Spencer Owen, Hashtag United Owner: ‘From YouTube To Building The Most Unique Club In Football’ (Ep69)

31:37That's like a key thing for me is innovating because all the other teams are not doing it. They don't know how to do it. Like there's a reason that when Brighton have such great success with their new recruitment strategy or the way they do things, why don't Chelsea and Arsenal and Man United copy them? They do Chelsea just go and buy Brighton. No, they don't copy them. they literally reinforce Brighton's whole thing they go the guy you bought for 3 million rather than us trying to buy a guy for 3 million from Ecuador and give him 50 games in the Prem so he becomes a 100 mil player we'll just buy him for 100 mil the minute you spend 100 mil on him he almost can't be good he can't be good because no centimede really is worth 100 mil and even if he has the exact same level of performance he had for Brighton he's now being judged on a 100 million yardstick whereas Brighton he's not he doesn't have to be good so Brighton why don't they now go we've made 500 million transfers to Chelsea now we can just start spending 200 mil on a player because it doesn't work but Chelsea and Arsenal these guys will never copy them because the minute they copy them their fans will kick off and go oh we're tin pot why are we giving this if this Ecuadorian doesn't play very well this week it's because it's only worth 3 mil everyone knows it's 50 mil minimum for a good cent in the mid no it isn't but you they can't change now they're too big so that's our superpower we've got a couple of superpowers that hashtag but one of them is no one's playing the same game as us certainly not above us in the pyramid we can just massively continue to creep up on people you know all through my career especially with hashtag but even before that it's a rinse and repeat scenario of people telling me i'm crazy this thing you're trying to do won't work i then prove it and then the new thing i'm trying to do they say it's crazy and they were copying the thing i did 10 years ago but i'm already on to the next thing so it's like you need people that understand the opportunity and innovation is a huge opportunity in football.

33:26Could you do this model at a higher level? Does where you're at allow you to do this? This is the thing. I don't look at levels like that. Like, yes, you can, but you have to keep the views. So for example, once you get to a level that has TV deals, how does that impact your model? It will impact it. There's a very good chance, for example, we're in the National League and they decide to stream every single one of our games and that means that, you know, we don't actually really live stream, we only live stream for members. So theoretically, it wouldn't affect our model, which is a YouTube highlights model.

33:54But it would because if a lot of people tune into the live stream instead, then maybe there's going to be less views on your video. So then you have to ask yourself, well, what's the financial? What are we getting on those live streams? There's definitely a world where you could get promoted and be worse off. And we've had that multiple times. So you're now at a stage where you've almost taken it as far as you can go. And you're talking about all of this and the success that you've had. But also you're going through an investment raise now. You want to be doing things a little bit different. You don't have a stadium.

34:18You don't have your own infrastructure. Yeah, that's right. What is it that you need to do now from an investment perspective, from bringing in new ideas, new money, but also maintain the integrity of what you've built, which is what sets you out? Yeah. So if you look at all the literature that we're putting out there, none of the talk is really about promotion. I do believe promotions are in our future. I do believe they'll come, but they'll come as a side effect of building the club out, not because we're aiming for them. We've got to get the ground. The ground is key. There's a load of reasons for that.

34:45It's not a romantic one. There's times when not having ground has been amazing for us, like during COVID, for example, and we didn't have to deal with any of that red tape. We'd just turn up, play our football and leave. How much is the ground? Yeah, this is the thing. It's not like buying a house where there's a thousand of them and you can just choose one. You can build one. You can buy one. You can merge with the club. We've looked at all these options. How much have you set aside for it? Well, we haven't got enough. So we've had multiple teams apply to us to merge with them. Okay? We had a League 2 team do it.

35:11That team actually was a League 1 team until recently. we say merge without emerging to your brand well this is the thing right so anyone that knows the ins and outs of the merger rules in football it wouldn't actually be a merger it'd be a business merger because in football if you merge you have to take the lower position so if you're a league one club and i'm a ishme and prem club and we merge in football terms and you're called yellow wonderers and i'm called red athletic and we decide to call ourselves the yellow and reds because we have to do as well with the naming you have to sort of co-brand it you'd have to come down to my league there's no they don't want people merging up the pyramid imagine if you didn't and we just merged with swindon tomorrow like there most of these clubs haven't got massive amount of fans outside of their jurisdiction so the merger thing there's there's a yeah we've got a weird situation at hashtag where like we haven't yet and we've always been open to it and i think it is in our future put a place name in our name we haven't pinned down it to a certain area we've been more than willing to do that there's just never been a compelling business case to do it yet and we haven't actually had anyone like almost want us if you like i've spoke to various councils i'm not saying they don't want us and i don't want to tar every council with the same brush most councils i've spoken to are just concerned about making money and i don't mean for the community i don't mean giving the community the best thing they can do they're businesses they're businesses and some of them run terribly by the way one of the councils we actually play under right now is the most bankrupt council in the country okay they lost loads of money on a solar wind farm fraud, basically, that was a huge documentary about I made, which is Thurrock Council, they can't even put buses on right now.

36:46They've got no money. Okay, I'm going to throw a scenario out there to you. You need this money. You want the right type of investor. You can't have an institutional person that just wants to come in and do the bricks and mortar type thing and run it a traditional way because that completely corrupts the core of what you built, right? But you're also in a space now which is huge, like socially driven sport. We see it so much. It's a hot topic of conversation. There's massive money flying around in it. Can you not just keep the mission that you're going? Could you not put together a Sidemen kind of investment piece alongside you guys.

37:11You get the five to six to seven million investment in. You guys have exactly the same approach and mentalities to developing this. You get the financing to go and create some infrastructure. A local town or whatever would, I'd imagine they'd go for that because look at what Wrexham has done for the area. It's massively boosted tourism and everything around the area. A council would surely want that. But you get to go to the people that are now really at the front end of a section of sport, which is i don't even like socially content driven sport or whatever it is but they maintain your integrity of vision they know what you do you get the right financing you build it from there it's a big part of my plan so we are speaking to you obviously i've got a lot of friends in yeah thanks for spoiling it no we yeah i'd love to put together a salford city type thing with like creators do what i mean like you know when salford city hit the ground class of 92 all these guys like the modern version of that is is on our radar we have had a couple of people like you know so we've done two people who have allowed to invest so far and that cezar aspila quetta acquired four percent of the club in 2018 really out of an interest in esports which is increasingly less of something we're interested in for other similar to women's football actually in terms of there's been this huge bubble in esports it's a bit of a fugazi to be honest certainly in the football scene but cezar got involved and he's been amazing and then a friend of mine is actually a professional poker player acquired 10 of us in 2022 and like i said all that money has been kept in the club earmarked for this ground opportunity.

38:36The fan raise we're doing now, it's like multifaceted. What we're trying to do is we're trying to give the fans a chance to buy a share and we're doing it through a company called Republic. So you've got football clubs that have used it before. Watford done it recently. IFC women didn't help pay for their staging with it. How much euro is it? So we want to raise a minimum of half a million, but really we would like to raise a lot more than that. Right now we're in the pre-registration pace. So like actually, it's a big drop off expected, but if everyone invests the maximum amount they've said they would, we'd be raising like six million at the moment, but it is going to be a huge drop off.

39:04So we want to give the fans a chance to buy shares. I did something very similar about 12 years ago when a Spanish club called Real Oviedo offered people to buy shares and it was one of the first times a club had done that. It went viral, this idea of they had a great story. They were about to go bankrupt but they produced Juan Mata, Santi Cazorla and Amichu. Almost like the West Ham of Spain a little bit. So I've always wanted to do that for Hashtag. I just never had the ask. The plan was to get the ground ready to go. We need two million quid to turn this ground around. How have you priced it?

39:31So the last time we did the investment, so the first investment we had was from Cesar. And it was in 2018. It was a valuation of 2.5 million. And he bought 4 % of the club. And then the second investment we did from Patrick Leonard was a 5.5 million valuation. And he took 10%. So actually, I'm going to leave it where it is, valuation-wise. We have actually had two promotions since then. And we've also signed some much longer term sponsorship deals since then. So the club's in better shape. But it's a really weird one. I mean, this is what you guys do, right? It's really not what I do, but there's an argument where you could argue hashtags worth way more than that.

40:07And there's an argument where you could argue it's worth way less, to be honest, because our league, our positions in leagues, it's really debatable what an issue in Prem Sports, what is life? Because if you're comparing us to another team, you could acquire a team in that league probably for nothing, like in terms of you might take on some debt, whatever. But what is your potential of that team? You know, really, we valued ourselves using a like a blended multiplier. We are really at our core an advertising company, really, if you think about how we make our money. We're our football club. Yes, we're a social media company.

40:35We're almost like an agency in some ways. So it's quite hard to value it in football terms. That being said, we've got like a sort of verified valuation in the sense of what happened in 2022. My main thing here is, on one hand, I want to give the fans a chance to come along for the ride. As we're saying, tag along for the ride, the tags, and feel like they own a club. I love the idea of having to put in your Twitter bio, I'm a co-owner of Hashtag United. I did that when I got in at Rail Loviedo. i want to offer that to our fans we don't exist without our fans been watching us for nine years every single video like they are the reason we exist so they should be able to own a piece of it in my opinion fan-owned football is something i'm interested in if it works but i really want to uncover the more of these high net worth individuals within our community of which at the moment it appears there's quite a few that i'm working my way through right now to see if they can really change the game long term for us i've got no interest in selling a dream to someone and saying, you know, if you invest in this, we're going to be worth this much one day.

41:25There is a case and I can talk you through it, my long-term vision for hashtag and how I think there's a huge opportunity to multiply what you invest. But it's not the traditional football thing because that doesn't exist. In the short term, I want people to come in because it's experientially cool. That's why I got into it. I could have made way different decisions in the last nine years that would have made me more money as a creator individually. But I wanted to run a football club. They're the sort of people I want involved. But I also want people that get it and understand how we can turn this into something bigger.

41:52mentioned being an advertising club when you look at media partners sponsors what do they want today are they just there for the brand are they just there for exposure are they there for performance marketing clicks attribution we've always shied away from any sort of like affiliation links type of thing like that's not really and we can deliver it but like we're not really in that game we're trying to do something cool and we and we are inherently different and innovative and we want those sort of brands. We signed a three-year deal recently with Monster Energy and Monster, they are great. I have to say they're great.

42:25They're new in the football space, but they, you know, kind of like their main counterparts in Red Bull, they just want to do cool stuff. They want to be seen to do cool stuff. They think we're cool. We think they're amazing because they've been helping us do cool stuff. And that's the dream in many ways. You know, we've had big household name partnerships. We're very lucky. Think about what we are. You know, we've had deals with Coca-Cola, Lucozade, Monster Energy, Adidas, Umbro, Hummel. kind of 100k deals oh north of that well north of that and usually we are trying to do like five year deals really where possible sometimes two or three years but what are these deals are they kit deals are they like where are these brands where's that brand association yeah so obviously we've got all the all the normal like advertising spaces that normal football clubs have we have our kit deals we have our kit providers but equally we have very unique deals as well we go to TST every year which is a million dollar tournament we're involved with them but we basically helped launch that they launched with us as the concept to help get us on the ground we've got five year deal with them if we win the million dollars we get to keep that as well which is basically a win-win the monster energy don't actually have any real estate really they have a little bit our kit our stadium sorry a little bit of branding there i know that they'll be amazing when we get our ground because they're really about the real life activations and stuff and we just can't do it we just can't do it as a landlord it's really restrictive to be honest so so real so many reasons why i want us to get a ground like all the ideas and things that we've done over the years we have just as much if not more for match day for what you can do in a ground and then how you can permeate that content online so it's a double win right you've got the match day thing you've got building a massive atmosphere you've got monetizing it in real life and then you've got making content from those things you're doing we just cannot do them as a tenant and it's not even in our interests if we could because we're not getting the food and beverage money we don't see the upside of it if you're if you're a tenant so we need to get our own ground kind of way more important than anything else a hashtag right now to the point where I'd probably take relegations if it came with the ground.

44:15Because that's something you have to sometimes consider because sometimes a merger might mean we'd have to go down to go up. But I don't think we need to do that. I think we can do it with our fans, maybe some of these high net worth individuals. To go back to your point, where's the future? What is the thing? If we can kick on, we need to get ground. We need to professionalise if we're going to get a higher level of football. In terms of the multiplier, in terms of where someone can make their money, you guys know this, right? The money in a lot of the interest in football now He's going towards the multi-club ownership groups and this way of doing it, right?

44:45Can you name me a single football fan that supports a group? No. No, we could do that. We could do that quite easily, in my opinion. No one supports the City group. No one supports the Red Bull group. I do like what the Red Bull guys have done. I disagree. You think people support them? No, I think that you're seeing the concentration of love and affection, not the expansion. You're talking about the expansion of affection from a team to a group. I think you're seeing the concentration from a team to a player and I think now you have people who would subscribe to me yeah that's true that is definitely happening and I think and so I think more than ever you're moving away from diversification I think you are in the traditional sense and you've got a great anecdote on that like my little nephew we did this podcast we sat down with them because they're like not for YouTube obviously for family to I thought it'd be funny to talk to them when they're like seven and five and watch you back in 10 years massive football fan loves his football i go to him what are you going to be doing at 10 years in 10 years time like i'm a professional footballer who do you want to play for hopefully al nasa how mad is that it's because he loves ronaldo anyway that's to your point yes people support players 100 to go back to my point yeah they're not going to support those groups never i like what the red bull guys have done because there's a shared identity i like what there's a deliberateness about it you know they're selling energy drinks so all their teams play high pressing football they hired Jurgen Klopp they need to be energetic in their football because that's what they're doing I like the at least the attempt the bastardization of football I mean let's just be honest a caffeine energy drink jacking up the way they play football to fit the brand of a consumer product I mean if they were doing it and it was anti-football yes but I love high pressing football that's my whole if I'm a manager I'm playing high pressing football like I think that's the best version of football personally everyone has their own you know some people like ticky tack or whatever My point is that it is entertaining.

46:34It's not like they're going, we're selling bricks, so we're going to be really steady at the back. That would be boring. Whatever your opinion on Red Bull, their teams are fun to watch. And the reason they're fun to watch is the deliberateness about their approach. But no one supports them. No one supports the City Group. No one supports those guys. When you look at Hashtag, we're a philosophical idea, is what we are. Are you a child of the internet? do you understand why a club might call themselves hashtag like all these old guys that think it's a stupid name like they don't understand you know west ham was called thames ironworks right that's what we were founded as thames ironworks why because they worked in a factory making iron on the thames yeah it did what it said in the tin it became west ham later man united were called newton heath all these identities change over time hashtag united does what it says on the tin everyone thinks it's a joke name no it's exactly the same as every other football club's first name was.

47:25It tells you where the club came from. We came from the internet. We're not embarrassed by that. So if we were called Brentwood Athletic, because I live in a town called Brentwood in Essex, no one would give a hell of us outside of CM15, right? They wouldn't. I've got people that like my team in every corner of the globe. So the name does what it should do. I've always been open to changing it if there's a business case. I do think we'll put a place in it. But one of the reasons we'll put a place in it is because there'll be others. It's because of the other hashtags and hashtag will become the umbrella term and hashtag united end up will end up being a very clever word because there will be a unification of hashtags in different speaking territories doing different things now when we talk about branching out i'm friendly with some of these guys that own these multi-club ownership groups you know there's a lot of movement now towards tourism destinations you've got like venice fc and like like como and i can completely see the logic in doing that our version of that is social presence so like we don't need to go in the country just got the best blossoming league we need to go in the countries that are undernourished that are huge football fans but don't have something locally to support because they don't they're underrepresented it's actually a huge thing for me politically anyway as an individual i want to represent the unrepresented i believe football's for everyone the reason i've got a women's team is really because i wanted two teams to support and i don't see the difference there is differences obviously but i don't see it as inferior or superior it's football i get to support team on Saturday and Sunday?

48:48Fantastic. Sign me up. There's a lot of people around the world that have to support Man United or they have to support whoever because they don't have anything locally to be proud of. One of my best pals I've known him since I was seven, a guy called Faisal Manji, he's a cult hero at Hashtag. Not the best player, but he played for us in the original years, but he's of Asian descent and I don't think there'll be people listening to me that think I sound like a madman. If someone's listened to this that knows about Hashtag, they'll know exactly what I mean. He was probably the most prominent British Asian footballer in the country for a couple of years because of hashtag not a great footballer solid footballer but there's not a lot of representation for that group in football if i said to use the best british asian footballer most people say michael chopper the point of that is he is a cult hero now he hasn't played for us for eight years right but if you we've got we've got a game on sunday we're playing a premier league all-stars team like yaya toray and all these guys and ray winston i'm playing in it it's like our old boys coming out i mean that's crazy about that is right that is an og 11 that we're putting together of boys like me who started the team and greg halford's also playing in it who's premier league player because he played for us for two years so he's an og this guy was in the premier league who had millions of pounds spent on him he's gonna be playing alongside me and the boys that didn't get in the school team because we all played for the same football club in the space of nine years we've gone from me and phasel manji to greg halford you know and others we've got layton smith with us now he won league two you know we've got internationals anyway i digress the point is that we have an ability to represent people we have an ability to tell stories other people aren't even trying to tell so i i envision our multi-club network down the line as being a handful of destinations across the world that maybe don't have the best coverage right now but are huge in social media huge a great example is a guy called elkin bagu indonesian international i believe he is on ipswich his book still but he's been loaned out last few years he's at bristol rovers for a bit almost every post that he is in on instagram it's like 100k minimum likes right because he's like david beckham in indonesia you know there's a reason that we saw south koreans come over to the prem we can expand in those markets we know how to make it work but then underlying that we will have a shared philosophy and vision for how football clubs should run they'll all do it the hashtag way and then you get into the economies of scale of the business and you start thinking about some of the big brands we do deals with you know we could start activating on a global level then rather than a regional level and we might for example we might we've had two different we've spent eight years under adidas for example we might then be looking at adidas and saying we want to do a whole piece or we might go actually hashtag is going to be the brand now and we're going to become merchandise company as well so there's so many things we can still do can i ask when when you look at like we mentioned that traditional clubs and the evolution to groups not just teams it just made me think of like actually the evolution of other big parts of football and the game we love and going back to content how do you think about the future of media rights and what it looks like in five to ten years well at the top level it obviously is quite apparent that the premier league are going to do it all in-house and whatnot and that does make a lot of sense when they're they have the ability to monetize that themselves at the low level is so strange right because england is such a weird country for football it really is that was such an outlier like it doesn't matter how much a danish person or german person thinks they know about football when i say to them we play in the seventh tier they instantly switch off they think I could play in the 7th tier you know the 7th tier because most countries I probably would be a 4th or 5th tier player in most countries I'm nowhere near the 7th tier in England because the level is so deep the quality is so deep the money is so deep there are players at our level getting paid well over a grand a week if not two not at our football club that is professional footballer money in the 7th tier like it doesn't make any sense to be honest it's amazing don't get me wrong I love non-league this is a massive misnomer with me I grew up in non-league.

52:31My dad was a physio. That's why I took us into non-league. So the baller league obviously is going mad right now. We're massively blowing my own trumpet here, but we basically invented that. So seven years ago, we did something called the Next Level League. It's way before Kings League, way before baller league. It was an influencer league. We had like Arsenal Fan TV, hashtag all these sort of YouTube teams. We did it on a tiny budget. We had one sponsor, Sports Direct sponsoring it. There was nothing like it. It has never been anything like that before. We started it. I'm not saying they copied us.

52:59They might not be aware of it. But we definitely were the first to do that kind of thing. We had a decision to make at that point to throw everything at that or to join the pyramid and to be the weird thing in the traditional setup rather than just doing something weird or unusual. And I decided that setup because I love non-league. And also, I had real issues running a club that played in the league that I ran. I felt it was a big conflict. And even when it wasn't, because I always tried to do things properly, if we won, we'd be challenged. Like, oh, of course we won because it was my league.

53:29so I had no real interest in running a league that I ran a team in and I prefer running a team to running a league so I went down non-league there's another universe somewhere where I did that and we raised a couple hundred million for that like what the Kings League have done and like what Border League have done raised 30 odd million recently do you think they will work? long term I don't know to be honest with you I know their model and I know the guys that run them and I think super exciting they're doing really good things they really know what they're doing in many ways I also I know that this space is very convoluted right now like look at Germany for example they've got the Icon League they've got the Baller League Kings League were going to go there Kings League were going to come to the UK I think Baller League have beat them to it now they've signed up all the huge talent Kings League are in Germany now yeah they've got three exactly I remember talking to them about Germany have Baller League beaten Kings League just on execution that's hard in England probably I don't see how Kings League can do it now where is Kings League well Kings League is starting in Spain they've got the Americas League they've got their World Cup thing they've got Germany now so they've raised a lot of money a lot and they're very good at what they do I would say the Kings League guys and Borla League are very much emulating them, but they're ahead of them in this country.

54:32My fear is, first of all, I know that because that space is so competitive right now, so many people trying to do it. They're all going to take chunks out of each other. And I wonder if they will just end up on the battlefield wounded because there isn't enough attention. You can't watch them all, right? So they're so busy trying to beat each other. I think they maybe destroy the space with saturation, personally. Were there any requests and appetite to get you and some of the hashtag brand involved in that? because they've taken people in and around We've got three of our players Three of our players playing in the ball league But not obviously directly related to hashtags so they're leveraging themselves separately Yeah so I don't have a I know Felix who runs the ball league I've spent some time with him I don't give I know they also were speaking to me at one point about being a presenter and commentator I commentate the side main games I was commentating in St George's Park yesterday for the Emirates Fives I don't have an answer as to why they didn't I think it's partly because we play in TST which is considered a competitor and we're three years into that partnership.

55:27They even arranged the Border League final to clash with the TST final this year. Well, I think they might have moved that now. That's what I'm saying. It's so competitive, this space. Not everything's competitive. It's, they hate each other. This is my observation. I'm not motivated in that way at all. I don't hate anyone. I don't not like the other teams. I want to beat them. I want to beat them. But if they, I actually enjoy competition. I enjoy, you know, most of the teams that we're competing with aren't doing it the way we're doing it. So it's not really a, we're probably competing is just as much of a YouTube channel as we are the football club.

55:56But my guess is, you know, the baller league model, they're paying these creators a lot of money to be in it and to be present and to care. Some of them care more than others. I think that's very evident if you watch it. I don't know where it is in five years. I don't know where it is. Are the audiences good? Very good, very good. Because the only thing that matters is consumer demand. Yeah, but it does hold. So what happens in five years? What happens in five years? Basically, if they can keep paying that money and they can keep those guys engaged, then maybe it's a thing. but and it's a lot of money they pay but if they're making profit then yeah but in five years if they can't keep paying that and those players move those presidents and the and the influencers that are involved move on what happens what they need to do is they need to there's a couple guys i know everyone in ball league very very well there's a couple guys particularly who really care about their team and i can see them like building brands off the team like angry jeans united sharky they really care about this stuff i'm not saying the others don't i'm just saying like it's evident that some are really trying to make something from it and i could see them even entering their teams in non-league or like trying to create a brand a 24-7 brand out of those teams that's what they need i do think they missed the trick obviously unbiased but in england different to germany maybe there wasn't as much of a space pre that i know you've got the delay guys in berlin but they have an existing ecosystem they have hashtag they have the sc dons you may be familiar with they have these teams that have actual inherent rivalry like we get on me and the Dons guys but ostensibly there's a real rivalry they were actually going to play for the first time this summer if you'd put I don't know if you saw the draft day of border league but it was a little bit of a production wise it didn't go great and it's a bit long and they know that they admitted it themselves that whole vibe would have been so different if you had hashtag and Dons in there because we'd be coming for each other like and these guys like Beatty squad now you need the big dogs without the KSI's and the chunks is of course it's not going to work I'm not going to name names but there's a couple teams in the border league that are adding very little value right now definitely and no one needs me to say that if you remove them and you put in these guys that actually genuinely football clubs that are in the space completely irrelevant to being border league and competed i think you have a real winner because then you have teams that continue to get people invested in the story can we actually just use that as a segue to talk about some of the athletes piece because we've talked about how athletes as brands have just become such a huge thing and you said something earlier and before we came on air about a story when you were working with Vincent Kompany and about a different way of thinking and how he was.

58:16Do you think we, as like an industry, do you think football clubs as an industry, utilize the unique personalities and characteristics of some of their talent to create more value for their assets? So I think like, there's, football is like everything. To be a footballer, you have to really, you know, win the lottery, really. Like, you've got to be amazing, you've got to have great genetics, you've got to be amazingly hardworking to get through. So the majority of them fit a certain mold. They've sacrificed other things, to be a footballer. There's a handful that just stand out above the crowd and they're just exceptional.

58:48And Vincent Kompany is definitely one of those guys. Like anyone that spent any time with him would know that. You know, there's a great story that I was told when I was there, which was when he was 18 and he was playing at Anderlecht, Man United tried to sign him and he was playing in Anderlecht in the Belgian league. What a great move that would be for an 18-year-old lad. And he said, I'll come, but I need to finish my degree because he was studying at the time. And Fergie said, you come to United, you're a footballer. You're not a university student. you know this is what you do at United and Vincent said okay no worries and just didn't go ended up going to Hamburg and then ended up at Man City to have the volition to do that at that age and to know that it was going to be good decision long term you know who knows what would happen if he'd go to Man United at 18 he could have he had a great career it could have been a good move for him football wise but he wanted that degree he ended up doing an MBA at Manchester Business School you know he was he had multiple businesses by the time that I worked for him he was so interested in everything outside of football, whilst also being 100 % dedicated to football, a leader of men.

59:46Why is it that there's these European businessmen, athletes, Juan Mata, Cesar Azpilicueta, Gerard Pique, Vincent Kompany, and the UK footballers seem to be very behind? It's a great question. I thought about that. I don't know if I know the answer to it. I do find that it's not even just that, right? It's like you listen to some like Giorgio Chiellini. why does he speak fluent English? He's never played in England so why does he speak fluent English? Why does Buffon speak fluent English? I think we are not challenged enough like the reason they speak English first of all is England English is the dressing room language even at a club like PSG right because there's all different nationalities in there and it's the one that you kind of learn to speak even if it's just basic but these guys I'm not saying they all do obviously so many of these guys just impress me Spanish footballers in general I've never had a bad experience with a Spanish footballer Juan Mata I've had a few things with him incredible guy obviously Cesar like we don't have okay we've got some guys yeah standing above the parapet a little bit got the rashford's got these things in my opinion i don't know these guys personally in my opinion some of that is you know not all them so people behind them well that's it exactly you know mario goetzer okay for example he is as good as my investing team he is hunting like venture deals sending them to me from planes where he's traveling like i'm looking at this market and i found this adjacency how do you think about that yeah he's a serial investor so yeah he loves it so i have an opinion and it's hard to like concisely put it down but i think a huge amount of that is a broader social part of where football sits in this country and the amount of sports that we have that capitalize our time if you look in europe you look in spain you look in germany the majority of their major national sports right football is at the heart of that whether you're from a high income family low income family whatever it may be it really extends across i think opportunities extend and focus is narrowed towards a sport.

1:01:40Over here, we play football, rugby, cricket, tennis, golf, whatever there is. There's different types of stuff. There's basketball now coming through, all of this. And football socially in this country is mid-lower income. It's a lower social sport. And rightly or wrongly, private schools tend to be rugby schools, don't they? And so, you know, you could have people like, and I don't know, and I'm really speculating, but, you know, Johan Matos, Cesar I don't know their family backgrounds or whatever it may be, but there's a high chance that if they were hyper-intelligent when they were young or were really interested in this side, if they were in England, they probably would have been either off their own back financially or scholarship-wise.

1:02:18They could have easily gone into a private school or an institution which pushed out this type of sport. They may have ended up playing a bit of football, but hey, they would have also played cricket. They would have also played rugby. Do any of those people make it to football? No, because you need to be so dedicated to that. And also, you've got things like the, I'm not saying it's a perfect system by any means, but in America, for example, you spend some time at university before you go into professional sports. Now, most of them are just playing the sport, I know. But the point is, some of the ones that don't quite make it, they end up with a degree as a side effect.

1:02:44So we definitely don't have it all right. I've got a theory on one of the things you just said there as well. So I have many... I didn't used to, but I massively get affected by the weather now, like in a good way. Like when the sun comes out like this, I love it. I didn't need to care at all, but I love it. And I wish football was a summer sport in this country. If you play the lower leagues, it's a real grind in those winter months. We've always played on 4G to avoid that scenario. But when you play away, you have some terrible pitches. No real football can be played on them. Your game's called off constantly.

1:03:13I look at a season like a TV season, with its peaks and troughs and its narratives and its storylines. So when you haven't got a game one week, it's really annoying. You lose an episode, right? Dude, I can't imagine that. A last minute lose an episode. It happens all the time. And the grassroots, particularly if you're a Sunday league player, you know the struggle of either getting a game on in ridiculous circumstances or not having a game. So we need more, obviously, artificial pitches. but also if it was a summer sport we would fix that problem pretty quickly you know why it's not summer sport cricket is the reason cricket now i'm not against cricket i'm not a cricket fanatic but i'm not against it in any way and this will upset a lot of people if you move football to summer sport cricket would probably die that's what would happen and and it's not just that the real reason that football is a winter sport is because of the shared resources there's still teams now that share so they can't play home games are like in april because the cricket season started and they literally share the same pitch.

1:04:02Well to the point like it would die whether you believe in grassroots or not it would die fundamentally because broadcast only has X amount as well and right now if you have football on the summer Sky choose football not. Of course. And I get it maybe that's a big thing for the country we need to protect cricket I don't know but I would fundamentally enjoy football a hell of a lot more if it was a summer sport for sure and I think it would make more people want to come and play in this country you know coming to play for no disrespect but going to play Newcastle in January like when you can play for Madrid or Barcelona there's just no way you win that battle there's no way you win that unless you go pay a lot more money so yeah i do believe that is is a cricket is a big factor in that but yeah what you're saying could be true can we do a quick fire so i love this one which club creates the best content in your mind oh wow definitely in the origins of youtube it was man city they were ahead of the game amazingly and i also helped them sign their first esports player as well because i was the first person to sign an esports player really in football but then I helped West Ham and Man City get into it I knew Man City would be on it so they've been very good they got their money at the right time to be ahead of the curve on that now I mean you could say Wrexham you could put Wrexham in the convoy couldn't you they're just storytellers yeah probably is we go to that TST every year and it's crazy man Wrexham are the home team you go to America and everyone is either in a Wrexham shirt or a Ted Lasso shirt it's mad people in England don't realise how big Wrexham are in America you don't realise like they are huge in America but this is my reason why you short the MLS and it's because every single person I know in America who's a bloke in a certain age range has a English Premier League team what happens though if they sort the promotion relegation situation and they're trying these little things I just don't think they care because they want quality products well they also you know this is the thing I've talked about loads before I think you'll be all over this I read that book years ago was it Soconomics America's the most capitalist country in the world but they have the most socialist sports the sports you know your last pick you get the first pick if you're the worst in the team it's very rewarding social idea but they're not because ultimately they're gate kept so yeah they protect you if you're in the league but no one can get in unless you've got a billion dollars that's why they buy english clubs is because to buy an mls club is billions of dollars you can buy wrexham for two million right if you could do that in america if you could acquire a club in the fifth tier of america and take on that disney story there's no reason why ryan and rob couldn't have done that of an american team they had to come to wrexham to do it you know so so yeah i mean that was not a quick question a quick fire answer yeah i think probably rexham are leading their way after us i'd say i don't think we make the best content to be honest we actually are quite formulaic in our content now i think we have the most interesting origin story what about the way you make content would you most like to change i just liked i'd love to cover our women's team more they're exceptional they're so good and it's such an amazing thing to be part of i'd also love to have more female presence in it off the pitch as well like you know it's very hard it's a big problem in football you know we just hired a new men's team manager i've always said because our old manager we inherited them when we took over the women's club that i'd love for a women's manager to follow them we didn't have a single female applicant no one applied for the job we got a grant this year from the national league this is specifically to put our female players on coaching courses because they want to increase female coaches so i can literally you know not only are these courses quite hard to get on and they can fast track them to be on them but they're expensive.

1:07:22So I can say to all our players, you want to be a coach, I can pay for it for you, and I can get you on the next course. Who wants to do it? Not one of them said yes. Not one of them wanted to do it. That is a big problem in women's football that no one's really talking about. There's a huge lack of uptake. Huge lack of uptake. You know what a lot of women's football is? And I'll get some stick for this. A lot of women's football, the debate around it, is people arguing what should be done who don't watch women's football. Like this wolf stigma, all the stick wolves got. You see the comments on the post about how critical they are.

1:07:50are you going to women's football on Sundays and are you watching women's football are you actively supporting women's football you've got an opinion on Instagram you're telling Wolves why they should do what they should do but do you support women's team I guarantee you most of them don't I guarantee they don't that's the problem we've talked about investment who would you most like to bring in as an investor you can have anyone no the boys there's a load of them in the YouTube scene with me that I think is just a low hanging fruit you know that would protect our identity and I'm not going to naming them individually I'm having conversations with a lot of them now but what about anyone that's invested in sport outside of that that does it really well that you think that we're kind of like a Ryan Reynolds but let's not use him because it's just obvious but you know someone like that see I'd always lean towards people that I personally like and vibe with you know we actually had chats once with Post Malone's manager at one point weirdly he follows me on Twitter and I still don't know why I think he must have watched my FIFA videos or something back then he's a bit of a geek like me Post Malone like he's a bit of a secret geek but he would be a very interesting person to work with like you know I'm a bit of an old soul so I like I'm like a Bob Dylan fan all these guys I don't think he's looking to the best football team I don't think he'll help us that much either to be honest but yeah I don't know man like obviously if someone like Mr Beast came involved it would change everything but ultimately I'm not necessarily on that wavelength I wouldn't say what about the way football clubs are run today will change most in the next 10 years well this is a controversial one but I personally believe heading is going to come out the game heading yeah i think it will come out of the game it might be 30 years the minimum that will happen is that i think you won't be able to contest headers so heading will be only something you can do kind of like a high foot you know you can have a high foot you just can't have it near someone else i think that might happen with heading but i think eventually you won't head at all i mean it's already happened at the kids level you can't head it now until you're 12 you can't head until you're 12 really so that's just a concussion i just i have personal experience with this so i actually stopped playing wiggly because of concussions i was someone that built their life for their football career career my football experiences were built around heading i was pretty good at it and yeah so like i actually identify with that like you know i love harry maguire like i think he's a legend because he's a big slabhead like as a footballer i love intricate football too it's like britishness as well is about getting up for a big header isn't it so it's very hard for me to to make sense of these two things but the rational side to me from experience knows that it's terrible for you, man.

1:10:13It's so bad for you. You know, when you head a football, it is essentially a collision of 40 miles an hour. That's what it is to your head. You know what? There is no, name me a sport where you use your head. Well, I mean, put your head in dangerous positions versus use your head is different, I guess. No, yeah. I mean, you get punched in boxing, but you don't use your head. Football is the only real sport where you use your head. Yeah. Right? And it's not going to continue. Yeah, to use it as a... Use it and you hit a ball that could be traveling 80 miles an hour. you get kicked in the head with a ball from a free kick or something, that can ruin your life.

1:10:45There's a lot of footballers that are big behind this. Mark Bright, Alan Shearer doing a lot about this. There's a massive link towards dementia and football in later life if you've headed the ball. I'll bastardise these stats now, but it's something like 600 % more likely for you to develop dementia in later life if you've been a professional footballer. Specifically if you've been a big header of the ball striker, centre-back. There's just no way it survives it, in my opinion. There's no way. And there's a really interesting team in Gibraltar that have actually started pioneering. They all wear headguards now in football.

1:11:13That'll come in. That'll come in first. They'll all be wearing Peter Petr Cech headguards to protect your brain. But it's going to 100 % come out of the game. It might take decades. There's no way it survives. The data speaks for itself. And that's the other thing people don't understand about football, right? Or everything in life. Everything changes. So many people are sitting there going, no, never do that, never do that. They used to allow the goalkeeper to pick up passbacks. How boring that was, but it was like 100 years of football before that changed. you know offside rule used to have an extra player that had to be there to play you on it's all going to change I think offside could potentially come out I mean Marco van Basten requested that when he was the head of innovation for FIFA this is a great example of hashtag right he said that was an idea next day we filmed an offside game put it on YouTube it's got like a million views now because I knew no one else was going to do it let's actually test it what happens oh it turns out the score is about 12-11 and it turns out it's pretty horrible to watch because strikers just stand in the box and goal hang but we can actually test that stuff live PK Gerrard Piquet has come out recently and said he wants neither team to get a point for a nil-nil I like his thinking but I think it's a bad idea because what that is going to continue to create the gap between the good clubs and the weaker clubs if you're Burnley and you draw a nil-nil with Man City you've got to get a point for that that's hard so there needs to be maybe a different incentivisation like maybe you get you get one point for a nil-nil and two points for a score draw or something I don't know but who knows the point is it's all going to change things like the baller league and tst and all these things my personal belief if i had to put money on it right now probably they won't be around in 10 years if i had to guess but they will make enough noise that they subsequently impact the mainstream football mainstream football has to adjust and change we're seeing it happen now that they've got to bring a stop clock in i feel so passionately about that the problem us football fans what we're not able to do is we're not able to see it with untrained eyes so i really try hard to do if you try and watch football with someone who doesn't like football.

1:13:06It's so bad to watch, honestly. Final one, final one for me. Creator-driven sport. So YouTube boxing, content creation. Why is it good for this industry? Sidemen Charity Match, you mentioned, you commentate on it. Clearly that's his most popular piece of content so far this year has been one of the videos that came out of that. Why is this so good? Yeah, I mean, I think I could turn it on his head and say, why is it not good? Like, you know, anyone that thinks it's not good, there's not really, Jerry Barton was having a go at them, wasn't he? Because they got to play at Wembley. it's like I think it's because you didn't get to play Wembley Joe I've played there five times by the way no the point is like of course it's good like do you know how many people watching that game that aren't active football fans for example do you know how many people who like I just said about the rule sets and how it can be like time wasting is a huge issue and football has to come out people ask me when I commentate the game how was it how was it because I commentate games every week right I'm like do you know how easy it is to commentate a game that has 19 goals like it's the dream I just choose when to stop talking because there's so much going on.

1:14:05It's the nil-nils that are the problem. That's the problem in football. Not necessarily nil-nils because you can get great nil-nils. The problem is we have got so entrenched in how things have to be done. It's such a big thing, football. It's so hard. There's a reason we had VAR and goal line technology and all these things last. Why did rugby and cricket and tennis have them all 10 years before us? It's not because we couldn't do it. It's because we're scared. They're scared to change something. I did this baseball project a few years ago randomly. and you ended up learning how to play baseball.

1:14:32And there's an issue there with basically the pitchers have got too good, right? Pitchers have got too good. And I observed this straight away. As a non-baseball person, I watched it. I went, they don't really hit the ball, do they? And they were like, oh, it's a huge problem in baseball. I was like, it's quite hard to hit a home run now, isn't it? Yeah, the pitchers have evolved and got better quicker than the batters can handle. So they're throwing these rapid balls, right? So I'm like, why don't they just move the mount back? Move the mount back, make it harder. And they're like, yeah. And I come up with this after watching one game, right?

1:14:57Because this helps to not be involved sometimes. and that's exactly what we need to do. The reason we can't do it is if we do that, you know, baseball is a data game. All they care about is data, data, data. Moneyball came from baseball stats. If you change that, you can no longer compare a single pitching stat for the last 100 years to the modern day because it's further metres back and they lose all the data. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't do it because it's a problem because I'm coming to you as a non-baseball fan watching and saying, a bit boring, they don't really hit the ball much.

1:15:25What's the whole point of baseball? It's not to not hit the ball. Of course, there's an art in a good pitch. But you need to see home runs. If you don't see home runs, you've got a problem. So these sports become too big for their own good, impossible to change. And then you see things that come out of nowhere, like paddle or like these other sports that suddenly capture people's imagination because they just get a bit stagnant. And the sidemen is a great example of an antidote to that. It's not great football, but it's not saying it is. They're not said that they're elite. They're saying we're going to put on a show and you guarantee whatever happens when you watch a sidemen game, it's going to be entertaining.

1:15:57They know how to make entertainment. Amazing. I loved it. Thank you so much. You've been fantastic and so appreciate you coming in. No, my pleasure. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I feel like we may need to take a breath after that one. What an amazing show and a huge thank you to Spencer for coming and talking to us about it. As he said, he dropped us a note a few weeks ago to see if he could come and tell that story. And I'm so pleased that he did because that is a very, very different type of conversation to the one we normally have. and a different way of looking at ownership and managing a football club in this country.

1:16:32It's very hard to argue with the success that they've had and it's fantastic to see things be done differently but it does highlight some of the major challenges that do exist within English football and broader sport you could even extend it to when accepting change and different ways of doing things that may disrupt the established order. We really love doing it and again a huge thank you to Spencer for joining us. 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. But before we leave you, a special one for you today as we have a very exciting announcement to make.

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