Bex Smith: ‘Women’s Football Should Be BIGGER Than Men’s…And This Is Why’ (Ep92)

26:42So the first thing we did is we created men's dressing rooms or men's holding areas for the players, sorry, for the coaches. And it seems like such an obvious one, but that was a cost we actually added in, whereas I stripped out pretty much everything else. And then regulation-wise, the first tournament I went to was an under 17 women's world cup. It was in Costa Rica. I went to a European clubs team arrival meeting and I looked at the girls. I went to like probably five meetings, really good vibes all the way around the first four. The fifth one I got to, the girls were just sitting in a corner, like really totally different vibe.

27:16And I looked around and it was all like male coaches all over the age of 60. Now, nothing wrong with male coaches over the age of 60. all of them were the same, clearly put in for political reasons through the federation. Not one female in their medical staff, not one female coach. So the first thing we did when I got back home from that tournament was I worked very hard to try to change the regulations for the FIFA Women's World Cups. It took me almost two years to get one female in the medical staff and one female coach at all of our Women's World Cups. And once we did it, I then filtered down to the confederations, the then domestic leagues, and it opened up more opportunities for women also to work in women's games.

27:57So FIFA was saying, oh, we're going to do all these coaching courses all around the planet. We're going to spend all this money. And yet there were no opportunities for them. So again, you gave me a rambling question, so I'm giving you a rambling answer, but we need the right structures for the women's game. And they're completely different. And I just got so sick of seeing clubs. And I mean, even one of my great friends, she runs one of the best clubs in Europe right now to this day. And I had her on the phone last week just bitching about all of the bullshit that she gets from the men's club because now that they're doing so well, they want to come in and they want to change this and they want to change.

28:32And she's like, they didn't care three years ago when we weren't at the top of Champions League or playing some of the best games and more eyes on us. And she's like, they don't understand what works in a women's team is completely different from a men's team. And she's worked in it because she used to play as well. And so there's so many issues that are hangovers from the men's that don't work in the women's. And if you want to talk about regulatory structures, I think the whole MCO discussion is a massive one. Hit me. Not literally, but why? You ready? I'm ready. Well, I think the MCO in men's football is almost a swear word now.

29:11It's not looked on positively by many people. Am I wrong? I don't know. You know the men's game very well. We're talking like multi-club ownership. Yeah. Yes. I mean, well, you've got the best example recently with what happened with Crystal Palace and John Texter and Leon. There you go. Yeah. So there's all of these issues and regulatory structures saying that you can't have multi-club organizations, you can't have majority ownership because there's competitive integrity that needs to be upheld, which totally understand. A lot of multi-clubs in the men's game are used for player trading, player transfers.

29:42There's often a pinnacle club that you just sort of basically use the lower tier, lower pyramid teams in different countries to develop players for your main pinnacle club. Right. And I can understand that as a fan that that's not cool. Like we want to play Champions League. We want to have the best players in the world. Why are you, quote unquote, stealing all of our players? So I understand the reasons why in the men's game people don't necessarily like it. But if you take 10 steps back and you look at the women's game, and when I was looking at, I want to look at women's clubs because that's the main driver of growth in the women's game.

30:15And I did some research on that when I was at FIFA, another long rambly story, so I'll skip that. But basically, it proved that the women's domestic leagues and women's clubs are what's driving the growth of the women's game in Europe. So when you look, okay, they're the most important players. They're run completely under the structures of the men, so they can't really do anything independently. Number one issue, brand identity, completely different. So I was like, okay, let's pull that out. Let's look at one club and how do you get that club to sustainability? I'm going to be honest, Charlie.

30:45it's very difficult, if not impossible, because the broadcast deals are not anywhere near going to help with that right now where they are. Obviously, the UK, the US are leading the charge on that. And we'll get there in the other European leagues. They're not there now. The commercial sponsorships, so through the leagues, the centralized commercial deals, they're not there. They're still there. So there's not as much help from the centralized structures of the leagues. And to get the amount of people you'd have to get through the door and the ticket prices you'd have to get to, the merchandise you'd have to sell.

31:17It's a lot for one club, any one club, let alone the fact that you have to build a whole brand identity that's different from the men's to start off with. So there's an investment that has to go into it. When you then look at a roll-up, so you look at multiple clubs across that, it actually then becomes financially sustainable. And so we did the financial modeling around it because I also don't just want to run football clubs. I want to run football clubs in the best possible way that I think we can. You need to pay for great people. And you look at our management team, we have Adrian Farina, who used to run, who was the CMO VP of Visa.

31:53Visa was the first brand when UEFA unbundled the rights from the men's and the women's. They bought the rights to the women's, and they said, we're going to go for that. He then did a tour with UEFA to try to get other brands on board to buy the rights to UEFA Women's Champions League and Euros. And that took quite an amount of time to get new brands on board. But I would argue there's no one better on the planet that understands commercial partnerships from a European women's football standpoint than Adrian Farina. He's one of our co-founders and he runs our commercial strategy and he is driving the shit out of it.

32:30He's awesome. You look at the football side. You cannot spend, it costs, I'm going to just finger in the air, 500 to a million bucks or euros or pounds to invest in and build a proper data analytics platform that you can use within your club, because there's not really anything out there for the women specifically, for recruitment, performance, enhancement, and like a real technical understanding of the game from a data standpoint on the women's. It costs about that much to build something within one club. So that's like not only the revenue, but that's over like the cost of one team in Europe for 80 % of clubs in women's football.

33:11So we want to build something like that. We also have Ted Knutson who started StatsBomb, which is, as you know, one of the biggest data analytics platforms that is used across many Premier League clubs. And he was at Brentford and got them into the Premier League where they currently are still and have, I think they had one of the lowest wage budgets, but we're still at, I don't know. a top 10 team at some point. So that's all through data, right? And so that's what we're building on the women's. You can't do either of those things. You can't have those types of people involved when you just have one club.

33:44You then spread those costs over, let's say, five teams, which is what our potential target is right now of clubs across Europe. And that then becomes actually quite a financially sustainable model, in addition to the fact that you can now sell across a European offering rather than just a Montpellier or French offering. So if we buy clubs across Europe, you can now be involved as a partner, as a sponsor, as a fan in something that is European wide rather than just really local. And Adrian said this really well. He goes back and he was not a jerk in saying it. He was just being honest. He said, I wouldn't open an email from any one club.

34:21It's not big enough for Visa. And so we want to attract those brands that want European presence, either from the US market moving into Europe or European brands that are really looking for something that's different from UEFA, which is really the only way that you can invest in European women's football. So I love it and I hear all of it, but I'll throw one counter to it, which would concern me, and that's focus. Running a club is hard and that's an understatement. So you incorporate, let's say four, across multiple regions and you've just highlighted how important, And some people have invested because of the quality of the team you've put together.

34:58So that's a key thing that I as an investor then want to see. I want to see that team delivering for me. Have you been concerned? Is there a concern that multiple assets in a relatively short space of time can spread it too thin, reduces some of that focus, risks the actual opportunity, the delivery of the opportunity? Absolutely, is the short answer. 100 % there needs to be a very clear operational plan of how we are running these clubs. What we then do is we're pushing all that excellence down into the club. So we're buying people to run the clubs in the best way that we know how. So Paul Buffard is our president at Montpellier Women's.

35:39They've never had a president of just Montpellier Women's. He's unbelievable. He used to run Bordeaux's women's team and the academy. He then went and worked at the Paris Olympics. and did a lot of operations there. So in terms of like finding the right people in the right positions at the club and making sure that we're training them, upskilling them, and then finding like the commercial, right commercial person for Montpellier Women will be working directly with Adrian. So Adrian won't be in the club all the time, but he is there and I'm there because I'm doing player interviews because that's the core of our, right?

36:14So we need to make sure that our operational teams on site are really good. and like not to toot my own horn, but that's what I did at FIFA. So I used to run the Women's World Cups. My role was to train venue teams to run the venues. And these are massive venues across all of Canada, across all of France, because I did the French France 2019. So I made sure that our operational teams on site were completely independent and could run things at the top, top world-class level. So it's a little bit, you know, my background as well. and before that I've realised we should probably give a bit of context for anyone that doesn't know your playing career wasn't bad either was it I mean you're not going to you're not going to give yourself the credit so you played what 74 times for New Zealand captained quite a few of them yeah most of them treble with Wolfsburg Champions League domestic leagues so you played Europe back home here into then executive positions a huge amount of the athletes that have listened to this and i've had some really interesting feedback on these conversations from directly they go oh it's amazing to hear these people but often don't understand like what it actually takes for them to get into these roles and we were talking before and you know you you didn't just walk into these positions right just because you you were being a former footballer you have multiple degrees you've gone into fifa you know you've now raised money for something you've gone and bought a club how did that all come about very quickly and i know you probably don't want to talk about yourself but it's important you know just give it just give it But seriously, because what it does is it legitimizes, again, the point that we just made everything together here.

37:52You need the right people to be in place to do this. You are the right person to do this for this club. Why is the question? Yeah. Well, I mean, I was born in L.A., but my parents were Kiwis. So that's why I had the opportunity to play for New Zealand. Went to college at Duke, studied economics, was basically going to go into finance and wanted to be an entrepreneur because that's my background. both my parents are entrepreneurs have started and sold businesses and so for me it was you know finding the right business opportunities then got picked up by the New Zealand national team made captain in my debut and then there was an opportunity to play World Cups and Olympics and I was kind of like well I might just like put the whole economics degree finance thing on hold you know rather than making this much I think I'm going to make pretty much nothing but like play in Europe, my parents were like, go for it.

38:42You know, this is your passion. You want to do it. You can always come back to that. You only have a finite time to be able to play internationally and see how good you are. So I ended up, you know, getting, doing some tryouts and ended up in FFC Frankfurt, which was at the time the best club in Europe. God knows how, honest to God, Charlie, like I did a tryout and Birgit Prince, who was the Ballon d 'Or FIFA best, like best player in the world for the last three years. Germany had just won the Women's World Cup, I think for the second time in a row. So I was playing with the best players in the world.

39:13She turned around to me in my tryout and she goes, you are too slow. I was like, yeah, I probably am actually, to be fair. So I don't know how I got a contract for that team. I did. I then went to Sweden, played in Australia in the first league just in between and then ended up in Wolfsburg where we went from ninth place to winning the treble. We won the Champions League, played two World Cups, played two Olympics, got my MBA during that time, which almost killed me. While you were playing? While I was playing in Wolfsburg. I was traveling. I was doing morning trainings at 8.30 at Wolfsburg, traveling to Hanover, studying all day, coming back, training it from four to five, then eating, studying until I basically fell asleep with like books all over me.

39:58I literally had books in my bed, which was very not sexy at the time. But, you know, I literally looked at myself in the mirror one day and was like, I didn't even recognize myself. I was so tired. But I just knew that, you know, as a footballer, you're not going to you're not going to make the millions and you're not going to be able to retire. And even the girls playing today, they're making great money. They're not going to be able to retire and not have something after. And then I did my master of psychology because I really felt like there was something really cool happening in the women's game.

40:27I saw it as a business opportunity, but where I found the best success of the teams that I'd always been on and the teams that I'd led was when we had a real clear understanding of how people work. You know, the best leaders, I think, really understand people, how to build great teams, how to motivate their team, how to lead from behind, in my opinion, I think is the best way to lead. I have a great management team. They run with stuff and we check in and I help and I guide, but I don't micromanage. So I think, yeah, I worked at Volkswagen. I had some really cool working opportunities as well when I played.

41:06And then when I left, I transitioned straight into FIFA and I learned a hell of a lot there, both good and bad. How about that for a run through? That's so impressive. But it's so important. And you've talked about the team and very rarely do people come in here and sit in that seat and talk so effusively about the team being the reason why something will work. But it also brings up the challenge between all of this value and independence of thought and how far it can actually go when you sit in a wider system. We've touched on it, but when you sit in a wider system that doesn't necessarily allow you to do everything that you need to do.

41:45You have complete autonomy over your asset, fantastic. But using, let's just say, as I said, media is not where it needs to be. Media is controlled by Central. Central is not good enough at delivering on media. The impact on you as a club is huge. When you're choosing these teams, we go back to the MCO model. How important is the development of the league, the overall structure that you're sitting in with the opportunity presented to you that you can actually buy and own? Sometimes really important and sometimes not important at all. and what I mean by that is the French league we know what the central distribution is we don't factor anything like any huge jumps in that because we have no control over that and that you learn as an athlete very quickly you control the controllables I can't control what the referee is going to decide it doesn't matter I just need to play the best game I can so in our financial modeling there are certain elements that we can control and there are certain ones that we cannot and the centralized broadcast the centralized commercial revenue is not something we can control in our modeling currently.

42:47However, that aside, we have one of our anchor investors is Cindy Holland. If no one knows who Cindy Holland is, Google her. She basically was the VP, exactly, one of the VPs at Netflix. She created their whole original content. She was there when they were handing out the day, selling the DVDs or renting DVDs, you know, those days. She's all right there. And then she went to sister production with Murdoch. And then she's now basically the number two under Ellison at Paramount. running a lot of amazing things. She has incredible ideas, super innovative ways of thinking about broadcast media, how you use media and storytelling to create revenue models.

43:29And so that's something that we're already discussing. You know, we're looking at, we also have Rob Guillermo, he's on our investment cap table. He sat right underneath Cindy and did everything that was unscripted at Netflix. Everything non-scripted at Netflix. That's all the documentaries, all the comedy, everything that basically didn't have a script to it, he greenlit at Netflix. So in terms of like a documentary for Crux Football and what we're building, he is the number one best place person. So there are certain ways where we can't control those things. We can look at the media space still and be really innovative, I think.

44:05And that's, to your point, it's a really important one i also think there's certain markets where broadcast is horrendous but there's a much bigger potential for sponsorship which is our second club that we're looking at so i want to actually read this out because it was too well presented and had too much in there that identifies all of that opportunity particularly from a fandom perspective and therefore from an alternative revenue stream or a developed revenue stream when looking at why the fans are so valuable to women's football in particular. And this is me reading it verbatim. It's the women's football audience is more diverse and inclusive, family and female skewed, which is a higher valued audience than that of the men's game across most revenue streams.

44:45The research shows the women's football audience buys more tickets, more often in bulk than singles, buys more merchandise, consumes more food and beverages at matches, engages with social media content more directly, creating more monetizable moments, makes the majority of household decisions, making it more valuable to sponsors is more valuable to sponsors so it is more valuable to broadcasters okay i'm done i can like walk out now right yeah basically yes one thing i was going to ask you right at the beginning it was very simply you know to understand the real opportunity in women's football what do i need to know that's kind of it yeah and this is where the game has changed so much in the last five years charlie there wasn't enough data there wasn't enough understanding and real business data behind the women's game.

45:33And now we're seeing, like you mentioned, who is that that did that? You. Right, perfect. I never do that. I will never copy and paste something and read it out. But that'll be from like Deloitte. That'll be from Wasserman. All of the reports that are coming out will be from UEFA. These are reports that are, you know, done by very, very legitimate, humongous companies that look at all kinds of sports and all kinds of businesses across the planet. And what we're seeing is finally the data is showing and proving exactly what I've known my entire life. You know, being from inside the sport, I could see so much potential and I could see so many inefficiencies in how the business is run.

46:14And I'm like, that is a business and an industry that is ripe for investment. Because the fan base is massive. You've got really young kids to much, much elderly grandparents who are obsessed with the women's game, male and female. You've got an LGBTQ plus community that has always been driving the game really. So there's no issues in that. You have, I've never once experienced any racism in women's football. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's just not something that's a problem in our sport. So you have all kinds of races, religions, types of people. It's such an inclusive space. So I argue, and I argue very vehemently, that the women's game can and should be bigger than men's football, because you have a much wider, much broader audience base that is all those things that you just read there.

47:10Now, can it be, can it reach its potential? The biggest hindrance of that is the structures that are currently in place. So you already have broadcast deals that are in some cases like 10 year cycles. So getting into prime time is difficult. So it's not going to happen overnight. You have contracts from commercial sponsorships that are four to five year cycles. They've already committed funds into men's football or into NFL or other, you know, sports entities that are potentially long-term contracts. So making sure that we're looking at the structures and trying to change things so that there's space for the women's game, that's the biggest challenge right now, that broadcasters are looking at, okay, if I've already signed a deal that's 10 years with Premier League, and that's why Nikki Doucette from the WSL, which is the league here in the UK, that's why she made the cycle as long as she did.

47:59I think it was a five-year cycle because she wanted it around the same time they were looking at Premier League. How it was before is they did all the deals for Premier League. The WSL then came the next year and said, oh, hey, guys, anyone want to buy? No, we've already put all our money in Premier League. So you have to change those types of structural changes do take time. But I genuinely think the women's game can and should be bigger than men's football. In the current structure, would you buy, will you buy a club in England? Yeah. What appeals and what worries you? Currently, what worries me is kind of what you've touched on before is the inflation of the the prices.

48:37I think there's now clubs saying, oh, well, West Ham is worth 55 million. And, you know, we're in the championship, we're worth 10 to 15. I'm like, you're really not. If someone's going to pay it, great, to your point. Yeah, the value is what people are willing to pay. But when you look at trying to make that a sustainable, like model, very difficult. So I think there's a perception in the UK now that the value of the women's game is higher than what it really should be. I also think that the popularity of the lionesses winning the back-to-back euros is on a very big high. So, you know, arguably the market's at a potential high right now, which is not necessarily where you'd want when you'd want to buy.

49:19But I do think there are really great opportunities still to buy clubs in the UK, which we're looking at and we are going to proceed with where the value is right and the opportunity is right as well. And I think there's an excitement around the Lionesses and the names like the Lucy Bronzes and Chloe Kellys. People now know who these players are and they want to be around it because it's sexy and it's cool. Sport now is as much about the athletes as it is about the brands. Individuals drive attention just as much as the badge on the shirt does. And that has many opportunities created that we haven't looked at before the development of let's call them icons because they are let's the development of icons in the women's game has been so important to raising that profile because they're people to follow they're people to be inspired by young children boys and girls need people to look up to if they're really going to aspire to something and you've had jill scott moving from you know what was a footballer now into let's call it the mainstream yeah lots of different platforms so popular in in everything that she does you've got chloe kelly still playing now with you know just the most incredible yes footballing success but there's there's so much more to that isn't there than than just her it's that it's how she does it it makes you want to to engage with it you've got someone like lucy bronze with the successes that she's had on the and then you know playing on one leg yeah i mean whatever crazy she's ridiculous i love her to death You need those, right?

50:48You need these profiles and these stories. How do we maximize that? How do we leverage the profiles that we've now got to help address some of these things that we've talked about, to help build that value into the game? It's basically the crux of how you build the sport, what you've just nailed. Well done. Well done, Charlie. And you're saying the crux as well. You like that? Nice, yeah, it's good. That's why we did it. I can drop it in the Business of Sport podcast. I've been waiting for that moment. storytelling is the key so when I left FIFA I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do do I want to stay in football do I not there's a huge opportunity in women's where is the next opportunity and for me it was media and storytelling because to be really honest this was in 2018 it was pretty shit I thought that you know there's a lack of media in general and when they do show the women the lionesses or any of the girls that were in the WSL where I was I was living in London at the time I was like, God, they're always seen as victims.

51:43You know, the poor Frank Kirby was at the top of her career. She was doing amazing. They had like a three page spread on her and whatever it was, a telegraphic guardian. And it was all a positive like article. And the headline was Frank Kirby trolled by. And I'm like, why? Why can't we actually just show these women as amazing athletes? And like Chloe Kelly wanted to quit about a year ago. She was done at Man City. She was like, I think I want to quit football completely. went to Arsenal scored you know all these crazy goals all the boys are copying what she's doing in terms of her her penalty kicks yeah exactly yeah funny right oh yeah yeah yeah hate and love yeah yeah yeah yeah it was the fastest harder than any ball was kicked in the Premier League last year Isak scored a goal against Liverpool that was 114 I think her penalty was 115 kilometres and that was something crazy right but again Charlie data we didn't have that data because UEFA didn't have the technology for the women's tournaments that they do now, like the tracking, the camera tracking, all that sort of stuff.

52:41So because we have the data, we can now tell the stories and the insights behind these players as well. Whereas I was seeing this from, since I played, since I was five years old, like the stories in the women's games are unbelievable. These athletes and humans are some of the coolest people on the planet and obviously I'm biased, but we're not telling great stories about them. And the stories is what gets fans involved. And the more fans you have, the more you can monetize. and that's how you create more revenue and increase your value. But because we weren't telling stories in a good way, in the right way, I think it was doing the game disservice.

53:16So I think the media has changed so much. The landscape has changed so much in the last five years that now I get in a black cab or an Uber and I talk to the drivers and they're all like, well, what do you do? I said, working women's football. Oh, that's amazing. Like our lionesses, they'll name five players. That did not happen five years ago. And that's happening all over the planet as well. It's not just in the UK. It's happening, sorry, all over Europe, I should say. It's really shifting super quickly. So it's super important that we're making our players icons. And that's one of the first things we're doing in Montpellier, which is why as a CEO of a multi-club organization that is across all of Europe, I actually flew to Montpellier last week.

53:57I spent two days spending time with our players, just interviews. What works well? What doesn't work well? What do you like? What do you love about the club? What can we do to improve? What do you do off the pitch? Who are you? Like getting to know the players so that we can extract all the value in their stories. And one of the girls had a camera and she's been videoing the whole time. And she's like, do you want to see my video? I mean, great. There you go. We separate out our IG handle, we make a Montpellier Feminin one, a separate one. I'm like, would you do a takeover? Are you kidding me?

54:29Her face lit up. And that we want the players at the heart of everything we do. But I also think that that's not done well in football. On the men's side, the players are seen as assets, their media trained up the wazoo. They're not boring humans, but they're made to look like boring humans. Whereas the women, there's a huge opportunity that we can look at their stories, their backstories, how they connect with each other. look at one of the most famous women's uh sports stars right now in the world elena mar yeah right exactly bigger social following in any male rugby player comfortably yeah easily probably as a global fame it could be one of the biggest but what does she do she brings you in behind the scenes but that independence that content that that ownership that she had over who she was and what she was doing is built now one of the most powerful sporting athlete brands absolutely across global sport absolutely look at megan rapino you know look she's a global icon and I would say most of the people that know her have never seen her play football you know same with Alex Morgan and those are the American players who were fighting for equal pay like Megan Rapinoe is probably known equally well for equal pay as she is for scoring goals what do you think on equal pay I have a really strong opinion about I think the U.S.

55:44women's national team is probably the only team and entity that can fight for equal pay, rightly so. And I think they did deserve it. I think it is a ridiculous argument that's completely out of scope of what the women's game needs talking about equal pay. Like there's just no way the Montpellier men's and women's are making the same because it's a, it's a back to our whole thesis of crux football. The women's game is a completely different industry, market, fan base, consumer base, star people that are the characters in it. It's totally different. It's in a completely much more nascent development place than the men's game is.

56:28So you just can't compare apples to apples. The economics are totally different. But also the establishment of men's football, men's teams can't support the wage bills. Even themselves. Yeah, exactly. So it comes back to your point of building sustainability. You do far more damage. Yeah, absolutely. But equal pay, I think, it always comes down to the broader impact piece. And so, yes, when you're looking domestically, you're looking at leagues, it's Chelsea women versus Chelsea men's. Or, as you said, Montpellier women versus Montpellier men's. Don't have that argument. It's completely different.

57:02But you say the U.S. piece, just for the added context, that's because the U.S. women's football team is so influential in America, correct? And spins off a lot of revenue. Yeah, massive. A lot of revenue for US soccer. But to your point, rather than talking about the tip of the pyramid of how much we're paying players when that's at the very, very top, I believe in equal investment. If you invest the same in a five-year-old girl as you do in a five-year-old boy all the way up the pyramid from start to finish across all the leagues in Europe, you will have a bigger game in the women's game than you will in the men's game, period.

57:38Hands down, absolutely no question for me. But because the women, like girls have always had to practice on, you know, different pitches, don't have pitches sometimes, don't have the same access to good coaching, don't have access to even teams that are, you know, wherever you are in England, you have a boys, you have probably five options for a boys team for your young kid to go play with. You probably have one maybe, maybe that you could drive 20 miles to for a young girl. And that was, you know, only five years ago. It was like, that was the case. so if you give the same access to young girls as you do young boys i guarantee that the women's game will be much much bigger when those five-year-olds are then turning 18 20 25 but that does become that's a knock-on effect of women's football teams being the main course not the side dish right that's it because right now yeah you said if it's a if it is a side thought then it is It's a 5 % of the focus.

58:36And that will come down to, as you said, the academies, the facilities, everything. But if they're individual entities, you're running this as if it was any sports asset, right? So you need to have your own pitches, your own facilities, your own technical departments, physicians, all of the things that you would incorporate in other sport. I'm really interested in this. Well, I'm glad. Naivety. I'm glad. Well, it's a good start, isn't it? We've done all right. And I'm just still, I haven't really been interested. I'm really interested in this. Yeah. I remember we had Jess Ennis on. Oh, amazing.

59:11And she was incredible. She was talking to us about the impact of the women's body in sport and how that just is something that most of us, we just don't even consider. And, you know, she came back from having a baby and, you know, won world championships and Olympic medals again. Yeah. In the women's game, and I really want this from agency rather than like fatalism, but how important is it to appreciate and manage the women's body in football? Having those doctors that are specifically the training schedules, etc. Because women, I think what, six times more likely potentially to have serious knee injuries or certain things.

59:51ACLs in particular. Why is this and how most importantly from the agency perspective, how do you factor that into everything that you build in a club? it's it's massive and i was unfortunately probably on the receiving end of bad medical treatment which is why my knee is basically dead and i can't run anymore but not be fatalist because you've asked me not to my mom said but you had the best time ruining your knee but that aside fatalism i mean by i don't want it to seem like it's an inevitability because you know so it's just going to happen yeah yeah no and it doesn't just happen like you have to proactively make sure that it's a priority because to our point of everything, all the medical structures have been created for male footballers.

1:00:37And again, they've just copy pasted for female footballers. Marion Torrent, one of our players now, two months out of having a baby, we're discussing very quickly how we can get her proper pelvic health, a pelvic health specialist because it's so important in this phase to make sure that she's healing in the right ways, that she can go back to elite sport. And it is very specific. And I mean, you know, you just have, you have a little one now too, and you've seen how probably your wife's body has changed and how it's developed and how hard it is to go back to, it doesn't ever go back to being normal.

1:01:16It's a complete change of their body. So that even aside, the ACL injury, how girls train, how they eat, how they recover is completely different from the male body. And I have some really good friends who are doctors. The Girstima twins are unbelievable Kiwis. So obviously they're amazing. And they do a lot of some of the world leading research on female athletes at the Aspitar Clinic. and one of them gave a presentation once and she said, you know, males share the same number of chromosomes to chimpanzees as males share the same number of chromosomes to women. And I was like, sorry, what? So we're doing all this testing on males and they are literally have the same number of chromosomes shared as they do to chimpanzees.

1:02:12Like that is absurd that we don't do the testing on female athletes. So everything like, you know, at what point should you get protein in your body? How are our muscles affected? The neck strength is another one. So, you know, I was a big, I was a very good aerial player. I scored goals with my head. I was very good defensively with my head. now my neck is so messed up because, and now I'm only finding out that female necks are like 10%, 10 % of the strength of male necks. Now, would I have wanted to do more neck strengthening exercises? Probably not. So maybe I'm glad, I'm probably glad actually that we didn't know that.

1:02:49So my friends who went on to play at NFL, like they used to put weights on there and make their necks massive, but still like, that's a fascinating stat. So how much should you be training headers and what is the safe sort of limit to that for a female brain and neck versus a male brain and neck. I'm 100 % sure that playing in Sweden in minus 20 degrees centigrade, having a frozen ball fired at my head from 50 meters away multiple times for an hour was probably not the best thing for me, you know. So it's super important. It's super important. And it is something that we're taking in. We're doing a lot of work on that.

1:03:30And Ted Knutson, who's running our football side of things, and I have a lot of discussions about, you know, what types of people we're bringing in. A lot of research, a lot of time and energy is around our performance. And what are the support systems that we're going to get in place for our women's teams? And, I mean, obviously we've been doing work on that prior, but it's still, it's a lot because there's not standards out there. Let's jump into a quick fire. Yeah. What do you think, if I say franchise versus open system? Franchise, easier for investment. You know, the promotion relegation, there's a probably, I can, there's an additional risk for an investor that, okay, you get relegated, there's less money coming in from central, etc.

1:04:13But that's why the Crux model, which is diverse, it's a diversified portfolio. You can't get relegated from the Crux football portfolio, right? So one team gets relegated. there's sort of a balance to that from a financial standpoint. I also think from a fan, it depends on what the standpoint is. From an investor, that's what I think. From a fan standpoint, I think promotion relegation is much more exciting. There's much more jeopardy in a league where you could get relegated or you could go up to the next division. And I think that's why fans are so adamant not to create a franchise or a closed league in the UK or in Europe more broadly.

1:04:53there's definitely benefits to having a franchise because you know you're going to be there forever. And so the investment is a lot more secure. I personally prefer promotion relegation. I liked it as a player as well. I think it makes, there's also a risk that if you're playing and you're one of the lower teams in the league, and I know the WSL has this issue, if they know they're going to stay in the league, they don't necessarily need to invest. They don't need to be better because they're always going to just be able to stay in the league. And sorry, when I said WSL, I know the NWSL has this problem because there's teams coming in like Denver, the most recent franchise in the NWSL,$110 million franchise fee just to be able to play in the league.

1:05:37Haven't spent one penny on player development, stadium, nothing. Just buying the rights to play. Just buying the rights to play,$110 million. Bay FC, we had Brady who runs it now and 6th Street bought it, I think,$120. Yeah. She had been in position less than a year when we spoke to her and she had to put a football team literally on the pitch. Exactly. In that time,$120 million. $120 million. And yet you still have clubs. You have clubs now that were in the NWSL a lot earlier on who were like, we don't need to invest. Why should we? We're going to stay in the league forever. All these newbies who are coming in and putting all this money in are just increasing our valuations, making everything that we're doing more valuable.

1:06:17We don't have to. So there's no incentivization for clubs to really fight. Whereas if you're going to get relegated, you got to fight, man. And that's the point of sport. So I prefer promotion relegation from a player standpoint and a fan standpoint. And I think it makes it more interesting for investment. Okay, so based on that, if there's a learning from the US, what do we need to incorporate in European football? Well, it is kind of exactly what we're doing at Crux Football, which is actually pulling, separating from men's football, creating our own entity, which in essence is a franchise, its own existing franchise that is not dependent on the men's game.

1:06:57And creating structures where you can look at a unique brand identity. I think that's massive. Angel City created a brand identity from nothing. How they have involved the community in Los Angeles is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. They built a brand before they kicked the ball, right? They built a brand and they still don't really kick the ball that great but have an amazing brand. And I say that, I've told them that. Julie Ehrman is like, yeah, we struggle a little bit on the football side. And I don't mean to be rude. They're great footballers and it's good football. But the brand is what leads and drives that club and the club's value.

1:07:32Whereas, you know, the football, I think, lags behind. So I think pulling out clubs, running them independently, creating a really strong brand identity. Why do you want to be a fan of this club? You know, and I think for me, success for Crux Football looks like we've built an amazing community that feels like they're, it's inclusive, it's celebratory, it's fun, it's competitive, it's fair, and it's a place where anyone can be involved for the values that we uphold, which is the things I just mentioned, you know. and also you know being on the south coast of France it's a lot more chill down there people have a lot more fun more relaxed right so I think like success looks like that and having a unique brand identity and I think that's what we have certainly learned from the U.S.

1:08:25and that's why we wanted to start Crux Football because I also think entertainment like sport is entertainment but you know when you look at football in in Europe on the men's side it's often just about the 90 minutes. You go to the stadium, you watch the 90 minutes, you have a shitty hot dog, you have beer, you have to wait in line forever. You may or may not get in and out of the toilet in time for the halftime. And people are used to that and they're fine with that on the men's side. On the women's, it's like, nah. Why do it? Nah. No way. We have to find unique ways to make sure that that match the experience is really way beyond the shitty hot dog and waiting in line for a half an hour during the halftime.

1:09:03Like we need to create ways and reasons why people can get into the women's game and it doesn't have to be the 90 minutes. One sponsor then that you'd love to have. This is your chance. Who do you want? I really like, and I'm a little bit biased and you'll find out maybe hopefully why soon because we're hopefully, well, we have some fun things coming. But I think L 'Oreal would be a really interesting one. They're French, they're global, they have incredible ambassadors, really strong females leading the brand, really champion women of all races, ages, sizes. I think they do a fantastic job. and there's probably an opportunity for them to shift the brand image a little bit just from oh it's a makeup brand or it's just you know talking about beauty but looking at more of performance and beauty from a different angle I think is where we could add value to someone like that and they can tell different stories through your athletes that's it that's it how important is performance when building the business side we just joked about angel city That's what made me think of that.

1:10:14But, you know, sometimes, and I love using this example because it thrills me, but, you know, Manu's a great example of a team that's been pretty rubbish for a long time, but the business side still does really well. So, you know, how important for you now building this without that legacy to fall back on is winning alongside the business? Yeah, it's a great question, Charlie, because I think this is one of the conversations we had really early on at Crux Football is what is our definition of success? is it that we get all of our teams into champions league well currently that's going to be an issue with the mco structure right which i know is changing and relaxing and is a conversation we're having you know with uefa and other mcos but i think the definition of success for us is we win we have a really great product that people want to come and watch because we play nice football we play good football we're super competitive i think the competitive element of football is super important.

1:11:09I think if you play a great game and you leave your guts on the pitch, you know, if I could take any player and sort of say that is the epitome of crux football, it'd be a Lucy Bronze, right? Like, my leg's messed up. I'm just going to sit here and strap it up while everyone else gets, you know, water. And I'm playing on a broken leg, but I'm going to fight like hell for my country. We're down 2-0 against Sweden in the semifinals of the Euros that we won last time. Everyone thinks we're gone. I'm just going to go up. I'm going to score a header. Come on, let's go. Like, let's do this. You know, like that passion and that commitment and drive to doing something that you believe so strongly in, that is like what I want to build with Crux Football.

1:11:53And it is an impassioned community that really feels strongly that we can use a platform that's across Europe for other things other than football, you know for for women's rights or for you know whatever it is that we believe in that we use that power of sport for cultural and societal change and to move the needle forward on different things and also just to have a bloody good time you know like I want people to come to our games and be like this is just fun and we did that when you know I used to build we built clubhouses at the women's world cups and I remember we did like fashion shows and we had art exhibitions and we We had like a film festival and people could just come and enjoy in the context of women's football, but they didn't have to watch the games if they didn't want to.

1:12:37So I think success for us is to build a great community. And I do think if you're focusing on the processes of building a great team with players that feel like they're really supported and have what they need on and off the pitch, it becomes a place where other players want to come. And I know that because we talk all the time. Players always talk. And they know that if it's a shitty environment, even if they're getting paid a lot, they're going to stay for a year or two years, they're going to leave. If you build a great community and a family vibe, which is what Montpellier already has, players will come to us.

1:13:10And so if we're focusing on the processes of taking care of our players for the right reasons, building a great community around that that is celebratory, the success on the pitch will come. So it's not an objective. It's not a focus. it will be an outcome of doing all the things right. So with that in mind, it's 2030 and we're looking at Crocs football. What am I looking at in 2030? We have five clubs across some of the best opportunities and leagues in Europe. We are very close to hitting sustainability as a group. So hitting profitability after five, six years across our five clubs. we've built an incredible community that is supportive of each of our clubs in Montpellier and the other five clubs where we where we have but also really interested in the crux football name brand you know at the holdco level what are we doing to try to continue to drive the game I think one of the reasons why I started crux football was for sure I saw so many inefficiencies in club women's football and I knew the importance of it in driving the growth of the women's game But I do think that we're also creating a platform that will allow us to step into other elements like the ECA, like UEFA, like FIFA, to be able to help shape and drive the growth of the game more broadly.

1:14:33You know, we talked about media and broadcast. Why don't we think about things differently? You know, why don't we grab Cindy and some of our other investors who are incredibly innovative thinkers in business and other industries from tech or media? How can we use our investor community to help really drive the growth of the women's game in totally unique and innovative ways? so I think in five years we'll be looking at doing some really cool innovative projects with our five teams but also potentially with other club teams leagues in the media space that haven't been seen before in the women's game or women's sports or it doesn't even matter about women just in business you know it's a hell of a way to wrap it up but in all seriousness it's amazing to have this chat I said to you so long how important it is that I think we have it and so being able to talk through both you know women's football macro but also with what you guys are doing independently and setting an amazing standard for how you can buy and operate in this environment is so important so thank you for coming in and doing that with us thank you so much for having me i think just the fact that you guys want to talk about this in such a massive podcast where you have so many incredible guests that are doing such amazing things really shows i guess the legitimacy of where the women's game is and where it's going to go.

1:15:54So thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Also, it's just a good chat, isn't it? Should we go have a beer? Yeah, let's do it. All right. Time to go. Awesome.

1:16:04Thanks so much to Bex for joining us for one of the most eye-opening and revealing conversations we've had. I've had the pleasure of getting to know her and have always found the way she speaks around women's football to be completely fair, justified, ambitious, and realistic. There can be a lot of fear around speaking openly in talking the game up, but there is no denying the opportunity for women's football to become a global sporting powerhouse is a very realistic one. It is a traditional sport being built in a modern environment that doesn't need to be built on the foundations of the men's game as it was 170 years ago.

1:16:38It'll take people like Bex and Crux to deliver this. Time to see what they can do with it. Now, if you want to see more from today's show, you can do so by heading to YouTube and typing in business of sport. But before we leave you, some words from our valued partners. For years, protein bars have been the go-to snack for a quick protein boost, but finding one that truly delivers without adding excess calories and sugar has been a challenge. Most bars offer around 20 grams of protein, but often pack in 350 calories or more, along with a hefty amount of sugar. This formula has remained unchanged for decades until now.

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