Simon Leslie: Eastbourne Borough Owner, ‘Non-League Clubs Deserve Better’ (Ep60)

25:11Building a media team is expensive. We're tight on our budgets. Their excuse is the bottom line. You just got, I'm very lucky. Well, obviously, he's well trained, well brought up. He's my second son so and he just said look you're doing it wrong and okay see what you can do and and he's he he tells me he's underpaid and i showed him how much crystal palace are offering for their head of media i said you're overpaid but he he just gets it he get you know he's been out actually in riyadh filming all the boxing because his stuff is like he just gets social media i was watching the fight on Saturday night and I see his little head coming through the ring with his phone, you know, filming the fight.

25:59And they said, you know, the content that he produced was the highest grossing stuff they did. So he's incredibly talented and it's one kid, to be fair. I have another members of the team who do other bits of the media, but he's done this on his own, really, and it's remarkable. How did the fans then react to this? They hated it. you know so they hated greater output and exposure for their club last year it was like you know the players shouldn't be doing all this they should be training I said how much more training can they do there was you know you're clueless and I challenged them I said you know what's wrong with it well we're not winning I said okay so it's not the social you don't like just the winning I said so if we're winning it would be okay yeah it would be okay if we were winning and now we're winning and we stopped doing highlights this year mainly because I just didn't think they were very good and I wanted to do something properly.

26:48And I said, I'm going to pause it for a bit and not do highlights. And then Zach started doing these highlights, which were really funny, and incorporating all these memes inside the highlights. And they were getting sort of hundreds and 200s and 300 ,000 views on our goals and stuff. And the fans were going, no, we want proper highlights. You can't do that. And then last weekend, I actually put a camera crew in and we did some proper highlights. You should have seen the gratitude of the gratefulness. But I think it's the difference of the age group. We've attracted probably 500 more 15 to 20-year-olds, whereas they weren't coming before.

27:25But the old guards, you know, they want to see it in a good old-fashioned way and they don't want things to change. How many fans do you get in per game? Get between 1 ,000 and 2 ,000, depending on the game. And accessibility-wise, 15, 20, 25 pounds a ticket? 15 pounds if you buy in advance, 18 pounds on the day. Okay, so accessible to hopefully as many people as you can. And I'd imagine you've got great concessions around it as well to build that match day. On match day, we have a live DJ playing. You know, obviously I spend a lot of time in the States, so I try to bring all the elements of a fun day.

28:01What we're noticing now is fans are really turning up late. You know, they're not coming early, mainly because there's a Premier League game at 12.30 and, you know, people sit there and watch it. We're trying to get more of those into the bar and watch it. club. Because yeah, capturing that consumer spend earlier, I guess, was huge for you to be able to drive up those numbers. What about that 3pm blackout, the protection of the Football League? Is that really important to you that that stays in place to ensure that those fans continue to come? Or do you believe in the strength of Eastbourne and its following that actually it doesn't make a difference to the game, but it may make a difference to what goes on around it?

28:35We're on TV tonight. We're on National League TV tonight. And it'll be interesting to see. I actually think we'll have a big crowd tonight even though we're on tv because i think the quality of the broadcast is it's not like watching a premier league match you know they'll have one camera there i'm not even sure they'll have commentators so i don't i don't think it'll make i don't think it'll make a difference the biggest factors for me are are brighton playing at home and there's two other lower slightly lower league teams in eastbourne who might play at home on the same day the challenge I've got is Eastbourne is actually quite a fast growing town there's actually 125 ,000 people live within Eastbourne and the suburbs which is a big enough audience to be able to attract a hell of a lot more people than we are but there's a lot of new builds, new towns and I've just got to do a better job of marketing to them and I think as we get up and bigger teams come to play us we announced yesterday that we got a Man United Legends game next month and like we sold 150 tickets in the first two days historically no one buys tickets until about our ticket price goes up at midnight between 10 and 12 is when we sell the most amount of tickets they wait to the last minute what about the talent that you've mentioned that catchment area where do most of your players come from london you know we're 25 minutes from brighton I've sat down with Tony.

30:00I've tried to create some relationships there. The problem they've got is that they've actually got a very limited youth team. They haven't got enough players. Brighton, sorry. Brighton, yeah. So they can't really help us. And then they've got Worthing the other side. So between us and Worthing, I think they try and help both of us. But there's very little coming out of Brighton. So then we're reliant on, I guess, Crystal Palace, Gillingham, Charlton. Yeah. and players that don't make the grade through their academies and new systems coming down or just in their 21s or 23s and they want them to play some men's football do you have an academy system with the club we've got 49 teams so right the way from eight we're we've got 18s and the problem is between 18s and the first team is too big a gap so we're looking at can we bridge that for next season our women's team are doing really well they just won their first won my first bit of silverware and they're playing unbelievable football.

30:57Now we're paying women's, you know, the team that they played in the final, we're all paying their subs and I've got an ex-Chelsea, an ex-Arsenal, an ex-proper players and we're playing the most unbelievable football. So I've committed to investing in both the men's and the women's divisions. So I'm sticking to that and we're starting to see the fruits of that come through. How do you view the strength of the women's game next to the men's team from a business perspective. Do you know, it's really interesting because when I look at it, I think I sat down at dinner next to the woman at DAZN who's doing the commercials for the women's, I think it's the Women's League, and they were telling me that Visa was the sponsor or something.

31:42And I said, well, what sort of deal? Not to share numbers, but I went, what? Is that it? Yeah, a lot of money, isn't it? I went, no. And I think it all stems from belief, right? Everything, even in the back of the shirts, it says success is driven by belief. I don't think the people running it believe enough in it because I said to my commercial guy, there's so much more opportunity here for us to find local sponsors to do the women's team. And actually, over the last two months, we've had more money coming in for women's sponsors. People will want to sponsor the women's division than we are getting from the men's.

32:18So I think it's, you know, are you telling a good enough story and i you know if i was running women's football i would be able to generate x more millions because i just think there is so much commitment to support it and they just don't know how to go and get it and find it do you think the structure is optimized to create success in the women's game i mean you you had people like lewis hashtag and they're just saying we can't afford you know we've got some of the best women's teams but we can't afford to compete we you know if we go up to the to the next level it's going to bankrupt us so i just think it's very hard for for the smaller teams to succeed and then you've got the sort of you know you've got the same challenges with the monopoly of the bigger clubs yeah i mean again we've had owners on the past whose women's teams you know they have them they finance them they finance them without really any return and they just do it because they feel like they should do it and And they say they feel they have to.

33:17And they are massively in support of having a women's team. They are not in support of the structure because, as you've said, it becomes unsustainable to actually encourage growth. You're happy in your lower league because it manages your cost base and keeps it affordable. But if you go up, it immediately becomes completely inaccessible to the structure of their existing club. So when you say it actually is generating money, is it a really good part of the business, a successful part of the business, that you can help drive the overall performance of the company? The results are successful. oh, we got a trophy and they'll probably do the travel this year.

33:48At the minute, they are unbeaten in the league and haven't conceded a goal. So it probably means our team is slightly better than everybody else's. As we go up, it'll get harder. But every game they've played against teams from leagues above, they're beating them. So I think my commitment when I came was I would like a league team for both our men's and women's. So that's what I'm focused on right now. Do you have someone managing the women's team separately? I don't mean on the pitch. from a business perspective. No, no, same team. Everything under one roof. Everything under one. Same facilities.

34:20Do they play at the stadium? Yeah. How important do you think it is that you kind of create that unity between both teams? I mean, what's that thing they say in life? You know, we want parity. Well, you don't really want parity, but you want to be treated fairly. And as they go up the leagues, they're going to get pretty much the same. you know we're giving them money of the same things the men have got now the men obviously generate a lot more revenues than the women generate we don't charge people to come and watch the women's game even though it's probably sometimes more exciting a lot more goals but nothing you don't charge anything not a penny why just encouraging it because i think at this level it's you know i don't think there is an audience for it even if you charge five pounds even if I think people will just but it's free they're coming in you know they're experiencing live sports so I think it's good.

35:17Looking at it like kind of then holistically again you've come into this you know you've taken this on you've got a love of the game clearly but it sounds like it's tough right and there's no shying away from that but I'm just going kind of back to my first piece which is you know with all of this why what is the opportunity that you see here and let's be really positive with all the challenges. Where's that real opportunity for you that you believe you can deliver the best success? I don't know the answer to that yet. I'm slowly uncovering it. I'm peeling back and finding joy in the pain. I think the opportunity is Eastbourne where it's positioned.

36:03There is no other league. You've got Brighton that way, but there's nothing else that way for a long way. So there's a really nice catchment area. I think there's an opportunity to develop the stadium and create much more sporting brands down in Eastbourne. Just give people a sense of Eastbourne because everyone knows Brighton and they've seen what having a successful football club does to a city or a town. And, you know, people walk around, there's lots of Japanese walking around Brighton now in Matoma kits. and there's lots of tourists and you can't get hotels and everything's full you know there's no sure you know there's plenty empty hotel rooms in eastbourne and there's it's like it's like the town that that left got left behind you've got brighton which is very progressive hastings which is you know which is gentrifying and then there's eastbourne in the middle which actually is incredibly beautiful it's a beautiful part of the world you got the south downs on one side and you've got the sea on the other and it's everyone just assumes it's the place where people go to die.

37:04And, you know, there's a lot of young families moved there. I think there's so much opportunity in both property and residential property. You know, you could buy a house by the sea. I was looking on Sunday for 300 grand, right? You could look out your window and see the sea. Where else in Great Britain can you buy that and, you know, be an hour and a half from London? So I just think that they've done a terrible job of marketing themselves. Now, I came in and they said to me wow it'd be so this is what we need you know we haven't done any marketing for 10 years and you obviously know your way around the travel media space i said use me let me let me let me help you and this is what i find frustrating about the town it's like it's like they don't want to change you know they're sort of the old guard are stuck in their ways and i think that every little bit i'm trying to i'm trying to improve it not just from the football because if i can if i can bring everything up you know all boats rise yeah how much of what you do what you want to do is clipped by the broader regulations the governance should we say of the game versus what you can actually achieve through your independent strategy at a football club that's a question this is the way i would answer it which is that there are 72 smartish cookies have all made quite a lot of money in business and were stupid enough to get into football and plough that hard-earned money into football.

38:29Yet between all of us, we can't, you know, we're allowing the National League, the Premier League, the EFL, allowing them to just, in a status quo of sort of nothing, of stuck-in-the-mud behaviour. And it's, you know, I keep getting told off that you've got to shut up, you can't keep saying this. And I said, why? It's got to change. The game is fundamentally broken. And if more people don't stand up and say something, it's not going to change. It's going to be the same in 20 more years' time. And there are incidents that have happened over the last couple of weeks with respect to player care that I've just made my stomach churn in terms of, you know, how people just turn a blind eye to not looking after some of their players.

39:15Then you look at some of the deals that got done. You know, our ball sponsors have gone, our benchwear sponsors have gone bankrupt. all the clubs are owed benchwear or owed balls and they can't get them because they've gone bust because they've made choices to go with people without doing their due diligence on them. And I just think that this is criminal. You know, in any other business, you wouldn't be able to get away with some of the things that you get away with in football. Why? Why do you think that is the case? How do we get away with it in football? Because people tolerate it and they're too scared to open their mouth and actually fight and say, this isn't right.

39:50So now you're in this position. I'm cautious to say a position to influence because actually you know as you said you're one of many and without a collective action of some sort it's very difficult for you to do it but it kind of brings me back to that question like how how do you see an ability to to actually do this is it just keep shouting and hope someone hears? Sometimes I feel like I'm shouting into an empty room you know how many black and white pictures of footballers you know from 2000 to 2025 do I have to see before someone realizes that this game is heading in the wrong direction? How many clubs need to go out of business before someone says, the model is fundamentally broken?

40:31Can a non-league team survive its level? Yes. If they have a really good cup run or they sell a couple of players, then they're going to be okay. Okay, let's jump on that because that's a really important point. That's the football lottery. That's what we call the football lottery. You You can't build a business on the football lottery, right? Exactly. So to rely on that is not sustainable. This industry will not work if you're relying on luck to drive the majority of your business. Wow. So I mean, okay, if I, let's say I came to you and said, Simon, a non-league club has come in and they've asked us to invest.

41:03They've seen an opportunity. They want us to buy it. Is it something you'd encourage? Is it something you'd say, yeah, do you know what? Go and do it. 100%. I think I'm sitting on the most unbelievable asset I had a long talk with Barry Hearn about this because he said to me, listen, listen, Simon, I had this for 19 years, and I didn't make a penny until I sold it. He said, you've just got to stay in there, son, stay in there. You've got to absorb them losses and stay in there. But, you know, bear in mind of what he's done in sport, he says, four of my top 10 days are in football, of everything I've ever done.

41:38So I went, I get that, you know, because it grabs you and gets into you. And I do think this is an unbelievable asset. I've got to find partners now who help me bring it all together. I want to actually turn Eastbourne into the biohacking center of Great Britain, somewhere where people can rehabilitate or I can make the players stronger, fitter, faster, quicker, whatever I need to do with them. You've talked quite a lot about this and it's something we do a lot here where we try and bring players into the world of investing and giving them a life and career outside of the game and quite often media.

42:12What have you been doing with some of the players to help them realise the value that they have away from the pitch? My favourite story is a guy called Yasser Qasim who was an Iraqi international who played for me last year. he fell out with the with with some of the management and he said to me i said do me a favor come come and have breakfast with me and we'll we'll have a chat and came in and i said look i'm gonna talk here on on saturday to watch us play it's a long train journey come with me you know we can sit and talk he said to me god it was like an mba in business because i learned more on that train journey than i probably learned anything else and he's since left and he's created his own podcast and he and i have been talking about what can we build to give players something and he's really looking at it from a player and also he's he's sort of learning finance and he's learning what he wants to do next and he said we want to build something that we can give the players some sort of investment in something or some equity you know what while they're in east born you know we create a property fund or something that buys that property that they could have some even if they're they're making a small contribution into it at least then you know We're showing them how to save.

43:20We're showing them how to invest or how to get involved in business. And we're looking at ways we can help players, whatever their business idea is, help them write a business plan, help them put ideas together. So he and I are sitting and we meet up every couple of weeks and have a coffee and talk about this. And he's now working at Crystal Palace and he's doing the podcast and he's doing other stuff. But he's one of the few that took the time to just sit down and talk to me and he goes. it's hard though isn't it because you know it's how much do you balance the players doing it off their own back and having the intuition to be able to realise that this is short term or they need to have a career outside of it versus whose responsibility actually is it anyone's responsibility to help guide them in the right way and this is really not just non-league right we have conversations with Premier League footballers look at how many Premier League footballers top top footballers have fallen you know after they've stopped playing so this is an issue right throughout the game they can't even fill a form in Premier League players because everything is done for them The challenge I get and the pushback I get is, look, we're just interested in the football.

44:22Just leave us alone. That's not important to us now. And I keep saying, it will be. And you'll kick yourself that you had access and you had that ability and you didn't take advantage of it. Do all of your players have jobs outside of? No, they're all full-time players. Really? I think of the top six teams in the league at the minute, I think they're all full-time. A bar one, bar worthy. what's the balance kind of across age demographics in the squad food you have some of the experienced pros in there alongside some of the young who help out yeah i mean most of our players are sort of 20 to 25 we've got three or four ex pros and a couple of you know i think i heard someone call them twilight players so over 30s but it's it's a pretty inexperienced squad a lot of you know come out of academies been released by academies told they're not good enough some have played in the league i mean it's i've never seen a business where one week you know you're on the starting lineup and next week you're sitting in rosehead watching the game from the stand and it's a game of opinions how do you balance decision making based on sporting decisions versus decision making based on business yeah i i don't really get involved in the football i have a ceo who runs the business and a manager who you know together they make the footballing decisions they'll come to me with players and sometimes a very quick google search i'll say he's had more clubs than gary player it's probably not and he's had more contracts ripped up i don't think he's quite what we're looking for because i i know what we're looking for and i know look i i'm very much wanted i don't want to sound like a breakdown service i want to take players and help them get them back so some players that were really good that just have lost their way yeah i don't want it to be a place where you just come because you think we're paying more money than anybody else.

46:14So I'm quite prescriptive in terms of, you know, are they adding to our culture? Are they going to be better for our culture? Are they going to be better for our dressing room? You know, are they going to make us go faster? Peter Kenyon said on the show, he said that when Man United were building that team, he said it wasn't necessarily the best players in the world that came in. They had to be the ones that fit the culture, that understood how we played and what it meant to play for Man United. The key thing about that was obviously they had Alex Ferguson in there, they had a chief executive who sung from the same hymn sheet.

46:45So when you're doing this and you're kind of making those decisions, do you have to be, even if you're not involved on the day-to-day, so closely aligned with the executive and the manager to ensure that this is being replicated, your vision, your ideals are being replicated in the culture of this club? How do you do that? And I'm not doing a very good job of it sometimes because sometimes players are crying into their beer because they're not getting picked or they don't like the way they're being shouted at or they don't like the way they're being talked to. And you've got to understand we're in a different place than we were 20 years ago.

47:19And, you know, you watch some of the Warnock. You just can't get away with that today. What do you think about that? I think it's hard. I think you do need to be able to tell people honestly what you think without you don't have to absolutely tear them apart but people need to understand what they i think it comes down to the fundamentals is do they know what's expected of them and are they able to do it because if they're not then we've got the wrong person so if they're not able to do what you want them to do then stop asking them to do it because you know you need to help them get better so they can do that i mean to me look it's our culture at the moment doesn't necessarily facilitate the setting of standards because you can't tell people often what you expect because it's perceived in the wrong way.

48:06Critique is not taken on anywhere near like it used to be, or at least the hard-nosed approach to things is very different. In sport, it's all about standards. It's all about expectation. It's all about hitting a level that meets the ambitions of an asset, a team, an individual that you're playing with. So do you think we need to not necessarily go back to how we used to be, but do you think we need to develop characters that are capable of taking on the criticism, of taking on learnings, rather than just always think that they're the best thing to come in and that the standard they've already hit?

48:42There's a saying in the office and in the changing room, which is playing at the speed of trust. And I always say to players, do you trust me enough to tell me you don't trust me? and if we can't have that honesty and i think that is the problem that i have at the minute sometimes the players are scared to be honest because they're scared of being dropped they're scared of not doing what they need to do because they're scared of not being picked and but that's a bad culture i know but it's a performance culture but who's responsible for this kind of you know you recognize this and you're the owner yeah but there's only so far that you can medal.

49:18You can set the standards and then there's this thing they call winning. Do you want to win or do you want to have this nice fluffy environment? Does it have to be one or the other? Because really... Apparently so. Because what you're talking about there is the stage of like culture of fear versus the challenge culture, right? Essence being, you scare people and they're not going to produce anywhere near as much as if you challenge them. You look at that Man United team, right? And I loved everything think that that stood for them. And they've stopped doing exactly, you know, you can't win anything with kids.

49:53It features in everyone, of everything I've done. I've started with young kids and I've developed them and developed them and they don't know how good they can be until you show them how good they can be. And that's what I want to do. But Sir Alex wasn't a big softie. He'd throw them in, you know, people would leave a change room with stitches in their eye. So you've got to have an element of fear. You've got to have an element of courage. You've got to have an element of all these things. And we've got to pick the people who can handle the good, the bad, and the ugly. It's finding the balance between being confident in your own voice without the fear of being dropped, right?

50:30And also, as you say, being strong enough to go, actually, I need to probably take some of this responsibility on myself. And I'm giving them that opinion and that time for a voice as well, which I think is which they don't normally get. So I'm aware of the situation. I'm aware that I have this standard. And I think amongst the football, the CEO and I have this debate daily. Look, they're not living to the... If you interviewed him, he'd say exactly what I said. We've been on interviews two days apart, same interview, same crew. We didn't know we were both doing the same interview. And they said, we couldn't believe that you two were so aligned.

51:10Right? And then you've got a management team where it's football, right? And football is different than they are from a different generation of footballers. And I guarantee that if you went into another changing room in similar leagues, you wouldn't find the same care that we have in ours. But we're not 100%. We're operating at 55%, 60%. It is about football, but any of these businesses, football in particular, it's still about people. People, good culture, good understanding and expectation setting and all of this, the people drive success. So, you know, you can stick. It takes time. Of course it does.

51:51Of course it does. But, you know, I guess it comes back to just that your now job is you're looking forward and trying to create this culture around the club of aligning yourself, the owner, the executive and the manager to create a very strong kind of three point piece. Yeah. to deliver this from top to bottom and ensure that this messaging, this expectation is met as much as you can. And Steve Coppell's been helping me all the way through this. And I remember the first time he sat down and he goes, so what sort of football do you want to play? I said, I want to play really nice football. I'm a Swansea fan.

52:24I like the ticky-tacky. He goes, do you want to win? I went, yeah. He goes, well, fuck that football. They're going to don't work, right? And he gets it. and I sat and had coffee with him the other week and he said, sometimes when you're winning, you've just got to keep your mouth shut for five minutes and just let them keep winning. And I go back to my previous point, which is that if you want a football club to be successful, you've got to keep winning. So there's like this horrible balance that you want to have. No, it's a question we ask every week and we're still yet to have a good answer.

52:56Nobody else has these conversations, John. This is probably the... People listening to this are going, wow he's been a bit flipping honest isn't he even in business we don't have these conversations where you say look he's not good enough she's not good enough we've got to get them to somewhere where they can perform at their best to wrap it up going back around to me the performance side you know as you said you know you've kind of got an idea you've got to create a structure in there you've got the team in place to then go and do it hopefully the performance is on the pitch deliver what you want them to but I still have that massive concern this business really is only viable because you are here financing it And so non-league football in this country, as great an opportunity as it is, as important as it is to all of the communities that these clubs play integral roles in, they are not sustainable if they do not have someone like you there able to help that business operate.

53:46One million pound deficit per year at that level is a lot of money. So how do we improve that? It starts at the top to the Premier League. I think they've done a better job of supporting the EFL. They've got to do a better job of supporting the National League. What does a Premier League support package, if you want, let's say, look like that would actually meaningfully help you? I think at the minute it's about£3 million. For the league, for everyone? 72 clubs. Wow. With 70 % of that going to the National League. So we only get 15 % in the north and the south. I mean, I think if 20 million was coming in, which is, you know, it's a dribble, absolute dribble.

54:29It would change that league completely. And do you know what? We would find so many more superstars. And that's what it's about. There is more talent being discovered in the national leagues and lower. You know, even step three and step four and step five are finding some superstars. They're actually hurdling us. Normally it would be they'd go step six, step five, step two, and then they'd get picked off. now they're going straight from 5, 6, 3 to League 2, League 1 and Championship But again I guess your problem is making sure that any money that is distributed down that is an increase in what you get isn't just spent irresponsibly in the same ways that we've seen We need some sensible caps put in place and you know you have in my league you've got Boreham Wood so Boreham Wood is a perennial National League team so they've got a National League budget really in National League South at the minute and they brought the best players up.

55:26And they've got a squad of, you know, they've got a Ghanaian international playing up front for them and it's the league's top scorer. Surprise, surprise. So it's not fair. They only get 500 people coming to watch them. I mean, Boromir was the first club I reached out to because it's very close to where my home is and Danny never responded at that time. but I just think he's got an unbelievable facility. He's done a brilliant job. He's got Arsenal ladies playing there and I think Arsenal under 21s as well. So he's got superb infrastructure, but nobody's coming to watch Boron Wood play. And that's because he hasn't done a good job of marketing because he's got a big enough catchment area.

56:10So I think non-league has work to do as a PR to get more people to watch non-league football. I think non-league football is much better than people realize. it's cheaper you can have a family day out and you still get to watch live sport and you can sit and the thing that i love the most that gives me the most sort of heartwarming moments is when the kids stand outside and they're they're getting the player signatures and they've you know they've got all their posters and they've got all their signatures and they have access you know when i used to take the kids to arsenal or brighton you know you're sat up in the gods you never see the players and you know you spend two hours getting out of the stadium and nothing you know interaction whereas now they they literally can shake the players hands and they have their pictures and their selfies and they feel they feel part of it so we're doing a very big work at because i think it's seven years old is when a kid decides what team they're going to support so we're in all the schools we have players going into all the schools as well so we're we're driving that community we're trying to get as many kids coming in to watch the games and as i said i i am an unofficial spokesman for the National League because they're not doing it themselves but it is an unbelievable league with unbelievable teams up and down this country and they deserve more.

57:28I think that's a perfect way to wrap it up. It's proper business of sportless in an area that as I said we haven't really kind of explored and chattered through. So thank you so much for taking us through both the club side and the whole league side. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. If you weren't sure how the business of non-league football clubs ran before we started listening to the show, I think that has done an amazing job at giving us the insight and understanding of what life is like outside the top four leagues in the English football pyramid. Football is amazing in so many ways, particularly in this country, but it does have its challenges.

58:05And for these businesses to continue to exist, there has to be a better financial structure for them to operate in. Owners like Simon need to be heard. They need to be able to influence policy to be able to develop the right environment for clubs to not only look after themselves and sustain, but also to grow. These are huge community assets with amazing fan bases. They're big employers. They need to be protected and of course promoted. A huge thank you to Simon for coming on and telling his story. And we hope you enjoyed the show. Now, if you want to hear more from today's show, you can do so by going to YouTube and typing in business of sport.

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