Those Jack Buckner quotes in full; Dublin Diary; When in doubt ban it; What does PIF want to be; Turf wars; The search for the London 2012 database; Venu vs AOL Time Warner; Not very Modern Pentathlon

Overthinking the sports business, for money

May 23, 2024

Jack Buckner in six quotes

The UK Athletics CEO was our guest this week.

This quote has gone viral, picked up by several news outlets.

There was plenty more where that came from.

If in doubt, ban it

Governing bodies haven't innovated. Going right back, one of the things about our London Marathon Great Run partnership is at that time when Chris Brasher and Brendan Foster set up those things, the governing body tried to ban it, and so, generally innovation has not come out of governing bodies.

The not very modern Pentathlon

And I think all the time about the Olympic movement and the inherent conservatism in the Olympic movement. I mean, it's really interesting when you think Modern Pentathlon could have morphed into triathlon. If the leadership in Modern Pentathlon had been farsighted, they would have just said, we'll grab the multisport space and we'll be triathlon.
But of course they didn't, did they, and they were stuck with a traditional format.

Beware the Squeezed Middle

I've got this thing at the moment you either have to be big or you have to be community and things that are caught in the middle struggle, whether that's events or retailers or whatever.

A Glastonbury for Athletics

Athletics cuts through as a broadcast product ‘once or twice a year’.
But I think what that means for the rest of your product offer and how you make the championships work you've got to look at it I think being really honest for more of a community engagement and taking some of the thinkings of Park Run and music festivals. I think there's probably a way of doing things which we haven't got to yet, which is what I call Glastonbury athletics.
So, if you could create three or four big moments - Olympics, Paralympics, World Championships.
And then the rest of it feels like Glastonbury, you go along for a long time, there's loads of stuff going on and some golden moments. So I think there's a sifting of the product offer that I don't think we've got to, I'd love to get to, and maybe we will in the next few years.
But it's very hard to see a football model or anything like that.

Beware consultants selling the future of TV

You can spend a lot of money with some amazing consultants to tell you what's going on. I don't believe anyone's got a clue what's going on with broadcast at the moment.

Whatever happened to the London 2012 database?

I think there were some big misses. We should’ve been far quicker out of the blocks with the 2012 database, what happened to that?
All these millions of people who were interested; that kind of fell apart. So I don't think we capitalized on everything. I think there were some misses in there. But I think for me overall, there was some massive wins in it and I think it was absolutely worth doing and I think I'd love to be part of doing it again.

Hear the whole conversation here:

Dublin Diary

We’ve been at the UEFA Europa League final this week - thanks to Jamie Graham and Simon Crouch at TEAM for the invite.

What airport security see when they scan Sean’s rucksack full of podcast recording equipment

If you want to know what’s happening in Irish football, ask the taxi driver.
The most connected man in football. Told great Roy Keane stories.
Alternatively, WhatsApp the (outgoing) FAI CEO to come to the pub
Oi, UEFA stop nicking our ideas

West Ham fans in Dublin the week of the Europa final?

Siri, show a photo that defines false hope.

The closest two Spurs fans get to a big game

‘What’s that big silver thing the captain is holding up?’

Old white men, what Netflix want from the NFL

This piece in Puck took the chasing Gen Z narrative and flipped it.

From: Netflix to the NFL - You Complete Me

As much as the NFL is looking to go international, Netflix could use pro football to help it check a box. Both in the U.S. and globally, Netflix is one of the more female-leaning platforms, particularly compared with local cable networks in countries where the NFL is trying to establish a base. In Latin America, for example, sports audiences are close to a 50-50 male-female split, according to Global Web Index’s annual report on sports engagement. Sports viewership in Asia and the Middle East skews much younger than other territories.
The reach of Netflix’s young and female audience is therefore appealing to a league trying to grow its international footprint. And while the NFL may be one of the smaller sports internationally, its older, male audience is something Netflix needs if it is going to strengthen its pitch to advertisers. Keep this in mind every time you read analyses comparing Netflix’s deal with the NFL to ESPN’s or Amazon’s. What the NFL needs from Netflix is different than anything it’s ever needed from any of its current partners.

Wait, is PIF a consumer facing brand now?

Saudi money is flowing in to women’s tennis.

The sovereign wealth fund is title sponsor of the WTA rankings, to go with the same deal done in February around the ATP.

Much of the coverage is on what this means for tennis (money, obvs, and Riyadh end of season finales. And soul searching, particularly for the women’s game).

But what is PIF now?

There’s a gathering of marketing accoutrement; things and words that consumer facing brands have.

There are job roles - a Head of Corporate Brand (Mohamed AlSayyad) - and some abstract aspirational nouns that act as strategic pillars (inclusivity, sustainability, youth and technology).

In golf and football, PIF has been a shadowy presence, working behind the scenes, making big bets, lobbying governments, known for nothing but almost limitless money, the bank of MBS.

Now it appears to want to change its image.

Smiley press conferences, the brand sitting next to that of the governing body.

Open, optimistic etc.

Compare its brand behaviour with its golf image.

I keep coming back to LIV Golf and wondering, if they had their time again, would they have done it the way they did it?

The other thought is that in both golf and tennis, they’ve paid over the odds for the middle of the market, which to Jack Buckner’s point above, is not where the excitement is.

The big winners of the last few years of the Saudi splurge are the rights holders of the Majors and the Grand Slams. Big get bigger and all that.

Brand launch of the week, part 2

Meanwhile, another faceless corporate entity is seeking what advertising agencies sell as ‘brand warmth’.

A couple of months ago, the story broke of a new service featuring rights of ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros.

The prematurely ejaculated JV streamer became known as Spulu (Hulu for sport, geddit?).

See previous: Courting the Nevers

Anyway, this week they gave it a name. And it sounds like a skin complaint.

Billy can’t come to school today, he’s got venu.

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