Cricket's burning platform; The LIV Tail; The value of style; Random Opinion Generator; Zombie sports; The meaning of graphs; Coke's COP up; Brainstorming bad ideas; Brewdog; Peter Cook on Qatar
Overthinking the sports business, for money
England cricket by numbers
This week’s podcast is with the ECB’s Mo Bobat and Omar Chaudhuri of Twenty First Group.
Both worked extensively on the ECB High Performance Review, led by Sir Andrew Strauss, former England captain and ECB Director of Cricket.
Strauss frames English cricket as a burning platform. Systemic problems. Tectonic plates are referenced.
Bobat: The reason Andrew Strauss is pushing so hard on the recommendations is that you want people to understand the rate of change in the game, and he describes them as tectonic plates shifting.
In a few years time we might have players contracted to global franchises playing across three or four competitions and released to play international cricket.
A big part of me thinks that would be really sad if that happens. But, if you're a player, you go brilliant: make hay and earn as much money as you can.
It’s hard to think of a major sport that’s undertaken such a root and branch analysis of itself in public, and it’s an essential read for everyone who works in sport.
Five numbers, one story
17 The number of High Performance Review recommendations.
15 The number Mike Atherton thinks will be ratified by the counties. The two remaining are about the schedule - the most important bit that requires a turkey-meets-Christmas solution.
70 The percentage of ECB revenue generated by the England men’s team playing at home.
12 The number of months England has been the number one test team in the world over the past 40 years.
0 Let’s call this The Liam Livingstone Dilemma: The player was picked to play a test in Pakistan having played zero red ball games that year. So, back to the schedule.
New regime, same problem
Richard Thompson is the new ECB chair and has brought in Richard Gould as CEO. There’s been a wholesale clear out of the Board.
Both men were vocal critics of The Hundred.
The Hundred was Tom Harrison’s solution to the ECB’s distorted revenue problem, see 3) above.
Thompson/Gould are left to tackle the big plumbing questions revealed by Strauss’ HPR, while placating their power base: the counties who don’t like The Hundred.
Let’s say Thompson and Gould get five years at the job.
Given Strauss’ ticking time bomb analogy - the ECB losing control of its own players to global franchises - Thompson/Gould are arguably in a tighter position than the previous regime, and have fewer options.
Any attempts to undermine The Hundred won’t be easy, because it was in part a creation of Sky, the ECB’s biggest paymaster, via the broadcaster’s blue sky thinking unit Sky Labs, which worked with the ECB on format and presentation to the extent that at one point there was talk of co-ownership of the property.
When Entertainment Becomes Strategy
At a session of the ECB High Performance Review, Sir Dave Brailsford put up a chart.
It had four quadrants.
My crappy version is below, you get the gist.
Top right quadrant is the dream - Brazil 1970, Dan Carter’s All Blacks; Messi’s Barca; Man City under Pep - the bit to note is that these are also among the most commercially valuable properties in sport’s history.
Top left, you’ll be ok - respected rather than loved, but you’ll keep your job - every Arsenal team ever, basically.
The bottom line is where the fun starts. (Btw, losing with style: Brazil ‘82?)
As a Spurs fan, this grid explains my psychiatrist bills.
But this is not about me (it is btw, always is - see psychiatrist, above).
Given this comes from Dave Brailsford, we can assume this framing has been internalised by every performance director in sport.
Some questions:
What happens when a sports team make entertainment an objective?
How does this impact the choice of coach or the player ID process, and by extension, how will managers, coaches and players respond to these implied incentives?
Given a choice - winning or style, you can’t have both - which would a team owner choose?
What role does this question play in the valuation of Liverpool FC as FSG put the club out to market?
Is this a tangible/intangible thing, where winning equals product and style equals brand? If yes, this might suggest entertainment is harder to quantify but potentially more commercially valuable?
And finally, how would I know if a cycling team is winning with style?
UP Takes: The Sports Business Opinion Generator
The LIV Tail: How to create a zombie sport
Golf faces a worst of both worlds future: A boring status quo disrupted by a shit breakaway.
The underrated problem with LIV is the funding.
The sheer amounts of it.
As Donald Trump pointed out: the Saudis have ‘limitless money’.
Which means LIV can be shit for the next twenty years.
Neither disrupting the tours or creating a new audience for the game.
Just existing. Half pregnant. Between things.
The LIV Tail.
Homework: a paragraph linking Greg Norman, Joseph Schumpeter and the limitations of applying the concept of creative destruction to the sports market.
Coke is the problem not the solution
Coke has sponsored COP22.
Fun fact:
“Coca-Cola produces 120bn throwaway plastic bottles a year – and 99% of plastics are made from fossil fuels, worsening both the plastic and climate crisis,”
John Hocevar, oceans campaign director at Greenpeace USA, told The Guardian:
“It is baffling that Coca-Cola – the world’s biggest plastic polluter in all global Break Free From Plastic brand audits – will sponsor this year’s UNFCCC Conference of Parties in Egypt”.
See also: The Two Cokes: empowering women through sport whilst simultaneously funding their return to 1973
That was about Coke’s role in contributing over two million dollars to campaigns aimed at overturning Wade v Roe, see image below:
Analysis of this week’s US elections suggest Coke’s corporate amorality has put it on the wrong side of history.
Beware middle aged men calling themselves punks
Brewdog’s hapless World Cup ambush was hilariously revealing.
Not least because my moles tell me those pictures of a billboard campaign were in fact just that, pictures: Renders of an out of home ad, rather than actually, you know, out of home.
So, a conclusion.
Brewdog are not only too cheap to buy an official FIFA partnership - a fair enough position imho - but they were even too cheap to buy a billboard site.
See also, a good piece by Shaun Whatling here.
And Amy Kean is getting some Linkedin love here:
Peter Cook’s Guide to Sportswashing
When he opened the Establishment Club in 1961, Cook said it was to be a satirical venue modelled on “those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War”.
Sports’ enabler class make a similar argument, minus the wit and irony.
The sunlight/disinfectant of a World Cup will open up Qatar.
Just like 2018 led to a more nuanced understanding of Putin’s regime in Russia.
And Beijing ‘08 was China’s welcome party for the world.
Say what you see
A new thing we’re trialling which invites readers to project sports business conclusions on to interesting-looking graphs
Global-Local, via The Economist
I’m wondering how the right hand graph talks to this story of reports that Netflix are ‘deep in to’ sports rights negotiations, specifically F1 and ATP.
There are no bad ideas in a brainstorm, and other lies
“How do we get our name out there?”
During an all-hands company call in December 2020 at the then two-year-old crypto exchange FTX, CEO Sam Bankman-Fried issued that challenge. “What are some big ideas?” he asked.
Among the bigger notions that percolated during the ensuing brainstorm was, “How about we put our name on a sports stadium?”
See also: This headline hasn’t aged well:
Breaking: In the hours before it secured rescue financing from its rival Binance, the crypto exchange FTX sought a bailout of more than $1 billion from Silicon Valley and Wall Street billionaires, people familiar with the matter told Semafor.
Sportsbiz Job of the Week
The Job: Strategy Analyst for Manchester United
Blurb: Manchester United is seeking to hire a Strategy Analyst who will be responsible for supporting high-profile projects within the Central Strategy function. The successful candidate will be working across all departments, including Commercial Development, Digital Products and Experiences, Venue and Football.
The Role:
To engage with various stakeholders throughout the business across a wide variety of roles. This will include liaising with other teams to collate information.
To work closely with Senior Strategy Managers, and other Analysts to deliver workstreams/projects.
To work with key stakeholders across the Manchester United functions to align on and deliver workstreams/ projects.
To work with the wider strategy and PMO team as required where holistic planning input is required.
The Link: Apply here, and tell them UP sent you.