Business of Sport

Ollie is the vice captain of the England cricket team. Last month, with Ben Stokes out injured, he was made captain for the first time for the series against Sri Lanka. He has been a key part of the side that over the last few years has transformed how test cricket is both viewed and played. An insight into what is going on behind the scenes with England throughout this period is something we’ve wanted to dig into from the start of the show. It’s fair to say that the future of test match cricket hinges significantly on the format's ability to sustain the engagement of a changing demographic and provide the entertainment expected by a modern sporting audience.

Ollie is at the heart of this. As tempting as it was to spend the whole time digging into Bazball, while obviously not calling it Bazball because they really don’t like that phrase, this is a rare unveiling of a cricketer's view of the modern game. England’s style has created an air of excitement that now surrounds the test match stage once more, but as Ollie outlines, the future needs to be more than India, England and Australia playing each other. From the view of the players, the ones that sit at the heart of this, how do you do it? 

On this week’s show, we discuss:

How to focus on your priorities:

• Why playing for England will always be the focus for Ollie as long as he is selected in the team.
• What was it like walking out onto the field as England captain for the recent test series against Sri Lanka?
• With a packed global calendar now incorporating test, short form and franchise cricket, how do you prioritise what to play in and what are the consequences of those choices?
• There is a place in the game for all these formats, but they need to work together to co-exist rather than compete aggressively and take players from each other.

A new England:

• What changed when Brendon McCullum took over the role of England coach?
• How important is it to have the support and encouragement of the management team to drive your ambition and performance?
• The value placed on security; it is not to encourage complacency, but knowing you will have the time to prove yourself in the team and not be dropped for one bad performance helps establish great players.
• What makes this England team stand out? How have the players bought into the new ideas and objectives of the management team?
• The importance of experience. Having Stokes, Cook, Root, Anderson, Broad all play in the same team as Ollie throughout his career has enabled him to learn from some of the greatest players in the game.

Becoming a professional:

• Cricket can have some strange pathways to the top. How did Ollie cope with being thrust into the England team after playing 15 first class games?
• With all the opportunity to play so many different styles of the game, has the rise of franchise cricket shaped how youngsters are learning how to play cricket?
• What do the contracts look like when you get into the sport and how does it work between county and country?
• What becoming an experienced member of the dressing room does for you as a player and your ability to act as mentor to the new teammates starting out.

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Vikram is the Director of Business Operations at the England & Wales Cricket Board and is the man in charge of selling stakes in The Hundred franchises. Vikram was a professional cricketer before taking up his position at the ECB, playing short and long form cricket around the world.

Domestic cricket has been under pressure in the UK. The international game is strong, franchise tournaments like the IPL and Big Bash have thrived, but county cricket, the foundations of the game, has struggled to sustain the attention. The Hundred was created not just to form a new short-form league to compete with the major international franchise tournaments, but to bring value back into the English game.

After 4 years of successful implementation, Vik is now overseeing the ‘privatisation’ of the 8 franchises; an opportunity to bring in private investment, injecting millions of pounds into the cricket ecosystem. Franchise leagues are hot property. How will The Hundred franchises compare to not just other cricket assets, but the crop of new teams and leagues all competing for huge capital injections?

On this week’s show we discuss:

New Forms of Cricket:

• Why the sport needed to speak to a new audience to maintain its position as one of the most followed games globally.
• What do you need to protect and what is open to change; how decisions are made to attract a new audience but maintain the integrity of traditional formats.
• The IPL was a game changer and showed the world how it can be done. Is it replicable or a unique product of India’s cricket mad population?
• Short form cricket has helped facilitate the creation of more global sports stars who are integral for attracting a youth audience as interested in following the individual as a team.

The Hundred

• How did the ECB come up with the concept of The Hundred and what were the key challenges in implementing the tournament?
• How does the current ownership structure of the franchises look and why was it set up this way?
• You need the top players in the world to be playing in your tournament. How do you attract players to ensure they participate on a regular basis?
• Why now is the right time to explore the privatisation of the teams, and the impact it’ll have on the wider English cricket ecosystem.
• Salaries: What do the top players get paid in The Hundred compared to other short form tournaments?

Overcoming Crickets major challenges:

• Create an element of jeopardy; you need to have a system that distributes the best players equally to ensure competition remains. How do you do this?
• Tribalism drives engagement. How do you build affinity to new sporting organisations?
• Align the calendar and make sure the top tournaments are not competing with each other for eyeballs.
• Break the gender barriers in cricket. The Hundred combines both the men and women’s teams in the same package. Why is this so important?
• In England in particular, demonstrate that cricket is a sport for everyone. 

Our Partners:

Leaders in Sport 

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WSC Sports 

https://wsc-sports.com/

Tyndall Investment Management 

https://tyndallim.co.uk/

This week we are delighted to welcome Claire Williams to the show. For nearly a decade, Claire served as the Deputy Team Principal of Williams Racing, one of the most iconic teams in F1 history. As the daughter of the legendary Sir Frank Williams, you could say she had the weight of her family’s legacy on her shoulders, but she forged her own path with courage, tenacity, and a relentless drive to succeed. 

Claire's journey wasn’t just about steering a team through the competitive and challenging landscape of Formula 1. It was about breaking barriers in a male-dominated environment, changing the landscape of a sport in need of regeneration, and navigating the requirements to perform at the highest level while fighting to keep her family’s team alive.

On today’s show, we discuss:

Building a Formula One team:

• The Frank Williams story: how did he build on the most iconic teams in Formula One history?
• Work/life balance in the sport is very hard. You have to make sacrifices to become the best. What is the impact of dedicating yourself completely to the perseverance of perfection?
• How has racing changed over the years? From early beginnings to becoming one of the most sought after commercial and sponsorship assets in global sport.
• What are the key revenue streams that fund Formula One teams?

Taking the reigns:

• What was it that led to Claire taking the controls of the team and how did she go about implementing her own ideas in delivering success to Williams?
• The challenge of finding your own voice when the legacy of your predecessor is so prominent.
• The changing role of a Team Principal; how has the job developed and what are the modern TP’s like Toto Wolff and Christian Horner doing differently to the likes of Frank?
• The need for sponsorship dollars. Frank Williams turned down a $40m title sponsorship when he was in charge because he had another one for $50m. Did Claire have the same demand for access to the Williams brand?
• The F1 meritocracy celebrated and favoured the best teams while leaving the others struggling to fund themselves. How did this change?

The Business of a team:

• It is a very expensive sport to operate in. Are Formula One teams worthwhile and valuable investment opportunities?
• The mediafication of the sport has brought in a wealth of new opportunities for the key components to make money, but what do the teams get paid for and what goes straight to the F1 governing body?
• How much does it cost to pay drivers and the key members of staff that run the organisations?
• Value in kind deals can be an excellent way to drive value for new partners. What do these look like?
• The story around the sale of Williams and why it had to happen.

Our Partners:

Leaders in Sport 

https://leadersinsport.com/sport-business/leaders-events/leaders-week-london/

WSC Sports 

https://wsc-sports.com/

Tyndall Investment Management 

https://tyndallim.co.uk/

This week we are delighted to welcome Paul Tisdale to the show. A former Premier League player, Paul went on to manage over 600 games in the football league for the likes of Exeter City, Bristol Rovers, MK Dons, and Stevenage. His time at Exeter delivered a complete transformation of the club, taking them from the National League to League One via back to back promotions. He cultivated an elite pool of talent that included Ollie Watkins and Ethan Ampadu. He was labelled the most fashionable man in football.

The approach to management is simple but so different to what you’d expect. But there is much more to the man than his achievements on the touchline. He has transformed his career to work alongside multi-club ownership models on a variety of projects, as well as venturing into the world of the sporting director, something we have been keen to dive into for a long time on this show. 

The skills acquired in football as both a player and a manager and transferable in many ways. This is an education in how to build a profile across multiple areas of sport and beyond, with an excellent dose of how to be a top manager! We’re delighted to welcome Paul Tisdale to Business of Sport. 

On today’s show we discuss:

The Business of Lower League Football:

• Big budgets are a thing on the elite; how do you operate when you an towards the lower end of football in the UK and strike the balance between sustainability and ambition?
• The challenges of running Exeter City as a cashflow business, meaning it could not lose money.
• Player sales are a key revenue driver for clubs. How did selling Matt Grimes and Ollie Watkins benefit the club financially and what did the structure of those deals look like?
• What are the budgets of a club in League One or Two?
• Scrapping the scouting department was one of the major decision Paul made at Exeter. Why did he decide to cut this key part of a football club?
• “It’s survival of the adaptable, not the fittest”. What does Paul mean by this?

Creating an Identity:

• Building a character than can deliver every week on a touchline was one way Paul was able to deliver success. Why did he do this?
• The power of fashion: dubbed the most fashionable man in football, what was the purpose of looking good in the dugout.
• Finding your place in sport is not something that comes naturally and being able to exist in an environment that has little forgiveness can be difficult for both players and managers.
• The challenge of moving teams is not something talked about enough. In football you are expected to move and slot straight in. It’s not that easy!

Transferable Skills:

• There are few educations as powerful as the one you’ll get in football, but how can it be applied away from the pitch?
• The power of data - this is something utilised by every club in today’s game, but are clubs doing it right? 
• Staying relevant in football is not easy. What do you need to do to ensure there are roles available that may be unlike ones available previously? 
• What next? Would Paul get back into management if he was given the opportunity? 

Our Partners

Leaders in Sport - https://leadersinsport.com/sport-business/leaders-events/leaders-week-london/

WSC Sports - https://wsc-sports.com/

Tyndall Investment Management - https://tyndallim.co.uk/

This week, we are delighted to welcome Charlie Methven to the show. Charlie is the co-owner and CEO of Charlton Athletic. He was part of the consortium that bought the London club in 2023, and was appointed CEO earlier this year. But as many of you will have seen in the infamous ‘Sunderland til I Die’ Netflix documentary, this isn’t his first dabble in football club ownership. 

He was part of the group that took over Sunderland as they attempted to recover from back to back relegations. What followed was the most transparent insight into what happens when it all goes wrong at a club, both on and off the pitch. You can’t rely on the owner to pick up the tab at the end of every month; you have to build a sustainable business behind the passion and fanfare. That’s not as easy as it sounds. 

It’s the realities of decision making at the highest level, the understanding that universal popularity is impossible, underpinned by what goes into running a sports entity as a business.

We’re delighted to welcome Charlie to the Business of Sport.

On today’s show, we discussed:

Navigating Football Finances:

• What did the business of Sunderland look like when Charlie and the new owners bought the club in 2018?
• How to manage going from £200m a year revenues to £20m.
• Owners cannot be left to pick up the bill. A club has to be sustainable if it wants to progress.
• What does it cost to buy a team outside of the Premier League?
• How are budgets spent? The cost of running the academy, first team, women’s team, behind the scenes staff.
• The problem with relegation clauses; why they’re very important but often hard to implement when attracting the top talent.

The Sunderland Experience 

• Balancing the business objectives of a football club alongside fan expectation can be the hardest job of an owner. How do you navigate it?
• There were ingrained cultural issues at the club. How did Charlie go about changing these?
• Managing a player wage bill that was more similar to a Premier League club than a League One club.
• How did they go about turning a £27m a year loss making club into a breakeven Championship team in just a few years.

Buying Charlton

• What did the new ownership buy Charlton for and how does that compare to the current revenues across the club?
• The unique academy set-up that plays a huge part in the successful running of Charlton, and the strength of the local population that feeds it.
• What are the ambitions of the team over the coming years and how are the ownership looking to achieve them?
• The challenge with running a women’s team in an environment that isn’t set up for success; how the FA missed a golden opportunity to make women’s football great.

This week, we’re delighted to welcome Marcos Galperin to the show. Marcos is the founder of Latin American e-commerce giant Mercado Libre. Last year, he bought the Miami Sharks, a Major League Rugby expansion franchise, combining a lifelong passion for the game with asset ownership in a high potential league and market.

There are some crazy numbers in the world of sports valuations, and the opportunity to identify value where it is not yet maximised is becoming increasingly hard. Can rugby make it in the US? Hosting the 2031 Men’s Rugby World Cup is a huge opportunity to build community and engagement in the sport, but a strong domestic league needs to underpin the temporary arrival of a major tournament, and that is what Marcos is looking to help create in Miami. 

Understanding the motivations of owners is crucial to helping fans establish a deep relationship with their teams. This is the story of why one of the tech industry's best entrepreneurs went all in on franchise rugby. 

In today’s show we discuss:

Rugby in the US:

• Why the 2031 Rugby World Cup taking place in the US is a huge opportunity to build a strong community required to sustain attention on the game.
• Major League Rugby is an emerging league with increasing potential to challenge more established sporting organisations in the country; what needs to happen to grow the league?
• What are the key revenue drivers behind teams in the league? Does the league negotiate and broker deals or do franchises have the opportunity to do so at a local level?
• Miami Sharks has a strong South American following and community. Who are their fans? What do they want to see when they go to games?

Running a franchise:

• What is the cost of entry to buy an expansion franchise in Major League Rugby?
• Sports ownership can often be an ego play rather than financially driven business endeavour. What was the motivation behind Marcos purchasing the team?
• It is crucial to form an identity to be able to take out to market and sell to partners looking to work with you. How have Miami done this to build a roster of sponsors many MLS and NFL teams would covet?
• How important has it been to have the right people in place behind the scenes to execute the vision of the ownership?
• MLR has a salary cap to ensure overspending and subsequent financial mismanagement can’t happen. Is this good or bad?

The global profile of rugby:

• Why the need for a global league aligned to the international calendar has never been greater.
• There are not many global stars in rugby, and rugby clubs need to encourage their players to build and leverage their brand to boost the sport as well as the wider ecosystem.
• Riding the Miami wave; how the growth of Inter Miami and the ‘Messi effect’ has created a buzz in the area to take advantage of. 
• The social value of rugby is huge! Why Marcos thinks his time playing the game was more valuable than his traditional education in preparing him for life in the business world. 
• What would Marcos do if he was in charge of World Rugby?

This week, we are delighted to welcome Alexis Ohanian. Alexis has become a prolific sports asset owner and investor, with controlling stakes in the NWSL’s Angel City, TGL franchise Los Angeles Golf Club, and new athletics venture Athlos. Alongside his involvement in sport, Alexis is the Founder and General Partner of 776, an early stage venture capital firm with $970m AUM. He is also one of the co-founders of Reddit.

You add all that together and apply it to sport, the outcome is pretty special. Married to tennis legend Serene Williams, they have been huge advocates for the development of women’s sport. His belief is simple. Women’s sport hasn’t scratched the surface of its potential as an entertainment product, investment opportunity, or social needle mover. Great investors take advantage of untapped value. To do this while elevating the profile of an entire industry is pretty special. 

On today’s show we discuss:

1. $31M in Revenue: The P&L of a Sports Team:

• What are the core revenue drivers for Angel City Football Team?
• How did Alexis convince Doordash to write the largest-ever brand sponsorship check to have the Doordash name on the Angel City shirt?
• How much money does Angel City make from ticket sales per year?
• What does the revenue from merchandise look like for Angel City? How has it changed with time?

2. How to Spend $31M Annually To Run a Team:

• What are the single biggest costs in running a sports team?
• Does Alexis believe that salary caps are good or bad for leagues?
• How much money is spent by clubs on content and software today? How should that change?
• Sports team optimised to be media companies; how to build the profile of your atheletes away from the pitch.

3. More Cash in Sports Than Ever:

• Prices for teams are at an all-time high. Are we in a bubble for sports assets?
• What remains under-priced and what is over-priced today?
• What are the pros and cons of private equity entering sports ownership in a meaningful way?
• Who is the worst sports team owner who despite his mismanagement, still made billions?

This week we’re delighted to welcome Brett Johnson to the show. Brett is the co-owner of Ipswich in the Premier League and Phoenix Rising and Rhode Island in the US. The rise of Ipswich since his group takeover is nothing short of ownership dreamland, seeing the club achieve back to back promotions from League One to the Premier League.

But this is only the most recent success for Brett in football. The joy of speaking to owners on the show is getting access to the people behind the numbers and strategies. Who really are our owners? He has been a key driver of development in the US, building infrastructure, brand and talent in the league under the MLS, the USL. Phoenix Rising has seen huge success over the past decade, from rebrand to new stadium to Didier Drogba, and his new team Rhode Island is set to do great things both on the pitch and in the community. 

Sports ownership is one of the most opaque parts of the sports industry. This conversation draws back the curtain. Owners like Brett are what the game needs. 

On today’s show we discuss:

Founding franchises:

• Identifying opportunity: there are many cities in the US with massive football communities that don’t have an MLS team. What can you create outside of the top system?
• How the birth of Phoenix Rising led to the build of a new stadium, development of young talent, and the recruiting of the legendary Didier Drogba as player and part-owner.
• Location, Location, Location - these franchises are more than sports teams. They play key roles in the community, from employment to infrastructure/real estate to social value.
• Why Rhode Island and what is the opportunity with this new USL franchise?
• There is value in the MLS and no one is complaining, but the league needs to become more than a retirement league. 

US sports leagues:

• Huge value, but limited jeopardy; why it is so hard to facilitate top to bottom relevance in a league season and retain maximum asset value.
• What are the buy-in prices for football in the US? It is rumoured that MLS team expansion franchises are now worth $600m. A USL franchise is worth $20m. Which one represents better business?
• A deep dive on the USL and why there is so much opportunity from a business perspective and value add from a talent perspective. 
• How do these businesses run? What are the key revenue streams and how do you ensure you build a business that relies on a strong foundation not fanciful equity valuations. 

Ipswich & English football

• If you want to be big in football, you need to be in England. This was always Brett’s ambition when becoming a team owner. The next question was which club?
• From being approached by Peter Kenyon to buy Newcastle to deciding Ipswich was the club to go after; what were the key factors in buying the club?
• Open leagues create the most incredible highs and lowest lows, from both the business side and for the fans. Relegation may decrease value, but rising through the leagues can add hundreds of millions to the value of a club.
• The value of English football is so because of the commercial and media revenues it can generate. Can the MLS create that same value without having promotion and relegation, and what is the impact of not doing that?

Carolyn is the co-owner and Governor of current NWSL champions Gotham FC. The NWSL is the flourishing women’s football, or soccer, league in the US. Much like the MLS, franchise slots for the league have become a coveted asset to own, with former Disney CEO Bob Iger reportedly paying $250m for Angel City last month. 

Carolyn and her family’s ownership stake in Gotham was announced in 2023. They also own the NFL’s New York Giants. Carolyn also ran Peloton’s marketing department as the company rose from promising start-up to multi-billion fitness empire. 

The success of women’s sport is a hot topic and while there are concerns over the structure and commercial viability of football in Europe, the US seems to have found a solution. In this show, we find out how. 

In today’s show, we discuss:

How to own a team:

• What is the process like to become the owner of an NWSL franchise? 
• Why the skills and experiences of owners are increasingly valuable as sports assets become more than ‘performance’ organisations.
• Learnings from building Peloton into one of the leading brands in an increasingly competitive fitness industry.
• Carolyn’s family are owners of the NFL’s New York Giants. What are the similarities between owning an established franchise in a developed league and an emerging team in a developing system? 

The NWSL: an emerging player?

• Women's football has been a driver of women’s sport in the US for many years, but a developed and successful league is key to building value into the industry.
• What does the league do well and where are there areas for improvement? How easy is it to implement change?
• Ensuring engaging competition from top to bottom is crucial to the competition’s success. How do you maintain that level of competitiveness and equality within the system?
• Can NWSL teams become billion dollar franchises? What needs to happen to build value across the league to elevate the standing of the assets?

Women’s sport on the rise:

• In recent history, women’s sport was not part of modern culture; the importance of changing the profile of various sports to propel female athletes into popular culture.
• Female athletes have a major role to play in society outside of the sporting environment they operate in.
• Building on the success of women’s football in the US to drive increased brand exposure and experiential opportunity for communities.
• 99% of investment in sport went into the men’s industry, but that is starting to change and the results are beginning to show.

This week we’re delighted to welcome Sean Fitzpatrick to the show. Sean was capped 92 times by New Zealand, 51 of those as captain. A World Cup winner and key member of one of the best rugby union teams, he is recognised as one of the greatest All Blacks of all time. 

Sean is more than the sum of his rugby achievements. He has been an integral part of bringing the now famous All Black culture to wider sport and business. Key ideals such as ‘sweeping the sheds’ and ‘play where your feet are’ have been brought to life in James Kerr’s excellent book ‘Legacy’. We often look at how numbers, revenue, media engagement etc. builds value in sport. Sean explains how mentality and values are the first building blocks in creating the brand that people want to buy. 

This is also about rugby more broadly. Sean’s perspective on the role of private equity investing in international rugby having been involved in Silver Lake’s minority acquisition of the All Blacks demonstrates the value that lies within the sport. But it begs the question, why is the sport still struggling? 

On today’s show we discuss:

The All Blacks Culture

• What does it mean to play for one of the most iconic badges in the world of sport?
• The life of a rugby player before the game became professional in 1995.
• How the culture of the All Blacks transcends sport, and the value that can be extracted by people living a life away from the field.
• ‘Play where your feet are’, ‘when you’re at your best, change it’. What do these sayings mean and what was the role of mindset in creating one of the greatest international teams of all time?
• It’s about the team, not the individual. However is this changing in today’s game with the need for ‘celebrity’ that wasn’t there before?
• ‘I don’t believe in work life balance’; you have to be 100% in'.

Sean & Performance 

• Winning the first Rugby World Cup in 1987 and the story of transitioning from domestic rugby to the international stage.
• The danger of complacency; how being the best can lead to a team dropping their standards. When this happened to Sean in the early 90’s, how did they turn this around?
• The 1995 World Cup in South Africa is now an iconised occasion in sport and popular culture; what was it like to be on the other side of that famous final and Nelson’s Mandela’s drive to unite a country using sporting success.
• Being asked to return to the All Blacks fold on two different occasions having decided to move on.

The Business of Rugby

• The increasing role of private equity in both teams and leagues across the game; why are they investing millions? What do they see as most valuable?
• A lack of global superstars is holding the sport back; the game needs individuals like Jonah Lomu to bring it to the front of the attention economy.
• Experiential is the key to driving value. Create amazing experience and capitalise on a reported 1 billion engagement with the All Blacks brand.
• Building a global IPL/F1 tournament series would bring the entertainment and excitement to the club level like we haven’t seen, but are the barriers to doing this insurmountable?

We are delighted to partner with Tyndall Investment Management for this show. To learn more about Tyndall and their incredible work in the wealth management sector, please visit https://tyndallim.co.uk/

James Kerr - 'Legacy' (must read!) https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/james-kerr/legacy/9781472103536/