In praise of mediocrity; zero sum games and two good quotes about the gambling snafu
The newsletter of the podcast
TL;DR
New pod: Nick Bitel, Sport England
The Parkrun Question
The zero sum game of governing body funding
Flipping the pyramid
In praise of mediocrity
Idea of the Week: Salla 2032
Personal Best: Paul Musa
Nice threads
The gambling snafu in two pull quotes
Sportsbiz Objects No.4: Peloton
UP Coming: The life and times of Patrick Nally
Another week, another strategy
Last week it was The FA’s eight year plan. Now it’s Sport England outlooking the decade to 2030. You should read both, because they’re revealing as to the themes and ideas that are currently in vogue across sport and government.
Nick Bitel (UP Pod #136) has been chair of Sport England for eight years, and leaves in April. So I wanted to know what he’s learnt along the way. And it turns out, there’s plenty.
Sport England distributes government cash to drive sport and activity across the country, so it’s the pinch point between public money and the public.
Traditionally, governing bodies have been the main recipients, making Sport England’s role largely about incentives: How to get NGBs to change, evolve or move toward agreed goals.
This is where The Parkrun Question comes in handy. It has a number of variants. For example:
What does the rise of Parkrun say about the role of sports governing bodies?
Could Parkrun have emerged from within a governing body?
How much of the running boom can be attributed to the work of NGBs?
Nick Bitel’s answer to 2. was ‘No’.
(Hear Bitel’s old mate, former London Marathon Race Director and 10,000 metre world record holder Dave Bedford’s answer to The PRQ here from UP Pod #28).
The PRQ opens up a conversation about innovation, leadership and corporate culture within governing bodies.
Here’s what Nick said about NGBs relationship with change.
NB: Governing bodies have to recognise the value of innovation and embrace it. I’m afraid far too often they’ve failed in that regard. For many years Parkrun was entirely looked down upon by the athletics governing bodies. There’s a famous story told of when Powerleague 5 a side football went to see The FA years ago, and said, ‘Let’s work together’. The FA said 5 a side wasn’t the game, the game is eleven a side on grass. Not only did they refuse to work with them, they actively changed the rules to make it harder for referees to officiate a five a side game.
UP: Do we fetishise innovation?
NB: No, I think we fetishise tradition.
History is great. you can celebrate your history and have innovation at the same time. Too many sports have only celebrate their history and think it’s frozen in a moment in time, never to change.
So much in there.
Click bait headline: The zero sum game of the vertical funding attribution model
Last week’s pod guest was UK Athletics chair Nic Coward (UP Pod #133), who talked about why we’re wrong to think of sports in terms of individual verticals, or pyramids.
Nick Bitel had an equally fascinating answer:
The limitations of governing bodies is that they tend to be membership organisations, so they exist to serve their member’s interests…and what this means is, they don’t know much about the people who aren’t their customers. They haven’t got their heads around the people who could do their sport but don’t.
Bitel recalls an early meeting with the British Wrestling Association, where the then chairman outlined his plan to increase membership, which was to go aggressively after the people who do judo, and convert them in to wrestlers.
NB: That plan adds not one iota to the health of the nation…but the whole mindset of governing bodies is not to get people to do more sport, but do MY sport’.
I don’t care if you’ve got 100,000 or 200,000 members, I care whether you’re contributing to Britain being a more active nation’.
Buildings v people.
Another semi-regular question, based on my distant past as a teacher in the state sector. Whenever we finally got any money, it always went on buildings or stuff: a science block or a room full of computers. Rarely did it go on teachers. Our working assumption was that a new drama studio demonstrated tangible progress and with it the suggestion of money well spent. Funding human beings, ie teachers and coaches, is a messier, less easily quantifiable investment, and the politics is harder. Governments find it easier to say yes to buildings. By comparison, people are always moaning, and they might not vote for you anyway.
Bitel’s response below:
You need both…you can’t teach someone to swim without a swimming pool. The amount of money spent on facilities over the past eight years has gone down, due mainly to local government spending cuts. Eight years ago, local governments were spending £1.5billion a year on sports facilities, this year, pre-Covid, that number was around £800million. That’s not sustainable.
Time to flip the pyramid
Joymo.tv’s founder Mike Emery has written a piece on verticals and pyramids and the myth of trickle down economics. It calls for two changes to the status quo:
1. A new rights structure.
2. A removal of content from Facebook/YouTube and into sport-owned platforms.
I’m a bit over gold medals
I loved London 2012 and cheered on Super Saturday.
But I’ve changed my mind.
My working theory is that we should leave the medal table to dictatorships and sports washers, and spend the money on other things.
The main reason for my shift is that I’ve lost faith in the inspiration story.
The lessons of Sport England’s research is that watching super humans doesn’t inspire us to take up sport, something Nick Bitel points out below. But he still wants us to go for gold (he’s on the board of UK Sport, so it figures he doesn’t agree with me on this).
NB: Medals have an important role to play, but they don’t inspire the mass participation, they inspire the next generation of great athletes, and occasionally it will change behaviour more broadly…Nicola Adams gave credence, or permission if you like, to the idea that women could be boxers. It was a seminal moment, and she changed the image of women’s boxing in this country. But more broadly, having those moments when we come together to celebrate, is good for the soul of the nation’
Fair enough. I like the ‘soul of the nation’ line.
My issue stems from the unquestioning laziness of the inspiration story (see also, the Passion For Sport cliche).
The performance industry promotes the work hard, play hard schtick as if all you need to succeed is grit and resilience and passion. This schtick pervades every social media feed from Instagram to Linkedin.
And it has real consequences: People are really unhappy. So, spare a moment for ordinariness, don’t turn your hobbies in to side hustles, and revel in your mediocrity.
IDEA OF THE WEEK
Climate change activism via the medium of an Olympic bid.
Salla, the coldest town in Finland, bids to host the 2032 Summer Olympics.
Have a look, it’s smart and useful. Thanks to Nathan Homer for flagging it.
PERSONAL BEST
Sports biz types list their favourite things
This week, Paul Musa, founder of What The Footie?
There’s over 100 more Personal Bests here.
NICE THREADS
James Corbett on the anti competitive incentive structure built in to the latest European Breakaway League proposal.
Professor Simon Chadwick gives good graph (click the image)
The gambling snafu in two pull quotes
Governments tend to focus on TV advertising and Premier League shirts. The game’s moved on. Have a listen to Chris Bevilacqua, CEO and co-founder of SimpleBet, which developed an AI-enabled feature that lets fans bet on individual plays in NFL games.
We’ve essentially chopped two- and three-hour football, baseball and basketball games into [millions of mini markets] ....[More betting] has to be done through automation.”
The UK market is a side show (quote below taken from a fascinating recent discussion thread on the UP WhatsApp Group (think Davos meets Mumsnet).
The threat of regulation has already prompted self-imposed withdrawal of bookmaker TV advertising. Make your own mind up as to whether that is the industry taking a moral lead, or an attempt to close shop and make it harder for any newly-liberated US firms to enter the UK market... other than by buying an incumbent.
SPORTSBIZ OBJECTS
Peloton
#D2C #Gamification #Obesity
I don’t have one btw.
There’s nowhere for it to go that would convince me that yes, this is a good place to have an exercise bike in the house.
That said, I’ve become slightly obsessed with Peloton.
It’s a symbol of something I’ve not been able to articulate, until I read Rob Walker’s piece on the Peloton Economy.
This insulated slice of America — the million or so Peloton owners and their professional-class peers Zooming and home-ordering from Whole Foods through the pandemic recession — is the Peloton Economy. It’s gotten quite a bit of attention in a year when health and economic forces have simultaneously upturned and ended lives month after month. But ultimately, we need to face up to the fact that the Peloton Economy is not a bellwether — it’s a warning signal underscoring a serious problem that should be a top priority not just for the new Biden-Harris administration, but for business at large.
For the millions of Americans who experienced the coronavirus era as a calamity of lost jobs, lost health care, and stunted wages, the Peloton Economy is an alternate universe.
Peloton’s relationship with the challenges faced by Sport England on societal health is like my relationship with open cast mining: Tenuous at best.
UP Coming - Origin story
Patrick Nally’s career is the story of the sports business. It explains everything. If you ever wondered how we got here, watch out for our next podcast. Search ‘Unofficial Partner’ in your favourite podcast app.
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