Billion Dollar Brainstorm, pt2; Spot Sean, win a prize; Grant Wahl podcast; Stellar returns; The UPTake poll; FIFA World Cups - is it biannual or biennial?; Always blame the PR; The apology genre;
The newsletter of the podcast
Join the thousands of people who subscribe to Unofficial Partner.
We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.Â
These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.Â
This newsletter is our way of picking up the threads, and is published every Thursday.
Our entire back catalogue of 180 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.Â
Each pod is available on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app.Â
If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us by replying to this email.
The Unofficial Partner Billion Dollar Brainstormâ„¢ Pt2
Anticipation is building toward what nobody is calling High Noon on the Podcast Stage at Leaders London. (Get 15% off a Leaders London ticket here).
The room only takes 50 people and we start at 12 on the first day, so get there early.
Last week’s vague idea to get through an hour of bullshit conference waffle has been chiselled into an actionable roadmap.
We’re asking a big question: What’s the fastest way for two amoral chancers to make a billion quid by building a new sports property? What would that even look like?
We’ve taken briefings from the top table of sports business decision makers. And Matt Rogan.
A series of questions will be put to an audience vote.
(1) Who’s the Audience: Boomers vs Gen Z?
(2) How do we get rich: Dividends vs Flogging it?
(3) What’s the product: Big Events vs Digital Content Platforms?
(4) Something, something..Proof of Concept: Global v Local; US vs China?
(5) Who pays the bills: Media or Sponsors (*cough* Saudi and/or betting *cough*)
(6) What’s our purpose: Healing societal discord or something to do with those earbuds that kill seahorses that David Attenborough’s always going on about?
Spot Sean and Win A Prize
Sean Singleton (Partner, Unofficial Partner) is available for meetings at Leaders London. And he has free tat.
Sean will be the one standing next to the free pastries. Here he is earlier, moments before being arrested. He’s the one on the right.
See also: Zelig at the SIAs
UPTake: A FIFA World Cup every two years?
It’s gonna happen. Agree or Disagree?
Click the image to vote.
We trialled the question in WhatsUP, The Unofficial Partner WhatsApp Group, aka best inside the ropes focus group in the sports business.
The result was a reasonably fat Disagree*.
*But there are caveats.
Patrick Nally: Perhaps your question needs tweaking - ‘should it happen’ NO - ‘Will it happen’ - it could as FIFA knows the dark arts of vote manipulation.
This week’s UP pod guest is American soccer journalist Grant Wahl, who famously ran against Sepp Blatter, for FIFA President in 2011. We talked about what he learnt from the experience and I asked whether there’s much difference between Infantino and Blatter? Has much changed, or is it a FIFA culture thing? Does the very act of getting to become President make political wrangling part of the person spec, as per Patrick’s note above? (Spoiler: Yes).
What about the Women’s World Cup?
If FIFA really believes in the commercial value of the Women’s World Cup, why crowd it out with another blokes’ one?
To this point, the timing of this FIFA release is a bit odd, and feels like a reactive move.
We sort of knew what Blatter thought:
Sepp Blatter, the president of the world governing body Fifa, said women should have skimpier kit to increase the popularity of the game. "Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball," he said.
"They could, for example, have tighter shorts. Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so, and they already have some different rules to men - such as playing with a lighter ball. That decision was taken to create a more female aesthetic, so why not do it in fashion?"
His successor Infantino has talked a different game. But does a two year WC undermine this in practice?
The mere mention of Sepp Blatter and tight shorts prompts this pic.
Visibility Uncovered
The Women’s Sport Trust has a new review of media coverage for the year, including Tokyo 2020, The Hundred, the start of the WSL and Premier 15s, Solheim Cup, and the US Open. Register here.
Nearly understanding NFTs, cont’d
Barnett fair
Worth noting soccer’s role within the CAA-ICM agency deal. (Good piece in Variety on the bigger picture Hollywood stuff)
It’s become clear that ICM’s strong publishing arm and its recent investment in U.K. soccer agency Stellar Group were among the big attractions for CAA.
Jonathan Barnett - agent to Gareth Bale and Jack Grealish among many others - sold Stellar to ICM in October 2020. ICM’s client list includes Samuel L Jackson and Beyoncé, and Stellar was their first move in to sport.
The deal also follows a similar pattern by a number of large US entertainment agencies who have recently broken into the sports market. Base Soccer, a UK agency that represents the likes of Kyle Walker and Dele Alli, was purchased by Creative Artists Agency for an undisclosed sum in 2019.
Similarly, Roc Nation, a New York agency founded by rapper Jay-Z, added to its roster of musicians and US sports stars by signing high-profile European footballers, including Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford and Inter Milan’s Romelu Lukaku.
One last line on this. Paul Conway talked of the ‘professionalisation of the European soccer agency market’ in our recent ReThinking Sport pod with Patrick Massey of Portas Consulting. Conway’s Pacific Media Group owns seven European football clubs.
Agent fees remain the business model, which are reliant on transfer traffic.
Premier League clubs paid a combined £263m to agents and intermediaries in the 12 months to January 31 2020, according to The FA.
The apology genre - When in doubt, blame the PR
Bruno Fernandes missed a penalty. Then took to social to make a public apology.
Ally McCoist responded on talkSPORT, using the keywords ‘absolute’ and ‘garbage’. He added, 'It's not even him, it's PR teams'
So we’re in to the side issue of who is actually doing the apologising, and by extension, who is running Bruno’s social feeds and does that render the apology irrelevant and/or actually worse than an apology? What’s the point of a blue tick if the social or comms team are running the show? Etc.
Re Dan’s tweet below, the internal comms blame game has a pleasing ‘People’s Front of Judea’ aspect to it.
Metaverse news: Move slow and make things
Facebook has promised to spend $50 million on making the metaverse less icky*.
"It's almost the opposite of that now long-abandoned slogan of 'move fast and break things,'" Facebook's VP of global affairs and ex-Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg told Axios in an interview at The Atlantic Festival. "It's definitely a departure for us, this is going to be a a much much more gradual, deliberate and therefore a much more thoughtful process of building technology."
*Icky = a get rich quick approach to development that leaves their products open to widespread abuse by bad actors and undermining functioning democracies.
And finally, everybody who reads this newsletter should read this report
The UK’s sports councils have published new guidance for transgender inclusion in domestic sport.
The Sports Councils’ Equality Group (SCEG), made up of representatives from each of the UK’s sports councils (UK Sport, Sport England, Sport Wales, sportscotland and Sport Northern Ireland), commissioned a review of its existing guidance (2013/15) for the inclusion of transgender people in sport last year, recognising that sport at every level required more practical advice and support.
This review investigated the views, knowledge, and experience of hundreds of people with a lived experience in sport, including transgender people, and also explored the background to current policies domestically and internationally and considered the latest scientific findings affecting the inclusion of transgender people in domestic sport.
New guidance has been published on the SCEG website, alongside a number of other supporting documents.
Enjoy the Unofficial Partner newsletter? Tell your friends
Subscribe to the Unofficial Partner podcast.
Help us game the Substack algorithm by liking this newsletter and spread the word on social media.Â
Follow @RichardGillis1 and @PaulPingles (aka the ill-judged Twitter handle of Sean Singleton, the UP co-founder).Â
Read over 100 gushing five star reviews for UP on Apple Podcasts - click the link to add yours. Â