Be radical and say 'I Don't Know'; Mervyn King on the limits of forecasting; The Cara Delevingne Guide to F1; The second biggest sport; Did Orange get it right; This Girl Goes to Tesco; Messi business
Overthinking the sports business, for money
This week’s UP Newsletter is sponsored by our friends at the Institute of Sports Humanities and Loughborough University London.
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 ISH and Loughborough University recently launched the new Leadership in Sport Master’s course, running from Autumn 2023.
Radical Uncertainty
This week’s podcast guest is Lord Mervyn King, best known as Governor of the Bank of England during the financial crisis, but who also founded Chance to Shine cricket in to schools charity, was President of Worcestershire CCC and a director of Aston Villa, his two lifelong sporting loves.
Lord King is also an expert lecturer at ISH, above.
One of the themes of the conversation was the limits of forecasting, a topic in which the Governor is a world renowned expert.
I recommend his book Radical Uncertainty, co-written with John Kay of the FT. It’s excellent.
Want to be disruptive? Try saying, ‘I Don’t Know’
We crave certainty.
And so people in positions of authority respond by giving it to us.
Or to be more accurate, they seek to appear certain.
Prevarication can look weak.
Whereas leaders are decisive.
They have roadmaps. They are led by the science. Their decisions are evidence based. ‘Our models say…’.
It’s what links the 2007 financial crisis to Covid to the selection of the England cricket team.
Mervyn King: “What politicians tried to do in a way was to avoid responsibility by saying, all we're doing is what the scientists tell us to do. And sadly, too many scientists fell into the trap of saying, ‘Yeah, I can tell you what you should be doing’, instead of saying, ‘We are very good scientists, but we don't have enough information to tell you what you should do.
UP: It's quite hard to say, I don't know, in public, isn't it, in a senior position?
Mervyn King: Well, that's one of the extraordinary things I think about public life. If the Prime Minister were to say at some point, ‘I don't know, but will take three months to find out the answer to that question’.
But if they've been interviewed three times a day, they feel they have to come up with a clear answer and the optimal solution to the every problem that people throw at them. No person could, should be expected to do that. I remember giving evidence to the Treasury Committee once and being asked a question and I said, ‘I don't know’.
The committee was outraged. They said, but it's your job to know. And I said, no, it isn't. It's not my job to know things that no one can know about and with great respect you don't know either. But this is the problem. People have elevated the idea of experts to be people who know exactly what the answer is and who can't express any doubt. You saw the same thing over Brexit.”
I AM big, it’s tennis that got small
Let’s call it the Sunset Boulevard Question.
Me and Sean spent a lovely day at Wimbledon for yesterday’s quarter finals.
Reading the morning papers, I realise I don’t know any of the players.
Is that my problem, or tennis’s problem?
The Cara Delevingne Guide to Sports Marketing
One race, two clips, quite revealing.
The first is Martin Brundle’s track walk at the British Grand Prix, where he tries and fails to get Cara D to talk to him.
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This is lapped up by the petrolhead Top Gear crowd - ‘Absolute BRUTALITY from Martin Brundle’ etc.
Old school ex-driver turned Sky pundit, doing his schtick, hoping to be rebuffed by famous people so he can make a quip about entitlement and the vacuity of modern celebrity, blah blah blah.
The ultimate F1 insider playing the victim, like Laurence Fox railing against ‘the establishment’.
It’s getting tired.
Particularly as F1 is bending over backwards to lure a version of Cara Delevingne to every race, not least in Miami, to please the Drive to Survive crowd.
The second clip is the version of the weekend put out by Delevingne’s team (I assume).
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Controlled, curated. But pretty much what you want if you’re going to invite (and presumably pay a lot of money to get) an A-lister to your event.
Different target audience.
You might expect me to say I prefer the first one.
I don’t much tbh.
The second biggest sport
The release of Karen Carney’s review of women’s football shouldn’t overshadow a lovely farewell interview in The Times with Kelly Simmons of The FA, who’s done more to get women’s football to its present place than anyone else.
The article’s headline prompted Jan Age Fjortoft to message the WhatsUP group:
It’s a debate that reminds me of the ‘Third biggest sports event’ title contested over by several rights holders who should know better.
See also:
Ricardo Fort likes this ad, messaging the WhatsUP group:
This @orange French ad (for the @equipedefrance) is the best sponsor work I have seen for this @FIFAWWC. Excellent.
The reveal is about a minute in.
Ricardo’s message set off a to-and-fro on creative in relation to the upcoming event.
Technically clever, the Orange ad challenges a stereotype - that women’s football isn’t as good as men’s.
Maggie Murphy of Lewes FC pushed back.
I think I agree.
Rather than spending time in an old argument, it would be better to move beyond it.
This one from FOX Sport in the US does that:
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See previous: Where’s the buzz? The real cost of Infantino’s duff bluff
UPComing: talking of creative, next week’s podcast is The Big Idea - Cannes Review.
Messi business
Love the quote from the press release:
See also: Apple, Lionel Messi and the $2.5billion question.
Good analysis by Adam Crafton in The Athletic.
Football v Threads:
Ed Desser adds: “Facebook’s business is basically an ad business. They’ve done a very good job of using everyone’s personal data to figure out how to target them. You don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of money on sports to do that. They tried it out and they figured out that there’s not a huge return on investment there. They’d have to come up with a new economic model and it looks like they’d rather come up with a replacement for Twitter.”
This Girl goes to Tesco
Smart brand extension work from Sport England.
Launched in stores this week, the range features 10 items in a broad range of sizes for both women and girls, with the aim to inspire active lifestyles by providing a stylish and accessible clothing line.
The range, made by their in-house brand F&F, will be available in 264 Tesco locations, nationwide, for 12 weeks, with the hope of also releasing a follow up range in January 2024.
