Seb Coe | New Formats, Athlete Pay, & The Post-Bolt Era: Rebuilding the Reputation of Athletics (Ep129)

21 Jul 2026 · 1 h 8 min · 26 chapters

Ask about this episode

Ask anything about it. ChatGPT or Claude reads this page and answers with the times it was said.

Connect VO and ask about every podcast you hear, including the moments you saved. Add to ChatGPT · Add to Claude

In short

Seb Coe (World Athletics president) discusses rebuilding athletics’ reputation after governance/integrity crises, athlete pay and financial security, new event formats to grow younger audiences, and how geopolitics affects integrity of competition (e.g., Russia/Belarus participation, transgender/DSD rules).

Key claims

athletics is one of only two truly global sports; sponsors pay because athletes deliver visibility; athlete welfare requires financial security; “sport is our activity, entertainment is our business”; season length is too short and climate change forces calendar changes; politics can’t be “kept out” because governments fund sport, but decisions should be grounded in integrity of competition.

Notable examples

Tokyo 2023 ticket sales (630,000 over nine days); “The Ultimate” planned as a three-night, TV-first world championships in Budapest; Tokyo 100m finalists’ prize money shows most earn under $100k; World Athletics spends ~80m over four years on development (about 30m integrity; ~50m prize money).

Guests

None besides hosts Harry and Charlie; the episode centers on Seb Coe.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Athlete Pay and Sponsorship

0:00 to 0:59

Explores the debate over proper athlete compensation and sponsorship dynamics.

“I've always found that the arguments against paying the athletes properly, they've often been propagated by people who've never really worried about where the next meal's coming from.”

Personal Connection with Seb

3:52 to 4:52

Hosts share personal anecdotes and reflections on their relationship with Seb Coe.

“continents are getting everything they need to win the transfer market all in one place.”

Global Sports Landscape

4:52 to 6:06

Discusses the global reach and challenges of track and field as a sport.

“But when I was listening to some of the stuff you've done before, there was just one thing that you said a few times.”

Balancing Engagement and Participation

6:06 to 8:01

Seb Coe elaborates on the balance between athlete participation and fan engagement.

“There's no other sport that gets even remotely close to that.”

Innovating Track and Field Events

8:01 to 11:15

Introduces new event formats aimed at attracting younger audiences.

“How do you balance where you can be most valuable?”

The Legacy of Usain Bolt

11:15 to 14:05

Explores the impact of Usain Bolt and the need for athlete personalities in track and field.

“Let's not just make it another World Championships.”

The Evolution of Athlete Visibility

14:05 to 17:41

Learn how the consolidation of events and increased media attention can enhance athlete recognition.

“So there are many, we've got many, many more athletes in different disciplines that are capturing the attention of the media than we did when we had Usain there.”

Addressing Athlete Pay and Governance

17:41 to 24:15

Discover the complexities of athlete pay and the need for better governance structures in sports.

“Actually, a little bit of a puff piece, I guess, but we've just emerged through the ASWAF, the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations, as effectively the best governed Olympic sport.”

The Financial Landscape for Athletes

24:15 to 28:00

Explore the challenges athletes face regarding income and financial security in their careers.

“I'm genuinely asking how athletes, you said at the end of their career, how athletes expected to start their career or to have their career if you're paid£15 ,000?”

Athlete Earnings and Responsibilities

28:00 to 29:18

Understanding the financial challenges athletes face and the responsibilities of leadership in athletics.

“If you take their prize money alone, forget shoe contracts and all the other stuff that goes with it, but if you take their prize money alone, there's probably only three of those finalists that are over$100 ,000 a year.”
Show all 26 chapters

Personal Anecdotes Shaping Perspectives

29:18 to 30:48

Seb Coe shares personal experiences from his athletic career that inform his leadership decisions.

“Some would look at that as a great thing and some wouldn't.”

Evolution of Athletics and Amateurism

30:48 to 33:06

Exploring the historical shifts in athletics concerning amateurism and professionalization.

“Pancras and I saw Walter on the platform.”

Geopolitics in Modern Athletics

33:06 to 35:43

Discussing the impact of geopolitics on athletics and the necessity of government involvement.

“is there was a real nervousness given that we were competing.”

Integrity of Competition and Gender Issues

35:43 to 37:35

Addressing the complexities surrounding gender issues and the integrity of competition in athletics.

“minister, that was actually quite helpful.”

Balancing Rights and Competition Integrity

37:35 to 40:16

Examining the balance between transgender rights and maintaining fair competition in sports.

“Can you have the integrity of competition and the satisfaction of transgender rights?”

Challenges in Sports Governance

40:16 to 42:00

Seb Coe reflects on the challenges faced in sports governance and modernizing organizations.

“And ultimately, we're all responsible to a Congress that elects us all.”

Addressing Challenges in Athletics Governance

42:00 to 45:54

Learn about the various challenges faced in modernizing athletics governance, including institutional and clean sport politics.

“So, look, we turbocharged the innovations and the reforms.”

The Role of Challenger Competitions

45:54 to 49:22

Explore the impact of new challenger competitions and how they fit into the existing athletics landscape.

“their relationship with us and going forward, we have a crossover in 2029 when all our commercial rights, all our broadcast relationships, our sponsorship relationships revert to us.”

Comparison of Event Planning in Sports

49:22 to 53:10

Understand the differences in planning for major events like the Olympics versus ongoing sports governance.

“My only concern at the very outset was it wouldn't be successful because the sport's on such a strong trajectory.”

Reflections on the Olympic Experience

53:10 to 56:00

Hear personal insights on delivering impactful Olympic moments and the emotional aspects of public speaking.

“You start off with 20 or 30 people that come out of a bid.”

Meeting and Political Insights

56:00 to 56:51

Seb Coe discusses his upcoming board meeting and shares his views on political figures.

“I've got a board meeting in Manchester on Friday this week.”

Carifta Games Experience

56:51 to 57:28

Coe reflects on his favorite athletic events and the significance of the Carifta Games.

“Can you imagine just like hanging out in the Caribbean?”

Emerging Talent in Athletics

57:28 to 59:26

Discussion about new athletic talents and the impact of Usain Bolt's legacy.

“And I'm looking forward to going back to the LA Games in 28 because that, as you know, was my second Olympic Games.”

Influence of Family and Endurance Training

59:26 to 1:00:37

Coe shares insights on the influence of his father on his training and endurance running.

“If he couldn't prove it in numbers, just don't do it.”

Lessons from Sport and Leadership

1:00:37 to 1:02:48

Coe discusses the importance of understanding the broader context of sports and leadership lessons for young athletes.

“One is you met some pretty cool people like Narendra Modi.”

Parenting Advice and Seizing Opportunities

1:02:48 to 1:04:32

Coe provides parenting advice and encourages young people to embrace new opportunities.

“getting them off the sofa and getting them to put down their mobile phones, then clearly you know that he's also serious behind an Olympic bid.”
Hear the part that matters, and keep it.Open this episode in VO. Double tap your headphones to save a moment as you listen.
Get VO free

Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00I've always found that the arguments against paying the athletes properly, they've often been propagated by people who've never really worried about where the next meal's coming from. I need them to know, as a federation president, that those sponsors come to the table because they know we've got athletes that they want to get behind. Usain was bigger, in a way, than track and field. He's our ultimate ambassador. We've got more athletes now in the top 20 in terms of global visibility than we've ever had. I do say to athletes, look, your passport is your performance, but the journey is in large part about your personality.

0:34A lot of people assume that if you are an Olympic winner, you are catapulted into the same echelon as someone that wins a golf major or a tennis major. You're not. If you look at the 100 metre finalists, Tokyo last year, their prize money alone, there's probably only three of those finalists that are over$100 ,000 a year.

0:58Sebastian Coe:Hello and welcome to The Business of Sport, the show that takes you behind the scenes with the industry's leading owners, operators and athletes. In the week where Josh Kerr smashed the 27-year-old mile record, we welcome into the studio the man who broke it three times, won multiple Olympic gold medals, brought the Olympics to London in 2012 and for the last decade has been president of World Athletics. Seb Coe is one of the most influential and respected executives in sport. He has certainly had one of the most diverse careers, and that gives him the opportunity to talk through both the biggest challenges that athletics and the Olympics more broadly faces, but also highlight what makes them storied, successful and desirable for both fans and brands.

1:38Sebastian Coe:In Seb's eyes, there are only two truly global sports. Now, Harry and I have had the privilege of knowing him our whole lives. It was therefore great to finally be able to do this show. Let's hear what it really takes to balance politics, performance, identity, finance, all under the banner of sport. We're delighted to welcome Seb to The Business of Sport. The Business of Sport is supported by Airwallex, the intelligent financial platform used by more than 200 ,000 modern businesses, from SaaS and marketplaces to some of the most ambitious organisations in sport, including McLaren Racing, Arsenal and the San Francisco Giants.

2:11Sebastian Coe:The off-pitch problem is simple. Your supporters, sponsors and partners are everywhere, but the money that connects them is still stuck in slow, expensive systems, wire transfers that take days, fees that quietly eat into revenue, and clunky processes that make simple things feel hard. Airwallex gives you one clean way through it. A single platform to open local accounts in key markets, collect payments from supporters in their own currency, CFX in real time, and pay out fast. From backroom staff to agencies and suppliers. If you're growing the business side of a sports organisation or any global business with the same problem, Airwallex helps you stop losing time and margin to the legacy banking system and move money at the speed your sport moves.

2:51Sebastian Coe:Clubs are spending more money than ever hiring analysts, buying information, building dashboards and subscribing to scouting report apps. But none of that matters if it's not talking to each other, not accessible by the full team. How many times this week have you been in a meeting, needed information about a player and had to text three people to get it? Your scouts filed reports and email, your analysts have information on their dashboards, your contracts are in PDFs scattered across shared drives. Everything you need to make decisions exist somewhere, just not in one place. Most sporting directors are spending hours every week hunting for information that should be at their fingertips.

3:24Sebastian Coe:Gemini changes that. It's the mobile first command center that brings everything together. Scout reports, intel, performance information, and now contract intelligence with full budget impact analysis. Drag and drop any contract PDF. The AI automatically extracts salaries, bonuses, sell-on clauses, and projects live financial impact as you evaluate players. See the complete picture. Make better decisions faster from anywhere. Learn more at geminisports.ai and why major clubs across three continents are getting everything they need to win the transfer market all in one place. Seb, it is so good to have you in the hot seat.

4:03We've known each other for years. It's a sort of family gathering, really. this isn't it i wouldn't have anticipated this 10 years ago sitting having sunday lunch i have to remember you with your chicken sliders and your baked beans and i remember going to lang tico with you yeah yeah oh you were grown up then pre-chelsea game for anyone that doesn't know

4:19Sebastian Coe:this exactly yeah great i was thinking the last time we were all uh with microphones in front of us was at mum's wedding it was exactly i think i had to say a few words yeah as did we as harry went off script actually that wedding speech it was the perfect prep for doing this show because You have all this stuff nicely put out and then you give it to him and he wouldn't read any of it and say anything that was on it. Hopefully I won't get cancelled after this one. But it's great to have you in. It's about time. No, I'm very happy to. And congratulations, guys. You've made a big impact in this world.

4:52Sebastian Coe:Thank you. It's been a lot of fun. We've done a bit of athletics. But when I was listening to some of the stuff you've done before, there was just one thing that you said a few times. It was great. It was like this one of two global sports. Why? Well, if you just look at what we do and you look at the number of member federations, i.e. countries that are actively involved within our own structure at World Athletics, there are two global sports. I think we have to concede, particularly at this moment with the World Cup, it's football. And track and field, Africa, extraordinary powerhouse for our sport now.

5:27Played an involvement in track and field in pretty much every of the 50 odd countries there. And if you look at the global numbers, more people do what we do, which is running, than any other participatory sport. There are over a billion people in the space of 10, 12 days that identify themselves as participant runners. And just to finish off that, you're looking at the universality of the sport of the Tokyo World Championships in 25, just literally a few months ago now. We had 83, 84 countries came out of those championships with a top eight finish or a finalist. There's no other sport that gets even remotely close to that.

6:18And statistically, at an Olympic Games, winning a medal in track and field is the hardest gig of them all. Because you've got so many countries competing, so many people sending 100 metre runners or 1500 metre runners into that landscape. So that's why I say that our sport is practiced everywhere in the world. And over the course of this year, I've been to Oceania for their congress and their championships. I've been to Africa. I will, by the end of the year, be at all the European gatherings and the Asian gatherings towards the end of the year. We've got the Asian Games there. it's it's an extraordinarily impactful sport and it goes way way beyond the field of play because governments across the globe are also using it to support some of their alignments around health and education i sat down with narendra modi a year ago what was the biggest ambition he was setting himself in india outside of the normal challenges that a country faces he wants more young people fit and active, and his words, not mine, off their mobile phones.

7:32I'm not sure that some of Indians' mobile providers would sort of share that. But there is a growing acceptance that the sport that is probably most suited to doing that is athletics because it's a low-cost entry point. It's accessible. It's truly global. And frankly, if you have a body, you're an athlete.

7:57Sebastian Coe:So you've been running World Athletics for over 10 years. With all of that that you've just outlined, what is the job? How do you balance where you can be most valuable? And what do you need to do off that? You've mentioned participation there. There's a commercial element. There's a viewership element. It's brilliant having all of these people running, as we'll see on the streets. How do I make them a fan of the sport? How do I get them engaged in it? How do I ensure that kids coming through actually want to compete and see a viable career in it where do you come into this charlie it's the holy grail of all questions and every sport is trying to figure that out and we do it on a daily basis the international olympic committee are going through a new you know initiative created by the new president kirsty coventry called fit for the future everybody is trying to figure out how they keep their sport front and central that they are engaging with new audiences and many audiences, many spectators that may not even realize that it's a sport that has something for them and that remains relevant, salient and exciting in the lives of young people.

9:02How do we do that? Well, we do it across a number of initiatives that we're running. We've got a global event at the end of this year called The Ultimate, And that is a really quite a big departure from what we've done in the past. And again, it's unashamedly designed for television. Our traditional world championships are over nine days, and it's a complex, lengthy process, both in bringing them to the table and getting them operationally up and running. Tokyo was a great example, probably our most commercial world championships of all time. We sold 630 ,000 tickets over nine days of competition.

9:45But the ultimate at the end of this year is a very different format. It's effectively a world championships in three nights, and it's only three hours a night. And it's not every athlete, and it's not every discipline in the field and on the track. and it is really aimed at unlocking new and younger audiences but being in a way traditional enough and holding on to things that people would recognize that like us are traditional fans that have grown up on the sport. But it's a recognition that, well, it's a mantra I've always driven And that is that our activity is sport, our business is entertainment.

10:35And we've got to do more in that space. So these are all the things that we're challenging ourselves to do at the moment. And the reason we've gone for this format is that over a four-year cycle, which sort of, well, it is the Olympic cycle. You have two world championships. You have an Olympic Games. But we have a year. I don't say nothing happens because there's a Commonwealth Games and there's a European Championships in it. But we have one year where we don't, at the most broadcastable moment in that year, have your famous billion eyeballs on the sport. And we can't have a year where we don't do that.

11:14So we looked at that. We thought, what can we put into that? Let's not just make it another World Championships. Let's really test ourselves and do this differently. And it's a very different model where the host city pretty much picks up almost the entirety of the cost. We take a, well, we sort of take a hosting fee, but we then give them all the uptick on the tickets, on broadcast, on sponsorship. So there's a real incentive for them to be involved in that. And we're going back to Budapest, which was, of course, the scene of our hugely successful 23 World Championships. Can I ask, is it not quite obvious that we just lack personalities?

12:01Why is Usain Bolt Usain Bolt? Yeah, because he's the fastest man on earth. But if he had the personality of Sinner or Djokovic, people wouldn't care so much. Look, Usain is Usain. He was, you know, he is to us what Muhammad Ali was to boxing and far bigger than boxing. Yeah. And Usain was bigger in a way than track and field. And look, he's our ultimate ambassador in Budapest. I sat with him just the other day at Wimbledon. We were chatting about it. He's very focused on that and really wants to give back. But actually, we've got more athletes now in the top 20 in terms of global visibility than we've ever had.

12:44and you're right in one respect and it's one of the mantras that I always try you know without sounding too dogmatic or lectury about it but I do say to athletes look your passport is your performance but the journey is in large part about your personality and you do have to fill a room and you do have to communicate and don't shy away from the media. They're going to be tiresome and irritable on occasions, but they are the way that you unlock interest in our sport. If you were asking me, as you could have done 10 years ago when Usain started leaving our sport, it was the same question that probably the boxing fraternity were getting in the 70s.

13:36Oh, my God, what are we going to do? There's no Muhammad Ali. Well, the reality of it is you're never going to replace a Muhammad Ali, and you're probably not going to replace a Usain Bolt just simply because of the stature and everything that he achieved. But we do have Noah Lyles, who actually has a huge social media following. We've got Mondo Duplantis, who is a rock star in our sport, and he's on Spotify and got contracts with Sony and producing music as well. So there are many, we've got many, many more athletes in different disciplines that are capturing the attention of the media than we did when we had Usain there.

14:19Usain was the magnesium flair, but we've now got a lot more stuff going on around that. And Mondo and Noah and Faith Kip-Jagan and Sidney McLaughlin, Femke, they're all big, big names.

14:34Sebastian Coe:But what you're doing here as well and making sure that the calendar is consistently got events around it that can showcase these talents, you're giving them the opportunity to be consistently in the public eye. We had this conversation when Sebastian Sarway broke the marathon record. I was sitting there saying, you know, it's amazing as it is, but I would love to, if I hadn't just said his name now, I'd love to go back to the audience and say, how many of you can remember his name? Who won the marathon? And where do you next see him run? Yeah, and that is, of course, a challenge. And one of the things that we're addressing at the moment at World Athletics, and we've been discussing this, well, discussing it, but acting on it for some time, is our season is relatively short.

15:14We're a 12-month-of-the-year sport because we have cross-country, we have road, we have marathons, we have indoors, obviously outdoors, we have junior events. But if you look at the seasons for somebody like Mondo, yes, Mondo will do an indoors. But effectively, the public are following Mondo from June through to September. And we've got to extend that. That isn't a long enough season and a long enough focus for fans, both in and those fans you want to suck into your sport. That's too short. and certainly for a professional sport. So there are opportunities for us to expand the season, certainly into different territories.

16:05I wouldn't have wanted it this way, but climate change is almost going to force us into that because there are events now that you simply, if you are keeping faith with the concept of athlete welfare, There are events at specific times of the year that you really can't by conscience really think about staging. That is part of the rationale as to why we've moved the marathon out of our world championships and into an earlier or later part of the season so that we can put them in a more benign temperature. We can build a lot more stuff around it, including participation, which is important. And I think that all major sports and the International Olympic Committee as well, I think we are going to have to have the collective global discussion about what does the calendar look like, particularly in light of climate change.

17:07Look, Diamond League the other day was a really good example. It hit 40 degrees plus in Paris on the weekend of the Diamond League. There were discussions about athlete welfare. There were discussions about rephasing timing. So it's a big challenge at the moment. But in an odd, perverse way, it might also allow us to build at the end and the beginning of the season more, partly because we have to. And secondly, because we just need to extend that period of time that fans and spectators, TV audiences or whatever platforms they're watching our sport on are able to just take into more of the year.

17:55Can we talk about athlete pay? This is something that comes up across.

17:58Sebastian Coe:well it's been coming up across a lot of sports i had a discussion with craig tiley the other day from tennis australia yeah good guy a brilliant guy right and managing an incredibly difficult uh environment when you're trying to get any sort of governance structures through to benefit the whole sport and the pay in tennis has been a huge discussion point at the moment with players wanting more but not necessarily linking that to profits of um grand slams and revenues so what i actually wanted to ask first of all before we do this is everyone would love to get paid more money but to get paid more the organizations that end up paying you have to be in a good and healthy position to do that so firstly just from a commercial perspective from a world athletic standpoint to be able to pay the athletes well how's your business set up how are you guys generating that revenue at the moment well you just actually talked about governance about around craig and some of the challenges of getting a combined governance structure across the slams and i've spoken to craig about that i've spoken to all the uh the major forces in tennis david Huggity as well.

18:54Actually, a little bit of a puff piece, I guess, but we've just emerged through the ASWAF, the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations, as effectively the best governed Olympic sport. And I'm proud about that because that's not when I inherited the sport. That's not where we started off. And so to answer the second part your question, you can't have any of that stuff in place, whether it's about athlete welfare, whether it's about making sure the athletes are earning a crust out of the sport, whether you're bringing on board more sponsors from different backgrounds. And there's a lot of new type of sponsors out there that need lifestyle products, consumer to consumer brands.

19:46So there's a lot of stuff going on out there. But they don't want to join a sport that's not well-governed either, because they've got equity in their brand. They don't want to risk that. They've got shareholders, they've got risk and audit committees. And we don't frankly, as a rights holder, want to be tied into a brand that doesn't also have those sorts of safeguards around procurement and policies about modern slavery and where labor conditions when our facilities are being built. This is a very different world now. I often say to my commercial teams, with all due respect, when I have a chemistry conversation with one of the big brands, I don't actually need you around the table at that stage.

20:34I need our head of sustainability and the people that are driving some of this. Because for the first two hours, these are the conversations. They want to know about how well governed you are. We need to know about your own policies around human rights or whatever it happens to be, because this is a very contentious, quite rightly, it's a very challenging framework. So my view about paying athletes has always been from the very moment I had a voice in the sport, and even when I spoke as the first member of an athlete's commission at the International Olympic Committee, I've always found that the arguments against paying the athletes properly when and where you can, they've often been propagated by people who've never really worried about where the next meal's coming from.

21:32And look, I was at the vanguard of change around the old amateur status before you and probably your parents were born. But the reality of it is that athletes need to know, and I need them to know as a federation president in a big global sport, that those sponsors come to the table, not because we've got great sustainability policies or we're doing lots of interesting things. They come to the table because they know we've got athletes that they want to get behind and a visibility that will allow them to activate around their brands. And I think the athletes need to know that I understand that transmission mechanism.

22:22They're not coming to us because they want to have an interesting couple of hours over a cup coffee with me. They want to know that first of all, we're a well-governed sport. And secondly, we've got great athletes in the shop window. Those athletes need to know that I understand why those brands are coming to the table. So my thinking around our prize money structures, even supporting them in their Olympic games, was that we derive broadcast revenue, We derive sponsorship revenue from their skill sets. And there has to be some give and take here. And that's the underpinning philosophy. I also think that we talk a lot about mental and physical welfare, as we should.

23:14But I think there is a third imperative in that. And that is that you're not going to have physical or mental welfare that really, in practical terms, means anything. unless you've got some financial security. And that financial security might allow an athlete to stay in the sport longer. That is beneficial to you. It may help them in those first steps that they take away from the stadium when their time comes to figure out what the rest of their lives looks like. It might even be helping them pause for breath at the end of their career and not jump into something that they're going to regret or they haven't thought through.

23:53So for me, athlete welfare is as much about trying where you possibly can to create a framework for financial security. And that's always been my philosophy. But when we hear Matt Richards, I think he was on£19 ,000. £15 ,000. I can't remember what it was. In funding, basically.

24:16Sebastian Coe:In funding. I'm genuinely asking how athletes, you said at the end of their career, how athletes expected to start their career or to have their career if you're paid£15 ,000? Well, look, you're right, but that's not how it works. I mean, I didn't, most athletes don't go into the sport because they're sitting there thinking. I'm going to get rich. You know, Noah, Lyles, Faith, whoever, don't come into the sport because they think they're going to probably end up on the same kind of income that somebody that wins the Masters or a slam at tennis. It's just not comparable. But I do want to do something about their ability to at least have some kind of income structure that allows them to do that.

25:06But the challenge, of course, is that, and you in a way summed it up, I introduced prize money into athletes that won an Olympic gold in Paris. And there was an argument from some quarters that I was only focusing on a few, a handful in the sport, and that it had to be for the many. And I pointed out even pretty relatively recently that if you look at our four-year commercial cycle, I'm not going to go into our audit accounts that are out there, but on balance, we spend about 80 million over that four-year period on developing the sport, all our development programs. and of that 80, about 30 of it is around our integrity program.

26:06So we have the athletic integrity unit that does all our anti-doping policies and programs and controls. We have a vetting panel, we have an integrity group. So everybody that stands for election in my sport, including me, goes to a vetting panel and that's the way it should be. On top of that, 50 million over that four years goes into prize money. And we've got seven World Athletic Series events as cross country, road, race, walk, indoors, outdoors. And of that 50, only$600 ,000 a year over four years went into paying athletes prize money for their Olympic win. $600 ,000. $600 ,000. It was about$2.4 million over four years.

27:02That's what it cost us to give prize money to the winner of an Olympic medal. So this isn't about identifying a few people and making them rich over the bulk of the sport. The bulk of the sport is still entirely focused on delivering and developing the sport. We want to increase that going forward, and we should and we have to. So, look, I think a lot of people assume that if you are an Olympic winner across 40-odd disciplines in our sport, you are in the same suddenly and catapulted in the same character, you know, into the same echelon as somebody that wins a golf major or a tennis major. You're not.

27:50If you look at the, I won't be far wrong here, but if you look at the eight 100-meter finalists in Tokyo last year, the World championships. If you take their prize money alone, forget shoe contracts and all the other stuff that goes with it, but if you take their prize money alone, there's probably only three of those finalists that are over$100 ,000 a year. Now, another really important part of that landscape is the shoe contract, the kit contracts, and the other things that go with it. And if you get into the upper echelons, the Mondos, the Sydneys, the Noahs, then there are other things you're doing.

Read the full transcript

28:37But for the bulk of even our top-rated athletes, it's hard going out there. So as a president of a sport, I have a responsibility to address that. And that has its philosophical challenges for some out there. I recognize that. We can all live in a world where we see things differently.

29:00Sebastian Coe:You've been one, right? You've been a top athlete. So was it the same when you were running, when you were winning gold medals and you were trying to build that life for yourself? You had the shoe contracts, you may have had some of those sponsorships. You wouldn't have had the digital exposure, right? That you hadn't had the opportunities alongside of that. Thank God for that on some occasions. Some would look at that as a great thing and some wouldn't. But does that make it easier or sometimes harder for you to have these discussions? Because there's an element of you which has to act as president, which has a multi-stakeholder responsibility.

29:31Sebastian Coe:Then there's the element that is athlete, understanding where the challenges may come. The great advantage of having been an athlete is I tend to look at most of the issues that are in my intray through the eyes of an athlete. That's not the only way you can address it, but often I will ask myself the question when others sitting around the table who don't have an elite background. I'm lucky. John Ridgen, my CEO, also was a very, very talented athlete, Olympic silver medalist. So he and I tend, and it's just helpful that he's there as well because he's a great CEO to work with. But it is helpful that we've both seen it from the hard end of losing seasons because of injury, trying to make ends meet before you get that shoe contract, before you get the commercial uplift of having performed maybe well in an Olympic Games.

30:35And it's hard work. When I first came into the sport and started breaking into the fringes of the British team, it was a second-class rail ticket and a 75 pence meal voucher i got on a train at i got on a train in sheffield i got on a train in sheffield to go to the inter counties then i just managed to um win the york i'd won the yorkshire championships i was you know 18 there were three athletes from yorkshire selected and i got on the train and one of the senior partners in in Yorkshire athletics was a guy called Walter Winterbottom. He was a train driver. I got on the train in Sheffield. I got out at St.

31:21Pancras and I saw Walter on the platform. And I said to him, I said, oh, Walter, if I'd known you were on the train, I'd have come and sat with you. And he looked at me and said, on the train, you dozy bastard, I drove you down. And he was the train driver. And we were both competing that night in the intercounties. So, the world did alter dramatically. And around about the 1980 Olympic Games, there was still the amateur divide. And it was being well upheld. And if you were earning money outside the sport or you were earning money from participation money, you ran the risk of being sanctioned.

32:02And there were people that were kicked out of the Olympic Games for doing that. But slowly but surely, and Britain was at the forefront of creating the trust fund that the athletes could draw down, subvention payments, so you had medical expenses paid for, and sponsorships that you did get had to be fed into that, and there were trustees. It was actually, athletics had a really sensible transition. We didn't have any of the explosions that cricket had or the professional players that were more than boycotting for a year or two. And, you know, the Kerry Packer, you know, revolution in cricket. We didn't actually have the ruptures around the going back now into the history of British sport, but the 10 pound cap on professional footballers.

32:53So ours sort of morphed carefully and sensibly into an evolution. The added challenge you had in Olympic sport, which people tend to forget historically, is there was a real nervousness given that we were competing. When I started to compete, we were competing in a Cold War atmosphere. There was a wall down the middle of Europe. And there was no such thing as profession. There was no such thing as professional sport the other side of the wall. And so I think a lot of sports administrators were really concerned that unless we addressed it in a sensible way, we'd have the sport breaking into West Europe, Eastern Europe, and it would have just frayed and shred.

33:42And we had our boycotts. We had our big challenges. But actually, the sport, athletics handled it pretty well. If we stay on that thread of boycotts and divides and political tensions, in many cases there are more conflicts than it seems to have for many years. Does geopolitics have a place in modern athletics? Look, I think you have to be realistic about it. Geopolitics is the stuff of life. It is everywhere. I think for me, one of the most limiting mantras that often people unfurl the flag underneath is keep politics out of sport. Well, yes, keep party politics out of sport, but politics is the stuff of life.

34:27And it's often overlooked, certainly in Olympic sport, that the biggest funders in Olympic sport are often governments. You know, it's not the Coca-Colas and the GEs that are building your venues. It's not those companies that are paying for your world-class programs or your coaching structures. That is often done through the public purse. And the public purse is in large part controlled by politicians and governments and voters vote them in and vote them out. So people tend to forget there's a linkage there. And arguing that politics and sport shouldn't be in the same postcode is really naive because you actually do need.

35:11I chaired the UK Sports Council, I chaired the British Olympic Association, and I ran a London Games. I know the importance of having government involved. We couldn't have delivered an Olympic Games without governments, and governments are made up of politicians. We couldn't have got the national lottery across the line without an act of parliament, that's politicians, that's government. So you need to really understand. And I think having been a member of parliament and for a short period of minister, that was actually quite helpful. But when you come to having to make those decisions, And we've had to do that in our own sport across a whole range of issues.

35:56The one thing that I absolutely circle the wagons around is the integrity of competition. And, you know, whether it's about protecting the female category, the arguments, the discussions we've had around DSD and transgender, or whether it's about the inclusion. of Russia or Belarus, they're not done on politics or passports. They're done about what impact does that have on the ability of others to compete openly and fairly. And if you look at the challenges around Russia and Belarus, you've got a Ukrainian team that has been completely denuded in the last few years. It's half, sometimes even only 20 % the size that it would normally have been.

36:50You've got male athletes fighting on the front. You've got coaches that are there as well. It's a huge challenge. So the decisions we've tended to make, like the female category, what impact is that going to have if you don't get control over it, over women's sport? And if you don't, you lose women's sport. That's not where we need to be. So I've always tried to look at it, these issues, through the lens of the integrity of competition. What impact does that have on competition rather than political discussions around passports and land grabs and all sorts of things? Yes, of course, they play a part.

37:31But the integrity of competition for me sits at the kernel of these decisions. Can you have the integrity of competition and the satisfaction of transgender rights? Are they mutually exclusive? No, look, I am a libertarian, so I have no problems about the way somebody chooses to lead their life. And I also know that the transition for people that are transgender is traumatic. I'm not remotely dismissing that, but I also have a responsibility to uphold the integrity of competition. and sport is very different. The greatest determinant in the outcome of a sport is, I know I'm simplifying this as I'm off to Loughborough in a few hours, the hotbed of sport science, but the reality of it, it's testosterone is a massive determinant.

38:31When my daughters were 12 and 13 in school sports, they were routinely beating guys. As soon as puberty and beyond, it reverses and it doesn't alter. And so we have a responsibility to actually follow the science, and the science is very clear around biology. And I'm sorry to say this, but gender cannot Trump biology and that is where we've been really clear. So I have no problems. And remember our rules and regulations in that space are only about elite competition. I'm not there to stop somebody competing in the Falmouth 10k road race as a participant raising money for charity. I have no philosophical need to do that, and I certainly don't have the jurisdictional right to do that.

39:32Ours is really about protecting the female category in sport. And we've had occasions where the female competitions in the past have been horribly impacted by those situations. situations and we've now been a sport that's been brave enough to do it and actually the world's following so do you mind now not such an outlier concept when i start when we started on that yeah we had a lot of when you started we had a lot of opprobrium around it governments other sports organizations have sort of recognized what what the justification for our thinking when you started it you got heat for it i wouldn't quite say in the same way that like a jk rowling did standing up for her beliefs but you got heat for it oh my goodness was there ever a moment where you were like maybe maybe we've communicated this wrongly maybe we've taken the wrong choice no because they you know i was always comforted well first of all it was the right decision secondly i have a responsibility to do what i think is right and look i'm not a lone voice here i do have a 26 strong global council so it's not me sort of sitting you know at my kitchen table on a tuesday morning going that oh i think i'm going to do that and we have you know we have good governances we have a council of 26 people a completely gender balance by the way the only international federation to have achieved that 26 members 13 men 30 women have an executive board that keeps the house safe.

41:10And ultimately, we're all responsible to a Congress that elects us all. So we've got a triple lock on most of these things. So I'm not a lone wolf here. But yeah, there are plenty of things that I've done in the sport and decisions that we've taken that have not been popular. Transfers of allegiance. In the lead up to the Rio Games in 2016, I was chairing the council. I'd only been president for a year. And we had 24 applications a few hours before the competition for people to jump ship and go and compete for a different country. That just clearly can't work. So there are decisions that we've taken, which actually have met with public approval.

42:00but yeah but you're never going to link you know famously Abe Lincoln you're never going to satisfy

42:05Sebastian Coe:everybody at the same time the biggest problem well not the biggest problem the biggest challenge then that you have throughout all of this right when you're looping all of that together let's say politics is at the central you have institutional politics that you found when you walked in and there was an organization that wasn't functioning as it should have been and you had to deal with that from the start you've had identity politics you have clean sport politics well it was a bit more livid than that to be honest Charlie you've been quite charitable you know a few weeks after After I arrived at World Athletics, I had 17 French policemen sitting in my reception and the rest.

42:36So, look, we turbocharged the innovations and the reforms. And even when I stood for the presidency, my platform was, we are going to have to modernize the organization and our ability to function in the modern world. The situation I hadn't foreseen, but I inherited, did actually mean we had to move pretty quickly. And one of the things I'm probably proudest about is the creation of the Athletics Integrity Unit, which is now seen as gold standard across the governance of sports.

43:11Sebastian Coe:So this is what I was actually going to say. So we sit here and we'll speak to organizations generally, right? And if we're looking at business models and everything, it will come down to how do you make your money? Is it commercials, ticketing, media, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. but really if we're breaking down athletics global nature one of two truly global sports politically valuable the biggest job you have is ensuring that this from an optics perspective delivers exactly as it should because if it doesn't and you have holes in those areas you're not as you've said going to attract the sponsors you're not going to get the trust from a public and a fan base because they don't believe that the athletes are achieving in a fair manner for you to actually do your job but we're talking about here oh great how do we pay more money how we get better broadcast deals really you're going that is all great but this is the thing that needs to work and operate and that's the stuff that you won't probably ever think about as the key business of world athletics of olympic sport it's the it's the perception people have of your organization from you know young people have got to look at you and think you look like the world i live in and too many sports in the past haven't and made decisions that have been sometimes just spasmodic decisions.

44:22We need to have a sport that's well governed. So you've got a commercial. Look, when I became president of the sport, I asked three questions. The first was, how do we make decisions that are clear cut, transparent, and that the chair of the local athletics club in Suffolk knows exactly why I and my council at World Athletics headquarters have made that decision and how do you communicate it? The second, given the sport inherited, and it's a more sensitive one, is who do you want in your sport? The right people with the right motives are coming in there to do good for the sport and not just worrying about themselves.

45:08Only when you've answered those two questions can you then get onto the substantive discussion we're having today, which is about how do you grow the sport? Because you can't do that unless you've got those fundamentals in place. So in a way, because of the challenges I had to deal with between 2015 and 2019 and even beyond, we've come to that slightly later, if I'm being blunt about it, than I would like to have done. Now, in the year or so that I remain in that mandate, I have a responsibility to drive that as hard as I possibly can. And I can do that with the comfort of knowing that when I do take this to brands and brands come to discuss their relationship with us and going forward, we have a crossover in 2029 when all our commercial rights, all our broadcast relationships, our sponsorship relationships revert to us.

46:08We've had an external organization that have effectively handled those for the last 20 years. and before that, another agency that did it. This is now where a lot of my time is spent thinking about what does that commercial model look like going forward? And that's what a large part of our teams at headquarters are buried in at the moment, particularly my very talented CEO. And we were an hour before this podcast, Charlie, we were sitting chatting about it on the phone this morning about the resources we need to apply to do that over the pace that we need to do it. So we're absolutely across that, but you can't, and we couldn't have done any of that unless we'd got all the other stuff in place.

46:52Do you think the IOC is sufficiently modern and relevant for a young person looking at it today? I think the president, the new president, Kirsty, to her immense credit, has recognized that it probably it's a great movement, but it needs to re-engineer itself in light of the question you've asked. And how does it remain salient and interesting and exciting? And I think she's really prepared to take some tough decisions. The Fit for the Future initiatives, there are four or five work streams. I sit on two of the working groups, one about what the program for the games looks like. The other is around cost and complexity of delivering a games.

47:37There's one about global and commercial reach. There's one about protecting the female category. There's another one about the future of the Youth Olympic Games and how we bring our host cities to the table. She's absolutely got out of the starting blocks quickly on this, and it's a refreshing approach. And to not mix our metaphors, I suppose, in the middle of a World Cup, it's appropriate, But I think she's really been prepared to put her foot on the ball and make us all think about exactly what the future of the movement looks like in light of the question you've just asked.

48:14Sebastian Coe:What about the rise of challenger competitions and how they can fit in? Because you've got different types now. And it kind of comes back to money because a lot of them, and a lot of sports have had this. Live golf, obviously, they're probably the most common one. People are there. Whether it is Grand Slam track, whether it is Athlos, whether it is Enhanced Games. these are things that whether we like them or not are here and you have to embrace that have to stand with it maybe against it alongside it how do you deal with this world now where you have we'll always embrace legitimate and from the very outset when we and athos is as a great example of that and alexis is a great guy and we work closely with alexis and we bounce ideas off each other and he's ambitious for the sport.

48:59We're ambitious for the sport. And we're all smart enough to figure out how we can actually help each other. We are the International Federation. We have control of the diary, all the things that he understands. And that's a really good example where you would welcome external investment and fresh thinking and creative ideas. Grand Slam was a different issue. And again, we welcomed it. My only concern at the very outset was it wouldn't be successful because the sport's on such a strong trajectory. You want fresh initiatives and we can live alongside those. We've openly supported and embraced a lot of these new initiatives, but they do have to be suffused in reality.

49:44They do have to have a business plan that you know, that is sustainable beyond the first competition. And putting on an event, I know this, you know, our guys are world class at doing that. I've got a great competition team, but stage a world championships, it's a four-year process. It's not something, and Ultimate is a really good example. We've been working on the Ultimate for September this year. We've been working on this for three years. It's not something you can come to a few months beforehand and hope It'll be okay on the night. So as long as those initiatives have got a robust business plan, a good plan A and a bulletproof plan B, that they don't leave the athletes stranded and in a difficult situation.

50:31That has to be our overall consideration. And then we can all work together. But if they're not, and it's a mixture of sort of hubris and arrogance, and we're just going to do this because, you know, we're here. But Alexis is a very different kettle of fish, and I like working with Alexis. Did your perception of the enhanced games change post seeing it play out? Not really. Harry, you know, I never really got particularly excited about it, you know. Shocked. I mean, it is what it is. But, you know, the vast majority of athletes, it's a footnote. But look, when I go to the Carifta Games in the Caribbean, as I do over the Easter weekend, and I see 17-year-old kids running low tens for 100 meters and 40-something for 400 meters, I know our sport's in great shape and in great shape in all the right places.

51:27So I'm not going to get excited about the old magnesium flare here and there. What about you next?

51:34Sebastian Coe:So you said you can't actually do any longer. No, I've earned myself to blame because in my reforms, I built in a three, four year, three lots of four years. So I've got about a year and a bit to go. For the next year, I'm entirely focusing on what the new commercial model looks like. We've got a lot to achieve in the sport. And the ultimate is, for me, is very important. Is it nice not being up for re-election because you can kind of do everything aggressively without worrying about being re-elected? As Richard Nixon famously once said, I know what to do. I know exactly what to do. It's how the hell do I get elected once I've done it?

52:07I don't have that problem now.

52:09Sebastian Coe:Yeah, but I mean, strategically now, you're almost in the position where the person now following you, as you said, it's much more about teeing them up to continue that work. Now everything's being cleaned. If you're looking at the growth of the sport from a pure play commercial element, they can now go and function that. I am more optimistic about the future of the sport than I've ever been at any stage in my presidency. And in large part in the last 30 years in a sport I've watched very closely. so no it's you know whoever takes over from me um and we've got some really strong candidates they will inherit a sport that is in far better shape than when i took the helm how did doing this compare to something should we say maybe like a project based but you deliver a games for london versus the other stuff you've done within the sport well where do they all kind of fit in for you just from how you've really felt there are lots of lots of crossovers i mean the venn diagram falls across a lot of it.

53:00But in both those roles, it's about preparation. It's about making decisions over the long haul. London was a different, in a way, it was a very different animal. You start off with 20 or 30 people that come out of a bid. And seven years later, well, every year you double your numbers. So your last year, you go from 4 ,500, 5 ,000 people to 10 ,000 people in an organizing committee. And you've got a seven-year window to create, deliver, and then clear off after a Games. The delivery of a sport is very different because I have a responsibility to think way, way beyond a seven-year time frame. I need to leave things in place, which we're working on now, that I hope are securing the tent pegs for the next 50 years.

53:54Sebastian Coe:how did you feel standing up on that stage with a speech in hand speaking to however many billion of people when you when you're up there in 2012 did you first did you write the speech of course i did every word of it yeah was there any not 2012 sound intelligent and authoritarian no not not 2012 seriously you know that it No, it was a sobering moment. Yeah. And you know that there are enough people in the stadium, but there are billions of people. Stadiums don't really, in a way, given what I did, I ran in Los Angeles, final was in front of 110 ,000 people. So a full stadium for people doesn't spook me.

54:38But yeah, you did have to just remind yourself that a lot of people watching around. I was actually more terrified that four of my kids were in the stadium at the same time. I just didn't want to screw up there. Do you like social media? I've got, yeah, look, it's the world I live in. It's not a world I started out in. And I've got, you know, great social media teams. And, you know, like, you know, you know my kids. So, you know, they're all of that generation. So they've sort of spruced that up for me in the last few years.

55:11Sebastian Coe:So next, are we going to enjoy the fruits of the work from a distance with athletics as you focus more on football? I'm really enjoying the work I'm doing up in Manchester at the moment as chair of the Mayoral Development Corporation. I was chaired the advisory group, scoping the new stadium at Old Trafford. And I also know from the London years that if you can build new communities around sport, you've got a much better chance of doing it. It's more effective and you can take people with you. Sport is a fabulous bridgehead into regeneration. So I genuinely get excited about regeneration projects.

55:56And I like, you know, I'm really happy to be involved in that. I've got a board meeting in Manchester on Friday this week. And that's a good process. And Jim Ratcliffe I've known for many years. Andy Burnham I've known because Andy was the Secretary of State at DCMS when we were delivering the games as well. So they're two people I really respect. Do you think he'll be a good prime minister? I don't see why not. I've seen what he's done in Manchester. He's a good communicator. He makes decisions. and all I can say is from what I've seen of him as a Secretary of State during the Olympic years and now up in Manchester, I think he's got as good a chance as anyone.

56:42And apparently he's a runner from his unit. He is a runner. There you go. And he's a good runner too. He's a good runner too. There we go. What else is there in life? Are you ready for a quick fire? Go on. Where's your favourite event to go to? Where's the like, ooh? In athletics or in sport generally? No, I'm going to do in athletics. Oh. Was it the Carifta Games? Carifta Games. This sounds beautiful. Can you imagine just like hanging out in the Caribbean? Carifta Games is running. I have to tell you, the Carifta Games is a great experience. It's the 24, 25 Caribbean islands. And if you really want to get, if you want to answer the question, what's going to happen after Usain Bolt, just go and watch those.

57:27Every one of Usain's school records has now been broken. you've got some extraordinary talent coming through and that's just one element it's over the easter weekend and it's it's it's great fun but you get a really good audit of young talent particularly sprinting talent coming through my diamond look zurich and oslo were the stadiums that i probably competed you know as well in as anywhere so zurich i love the zurich track meet which I will be at in a few weeks' time. And I'm looking forward to going back to the LA Games in 28 because that, as you know, was my second Olympic Games.

58:06Sebastian Coe:Yeah. The Coliseum. Athlete that we don't necessarily know about that we should. That's a really good question. The lovely thing about our sport is it does occasionally throw up some outstanding. You're going to ask me to pronounce his name properly, But there's a very, very young, talented 800-meter runner that's emerged in the States. He's running times that are not far shy of my own 800-meter time. He's only 17 or 18. He's outstanding. And it's good to see the US producing another good generation of endurance athletes, not just field eventers and sprint stars. I hope it's okay for me to ask, but I actually think about it because I have really bad knees running.

58:54And I actually think about you and your father quite often because mum always told us about your dad coaching you and how he would drive you downhill. Yeah. And you would run up. And I always think of that when I'm running because, no shit, it hurts a lot when I'm running downhill. What's your biggest takeaway from working with your father? Well, he was an engineer. He was a mathematician. He started life as a mathematician. He got a degree in maths and then he got a degree in engineering. So I was really lucky because I was working with somebody who was just fiercely analytical. If he couldn't prove it in numbers, just don't do it.

59:28Simple as that. Absolutely. It was clear cut. And when I was 14, 15 and running the roads around the Peak District in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire, everything from your front, If you know Sheffield, everything from your front door in Sheffield is uphill, which is great. But obviously going downhill when your joints are solidifying and ligament structures are still not fully complete. He was a good enough mechanical engineer to know that forces and stresses were more intense on joints going downhill. It wasn't that I didn't do downhill running, but he just didn't like long protracted periods of downhill.

1:00:13So he'd often stick me back in the car, would get to the bottom of the hill, and then everything was uphill again. And I think that's, in large part, helped my endurance base. Landscape is really important in endurance. And the fact that I was a cross-country runner, the fact that I was very comfortable over long distances, over quite tricky terrain, I think gave me an endurance base that was really helpful for my track career. Two for me. One is you met some pretty cool people like Narendra Modi. Yeah, yeah. Who was the coolest? Oh, my goodness. I, you know, I've met so. Yeah, look, the great thing.

1:00:52I don't know the obvious answer. I'll think about it. But now the great thing about sport, and I've often made this point, I'm very privileged. I got an insight into life through sport that I probably wouldn't have got for at least another 30 or 40 years. And it's given me privileged access to so many things that actually my intense political curiosity and the fact that I still read probably history for at least an hour every day. I like to be able to put things into context. And so much, the one thing I always encourage people in sport, particularly young people setting out in sport, is become analysts.

1:01:35Really go beyond the back page of the newspaper or whatever the sporting platform is. See it in the broader global context because if you're running a business, you can't just run the business worrying about what's going on in your sector. You have to look at some of the externalities. And those externalities in the next few years are going to have profound impacts on sport. So I say to my younger teams, really be familiar with political landscape. You don't have to come out on one side because most of them are crazy anyway, but just really understand the landscape that you are navigating your sport through.

1:02:17And don't close doors to those types of discussions because, as my history tutor at Loughborough always said, you go to the primary source. and if you're sitting down and you have the opportunity to sit down with a world leader don't just try and sell them your sport find out what is worrying them and then sometimes you can put a bespoke program together for your sport that meets those challenges when somebody like the indian prime minister says look my biggest challenge is getting more young people active getting them off the sofa and getting them to put down their mobile phones, then clearly you know that he's also serious behind an Olympic bid.

1:03:01He's also serious about wanting to stage your events. And as long as you are able to tailor those events, not just for a medals table, an elite competition, but helping those governments, those countries that are seeking those alignments to use your sport to help you, then you're in the right landscape. Final one from me. You've got four wonderful kids obviously joys of knowing them what's biggest parenting advice what's the world biggest parenting i thought he was going to say who's your favorite your four wonderful kids choose one you're waiting for this moment i often say look it's i can only use my own experience life is not an exact science there are things that are going to come your way that are going to come out of left field and often you should you're going to say yes without actually even really understanding what you're signing up to.

1:03:56Welcome to Venture Capital, Seth. Well, I'm being asked to suddenly take over from somebody in the Olympic Games a year and a quarter out. If I'd predicated it on risk or the chance of us winning, which was at that point pretty slim, I'd have said no. So I always encourage young people to actually say yes and just see how far it takes you. And it may not work out, but don't sit there in your 50s going, oh, I wonder what would have happened if I'd said yes. So say yes more than you say no. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's so good to have you. Thank you so much. No, I've enjoyed it. Well done.

1:04:39Sebastian Coe:Thanks so much to Seb for joining us. One of the truest examples of an athlete going into executive and having a profound impact on sport well beyond the confines of his individual discipline. Having known him for so long, the opportunity to actually ask some of this while sat down in this environment was a unique change and hearing his position on some of those huge challenges faced by athletics and how they're overcoming them is a really good lesson for other sports to follow. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did recording it. Now, if you want to see more from today's show, you can do so by going to YouTube or any of our other social channels across Instagram and TikTok and now, of course, Substack.

1:05:12Sebastian Coe:There are more snippets to share and bite-sized chunks to consume. And whilst you're there, please do like, subscribe and follow the show. As you will hear from your other favourite pods, it makes a huge difference when bringing you the best guests and conversations from around the world of sport, which is, of course, our endless aim. Thank you again for tuning in and we'll see you next week. The business of sport is supported by Airwallex, the intelligent financial platform used by more than 200 ,000 modern businesses, from SaaS and marketplaces to some of the most ambitious organisations in sport, including McLaren Racing, Arsenal and the San Francisco Giants.

1:05:45Sebastian Coe:The off-pitch problem is simple. Your supporters, sponsors and partners are everywhere, but the money that connects them is still stuck in slow, expensive systems, wire transfers that take days, fees that quietly eat into revenue and clunky processes that make simple things feel hard. Airwallex gives you one clean way through it. A single platform to open local accounts in key markets, collect payments from supporters in their own currency, CFX in real time and pay out fast. From backroom staff to agencies and suppliers. If you're growing the business side of a sports organisation or any global business with the same problem, Airwallex helps you stop losing time and margin to the legacy banking system and move money at the speed your sport moves.

1:06:25Sebastian Coe:Clubs are spending more money than ever hiring analysts, buying information, building dashboards and subscribing to scouting report apps. But none of that matters if it's not talking to each other, not accessible by the full team. How many times this week have you been in a meeting, needed information about a player and had to text three people to get it? Your scouts filed reports and email, your analysts have information on their dashboards, your contracts are in PDFs scattered across shared drives. Everything you need to make decisions exists somewhere, just not in one place. Most sporting directors are spending hours every week hunting for information that should be at their fingertips.

1:06:58Sebastian Coe:Gemini changes that. It's the mobile-first command center that brings everything together. Scout reports, intel, performance information, and now contract intelligence with full-budget impact analysis. Drag and drop any contract PDF. The AI automatically extracts salaries, bonuses, sell-on clauses, and projects live financial impact as you evaluate players. See the complete picture. Make better decisions faster from anywhere. Learn more at geminisports.ai and why major clubs across three continents are getting everything they need to win the transfer market all in one place.

From the publisher

In the week where Josh Kerr smashed the 27 year old mile record, we welcome into the studio the man who broke it 3 times, won multiple Olympic Gold Medals, brought the Olympics to London in 2012, and for the last decade has been President of World Athletics.

Seb Coe is one of the most influential and respected executives in sport. He has certainly had one of the most diverse careers, and that gives him the opportunity to talk through both the biggest challenges that athletics and the Olympics more broadly faces, but also highlight what makes them storied, successful, and desirable for both fans and brands. In Seb’s eyes, there are only two truly global sports. Harry and I have had the privilege of knowing him our whole lives. It was therefore great to finally be able to do this. Let’s hear what it really takes to balance politics, performance, identity, finance, all under that banner of sport.


A huge thank you to our amazing partners on the show: 


Airwallex

The intelligent financial platform for global businesses

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.airwallex.com/uk/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠


Gemini

We empower the most confident sports organisations on Earth

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://geminisports.ai/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠


If you’re interested in partnering with the show, please reach out to us at

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bos@20vc.com

More from Business of Sport

All 125 episodes
Seb Coe | New Formats, Athlete Pay, & The Post-Bolt Era: Rebuilding the Reputation of Athletics (Ep129)Business of Sport · 1 h 8 min
Listen in VO