What Cannes Wants; Unofficial Caveats; Industrialised stealing; Big FIFA v Small FIFA; The Overplug; God thanks the sponsors; The INEOS purge; What's a women's team worth? Man United v Angel City
Overthinking the sports business, for money
What Cannes Wants
The Cannes Lions for Sport set the incentives for creative work in sport.
So what got rewarded last week will be copied/rehashed/ransacked by Agencyworld over the next year.
This phenomena is known informally as The Drive To Survive Effect. (it’s also why Elon Musk is right when he says AI is coming for creative. AI is industrialised stealing. So is creative marketing. It’s a match made in heaven).
The winners list in full is here.
Each was a great bit of work. But with caveats. #UnofficialCaveats
The three standouts discussed on this week’s podcast were these:
Orange (Agency: Marcel/Paris)
Official Line: ‘Not only marked "a cultural moment" in the portrayal of women in sport, but managed to spread its message beyond typical sports fans, and international borders”
Unofficial Caveat: The ad is still fighting the old ‘male lens’ battle, betraying a lack of confidence in the women’s game by attempting to convince its audience of its quality.
Meta - We Are Ayenda (Agency: The Lab @ Anonymous Content, LA)
Official Line: ‘authentic storytelling and imbued connection to the brand’
Unofficial Caveat: Great embed of WhatsApp’s core product. But it feels v.icky watching Meta using the plight of Afghan women to plug privacy. (Facebook, Zuckerberg and guardian of your personal data….three words not often found in a sentence). Form is the other question (see also below entry). This is a 30 minute documentary aired on Amazon Prime. What is Cannes’ remit?
Real Celta - Oliveira Dos Cen Anos
Official Line: “This global recognition takes the roots of RC Celta, Galician culture, and the Celeste Boldness beyond the borders of Vigo, Galicia, and Spain. ‘Oliveira dos Cen Anos’ is not just an anthem; it is a global ode to Celtismo”.
Unofficial Caveat: It’s a song. A brilliant, uplifting song. But should a song get a gong?
Unofficial Proposal: Fuck Effectiveness
Cannes is a wankfest for the ad industry.
And as many people have noted, sport is playing a larger part (SportsWank?).
The awards are sold as the cutting edge of creativity.
But it’s a very corporate form of creativity.
These are ideas and executions that made it through the lawyers and the career bureaucrats who’ve built a pleasantville Farrow and Ball life for themselves as gatekeepers of the sign-off procedure.
Effectiveness is an expensive, McKinsey word, but it’s mainly lies, guesses and misattribution dressed up as science.
So, let’s remove it from the judgement of creativity.
What we need is a Turner prize for sport, where the only thing the jury cares about is the idea, and it can be as batshit as you like.
The Unofficial Overplug
This week: God thanks the sponsors.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Do you want a Big FIFA or a Small FIFA?
What happened?
FIFA has enlisted UBS to raise up to $2 billion for the expansion of its streaming platform FIFA+ (good scoop from Bloomberg).
We’ve just recorded a couple of podcasts that reference this story, because I think it’s significant, in and of itself, but also its ripple effects through the rest of the business.
Why do we care?
FIFA+ is one of the big D2C plays in sport.
The arguments rumble on as to how history will judge this period in the sports market, in which billions have been spent creating owned and operated channels, mainly as a mitigation against volatility in the media rights market.
Walled gardens, creative tension in the bidding process, owning the customer relationship, long tail audiences, build and they will come. Etc.
FIFA+ is a poster child for these theories.
But there’s a conversation beyond the D2C question, which is about what we want governing bodies to be.
It’s about Big FIFA or Small FIFA.
The role of sports bodies is analogous with government, so the debate often divides along public/private lines.
My instinct, referenced previously, is to be pro-public institutions, so we don’t need to rehearse those arguments again here.
But even I, a pro-NHS, state comp council house centrist, can see the mission creep inherent in much of public sport’s strategic direction.
Gianni Infantino describes FIFA+ as part of the ‘democratisation of football’.
(This is a bit rich, given he was elected unopposed and has shown a distinct antipathy toward presidential term limits, one of the key components of good governance, but we’ll let that slide).
I can get behind a small FIFA+
A home for all the football that sits outside the rights market - of which there is a lot, both men’s and women’s.
FIFA+ gives this inventory a home.
This is laudable and feels like the sort of thing a governing body for football should do.
But.
By definition, this means that FIFA+ is a compendium of games that not many people want to watch or pay for.
This gets us back to this week’s story, the two billion quid and the UBS sales round.
What are investors buying? And what will FIFA+ need to become to ensure a return on that money?
In other words, what is Big FIFA+
Is it a major player in the football media rights market place?
Is it bidding against its own TV client partners for its own events, intervening in the market when FIFA deems the price below their own expectations, as happened in the run in to the Women’s World Cup last year.
How many FIFA+ subscribers will be needed to justify this type of positioning?
How long can such a position be justifiably subsidised by the central pot of FIFA media, event and sponsorship income before the constituent FAs get cold feet?
Push this further and you get to other tricky questions.
How can you solve the DAZN problem of stickiness: getting punters to stay in your ecosystem long enough to justify sponsor and advertiser interest?
Sky solves this problem with Sky Sports News. ESPN Sports Center has played this role for decades, to great success.
But FIFA News? Sounds like Pravda.
Which gets you to betting, which is DAZN’s solution to the problem.
FIFA Bet?
That’s a wall of pain.
See also:
The 12 questions of streaming
The New York Times did a deep dive with the big dogs of the streaming market, names such as Diller, Malone, Sarandos, Hulu and Comcast.
Thanks to Carlo Dimarchis for flagging.
In your opinion, who's really driving innovation in streaming? Are there unsung heroes or companies we're overlooking?
Do you think we'll see fresh faces leading the streaming revolution soon? What new perspectives might they bring?
Sports are becoming streaming's golden ticket. How do you see this affecting sports media rights values?
Is 200 million subscribers really the magic number for survival? Can you envision successful niche services thriving with smaller, devoted audiences?
Ad-supported tiers are on the rise. How do you think this will reshape content strategies?
Any predictions on upcoming mergers or acquisitions in the streaming world?
What's your take on how traditional media can stay competitive against tech giants in streaming?
How do you see AI and machine learning transforming content creation and delivery in streaming?
As profitability becomes the focus, what's your prediction for content diversity and quality? How is managing churn becoming the true focus and retention the new holy grail?
Streaming's going global. How might local tastes and rules influence strategies worldwide?
Got any ideas for game-changing innovations in user experience or tech for streaming services?
How do you think all these changes will impact content creators, both big names and up-and-comers?
Mixed signals from the women’s football market
$250million for Angel City; Man Utd Women changing in portacabins.
It’s been a weird week for those seeking a coherent position on the value of women’s football.
In Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s recent round of interviews, he’s made it pretty clear that Man United Women is not a priority.
The ‘first team’ reference was inadvertently revealing.
This was followed by tales of the women’s team facing a season changing in portacabins as Carrington gets a re-up.
Certainly, star goalie Mary Earps seemed very pleased to escape Manchester for Paris.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Meanwhile, Disney head Bob Iger and his wife Willow Bay look set to buy Angel City for $250million.
United’s owners can doubtless point to the differences in American and European structures that create such an exalted asset valuation.
But still, it’s also about prioritisation, and focus of intent.
As Kara Nortman, co-founder of Angel City put it when she came on Unofficial Partner:
We get up at 6am and think about women’s football. At other clubs, they don’t think about the women’s team until 5pm, if at all.
Seems she had a point.
Hear the full conversation here:
How many’s too many?
INEOS has set about cutting staff at United, with headlines suggesting 250 people are losing their jobs.
It is no secret INEOS believes United have too many employees and that the workforce is bloated compared to other English clubs.
After its minority investment was ratified in February, the company hired consultancy firm Interpath Advisory to review the business and operational costs all across the club.
The hope is that by streamlining the 1,000-plus workforce, United will make savings. This, in turn, can help them better comply with the financial regulations of both the Premier League and UEFA, European football’s governing body. To know how much they can spend on signing players, they need to look at the costs associated with the club and work out where money is being spent.
For comparison:
Man United’s monthly employees have risen to an average of 1,112, up from 1,035 in 2022 and 983 in 2021.
Liverpool’s accounts say they employ 1008 people.
Arsenal 689.
Man City 520 (more if including City Football Group).
Brentford has 243 employees.
Thanks for reading, now press the like button below.
A great read!