both parties contributed the effort, sources from both sides said, by agreeing to make strategic programming cuts — axing promos and other pre-taped segments, among other cuts.’
Interesting bit here on the feedback loop.
“When you’re here all day and you’re in meetings all day and everything else, sometimes you don’t really understand the fan experience until midnight and reading social media,” Whan said later. “I shouldn’t admit that because I can only imagine the amount of crazies that will come out this week.”
See also:
US Senator begins probe of the PIF PGA Tour deal.
The Athletic lay offs
Sad to see former SBJ staffer Daniel Kaplan among the 20 or so journalists leaving the title.
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