Jeff Shi, Wolves Chairman: ‘How to Succeed in the Premier League & Be Financially Sustainable’

0:00I think people should understand that we are very ambitious and we are not only content to stay in the league, we are not only content to be a mid-table club. We did a lot of review about the last season. I feel the team lost a kind of leadership. We didn't have the clear communication, motivation or disciplines. And so after Vito came and we worked together, the first thing is just try to rebuild the team to talk with all the players to understand what they want. Last January, we did let some players go. sign some new players, then build a new team and a new leadership team. So it shows that the squad was good enough, but we did something wrong off the pitch.

0:41I mean, the biggest lesson I have learned in the last 10 years is sometimes when you are doing so well, be careful. Be careful. You have to prepare for different options. Otherwise, if you only go to one pathway, if you fail there, then maybe no pathway to come back.

1:01Hello and welcome to The Business of Sport, the show that takes you behind the scenes with the industry's leading owners, operators and athletes. This week we're delighted to welcome Wolves chairman Geoff Shee to the show. Having been at the club since 2016, he's been a key part of the club's rise from championship survival to top half Premier League finishes and European quarter finals. Currently enjoying their longest run of Premier League football, there's a lot to be proud of, but the last few years have been challenging. Jeff hasn't done a huge amount of interviews. With the club surviving a tricky period last year when their top flight status was at risk for half of the season, now is the time to talk to the fans and wider football community about both his ambitions for the club moving forward and how he believes a club needs to be run to bring both stability and success.

1:43He's candid in his reflections, it took him a while to understand what it really takes to run a club in this country, but in this era where there's a demand for access and insight into our top teams, a Premier League chairman keen to come and open up on his philosophies and development plans like this has to be admired. From signing top European players while in the Championship to building for the future with Vitor Pereira, it's time to take a look inside Wolverhampton Wanderers. We're delighted to welcome Jeff to the business of sport. But first, some words from our valued partners. This is digital fitness coaching at its peak.

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4:27You'll be ready for whatever's next with this account that's designed for efficiency and built for business. Click the link in this episode's description to sign up and get your £200 welcome bonus. This reward is only available until the 7th of July 2025. New Revolut business customers only. Feature availability varies by plan. Fees and T's and C's apply. Jeff, so excited to have you in the studio. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you a lot for having me. Very excited for it. It's been nearly nine years since you took control of walls, I think. Yes, nine years ago I came to the UK by myself and traveled here.

5:07Then to come to a new town I never know about. So nine years is quite a good journey for me. What did you think when you arrived? You came from Shanghai, a city of 20 million people, towards a much smaller place. I think because I watched football a lot, even in my childhood. And the Premier League or the Championship, I know a bit. and we feel commercially there is a chance to promote the club to the Premier League and we feel the chance and we came. So I think at the beginning we didn't know much about football at that time. But we are working more for business side. So when we feel a chance to come, we come here to invest, to try to do something here.

5:53What was it about Wolves that made you so interested in them? Actually, I did know Wolves a lot and i i played a football manager you know so we used to love yeah yeah we spent all summer playing football yeah i knew wolf camp the one just from that that game but i didn't watch a lot wolves in the primary because they only had four seasons during the last maybe 20 30 years and so i i knew more about wednesday about united sheffield united or ipswich or whatever so but not too much about wolves then but we talked with west brown first and because at the time west brown owner jrm peace wanted to sell the club and they were in the prime league then so we talked with him for three months but we felt the price too high they are trying to sell for 200 million ish i thought come on we have to invest 200 million then maybe spend another 100 million to stay up forever so it's not a good investment but at the time still morgan knew we are trying to find a chance then he spoke with us and i i flew to the uk to meet him in his house and a massive house and then then spoke with him and then eventually we found the deal is quite good and 30 million ish at the beginning then we invest maybe still 100 million but we can be promoted i think commercially or financially, it's better compared with the other project.

7:26So that's why. So we came here to find the right project to work in. So it's literally one-sixth of the price of a club very close by. Just because they really had a Premier League place, that shows you the value of competing in the leagues and how that could change when you move in between the two. When you came in and you were in the championship, was the first thing that you looked at to figure out the football side so that you could get the performance to the place where you could then get promoted and play in the Premier League? We didn't know much. The first season, 2016, 2017, was a nightmare for me because first, I think I didn't have enough knowledge about the league at the moment, championship even.

8:07Two, we took over the club in July. It's very late, you know. And the EFL, I think, had gone through a long process to approve our takeover. Then eventually when we finally sign off all the paperwork, it's mid-July already. And so we only had maybe one month to prepare all the transfers. And then the head coach, Kenny Jackett, warned me. And in person, he said, Jeff, if you don't do anything, we will be relegated. So we signed maybe seven or eight players. And in a rush, eventually, fortunately, we stayed up in the championship for that season. But it's a nightmare. and it's something we have to go through yeah can i ask you said that you played football manager and fell in love in some ways through that how much of what you do is like football manager and how much is very very different oh a lot a lot if you want to talk about the game i can talk with you for 24 hours your football manager is one of my favorite games you know so the first difference is in football manager if you play the game you know after a long time playing you know several players will be always good right so for real world football no one knows you you can sign a player you feel good and but the next day he is injured or the next day he didn't do well whatever so then also another thing for football managers i think more or less you can find the formula or whatever the shape how to play and you have to try and test at the beginning but eventually you you know what's the best way to to go through but for football the challenges are always evolving you know so every year is different and you can play this way you have a good success then the next year maybe you will fail so it's changing every year every day every month and you have to adapt and learn very quickly you said you can sign the players and sometimes they do well sometimes they don't who signs the players for you i think normally the manager will tell us and what's the positions he want to sign and then what's the profile and maybe he will give us two or three names he knows very well but we will check all the names then we will finally propose maybe two or three names for every position to the head of coach then he will say yes or no so it's like a conversation both parties have the veto rights you know so we can read her play if we feel sorry no no it's too expensive for us whatever or he can beat her player no Jeff and I don't think the player is good for my shape or my style or whatever so but only when both say yes then we will go forward but it's a constant mutual waste conversation and yeah just like that which happens more often you veto them or them veto you i think it's it's very rare to go to the final veto step you know sometimes we have the chemistry we have we don't need to say anything he knows me i i know him you know so we we know and more or less the player can't go through whatever so we will not go to that step okay veto jeff you can't do this no i said but But it's more we try to respect the coach's view and try to find a way to help him.

11:30But he also understands the philosophy of the club, the financials, for example, the balance about age groups and old players, young players. But eventually, I think we help him try to find the choice. So veto is a kind of maybe too strong word. It's more about common sense or common understanding about something in general. But it's not every coach doing something like this. Some coaches, maybe they just don't even try to have the chemistry with me. So it's tough. Yeah, really. But that's really important, isn't it? For you to be able to be collectively successful in a football club. The relationship between the performance team and those running the business.

12:12If you don't have that, isn't it hard for you to deliver in the ways you need to and for the team to deliver? If you can't have that, the coach can't stay longer. So for example, you know the story. I think we once have a coach and just said you have to sign someone or I have to leave. Then eventually, yeah, we compromised. We signed Rose Blair, but eventually he left. So no matter what happens or whatever. So I think if any coach, he wants to work in a club for a long time, like more than two or three years. it's necessary owner management leadership team and the coach have a kind of chemistry and a common understanding about what the club wants to do and the identity the limitation and also the potential the ambition it's so important how do you look at the development of that performance team you're managing a business and you need them to be able to operate to deliver the best results for you on the pitch you've had you know Nuno who's doing incredibly well at Forest now you've had Lepatagi you've had then Gary O 'Neill and Bruno Laje very different people what do you look for in those people to be able to deliver for you I think two things the first thing is about they have to be very good because in the Premier League it's very hard to be a coach because you are facing another 19 top coaches in the world and maybe the best 19 coaches in the world so you have to be one of the best so sometimes we work with a coach he's very nice he works with us very well very professional and working very hard but if he is not good enough i mean on the pitch to coach a team or to face change from other teams in the prime league with top players it comes to the job and also number two if you are good enough but you can't work well with us for the chemistry for the corporations for the understanding then also not working so it's very hard it's it's so difficult to find the right coach for any primary clubs that's the reason and the character wise background wise and the ability wise and it's not easy you mentioned several different coaches you know great in many different respects i think of like sir alex ferguson success is often defined by continuity and sustainability the same thing how much do you think about wanting to ensure consistency versus changing it up when it needs to be changed up yeah i think may united is a good example so they they used to have a very long period of success with one coach but when they change the coach and it's tough i understand how tough it is because when the coach has a quite a strong fingerprint there then it's very hard to change it to build new system about this and for us i think in modern football in wolves and we are trying to have a leadership team and for maybe four or five or six people doing different things you know so i think when you have the leadership team then we try to manage the jobs leave the head coach maybe not too big things to do just to try to train the players try to get players then and doing a good job then try to decide what to do for the match day or whatever and also to support the head of coach and mentally or whatever and i think eventually when you do a teamwork it's easier to do some succession plan otherwise when you allow the coach to do everything first he may not be happy to do everything he's not happy he's too busy whatever two he thinks what you are doing you know so it's my job or then eventually he's not happy he may leave eventually when he leaves and we may feel tough to do more things and to find the success or to build something new so wolves i think in the last 10 years has gone through the first period of time to rely on hugely on one coach but we don't do much you know so then until now we start to think about to have a team and to maybe have different teams to be expertise on every separate areas then try to give the coach maybe an area for him to focus on then eventually we can be more sustainable for the future is there a coach you think you cut the cord on let go too early it's very hard to say yeah for example like the last one gary maybe we cut the tie too late i think the team has lost the form and mentality but normally we cut the tie too late so we should do it earlier so you know just because when you work with a coach you start to build a kind of emotion attachment to him you know so it's like a team then you talk with him for every day every morning every night then when you decide to do something with him and you feel emotionally weak in your heart you know so But scientifically, maybe you should do something more decisively.

17:17It's a hard balance to strike, isn't it? Because there are some managers where if you cut the ties when there's a demand to cut ties, especially from a fan base, you wouldn't have had a lot of the success that comes with it. Sometimes time is needed in football, and football is not very good with time. We generally, as fans, want things done immediately if they're not working now. But when you're having to do that, and then you go out and bring in a new coach, if we're looking at last season, You actually brought in someone who's now integrated well and effectively you secured the position in the Premier League, which the fans were really worried about when Gary left.

17:49How has Vito transformed the club this season to be able to now, as you've said to us before we came on air, look ahead really positively to what's coming? Yeah, we did a lot of review about the last season. I think actually we have a good team. And even when Gary was a coach, I think we have an okay team and not so bad and try to yeah to to drop in the bottom three for so long and but so we did something wrong because at that time i feel the team lost a kind of leadership you know so we didn't have the leadership we didn't have the clear communication in the dressing room and we lost a little bit discipline and when you don't have the leaders there then eventually you feel the team lost a kind of motivation or disciplines and also to freestyle play and in any game you know so that's the reason so after Vito came and we worked together try to address the first thing is just try to rebuild the team you know we have a we had a new captain you had a coach new coaching team and to talk with all the players to understand and what they want and they try to let some players, they are not happy, maybe they have to go.

19:05So I think last January was almost perfect for us. We did let some players go, sign some new players, then build a new team and a new leadership team. So that's what we have done. So it shows that the squad was good enough, but we did something wrong off the pitch. When all of this is happening, communication with fans is always the hard bit, but it's also some of the most important bits, building that communication line and trust how easy is that for you to do yeah for myself i think of course i can only talk about myself myself i think i made a mistake and maybe i tried to stay away for the ball for a while i think after the promotion to the prime league we we did really well right so we went to europe and we were sevens twice and i felt maybe i don't need to do much i because i i'm not from football industry.

19:59I have more interest. I like games, I like videos, I like movies, I like music. I think maybe we can do more about something else and I can focus on that and maybe leave the people here to do the job here, whatever. So I suppose in the last few years, I tried to not stay away, but maybe don't spend enough time here, whatever. So then now I realized I have to to be inside the training ground the building and try to do something until one day I can find one or two guys and to do my job here so that's from my personal side and it's difficult because you know football team they need a leader to tell them what to do and to to show them what's the right way to do so if I intended to live a bit then people start to feel a little bit disoriented you know so and then yeah i think maybe it's my personal mistake then now i come back so for example after january and december i spent every day in the training ground 24 hours talking with all the guys whatever then next season i don't know i hope i hope i can find the balance you know just yeah but it's very hard because i feel we can have a team to do the same job as i'm doing but i feel eventually maybe they needed to see you here to to talk with them so do you feel after the last six months of doing that do you feel now that that is the way that you need to operate here to run the club yeah it's not ideal for me you know so i i've been in the industry for almost nine to ten years you know but this job is it's very interesting they needed you to be be stick to the training ground even even when they're in london not not right and they have to been the training ground because the players the coach the people they want to see you in person they want to speak with you in person and also when you are they are in person things are different so i i i don't know to be honest i have no idea how to solve that what's different when you're there in person i don't know i just uh for the first year for example 2016 2017 i tried to stay in shanghai because my home was in shanghai then so my family was in shanghai then i tried to travel here every two or three months for women's here then maybe in total three months in a year in waffampton it didn't work so so then then after that season i decided to move the whole family here you know my daughters my my wife to just to move then eventually things worked you know Then after that, I try to diversify my interest a little bit to different things.

22:46Then things not working very well. Then when I try to focus, I don't know. I just feel maybe it's like a company. You need a CEO always to be there and then to get the ideas across. You mentioned before we came on air that you're trying to do things differently. And you've also talked here about esports. You've talked about broader interests for you. How are you doing things differently as a football club? I think for two reasons. First, I want to say why. Okay. So for example, the first reason is about commercial side. If you really want to put Wolves to be a big club, for example, as big as Man City or Man United, you have to look at the market here.

23:26UK has maybe 60 million people, right? So they have maybe, I don't know, 10 sound clubs, 92 professional clubs, whatever. So every club, the interesting side is every club has a solid fan base. if you think about the population of the country and all the clubs, the market is so saturated. So it's very hard. For example, if you are a West Ham fan, it may be impossible for me to convert you into a Wolves fan. It's impossible, right? So even the team is doing well or not, vice versa. So then you think about commercially, if you think about the growth of the club and if you really are ambitious, try to reach the same fan base that May United do have.

24:09What do you should do? So that's a question about why. Then another thing is about myself. I think, I always believe and football is a show, movie is a show, TV show is a show, music is a show, esports are a show. So all the show business, they are similar in nature. They have to have the fan base followers. Then you can try to talk with them, to speak with them, make them emotional, attached to what you are doing. Then maybe they will pay for that. you know so i suppose that kind of idea can be extended into different categories so that's my personal interest and i used to be a ceo in a video company in china i used to work in a gaming company for a long time you know so and so that's my personal interest so yeah two reasons about why how then we can talk about this just can we just pause you said commercially quite a few times you about kind of the investment benefits before about owning a club you come from different industries and you understand business as a ceo the pnl the football teams looks horrendous they continuously lose money year after year after year i mean the losses are substantial for wolves and for every club that we have on these are seemingly not good businesses where do you get the confidence that commercially it is a good investment?

25:30I think depending on how you do the business, the trend is not good at the time now. And when we invested into the Premier League 10 years ago or 9 years ago, the championship, I think then it's still okay, not too bad. But now after some owners, they came to the league and they tried to invest a lot, they didn't care financially at all. And some were even trying to break PSR rule or whatever. I think you're right the financial environment and for a sensible owner or commercial guy it's bad because you have to compete with the reckless spenders on the pitch but also in the meantime you have to look after your P &R or whatever so it's not good but I hope one day it can change because the industry will adjust to itself when I think all the owners they can't keep spending unlimitedly for a long, long, long time.

26:28So I think the industry will look at itself and in the mirrors and then maybe try to learn from the lessons or whatever. But you have to be patient. For every industry, until one day it's quite mature and commercialized and all the owners, they are sensible, you have to wait maybe 20 to 30 years, whatever. So currently, yeah, financially, commercially, I think for owners, we are in a better moment because not because of us because the league is quite divided now and maybe there are 10 owners like us we care about financials we care about the sustainability but another 10 maybe they don't care at all you mentioned that the kind of conditions changing in the markets which make it a tougher business to run financially in in finance we say that markets can stay irrational longer than a company can stay solvent okay yes the question is how much are you willing to lose to wait before markets regain rationality the first thing is you have to make sure you are the spend the money most efficiently so so I think we have an index called a capital efficiency so for every dollar or pound we invest into the club we have to make sure compare with other 19 clubs and in a long term in five to ten years and and we are maybe the most efficient when investing you So I think we are maybe one of the best in the league now.

27:57So when you invest less but enough, but the capital investment is limited, then you have more space to survive or to sustain or to grow. For example, if you spend one billion into wolves, okay, maybe one or two seasons, you will be good enough. But if a better season comes, you can't revive from that. because if you go down or you have better season, you have already spent one billion. Even you sell the club now, you will lose money for sure. So the important thing is to control the spending in a range and you still feel safe. So it's a little bit like in a bank, you have to have enough reserves in your bank to prepare for the better good moments.

28:46So that's our way to think about the long-term future. Like you said, if the league may come good eventually, but you die before the dawn, right? So yeah, that's what we have to do. If we're looking at some of the numbers recently, turnovers have been, let's say, anywhere between 160 to 180 million, but costs could have been 200 to 230 million, i.e. losing maybe 15 million a year to 60 million a year. How do you balance covering the losses with also what you can invest in progressing the club forward? yeah in our way i think if everything is right according to our business model or strategy we should break even and on ebit level and on net profit level i think we should do this but sometimes we lost money because maybe we were too emotional to do something like spending too much or in a very difficult time for example when we were in the bottom three so we had to adapt we had to react we have to change the coach or change the players then you spend more for that so so for example if every season we are top 10 or 11s or no danger to go down no danger to go up or whatever i think it's not too hard for us to break even for everything but football is not like that so if you ask me how to balance the financial books it's more about the score and how to make sure the squad is right the budget the cost the the competence is right to to compete you know yeah you mentioned emotionality maybe spending too much where do you think with hindsight you spent too much and you would make a different decision knowing what you know now yeah i think we had a big lesson to learn from maybe 2020 to 23 24 i think in those years because we were twice the seventh in the league we thought we should be in top four so we are very ambitious we thought okay and we could achieve there then so we spend more after the two seasons and we try to which is rational because you're making more and more from media rights and from i guess increased ticket sales yeah you can say it's rational but it's also irrational because it's rational maybe for next season you had a chance but it's it's not right if you've you missed that chance maybe how to deal with what happens afterwards right so the wage bill or whatever so i think we gambled a bit and in maybe the third year or the first year in the prime league and we failed we failed and we tried to do more try to reach top six but we failed but after the failure unfortunately your wage bill is very high your transfer fee is very high then it's not easy to adjust back you know so you have to think about a way to maybe to rebuild a team to have a more balanced a wage structure and the cost structure and the revenue structure and to rebound from that but it's not easy now i felt you need a if you fail once you need two or three years to to go through that or prepare time to rebuild a new team so now we are here 24 25 now are here maybe we think we are ready to rebuild or restart again for a new time or period but if you ask me the biggest lesson i have learned in the last 10 years is sometimes when you are doing so well be careful be careful and you have to prepare for different options otherwise if you go only go to one pathway if you fail there then maybe no pathway to come back i have a couple of Wolves connections in my friendship with big fans.

32:33And they said they had a feeling that it was that period of, I think in the year you had Raul Jimenez's horrible injury and you had Nuno leaving. And then after that, he said he felt like there was a challenge to maintain that position. I think, I feel the two years with Nuno in the Premier League and it was not so stable for us because we were a little bit lucky sometimes on the pitch and to win our game. And we played quite defensively, you know, So we played 3-5-2, sometimes 3-4-3, and very deep. The whole team was not so quick. We were a slow team, but we were very quick on counterattack. And we have maybe Adama Chowry or whoever.

33:17I think this kind of style play can't handle well in the league now. But six or five years ago, maybe still okay. And we have a very small squad then. The first two seasons, we didn't have many injuries, and so a small squad, we can compete very well. But all the things happened for two years, and I think that kind of style play and that kind of luck on the pitch can't last for long. So I don't think that two years is a good benchmark. Okay, we can build from that. We can start from that to do more. But we didn't know that then. Now I look back, I thought, okay, It's like that. But then maybe we thought, okay, we could start from there to do more.

34:05So actually, too early success is not good. Too early success is like an illusion for you to feel you are doing so well, but actually you are not doing so well. And also, apart from the first team, the club itself, from the structure, the staff, the leadership team, they are not also ready. And it's more about Nuno's one-man team, so just to do all the job. and the club haven't or didn't support him enough on what we should do. And then eventually when he left and we have to rebuild a new team. Sometimes, for example, I learned a lot from Brighton, for example, and they almost got into the league together with us.

34:45And they were one year ahead of us. But the first three, four years were tough for them. They were always bottom half and sometimes close to the bottom three. and for a moment I don't feel they know what to do but eventually they came good because they learned from the starting three or four years now they build their own strengths now and so we are we were very good at the beginning but we didn't achieve that because we had a good foundation from the club you know so then we try to adjust to then eventually now I'm trying to build this kind of foundation in the club and to sustain us for long-term success in the future you know when you think about sustaining for long-term success in the future and kind of going through the peaks and troughs of rebuilding and kind of building that foundation again where do you think wolves is that in the rebuild process that is now the time to reinvest again heavily into players is now the time to maintain how do you think about where you are i think it's if you want to summarize one thing is about the understanding of Buffalo so the understanding of Buffalo from me from the team here from from the staff here and the front everyone from a physio to the head to the sports scientists to to the people in charge of communication to the coach to the player to everyone so how to make the club as a whole as a team to understand how to compete in the prime league and i think that's something we have evolved and i think we are almost there now just i say otherwise if you don't understand football enough sometimes you you are so lucky to win something but eventually you will lose so yeah i guess my question is bluntly do you need to spend again to win again i don't think so i think we can still spend with the budget we want to spend and is that budget the budget that you sell we mentioned football manager and if you sell a million in football manager of players you can invest a hundred million is it like that in real life no it's not really like you spend 100 millions then you sell 100 million it's like for example if you want to break even so for example you look at the pnr and it's a kind of a good angle to think about how to spend so for that if you when you spend 20 million for a player and normally they sign for five years for example then by amortization maybe like uh 4 million a year contributing to the cost to the pnr whatever then because you'll break up the payment into five-year payments not about the payments them it's about the the counter lengths for the player so amortization is based on the counter lengths of the player so that's the reason why chelsea wants to sign 10 years you know so yeah but if you look at the piano if you want to break even you can think that way or you think about the cash flow you want to break even you can think that way but not it's rare to think like that we spend 100 million we sell it's not the same because if you think about the cash flow the cash flow will be paid year by year for a sale so it's not like all the money will come now if you think about the P &R the cost for a player will be amortized for the country lands so I know it's easy to think that way but in real life football world we don't think that way yeah but it's hard as between real life and then managing fan expectation again isn't it because fans will see big numbers in newspapers they see kunya and ainori going for x value and then they see that as a total they'll add it up and they'll expect that to come back in so do you think it's important to be able to explain how that process actually works to make sure that they don't get disappointed with the outcomes of should you say your business in the transfer market?

38:38Yeah, I'm looking forward to share some view about some knowledge or whatever, or common sense in, for sure. PSR, so far I can tell you, some people in the industry, they don't understand. Because PSR is about some understanding about financial regulation, about amortization, about something like this. You know, people don't understand that. then so I think I'm happy to to share something with the fans and they know how to amortize even they know what's the right way to do the financials whatever if even they know how to balance the account they don't want to see that they want to see still you spend because they are either they are very ambitious to do something for next season or they are scared maybe the team will not do well so sometimes there is a mind trap now in football you feel you spend a little bit more you feel safer it's it's for your emotional value in your heart but actually science tells you it's no difference but you still want to spend which player did you sell that you least wanted to sell i think uh in the last nine or eight years i think we shouldn't have saw that Diego Jota I think at that time I spoke with Nuno and we may sell one of the players maybe Diego Adama whatever then Nuno chose Adama to stay you know so because he thinks maybe Adama was so important for how he played but we saw that they did of course at the time Diego was injured a little bit too much you know so he was injured for two months then two months again or whatever and not playing so well in the last three four months for us but he went to liverpool he did so well and i i was very happy for him he was a very good guy and smart boy so so but if you ask me if i can change the history i wouldn't have something who did you buy that was benefit of hindsight you wouldn't buy again But yeah, maybe the worst deal is Patrick Couturne.

40:52So we bought him in the third season, whatever. Then, yeah, but his character was not suitable for UK. So I think maybe his style play maybe more for Italian football. So yeah, I think he's a nice guy, but I just feel we signed him. How much did you sign him for? 18, was it? 18 million euro yeah yeah but he he did it very very well in AC Milan then you know so then we may be yeah we may be a little bit attracted to his history in AC Milan a young boy whatever a little bit but not scouted enough about what's the style play in the prime league you know sometimes you are attracted by the name or whatever so that's something we have to learn yeah There was a time where you were signing some absolutely incredible players, should we say, that the major top Premier League teams were chasing.

41:48Ruben Neve is a perfect example in the championship. That was amazing. Right, and you bring them in to play for you and be a part of that project. Also then the relationship with Mendes and being able to leverage the influence that someone like that has to bring the players in seems to be really influential. How do you work with someone like Jorge to build the value of the club and the playing squad? First, I want to say the industry is such strongly linked with agencies. So agencies, especially big agencies, they are very strong in the market. And fans may think from two clubs saying, we sign, we sell.

42:23It's not really like this because every player, they have one agency alongside them and advise them where to go or whatever. So all the deals are linked strongly with the agency. So you need agency help. If you just say you don't like all the agencies, then no deal will happen. Even now for 17 years old or 15 years old, they have agents, you know. So it's very hard to bypass the agents. So what I would say is if you have a good network with all the agencies, not only for George, they will help you. And of course, with a professional way, right? So then we knew George even before we came to the UK to buy wolves, you know.

43:05So we were good friends. And I know how he did really well in Portuguese markets and so many boys from a younger age and from him to become a superstar or whatever. So his help will be very important to us. And also, it's not only about deals. It's about mutual understanding. And when you have three or four good agents to work with, you know their habits. You know how they think. You know how professional they are. It's easy to do deals because they can help you. they are powerful then if you don't have that it's not easy i'm sure not only for us every club in the planet they have two or three agents very familiar with and they are working very closely together yeah just on that so you call him up and you say hey i want ruben and he says sure i'll make it happen no i think for ruben i knew ruben was a new and the potential high high potential young player then and before we bought wolves i already went to hotel to watch a game and ruben was the captain then at 18 years old you know so so then after two years i remember the names then i spoke with nuno i spoke with george and we decided to bring him but actually at the time i forgot the price maybe 80 million euro something like this and it's very high in the championship at that time you know so and so I thought okay and it's very expensive in the for 18 years old or 19 years old and can we do that and but yet we feel Nuno like the boy very much and so eventually he thought how Ruben played is suitable for how we played at them because he had a very fantastic long pass you know so long pass range and also reading the game very very well He became the anchor of our middle field from that squad.

45:00He was the youngest captain in the Champions League at the time. But for example, if you want to convince Ruben Neves or Diego Gioza to join a championship club, then it's not easy. You needed the help from George, of course. That's where I want to talk about the fan side because this is where it actually comes into everything you're doing, not just on the pitch but off it. It's when you're building a football club like this and you want to do so much more than just the work on the pitch. How do you manage the communications with them so that they don't fear you're losing focus on the football side where they just want players and they just want performance up the table while you're also doing broader work in business, entertainment, esports?

45:35How do you manage the balance? Yeah, the first thing is for me, the first thing is to maybe to understand social media is not all the defense. If you look at the social media, you will feel a lot of very negative or toxic offense are always on social media. But that's the world we are living in because of the algorithm now. And we are living in a social media cocoon, something like this. So the social media always pushed the related content to you. So if you only rely on that, you are not seeing the whole world. So I think when you talk with the fan base, when you speak with them, the first thing is maybe forget about the social media first.

46:23Try to talk with them in person. Try to understand them. So for example, for wolves, there are two phenomena. One is on social media, a lot of negative voice and, oh, Jeff, why are you doing esports? I don't care. Something like this. But in person, for example, when I engage with the fan group, whatever, they are happy because esports help the club to spread across the whole world and then try to make more people know about us. you know so so now wolf i'm something i'm very proud of is 10 years ago nine years ago wolves is a kind of in china we call it a kind of provincial club or whatever so in uh in an area west midland people are proud of the club in that area but out of the area no one knows about it you know it's just oh no one cares but now wolves is a club or a kind of organization and all over the world and the people know about the logo people know about the club so that's what i want to do but of course some fans maybe in local area they don't like that but i think they are the minority you know so so i think just we we try to do something we want to do and also we try to speak with more fans in person to understand what they really think and but also be careful about how to read the social media content because they are not they are partial they are not the fair reflection of the whole fan base what do you think is the biggest misalignment between fan bases and ownership i think one big alignment is we are together we want the club we want wolf to do well but if you want to pick out what misalignment is fans sometimes they think the job is very easy but actually the job is very hard you know so when you think the job is easy or whatever then then you think you should do this, you should do that.

48:18For example, if you say wolves at 16th or 14th, 13th, whatever, in the last three seasons, whatever, you can say it's very bad. All you can say is okay, depending on how you judge the difficulty on things. So I think, yeah, you want to pick out the misunderstanding or misalignment is, I think, the judgment on the difficulty of the job. And it's like you play a game. And if you play easy mode, then it's easy. But we actually, Wolves in the Premier League, we are playing hard mode. Do you think it's been a case of you've given them a taste of what success really can look like in the Premier League, where you participated in European football, you got to the quarterfinals of the Europa League, you finished seventh twice.

49:01That would have been probably far ahead of where they would have expected things to happen when they got promoted. So you had that huge success earlier, and now it's been harder to maintain. Is that a problem within football where you set new expectations to then have to live up to those? I think it's maybe not helpful for the perception from the fans because like I said now if I look back I think the first two years in the Premier League was not stable because we won things by a little bit luck and also it's not a holistic win from the whole club is it it's maybe from one coach or one team or I think it's not sustainable but of course from outside many people feel it should be something we start from right so to beautiful then that's the misconception on that actually the first two years was a kind of barrier for us because we have to maybe forget about that to then start from zero and that's what we are doing now but it's hard to convince fans to to feel that do you think fans are ready to see clubs as businesses no they don't want to see the business they don't want to see for the ball or club as a business but they want to see the football club to be sustainable they want to of course they don't want to collaborate to do you think they care if it's like financially sustainable i think fans want rich owners to keep putting money in and keep putting more money i don't care if it's sustainable just keep putting more money in but if you go to ask the fans from blackburn you go to ask fans from norwich france from water for example 14 teams already were reggae from the after we were promoted you know so if I ask all the teams they have played in the primary gonna Wednesday Wimbledon Sheffield United whatever but Bradford even right so all the clubs if you ask the fans do they want a sustainable club in the primary of course they will raise their hand but sometimes fans people are emotional to one moment you know so they the next season the next season or whatever but sometimes people easy are you to forget about and the 10 years 20 years are important and for example we have been in the league for eight years already and i think it's a good achievement because it's already the longest run to be in primary or in the tier one for wolves since 1976 you know so then hopefully it's nine ten years or whatever but by doing that it's not very easy like leicester you can see that they won the league they won the FA Cup but they were in the Champions League but what happened you know do you think the gap is widening between those teams in the top of the Premier League and should we say the rest on the opposite I think the the gap is shortened so not at the moment so we are at the moment we are more close to Man City than we were three or four years ago because there are more and more talents in the world more and more players they are good at the level then yeah man city or man you can sign maybe the top 10 but we signed the top 30 but top 30 is not so hard so far away from the top 10 you know so i think one thing good about the product is they are trying to shorten the gap between the top teams and us and it's happening now yeah you look at brighton bournemouth fulham yeah forest they were all up there competing for european football yeah now for example at the beginning I remember in the first two or three years when we beat Man City, when we beat United, it's big news for us.

52:30But now it's not big news. It's normal, right? So it's just you win a game against a big team. It's normal. People don't feel it's a surprise. Can I ask you, again, you've spoken commercially as investment people, but fans don't want to see it as a business. If one had a business hat on, I'd be selling the club when I'm seventh and when I'm in europe because the enterprise value would be highest then and my investment aim would be a five-year period i'd be going okay time for some liquidity is how like financial manager would look at it you would have also not spent another three years of 50 million losses so you'd be another 150 million back yes i think of course when you do well on the pitch it's easy to sell the club but we are not planning to sell the club so i think it's another thing and we want to build a kind of brand or company to do very well on football but all on sports and on entertainment and with the same logo you know the same logo the same name but we can do versatile things and then try to build different elements into what we want to do and what do you not do today then that you think will be most impactful revenue wise in five years uh i think yeah like esports we are doing esports but we are not doing esports big enough so for example esports is a little bit like affordable maybe 50 years ago there is a huge fan base in sports but currently there are teenagers there are younger people you know i think that the industry haven't found a good way to monetize from the fan base enough but football has found a good way to do that but time will change so for example from now to 10 years later and whether esports can build a kind of legalized prime league for the future who knows but if one day it happens and we will be like wolves the founding members of the league whatever so that's what i hope to to see is it a brand play or is it a direct revenue contributor to the football side now esports no it's it's about they can get the revenue from themselves so they can sell the tickets they can get a sponsorship deals they can have a good tv broadcasting whatever now they are trying to do this but it's still too small you know so for example top tier esports organization in europe maybe the revenue is 20 30 million pounds or whatever but to compare with the top tier here it's like 500 million or 600 million so the gap looks very high you know does that not actually prove the opposite of what you just said though which i would actually argue i think football teams monetize incredibly badly i think when you look at manchester united it's a five billion dollar market cap circa and some and some and it has millions and millions and millions of fans around every country in the world and actually that shows the monetization inefficiency of football teams because it's a 750 turnover business ah no i think the opposite sorry i i feel football has reached a ceiling for monetization already and there are are not as many fans as you think about that so for example i'm sure many that don't have 100 million fans i think the primarily do a good job to try to build 20 teams together to try to negotiate with all the tv to get a good monetization for us but if you allow every club to go by themselves separated to the market they will feel they're weak because the ceiling we already see the ceiling so i i don't think you don't think there's more room for that ceiling to increase with individual subscriptions to maybe players behind the scenes access exclusive content that we don't have already betting innovations where you can do like in-play betting with advanced data that we don't have already i think we have tried a lot the league has tried a lot and we also have tried a lot and then it's not because the the football industry is not growing the the fan base is growing and there are still more and young boys young girls interested but it's because there are so many clubs you know so yeah the the whole pool is is high the whole pool is big but too many clubs here So for example, it's like you compete with each other.