Peter McCormack, Real Bedford Owner: Can Billionaire Investment Take You From Non-League To The Premier League? (Ep79)

0:00I was laughed at when I said I would take a team from the bottom of the English football league to the Premier League nine promotions in three years we're a third of the way through we've now got billionaire investors and we have a roadmap to do it we've never had a team in the football league we're the second largest town in the country without a team in the football league and so i was looking i was like why has bedford never had this winklevoss sponsored my podcast at the time i sat down with them and i said i want to buy my local football team and get them in the football league so they're like what does that mean i said well there's this area called non-league and we're in the sixth tier of that and i think i can get them into the football league which is the fourth tier and there was like a two second pause from Cameron and he went, how do you get him in the Premier League?

0:35It's very different from any other business because when you run any business, you are profit driven. But football is results driven business. You sacrifice profits for the goal of success. And the biggest challenge is trying to be a club who can do both. Can you be successful and profitable? If you're trying to race through the leagues like we are, you have to sacrifice profit for success.

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're delighted to welcome Peter McCormack to the show. Peter is the owner and chairman of Real Bedford, who play in the 8th tier of English football. But this is unique for a number of reasons. We always look for the stories that represent a different approach to running sports assets and building your Premier League ambition around Bitcoin is certainly one of those. Peter is the host of one of, if not the biggest Bitcoin podcasts. As you will hear, his journey to club ownership is as colourful as it is extraordinary.

1:34This is someone who's come through some really challenging times to get to where he is now. As you will have just heard in the intro, everyone laughed at him when he laid out his plan for Real Bedford, but with a wealth of both deep-pocketed investors and sponsors, most notably the storied Winklevoss twins of Olympic rowing, Facebook lawsuit and Gemini fame to many of you, I'm sure, this is quickly becoming a team with both the resources and strategy to fly up the pyramid. With the women's team competing in the third tier and proving equally ambitious, the plan is to build a club fully representing the community, full of opportunity and success.

2:05The usual challenges remain though, success versus profit, full attendances, wider football governance. But as this is a place where we want to look at how to create sustained value beyond football's historic and increasingly out-of-date financial levers, the real Bedford model is a captivating alternative. Not for everyone, not guaranteed to work, and certainly unorthodox, but a bold attempt to break the wheel. We're delighted to welcome Peter to the Business of Sport. But first, some words from our valued partners. This is digital fitness coaching at its peak. I'm so excited for us to partner with Runner, a relationship that's going to get us all up and out there, me included, pacing the streets, woodlands, parks, beachfronts, but backed up by elite-level insight and accessibility.

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3:29This is fitness driven experience and community. We bring you a global network of runners who push, celebrate and support each other. Whether you're an existing user or want to check it out for the first time, you can use our code BOSSRUNNER, that's B-O-S-R-U-N-N-A or click the link in the bio. Take a look, be challenged, have fun and of course stay tuned. Peter, I'm so excited for this. I've been really looking forward to this. I think it's probably one of the most unique stories in sport, in modern finance. So thank you so much for joining us first. Not a problem. I do just want to start there.

4:04We were chatting outside and you quite rightly said, listen, this is the podcast. And I'm like, yeah, I should actually ask it in it. How did you first discover Bitcoin? Let's start there before we move to the club. So back in 2013, I was working in what we would call digital advertising. That's the romantic side of it. We were building websites, social media, etc. and one of my friends called me up and said pete there's a website you can buy uh cocaine on it's called the silk road i was like what what are you on about and he said yeah no there's a website you can buy you can buy cocaine it gets delivered to your house what he's like yeah it's called the silk road and you need the single bitcoin i was like bitcoin i've heard about that that's like okay that's like if you used it and he said yeah it's incredible all it's like amazon it's got every single drug and you can review you can order the dealers in terms of their reviews you can find who's got the best okay and i was like this is mental so i went on a website called local bitcoins i bought a bitcoin it was about 80 pound at the time i went on the silk road which on the dark web which takes a bit of time to get your head around it and uh ordered myself a couple of grams of cocaine and two three days later a little amazon style package turns up at my house with cocaine.

5:19By the way, anyone listening, I don't take drugs anymore. That was a period in my life. And I went through a divorce during that period and ended up becoming quite the addict. And yeah, a lot went on that year. I mean, I'm working in London. I set up an agency in London and I'm doing a little bit of trading, but I'm not buying and selling real Bitcoin. I'm on a platform called Plus 500 and I was doing CFDs and it was wild because I had a good job. I made okay money but nothing crazy it was a low six figure you know a good year with bonuses maybe made 120 000 pound but with two kids and a you know mortgage and a habit that goes quick so i started trading and and i remember i put in orders overnight and and yeah and i'd maybe make three four thousand pound i was like this is crazy and then other ones the market would crash and i'd get leveraged out i'd get stopped out so i didn't properly accumulate and then i i also started trade i remember one night i was trading tesla during a period i used to just sit there and i'd buy sell during the day i thought it was a genius i was really i was just guessing and i had a order go in that didn't i didn't close out before the end of the day and i think i was short and with leverage what 10x leverage and then tesla had some incredible announcement over the night and i woke up in the morning i was like 15 grand down i remember calling my fiancee at the time i was like something's happened i need to talk this through with you and she was very cool about it and she was like yeah you should probably stop that so i did and i closed my account and i was like i was done with the world of trading but roll on to the end of 2016 my mum's very seriously ill with cancer she had ovarian cancer she was uh weeks away from death and we wanted to get her some cannabis oil for therapeutic treatment and so my dad was like how do we get this i was like well dad do you remember that time i was doing lots of drugs he's like yeah well there's these websites you need bitcoin so he gave me i don't know bitcoin at the time is about 600 pounds so we went and bought a bitcoin bought some cannabis oil then uh sadly mum passed away that was early january and so i went back onto coinbase to resell the bitcoin and there was this other thing called ethereum but at the time i was like in limbo i'd quit i'd got divorced i'd quit advertising i'd got fed up of that industry and i didn't know what to do with myself so i was looking at this ethereum bitcoin i started reading about this blockchain revolution which is all bollocks and just bought the 35 grand i had in my bank account i just yolo'd that all into bitcoin and ethereum and that whole 2017 i was trading i was just and again i thought i was a genius but i wasn't just everything was going up i was just lucky and i traded that 35 grand up to it was about 1.3 million pound and then back down again by i think it's by about march 2018 i was down to about 60 grand but there's a few there's a few little stories in that so a really funny one as i remember at christmas i booked because i'd been making money i was like living the life i bought a brightling and i bought a new car and flying business cars like a proper twat he's just made a bit of money but i remember at christmas i was with my dad at center parks and i'd taken my kids and my dad was saying look you've made a lot of money why don't you just sell some you could buy three or four houses and you could protect your investment i was like oh but i think it's going to go higher it's like yeah but what if it doesn't so i agreed with my dad i was going to sell harvard about 600 grand and at the time in bedford i mean this is god this is back in 2017 you could probably buy a decent mid-terrace house 150 000 so i was going to buy four of them and i'm sat there on my laptop and my daughter she was six at the time and she runs over to the table where i'm at and I've got a glass of wine on my laptop open and she smashes into it.

8:56The glass of wine falls onto the laptop and it fries the laptop. So I'm like, ah, shit. So, okay, dab, I'll do this next week. And I just never did it. End of January, Bitcoin crashes. All the shit coins I own crashed. And by March, I had about£60 ,000 of Bitcoin left and a tax bill. And then that was like the period where I was like, okay, time to rethink life. So yeah, a lot happened. how does real badford come into it and where did that first seed of an idea come to be there's a big bit we need to tell before then sure when i'm running every day and i discover a podcast by a guy called rich roll don't know if you know rich yeah so i so i'm running and also because my mom's got cancer she went vegan so i went vegan with her and so this vegan ultra athlete was like oh this guy's amazing so when i'd go running i would listen to his podcast and i went home one day i remember i was and i searched rich roll on google and i found that he had this event in italy in florence and it was like a yoga vegan whatever so i call up the girl organizing it and i said are there any places left she said there's one place left i was like okay can i have it and so about a week later i get on a plane fly to pisa get in a car and go to this event and there's basically about 40 people who've just come together and we all spend a week doing yoga um running and hanging out and there's a note from rich in on my bed which basically explains thanks p i understand what you've been through and i end up reading his book and he was in a very similar scenario he his uh marriage broke up on the honeymoon so even more premature than i did and so anyway so i do this whole trip and at the end of it he has these private meetings with everyone he said like stay in touch and if you're ever in la look us up i was like all right so i go back and i book flights immediately to la and i call rich and say look i'm in la he's like all right come over to the house so i did and i just said look i love what you do i love your job i want to be a podcaster how do i do it and he said you need to do the pat fling course um you need this is the equipment you need and so i go back to my buddy's place in uh i had a friend who was living on venice beach so i go back to his i buy the equipment i bought and i do the course and i'm like what subject am i gonna do i was like i was buying bitcoin at the time so i thought fuck it i'll do it on bitcoin and so i find this guy on twitter called luke martin and i messaged him say hey i'm doing a podcast you want to be the first guest and he said yes so i went out and interviewed him and so i do the podcast and that becomes like my new focus i start that november 2017 so that's just before that christmas when my daughter fries the laptop and before the price crashes and so i get to kind of mid 2018 and i'm i'm running out of money uh the podcast is going okay and i eventually get a phone call from a company who says uh can we sponsor the podcast a company called blockfly who went bust in the end and so i'm like yeah uh i don't know what they pay i was like i don't know what to charge they said we'll pay you five thousand pound a month i was like fucking great i mean i'm broke uh i'm a like i was close to losing my house i couldn't get a mortgage because i didn't have a job so they advertise and that's kind of flywheel up because other people heard the ads and thought i want my i want to advertise and the show just grew really quickly it went from you know thousands of listeners to shows doing over 100 000 which obviously that's when you're in a position where you say well i'm doing millions over the year and people advertise and so i i mean i ran that show up until around i mean i flipped the show recently but around it must have been 2021 like i was making good money i was investing well what was the most you did in a year on the show oh um i mean i always priced it in dollars because all my clients were in dollars uh the peak was about 3.5 million dollars but that was a bull market time everyone wanted to sponsor it you know it was if you're an exchange your biggest players are ftx's your binance isn't a sponsor so i didn't have them so i had kraken and gemini at different points um but if you're an exchange you want to hoover in customers you want to be on the biggest bitcoin podcast in the world mine was there's a lot of competition for that and so it was feast of famine during a bull market lots of advertisers desperate to advertise and then during the bear market how do we survive and i had two or three of those cycles but in i'd got to the point where i was like comfortable financially comfortable i was like okay i'm okay i'm not gonna piss this away i've protected my assets but anyway like 2021 i was um i was like i'm from bedford we've never had a team in the football league we're the large second largest town in the country without a team in the football league wake i think it's wakefield's the biggest but they've got rugby league and so i was looking i was like why has bedford never had this and i just figured out no one had ever done it um winklevoss were my sponsor my podcast at the time we met up in austin for our like i think it was austin for our annual catch-up and so i just i sat down with them i said look i've got this idea by the way will you renew the podcast yes i've got this idea i want to buy my local football team get them in the football league and so they're like what does that mean i said well there's this area called non-league and we're in the sixth tier of that and i think i can get them into the football league which is the fourth tier into the professional leagues and there was like a two second pause from i'm pretty sure it's cameron and he went how do you get them in the premier league i was like well i've had all your money it'd be easy i said let me go away and have a think about it and so i tried to buy bedford town the biggest team in the town they rejected my offer and i was a little bit deflated i was like oh what do i do now and then somebody said look there's this other team next door um bedford sc are you interested in buying them and i was like yeah i'll buy any team and so so i acquired them and but how much uh undisclosed so it's not not a lot of money but our respect to who i acquired it from we agreed it would be undisclosed and uh i was like okay i need to come up with a plan if you look at football it's you know it's a it's a game of numbers i think every promotion my view is 60 is your player budget 30 is your manager budget and 10 is is your luck in that leicester city didn't have the best playing budget but they had a great manager and a lot of luck that year and won a league and i think there was a time recently where chelsea had the probably spent the most money and had the wrong manager and didn't have a lot of luck and failed but generally speaking there's a correlation between those things so i was like well if you need the best budget and all your money comes from sponsors gate receipts and burgers sold how do i make sure we're the best i was like fuck it we'll become the bitcoin side If we become the Bitcoin side, I've got my Bitcoin podcast, which is the biggest in the world, and I'll just make everyone like our side and I'll get all the sponsors.

15:53It totally worked. I went around all the sponsors and I said, this is the plan is to take a team from the 10th year of English football to the Premier League powered by Bitcoin. Do you want to be a sponsor? And everyone's like, yes, let's do it. So I sold all the shirts, sponsorship and boarding around the ground and then promoted on my podcast and sold so much. I mean, we are we've been going three years. we've sold over 300 000 pound of merch most clubs at our level will be lucky to have sold 3 000 pound of merch we have people who fly to the uk to come and watch games or they come to the uk and belt bedford's become a pilgrimage and so our finances have been really really i mean we made a hundred thousand pound profit in the first season i think it's around 90 000 just so i understand so you sell like front of shirt sponsor yeah how much is that so the last deal i just did with Gemini was a five-year deal paid in Bitcoin in advance, £100 ,000 a year.

16:45So they did a£500 ,000 deal. But when they did that, I don't know what's the price of Bitcoin. I'd have to go and look it up, but say it was£60 ,000. Is that the biggest contributor on sponsorships, front of shirt? Front of shirt is the biggest. Back of shirt, second. Third is stadium. I think fourth. How much is your stadium? So that is undisclosed, but six figures. Six figures over two years. okay and this is all crypto providers or crypto primary bitcoin companies yeah and we don't really sell to outside of that because we make so much from these companies like non-bitcoin companies they can't even get close to those prices because we're not in the i'm not talking to expedia yet yeah so so how much do you do in a year from the football club so last year i'd have to look it up it's about 640 000 pound turnover but last year we spent probably 1.3 million but but uh some of that uh we will depreciate because there's a lot of investment in the ground do you own your ground no we have a lease from the council okay um but but when you're a fast growing club so the first two years we didn't lose money we made money last year was the first year we lost money but last essentially your player wages tend to double each year if you want to win the league which is a lot are you doubling your revenue no the sponsorships are three-year deals so they're about static um the uh merch is pretty static the only thing that grows is your gate revenue but that's not growing to keep up with those costs and so it you know we budget for this stuff like this year i've budgeted to lose my expectation is we lose another 700 ,000 this year up to 900 ,000 but we've done that because we're trying to win leagues and grow the club there's a lot of you know every promotion you get you have something called a ground grading so you have to build new stands new infrastructure i mean if you come down to our ground at the moment it's a building site we're putting a new fan zone with food facilities new grounds we're putting in a a boardroom there's lots of things we're doing to grow it how many people come to the average game so when i took over they would get 40 40 yeah and that was all friends and family the first season we averaged 179 the biggest crowd i think was 350 the second season we averaged about 260 the biggest crowd was over a thousand i think it was 1090 and then last season we averaged 360 and the biggest crowd was 1400 so there's average 360 but that average is often brought down by tuesday night games because if you've got kids you're not coming so your average say midweek might be 180 and your average on weekends might be 460.

19:35When you look at revenue drivers within the club say of your 600 income how does that split between sponsors uh ticket receipts you're not doing player sales yeah so so last year I would say last year if it's 640 it was probably around 400 ,000 on sponsorship about a hundred thousand and on merch and the rest would have been uh match day which is uh gate receipts f and b f and b and prize money competition but that's very small at the moment um but we're we're not just a men's side we're a women's side as well and so the men's side they've won the league three years in a row three times running yeah and we're the only i think we're only the second or third cup to have done that yeah insane no one's ever done it four times which would be great if we do that this year and then uh a year and we started our women's side they've won back to mac promotions they're up to the third tier so they're two of the wsl and so if you're moving that quick it's very hard to keep revenue up with costs because you have these infrastructure costs for your gradings and then you know player budgets go up and you know we can pause we could go right we'll settle here we'll sit here for a few years we'll work on our revenue but we don't want to pause and a year ago tyler and cameron cameron winklevoss winklevoss capital invested uh 3.6 million pound into the club so because i told him about the idea i think i basically i was like when are they going to do this i think they were basically watching me to see if i could execute and as we i mean we won the back-to-back promotions we won a cup each so it was back-to-back doubles and then the ladies one i think it was a treble i think i could go to them and say look i know how to do this but money is a big component and uh so i pitched to them the investment they went yeah here we go money is a big component yes is owning a sports team a financial decision or is it an act of passion i mean it's both it is a financial decision because finance is part of it uh it's very different from any other business because when you run any business you are profit driven but football is results driven business you sacrifice profits for the goal of success and the biggest challenge is trying to be a club who can do both can you be successful and profitable if you're trying to race through the leagues like we are you have to sacrifice profit for success.

22:06But that's like any startup. I mean, how many startups do you know when you've made an investment? You're like, deploy that fucking capital, get it out there, and then come back when you need more. You build market share. Well, our version of market share is position in the league. You're trying to grow. So when you are in lower leagues, bluntly, success is predicated by how much money you can spend. I think success in every league is predicated by how much you can spend. Look at Liverpool, what they're spending at the moment. They're about to sign ISAC as well. They are trying to reinforce their position as the best team now in the UK.

22:39And Chelsea are snapping on their heels and City want to come back. Go and look at the championship. Who's going to want to get promoted? They're probably a 10 side who think we can have a go. We can at least make the playoffs. And the financial benefits of the Premier League are so huge. Does any club in the championship make money? I mean, Rexima there now. Are they going to have a go? the interesting thing with rexum was i was surprised actually by how small their revenues were and that sounds very arrogant of me they did about i think it was at 18 to 22 million in revenue and don't get me wrong it's a lot of money yeah it's not really when you look at ryan reynolds bringing in the biggest companies in the world to do transatlantic sponsorships and campaigns yeah it's not a huge amount but but against their competitor set it's enormous yeah enormous and so actually i i think their revenues are good i think they spent what 31 million so far to get where they are um which i've shared with my investors and they're like well that's not a scary number but the the goal is you either want to be a local football club that supports a community down in step three or four uh with a healthy crowd and you you don't lose money you do a job for the community or you're going to be a club you know a regional club that wants to be kind of EFL one, EFL two, again, do a good job, not lose too much money.

23:58Plymouth are quite good at that. Or you want to be established in the Premier League. I mean, that's the big goal. I was laughed at when I said I would take a team from the bottom of the English Football League to the Premier League. Nine promotions in three years. We're a third of the way through. We've now got billionaire investors and we have a roadmap to do it. So I like actual odds. I was told I was an idiot for investing in Bitcoin. It worked out. I like shitty odds. Do you think the structure of english football is fundamentally broken in terms of bluntly parachute payments in terms of premier league or bust it depends what just depends on your measure yeah what is a premier league club uh uh is it a toy for billionaires like front row tickets at the knicks is it just a toy whereby they're happy to lose money because they want to play the thing i think of it differently i think of the trickle down effect this football club i'm running could lose a lot of money for years which i lose a lot of time because i don't make any money and my investors lose a lot of money but they're happy to because they like the project and then what's coming down at the bottom of that we've got hundreds of kids playing sports and playing football in bedford who love it with an ambition and idea they can one day play for the club and so this ripple effect around the town has been huge of what we're doing i mean look i like free markets and people want to invest in a football club and lose a bunch of money it's kind of down to them right i mean how else do you fix it the only option is a salary cap yeah the only like literally the only option but who are we to restrict how much money somebody can earn who has a talent how would you like it if somebody said well harry your uh fund's doing too well we're going to restrict you we're gonna put a cap on how much you uh you can earn you'd be like bollocks that's my talent i don't like salary caps completely agree with you people just think that we have an unsustainable business model and that it is crumbling and actually not not non-league but the second tier third tier teams cannot continue in the way that it is and they're all losing money and it's just a question of how long they've been saying that for 10 years 20 years yeah 10 20 years how many clubs that you know of that existed no longer exist no longer in existence as a club they're like two or three that've gone bankrupt yeah but they still exist i think they're in our league this year and they merged berry town much with berry united or something but berry still exists they did a merger yeah who else the truth is is like if you're really honest about it you can all bitch and moan about it if a club goes bust they'll be in somebody else who'll want to buy them and they start the merry-go-round and this could be quite good fun look what happened to luton everyone's like this is so awful and they're down down in the national league but they came all the way back to the premier league and what a ride like let's just face reality is like it's when pundits are discussing football i always say to myself can we all just say look someone has to go down you know a manager can do a good job and they go down so you don't think the closed league system is good obviously in the states a lot of value retention comes from the closed league nature yeah no it's communist it's socialist look look at the way their sports run there's no there's no penalty for failure uh there's actually you're actually rewarded if you fail you're given the best players it's pure socialism which is really odd because it's a hyper capitalist country with a socialist sports system the jeopardy of relegation and promotion is incredible so i mean you know it's like some years you get to that final day the relegation battle is more exciting than the promotion battle the jeopardy of it is i love it i love it what i don't like in football is this constant squeeze and the trying to force something that people don't want so when they try to set up that european super league i thought that was gross uh i thought the world i know chelsea won it but the world club championships it was crap why i mean why are there four saudi teams in this thing all of a sudden why have Saudi suddenly got a world cup Saudi are investing in the New Zealand League it's pure corruption it's we're trying to make Saudi football a thing it won't ever be a real thing it's just purely manufactured football you don't think the Saudi League will be a real thing I mean it's real they exist to the point of ever caring no just I'm never I don't care because it's it's not an emergent league it's an it's a manufactured league and you don't think we will be able to turn that into an emergent league.

28:27There's the idea that actually you take the transition, which is you need the big stars, and then you will be able to foster that next generation and build that internally. You'll be able to make the transition to getting young people to want to build that career there. How long has America been trying to do this? America and China have both failed. Totally failed. I mean, America is a retirement league, and that's cool. It's a retirement league. It's end of your career. go and watch Messier into Miami and that's cool and by the way by the way my one of my secret pleasures is the commentary in US soccer I think the commentators are great why because they're just wild they just go crazy have you never listened to it no go and watch go and watch into Miami just watch their highlights and listen to the commentator they're brilliant but it's a retirement league it's Beckham at the end of his career Suarez you know they're all people at the end of their career you can invest in the MLS or you can invest in the Saudi league for long-term growth potential which one do you do you've got to do one how's long term is the long term five to ten years and am i invested in a team or the league the league um i'd probably go america but i'm not a great investor but do you think there's any way miami sustain messy leaving yes they'll find the next messi they'll find the next one they'll just pay someone to come and do it um they've they've always done that and and i think it's got better i think the u.s football has got better but but it's still not great it's it's mainly supported when you go to the games it's a lot of the hispanics are there they're the one driving the crowds they're the ones doing the songs behind because they're proper football people what you said there about kind of the socialist nature of the american league and i completely agree it's so paradoxical compared to that kind of capitalist society what would you most like to change about the english football league and the way that we do it in our structure i've got more i change about women's football than men's go for it okay so uh i think they need to make the leagues bigger they're doing it this year finally they've taken the wsl up to 14 which is great i think they all need to be up to 16 there's not enough games uh they all need playoffs i mean on our leagues the only the winner goes up and that's it there's nothing for second third i mean they should have a playoff that would make it more interesting that means you know we pretty much won the league by christmas uh we knew we're going to win it where and so what tends to happen the incentive for the next team changes but if you had a 14 playoff for that second spot essentially half the league has a chance of making the playoffs so there's an incentive to continue and that incentive drives more money into the game and therefore that leads more people playing football we've had so many owners on who don't want to get promoted because of the cost increases when you get promoted i mean it's it's the cost increases are they're bigger jumps each jump in the women's game is like two to three in the men's uh and the i think others have found it difficult on the revenue side our women's side was operationally profitable last year how are you profitable when no one else is uh just good sponsors we've got a very good main sponsor a galaxy they pay for a shirt they pay for our training kits uh we sold our sleeve we sold our backer shirt so we're just very good at selling sponsorships that got us to about our wage bill and then what's the wage bill i just wouldn't wouldn't disclose that publicly because it's i don't think it would have been the highest i think norwich would think ours was higher but if you include because they had a full-time manager uh their budget was probably higher we're not budgeting to win the league this year because we don't want to go into the championship because we're not ready.

32:06I don't want to go into the championship until we can afford to stay in the championship. How much money do you need to stay in the championship? I mean, I think you probably, I mean, I'll give a broad number, I think between 600 ,000 and a million. But that's all in infrastructure, staff, wages. You've got to have your team. I mean, your team's got to be full time. You're probably going to have at least 10 players on 20 to 38 ,000 a year. But there are players in the championship who are on 100 ,000 pound a year. And so, you know, there's big costs. You've got to have medical in place. It's expensive.

32:38And again, how do you get the revenues there? Women's football is played on a Sunday. People don't drink as much on a Sunday. Ticket prices are lower. Women's football faces some headwinds men's football doesn't have. More injuries. Women face more injuries just because during, say, the menstrual cycle, there's a change to the body composition, which leads to more injuries. That's an issue. That's increased costs. But there are other things in the women's game they could do better. they've created this new co which is the championship in the premier league and they're kind of ring fencing it and i think they're heading to a place where it's going to become i think it might become closed loop because a lot of the teams were saying they don't want to invest in women's football because they get into the wsa and they come straight back down and so they've expanded the league i wouldn't be surprised if this ended up closed loop they got increased budget for the fa cup a few years ago and they only deployed it after something like the fourth round so all the richer teams got it there's a lot of protectionism for the big sides and it's it's just nonsense if i gave you an unlimited checkbook today yeah what would you do differently about the way that you run the club would you buy the land so you don't have to lease it no i would uh establish an academy yeah i'd establish an academy i would build a large facility to create a pathway for boys and girls to get into senior football because that's the This is the point of football.

33:57For me, the point of football isn't to win leagues. It is to build up your town. It's a job for the town. It's to create jobs, opportunities in football, and put yourselves on the map. If you get up into decent leagues, say you're up into the championship, and you've got 1 ,500 away fans coming, that's 1 ,500 people who might stay in hotels, eat in the restaurants, shop in the local shops. You'll have an academy where thousands of kids can play football every week. You'll have disability sports. you'll have opportunities for women to play sports you'll have opportunities for coaches so i would just establish the base layer which is the academy which will end up becoming the feeder for the club how much is that i mean it depends which category you go for because there's different categories i mean we wouldn't be cat one but uh land uh an indoor dome a few 3g pitches i don't know you'd be spending eight to ten million what do you think you need to do to unlock more money from the Winklevii?

34:53Ask for it. Why don't you ask for it? Because we don't need more at the moment. I mean, we deployed the 3.6 million straight into Bitcoin and Bitcoin's gone up from$70 ,000 at the time to what was it now,$115 ,000? And so... So that 3.6 has turned into like a five and a half. Yeah, I mean, our total balance sheet is over£6 million now. And our balance sheet each year is increasing faster than we are deploying the capital. so say we lost 700 grand last year i think our values increased by what two two and a half million and so we might be able to depending on the performance of bitcoin and the interest in bitcoin we might never have to raise more capital for team operations again we might need it for infrastructure for a new stadium but team operations we probably just go to debt for stadium on playing staff what are your biggest lessons on managing playing staffs effectively now being an owner uh give complete find the right manager and give them complete autonomy just have a very clear separation is that he's everything on the pitch and i'm everything off the pitch i won't interfere what he does and he doesn't interfere with what i do we can talk you might ask me after game how do you think it went i'll tell him but there's no world where i go i think you did the wrong formation i think you need a new strike and why don't you sign it like give them complete autonomy and support but you've got to find a manager who's capable we've got a very good manager and then he just has to accept me being a lunatic off it do you think we have the wrong mentality towards manager durations in the uk football league yeah absolutely although i say that i mean i sacked three managers in my first year till i found the right ones or maybe more maybe four but i there's a lot of people don't understand about when you're sacking a manager and why they just see someone being sacked so for example our ladies won the treble and i fired the manager and replaced it with a new manager why because we had a meeting about uh so she got the job halfway through the season there's no discredit to her she is going to be an unbelievable manager and i'm not i'm not making that she's gonna be great i know it she was a coach i'd fired our uh our manager halfway through the season despite we won the first 10 games but uh i didn't like his i didn't like the way he treated the players and so i fired him because i knew i was going to do it eventually anyway and i felt after 10 games we'd kind of won the league i was like you can go she took over to the end of the season secured the league won two cups but in preparing for the next season which we wanted to win again um i didn't think she would be capable of winning that league i didn't think she knew enough of the right players to bring in and hadn't had enough time in the job and i'd found a manager i knew who could do it charlie bill was manager of mk dons they're already a tier three side we're tier four i done my research mk dons weren't even paying their players properly and so i recruited the manager he brought the team over we paid them properly and they went and secured us the league now i got absolutely hammered for this oh you're terrible you're disloyal blah blah this we went and won backpack leagues we beat norwich and qpr and won the league and so i i was vindicated on my decision and it was my gut instinct now i could have got that totally wrong and i'd have been hammered but I think as a manager as a chairman sometimes you know what is right that said I totally get if you're in the Premier League say you're 18th and you're worried about getting relegated there is that bump when you bring a manager in you see it regularly they bring a new manager in to save them and it works that's a 100 million pound decision 150 million pound decision so I totally get why they do that.

38:44Football's a lot of pressure. Standing by a manager year after years, it's hard. It's easier for us in the low leagues, but it's hard. What's the biggest mistake you've made? You said there about being vindicated in a decision. What's the biggest leadership mistake you've made running Bedford? I've not really thought about it. Because we've had three good years and we've won 10 trophies, we've made a lot of good decisions. I've been very lucky as well. The luckiest thing I did was by the team halfway through a season and i got all my mistakes done in that first six months but biggest mistake that's a really hard question because i not much has gone wrong what about duration of sponsors i mean look there's little things like that you know most of them we've got two plus one deals and so that's been good for us you know when you're securing a long-term deal um i mean what i would have done in hindsight i probably should have should worked harder on crowds but our crowds have been okay it's it's really hard because i don't think i've made you can ask me life mistakes i can tell you hundreds of them uh but the football club we've been you know it's just it's it's just gone perfectly we've been very fortunate probably do you know what you know my biggest mistake i probably should have raised more money when i raised i should i don't care about making any money out of this club and so the amount of equity i have is irrelevant as long as i have that kind of golden vote how much equity do you have 55 okay so it's just you and the winkle boy uh i'm one other actually i've got 53 and a half i gave one and a half percent to another person who was involved in the deal part of the the wickfoss deal and i wanted him as a shareholder but i don't care if i've got 53 and a half or three and a half as long as I have the ability to control and run the club the Zuckerberg got a vote and so really if I'm going to raise money and stick it all in Bitcoin and my I have conviction with regard of Bitcoin I should have just raised as much as I could and just raised I don't know 25 million and then that 25 million that would be 50 million and we would never have to raise again do you think that clubs are fundamentally not thinking about media the right way when you look at the way that you've weaponized sponsors brilliantly well to fund the club in the way that you have done in large part it's because of the attraction around being the first bitcoin club the naming that comes with that the prestige clubs just don't get it i think football most clubs are boring i mean can you tell me what any club give me what does chelsea stand for what a menu stand for what do they stand for as a club what's their soul like what if you go back and look at the history of football when clubs have established their nicknames it comes from where they were from in the community like liverpool used to be a club that was really based around the working class community in liverpool are they now of course they're not football clubs don't really stand for anything but you get the odd one like forest green rover is a vegan eco and dale vince is a government grifter but they stand for something right they have a thing they stand for but most clubs don't and i think that's sad that they all want to have the same opinion you know when they're required to to take a knee before a football match they all take a knee if you don't wear a poppy if You're the one person.

41:52The whole of football hammers you. No one stands for anything. No one's got any personalities. No one's, name me a football club that's standing up against the government right now and saying, absolutely fucking not. No one stands up. It's all fit in, don't get cancelled, play the game, sport in excellence. And I just, I think clubs need to stand for something and be bold and brave and have a personality and just say, no, like we are essentially, we're a libertarian football club. We've got Skull and Crossbones as our logo. We stand for something. Wouldn't it be great if other clubs did for something?

42:25But they all stand for the same. And that's the responsibility of the owners? Totally. They're all just cowards. And they all just want, they just care about the next season, just that little bit of improvement. They're really scared of losing a few fans or upsetting people. I think that's a problem with society. That's one of my controversial opinions. I would love to do a quick fire with you. 60 seconds per one. if you could bring any player to bedford who would you bring oh a current player yeah i mean without just saying no lionel missy forever like who do i love as a player i like harvey elliot i like him liverpool don't want him i take him which sponsor do you not have that you would love to have oh that's a great question neighborhood clothing interesting why because i just think they're cool i wear a lot of their stuff what have you changed your mind on most about football ownership god these are good questions why i changed my mind first um how important winning is unpack that if it's win at all cost you lose a bit of your own integrity and you want it too much and you make poor decisions if you can be stoic about the results of a game you become a better leader and you're able to make better decisions the amount of times where we've lost a game and people are losing their shit or why is the manager pick this one or why and you can just stand there and go he's our manager he's the one in the position of the job he's doing a great job we can't win every game see you next week i think i'm a better leader and a better chairman by being stoic about every result like i i do not get upset with defeats anymore and by the way there were times where i thought i was literally going to have a cardiac arrest during a game i was you know it's one nil five minutes ago and i'm panicking i'm very stoic about that now what's the favorite trait of yourself that's been most contributing to your success relentless i've been relentless get up turn up every day work at five in the morning wake up at one in the morning with an idea go down and work on it work till midnight sacrifice everything willing to phone up and ask for things just relentless pursuit of winning which owner today do you most respect and admire beckham i love what he named the club into miami i totally stole the idea with rail bedford i came up with the name in their stadium when i was there i was like that's a great idea he has a relentless desire to win and has figured out what he needs to do and he has attracted the best players the sponsors absolutely delivered i think he's brilliant i don't could he do it in in the english leagues probably not uh i just love david beckham real bedford in five years time where are you then you'll be eight years into 10 year plan oh i think we'll be in the national league what would stop you getting there obviously losing but like what is the reason i don't think anything will stop us yeah i don't i think we're we're an unstoppable train like lynn alden says nothing stops this train i love having you on you know why it's because you you know this doing a podcast you want people who are willing to say what they think thank you so much to peter and harry for doing that show it was one i was very sad to miss peter's story and approach to sports ownership is as you would have figured by now very different to the traditional way of approaching owning a football club but this is what the industry sometimes needs we're always calling out for people to do things differently to create value in different ways to test things but when you have owners who can operate in the lower tiers and try things it's a brilliant laboratory for gauging where there are financial opportunities to take football to the next level It's been an amazing story so far.

46:21It's one we'll definitely keep following. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on what was discussed. Now, if you want to see more from today's show, you can do so by going to YouTube and typing in Business of Sport. But before we leave you, some words from our valued partners. This is digital fitness coaching at its peak. I'm so excited for us to partner with Runner, a relationship that's going to get us all up and out there, me included, pacing the streets, woodlands, parks, beachfronts, but backed up by elite level insight and accessibility. This is the kind of coaching that used to be reserved for the pros.

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