Mirwan Suwarso: From Bankruptcy to Champions League in 9 Years | The Como Story (Ep128)

25:08Mirwan Suwarso:like that that's the development right of the modern sponsorship package that i think a lot of organizations don't understand because what traditional sports entities understand and this is probably why you haven't brought in a load of sports people to run the business is i understand that you've got inventory here so i'm going to put uber here and i may give you a few of our 100 hospitality seats isn't that great uber isn't that great that's what you guys want right but really what they want is no they want better access and distribution across the region they want an operating partner i mean our sponsorship with uber's like now it was less than a million last year in terms of how much cash up front today we're signing a deal for over 10 million for the same uh space but what are we going to become we're going to be acquisition partners customer acquisition partners one of the things that we've done there's only two ticketing platform in italy operates in the football space we'll be the third we created our own we've tested it all last year is blockchain based and it will be how do you call it it's a ticketing merchandising and fnb ecosystem anything you buy on this platform you'll get a five percent cash back what did we have we didn't have a finance permit to operate in Italy to store the cash back but what we wanted to do was that have this e-wallet concept so that the money can go there and then the user can then go to their next cafe to buy a cigarette if they want to.

26:27But then the money rotates in there. So we need a partner who can allow us to do that, which is what we just did, in which we will be rewarded for each time someone converts becoming a user of the platform, thus an acquisition customer for their product. Because it's a ticketing platform, it doesn't sit just with us. We have offered this to other clubs. our goal within the next year we should have six other clubs in Italy using our platform and within two three years we will have 30 clubs in Italy using our platform and the bank or the partner will have enjoyed new acquisitions and we would have benefited from the new EDCs we helped them install and one of the unique things that we have was when we first came to coma totally was like we didn't know what we were doing.

27:21When we realized a lot of the businesses over there was serving to the tourists. And one of the biggest problem was managing inventory. Moms and pops shop, they have to sell to the tourists. That means they have to buy and take risks. So why don't we say like, why don't we make those souvenirs for you? Why don't we make the merch for you? We'll take it away. We'll take your problem. We'll give it to you on a consignment basis. You can take it off the top. Whatever we make, we reinvest into the business and we make more products. What have we got now? We have over 900 touchpoints, we call them.

27:57Moms and pops shop, pharmacies, hotels that distribute these products. Do we make a lot of money from that? No, but we have the relationship. Now, when we work with this finance partners, these are touchpoints we've created for them to put the EDCs, to put new things with them. so for us this model we want to replicate it in as many towns in Italy as possible can I ask you when we think about the 150 160 that you said that it's incredible scaling in two years when you think about then what that pays for what is the single biggest cost line of the business players what percent of the business what what is that I don't know I can't I don't even I'd never come to that I know it's a lot is it like 50 60 probably maybe more.

28:43Maybe more, yeah.

28:45Mirwan Suwarso:But then, you know, this is the benefit, right? But there's a big difference between having wealthy ownership who can spend money and being able now to spend money within the regulations that you have to live with, both domestically and in a European way. So really, your model is super valuable because ultimately, as a fan, you may think, oh, there's a lot of distraction there off the pitch. No, no. But the more money you make in these ventures, that feeds back into the club that can be recognized as direct revenue, the more you will be able to spend on the footballing side of it. But the big challenge of that also is that you need to spend to grow in the meantime to maintain your position correct so we you're right you know we've identified our biggest costs are the players so can you monetize the players of course because uh the players that we buy are of high value just to give you an illustration we bought a 20 year old left winger um a sandy owl over the winter last season for 12 million and we had an offer for 60 in the summer wow um so you as a committee then sit down and say hey we can make 48 million in profit here and you chose not to the bookkeeping standards or the accounting standards the longer you keep the player it could be the longer the profit is the higher the profit right because the book you count off the book value as the amortization comes is reduced taking away the book value you can make more money we have another one this year that we bought for 18 or 20 I can't remember I think 18 18 plus bonuses and we had an offer for him for 55 but we understand his value is about 75 so we can hold on for another while and at the same times we bought a player for 2 million in the winter last season we put him to Ipswich the last season he didn't play with us we bought him for two we have loan fees and bonuses from the club that loan him for 2.6 million and we have an offer for 10 million already for him so that's pretty good upside from that side of the investment so from the player standpoint we can see the player trading is one way of monetizing them but as we spoke earlier at the same time for a player like nico pass for example there's somebody we have while we have him what businesses can we create with him not just merchandising putting his t-shirt you know stuff with him but what are the businesses that are relevant to him that we can create and build.

31:00That's what this what we're trying to explore now. Asan Diaw is a player from Senegal that we was in the World Cup. They didn't play much, but we recognize maybe we can create a product with him to target a certain market, certain demographics, certain geography. So it's a new area that we want to do. We recognize very early we're too small. Como is too small for a market. We're not Arsenal that's known all over the world. Lake Como is more famous than our Como football team. So that's when we knew, when we started creating merchandise, we were creating more Lake Como merchandise than we were making Como football merchandise.

31:42When I look into our revenue, the 13.7, 14 million revenue of merchandising last year, only 38 % were jerseys. The rest, if you open our shop, shop.comofootball.com, forgive me to say that. But you will see that we sell Como hiking collection, Como sailing collection, Como running club, Como racing team. We don't have any of those. They're just lifestyle products that sell extremely well. We've created that. And that's when we said, like, you know, our chief brand officer, his name is Rigi Villaseñor. He owns a brand called Rude. He was also the creative director of Bali at some point. But Rude in itself is a very well positioned premium urban lifestyle products, right?

32:34His t-shirt retails about$200,$300. His hat is$285 for a hat. his clothing is worn by celebrities and athletes, you know, like Jay-Z or Paul Pogba. They all wear Rude Dybala. And I said to him, Rude, in the last game of our first season in Serie A, fourth jersey, can we put, instead of a sponsor, put Rude on it? Let's see how much we can sell. We sold it for 275 euro. Usually it's 95. right? We sold it for 275. We sold 2 ,000 units. We sold it. Everything was gone in less than seven days for five days. It was gone. Sold to the US. Sold here at Harrods. So it was all these different distributors, suddenly wanting it.

33:28So this year we did more. We did another one. Again, at 275, more units, but we said all the money goes to charity. Not the profit, top line revenue because we want to support this uh childhood leukemia foundation top line screw it it's not it's not about taking 10 to the channel everything because i wanted to see how much we can push with this brand so knowing that we have the root brand we started how many did

33:57Mirwan Suwarso:you sell i think like 3 000 or something like that it's quite a lot yeah but also sorry guys the really important point there is that there's a big difference between you being able to do that and the elasticity of your pricing on a product like that versus you changing and dramatically shifting the product of the match shirt, as in like the first choice match shirt, because that's where you have the balance between fans going over exploitation of the core audience versus you then being a lifestyle brand on the side, which is creating premium. We were trying, when we were in Série B, we made sure that when we created the new jersey, it lasted for two seasons, so fans don't have to buy a new one every year.

34:31Because also in the fact that we knew we couldn't sell much anyway. We were just a Série B club, right? But we wanted to learn how to do the supply chain. We wanted to learn to do everything. So even though we had Adidas as a partner, we told Adidas, don't give us money at the time. We want you to give us your products and allow us to customize them and then do all the designs and everything and put it out there. And that's why we created our own shoes. We created everything, but we had the Adidas credibility on it. Now with Root, we started approaching other clubs. You've seen how successful the Como Root collaboration is.

35:03what if we take it into a lifestyle product now would you like to have like root and your club hoodies and t-shirts and leather jackets and whatever you know and we've managed to get 14 clubs sign up and the first one it will be launched this uh 27th of july i can't announce it yet because i think the club should announce it but we will and it's a big premier league team and it will be followed by i don't know we have four teams in the premier league five teams in Italy, four teams in France, two in the Middle East, three in the MLS that's already working on this collaboration. We've just added another one where we will actually manage all their e-commerce and manage their physical stores as well.

35:48So we will become what we said. We're not interested in the multi-club ownership model, but we want to become the multi-club servicing model because we've gone through it. We've gone through this process. We've learned it. We know how to do it. We've made many, many, many mistakes. So all the small clubs, smaller clubs, they don't have the resources to fuck up like we did. Take our learnings and at no cost. We'll cover all the production costs. We'll cover everything. We'll just do revenue share with you. And that's how we've been hoping to grow that. When I hear you, I don't know if you agree with me, Charlie, you speak more about external business than any other CEO we've had on the show.

36:29and about it really feels like a true business in the kind of expansion and we're here to add channels way, which is great. But I always think about opportunity cost of time. Do you ever worry that there's so much time being spent on merch, building a premium brand, which takes away from the ability to invest in an academy? We're doing that too? When we started, we had no academy three years ago. Today, we have 11 players in the Italian Youth National Team Program from zero within three years. And this is just the Italians. We have also Dutch internationals, Portuguese internationals, Latvian internationals.

37:14We work on all prongs. Why do I talk about the non-football more than the football? Because the football is just a playbook that everybody can do. Everybody's been doing, right? We're also doing them. We're working very, very fast. That's why part of the Senate, we have a head of recruitment. That's the first thing I did when I met with Tony Bloom and Billy Bean. I need a data scientist. I need a data analyst. I need someone to actually run this process well. So I hired a data recruitment team. And then I need someone beyond today, someone who can actually create and make sure that our football strategy stays within.

37:53We have a five-year plan, 10-year plan, similar to the Japanese 100-year plan. I would love to have a 100-year plan so none of us can tell me whether I was wrong or not. But we have a 10-year plan. I need someone to be in charge of making sure that we carry out this 10-year plan. So we have a Dutch guy doing that. And then I need a head of development. What was he for? His job is to coach the coaches and also to coach the players to create individual program, not just the training with the team. How to every player can become better. So when a player comes to us, even before they come, we already develop a business plan for them.

38:31He is coming here for growth. He's coming here. The way we see him, he would develop in seven years. We can contract in five. If we cannot renew his contract by year four, what do we do? We have to let go at what value? How many minutes does he need to play every year for us to think that he can get maximum value? So we have that's the head of development program, had a performance doing his own thing, injury recovery, all that kind of stuff. Then you have the first team, the coaches and a similar setup on the women's side. So we create these two operations as two separate, almost like two separate companies with very clear KPIs.

39:12It's not wins and losses because wins and losses, there's so many variable factors to it. But development and growth, how do we play? Did we create more chances than we didn't? Do we, whatever the parameters that we set earlier is what is measured. So CES actually writes a game plan. He submits to the board 24 hours before every game. So the owners would actually be able to watch the match and understand what they were to look for. Rather than the owner saying, God, that striker doesn't score. His job wasn't to score. His job was to create this decoy, whatever. How are we building up? Are we playing a two plus three in the buildup?

39:51Are we doing a two plus four? Who's going to drop to open the space? Who is running where? The owners have all that information. After the game, SES also writes a post-game report, how the game evolved based on the prediction that we started beginning. At the same time, our data team is creating a prediction of how the match would be separately, independently of what the coaching teams are doing. At the end of the day, we share all the data with each other. So the owners always know, ah, against this team, let's say, for example, we play against Juve, we have a 20 % chance of winning, 40 % chance of drawing and, you know, how much to lose.

40:33And then they would already know to expect how we commit, how would ses mitigate this probabilities. And then, ah, we perform better. Our XG in the match was way higher than what we predicted we would have been. So it wasn't about winning or losing, it's about how we perform. For example, when we play against a team that we know will be low block and it will be very difficult because they would have eight defenders. Usually the XG may be like 0.8, 0.9. If we were able to get to 1.3, but we tied 0-0, we did better than we were supposed to do. And we'd be happy with that. So that part of the business, you say the performance business, we're very thorough.

41:17but it's not something we need to talk about because I think it's a must that everybody operates that way. I'm assuming Atalanta is the same. I'm assuming, I'm sure everybody in the Premier League is like that.

41:30Mirwan Suwarso:But I mean, look, especially for you from an academy perspective, building the foundations at that level and investing there is really important because there's a key business line. But also, buying, if you're in a situation where you're going out to market and are trying to buy Italian players, that is a far more expensive endeavor for you than going inside international players. naturally now just with these regulations, domestic players always have a premium. You look at what English players go for here compared to foreign. And also that you cannot pay in installment. Yeah. Because in Italian regulations, for some reason, you're obliged to either put a bank guarantee for how much you want to pay someone or you have to pay in full.

42:05So if you're buying a$40 million player, a 40 million euro player, fork up your cash flow for that 40 million. Whereas you're buying it from Belgium or buying it from Premier League, You can pay in six installments, five installments, whatever you can negotiate. So it's a cash flow management business as well. What a bad rule.

42:24Mirwan Suwarso:You talk about the luxury of the positioning and location you have versus the challenges as you get bigger and scale as a company. A huge part of value appreciation in sport now, particularly football, is the infrastructure that they have. And that's where that's held. And you sit on that beautiful lakeside front. But you also have, I'd imagine, a cap on how big you could make a piece of infrastructure there. So as you're growing up and you've got different demands now in European standards as well, how do you address the stadium? We renovate. Right now we're already in our process of renovating to allow us to play in the Champions League by September.

43:01This is the same thing when we got promoted to Serie A. Our stadium, we had to meet the Serie A standard of having 12 ,000 people from 7 ,000. So we had to do that over the summer. And we did it. And now we're doing it again. to meet the UEFA regulations. We should be okay. The long-term goal is to have a nicer stadium, obviously, because the stadium is very old, 1927. It hasn't really been renovated much beyond the extent that we have done. But we try to be as creative as we can. We have filed our permission to build a new stadium. So far, so good. Fingers crossed, everything will be fine. We can start building 2027.

43:47How much does it cost to build a new stadium? Ours will not be a lot. Ours will be focused more on hospitality. So it'll be about 64 million. That's all in. That's the goal that we're trying to build it on. We look. This is Como. The population is only 85 ,000. Our capacity, if we can make it 15 ,000, we're already ecstatic. What my want is in that stadium. This is a place where when I came in, there was 1.9 million tourists a year to today. last year was 5.6 million so it's grown tremendously in terms of tourism i just want to have on that lakefront view six restaurants one rooftop bar we're good that's the only generate about 25 million per year just that side alone before the food court before all the other hospitality that we create on game day so i'm quite happy with a small stadium but a boutique feel it can be quite

44:40Mirwan Suwarso:difficult for clubs generally where they are dealing with these planning situations in their communities generally because they won't necessarily contribute a huge amount back to those communities in the ways that some people would want if they didn't like sport but by the looks of it the work that you're doing across the whole area and the relationships you're probably having to build to do that does that make this process as you look to build the club in accordance with the success that you have from a planning perspective from the relationship maintenance that you need to have with the locals whether they like football or not does it make it easier because of the contribution that you're making to Como as a whole, not just to I'm a diehard Como fan?

45:13I think it's the benefit of not speaking Italian. I don't really know what people are talking about, you know. So having said that, we have not come across many obstacles, to be honest. And when we were trying to build the stadium or come up with the idea of building a stadium, the first thing we ask is, does the city want this? Do the people want it? That's the first question we had. And then we asked, what can we put in there that is of benefit to you. So one of the things was like a community health center. That's a high-performance sports organization can provide excellent health care, would be beneficial to the community.

45:49So that's one of the priority. Two, cheap rent. Como, because of the tourist, has become very, very expensive for people to open businesses in the city center. So we said, okay, on some of these areas here, why don't we take the whole East Stand, the whole East Building, for local businesses that have to be from Como and they will be very competitive low rate just to host people to actually be able to operate their offices building also low rent. So we want to become a place where people feel that our presence is useful for them. We want to be a part of the community. So that's what the key thing.

46:30That's why I said all I want is the lake facing side to become the commercial side of it. the rest of it has to be something that is beneficial for the community tell us about the

46:40Mirwan Suwarso:value of the profiles that you have attached to it and i mean that from a sporting and non-perspective you know we live in a world now where stars and individuals are very much exactly those rather than quite often clubs and brands and you know people follow people a lot now you have uh sesk you have thierry henry you have rafa varan for example from a footballing perspective involved in the club from an ownership level but you've also done really like front-facing cool work with people like Chris Pine and I think you've had Hugh, yeah, Fassbender, Hugh Graz come in. You've built that kind of celebrity status around the club.

47:14Mirwan Suwarso:They've been seen in the stadium. How important is combining all of those worlds and the people from them in what you're trying to do? I think Luigi, which is also a shareholder, our chief brand officer, has been quite instrumental in bringing in a lot of people there because a lot of them are his colleagues or his fans because he is that kind of designer that dress up all those people. Also, it's the location. It's not just so much about the football team, right? If you've been to Como, after four days, most of the chance you're going to ask what else is there to do aside from sitting around a lake, right?

47:52These guys usually go there when they are promoting a film or seeing something. I don't know what they do. and usually it's the concierge would recommend them if you have nothing else to do you can go watch a game and we would always get a call from the hotel saying like so and so is here would like to come to a game would you like to host them and we'd be happy to um that's become more and more the case now that we have a uh what do you call it a private members club also uh not too far away from the stadium it's a house on the lake we call it the club on the lake and we always have requests like nfl players coming they want to hang out but they want to throw a party but They want to be private.

48:27Fine. Become members of the private club. So we just gave them free membership and they become members. And hopefully they come back. So that's become very beneficial to have that area as a destination for the stars to begin with. What would you like to do today but the budget today does not allow? I don't know. I don't think that way. I always work with what I have and then trying to see how I can get there. So, I mean, ideally, right now on the digital side, the ticketing platform, I think we're doing quite well to start distributing it. We have SAIS system that we create to manage football teams that we now start sharing with other clubs as well.

49:11I think the cost of innovation and creation has come down quite a lot. You can do a lot without spending too much now. So, yeah, I would like to focus on those things more. it's more like the human human power human capital is more important than the money capital

49:27Mirwan Suwarso:looking at the macro is there the micro the big challenge you often have when investing in these types of assets is understanding what you can control to build value and what you can't and the problem with football can be sometimes there's a great opportunity in an individual asset but they sit in a broader system which may not be open to the same flush with the same opportunities as you. Italian football, like what you're achieving is incredible in the way that you are. But Italian football has its challenges at the moment, but from a financial perspective, from a historical perspective, from an ownership perspective with infrastructure.

49:58Mirwan Suwarso:So there's a question really, I guess, around how much of what you're doing in Como is capped by the broader environment that you sit in, in a kind of Syrian environment. I think we can look insularly as well in Italy. If we can help every club to grow, every other club in Italy grow, my market is bigger. So we own a website called or a media platform called destination culture it's uh about football lifestyle about football travel lifestyle about traveling to italy discover which football teams to visit where to eat when you're there where to go and that's in english it's all ex daily male people that we hired actually to to run it and operate it i think it's about 10 people strong writing it right now the next evolution of it is to marry it with a our travel division and then start right now our tourism and travel destination division is only met creating packages and managing it for sales in coma once this is running with destination culture and everything like that my goal is to then start offering the services to all the other italian clubs which are also tourism destination like verona what a beautiful city right romeo and juliet and everything like that what if you can go there and experience the authentic italian football culture with easy jets only 25 pounds to fly in sometimes it's very very affordable lucrative business and then on top of it i can sell uh verona jerseys and souvenirs which we will produce be producing as well of course of course so we own a shop called kurva which means the north stan or south stan and where the tifosi so where the hardcore fans are and that is basically a fashion brand inspired by football culture what do we sell the most ac milan stuff we sell bologna we sell is roma items and we're trying to get more and more football clubs we buy it from them it's like guys you can't sell it give it to us we'll sell it for you we will do this we and that's creating a whole kind of like i always go like i'm borrowing the disneyland analogy because i want to be like disney you know it's you have the core like but you were saying earlier the product has to be strong yeah of course but what if I can mitigate the risk having our own football team by servicing 20 other football clubs so and now I'm servicing all 20 so any other football clubs have an issue working with you because you are maybe a competitor no no no no even today we were subject in the media that we were in competition with another Italian team for a British player they were saying that we might want to buy him, they might want to buy him.

52:37I said, like, well, you know what? Why don't I just call the president of the other club and say, like, do you want him? If you want him, you go for it. We'll back out. Thank you. But if you buy him, give me one of yours. And he was like, thanks for calling. I appreciate this. We'll let you know by end of day. And if we're not moving through, these are the other targets we were going after. We're happy to share that with you. So to me, this kind of like win-win relationship within clubs, being open, it helps all of us growing.

53:07Mirwan Suwarso:So I saw that. That was true. Because that's an extraordinary way to operate. People just in football do not do that. Yeah, why not? And people actually welcome. So I have a lunch next week with another chairman of another club to start managing their clothing brand together. So we will be, you know, like if you read the stories, like Adidas is one of our partners right now. An amazing, amazing brand. but they will not pay us the same amount as they pay Real Madrid or Liverpool, right? But why not? Of course, they're bigger. I understand. So for the smaller ones like us, why don't we all make one of our own?

53:44And we just split the revenue together. We grow together. So that's why we have a few clubs that's actually interested to select, you know, maybe not the kit, but maybe all the lifestyle products all around it, we can work together. Some actually says, why don't we make the kit? so these are all conversations which we would not have had if we don't sit down together with the other clubs and say what's your problems and how can we help you how can we help each other i'm sorry maybe i'm incredibly naive but if you call up your your competitor in a league and say if you want them take them and then like maybe we'll take one of yours if the person that you sacrificed is the best one and will perform better on the pitch are you not letting your team have suboptimal product on the pitch?

54:26I mean, this is a target, right? We're looking at a target. For us, every target has percentage. He's a 10%. This guy's at the top 10%, top 10%. You want this top 10%, I'm not fucking auctioning with you. I'm not going into an auction with you. You can take that one. I'll take the other 10%. I know you have two 20%. I can turn into 10%. So we are working based on numbers already anyway. So I know if I can get a cheaper price into my squad, but still same quality. We have a player named Mark Oliver Kempf, right? We bought him from Hertha Berlin for 1.5 million. If a low price is a sign of quality or lack of quality, this guy will not be the best defender in terms of winning the highest aerial duels in the league in Italy.

55:14But he was. So we know sometimes it's not about the money, it's about the quality of the players. I'm not saying price denotes quality. I'm saying price denotes conviction level. And what you should ask yourself when you're buying him is, fine, if we pay one and a half, but would we have been willing to pay six? Because if you'd been willing to pay six, it would have... This depends on other options that you have. If there are no other options and he is the one solution you need, he's the key, he's the missing piece of the puzzle, I would say, let's move this, move this, move this, Let's rejig everything.

55:49How much can we put into that? But I don't think the supply is ever that scarce. I agree. 25 players in the team, right? How many football teams in the top division, in the top five leagues? Germany, England. I mean, sorry, Germany, England, Spain, France, and Italy. If I'm looking for a center back, each team has four. 20 teams in the league. There's quite a lot of options. and then you go to the youth teams, then you go to their less known teams. There's got to be quality. It's up to them for us to discover them and turn them around.

56:27Mirwan Suwarso:A lot of this to me, I don't know what you think, a lot of this and the way you talk and what you guys have done, it plays to the US playbook that is often justified for some of the mad prices that are being paid based on the turnover of some clubs, particularly in England where they go, oh, but they see so much untapped potential in some of these clubs and they don't optimize their revenues and then they come in and they own them for a few years. And I don't ever think they really get off the ground. They don't begin to exploit half of the things that you guys are doing. So there's a fascinating element to this, I think, which is rather than just talking about it as well, you guys have actually put this into practice and I'm really interested to see as these develop, right?

57:05Mirwan Suwarso:As these business lines develop, as your partnership strategy develops, does this become the classic shepherd and the sheep thing? Which is football's generally pretty bad at being the shepherd, but clubs are very good at being the sheep. It just needs that one club to really show people the way before it brings some of the ideas in. Could be. I mean, I saw like what we're talking about, about the Uber partnership, and we do that with Brioni as well, that we own a certain color palette that if they sell that color palette, we actually make the revenue from it. But I saw that in Newcastle doing that with the energy drink in which they become collaborators in the sales so that they would actually enjoy revenue from the sales of the drink as well.

57:43And I think more and more clubs will do that. and the bigger clubs probably have bigger, better clubs. I was talking to a club in Holland at the time, and they were saying, oh, you can do all this because you are Como. You have all these destinations. And I asked him, what do you guys do? He was like, in our place, we all make cheese. The people are cheese makers. I'm like, dude, I'll be making cheese. That's what I would do right away. And how can you actually use the football club? It's almost like a shop window to what you can create. That's how I see it. I mean, right now, a lot of football clubs are just renting out that shop window to, I see like Energy doing like Prime, for example, sponsoring clubs to promote their products.

58:24Why not have your products itself and then create and use the club as a shop window?

58:29Mirwan Suwarso:So Champions League for you, if we're being honest, right, this is amazing for you, not just from a footballing perspective, but it's going to open you up primetime audience to 500 million, let's say, people who watch Champions League globally. Yeah. There's a massive chance to really nail down and drill down on some of those things because the bigger that brand is, the more people you can speak to on that side, the more people are probably going to be walking around with Como apparel of some form. It's almost like you get one shot, one opportunity, right? As Eminem once said. Yeah. I wasn't expecting the conversation to take that turn.

59:02Me neither. It's brilliant. Can we please have the dun, dun, dun, dun playing in? I don't know if you can add that without copyright. But we know, we know, we realize. And we don't take this for granted. We don't think that we belong in the Champions League. I mean, forever. This could be a one year off. So we have to act like we don't belong. If we can sustain this presence, amazing. But we as a club need to act that we don't belong here. Don't overspend. Fight like hell. Try to fight to prepare as much as we can. But trying to take this opportunity as best as we can. So you don't change span to accommodate the...

59:39No. Okay, because that's where you get in trouble. Can I ask, how much is front of shirt today? I can't say it. Last year it was 750. 750 grand? Because we were just promoted in Série B. The contract ran from our second division. Today it's north of 10. North of 10? Yeah. And plus all the revenue share, plus all the acquisition revenue that we're going to be getting. And just so I understand, that's just front of shirt. You don't get sleeves or shorts? We do. We have sleeve. We have back of shirt. We have training shirt. We have third shirt. we have training ground sponsorship we're opening up quite a lot we're talking to a technology brand right now which I'm really excited really really excited because with them it'll open up a lot of windows for us a lot of opportunities because we we're just big fans of this brand I can't say it

1:00:29Mirwan Suwarso:damn it what do they get around that if you don't mind me asking but you get front of shirt Is that it? Do they also want hospitality? Do they want... Quite a few, quite a few. Dependings on the brand. The one that I was talking about, we become their partner for growth in terms of customer acquisition. And we are compensated for each acquisition that they gain, both on the EDC side, the business-to-business side, as well from the consumer side. We create collections together with them on a fashion standpoint. They also own a partnership with another sport, which involves automotive, which is very, very popular.

1:01:13We will do a lot of collaborations with that team. So that's a win-win proposition as well between us and them. You know the sport, I'm assuming, right?

1:01:24Mirwan Suwarso:This is all part of that revenue-generating self-sustainability piece. But right now, if it's owner financing now, how long does it take, do you think? and what's the realistic plan then to make that self-sufficiency model the reality so owner financing is less important to this as a business how much did you lose last year i don't i don't remember i try not to remember how much i lose but i know how much i've my i've spent of my owner's money that they remind me every day when we were we were joking about financial fair play regulations i'm like i don't need uefa to tell me financial fair play i got my owners telling me financial fair play tomorrow, not even like next year.

1:02:01Yeah, we've spent quite a significant amount, but we do believe we will break even and start actually no longer requiring injections from the owners within next season.

1:02:10Mirwan Suwarso:Okay, wow. I mean, end of next season, not like tomorrow, no. End of next season. So basically this season and next season. Correct. Get to the end of there. Yeah. Are you guys compliant at the moment with financial regulations? No, we're understanding that we, I met with UEFA and we talk about it. there's no precedent of where we are because you cannot say in UEFA you look at the last three years, right? Our last two years. Not applicable. And then you put us in comparison to Juventus, comparison with Aston Villa. If you're looking and you guys are business people, you understand the startup level and then the growth level.

1:02:47You're comparing us in the investment level, seed investment, to those who are actually at the growth level. so even they say they would have to be how do you call it they would have to evaluate how they look into financial flat play with us but I told them don't hesitate to not to find us if we are in Europe we want to become good members of the association we want to become a model club like everybody else if you have to find us find us it becomes part of our obstacles that we have to overcome it's a regular part of business, no? We can negotiate. We can just restructure finances and stuff like that.

1:03:29But no, we don't want to be any different. We don't want to be treated differently.

1:03:33Mirwan Suwarso:I bet they were surprised at that. Not as surprised as the chairman of the other club was when they said, you can take him. Huh? Life is life, right? You just have to roll with it. I love it. How much did the family buy the team for? 800 ,000. 800 ,000? $850 ,000 plus$150 ,000 in debt. Why can't you buy a team for$800 ,000? Because you've got a lot of investment that then needs to be made on top of that to make that what it is today. How much have you guys put in now? Quite a lot. Like hundreds of millions? Yeah. Let's just say to recoup it, maybe it takes another five years to recoup all the investments.

1:04:14But I think we can do it. That's the same as in other businesses, isn't it? If you're looking into trying to make a global business how much do you put into it yeah i think that's the big challenge right yeah and

1:04:25Mirwan Suwarso:you've identified here in football again i come back to that american piece of oh we can maximize this a little bit better everyone looks at it thinking these are very big brands they're very small revenue generating businesses in comparison ivan gazeta said that when he compared uh manchester united to coca-cola and he said look at them as brands globally and then look at them at turnover globally you're man united and coke not too far off in brand recognition the revenues well one 1 % I think is man use of code code. We were looking into like Real Madrid's merchandising revenue, the top clubs in the world, I think it's like 200 million, 220 million in terms of merchandising revenue.

1:04:55And you compare that to a fashion brand, which is up in the billions. Yeah. Is Real Madrid only 200? I didn't mean that badly, but you think about the prominence of a Real Madrid shirt all over the world. I'm surprised. So that's what I'm saying. Yeah. If you put your target setting, you benchmark it against other clubs, I think you will hit that ceiling. So for us, immediately we say like, we cannot benchmark ourselves against Second Division Club. We cannot benchmark ourselves against First Division Club. Who do you want to become? So we say always like, I want to be Disney. Billions and billions and billions of revenue.

1:05:29How do we get there? Then the question, when you ask that question, the answers change, right? Because when you say like, I want to become like a Disney, then the answers become like, we need a hotel division. We need a cruise division. We need this. We need to be able to do that. And then that helps us answer a lot of questions. Would you like to open a hotel? No, but we can manage one. We can find facilities and actually give to one. The group owns hotels. The group that I work for currently now, I think they have about seven, eight hotels and investing in more, but all in our home country. We have no interest in actually pursuing it outside of the country.

1:06:03But I see it like when you're saying like Disney, we could be a media arm. We could be, you know, we're in talks for three entertainment production right now, TV shows that we're working globally. we're we'll be paying a lot of stuff let's just say that this is the thing about you owning like

1:06:19Mirwan Suwarso:if you're going to do this you know ultimately football clubs need to own more and your own your point up here then which is distributing to others you're owning that source now if you were at the reason your football club revenue merchandise may not be huge is because let's say your deal is real madrid with nike or adidas or you know let's say you've got various relationships in there you're taking maybe 10 to 15 of the shows being sold so the most of that goes back to adidas for Real Madrid. That's amazing. That's kind of funny because every football team is actually a distributor for these big products.

1:06:48They're big products. I mean, if I look into ourselves when we were dealing with Italian brands or with big global brands, they tell you, we'll give you all your training kit and all your football match kit. That's worth what? 300 grand? 400 grand? And then they say, you will have to buy from us for your shop. I mean, this 300 grand is like retail value, even wholesale value, but their production costs probably like 100 grand. Then you have to buy 300 ,000, 500 ,000, a million, five million worth of inventory to put in your shop. They already made their money. I'm amazed that Adidas, was it Real Madrid, sorry, are not aware of the leverage that they have then.

1:07:29Obviously, they are. I'm struggling. Real Madrid must be aware of the leverage they have. They can go to Adidas and say, hey, I want the best deal, otherwise I'm going to Nike. They do that. They do that. I think they have the best deal in the sport. And they still get screwed to 10 cents? Yeah, because if you really think about it... They make 40 million from the minimum guarantee. And then on top of that, they have royalties and they have whatever they sell in the shop. They make a lot of money. I think it's a very good deal. And Adidas, I would have to say, is one of the best partners a club could have.

1:07:56And I'm saying that not because...

1:07:58Mirwan Suwarso:They're partners. They're my partners. But that was what I was about to say is why Real Madrid wouldn't do it. Because actually, the difference is if you turn down a Nike or an Adidas and you do that, you have to produce then yourself. You have to distribute globally. If you're Real Madrid, right? your points distribution, your supply chain. They're like, it's crazy. You have to have your supply chain. So these guys take a huge amount of that. Well, they take all of the legwork out of it. So your 15 % is, it's a licensing deal. You're using the brand. That's the business. For you, though, as you've said, if you're not sitting right at that top where you're that global, global brand, then you can create something here and then build value across all of those clubs.

1:08:30Mirwan Suwarso:You're owning that. But for you guys as a business, then that's actually really clever because you can become a multi-billion football club if this brand is tied into it because you're getting points of revenue from all of these different clubs. Exactly, and all the other clubs benefit. Yeah. So the way I want to do it is that we work together with all the clubs to grow together. Not one club benefit, but all clubs benefit. That's the most important part. When we talk to them, to the other clubs, I don't say, oh, I'll give you a 90%, 90-10 split, 70-33. No, no. Whatever we make, we split. Yeah.

1:09:00That's how I see it. And, you know, yes, we take the risk. When we take the risk, it's a 50-50 split. That's what I say. Once we can convince you that this works, maybe the deal will change. But until then, and as long as we benefit, why don't we all benefit? How much do you think Como is worth today? Well, we've rejected bids over the high hundreds for interest, yeah. How much is it worth? Which valuations would you like to do? Based on squad value times 2x, based on revenue, And then when you say revenue, is it the conventional valuation calculations where you're just a football club, which is between 3x, 4x, 6x to 15x or something?

1:09:46Or if you... I would love to... What is our business? What is the fair market value in your mind of your business? I would say right now we are going closer towards a billion. Because we are not just a football club. We are a multi-club servicing model. we are the boutique version of a fanatic right so how much is the fanatics worth yes their revenue is established a lot more established we jump from two to 14 one year one brand one club how much we're going to go next hospitality we jump from seven to 14 i mean whatever it was double one club and i do believe we can bring value to so many other clubs

1:10:30Mirwan Suwarso:just to build on that it's amazing to hear after everything that you've described you can justify that but just from a football perspective to put that into context probably 7 clubs in the Premier League are worth a billion no one else is at that height you have to deliver it how much is Disney worth? however many 100 there we go that's the goal do you think your not coming from football materially helped you build a better business I don't know because I only know what I know right and I am who I am from my background what I have and this is what I'm working on our owners the company that I work for have started with one company to then today I don't know how many companies it's a lot right I've sat in meetings across industries where they have have grown businesses and in the same style that we are operating today is always believing where we can be and then trying to just maximize opportunities by putting collective decisions on a lot of things.

1:11:35We have now the biggest private bank in I think Southeast Asia, but definitely in Indonesia. We have a tower business. We have e-commerce. We have like the equivalent of Expedia as well. So many consumer products, so many consumer products. I can't even tell you the brands. I would say probably close to 100 brands operating under the group. So we are all brand people to begin with, to start with. So when we see something like this, the first thing we see is this is a brand. How do we grow it? And then we set a target. And people say, like, what's your target base? How much have we spent? How much money do we need to make?

1:12:14And how much money do we want to make? And then we just say, like, whether realistic or not, how can I get to that revenue target? And that's by throwing as many ideas as possible. A lot of them has failed. A lot of them has worked. And we just keep going. You ready for a quick fire? Okay. We've heard of the many successes. You mentioned fail that. What's been a failed investment? Yeah, I'm really good at this. I forget all my failures. I have to think now. You really should be a venture capitalist. You will need that skill. A bad idea, but I don't think it was a failure, but I don't think it was a failure in the end.

1:12:52But we were trying to grow our social media following by trying to emulate the Oprah Winfrey giving away stuff for Christmas thing. So we did that through our social media. I think we spent a couple of hundred grand. We paid for a lady who had cancer so she couldn't travel up to her bedroom upstairs. So we rebuilt her bedroom downstairs in Newcastle. We helped a family in Ghana, not family, a community in Ghana with the transport, creating new transportations. Motorcycles and helmets, we provided all that. So we did a lot. We had a help a teacher financed her first ever travel. She's a grandmother.

1:13:42She's never traveled anywhere and her children nominated her for this trip. So we took her for a two weeks trip in Lake Como. So we did a lot of that and we still do it. I would say we didn't gain the followers, but we gained a lot of friends. One of them now, I'm very proud of this, is a guy named Brandon. I think he's in Glasgow and he is the founder of the Scottish the Como Tartan army, which is now 3 ,000 strong. It's quite exciting, right? These kind of things have helped us.

1:14:12Mirwan Suwarso:That's brilliant. Who has not come to a Como game that you would most like to come? Good question. George Clooney. Has he not been? Mr. Como? Well, I think he's mostly there in the summer, and in the summer there's no games. Okay, but you've started, haven't you? So you're recognizing that a lot of tourists come in the summer. You've started the Como Cup? Correct. There's our tournament that we start in the July 28th to August. first. This is our second edition this year. It'll be very cool. Nice. So the last year we had Ajax, Celtic and Al-Ali from Saudi Arabia. This year we have Lawns, Villareal, Crystal Palace, Family Cow and Alula from Saudi as well, which would be very, very cool.

1:14:52Which fashion brand would you most like to align with for a collab that you haven't aligned with yet? No, we will not. We will just make our own and just continue. Our collaboration with Como is easily with Root because we is part of the brand that we manage. So we'd like to grow our brand. And you don't think that collaborating can grow brands? You look at AP and Swatch as a really interesting collab. I think if it's not overlapping in terms of the space, yes, maybe. But we're still not that phase yet. We just need to keep growing. I mean, Root is a brand that is very strong in this area. It's an amazing niche, in my opinion.

1:15:27And Root has collaborated with McLaren, currently collaborating with Pirelli, has collaborated with the Lakers and all these big names. So that's how they have built their success. And for us, it's just going to, yeah, we'll probably be doing similar ways.

1:15:46Mirwan Suwarso:Okay, Champions League draw comes out. Who do you want to play the most? Which trip? Real Madrid at home. A place then you would go to away? Barcelona away. Which we played them and we lost 5-0. You don't want to go up to Manchester or, you know. In November. Yeah, lovely. On a cold November day? Oh, God. Or Newcastle? Not in it. Not in it. Or Liverpool? Yeah. No. Any trips would be fascinating, right? But Real Madrid at home, it would be me starting when we were in the fourth division with an audience of 200, suddenly having Real Madrid in our stadium, that would be epic. Pretty cool. Yeah, that would be epic.

1:16:25Which other club in Syria has the best hospitality? Depends how you find hospitality. It's a very tricky question. I can answer with best food. I can answer with best hospitality. I think the southern clubs obviously have the best food, like Napoli, Lecce. Great, great food. Love them. Oh, interesting. It's really unique. If you come to our stadium, it's also different. As you know, the infrastructure, I mean, you can read. In Italy, there's infrastructure problems in terms of the stadiums. It's a bit old. It's a bit dated. So when they renovate, they choose to become modern, in which, to me, you're losing the essence of being Italian.

1:17:06You want to be cool, you want to be modern? You're competing against a Spurs stadium. You're competing against SoFi in America or the Las Vegas stadium, Knight Stadium. You have to spend billions to compete with that. When you spend hundreds or 60 or 70 million, you look like a wannabe, which is if you're coming from the UK, you go there, you'd be like, yeah, okay, pizza's good, all right, whatever. You come to ours. Ours looks like a palace. We made it look rustic. We made it look like as horrible as possible in terms of, not horrible, as old as possible. And if you go to our suite, all the furnitures are from the 1700s and the 1800s.

1:17:45We go to flea markets and identify them and found them. So when you go there, it becomes an experience. And we make sure the food is an experience too. When you come in a game, Como versus Napoli, the food is from Naples. If you come Como versus Genoa, the food is from Genoa. So we always make sure the food is from the territory of our opposition because Italy has that storytelling element of culture and cuisine. So we double down on that. This way the villa that we have, the club on the lake, it doubles down on that too. You go there, you can sit down, chill outside with your aperitivo. but we have a two Michelin star chef cooking in the restaurant.

1:18:26Mirwan Suwarso:Final one for me. When you came in, you were like, look, I come at this from a marketing guy. That's my trade, right? Now, after the years that you've spent operating this, what have you built into the experiences that you've got, the skill set that you've got, that was maybe most surprising to you?

1:18:45I would like to say I'm just an employee, man. I can do whatever my boss tells me to do. That's the best definition of it, right? If I don't know how to do it, I'll learn it. And it seems that I can learn quite a lot of things quite fast. So yeah, whatever. I told my boss, I joke with him. We just bought a noodle branch in Indonesia. It's like the largest, it's like McDonald's of Indonesia. It's all fast food noodles. And I said, like, boss, when do you want me to come over and take over that? I'm happy to do it. I think noodles is a lot easier than dealing with egos like this. So I'm okay with that.

1:19:14Selling cigarettes, I'm fine with that too. selling motorcycles we own ev ev business indonesia i have to sell motorcycles or cars fine whatever i'll do it mohan listen thank you so much for joining us this has been such a broad wide-ranging discussion m &m clips thank you so much you've been amazing thank you thank you for

1:19:32Mirwan Suwarso:your time thanks so much to mirwan for joining and for approaching this with the candor you hope for from an executive striving to create a top class asset there are some incredible takes in there that we're not used to hearing in football and there's no doubt a huge amount of the business that is built on the opportunity provided by an incredible location but that is playing the hand you're dealt it may not be directly replicable but there will be things to build on for many clubs that are unique to them it just needs some work to identify and develop that a huge thank you again to merwan and we hope you enjoyed the show now if you want to see more from today's show you can do so by going to youtube or any of our other social channels across Instagram, TikTok, and of course now Substack.

1:20:13Mirwan Suwarso:There are more snippets to share and bite-sized chunks to consume. And whilst you're there, please do like, subscribe, and follow the show. As you'll hear from your other favorite pods, it makes a huge difference when bringing you the best guests and conversations from around the world of sport, which is of course our endless aim. Thank you again for tuning in and we'll see you next week. 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 organisations in sport, including McLaren Racing, Arsenal and the San Francisco Giants.

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