Saudi 2.0; Disparagement clause of the week; Gregxit stage left; Kids heart YouTube; The Dan Ashworth Effect; Romero v Maguire; Slippery ground; Premier League to Apple; Back from Baku
Overthinking the sports business, for money
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World Cup marks end of Saudi 1.0
Prediction: A through line of 2025 will be the shift to Saudi 2.0, the next phase of its massively expensive sports business test and learn experiment.
This will have big repercussions for several elements of the industry.
Six months ago, every agency head I talked to was just back from Riyadh, full of plans to ‘open a shop’ there. That mood music has changed a bit recently, as the seemingly limitless ambition of MBS, and those who purport to talk for him, shows signs of having, well, limits.
The longer term consultancy players - Portas for example, or 54 - will reap the rewards for building local trust over time. Later agency arrivals may have missed the gravy train, as people and skill sets get bought in and developed locally. This will upset a few revenue projection slides in adland.
A common reading is that Saudi 2.0 is less about global disruption and more about local inward investment.
So, Saudi Premier League yes, LIV Golf and Newcastle no.
And we should all monitor Play The Game’s dataset on Saudi investment for clues. It maps 1,412 key positions across 209 Saudi entities and documenting 910 sponsorships in sports globally.
I’d be amazed if this list is as long in three years time.
Greg Norman exits stage left
In 2022, Rory McIlroy called for Norman to “exit stage left,” adding, “No one’s going to talk unless there’s an adult in the room.”
Seems he got his wish. And it feels significant.
Also, thought this was true:
Premier League on Apple, one ticket globally outside the UK
While we’re overreaching, and predicting the future on the back of a bit of industry gossip….how about this one.
Detangling Premier League Productions from IMG is not about Premflix, its about making it easier to sell the league to Apple (insert any other platform here).
At a stroke, Apple TV goes from nice to have to must-have. One ticket.
Cost of the rights? Blimey…
Or…YouTube
Kids don’t like sport…wait, what?
From Jo Redfern, via WhatsUP, the best backchannel in the sports business.
The next big sports business media company will start on TikTok
File under, Things I like.
Jordan Macauley’s Long Play account is worth a look.
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More layers than Toyota
Whenever the principal at my old college delivered bad news to the staff room, someone would nudge me and whisper, ‘Deputy heads must roll’, in the hope that I’d giggle and be shown up as an unserious person in front of my peers.
There’s something in the Dan Ashworth story that’s about accountability and the roles that evolve over time that act as buffers between the person at the top and the problem.
The manager remains - just - the focus of the media’s attention on a game by game basis, the one who will be deified or sacked depending on short term results.
The speed of Ashworth’s departure might yet become a moment we look back on, when a more rigorous questioning is applied to the job of Director of Football.
Omar Chaudhuri, the Twenty First Group brainbox, sent through this note. I’ve never seen them listed in this way before.
Just as interesting as the rankings themselves, is the criteria TFG uses to judge performance of the performance people, as it were.
The level at which they have operated
The performance trajectory of their club(s)
Their club’s record of buying ‘low’ and growing value
Their club’s net transfer income
The ‘What I Call’ genre
In the competitive arena of Linkedin-based thought leadership it’s really important to invent a word.
This process magically transforms any trite, mundane observation in to ownable IP.
I love the hope in the trademark symbol next to Passionomics, below:
Romero vs Maguire
After the Chelsea game, Christian Romero, Spurs’ hot-headed Argentine defender lamented the lack of investment by the club’s owners during an interview with Spanish broadcaster Telemundo Deportes.
Romero, who joined Spurs permanently in 2022 after a season-long loan from Atalanta, said "something is going wrong, hopefully, they [the board] realise it", when discussing the spending of other clubs compared to Tottenham.
This gets to the Daniel Levy Dilemma, which is that other than actually winning anything, he seems to do quite a lot right, in terms of running the club.
Not my words, those of uber-footyaccountant Kieran Maguire.
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Clause of the Week: Disparagement
Some lovely fall out from the Cucurella slips up in Puma’s new boots story.
There was the bin. And the quickly deleted Instagram post of the bin, with the boots in.
Even better though is the too-clever-for-their-own-good message on said slippery left back’s £220 Puma Future 8s, ‘This boot might be leaked. We're used to it. Don't worry. Stay tuned', followed by the release date "03/03".
Say what you like about Sergio Garcia, he only chucked his Adidas golf shoes down the fairway at Wentworth, he didn’t put them in a bin and then take a photo of them.
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Does this mean they can sponsor British Cycling again?
See previous: What’s the point of British Cycling?
Welcome to our new listeners
Tbf, that Baku listener might be an Arsenal fan still on the way back from the 2019 Europa Cup final.