Raine's World; Silly Tuna is coming to Wise UP; TMRW's another day; Leadership 101; Anatomy of a Saint; Agency pay; Table tennis in the office; DAZN bets on betting; Buffett on complacency
Overthinking the sports business, for money
If in doubt, be more Martin
Millennials need money, not free pizza
One of the more irritating office trends is the rise of table tennis.
Go to any agency and you’ll find this type of performative hipsterdom: look at us being un-corporate.
Then they go home to a rented flatshare to grow an ulcer worrying about paying off their near-lifetime student debt.
Rob Mills has written a really good piece that tackles an important and very under discussed issue.
I am constantly bemused when I see other agencies and consultancies fail to adjust salaries each year to adjust for inflation. Some of these agencies have won awards for their “employment proposition”. ‘Hey, don’t worry about your rent, check out our Friday beers and funky slide in the office!’…Are we happy for company profits and CEO salaries to keep growing year on year at rates that dwarf those paid to employees? We need to ask ourselves the hard questions; Over the past 5 years, what has grown quicker? Your profit percentage? Your CEO’s salary or your team’s salary? In real terms has your team’s salaries kept up with the real cost of living? Call it socialism if you like, but I prefer to think about it in the terms of doing what’s right.
Whisper it…Silly Tuna is coming to Wise UP
If that headline alone doesn’t make you want to click this link, there’s no hope for society.
We’re brainstorming web3, live at The Emirates Stadium from 5.30pm on Wednesday 21st September.
Leadership 101 - be in charge when winning happens
Whatever happens in golf’s war of the acronyms, history won’t treat PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan well.
We’re preconditioned to tell stories and there are only two basic narratives when it comes to leadership: The Good Leader and The Bad Leader.
When success happens, a halo is placed around the person in charge. Then, less obviously, a halo is placed around that person’s decisions.
Likewise, when failure happens, the Bad Leader is scapegoated along with their key strategic choices.
This attribution error isn’t fair and doesn’t help identify the difference between good and bad leadership. But that’s too complex a question to deal with, so we ignore it.
Monahan’s predecessor Tim Finchem is seen as the architect of the PGA Tour’s 90s and early noughts boom.
But his tenure coincided with the career of Tiger Woods and the cable bundle rights explosion, both of which hosed the tour in cash.
Crediting Finchem with the global TV rights market boom recalls this analysis of Donald Trump’s business career:
Meanwhile, Jay Monahan was accused this week of being asleep at the wheel.
As he fronted ten big structural changes to the Tour, he was asked why he didn’t do this 18 months ago, when people were talking about breakaway leagues but LIV did not exist.
Then along comes Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy with TMWR and the TGL (‘golf remixed’ as the counter to LIV’s ‘golf but louder’).
If TGL works - and LIV is defeated - the credit will go to Tiger and Rory, not Monahan. Them’s the breaks, as someone said recently.
See also:
Never Raine’s
The Raine Group’s role is worth pausing on for a moment, because I think it’s instructive in this ‘sport and private equity’ era.
TMRW seems to have the backing of Raine.
Raine’s head of sport Colin Neville was in the meetings last week.
This is the same Colin Neville who is a director of Premier Golf League, which he has now condemned to irrelevance by getting in to bed with the Tiger and Rory show.
And the still same Colin Neville described in this FT piece, by a bloke from Draft Kings, one of Raine’s biggest sports bets: “You can pick whatever turn of phrase you want — first one through the door, you’d want him next to you in the foxhole — that’s Colin”.
UP15 is code for 15% off Leaders tickets
Leaders Week London returns this September - mark your diaries. Slightly earlier date than you may be used to, this year it will be from 26 to 29 September 2022, just 5 weeks away.
There's a good stat that talks to the calibre of people in the room – over 70% of LW LDN attendees are at Director level or above. From the Premier League to WWE, BT Sport to DP World Tour, they’ll all be there this September.
In addition to the talks going on across three stages, there’s networking breakfasts, forums (like the Brand and Sponsorship Forum), think tanks (the Broadcast Disruptors Think Tank for example), tech showcases on the exhibition floor and the list goes on – you can tailor your Leaders Week London experience to best suit you.
The two day Summit, part of Leaders Week, will be held at Twickenham Stadium on 28th and 29th September. Even better, you can use UP15 for a 15% discount on your Summit passes. Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information.
DAZN’s alternative bundle is…(drum roll)…Betting
The alternative bundle is the idea that sport can do more than sell media ads and telly subscriptions.
This brings in other types of businesses to play the role of broadcaster, from retailers (Amazon, Walmart, Fnatics) to - in the case of Disney and MGM/Discovery - theme parks owners.
It’s about other things for sure, but it’s mainly about betting.
A game of two halves: Football’s new audiences
Good stat from Sarah Batters, director of marketing and partnerships at Southampton FC, in UP264.
Sarah Batters: I've got a lovely graph that shows the Lionesses won and our season tickets just rocketed. We have over doubled last year's season tickets and we are almost at what was our target for match attendance on average over the season, we're almost that in season tickets, I've seen another 600 tickets be sold yesterday for our match on Saturday. So it's exploding. Now to answer your question, who are those people? Not surprisingly, the demo is much more equally split gender wise and is much more of a family audience. The biggest statistic that surprised me around the new season ticket holders is 60% of them have never been to a Southampton men's first team game. So we are speaking to a new audience.
Click the image to hear the whole pod.
3 Randoms
Sports Biz Job of the Week
The Job: Communications Manager at Premiership Rugby
The Blurb: If you can demonstrate a background in communications, strategic planning and campaign management, and have knowledge of Rugby Union and Premiership Rugby clubs, then you could be perfect us, and we'd love to see you apply.
Communications Manager Responsibilities:
Strategic thinking and planning campaigns to build Premiership Rugby's reputation as a world-class sports business and create great partnerships with clubs
Dealing with media inquiries, developing news stories and drafting press releases
Co-ordinate a season-long strategy for communications from the Rugby Department
Establish an impactful communications plan concerning player welfare, development, and performance research activity across the professional game
Supplying content to several media platforms and editing several publications, including the Premiership Rugby Media Guide
Support the Communications Director in producing editorial content for their website, app and maintaining the Premiership Rugby press release system
The Link: Apply here, tell them UP sent you.