Top of the market? Benham's £500m Bees bet; Barca's DIY shirt; F1 and women; 10% off SportAccord; Netflixification; Evolution of Fan; The Super League incentive, by numbers; Best sports books ever
Overthinking the sports business, for money
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With a thought-provoking conference programme, busy exhibition and a host of networking events, evening receptions and cultural activities SportAccord is your chance to organise a year’s worth of meetings in a week with executives from across the global sport ecosystem.
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Hitzlsperger is an important voice on the Saudi question
I’m going around asking for people’s views on Saudi because I want to interrogate my own starting position, which is anti.
People I know, like and respect have moved there or planning to open offices.
The why is obvious; to quote Slick Willie Sutton when asked about why he robs banks, ‘it’s where the money is’.
But is that it? Hitzlsperger says not.
Top of the market?
Matthew Benham has instructed Rothschilds to get £500million for Brentford.
Benham is famously one of the smartest guys in the room.
So what shall we read in to that decision?
It’s a question I asked Thomas Hitzlsperger this week.
If you haven’t got to it yet, Apple can now be of service.
As of this week, Apple’s podcast app comes with transcripts of every Unofficial Partner episode.
It’s available on the latest IOS upgrade. Give them a try and let me know if it’s useful.
The podcast search function has lagged behind other media, making discoverability a problem.
This improves that. A lot.
Jim Salveson likes them, which I’m taking as a good sign.
World Book Day - The 35 best sports books ever written
Esquire’s list has a few omissions, most notably Moneyball and Netherland. But a good thought starter.
Barca shirt - Hope v Reality
I hope Matt Hymers is right. I fear he isn’t.
See previous note on Cruyff and that shirt.
F1 DNA
Wonder how this story will go down with F1’s new, post-Drive to Survive female audience.
Last year, a global survey by Motorsport Network found the average age of F1 fans had fallen from 36 to 32 since 2017.
Female participation had doubled. “This has resonated with a different demographic, a younger demographic, a female demographic,” Ian Holmes, F1’s director of media rights, said in an interview last year.
If the numbers are right, 40% of F1 fans are now women.
Netflixification
Netflix Exec to The Ankler: 'We’ve Now Talked to Every League, Every Athlete, Every Team'.
In the span of a decade, Netflix has helped decimate linear TV, not only gobbling up series that once would have anchored a network lineup but also taking discarded network series — from You to Manifest— and making them hits. That’s left traditional TV clinging to live sports like a life raft: 98 of last year’s top-100 broadcasts were sports (overwhelmingly, NFL). Now Netflix appears to be coming for them, too.
Fans and tech: hope and fear
A fun evening at LiveScore’s Soho HQ last night to celebrate their 25th Anniversary.
Sam Sadi was our guest for a live podcast.
The theme of the conversation was our relationship with technology, bouncing off their new report ‘Evolution of Fan’ - you can download it here.
AI was a big talking point, inevitably.
Our response to the subject is revealing - the excitement of its potential vs the fear of the consequences.
To gauge the mood in the room, I asked a series of idiotically simplistic questions and asked the audience to vote Yes No Brexit style. All complexity and nuance out of the window.
Questions such as:
AI makes us safer. Y/N
Are you comfortable with AI replacing these human decision makers - Judge/Heart surgeon/Pilot/Teacher/Referee
Regulation v Free market: Who should decide what AI can and can’t do? Government/Independent Regulator/Developers/Users
The responses in the room were roughly in line with the general population.
Here’s one I’d like your opinion on:
The Super League incentive, by numbers
As the FT’s data journalist, John Burn Murdoch was unmissable during COVID.
He’s good on football too.
His summary at the FT Business of Football conference shows how power shifted over the last decade.
In 2013-14, the big two in Spain (Barcelona and Real Madrid) and top three in Serie A each made more from the distribution of league broadcast revenue than the top three in the PL
By 2022-23 every Premier League club earned more from their domestic TV distribution deal than did any Bundesliga or Serie A club, and the top half of the PL were all earning more than Real Madrid and Barcelona
Bournemouth’s net transfer spend (€64.9m) from 2021-24 is greater than that of Bayern (€36.1m), Juventus (€35.8m) and Real Madrid (€21.1m)
Nick Greenslade was the Sunday Times sports editor and is now an MD at Teneo. He did a good summary of the FT event.
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