Nicolas Julia, Sorare Founder: ‘Building a $4bn Fantasy Sports Empire’ (Ep64)

0:00I want to make every sponsor fan a manager or team owner. That's our mission as a company. And what they can do is exactly what an owner can do. They can trade on the market. So with actual money, you can trade players and the value of the scores, they fluctuate based on many criteria, including the performance of the player, the scarcity of the card. It's really the performance of the player on the pitch that makes you good or not at the game. So if I have a direct deal with a player, I could do much more than what I do without having a direct relationship with the player through an agent. If you cannot feel the authenticity of the player, it doesn't make a good relationship.

0:34I've been working closely with Piquet, with Serena Williams, with Mbappé. They are all genuine and authentic in the way they want to help. Serena Williams, she was sitting close to me when we negotiated a deal with the NBA. It was a very competitive deal. Michael Jordan was helping DraftKings. She was deeply committed to the vision. We knew she could help us get the rights in the US in particular from the get-go. She delivered, that was awesome.

1:01Hello and welcome to the Business of Sport, the show that takes you behind the scenes with the industry's leading owners, operators and athletes. Today we welcome Nicolas Julia, the founder of SoRare, the record-breaking platform that blends fantasy sport with digital collectibles. This is a step beyond the fantasy football, F1, rugby that you may already be a part of. It's an open market, providing the chance to show your skills and talent identification to buy, select and trade tangible assets in the form of player cards. They are reimagining sport for the digital age, combining NFTs, global partnerships and strategic gameplay to create a fan-owned, athlete-connected future of sports entertainment, while also empowering athletes with their own data and IP.

1:41Serena Williams, Gerard Piquet, Kylian Mbappe, they're all backing this company to deliver on their objective of making every fan an owner or manager. But how did this bridge between digital fandom and the world's biggest sporting entities form? There's big numbers, big partners, big ambitions. Nico delivers the thesis of a company at the heart of the modern sports industry. We're delighted to welcome Nico to the business of sport. But first, some words from our valued partners. Oroco are the leaders in AI for pro sport. Their algorithms help make the invisible visible, providing advanced warning of illness and injury risk for some of the best athletes on the planet.

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3:03You can get in contact to find out more on humans at orico.ai, that's O-R-R-E-C-O dot A-I, and the link is also in the bio below. So talk to them before your competition does.

3:18Nico, it is such a pleasure to have you in the studio. And we've been looking forward to this. We're slightly jealous of the shirt. We didn't realize that you were bringing this. We could have come too with shirts. But thank you for joining us, man. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited. And I'm a big supporter of the show. I'm a big listener. So I'm very excited to be here. He's got many fans. Imagine how many more fans I'd have if I wore stuff like that. This is true. This is true. It'd be amazing. Let's start right at the beginning. Let's start with the story of SoRoe. Can you give us a bit of the context around the business and how you've managed to create this company?

3:48Yeah, I think, I mean, the origin story of the business is the intersection of my passion for sports. I've been a massive sports fan, massive collector, massive player. I mean, gamer, not player. And a new technology, so crypto, web free and so on. I got into crypto in 15 and in 17, NFTs came in. And so I was bigger into Bitcoin, bringing an alternative form of money. and I was like okay this technology can change other verticals it's bringing digital property oh this is going to impact sports right and so I was like okay like humans being have been collecting for centuries right this is something we all do for a variety of reasons we've been doing that in the physical world and now we have a way to do it in the digital world and this is the technology enabling it this is the technology that brings authenticity security basically digital property right and so I was okay this is going to be a business that's going to be ten times bigger than physical collecting in the world of sports right because just the inherent properties of this goods are much much stronger than the physical one it's much easier to trade it's much easier to authenticate it's much easier to everything right so you miss the tangibility of the good but in its digital form you have all the stuff that are much much much stronger and so i was like okay this can be like a massive massive business but if we bring utility to it that goes beyond collecting because in the physical world it's just static right like you you let your cards in your album right then like you can build the sports empire and that's what got me excited because building a business is so hard that you i want you to have this ambition to build something massive and so at this intersection of collecting and gaming so like collect the cards play with the cards uh we got very excited with my partner adria uh with the city of the company and that's that's the origin story basically the again the intersection of my passion and the new technology enabling new things okay i love that completely see the vision then you go well we need to kind of create the first versions and then you think well how do we get the players on board how did you get the first initial players slash products created yeah so from the first day we were like okay everything we do is going to be officially licensed because i want the authenticity to see the real name of the player the real face of the player the real jersey and for that you need to have agreements but the problem with is in the last 50 years you had two three companies that managed to build a real portfolio in gaming and collectibles you have electronic arts with video games you have panini and tops with physical collectibles and that's pretty much it right so i knew that there were it's a conservative industry and it's going to be very hard so i wanted to prove that we are building amazing products that can be value accretive for them as organizations and we had no resources back in the days like it was just like a few thousands of our personal money with our co-founder so we were looking for leagues that were like kind of reasonable right and so like i built a pipeline of dozens of leagues and you know like a sales pipeline you know like trying to progress some of this conversation and the belgian league was our first deal basically and so it's of course a very long story so basically reaching out to the intern on linkedin and and so the the intern was like okay let's let's do a 15 minute call you actually reached out to the intern i mean it was the only one responding to me so like he got back and and see well yeah let's do a call and instead of taking the call, of course, I took the train, went to Brussels.

7:23He was very surprised to see me, managed to spend time with the head of legal, who was also the head of commercial at the league during this day. And we had no product. It was late 18 back in the day. So it was just a short presentation. And so managed to convince them to open the conversation two months later, along so we short, like we closed the first deal with the Belgian league, launched the private beta of the product with the Belgian league. and like the beginning was with just them like just the Belgian league uh and what does a deal look like then you how does that structure work for the Belgian league deal so the structure of the deals remain the same across the years and across the leagues even when growing the business basically we didn't innovate that much down like it was a minimum guarantee for them and then realities the innovation for them did you have money to pay the minimum guarantee so the few thousand dollars were from our own pockets and like we had like our pressing run was not close uh and so it was just our personal money again like we've been lucky that the belgian ling was reasonable and that was a deal that we could afford but that's where we started and yeah the structure of the deal minimum guarantees realities i mean the one big thing that is very exciting for these leagues is that in the old world of physical collecting or even video gaming like when an asset is sold that's why you collect the realities and that's pretty much it and with web free when the asset is resold even five years later even if it's outside of my platform and it's resold on ebay openc whatever platform that you can still collect a reality as an ip owner right and so that traceability and infinite revenue stream on the secondary market is something that is getting them very excited so let's be really clear at this point just so everyone understands When you're doing this deal, this first deal, what are the assets?

9:09What are you creating? Yeah, so we are creating cards representing athletes. So Belgian League athletes in this case. And we are selling them only for auctions. That's early 19. And these cards, you can play them in the fantasy sports game. That's basically the core of the product. I want to make every sports fan a manager or a team owner. That's our mission as a company. So every sports fan is talking about that. and we know they are all commenting on such decisions and i want to build a place where they can do that and while like being a team owner or manager is unreserved to an elite of billionaires right but is accessible to everyone and what they can do is exactly what the owner can do they can trade on the market so with actual money right so you can trade players and the value of this cause they fluctuate based it's a market right like so based on many criteria including of course the performance of the player the scarcity of the card and so on Who sets that price point?

10:04So it's a market. So we are selling everything for auctions. So it's supply and demand, right? And then you can play with discounts on fantasy competitions. So basically, it's really the performance of the player on the pitch that makes you good or not at the game. So if Mbappé is doing a hat trick, he's going to get ranked like 100 on the games, which is the best mark. And so you're going to be good on the leaderboard and you're going to win stuff, right? And there's real money that you can win on the game, like in real football. so basically you have all the hats you are an owner you are a coach you are a new player you are a scout because you need to be able to detect the next star as well so you have all the hats that you could have on an actual club basically when you do a deal with a league do you get all the players rights beneath them like do the leagues own the rights or do the players own the rights so i mean today we have the biggest portfolio in sports gaming it's more than 300 panels so So we have more depth even than here because we have the NBA, we have the Premier League, we have all the top football leagues, the NBA, the MLB and more.

11:06And so it's very fragmented in football in particular. So there's some nuances to the answer of your question. I would say that if you take US sports, basically the setup of a deal is that you have on one side the league, let's say the NBA, and on the other side, the union. So it's an NBPA, NBA Player Association, right? So you get the rights of the players through the union. okay so the the right to use the the face of the player the the player name and then for the league you have the jersey the name of the team and so on and the money is flowing to the players through the union okay so the union is taking a minimum guarantee and then they have a repartition and they get the money back to the players that's u.s sports i'm trying to generalize but basically that's how it works in the u.s in in football it's a bit different most of the time you have the rights the money is flowing through the teams okay so you you're gonna get a deal with the league uh the the league is gonna split the money to the teams and the teams is gonna split the money to the players right so that's that's how the the money would flow in football which one do you think is better if you were to advise a governing body what would you say to them knowing all that you know now um i think it i think it has value like to have a union on one side and the league on the other side, like they represent interest of the teams and the players in a way that is probably more close to them, right?

12:29But I would say that as a business, it's also good to have centralization because I have one contract for the Premier League, for instance. So the setup of the rights, like who owns the rights is different. So as a business, it's, I would say, as a business, it's better to have centralization. But for the stakeholders, like the teams and the unions, it's probably better to have it this way, like they do in the US. Which league was the hardest to get? I would say the Premier League. The last one, yeah. And I think it's normal. They are sitting at the top of football, if you look at basically any main trick.

13:03And so they have this privilege to be passionate. They have only 10 partners in the world. And the youngest partners after Sauron is Electronic Arts, which is a very, very old company. And then you look at the list, it's public on the website. understand of them maybe 11 if I miss something recent so they are very very conservative in who they associate the image of the league with and I respect that very much what was the tipping point in getting them to partner with you I think it was the addition of of course seeing the the product growing the user base growing the revenue growing and seeing also like the fact that all the partners were like you know eating uh that new category like eating that lunch and that they should be part of it, I guess.

13:49I think that was one. And generally speaking in the world of sports, I believe that media rights, they have hit a ceiling and that the teams and the leagues, they need to diversify and open new revenue streams and grow revenue streams. And we've seen that in the US. So there's many great stories in the US with fanatics, for instance, and the relationship with the leagues and how they grew together as partners, you know, and DraftKings and many O'Donnells where the leagues would take an equity stake and would generate hundreds of millions of dollars of value because of a deep partnership. And so this is something that has been not a playbook but something of inspiration for me.

14:33And so the top leagues, they own parts of the company and we want to grow together on the long run. Do they understand the value you bring when you have the first conversation? I think that you need to prove because it's a new category. And as I said, like if you look at the last 50 years, there have been close to zero new categories in gaming and collectible and in sports, right? And so you need to educate. And so I spent a lot, a lot of time in the first few years of the company talking about, oh, we're going to help them reach new audiences. Or we're going to help them develop a new stream and do it in a way that is new.

15:09and one thing that is truly new for us is this idea of digital ownership and digital property because in the old world when you buy something that is officially licensed when the license is over in the digital world you don't have the thing anymore like let's say EA you build something in the FIFA Ultimate Team mod you open a pack you buy a pack at the end of the season your calls they are done it's over right and in our case it's different you buy something you truly own it like you would own physical collectible and so we needed to you know build the contracts also in a way that is very different uh from what has been done in the past uh i think a lot of businesses are 80 20 where like 80 percent of the demand concentrates is that 20 of the supply when you look at the business does everyone not just want two or three leaks to what extent does it matter having the long tail yeah um it's uh it's interesting because of course like the top leagues concentrate like most of the revenue but uh if you if you look at you know like our kind of vip users or users spend a lot of money in the product there's users they are very deep uh into sports uh they are very deep into data and they love to scout uh and so a big part of the enjoyment of the of the game is looking at the belgian league looking at argentinian clubs and you know looking for who's going to be next And so I think it matters a lot for the fun of the product, for the retention, not only of Desco Horts, of big spenders, but also some even free users.

16:44Is the game, is it accessible to every football fan then? Because what we have here is not a freemium fantasy league like the Premier League has, which is hugely successful, over 12 million players a year globally. You're talking about something which has a real financial element, but it also has an educational element. you probably need to know a little bit about nfts maybe cryptocurrencies maybe blockchain maybe you know digital asset ownership how do you go about educating the fan base to get them really enthused by the product that you're creating so i mean a few few principles from the first day i told my investor my team and everyone like i'm not in the business of selling a technology selling an nft selling crypto actually i don't care you know like i'm pragmatic i just believe that this technology is bringing stuff that are truly unique and truly new to sports fans the fact that they they can truly own something digital they can trade it they can use it across the seasons all those things but i'm not in the business of educating about this i want the product the experience to make them understand these benefits so i abstracted all the complexities of crypto web3 whatever you call it so you kind of have a partnership with stripe like like most of the users that join today they don't even know it's an nft or it's a blockchain underneath they don't need to know about that so that's number one number two and that's part of simplifying the overall experience as well we are probably the only big company in crypto web free without a token so that's coinbase also without a token but if you look at the main exchange the main games there's tokens everywhere which is adding a lot of complexity to the management of the business and a lot of complexity for the users so we don't have that and maybe to answer more directly your question about like the education element and so we do have it's free to play uh so you can start the game opening pack of free cards and and getting started for nothing and then climb the ladder basically but you can start from the bottom and we'll talk about this later but you started in football and the focus was football yeah how did you start prioritizing the various leagues that you went into so to be transparent i wanted like all the top 20 leagues uh in the world of football like that was my goal because as i said i knew that my business couldn't reach the scale i wanted without the top leagues but at the same time that my products would be good only if i got the long tail as well because part of the fun and and football is very fragmented and so you are and so i i wanted that i needed that and um and so i i just got all in building building that and going relentlessly around uh all this all this potential partners until i got them all and i mean i had to be pragmatic on some of these geographies like because the league was kind of conservative and so in spain for instance or in germany like i would start by closing deals with a few clubs and showing the benefits to the clubs having the clubs talk to the league and then closing a deal with the league right so that that's how i got to the biggest leagues in the early days can ask when agents start seeing people buying their players assets i don't imagine that they're that chilled when you look at the agent landscape today it's something that we navigate doing the show what is broken and what is great about it look i think that um this is this is something that can amplify our experience right so if i have a direct deal with a player i could do much more than what I do without having a direct relationship with the player through an agent or not.

20:12I think what's important to me is that I have an access to the player, like a direct access to the player. Do agents block that? They are very protective. Sometimes. And in that case, we don't do the deal because if you cannot have direct interaction with the player, if you cannot feel the authenticity of the player, it doesn't make a good relationship. I've been working closely with pique with serena williams with mbappe with like many many um sports icon they are all helping in different ways but they are all genuine and authentic in the way they want to help right and and that you need you need to have as a founder i believe a direct relationship together so i mean agents are doing very important job for athletes but i think in this case and in particular with early stage or startups in particular they need to be a direct a direct relationship you You've done an amazing job raising money from athletes and getting them involved right from the beginning.

21:05Tell us about the first few conversations that you had to bring some of these athletes on board. So, yeah, the very first athlete we brought was Gerard Piquet. And I think, I mean... That's a big whale to get first. It's a big whale to get first, yeah, yeah. How did you reach out to him? What was that? So he's been introduced through a fund. Gerard was an LP in the fund, and so that's how we got introduced. and you know like i mean you know jaron right like he he wants to move lines he loves category creators he loves to challenge the status quo uh and so and he has been an entrepreneur in mobile gaming as well in the past so there's a lot of things that's where we knew that there would be something you know and uh and then it was just like two hours conversation with him to pitch him about the vision to tell him about the product and and and now we could help and we just clicked basically can i ask you when it comes to like um player investments yeah a lot of founders want them and it's been a rising like trend for the players and then it's kind of brought about the question of like to what extent do players actually add value when you advise founders today you say hey do they actually add value what do you say to them and how do you get the best out of sporting talent on your cap table i would say number one quantity over quality i would say number two um authenticity over fame and i would say number three like direct relationship between the founder or the executive team and the athlete i think there are three three important rules right just thinking about quality over quantity what is what does that mean is that their intelligence is that mbappe and they're the number one in their category what is quality i think you need you need to understand like why the athlete is here what she needs for them in their personal journey right what they would get basically from uh their relationship this relationship and oh they could help you as a founder what do you think is in it for them i think number one is education so learning about vc learning about finding a company and also helping also lots of them they want to show that you know they are more than at least they can have an impact and so they want to feel that they can help right and so you just need to precisely identify how they can help i work with lots of athletes and they all helped in different ways like serena williams she was sitting close to me when we negotiated a deal with the nba uh pk well pause pause pause that's like dropping an amazing jewel so serena williams is sitting next to you when you're doing a deal with the nba what happens so you know like it was a very competitive deal it was in uh 22 like the space was very hot.

23:45Like we had all the big companies in the US against us. And so Michael Jordan was helping DraftKings and Sam Williams was helping us to get a deal with the NBA. And so like we are like a European company. So we are kind of, I guess, like in the second division in the mind of decision makers in the NBA, in the NFL and in the MLB. And so like we needed to build a solid rosters or vcs or athletes um you know to pitch the vision with us uh and so she was like deeply committed to the vision and so she was in for that and so when we partnered together that was one of the reasons why we knew she could help and she just delivered on this and so that was that was crazy like not only with the league but also with the union like taking calls uh with tamika who was leading the league by back in the other union sorry back in the day so so so yeah that's that's but yeah we knew that uh she could help us get this right in the us in particular from the get-go she delivered that was awesome and i have like many other stories where athletes helped us in very different fronts what's your favorite other story i mean this one is is i mean is of course very special because of her and because of the nba with with an amazing partner um i think you know Antoine Griezmann is also one of the very fast athletes that got involved.

25:05He was like from the very fast, very active in the product. Like he's a big gamer and he was helping us, you know, shape the product. Like, you know, giving us feedback on the algorithm or we are basically rating the players, you know. And so lots of other footballers were doing that. But he was one of the very fast. and and for me it was i mean it is these are amazing memories because there's nothing more that i love than talking to the users and i still do it every single day and so taking feedback from users that actually athletes when you are building a sports business i mean and in that case a french world champion like it's it's yeah it's very um humbling a lot of people think that the u.s and say that the u.s athletes are just light years ahead in terms of how they think about investing being an entity themselves a corporate themselves versus the european athletes which are much more not amateur or pedestrian but just kind of a little bit earlier in their journey and understanding yeah is that what you've experienced yeah it's there's definitely a big gap like who are years uh ahead in europe uh compared to um to the us like in in the us you have unions that are organizing founders day where founders would come and you know like pitch how they build the company to the rest of players and with a big Q &A afterwards and so on.

26:27So this is something that has been existing for years. There are also lots of success stories of athletes who made, like Michael Jordan made most money after his career than on the court. And there are many stories like this in the US. We are building the stories in Europe, but yeah, it's a bit lagging behind. And I think that unions and leagues and teams would benefit to open up a bit more for the benefit of the athletes i would love to buy a team and start i think every team in the premier league should have a venture fund number one yeah 20 million dollar venture fund to invest in amazing companies that are adjacent to their core business and i don't understand why they don't have like financial wellness platforms and what i mean by that it's like exactly like the unions that offer a curated discovery platform for their players to see good companies why clubs don't do that like hey we know we're paying you an incredibly large amount of money yeah let us help you in your financial discovery yeah I mean that would be amazing I know that the Premier League has a venture fund that is pretty recent uh and so they start investing in in companies I don't know exactly like the structure and the setup we've had the conversation with the NBA and the NFL ones so the NBA the NBA is probably the oldest one uh so it has been existing for yeah at the Premier league i know that darmash mistrew was was a board member an ex vc uh has been very involved with the fun and so he's amazing and and and so so i don't know the size the setup and and so on but i know they start they are starting investing in early stage companies but again if you're looking at those new leagues and those new markets let's move it away from football how did you then go out into the us and try and build the relationships in an nba for example yeah i think look um from the first there i was like okay we are sitting uh at the intersection of two markets that exist and are already big in the u.s collecting things collecting memorabilia and uh fantasy sports so there are two existing categories so are bringing with this unique twist of digital property like you can own your stuff you can trade your your card you can use it across the seasons and so on and I was like, okay, I need to win in the US to realize the ambition we have for this company.

28:42So I think that to get there, I wanted to prove that with football, like we are on the journey of building something massive and then it all accelerated with then like the NFT boom and then the crypto boom in late 21, 22. our business was becoming sizable and you know they were like okay we need to open this new category and then we were like okay no like it's going to be very competitive so we need to raise money so we raise a large series b in order to be competitive to get this right so it's all it all came a bit together very fast straight away did they get it in ways that you didn't have to explain to the european markets those leagues they understand how to integrate this um look i think I think I don't want to be harsh on European leagues.

29:33I think they got it the same way. I just think that the US leagues, they came slightly after into our category because we just started with football, because football, it's our roots and that's the biggest sport in the world. So that's why we decided to stand there. And then the market was a bit more mature, I would say, if I can use that one back in the days when the US leagues started to take notice. Have you found the fans different to work with? Fans of football in Europe are very specific in how they interact maybe with their clubs. Fans in the US are quite used to spending more money in and around the experiential side.

30:13How have you managed to tap into that? Has that been different? Yeah, so I mean, starting with the leagues and then I will get to the fans. I think the leagues, what's a bit different is that the NBA, when you look at the MLB, they had experience in taking equity positions in certain partners, taking more risk, even if it was a new category where even the regulatory topics are not totally sorted out. Like they know how to take a long journey with a company, with the hubs and the downs and so on. And so that's what makes it a bit easier, I would say, to deal with in the beginning. When it comes to the funds, I mean, as I said, like in the US, you have these two markets that are already massive.

30:50And so, yes, I mean, the LTV of a US fund is much higher than a European fan. And you have less education to make as well because even fantasy sports, you mentioned fantasy Premier League, but the market is very fragmented. You have like a lot of local players. In France, we have fantasy Premier League in the UK, even if it's a global game. But in France, you have a small local player, same in Spain, same in Germany and so on. So the market is not as mature as it is in the US where you have basically free-to-play products like Yahoo Fantasy and so on. And then you have daily fantasy sports with Fangio and DraftKings, which are just by themselves two massive categories, right?

31:32So less education, more maturity, I would say. I'm permanently in awe of how huge fantasy football is. I'm an addict. Are you? Yeah. The day after my daughter was born, I played my assistant manager's chip on fantasy football and everyone was like, oh my God, we thought you'd have a week off. I was like, uh-uh. That's not happening. but it's great because it just it gives you a level of competition with your mates that actually you think shows how good you are at something exactly but it doesn't and then when everyone does badly they go oh i just i forgot exactly exactly i forgot to do i have your wife doesn't hear that she plays too she plays too yeah in yourself in the same league wow yeah she's beaten me before i mean being very direct you raised a lot of money how much did you raise so uh total we raised close to 450 million euros in primary and then we've done some secondaries along the way and then so when you raise 450 in primary does it not get to a stage where you can kind of buy the assets like you just have this war chest of cash that you can come in and win markets with cash alone when you think about like um putting down deposits for leagues and winning leagues yeah yeah you can just go to the nba and say here's 100 million yeah i mean First of all, we raised for that specific reason, right?

32:46Because when it comes to scaling a team and so on, I believe that you cannot just force the growth of an organization and add people and that would add value to the company. Isn't that the VC model? When we raised like 400 million euros, we were 17 in the team. And one year later, we were still less than 100, right? So I always have been very clear that our model could be very efficient without being hundreds of people in the company. So the money was really to be used, number one, to get these rights, which were becoming very expensive. And I wanted to be able to compete. I knew that I'd have the better team, the better product, and so on.

33:31But I wanted to have the financial resources that some big gaming companies in the US have. Why were they getting more expensive? Was it purely demand going up? it was competition so you are being a good that is unique like you are going to the nba they're not going to sell two goods it's going to be one category it's going to be called like fantasy sports with digital collectibles whatever you call it and there's going to be one company and and and you just have like three four five six massive companies that are bidding against you so either you want to be part of that uh conversation or not right so so as simple as that you know you need to be in and you need to have the the strengths to compete so that was the main reason uh and then like you know having the ability to have a one chest you're creating a new category you don't know what's going to happen along the way you have regulatory hurdles that may happen like it happened for many category creators so do you think it's more important to have let's say 100 million to put in front of an nba or serena williams on the side actually adding something different because it's basically is it all about money it's no it's it's uh it's different because like when you are buying something like uh then be right or the premier league you know it's it's something that is unique uh and you know that it's not going to be like two or three companies getting those rights so you need to have your products it's as simple as that so you need to find the right balance because if the daily you know at the end is too skewed towards us as a company or the partner like you know like at the end there's no business right when it comes to athletes of course like you know that some athletes can change the trajectory if a company can accelerate different parts being like product or bd or whatever but you know like it's not going to kill your product if you don't have right so you've got messy involved right yeah we got we got messy we invested money in the company that's a needle mover exposure wise so yeah it helps but But, you know, like, I think we always overestimate the impact that an athlete could have on user growth and underestimate the impact an athlete can have on other parts of the company building.

35:37When they invest, do they agree to post on Instagram, post on Twitter? Is that part of the investment? It depends. It depends. For some of them, it was part of it. But most of the value came from stuff that were not, you know, in the contracts and that just came organically, naturally, because the athlete loved the product, because we built a great relationship with the athlete. And so they were doing things that, you know, they were not supposed to do or that were not in the contracts. And that's why I was, you know, spending time earlier in this interview talking about authenticity. And you need to have athletes that really get what you do, that love what you do, that love the vision, that like you as a founder and and just embark on a journey that's why you get most of the value which league was the most expensive in terms of the upfront payment so i mean this is where like my contractual obligations are a bit preventing me to be as transparent as i would like but i think what we are very proud is to have as i said like a business where of course you are generating more money from the big leagues but while we are still generating like a very meaningful amount of money from like what we would call like Tiantu or Tier 3 leagues.

36:44Not only that, but also helping them grow the audience because like there's dozens of thousands of fans that, you know, got to know the Japanese league, the Korean league, the Belgian league, the Dutch league because of our product, you know, because they started maybe with the Premier League or whatever and then, you know, like they got to know other leagues and watch games. Do you have the Saudi league? We don't have them yet. That is something that could happen. that is something that hopefully will happen in the future. Do you think the Saudi league has sustainability? I think that they have a time horizon that is very long from what I understand.

37:23I believe that they brought amazing talents. And, you know, in the early days we were like, it's only going to be people that are about to retire and so on. And we can see that they managed to attract more and more younger talents in the league. i think they know that they need to be stronger on raising talent talent locally as well and building all the infrastructure for this i think they are starting to do this but these are things that take years and so we would you know they will see the the benefits i guess in in the long term solve a debate for us everyone is quite excited for the world cup in the u.s and like oh it will sustain purely mls like domestic football leagues i question the sustainability of them in the us am i wrong how do you um look i think that uh it's it's a it's the the mls like the the level of the mls is is really growing five years ago you would see long uh young sorry uh latin american talents like from argentina brazil like going from uh brazil directly to portugal or france or europe basically and that was the goal right and now you are you are seeing competition from top mls clubs that get to attract this very good talent, like 19, 20 years old, and raise the level of the league.

38:38And they take that as a really competitive destination when you compare to, of course, not the Premier League, but some other leagues in Europe. So I think the level is growing. I think there's room for a league with massive success in the US. I don't know if you see a particular blocker, but I'm pretty bullish on MLS. You've done a deal with the MLS, correct? We have a deal with the MLS and with the MLS Union. Did they talk to you in a different way to other football leagues about their ambitions and their plans? I think they are very focused on growing the audience, growing the user base. I think what they did with Apple is very smart because they have global exposure and as a fan you have one place to watch all the games which is something that is killing us in Europe in certain leagues and as a French fan I can tell you it's killing the French league product because of the fragmentation of the rides.

39:26But that's a great point on questioning its sustainability because that deal is in place because Messi joined the league and he's even a part owner of that field. So if Messi leaves, does Apple still keep that deal? Of course that helps. I think that they need to prove that they can build stories around the league. And this is something that remains to be seen. That's true. And it's a big challenge. But when you watch the Premier League, you have so many side stories. You have all the Londonian derbies. You have Manchester United, Manchester City. I mean, there's many, many sub-stories to the series.

40:03And it's also like the ability from the league to market the product. I was watching an ad the other day from Sky when they launched the first season of the Premier League. I mean, they just get it, you know? They know how to get into... It's more than sports culture, you know? And the way that they've been telling stories and marketing the product has been just amazing, from the very first season, from the very first day. And I think that's what remains to be proven for the MLS, but they have the right talent, the right people. We talked about the frank-mented media rights quite a lot, and obviously as a French football fan, you've got to deal with that a lot at the moment.

40:45How much does the media rights landscape influence the opportunities that you have? I think it's an opportunity because I think smart leaders at all leagues recognize that it's going to be a challenge to keep on growing media rights. And I think we are seeing that, like, you know, if you are flat compared to the previous cycle, it's already a win for like most of the leagues right now. Why is that? If you're flat, it's a win. I think if you talk about football, like, you know, like most of your audience is still local, right? And at some point, there's a ceiling of the number of fans that you have and the money that you can take from their pockets.

41:25And I think that with the current price tags that we have in these markets, you have limitations. So do you think there is or do you think that's actually just a lack of innovation in the mindsets of the monetization methods that we use? Like you can think about player data, the ownership of player data, how we sell player data to gambling companies. There are so many. I think, I mean, that's a difference. I mean, I was talking if you keep the existing model. With the existing model, you have a ceiling. but if you break everything let's say you give everything for free all the games worldwide and you monetize in a different way i mean maybe you can do much more than what you are doing right now maybe not right but there are innovative approaches that need to be tested i think that works for smaller leagues for sure but in in that sense i think that distribution is going to matter a lot and getting able and that's why i'm very excited to for for the mls approach with apple But they just got started.

42:21So it needs to take years for the stories to take shape and so on. But today with the current model, there's a clear ceiling. And they need to look at more avenues, more opportunities to market the rights, the IP that they have. What do you think the media rights distribution looks like in a few years? We see this concentration of attention towards the English Premier League. But like a worsening of leaks in France and Spain and Italy. So you'll see the EPL go up and you'll see more pressure on the alternative leaks. Do you think that's going to continue? I think it will continue unless the leagues work hard on the product and change the product and make a better product.

43:00What would you do if you were in charge of it? I mean, first of all, you need to have competitive balance. That's part of what makes the Premier League an amazing product, is that you have balance. Because the way the TV rights are split between the clubs is fair. And so you have a good balance between the bottom of the league and the top of the league. So that's number one. and I think that an approach that is taken by some leagues is okay we need to help the top clubs with like skewing more money to them so that they are competitive in the Champions League and so on but you know in the end it's just weakening the domestic league and with a weaker domestic league like they don't face competitive teams on week over week basis and it's hard for them to be good on the Champions League stage or the European League or whatever so I think that's one point and number two is just be innovative in the product itself and in the way they distribute the product and picking partners that can help them grow in that direction.