Kyle Edmund: “When you’re 13 you DON’T really understand the call you’re making” (Ep121)

0:00When you play Novak, the first thing you play all these guys is they have an aura and you feel it. And he even starts in the change room, walking to the court. He's not there waiting for you, I'm waiting for him. And even on the court, you're playing the match, he's dictating the crowd. You feel he has control of the situation. There's no doubt anyone who wants to be a player has like an inner belief that they think they're going to make it. I didn't really say that out loud, but inside I felt like I had something a bit of an X factor that I could keep improving. So as a player, you want to get paid more.

0:27They are the product. The one thing I would say is the slams provide the most money to the sport for the players. Is it up to the Tours to reach that standard? They need to provide more first before attacking the slams. I find it hard initially because I spent all this time and effort for 20 years. It almost feels like failure that you then give up in sort of one day. And I struggled to get my head around that.

0:53Kyle Edmund:Hello and welcome to The Business of Sport, the show that takes you behind the scenes with the industry's leading owners, operators and athletes. As the tennis summer gets going, we're delighted to welcome Kyle Edmund to the show. A former British No. 1, World No. 14, Grand Slam semi-finalist and two ATP titles, there are some serious achievements to put to Kyle's name. That and of course the aura that comes with playing in one of the greatest eras tennis has seen. Having retired last year at the age of 30 after years battling serious injury, we found him at the critical point of reflection. the chance to recognise all he has achieved as an elite athlete and how to put that to use in the future.

1:29Kyle Edmund:The world of top tennis players has been a mystery to many and Kyle takes us through what it takes to not just reach the top but the work that has to go in to stay there. There's no doubt about it this is a brutal industry, a real survival of the fittest. We're delighted to welcome Kyle to the Business of Sport. The Business of Sport is supported by Airwallex, the intelligent financial platform used by more than 200 ,000 modern businesses from SaaS and marketplaces to some of the most ambitious organizations in sport, including McLaren Racing, Arsenal and the San Francisco Giants. The off-pitch problem is simple.

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3:16Kyle Edmund:Fully accessible for all tech abilities. fully customised to how your club actually works, and fully focused on winning the transfer market. The Moneyball era taught us to collect information. Now, the AI era is about actually putting that information to use quickly, simply, and easily. Visit geminisports.ai and see the kind of edge you can get when your entire organisation is working from the same intelligent, high-powered system. Kyle, we are so excited for this. Now, I always consider myself the more talented tennis player between us. Sadly, he grew to like six foot ten and became a beast of a server and now kicks my ass.

3:55But it's so good to have a tennis legend in the studio. So thank you so much for joining us, man. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for inviting me. It's great to be here. Excited to chat to you guys.

4:06Kyle Edmund:It was actually just it was the one thing that we used to really fight about. Really? Tennis. We're pretty close and we were pretty chill growing up. but the tennis court I don't know what it did it just I had serious anger management I still do something about it though isn't it yeah exactly it's that sort of one to one personal battle and very few times how many rackets have you broken so I think the short answer is two but so when I first started playing my dad when I first time I went to court he said if you break a racket you throw your racket you're done you're not you're not playing again and my dad was one of those guys when he said that he meant it and um it was only until i was probably 24 25 in an off season just remote court that the off seasons were going along i was getting more tired getting more um agitated less patience and then just one drill i just had enough and went and uh but i never did it and then um i did it one time in a match again so yeah i i tried not to but yeah when you see like medvedev like just absolutely destroy a racket do you think that's acceptable it's pretty disrespectful to the other player puts everyone in a tough situation is that okay no i think it's i think it's fine when i played I've kind of viewed it as like oh he's lost his sort of you know patience he's lost his composure but now where I'm not playing I think it's great because it's it's like people actually love to see it that's why you know when they give the warning and it's like code violation I guess like for the integrity of everything but it's like what why like what's it actually done the guy's he's the problem he's lost his racket no one else has has lost out and it's been good entertainment.

6:02Kyle Edmund:And he's just showing you that he's rattled. Yeah. Right? No, the only time where it is bad is the grass courts because it puts dents into the grass, which obviously you don't want. But hard court, clay court, I like to see it. I didn't do it loads myself, but it's fun to watch, isn't it? Rather than just walking to the other side and not showing any emotion. What was your favorite surface? Growing up was clay. I played a lot on it. It was good for my game. The way I played, it rewarded shots. but the tour is predominantly played on hard courts I'd say 70 % obviously start the year through to spring before the clay and the grass court season as soon as Wimbledon finishes then you've got hard courts the rest of the year so naturally I found myself transitioning to hard courts and liking them and my best results in terms of tour events and Australian Open came on hard Okay, can we clear something up?

6:51Kyle Edmund:The nationality questioner Andy Yeah I know you as like the British number one that took Andy you know off his perch when was it probably about 2018 2019 yeah you got number one so you're a great British player Davis Cup winner Grandstand City finalist born in Johannesburg yeah then lived in Yorkshire yeah and have kind of got a South African and Welsh parent yeah exactly dad born in Meistag I think that's right and then yeah mum over in Durban Umpengeni in Durban he is in Wales then he went to Zimbabwe and then South Africa and I was born in Joe but a family is predominantly from Durban area and Maritsburg and then I moved to UK when I was three so I don't remember much at all but all our family's still over there cousins and uncles and aunties so yeah I'm very very British now and don't don't really have much much connection there apart from family.

7:49So you went through the whole system the British system the British tennis system came up through the ranks. Exactly, yeah. I started when I was 10 in Hull in Yorkshire, Beverly in Yorkshire. Went to David Law there with Richard Plews. Just started up as a summer tennis camp. Typical, you know, parents put me and my sister in, didn't want us at home during those six weeks. And then it was actually a coach that sort of approached my parents and said, why don't you think about playing more? Because, you know, he's doing okay. and just snowballed from there, started doing a few squads after school, before school, six days till late.

8:28And then at 13, I left home to come to London. And that was when you realised like, I need to commit to this and this is going to be a thing. Yeah, especially moving away from home because I loved playing other sports in school like rugby, football, cricket, athletics. And I did that around tennis. But when you're sort of moving away from school to go to an academy and get tutored, it's uh you know it's a commitment um to do that so i was like i need to be on it now what's that like at 13 like are you playing tennis for like five hours a day and doing school for five hours a day like yeah kind of like you're it's great at that age because you're suddenly shifting from a school focus to tennis on the side where it felt like tennis was the focus of school on the side at 13 years old it's the dream yeah and uh yeah it didn't it didn't benefit my my grades at the end or from my mom wasn't too happy but that that was the reality so you suddenly went up playing a lot more tennis your body's obviously adapting to it um initially i didn't enjoy it just being away from home i think i even had conversations said i want to come out but my dad just said no no stay there and you'll get over it and kind of before i knew i did thanks dad emotionally understanding

9:42Kyle Edmund:exactly so you really having to make a call on this being a potential career option at that early stage yeah which is crazy to think about and i think at 13 you don't fully understand the call you're making you're just making a decision because in that moment it's like this is i feel what i find fun and i want to do but you don't really think about everything beyond that as in if it doesn't happen what do i have to fall back on um what's the backup plan it's just this is it and hopefully it goes all right you know knowing all you know now yeah if you had a child at that age would you say let's roll the dice you're going in the lotto and we'll see if you can make it to the top or would you go we're sacrificing academia we're sacrificing potential career and professional life yeah and it's very unlikely yeah it's the i would say well yes because I got the opportunity to do it I don't feel like I'd ever want to take away that opportunity I think there's a balance of it's really hard to know at that age whether you are going to make it so I think there's got to be an element of being rational and practical and being like well is is this actually going to happen or we just kind of delaying the inevitable so there's that side of it but I would definitely say you need something to fall back on but even with my career that i had i certainly paid back the sort of sacrifice i think with with moving away and financially and the time and effort but even with that i still feel now that i've retired you're still a little bit in the unknown of like what am i doing like what do i have to fall back on so i think that's important because sorry you said about something to fall back on we had dom team on the show and he was like it costs a million bucks to get your child through the formation stages and the kind of training ages yeah to become a pro yeah no absolutely it and we were i wouldn't have been able to do it without the federation there's there's no doubt about that like parents put in money um i was very lucky i was in private schooling and i had to come out private schooling and going to beverly grammar school purely because of tennis just can't do tennis and the private schooling and it got to a point where then i did get some funding to go to academy and probably till the ages of 18 I receive funding but without that there's no chance it happened.

12:13So in the UK you can be a pro without having very rich parents? You can but you need the help and you kind of need to be recognised. So it's that whole give and take of I start tennis at 10 years old so it's quite late and that's a good thing. So to get the funding you need to get recognized which means you need to be good and you need to win some matches it's very hard to get funding just purely off like oh we we like you and you look like you could do something so um there's that balance of i'm trying to play for the future in the long term and improve for this end goal but in the meantime you need some short-term success to make sure you're keeping

12:54Kyle Edmund:on track along the way and i don't know if you i mean i'm sure you would have seen this but we we've had a few conversations with it where now you've got a model almost like it's an equity investment in some players so private investment coming in 100 150 000 pounds let's say and you'll secure 15 of future earnings after the age of 18 for five years and it almost becomes an investment in an asset which sounds hugely transactional and maybe slightly immoral to some standpoints but actually if done right and given at the right stage of that career development and it allows you to go to the more toggle academy or similar exactly and you you do see that i i know when i was growing up and on tour there are certain players that in that time it's very appealing because you're getting the the finance power and availability to to fund your career but obviously for them when you do make it you're then having to give up percentage of your paycheck and then lots of times you see people trying to get out of that and yeah maybe sometimes it's only the way to do it we never really had that at the LTA it was just purely we're funding your career we don't we're not asking for anything back when you make it let's say because you're doing it on your own but there are some private backers that go down that route and it depends I think how savvy you are or your parents as well may help you making decisions of yeah let's take because we really need the money but actually do we back ourselves enough that when we do make it we've then got to accept that we're going to be forking out the whole time percentage wise which you know you don't you don't want to but depends how much in the short term you want to you want to you need the cash basically you know do you remember a moment when you're kind of coming up through those junior ranks and you've made those sacrifices and you're committing the way you did where you were like yeah i'm going to be a top player i i was always quite reserved in that way I never like to think too far ahead there's no doubt I think anyone who wants to be a player has like an inner belief that they think they're going to make it like they think they have something that I didn't really say that out loud but inside I felt like I could do something like I had something a bit of an x-factor that I could keep improving and you could see that maybe with evidence on results but also evidence on on feeling like you feel yourself improving you feel yourself getting closer to players on court competing with them harder and that was always my my way of doing it every stage I went from under 14 tennis Europe to the ITF juniors from the ITF juniors to futures challenges on the tour I'd always go into the next level dip my toes in not break through immediately sort of get a feel for it and then probably six months down the line And then I'd get results and really get momentum to kick through that.

15:49And they say on tennis, you never want to be at a particular level for more than 18 months. So in the futures, you don't want to get stuck there for 18 months. Otherwise, you're stuck there a long time. You really want to punch through those levels to get onto the tour. And that's the way I did it. But I had an inner belief that I had the game or personality or drive and stubbornness to really get through and get to the top. Do you remember your first paycheck or prize money? I don't really. I mean, I had some opportunities with the LTA through wildcard, so it probably would have been that. Certainly the Wimbledon wildcard was, when you look at the numbers, it's obviously even better now.

16:33What was the Wimbledon wildcard for you when you did it? My first one was in qualies, so it probably would have been something around 10 ,000. First round loser obviously goes up. each time to probably like 18 or 20 and then first round prize money these days you're looking at what 70 80. that's that right now yeah yeah for losing for losing 78 something like that i know are the us open australian hopes it's a hundred thousand dollars yeah i mean australian dollars is quite different but us dollars 100 000 something like that is i'm not 100 i remember

17:09Kyle Edmund:a few years and i say a few years ago times suddenly started moving really quickly so it's probably about 10 years ago i remember when it was about 30 grand yeah and i and that was like whoa okay 30 grand to make it and then there was a lot of discussion around uh a couple of years where that money had jumped yeah uh i think maybe there was like 10 withdrawals in the first round where players who weren't fit were coming and playing a minimum because that was such important money to them to make even just from retiring in that in that first match i think come out with crutches yeah that's what was happening that's like a deeper issue in the ecosystem in terms of being in the grand slams because how different they are to the tour and financially it's huge and it pays for your year so if you have the ranking where you know as a minimum i'm getting first round of these slams i know i've got a guaranteed say 250 grand coming in which is huge so I have to turn up at those events I can't afford not to they've done it differently now where they obviously realize what players were doing even players that there's a loop on the system where if you get injured you get protected ranking and someone was exploiting it a lot where you turn up go on court pull out and because you pulled out it wasn't counted as a one of your allocated protected rankings so you kept you kept your allocation protect rankings but you took the check and you just he found the loophole and eventually changed it so now if you're on site you can take 50 of your prize money so the incentive is a lucky loser can get in the draw so someone can play he they pick up 50 but you also take you by doing nothing you take home 50 so I think it's a lot better.

18:56You paid$100 ,000 say for a US Open first round loser now. Everyone's like, oh my God,$100 ,000 to lose the first round. It sounds nice, but you have coaches, you have travel, you have hotels. What is that tax? Straight away we're holding tax, 30%. Okay, and so you're now down to 70%. What happens then? How much of it goes back to you, a player? Yeah, you're right. So the US Open is, they call it US Open Series. So you're going from the grass courts to first week is like Atlanta and Washington, then onto the Canadian Masters, which is like Montreal, Toronto, Cincinnati. So it could be like a six week trip.

19:40So obviously you're paying flights, first of all, to get over there internally with your team. Let's say if you're on the tour, you probably have a team of a coach and a physio, let's say. that minimum yeah yeah i mean people do it different ways but something like that if you've got the cash you do it you're paying them a weekly expenses hotels are on you for them as well um generally coaches are wanting business class flights um if you're of a certain level um and you've got all all that stuff you're paying them you get to new york so yeah you've got all that stuff it adds up obviously the better you do in the end you're gonna make profit but it isn't literally like that's what you get that's what i'm taking home is all that stuff in between and you kind of don't see that of course if you're successful on court you are going to be successful in your bank at the end of the day but yeah you're right for your coaches and your physios

20:36Kyle Edmund:are you so you're paying for their flights and accommodation yeah do you have are they on a salary or are they is it a balance between a salary and a performance related bonus based on your winnings yeah you can do it different ways as in it's whatever you individually agree that person a lot of my career I had a salary and as I went on when I was on the tour that the coach would generally ask for a percentage of prize money which was probably between zero and one and five percent you can go back at them and and debate on that or try and arrange a deal sometimes physios and trainers ask for prize money percentage but i was not as much there it was keen there but at the end of the year as well in the contract was like uh if you're 40 50 30 to 40 they'd get another bonus as well so they're always protecting themselves which you totally get but yeah some people had prize money particular agents as well with players i think uh do that as well uh depending on what you do so so let's if we're contextualizing it you earn just over six million dollars in prize money throughout your career so that's prize money on court yeah that's a 12 to 13 year career yeah so again very conscious that these are numbers and putting into context of life but you're like wow wow, okay, that's incredible.

22:01Kyle Edmund:But then if we're immediately just on the total package, bringing some of those down, plus then a consistency challenge, which I guess you have, that's not taking into account years where maybe you aren't earning as much. When you made an Australian Open semifinal, right? So I'd imagine in that one semifinal, if you lose, you're making as much in that one tournament as you would do in other years. There's accounting for all of this. There's planning. There's creating like a consistent plan rather than living paycheck to paycheck. Even for someone like you, who got to number 14 in the world, you know is this a serious problem yeah it's so that's obviously throughout my career and for the first few years the futures you're not earning money unless you're i would say 150 to 200 you're not making profit you're kind of breaking even at best below that you're losing money that that's that's what I see so and also when I was injured with my surgeries from the ages of let's say 25 26 to when I stopped I didn't make money because I wasn't playing the top events and during the period of 20 months when I wasn't playing I was paying coaches salaries physios fitness trainers so there's a shorter period where I earned a bulk of my money and of course in that time you can afford uh to invest in yourself um pay people a bit more have a uh a traveling say strength and conditioning player trainer rather than at home so there's all those little things but i i was lucky my dad's a charting accountant so he looked after my all my expenses did all my tax returns which obviously playing in all that playing all these different countries is pretty important so he was on that but he was always managing that and i i trusted and left all that to him and i like to just focus on the tennis rather than getting but he would always say uh this is what's happening i let i left him to sort of uh negotiate with coaches as well i didn't personally want to do that um but i was aware of the end what what happened in the end you know what what year did you make the most and how much did you make in a year it would have been 2018 for sure because i reached the same far as australia and i think that was about ballpark 600 000 australian dollars for that one tournament and then throughout the year i won my first tour event what won some masters matches master series matches uh some other grandstand matches as well the crazy thing is one one year 2015 that we used to have um a competition called tiebreak tens and uh i was still i was 20.

24:45we just played davis cup it was the off season and we played at royal albert hall it was the uh this tie break turns basically a tie break to 10. and um it was on the sort of pro size me andy and david ferrer and on the legends was macknerow tim edmund and melice and i ended up winning it and the prize to win it was 250 grand for you know four tie breaks which is crazy and then i said to my dad quite a few times i was like you know tennis is or i said life in general you can have those nights and that financial sort of uh high and then i said for how many ever months nothing you know net nothing so that's that's the difference in terms of being in the right place right time with your ranking your career and tennis is pretty tough in that way you know it's also so funny like the luck though that comes from like tiebreak tennis the role albert hall versus the slugging it out on tour and delayed lounges and this is when i played those guys obviously like the the legend they're retired you know like they're not playing full time and we had just won the davis cup and andy had a long year he played a lot so he had gone on holiday or rested and for air just come back from his honeymoon and uh when we came from day so i still i carried on training because i was like it's a lot of money here i need to give myself a chance yeah so they sort of turned up a bit more uh chilled chilled and the one the other thing that was um interesting is you've you got a appearance fee i think my appearance was 10 and the other guys would have been a lot more especially andy wouldn't have done that for for something low and the 250 grand was the difference so let's say someone got paid 150 200 they only have to pay 50 so the owner obviously has to pay me 240 more and i was on the lowest for sure to be there so he had to fork out the most for the guy who's on the lowest appearance so so you winning was a disaster yeah it was like the story was great in terms of the young british guy winning but the financial was probably no good for him last year they did it so those types of

27:04Kyle Edmund:things increasingly have started coming into sport where players need more financial opportunity we're lucky to be having this conversation now because as of recording only last week the pay around tennis players has been in the news when sabalenka brought um the conversation that's really been bubbling for quite a long time around the distribution of revenue into tennis for those that don't know the grand slams generally pay about 15 to 17 percent of total tournament revenues to the players yeah which is you know netting out should we say it around maybe between 60 to 80 million across the different events to all of those players now that um again seems like a lot but actually when distributed all the way across the field isn't a huge amount when baked into how much money they're actually turning over and a lot of other sports go far more towards the kind of 40 to 50 particularly if you're going into some of the american sports going into the players now from what i've seen the players aren't actually asking for massive recalibration they're asking for about 22 percent of the revenues to go to the players and the top players are the ones that are carrying a lot of this fight yeah which again from people has led to critique going, oh, well, it's not like they need the money.

28:15Kyle Edmund:But that's not really the point of what, from my understanding, they're doing. They're doing this because if you have Yannick Sinner and Irina Sabalenka arguing the case for more money, it's far more impactful than having player number 150 in the world who can easily be dismissed. My point being, we've talked about how money has impacted players and the importance of this. We also talk about the prestige and history of these events and the assumption that, oh, people will always want to play. yeah as someone that's been in this how do you view this situation yeah i mean you said right where do we begin um should they be so as a player yes like you want to get paid more um they are the product of of the sport they're the ones that's going out there so it's really like tennis is a very muddled system as in you have seven governing bodies essentially which is the four slams atp wta and itf and it's really hard to for them to work all together in their own way the slams can do what they want they're not obliged to follow atp rules or tour rules or whatever that is they can decide what they want to do and that's it the atp as well the tournaments are owned by the actual tournament the atp don't own the license to the tournament so Rome Madrid they own their license they can also essentially do what they want to do and if they don't meet standards they will get fined but there's nothing you can really say in terms of an actual number I don't know the answer like what is the answer if it's 22 then in five or ten years it's going to be 25 I don't know how that will work the one thing I would say is the slams provide the most money to the sport for the players.

30:13That is where they're getting the most benefit. Is it up to the tours to reach that standard, as in they need to provide more first before attacking the slams in some way? And the other side of it, like, I mean, so Wimbledon last year, they actually had a net loss on their whole thing, I think, of 70 million because they're probably putting in money in projects and building hopefully the golf course and all those kind of things. But I don't know what the answer is. The other side of it is, is like I've heard arguments in the tournament side where as Wimbledon, as a brand, you get to play. If you win Wimbledon, whoever's won it, the benefits you get post that, you won't get through playing a challenger.

31:05if you win a challenge 250 you don't get a million pound contracts with a clothing company or a jewelry company from that so the opportunities you get from winning by playing Wimbledon is also down the line so and it's not even winning by playing on center court against the top seat the exposure you get is probably 50 to 100 000 instagram followers the other debate is when you get the top guys asking my money is it for them or is it for the benefit of the sport further down so is someone who earns maybe 10 grand uh no more like six or seven grand at a challenger for winning should they be earning 10 grand which for them is a big difference in in that way but is someone who wins two million is it 2.1 so where is it going as well is a big big thing

31:56Kyle Edmund:that's what makes me think that maybe it's rose-tinted glasses but again like if it's Sabalenka or Djokovic or Sinner having these discussions and we're talking about another 100, 150 grand of what maybe they would get. Like they can go and get that for a branded post somewhere or they could do it in another way. So to put this fight in there, I do believe that this is far more about the sustainable top to bottom ecosystem. Because what we've really heard so far, right, is to become a tennis player, it costs a ton of money to do it. And then when you become a tennis player, you're not guaranteed a ton of money.

32:25Kyle Edmund:In actual fact, most of the time, for the majority of players that make it, you've spent a ton of money to put yourself in a really difficult earning position where now I'm going, well, is this a viable career? The sport is going to suffer because gradually people just won't be picking up rackets in the same way that they would have done previously. Revenue doesn't suggest health of revenue. And so if you think about the modern media product that's required today, it requires a lot more investment. Your cogs go up as an institution. And so frankly, they could be losing more money than ever because they've got to provide a better product to the different media providers.

32:58You should actually do it as a percent of profit margin. that's what you should do because you could be having to invest it's a worse financial decision for them like to deliver that product do you see what i'm saying completely the players to me are

33:14Kyle Edmund:actually being quite reasonable in this discussion it is not an unachievable conversation it just feels like there's a there's a breakdown in whatever that communication line needs to look at because players don't seem to have a really collective powerful union no that that's the problem come and you're right compared to other markets what they're getting and they're comparing and that's the whole debate at the minute that uh like there's lawsuits with the ptpa which i actually still don't know what it means but it's essentially a voice for the players uh and i know australian open um settled with them but the other three slams are still in a legal process i don't know what the outcome is that they're trying to get to but yeah the players don't really have a voice in that way but at the same time the i'm pretty sure the tour is owned by some of the players by some of the tournaments there's a split i in general i would like to see more money lower down i don't like how limited it is as in how high you have to be to make a living on the tour how high is that top 50 no like as in profit it's somewhere in the 100 so 150 200 maybe you could make money but not you're not making lots of money but to to have a sustainable career and i think that should be way way more as in top 300 should be able to make a living on your own with the prize money and all that stuff if you think about that prize money being as we said like kind of the publicly reported number of like six million yeah the idea then is that you have like brand partnerships and commercials the problem is with the the players that sell tennis is probably only a handful of players which is crazy and those are the the priority for the rest of the game and i think it's they're quite honest with that with the tournaments or governing bodies that that is the situation doubles doesn't do anything even though it probably should in the uk we're very successful at doubles but it just doesn't do any it doesn't sell as in doesn't make money um there's arguments internally about it uh i actually think they should probably just sell it and someone else come and say actually i want to do i want to make something of this but i don't think it's within the atp's interest because they want to keep hold of the market and control it all if it was a doubles because again really nice idea yeah because doubles is great to watch but when you actually sit down and watch it you know it's really fun it's a great sport like it's completely different to singles the talent yeah yeah but if you separated a doubles tournament from a singles tournament you've played doubles right yeah you were successful in junior you won two junior grand slams in your doubles right so you take that out of the main tournament you're probably not going to go and play those doubles tournaments if we're separating the products because it reduces your as singles players no they'll have no interest and that's why in US Open they did the whole mixed doubles thing before tournament and only singles players could play it so it's a doubles event but only singles they sell people want to go and watch them and also do you think if you had a doubles event I don't think people would go like you go to see the doubles match at Wimbledon because Carl's playing next against Sinner or against Novak Like, cool, I'm here, great, but I'm going to go.

36:39But you do have drapers paired with Pegula. Exactly. And it's actually a really sad thing, like situation in that because you don't want things to drop down or to disappear, you know, in the game. Like you're losing, but the reality is there's no money being made as in the ATP have to fund it and put in the money. Darwin, like survival of the fittest, it doesn't make money. People don't want it. I'm just calling a spade a spade. Let it drop. Yeah, that's why there was a bit of a, well, I've had discussions with players at the NBA and stuff as in get an independent person to take it on, maybe even run it alongside the singles events, but it's marketed and funded by an external or they go off and do their own thing.

37:25Like they go to other venues where maybe you could go to Asia and there's interest because over there they don't get much live sports in China and you know you're just going to get lots of people or India I don't know but yeah.

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38:15Kyle Edmund:It's why industry leaders like Stripe, Figma, Visa, and Anthropic rely on Navan every day. Go to navan.com slash 20VC today to see for yourself. You will also get a chance to win two business-class flights to anywhere in the continental US. No purchase necessary. Rules apply. Good luck. For your commercial point, we've had a number of Olympians on the show and the thing they continue to talk about is maximizing the window that they're in the shop for, basically. That is very, very brief. They win a medal. They're the biggest news for a month and then afterwards it can kind of collapse around. You're like, shit, that's really, really tough.

38:53Kyle Edmund:Your point really around the commercials, I think, was, and we spoke about this a little bit before, all the money accrues right to the top the the right at the top is already earning the huge cash yeah but it's also sport now is increasingly moments you had a moment right you've been around for a while i'm when you got to the semi-finals in australia it wasn't as if no one ever heard of you before but we hadn't seen you that far in a tournament and also this country we get so excited what did that do for you did it suddenly create a wave of interest beyond the court did it feel like a flash did it sustain once you had gone through like what what was that like when you suddenly had that jump in achievement especially in this country it's up or you're you're down and you feel it especially when i made that tournament run you have lots more interest um also it benefited me in my career like financially sponsors um did it after that yeah big time i um what did you sign i signed that year i signed with rolex evian jaguar british airways um a new nike deal so pause pause we got rolex dude this is really shitty brands now we're getting to my mood in the cooler okay rolex yeah they're never gonna pay me okay so i want to live vicarity through what does that look amazing first of all the best thing is obviously the exposure because Rolex is a very sort of premium tennis they invest quite a bit in the tournaments and the slams they have the rights to all the time keeping the slams now and I think they do a few like Monte Carlo and Shanghai but for me it was the exposure it gives you in terms of financially it wasn't huge but you're getting the the timepieces how much is it so you get you get the credit and the credit is like i think it's about 50 000 in my first contract and then i renewed and it it was a bit more not 50 but you you get more budget to purchase more um more uh watches so yeah in the end i what how many have got i got in the end i got six and uh and you can purchase one as well the rolex was not yeah not designed of course our careers roger federer are on another different kind of contract for sure but and sinner um but that it more being associated with such a premium brand is is amazing what you do uh the hospitality as well this is where charlie's like yeah god hiring so evian yeah what i mean i give you credits i hydrate the shit out of you there i've been peeing for four years exactly seriously what so that was um yeah that that was financial i don't often ever don't know the financial but again uh they do very sort of niche campaigns in not lots of athletes are with them like now they have emma alcaraz i think francis tiafo at the time like stan vavrinka was there maria sharapova as well so that was very cool and you obviously get unlimited sort of stock of water and every tournament you play when you walk into your hotel i just had boxes of everyone in the corner so they sent it all around the world and you come into your hotel and you also had to use that at the tournaments so even if the tournament was um on spring or um whatever the tale you had to use every one I'm caught which was a bit of a battle I was going to say who how does that work because normally tournaments you serve I don't want you to to use it but you just have to really fight with it and the give and take you just have to take off the plastic wrapper which obviously defeats the point but yeah sometimes you get away with it sometimes they're very insistent um i'd us open and wimbledon is fn so you were fine appearance days i didn't mind doing but i was always scheduling them in was a night was you know you got to do it back home when you're at the tournaments they want time but that's all part of being a professional athlete and when you were younger you don't think about that but as you get older you realize that's what it entails but um but that was very black and white those things and be like well if you don't want to do it don't don't sign a contract like you know you sign a contract you've got to do it fulfill your agreement um relationships and yeah jaguar was the same you had to do days but i got a nice car to do it so didn't complain and british areas gave me uh quite a lot of nice business class flights which also So it was for my team.

43:58So going back to expenses, they were getting business class flights. I was. There was no money involved, but of course I'm not spending the money. So actually I'm...

44:06Kyle Edmund:So actually that's a really good deal for you if you're being able to travel. That's really beneficial as in I'm not... You know, something that maybe doesn't benefit, like maybe a yogurt brand. Like it's not like it's... But the flights were really beneficial. We'll send you a shout out of Oikos. but this you know coming back to that point so that really australia 2018 yeah was the moment where this type of deal suddenly became a reality yeah exactly and that yeah my agents a big big thing to do that and they got then the british areas thing happened straight away literally i'll finish the tournament and he said you'll find back british areas because when you land uh they're going to do a thing with you so he in the pipeline while the tournament's going he was already arranging that relationship which i didn't know but he was doing that and the idea was trying to align myself a very sort of british brands and i guess yeah evian is not quite that but they were very premium in the tennis world and obviously jaguar and british airways and rolex is such a you don't turn that down so yeah that was the the philosophy can we have a bit of fun with that like proper tennis side you start every grand slam with hope you then start winning a few games games you don't get into stages you've never been in before the next thing you know you're in semi-finals yeah i mean you beat dimitrov right on the way and he was number three in the world that time so you're you're really pushing through like what what was that whole kind of couple of weeks like yeah it's incredible because you're just gaining momentum i had a really good off season i remember that year in end of 2017 um we did a shed load of physical work I'd just got a new coach.

45:48I did my off-season in Bahamas. So basically every day, you know, blazing sun, getting ready for the Australia heat. And I had two juniors with me, and we just put them in a corner and moved me side to side, doing two-on-one drills for three, four minutes at a time, interval stuff, running the track. So I was in really good shape. And I turned up to Brisbane. I won two matches, a beat Shapovalov, and Chung, who actually made semifinals that year as well. And then I rolled my ankle against Dimitrov and it bruised, was blue. I meant to play Auckland, but I pulled out because of that. And actually in hindsight was a blessing because I actually got some rest in that week before Stron Open.