That Chelsea PIF Clearlake rumour; Perception v Reality; Should rebels be punished; Gary Neville's map; Winning v losing 4-3; What Lewes' tickets tell us; When clubs change logo; Top ten sports pods
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.
Game of the Week: Perception v Reality
Does Saudi fund Chelsea?
This bloke thinks so.
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The story in 3 acts:
PIF is an investor in a Clearlake fund
Clearlake own Chelsea
Chelsea offload players to PIF owned clubs in the Saudi Premier League
For a more nuanced view, read the reliably excellent Matt Slater in The Athletic.
Two quotes from Matt’s piece that sum up the problem.
This one:
“It’s an interesting one, indeed, and that is part of the issue with investment funds,” says Christina Philippou, a principal lecturer in accounting, economics and finance at the University of Portsmouth and an expert on the business of football.
“In most industries, conflicts of interest relate to both actual and perceived issues, and that is why there are often declarations required in such circumstances. This is why the requirement for football clubs to declare their ultimate beneficial owners made its way into the recent White Paper on football governance.”
When there’s a betting scandal, sport execs often make this point.
Smoke, fire etc.
The threat of contagion: From betting to cheating and straight to integrity.
The perpetrators are punished. Examples are set. The C-Suite is seen as thrillingly decisive.
(Btw, Ed Warner wrote a really interesting piece about the complexity of the Ivan Toney case here).
Ivan Toney is easier to punish than a country.
Owning two clubs in the same league (Premier or Champions) brings the same threat of story contagion, and the same perception/reality face off.
But the nature of business ownership is fiendishly complex, often purposely so.
Another quote from Matt Slater’s article sums up the challenge.
“This feels like a nothing-burger,” says a partner at a different US-based private-equity firm, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect relations and business interests. “Clearlake is an incredible firm — they’ve made a ton of money for their investors. I’m not sure if PIF is a big investor but anyone who has been has been well rewarded.
“Wouldn’t PIF be using Newcastle United if this was their plan, not Chelsea? The reality is all the sovereign-wealth funds are in all the big, global private-equity funds, from Australia to Abu Dhabi, Canada to PIF.”
So everyone is everywhere.
Money is complicated.
Nothing to worry about.
Is it any wonder Gary Neville is all over the map.
Here he is on a Qatar owned Man Utd in March:
"There is some concern, [but] they want a debt-free club. They've become harmed mentally by debt, Man United fans, over these last few years," Neville said. "There's a feeling they want an ownership that can compete with the Middle East estates we have in this league.
"Which is Saudi Arabia at Newcastle and Abu Dhabi at Man City. From my point of view, there's a white paper coming out later this week from the government. I know that might seem like really boring stuff around legislation through parliament of Tracey Crouch's report and the independent regulator but I honestly believe, at this moment in time, the EFL are powerless, the FA are powerless.
The same Gary Neville, this week:
“The Premier League should stop all Saudi transfers.”
Punishment tropes pt2
Suppose every major sport faces a Super League cum LIV disruptor-type threat.
Big money luring top talent.
There are two striking features of the Super League and LIV Golf
They failed
The rebels were let back in
(Note, I’m already talking of LIV in the past sense).
According to Wikipedia…
There are four different types of justice: distributive (determining who gets what), procedural (determining how fairly people are treated), retributive (based on punishment for wrong-doing) and restorative (which tries to restore relationships to "rightness.")
It’s the last two that are most relevant.
The balance between retribution and rehabilitation.
Make them pay v Stop anyone else trying it again
Nobody’s going to prison for leaving the PGA Tour.
And in fact, rather than punish the rebels, they’re going to bung Rory and Rickie a hundred mill of hush money to restore rightness.
Not every sport will end like LIV will. With a PIF reverse ferret.
Some will shatter the existing rights holder or governing body. Zero sum.
So presumably every sports CEO, from tennis to rugby, wants to put it out there that actions have consequences, at a team or player level.
Retribution is important for society.
It keeps us honest.
See also:
After that white hot Super League weekend, there was talk of retribution.
I wrote this, and I’m still looking for evidence that the rebels have faced any sort of punishment beyond the court of public opinion.
New Balance’s Tiger moment
What tickets tell us, if we’re smart enough to look
Lewes FC shared this analysis with their own fans.
It’s really interesting, showing how fine the margins between ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in running a football club.
The difference often lies in a few more Saturday games, a cup run, good weather.
Lewes FC men saw an increase of 7% in their total attendance while there was an increase of a whopping 84% of fans attending the Lewes FC women’s games.
Why? Well, lots of reasons we can bore you with – but one thing to note is that both teams played an additional 3 home games each this season, all 6 of which were in cup competitions. This shows just how positive a cup run (with lots of home draws!) can be.
We’re delighted with our club record attendance for our FA Cup Quarter Final game v Manchester Utd in March and we know we made a lot of new fans there. We generated £23,129 in ticket sales for the game for the 2801 who joined us.
More of this please.
Hear Lewes FC CEO Maggie Murphy on UP138.
Winning v Losing 4-3
The Product collaborator Omar Chaudhuri of Twenty First Group on the Bazball story running through this Ashes summer.
I firmly believe the supporters of England's new approach will be proved right in the long term. There's more and more evidence to show that attacking strategies in sport are not only more entertaining, they're actually more effective.
Ed Smith went deep in to Bazball last week.
You could see the history of sport as the effort of defensive organization to overhaul, attacking flair. Certainly the easiest thing to do if you are a system, a coaching system, strategic system, is to improve defense because defence usually relies more on discipline, organization, concentration.
Unpredictability is the most prized asset of all.
Loved ‘a splash of the madman’.
So a defence that always knows how the attack's gonna behave is gonna organize itself in an optimal way. But if you don't know what's coming, it's a lot harder. Now, this is one of the reasons why people who have a splash of the madman, are difficult to negotiate with because it's hard to know what they're gonna do next.
The club logo TikTok meme
Loved the Norwich one
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Top Ten ‘New’ Sports Podcasts
From the Unofficial Partner guest blog
Jim Salveson, Director of Sport for Voiceworks and the Sports Social Network picks his favourites.
Unofficial Partner publishes two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.
These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.
This newsletter is our way of picking up the threads, and is published every Thursday.
Our entire back catalogue of 300 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.
Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app.
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.