What Super Leagues will do next; America divides on equal pay; Cordeiro's comeback; FIFA without Coke; StepUP to a new gig; What would Moritz do; Golf's Charley Hoffman problem
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What would Michael Moritz do?
Golf just had its Super League Super Sunday moment.
The disruptor has seemingly been bested.
Complacency can resume in earnest.
But the problem remains: Golf’s normal isn’t really very interesting most of the time.
The tournaments are designed to satisfy the players not the audience.
And by players I mean all of 156 of them.
More broadly, the Tour as a concept is flawed for the same reason.
Very few players sell tickets - see The Charley Hoffmann Problem below
So, what happens next time?
The Premier Golf League and football’s Super League failed for similar reasons.
Both ideas were undermined by the nature of their ownership.
Revolutions aren’t a top down thing.
They can’t be led by Florentino Perez, JP Morgan or a Saudi prince.
Next time - and I’m convinced in both football and golf there will be a next time, because the strategic weaknesses in both sports remain exposed - the disruptor will learn the lesson. The money won’t lead.
What’s Sir Michael Moritz got to do with it?
The most interesting recent challenger story has been the Professional Triathletes Organisation (hear our pod with CEO Sam Renouf on UP179) .
Why? The ownership structure created by Michael Moritz, founder of Sequoia Capital and arguably one of the best investors of the last twenty five years.
This gives the players an equity stake in the property.
Here’s Moritz on how equity stakes could de-risk sport’s star problem, written in the FT at the time of Messi’s departure from Barca.
Imagine if every football club set aside about 25 per cent of its equity for player compensation, requiring that players sell their shares upon leaving the club. If Barcelona had compensated Messi with a combination of 50 per cent cash and 50 per cent equity, both he and the club would be far better off today. Two years before Messi joined the club it had revenues of $123m which, during the pre-pandemic season, had risen to more than $1bn. When Messi made his debut for Barcelona in 2004, the club was probably worth about $400m (precise figures are unavailable). Today it is worth about $4.8bn. If, as his value became clear, Messi had been granted shares or options, for about 10 per cent of the club, that would be worth about $500m today.
This from Conversations with Tyler, one of my go-to economics pods:
Now read The New York Post scoop here:
The Post has learned exclusively, though, that the PGA Tour was presented an alternative league opportunity in recent months that would squash the threat of the Saudi league and its controversial endless supply of “sports washing’’ money.
But, according to three independent sources with intimate knowledge of the proceedings, the PGA Tour squashed the alternative concept.
“A player-driven opportunity was brought to the PGA Tour that was financially backed with one of most respected people in finance who already has a long-term relationship with the PGA Tour,’’ one of the sources told The Post.
A new league, part owned by the players, and backed by betting money.
That will come back at some point. I’ll put money on it.
The Charley Hoffman problem
You probably haven’t heard of Charley Hoffman.
Most golf fans haven’t heard of Charley Hoffman.
But Charley Hoffman is emblematic of the tours’ strategic flaw, the one that the Premier Golf League is/was seeking to exploit.
Although endearingly, Charley Hoffman himself doesn’t appear to be aware of this fact.
Last year, the 45 year old earned $3million without winning anything.
So he’s made a career being someone better players beat. He’s essentially ‘the field’, or Norwich.
This is lucrative work. He’s making a fortune being what PRs call ‘meat in the room’, people who fill out a press conference to make the client think it’s a success.
You’d think Charley Hoffman would be ok with the hand he’s been dealt.
But apparently not.
At the recent Waste Management tournament he was cross about being penalised harshly for hitting his ball in the water.
So he took to Insta, writing a post that elevated his wet ball problem to the broader issue of a Saudi-induced existential threat to the PGA Tour.
“What a joke….It's still mind blowing that a group of amateurs rule the professional game of golf….You wonder why guys are wanting to jump ship and go play on another tour…Sorry Jay! (Monahan) We need to do better at all levels of the PGA Tour…If we don't we won't have a tour any longer!
Following his post, Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau—two of the big names linked to the Saudi rival circuit—lent their support to Hoffman. “I feel ya,” Mickelson wrote, with DeChambeau chiming in “Agree wholeheartedly.”
Whatever you think of Mickelson and DeChambeau, they sell tickets.
In any Super League, they are the Supers. In golf this is loosely defined as: the people who beat Charley Hoffman.
Which begs the question, what happens when the Supers have no Hoffmans?
How does that work?
America is divided on equal pay
What happened?
US Soccer Federation (USSF) and the US Women’s National Team settled a six year fight over equal pay. The players will receive $24m. The USSF has promised to equalise pay between men’s and women’s national teams for all competitions, including the FIFA World Cup.
Why is this happening now?
Next week the USSF elects its next president, whose tenure will include the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico.
The two candidates are former president Carlos Cordeiro and acting president Cindy Parlow Cone, who took over two years ago, when Cordeiro was forced to resign after his legal team filed court documents that implied men are better than women, so should get more money.
“…by ignoring the materially higher level of speed and strength required to perform the job of an MNT player. A reasonable juror could conclude that the job of MNT player requires materially different skill and more responsibility than plaintiffs’ job does, while also taking place under materially different working conditions,” .
Cue a shitstorm: Coke, Visa, Nike et al took umbrage and Cordeiro walked.
Cordeiro left the USSF in a shambles. And that’s saying something, given the organisation was led by Chuck Blazer for thirty years, until he was flipped by the FBI as part of their FIFA corruption investigation…
So Cone for Prez? Maybe…
Given the context, Parlow Cone appears a shoe-in for president.
But the word is that the election will be close.
So this week’s news feels very strategic. After six years, the pay dispute is suddenly settled days before the election.
Cone is a former US international player and has Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and every pro-women, equal pay supporting liberal member of the USSF selling her campaign across social and mainstream media under the banner of ‘forward not back’.
But elections are not about the candidates, they’re about the voters.
Read the threads that followed the news of this week’s equal pay settlement and you’ll meet the usual culture warriors doing their thing.
Carlos Cordeiro’s bet is that for every USSF constituent in thrall to Megan Rapinoe, there's plenty who’d like to see her taken down a peg.
We’ll see.
In the meantime, hear Cindy Parlow Cone on tomorrow’s podcast.
All roads lead to FIFA
How much money US women footballers earn depends on how much money FIFA pays US Soccer.
The success of the last few women’s World Cups has led to a change in commercial strategy in Zurich, discussed on last week’s podcast with Ricardo Fort and Shaun Whatling.
Hear the pod here and then read Shaun’s excellent analysis of the changes here.
A crude summary is, they’re carving out women and digital to sell separately.
This is a signal that FIFA believes in women…(discuss and show your workings).
And it may make them more money - Visa came in early for the women’s package.
But as Ricardo Fort put it in last week’s podcast: the problem for FIFA is not raising money, they have money, its how they distribute it that’s the problem. And that distribution remains massively loaded in favour of the men’s game.
One other thing.
Again, from our FIFA pod, which felt like something, given Ricardo has run both Visa and Coca-Cola’s global sports programmes...
Ricardo Fort: FIFA should be paying more attention to their existing sponsors. A FIFA World Cup without Coca-Cola and without Adidas is not going to be the same. It would not have the same value. FIFA needs these companies more than these companies need FIFA today. Unless they start paying attention to these partners, they may not be able to get new sponsors and retain their current sponsors, which is going to be a big deal.
Coke has a lot of investments. Visa has a lot of investments in football. Adidas has endless investments in football. And there are a lot of other people that treat these companies better than FIFA does.
Strategy Director - Sports Partnerships & Sponsorships - FUSE
The Blurb:
We’re looking for a rare strategic talent but not necessarily someone from a pure partnerships and experiences background. This is because your challenges will be broad. When it comes to partnership strategy, for example, you’ll be tasked with partner identification, creative platform development and rights identification/activation. When it comes to consultancy, you’ll understand how to help organisations/rights holders strengthen their commercial propositions or develop new marketing programs.
What’s more, you’ll have an innate understanding and appreciation for data led solutions and be curious enough to interrogate the wealth of insight resources we have at our disposal - you’ll play a role in shaping our data and analytics offering, a key part of our strategic armoury.
Tell ‘em UP sent you: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2909850808
Not going to games is a decision too
Sound the Simon Banoub is right klaxon.
Going to games is a decision.
Watching games on telly is a different decision.
One is not necessarily a substitute for the other.
And - whisper it - going to an event can be really boring.
Geopolitical Activation Idea of the Week
When United players took the Paint the Aeroflot Plane Challenge.
(Thanks to Professor Chadwick for the steer).
