The 6 best Johnson resignation memes; OneFootball's billion dollar valuation; 'They came as their avatars', Steve Bannon on arse flare man; WhatsUP on Euro2022; Web3 WTF, going going...
Overthinking the sports business, for money
This newsletter is sponsored by Turnstile.
Turnstile uses real market rates to quantify the value every single sponsorship right within a deal, looking beyond the traditional media metrics to calculate the value of the Exposure, Intellectual Property and Direct Benefits.
This enables Turnstile to deliver a recommended transaction price that’s comprehensive, accurate and defensible.
If you value your sponsorships, value them properly.
Get in touch at turnstilegroup.com
‘This is why we Europeans, with the exception of Spotify and Skype, have never built big platforms’
This week’s podcast guest was Lucas von Cranach, founder and CEO of OneFootball - UP255.
Key topics: Fan monetisation, Lifetime value, Spotify-Barcelona, VCs, web3, tech unicorns, club as publisher, club as Amazon, platform economics, Dapper Labs, Tokens.
I mentioned to Lucas that I found the recent OF’s $300million Series D raise comms release confusing, or more accurately, the headlines that emanated from it give the impression that OneFootball was now going full pelt to a web3 blockchain platform, via Dapper Labs and Animoca.
Lucas countered by pointing me to his own Medium post, which is far more considered and nuanced.
Here he is at around 39 minutes:
Lucas von Cranach: To be very clear, OneFootball is not a web3 business and it's not a bet on web3. The strength of OneFootball is 100 million plus users. It's the 12 leading clubs and the German football association as shareholders plus 500 plus aficianados building the best product for the football industry.
Plus OneFootball being the biggest football live streaming service on this planet by number of matches. Plus, plus, plus… I can go on, this is substance and the reason why Animoca and Dapper Labs and web3 companies want to partner with us and want to work with us and do invest in us. It's because we have this substance.
Web3 companies start with zero customers, no customer knowledge, no direct to consumer offering because all of these companies who have been in web3 were either infrastructure companies or were currency layer companies. There were no product companies….whereas we’ve been doing this for 14 years.
The nub of this issue is valuation. The $300million figure values OneFootball at $1billion. For context, the last revenue number I could find for OF was $20million, in 2019. But is revenue the right metric?
(At 42mins) Unofficial Partner: Something has happened. People are projecting onto you. Investors are projecting onto you a story. You can put me right on this, but looking at the Deal Room data, in 2019, 20 million dollar revenues for OneFootball, and now in 2022, we're looking a valuation of a billion with 300 million being put in. So there is something that they're seeing in you and you are saying it's the audience and it's football.
Lucas von Cranach: That's one of the biggest challenges, Richard, that in Europe specifically, you know, there's a reason why we as Europeans, except for Spotify and Skype, have never built big platforms. Yeah. Is number one, what's your revenue model? Number two, how many people work for you?
It's about number of users and how big, how good your product is in terms of sustainability. I have a hundred million plus users. If I just get one Euro per user per month, that's a 1.2 billion business. If you start with revenues, we'll never get that. So for me, it is super clear. We're talking about a hundred billion plus industry per year from a direct to consumer perspective in terms of merchandising, ticketing, OTT, betting, et cetera already.
Now web3 is another layer, which is adding to the hundred billion plus in terms of pie. And we, as a representative for the football ecosystem, have that access to the customer. So if I now do the math, starting at the beginning, a hundred million users times a hundred euros, lifetime value.
I think then you understand why people are investing in us.
Hear the conversation in full here. UP255 OneFootball meets Web3
Remember: tickets go on sale for our first ticketed live podcast event soon.
To ensure you get one, register via this button.
The 6 best Johnson resignation memes
Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.
This list will be out of date on moment of publication.
Clownfall
2. School trip
3. Gove
4. Dorries letter
By Joe Lycett
5. Big Sam at Number 10
6. Johnson keys
Twitter was made for days like this.
What Steve Bannon knows about fandom
The January 6th hearings were a glimpse in to American politics, obviously.
But also in to us, and how the internet has changed us.
My position has always been that the internet is a mirror. It reveals us but doesn’t change us.
But this is a simplistic analysis.
People showed up as their avatars, says Jennifer Senior in The Atlantic, who spent months in the company of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser who is often credited as being the key MAGA strategist.
“Some people—particularly disaffected men—actively prefer and better identify with the online versions of themselves.”
My mind went, as it often does, to Charlie Perry, aka arse flare man from the Euro 2020 final, who in real life is a roofer from Sunbury on Thames.
Perry: “It was the biggest day of my life. There were no rules that day. All I know is that I loved it all. I was off my face and I loved every minute.”
Man and superman. Bit of a jump, but listen to Bannon on how he uses online communities to weaponise unhappiness.
“This became more of a community than the city they live in, the town they live in, the old bowling league. The key to these sites was the comment section. This could be weaponized at some point in time. The angry voices, properly directed, have latent political power.”
(Bannon) frequently talks about three levels of participation: the posse, the cadre, and the vanguard:
This sounds like the gamification of politics.
Yes, he told me. That’s just it: “I want Dave in Accounting to be Ajax in his life.”
But that’s precisely what happened on January 6. The angry, howling hordes arrived as real-life avatars, cosplaying the role of rebels in face paint and fur. They stormed the Capitol while an enemy army tried to beat them away. They carried their own versions of caissons. They skipped a day of work. And then they expressed outrage—and utter incredulity—when they got carted away.
The fantasy and the reality had become one and the same.
Hear here: Steve Bannon’s Very Online Insurrection
Hear also: Does Twitter change behaviour or mirror it? Is it a camera or an engine? Marc Andreessen talking to Tyler Cowan
The WhatsUP view: Euro 2022
The UP WhatsApp group is our exclusive, invite-only backchannel to the sports business.
@Mark Bullingham: Great that so many of you are going to be there, the team has worked so hard to make the event a success and we are really proud of everything so far. The legacy programme is looking great and many people told us we were nuts to aim for over 500k tickets sales…it should be another huge boost for the women’s game…look forward to seeing some of you there later.
@Ebru Koksal: Very excited to witness another historic moment Mark, the activation campaigns are brilliant so far!
@Dave Roberts: Just one metric coming from the FIFA+ project.... Live match data streams. We were able to commercially access live data from over 450 competitions globally from the men's game.... just 60 from Women's. Just shows the imbalance - so we are working to readdress that imbalance.
@Mark Bullingham: This tournament will be a big step forwards but there’s still a long way to go!
@Chris Hurst: From a Whisper perspective, we are so excited about producing BBC's live coverage for the event (and all the content we are creating for others). A massive moment for women's sport and a platform that other sports can also benefit from, as we showed with the Women's Sport Trust research earlier this year and how major events can act as a gateway for viewers to tune into other women's sport.
@Jane Purdon: I hope everyone in this group really enjoys it. So many, not least many on here, have worked so hard for this. It takes a village to create a new sport, or a new edition of a much loved sport, and get it to this level, but special shout out to the FA and you Mark. No country backs its women’s football better. I’ll be honest and say that’s not something I would have said 15 years ago. You, Sue and Kelly, and all the team, have done an incredible job. So enjoy it, take a break in August, and then go and hammer on those doors in Zurich and get us a women’s World Cup!
@Laura Weston: Agree @Jane Purdon The FA has worked hard to support the game and where would we be without @Kelly Simmons and the team?? In some ways it’s bitter sweet to see the marketing activation from the brands. Of course I’m happy that they have finally got their act together and given Women’s football the marketing it deserves. But it’s hard to get the years of meetings with brand managers and directors who just stared back at me blankly when I mentioned Women’s sport as an opportunity. Let’s hope this acts as a halo effect and we see better brand support overall.