Women's sport and other monoliths; LTA in a pickle; Tennis adjacent; Gerry's crowd; The final 3, for now; Brand Saudi shifts; Padel is posh, own it; Call Me Daddy; Other People's Mone
Overthinking the sports business, for money
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The Monolith Problem
Given I failed French, it’s unlikely that the following Greek translation was achieved without the help of Google’s popular search engine.
Monolith: Mono (Single); Lith (Stone)
A monolith is a group of people seen as uniform and indivisible, lumped together and assumed to share objectives, characteristics and worldviews.
The sports business conversation is full of them: Saudi, Women’s Sport, Football, Private Equity.
They’re everywhere, and we all use them all the time, a necessary shorthand that makes it possible to get from one end of a sentence to another.
The obvious trap is over-simplification, inaccurate assumptions and bad decisions.
This thread jumps off something Dave Cushnan said on The 3 last week, our Friday podcast on the issues of the week.
It was about the shift in how Saudi Money is showing up in sport, highlighted by two or three recent deals. Riyadh Season has done deals with DAZN - after the recent Wembley AJ fight - and struck a three year partnership with La Liga to become official partner of the league. Riyadh Season is a cultural project that falls under the control of the General Entertainment Authority, whose chairman Turki Al-Sheikh is a key figure. Now throw in Riyadh Air, which expanded its deal with Atletico Madrid to become the naming rights partner of the stadium. Add in PIF, the sovereign wealth fund and it’s sporting arm SRJ, and the mega projects Neom and Qiddiya. Each of these sub brands is adding a layer of nuance to the Saudi Money monolith, inviting us to ask other types of questions. Whether this is part of a concerted brand strategy or reflects a chaotic buying spree remains to be seen. But it makes talking about Saudi more interesting.
Private Equity is another monolith, which comes with stereotypical assumptions of motive and operational approach. Then along comes Gerry Cardinale with his chisel. Note the AC Milan owner’s quote from the IMG RedBird Summit, where he was trying to separate himself from the p/e pack: “This is about my crowd coming into sports. The problem with my crowd is they are asset managers,” said Cardinale. “They just want to buy stuff, and that’s not great for intellectual property-based businesses.”
The Women’s Sport monolith is particularly daft, because it can easily lead to the assumption that there is one answer or strategic direction that can be applied to all that fall under that banner, when that’s obviously nonsense.
Btw, what I like about what Maggie and Matt are doing on Expected Goals is they are breaking down the Women’s Football monolith by asking better, more specific questions. The result will be a more informed and grown up conversation.
The breaking up of monoliths is a sign of confidence. That it’s ok to disagree without threatening the whole project. ‘They can’t even agree amongst themselves’ is often presented as a criticism of political parties, to be exploited by opponents in the media. And it leads to an infantile level of public debate.
Women’s sport is not a homogenous group. It is a series of constituencies with different characteristics and objectives - radical/conservative, rich/poor, revolution/evolution, public/private, fast change/slow change.
And that’s ok. In fact, it’s great.
Padel in a Pickle
Ok, that headline doesn’t work, but it’s there somewhere, and stop being so judgey.
There were two pieces in The Times over the weekend, so I’m using these as a way in to two separate but related threads.
Thread 1 - NGB landgrabs
There’s a row going on over who should run the nascent and potentially commercially valuable sports of padel and pickleball.
This issue has a universal application across many sports, as NGBs seek to wrap their arms around what they might call strategic adjacencies.
See the piece below for context:
We’re trying to arrange a podcast on this topic, so this think of this as a bit of prep for that.
A Question of Attribution
The way sport is organised in the UK encourages the LTA in this case to grab hold of the shiny new thing for themselves. The more people in Britain seen holding a racket of any shape or size will ultimately lead to more money from government to the governing body. Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcomes, as Charlie Munger used to say.
See previous note: Is Crazy Golf Golf?
As Aquatics GB CEO Drew Barrand pointed out last week on UP, every NGB survives on government (tax) money - in many cases 95% of a sporting body’s income comes from public funding.
So, what are pros and cons of the LTA owning Padel and Pickleball.
Is the NGB model the right one? Do we want or need every version of a sport to have its own governing body, or is the LTA just the best compromise solution when it comes to allocating money. Does the attribution incentive outlined above crowd out privately run Padel or Pickleball businesses or is the LTA helping to build a market for them?
This piece by Alex Inglot is really good on these and other questions: Surely Padel Can’t Thrive Under The LTA
The main argument seems to be focus and prioritisation, a regular trope across many sports - see previous, is women’s football safe with FIFA?
New sports need the intensity of focus that zealots bring rather than waste time waiting in line to get the attention of an organisation set up to focus on tennis.
Alex Inglot (above) is my way in to Padel world, and he has a very good podcast on the business side you should give a listen to.
Thread 2 - Padel is posh, own it
Another Times article, another angle.
There’s a worry among padel supporters that the sport is seen as elitist and middle class.
My view: it probably is, so take the win. In a crowded market for sports entertainment options, not every sport needs to cater for every demographic.
Balch KORE
We were at Leaders on this week as the news dropped that Two Circles had agreed to acquire KORE Software.
So, obviously, we did the first with the context podcast with TC founder and CEO Gareth Balch to talk about the why and the what and the what next.
That podcast will drop tomorrow.
Podcasts are the most accurate targeting tool in marketing
File under, we would say this wouldn’t we.
Kamala Harris appeared on Call Me Daddy, the hit podcast. It got rave reviews.
It also told us quite a bit about how the candidates are targeting key constituencies along gender lines.
The Bundle Live @ Sportel
Unofficial Partner are heading to Monaco in a couple of weeks, launching the week with a special live version of The Bundle that kicks off the Monday morning programme.
Questions for our esteemed panel welcome.
Welcome to our new listeners
Great stuff as always. On the padel/LTA discussion, would be interesting to contrast with the US experience--where there is no government funding carrot--and how that shifts the incentives and behaviors of the players looking to "own" the sport.