THE BREAKDOWN: Amorim & Maresca Escape The Chaos, Is LIV On The Verge of Collapse & The Real Reason England Lost The Ashes (E01)

27:11Teams that are successful have the right coach, they sign the right players, they have the right structure around the coach and the players. Individually, all of those things I agree with, but he's got it the wrong way around. Teams that are successful have the right structure, full stop, right? Clubs that are successful have the right structure. That's where you start. They then have senior people in the right roles, round pegs and round holes, who also have the human capacity to get on with each other in a constructive way. They, in turn, will appoint the right head coach and the right performance director and the right recruitment director.

27:50And they, in turn, will ensure the right players come to the club. And understanding that waterfall is the key to getting these things right. Is it easy? It's fiendishly difficult, I'm telling you. And there's even a bit at the end, even when you've got it all right, there's a little bit at the end, which is alchemy, which is a moment. It's a spark, right? So I'll give you an example, right? So I remember doing the interview with you guys when I was the chief executive of Charlton. And it was during the summer. And we'd been there for a year. It had been a disappointing season. We brought in Nathan Jones.

28:19We felt that we were heading in the right direction. We knew that we'd sorted out the performance side. You know, Charlton had a horrific injury record. And we'd sorted that out. We felt we got the performance side right. We felt that the recruitment department and the use of data was way advanced from where it was when we took over And we started the season just after I did the interview with you. We started the season And it wasn't it just wasn't quite right This feels totally functional the relationships are good everyone's in round pegs and round holes. This whole thing is correct this and yet we were up a mid table and we felt that we should be in the top four like And it's unbelievably frustrating because you've got the whole world screaming at you You're a bunch of idiots.

28:58And yet you think, I'm pretty sure we've done everything right here. And then one game in early December, the manager makes one tactical tweak for an away game. We win the game 5-0. The thing turns on its head. And between then and the end of the season, we got more points than any other club in the division and got promoted. So for all that you have to get all this other stuff right, there is still, particularly with football being a low margin, low scoring game, which does rely a bit on confidence and a bit on mojo and a bit on vibe there is a little bit at the end which is you need something at some point a spark to go your way however what is the case is if you don't get all those building blocks in place first you will not have um medium-term success right and and i think that that is the problem when i look at the involvement of the ownership at manu and chelsea which you've got people who are unqualified to be owners people who are either private equity bosses or petrochemicals bosses getting quite heavily involved in decision making and being very obviously and plainly involved.

29:57It's not just they have a relationship with their chief executive. No, they are the ones often who are visibly the ones marching across the turf and doing all this type of stuff. It warrants a show on itself, but I feel we should progress. We need to move on. We need to move on. This next bit, it's been boiling for a while. I want you to talk to me briefly at the beginning about why we think this is so interesting right now, because there have been some things that have happened over Christmas that have made it particularly interesting to look at, I think. There is a rabbit hole, and the rabbit hole is labelled Saudi investment in elite sports.

30:33And because I'm a sad, nerdy type of figure who, when he gets a little bit of time off, decides to dive down rabbit holes, I've decided to dive down a rabbit hole. And it was all kicked off by Brooks Koepka, the former world number one golfer, announcing together with the Liv Tour that he was leaving Liv. He was leaving his contract with Liv. Four years into a five-year contract, he was off. and it just felt to me as somebody who takes a keen interest in golf. I've actually never worked in golf before, Charlie. I don't know if you have, but I've never worked in golf before, even though it's the game which I am least bad at.

31:02It's probably the only sport which I am a fan of, right? Because the other sports, even if I was originally a football fan, I'm now an executive. You worked in most of them. I've worked in most of them. Once you work in it, you actually stop being a fan. Live golf. Right, so let's just go back to where this all comes from. in 2016 um the the ruler of saudi arabia um not the king actually the crown prince muhammad bin salman announces saudi 2030 right which is a vision over the following 14 years to start well not start to actually go through the process of diversifying the saudi economy culture and everything developing it so that it's no longer just a conservative um muslim state dependent on oil for its existence.

31:49And that covers loads and loads of different areas, including huge developments within Saudi in terms of physical real estate developments, all sorts of law changes in terms of what people are and aren't allowed to do. I don't propose to discuss any of that. When it came to sport, there were a few separate strands, right? So I'm going to cover off one or two that I'm not going to talk about, well, at least not until later and not unless you want to. One of which was we're going to bring really high profile events here. We're going to bring big boxing fights here. We're going to bid for the World Cup.

32:21That's there. They then instituted a sort of venture capital fund called Surge to make investments into sports technology, sports businesses, smaller investments, which hopefully over time would end up being much larger investments. And then the third bit was, we're also going to try and create a large, globally relevant sports assets, leagues, effectively, which are going to be obviously loss leaders in the short term, but which will end up becoming hugely valuable entities in the medium to long term and help be part of the economic diversification of the country. One of these things was the Saudi Pro League, which is the Saudi top division football league, which already existed very much, but they put rocket boosters underneath it and vast amounts of money recruiting some of the top players in the world, albeit mostly towards the end of their careers, in the hope and the belief that they would be able to crack the top five leagues in Europe.

33:14The Saudi Pro League would perhaps go past the French League, maybe past the Italian League and become one of the top leagues in the world because they had so many famous players playing for it. To put it mildly, the numbers have not worked. The live attendances, which were about 7 ,500 to 8 ,000 on average before these rocket boosters got attached, briefly ticked up to about 8 ,600 and then ticked down to 8 ,000 and then ticked up to 8 ,200. Basically, live attendances in the stadium are static. So the crowds don't particularly think that what they're seeing is worthy of going more often. And then the international TV ratings have been, I don't know how, have been kind of disastrous, right?

33:58So there'll be matches in the Saudi Pro League, which if you look at their overall audience, would compare roughly to a French third division game. Not even an English third division game, which can attract more than that. And that's after, you know, four years, five years of this. So what's happening, what we're now seeing is that they're scaling back in terms of the amount of money they're paying for massive high profile players at the end of their career. I think Neymar was probably like the moment at which they think, Christ, this really isn't a good idea because it's not just they paid 300 million, but he barely even played a match during his time there.

34:33So it was just a colossal waste of money. So they've scaled back on that and they're starting to try to sign younger players from around the world, becoming more of an elite development league. Possibly part of it is trying to hope that some of those players become Saudi citizens and perhaps improve the Saudi national team a bit in terms of the 2034 World Cup, etc. and also trying to become, I guess, making sure that they are the leading team in Middle East and North Africa region, MENA, which was something which I always felt that should have been their aim in the first place. So in other words, the Saudi pro league for me now is heading in a direction which probably it should have always been heading in in the first place.

35:07Their short-term bid to try and crack the top five leagues in Europe has been quietly abandoned. And you can see that just from the way in which they're now talking about themselves and the kind of the way in which the strategic talk has shifted. it hasn't been much publicly discussed that this pivot has happened and the fact that this pivot relates to fundamentally a failure yeah it was a failure just in terms of just the level of ambition was so great and i think it didn't fully recognize and understand how hard it was going to be to disintermediate these massive leagues have been in place and have got multi-generational support not just in their own country but around the world but anyway that's that's the saudi pro league i don't really want to focus mostly on the saudi pro league because i think what's happening in live is more interesting but if there's anything i agree i do agree and and what i'm going to say will feed into live the thing i think about this is this is much more an issue of time frame 2030 if we're looking at it um you know objectively this is a what we're really talking about that it's a direction it's not a destination you're saying that you're never going to achieve what they fully wanted to achieve by that time but as we know you have to time box these things politically you have to give people deadlines to get things moving football being a part of this and the total ambitions of of the pro league of course is to create a great asset but it also runs deeper in society it was a big health kick for society saudi population is relatively immobile if we're looking at a lot of populations health is a very very important thing if you have an unhealthy population it's a very expensive thing for a for a country to have to look after what we're looking here is almost a 30-year play.

36:44That's what it should be, because we're not just talking about the creation of a top-level sports asset. We're talking about the foundations of academies, grassroots, broader health, entertainment properties that are getting and mobilizing that population. I wouldn't say the mission is wrong. I think how they framed it is wrong. So, exactly as I think you said at the end, but I think a reframing, a reassessment of what success really looks like for the Saudi Pro League is good and important. What happens next is what's going to be most interesting. But I do think this is a longer play. Now, the challenge comes when they've invested in assets that, when we've looked at it, have actually very little value to Saudi other than vanity that don't necessarily align with making the country greater.

37:29And if we're looking at the two, that's where Live becomes quite interesting. Yeah, because a Saudi pro league plays in Saudi, whereas Live mostly does not, right? The Saudi pro league involves lots of Saudi footballers, Live Golf does not. So really, Live is an external asset owned by Saudi sovereign wealth fund. And it's something which has to work on its own merits, stand up on its own merits, because it doesn't have that broader remit, really. I know it kind of says it does. I've had a look at some of their foundational documents, but really, it's golf. So Liv is founded four years ago. Obviously, the planning happened rather earlier than that, mostly kept under wraps.

38:15It was quite a surprise when the whole thing started to happen. And effectively, what they did, rather like in football, but in a much more structured and systematic way, is they went out to buy up a lot of the leading golfers in the world at that time. for quite astonishing numbers. John Ram, who was, I think, the world number one at that time, was effectively bought for 300 million. Phil Mickelson, 200 million. Brooks Koepka, who has just resigned from the Live Tour, 130 million. Dustin Johnson, 125 million. Bryson DeChambeau, 125 million. And even Till Hatton for 60 million. And the idea was basically to blow the PGA Tour out the water right so that we shock and awe we will simply take all the best players in the world by offering them unimaginable sums of money compared to what a golfer could reasonably expect to to earn i mean a good year for a golfer in prize money terms might be a great year might be like 20 million right so when you're saying it's like john ram here's 300 million you're basically saying to him we're going to take all the jeopardy out of the rest of your professional life, we are going to guarantee you a sum that even if you had great years every year on the PGA Tour, you would not make as much as we're going to give you now, right?

39:29So the idea was to blow the PGA Tour out of the water. And there was a period in that tug of war where the rope was wobbling a bit, right? Where the PGA Tour looked like it might be struggling. But ultimately, in the end, they hung on to their end of the rope. And then they started to tug. The bottom line is, is this was not a 30-year play, right? You don't go and spend billions on buying the top players in the world on the basis that you're going to keep on spending billions on acquiring the top players in the world. You do it as a one-off to break the back of the whole thing to then create a situation where all of the next best players in the world just want to be on the tour anyway, want to be on your tour anyway, because effectively you've broken the opposition.

40:14And that was clearly the aim, right? And it's hard to say it any other way. Go on, just do it. Well, it's failed. And, you know, I sort of had this discussion when we were on holiday with my wife. And she said, well, you know, I just can't criticize them for their vision. For me, the ambition was misplaced. Yeah. Right? Because they were basically doing something which was, in my view, ego-based rather than reality-based. They didn't need to do what they were doing to have a massive impact on the world of golf. I just want to sort of frame a little bit about what I mean by failure and about audience, because ultimately professional sport is about audience.

40:56And you're transferring money, which the audience spends, to the participants. That's what professional sport is. It's a circus, effectively. So clearly live attendance in golf is much less relevant than it is in most sports, because you can only fit so many people on the golf course. You've got a lot of competitors, so it's not just two teams, and you've got them there for four days. But really the TV audiences is the critical thing drives the corporate sponsorship drives the rights payments Drives all sorts of things comes basically from the amount of TV eyeballs that you can get on your golf event So if you look at it Live last year And this is after they got their deal with Fox TV So on a more prominent channel and all this type of stuff the live events that were held in the US you're looking at a average final round audience of about 400 ,000 people, right?

41:47And for the non-US events, it's 70 ,000, 80 ,000. Now, if you compare that to the PGA Tour, the average final round viewership on the PGA Tour is about 3.5 million, right? So even if you look at the best live events, the PGA Tour has 10 times as many eyeballs, right? Go to the European Tour, it's a little bit harder to do because it's based in, or it's a little bit harder to gauge because it's based in lots of different markets, right? It's not straightforward to measure. But I just looked at one, which was the Irish Open last year. They had 400 ,000 final round viewers in Ireland, and then a million plus on top of that internationally, right?

42:25So in the European tour, now known as the DP World Tour, you've got around about three to four times the audience that you do on the Live Tour. So effectively, for that investment, and we know what that investment is, because there's actually a company which has filings which shows that the total investment of the Saudi Sovereign Investment Fund in Liv is now over$5 billion, right? For that, they have a massively loss-making tour with one of their core signings, who they paid a vast amount to, now leaving. And let's see whether that precipitates others leaving, because there is talk about Bryson DeChambeau leaving as well, which would be an absolute hammer blow, because he's the one signing who's really worked.

43:08It's your biggest fear probably right now. Right. The biggest fear now is that once one goes, the whole house of cards starts coming down. But also in the meantime, the US PGA Tour, having perhaps been a bit complacent and laying themselves open to some sort of competition, they've then gone and played a blinder. And that's the rabbit hole which I've dived down, is really trying to work out what the US PGA Tour did in order to fight this threat and it looks like win this battle overall. So I just want to jump in here because I think what we're about to say is that it wasn't wrong for Saudi to look at golf and see opportunity.

43:44Absolutely. What was wrong? was to take a vanity play from it rather than a really sensible business one and what we're about to go through is recognizing what i would call is a historic and let's say a monopolized arrogance of a traditional sporting organization something like the pga tour and this thought process that we do see in sport a lot which is we're almost immovable why change to getting a kick up the ass and suddenly then kicking into gear and making the decisions that have now put him in almost an insurmountable position they're actually in a much better position now than they were pre-lived completely which is a result of a whole bunch of smart things that they did but under pressure but having made as you say having left their left flank open that the interesting from battlefield perspective is that they left a chink in their armor and if live had exploited that chink I think Liv would have won.

44:42So go on Charlie, what is that chink? The chink was the European tour. So the US PGA tour had a compester, a little brother, the European tour. The European tour, which had been a genuine compester, not perhaps on an exactly level playing field, but in the 90s when the Europeans had a lot of the most prominent players and a lot of those players still played the majority of their golf on the European tour as opposed to on the American tour. during the last 20 years the US PGA Tour's revenues have grown to the extent where the prize money they offer meant that the top European players really had to place themselves in America whether they liked it or not so the European Tour was losing its star appeal but still had the structure and the history and the legacy assets of a great tour right so it still had the PGA at Wentworth you know massive event one of the biggest events in the world it still had the European Masters still had the Spanish Open these historic events and once say then teamed up even with you know the the african and australasian tours then you've also got historic events and all of these different parts of the world got legacy you've got on those trophies you've got balesteros you've got faldo you've got all these famous names etc so you've got credibility and you've got tv deals and you've also got a sort of structure in place right um now at that time um the pga tours total prize money was about 350 million bucks and the european tour was around about 100 million a year, right?

46:11So the USPGA had motored away to such a degree that someone like McElroy really had to be in America, come back to play in Europe when he could. And I think he's always been pretty assiduous at doing that, actually. It's one of the things I really hold him in high regard for is that he does look after where he comes from. So he always tried to come back and play, but really had to be in America most of the time. If Liv, at that point, had teamed up with the struggling European tour and said, right, we are going to boost your prize money funds to such a level that you are now going to compete on a level playing field with the PGA Tour, which in turn is going to mean the top European players stay to play in Europe.

46:48Because of course they want to stay at home, right? They don't have to sort of travel most of the year. They would much rather stay at home. So we're going to boost your prize money from 100 million bucks a year to 300 million a year. So we're now competing with the US PGA Tour on a level playing field. So over the last five years, that prize money boost would have cost them a billion. And we're talking about an investment alongside this as well, right? Well, it is an investment. And I'll tell you why we know it's an investment is that there is a commercial rights vehicle, which the European Tour has.

47:14It's called European Tour Productions, right, which is effectively the commercial bit. The Tour itself is effectively kind of like player owned, but the commercial bit sits over here. Now, what the Saudis could have done is said to the European Tour, right, we are going to invest huge amounts in the Tour in return of an equity stake in European Tour Productions, which effectively gives us co-ownership of the meaty asset bit of the tour. You guys carry on governing it. You do the rules. You sort out how you sort out the qualifying school and all that type of stuff. But we want to have a long-term stake in what we believe is going to be the greatest tour in World Gulf.

47:50We're going to help you make it there. Would the European tour have taken that? Well, the thing is, we know that they would have done. Why? Because they have done since. because what happened is that once the PGA Tour woke up and understood where it was weak, it went and did exactly that deal with the European Tour, but for much less money, right? So over the last three years, this is what basically the US PGA Tour did. First of all, it agreed some sort of negotiating thing with the Live Tour, which basically meant that, okay, let's talk about things. They bought themselves some time, right? That was two years ago, two or three years ago, 2023.

48:26about three years ago. Let's have a framework where we can discuss all existing together. Let's have some meetings. I think the commissioner who'd been in the driving scene until then, Jay Monaghan, was then stepping down, which then provided a bit more of a clean sheet of paper, et cetera, et cetera. So a new guy comes in. Yeah, let's all be friends, et cetera. Meanwhile, the PGA Tour got to work and they did two things. First of all, they have basically bought up almost half of the European Tour by giving the European Tour an extra 25 million bucks a year. That's how cheap it will. They've basically, over three years, given them 50, 60, 70 million to top up their prize money and make sure that they are okay.

49:03And in return, they've got more than 40 % of the rights in European tour productions, right? The second thing they did is that they did a deal with something called the Strategic Sports Group, which is a group of investors, effectively, for 1.5 billion equity program, which enabled the PGA Tour players who stayed involved to then get equity effectively in the entire thing, right? So they then tied in the players here, tied in the European Tour there, and now the US PGA Tour is, in my mind, strategically impregnable. So if we're looking at this then back into Project 2030, we're talking about something now where you'd look at it and appreciating at the beginning all investments here won't succeed.

49:46Some of them don't even need to make money because the knock-on effect they will have in broader parts of Saudi culture. What we're really pulling apart here is one that doesn't seem to add any real value to the outlay that it requires. A 5 billion spend so far, it will most likely increase significantly because I would imagine there's going to be some form of reaction where they try and maintain their position. And this is the type of thing we're looking at that project as a sport as part of that project and saying, cut that yeah and i think that's the thing isn't it which is you know um as kenny rogers said you got to know when to hold them you got to know when to fold them of course in this case you know saudi is still a very very wealthy country losing five billion on live you know i wouldn't say it doesn't touch the sides because with oil at the current price there are some stresses and strains on the Saudi current business model.

50:43But I guess the question is, is there an extra two or three billion that gets put in to try and save the moment when you have to just hold your hands up and say it hasn't worked? Or do you say, actually, various stuff we are doing has worked. This one has not worked. And we actually need now just to sort of fold our tent and accept that. It's your Warren Buffett thing of do you try and fix the leaking boat or do you get onto the new boat, right? And this, now you could very easily pump a huge amount of money into trying to rescue or create a new value for Liv. But if we're being really, really direct, this just does not look like it will work.

51:21And the only thing that really matters when you're trying to do this with sport, and it's something we've spoken about separately a lot, is if you don't own those key assets, those key legacy moments in sport, you are not going to win this race. If they don't have the Masters as part of it, if they don't have, and this is the other thing, if they don't have the Ryder Cup as part of it as well, which they would have got for any investment in the European Tour. They would have had direct access into that. The majors is fanciful, maybe, you know, looking at how you can get that. But the majors sit outside the US PGA Tour as well.

51:51They do, exactly. So that's why, you know, a bit far-reaching. But if there wasn't something that incorporates those key moments, which makes me as a fan tune into golf, I will watch the odd PGA Tour event on the later days. I will do the same for the European Tour. but the reality of my engagement is those key moments throughout the year. If you're not involved in that, if you don't have a part of it, it doesn't matter how much money you throw at it, it actually doesn't matter who you bring onto your tour. I'm backing the legacy. See, this is the point, and this is what combines Live Golf with what happened in the Saudi Pro League, right, is that there was an investment thesis that said, effectively, the players are more important than the events or the venues or whatever it might be.

52:32and what has been proven I'm afraid across both the Saudi Pro League and live is that whoever the players happen to be at a particular moment in time is not actually the most important thing I said earlier on if you go back five or six years and say well where was Scotty Scheffler then kind of nowhere five six years ago he is now the you know the top player in the world and in America an absolute you know media icon I've just been in America for three weeks you see pictures of Scottie Scheffler are absolutely everywhere, right? So I think that the big bet, which is that John Ram and Neymar were going to effectively be more important than a major European league derby fixture, right?

53:12So like Dortmund versus Bayern Munich, that actually that's not going to matter because if you actually have, you know, Ronaldo and a few other 35-year-old players who everyone's heard of, everyone's going to want to watch Ronaldo. they're not going to want to watch Dortmund Munich around the world what has been proven to the case No, they do want to watch Dortmund Munich They don't care about watching Ronaldo in a league in matches play for clubs. They've never heard of and on the golf side They we because in this case I am a fan like you and I'm a viewer I'm a spectator and I came to have no big hex against live because I Also saw the US PGA tour is a bit arrogant a bit snooty I was a bit sad about what's happened to the European tour which is the tour I grew up watching etc so I didn't hold no particular brief in this battle for the USPGA tour against Liv I thought USPGA tour deserved to be disintermediated in some way but the bet that's gone wrong is that the way to do that is to buy John Ram as opposed to buying the Spanish Open I think the point as well here is that we're not suggesting that the players are wrong to have taken this jump I'm certainly not because the last thing I like is to sit and say well you know I wouldn't have taken that Like you said, 400 million quid or 300 million quid.

54:21It is worth noting, by the way, that it has ended up in them not being very good golfers. Completely. Right. And I think that's a really interesting part. And if you actually look at why Brooks Koepka is leaving, history will eventually relate. I think it's because he's currently got a ranking in the 200s, right? And for somebody who is an elite sportsman, who is already generationally wealthy, to be in a situation where when you teared up in the majors, you don't feel able to compete with McElroy and Scheffler because you're not competing week in, week out against the very best. And you're competing in a system with no cuts.

54:56So it's a non-jeopardy situation where it's basically almost like exhibition golf on a constant basis. What's now been proven over the last three to four years is that those players who only play on live tend to lose their competitiveness. DeChambeau is probably the one player who really plays on live who has maintained a level of competitiveness. Tyrell Hatton has. Tyrell Hatton is actually, I think, the highest ranked player on Live. I think he's ranked number 20 in the world right now. It's interesting why. So he has, I admire Tyrell Hatton for this. What he's done is he's maintained his membership of the European Tour.

55:31The European Tour fines its members when they then go and play for Live in a week when there is a Live event and a European Tour event. And these fines, until recently, were being paid by Live, but now are paid by the golfers. So Hatton is effectively paying for the right to remain competitive because he is still playing seven or eight events a year on the European Tour. He's also then playing the majors, right? So he is playing 12 events a year, let's say, when he's playing against really, really good players in a cut situation where you have to really earn the right to play, etc. It's quite a lot of parking tickets he's accruing as well, isn't it?

56:08It's no small number. No, we're talking about a million a year, I think, something like that, per player. And I know that he's earned 60 by going to live. But nonetheless, a lot of people would prefer to hang on to the 60s. So clearly Hatton's thinking, I don't want this to damage my competitiveness. But he was already a European Tour member who maintained his membership. So it's kind of easier for him to do that. I'm not sure it's quite so straightforward for the guys who came for the US PGA Tour to then effectively make themselves members of the European Tour to then perform this. So the guys who are Americans like Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, who at the time when they were recruited were absolutely in the top rank of golfers in the world, have basically slipped down, not just the world rankings, because there are reasons for that, which is that the live golf events don't get you world ranking points.

56:58But they've just slipped, you know, just look at their performances in the majors. They are not as competitive as they used to be. And that's just a really interesting comment on the final thing I want to say about this is that the original conception of live is what I call producer-led, not consumer-led. So instead of starting off thinking, you know, what would make for a really compelling sport, right? So what would a spectator want to see? Well, a spectator wants to see more jeopardy, right? A spectator would probably like to see a cut every single day, so that every day, even in the early stages of a tournament, you're watching a guy with a putt, a 10-foot putt that really, really matters.

57:33for the producer i.e the golfer themselves they would rather have less jeopardy they'd rather be guaranteed money for turning up as you and i would it's not an unnatural thing so having 54 whole tournaments instead of 72 whole tournaments having fewer events in total all of these things were mostly led by the perception this is going to be better for the golfers and easier for us to attract the golfers onto the live tour if we make their lives better but they weren't really done from the perspective of yeah but what what's actually going to make this compelling sport what's going to make this compelling to the international viewers.

58:04And I think that that's a large chunk of the problem, Charlie. Having your financial achievement linked to your success during an event is crucial to you playing your absolute best. If we're really saying, if we're really talking about that 1 % extra of motivation, if it's the difference between you getting paid and you not getting paid, it's going to push you that little bit further. So while getting paid to turn up has been an important topic in golf for a long time, what it also does, links back to your comment earlier about seven, eight, nine year contracts. Yeah. Right. If that security is there, does it take away a tiny part of that competitiveness?

58:40And at the top end of elite sport, tiny margins make a huge difference. I just want to sort of finish on a quote here from the golf industry media recently about Liv. Reports suggest that former PGA Tour player Harold Varna III is expected to join Smash GC, Koepka's old franchise, which is now led by Taylor Gooch, while Laurie Cantor is replacing Henrik Stenson. I'm quite a keen golf fan, and I have absolutely no idea who Harold Barner III is. I do kind of know who Taylor Gooch is for being one of the not-quite-top players, and Laurie Cantor, you know, no, I don't. Henrik Stenson? Henrik Stenson, of course.

59:22Briggs Koepka. Yeah, right. I mean, Henrik Stenson is actually unable to play because his performance has relegated it. That's right. Different story as a team owner that's presented them with some interesting challenges. To finish off the Saudi piece and to offer a positive to the back of it, I do think the events focus, bringing things like the boxing to Saudi, bringing things like the World Cup is going to do a huge amount for them. And I think that's the strategy that makes the most sense. If we're really looking at sport as both foreign policy and domestic reform, which it has the power to be.

59:59It's one of the very few things that can change the perception of you externally and really elevate what you can do internally to your population. If you can leverage that properly and bring the world's most coveted events to your shores, that benefits you far more than investing however many billion in something that has no direct correlation to the performance of your country across multiple different areas. and so hosting those world title fights hosting that football world cup it's in the similar model to what a lot of countries have always done and how they've used these tournaments to be valuable whether they actually work as long-term value or not when you spend nine billion to to bring the olympics to your city you know you'd have to ask paris or london about that and that's always up for debate but i think that is the better strategy for them to incorporate sport into a vision 2030 year project 2030 and so to me it's what you almost have you have the three tiers you have the event side i would go all after the saudi pro league well it has its issues and significant numbers attached to it i think as i said it's a 2030 year play this it's a it's a part of the 2030 incorporation but the reality of its success is not going to be based on its ability to become a top five league and that's where they've got it wrong just to conclude my thoughts on this you're absolutely right by the way the boxing has been a PR triumph and will doubtless have promoted not just tourism for people visiting for the event itself and I have I know a lot of people who went to these events but also in terms of being a platform for promoting tourism to the country and the openness of the country that's been hugely successful I believe I mean as you say beauty is in the eye of the beholder probably in 10-15 years you'll be able to work out whether it has been really successful, but my suspicion is it has been successful.

1:01:49And there's no doubt at all in my mind that attracting the buying, paying the money that needs to be paid to get the World Cup is similarly going to be transformational for the country. And also enable the leadership of Saudi to drive all the internal changes that they want to drive, saying, by the way, in 2034, we've got the whole world coming here. We need to get a whole lot of stuff in order before then, both in societal terms, structural terms, etc. So those, I think, are absolutely, you know, copper-bottomed, smart things to have done. Cynics call them sports washing. I call it sensible deployment of capital to improve the overall state of the country, right?

1:02:32Both reputationally outside, but also, as you say, societally inside. I think with Liv and the SPL, these were big bold plays and far be it from me to say that everyone should be thinking small and conservatively and not trying to do big things so i don't want that to be the take out from this in both cases i think they could have been successful and the question is is who is able to speak that truth to power in the early stages of these projects and actually design something which is achievable or is it simply that it comes from the top where it says unless this is going to be the best in the world i'm not interested finally well firstly charlie you and i um made some quite incredible i would say prediction when we were talking in our in our pilot about the challenges a two-day test presents uh a test match cricket what would happen if the mcg had a two-day test match uh having just had the one in perth and we were like no well this you know this wouldn't happen we're not gonna suddenly have a series of two-day tests well lo and behold we got a two-day test.

1:03:37At least it was in England's favour. But the notorious 100 ,000-seater stadium, the thing that Cricket Australia relies heavily on, ended in two days. Have you done the math on it? I've done some of them, and it's only been early in the numbers coming out. So we must take them with a slight pinch of salt. But I think we came to the totals for Perth. The losses generally were around 4 to 5 million Aussie. Yeah. The projected numbers for this go up around 25 plus million Aussie. and the numbers are particularly frightening i think when you when you just look at the the gate receipts i could get up to 12 just on that very easily and that was because each ticket was about a hundred dollars aussie dollars let's say um you know they reckon across hospitality food and beverage merchandise etc each fan on those days generally spent around 40 to 50 dollars on average which i thought was interesting quite a high spend but doesn't surprise me i was you know having a look at that going fair enough okay so that's another four or five million so you're at 17 to 18 that's what even then bringing in the make goods the broadcasts and and the longer term impacts of it on on test match cricket in australia it's 10 to 15 percent of cricket australia's annual revenue is the mcg test yeah right and that and that suddenly you're looking at that going well okay when we go back to the thing of where you lost 11 million last year you're banking on this year being the year to make that up this is your opportunity to really drive some great financial returns and then you have two situations like this it's a problem it's a problem i mean that you know and who knows perhaps um perhaps the uh cricket australia should be having a quiet chat with um the powers that be the england cricket ball and suggesting that they might help pay part of severance from for mccullum to go so we get so we get a new head coach who comes in and actually aims at having four to five day tests rather than two day tests i mean let's i think this is the this is the real reason why we wanted to to bring this in at the end uh not least because obviously the humiliation was compounded last night of the 4-1 defeat.

1:05:27But because once again this morning, there's been another story that has come out. Not about what's happened on the pitch, but about what seems like ill discipline off it. Harry Brook has had an altercation with a bouncer pre-tour in New Zealand while England were on their white ball tour. Directly before captaining the team. So we've had Noosa. We then have this. How much can we look at what is happening off the pitch here? all these stories that are coming out now as a smokescreen for the performance on the pitch or actually as a hugely impactful part and a reason as to why we have ended up performing so far below where the fans and I would imagine pretty much everyone who had been following England over the last few years expected so I hold reasonably strong views on alcohol and elite sport and it's I'm just going to sort of get my defense in first.

1:06:22Obviously, it's highly hypocritical as somebody who does like a pint of beer and a glass of wine. Right. So it's not for me to say, really, that people in general should or shouldn't drink alcohol because I would, you know, going back to my Fleet Street days. Charlie, you're not in that England team running in it. Perhaps that's the problem, Charlie. No, anyway, so putting that to one side and just sort of forestalling those of my friends who would be watching this going, oh, come off it, mate. You love a drink like the next guy. That is true. However, I've now been involved in elite sport long enough to understand what successful elite sport looks like in general.

1:06:58And there are always exceptions that prove the rule. But the key thing with exceptions is that they have to win. Right? So if you're going to be a hard-drinking, you know, larger-than-life cricketer, like Ian Botham, you need to win. You need to perform. right you need to be able to turn around to those people who say as they used to when both of them was on tour i mean i remember when i was young the tabloids were full of his exploits right but he was so good that he could turn around and say well you know frankly what are you going to do about it like david garr was the same right what are you going to do about it i'm one of the best players in the world this is this is how i do it this is my way of doing it right so when you win, you earn the right to say to people who are knockers of you, this is how I perform as an elite sports person.

1:07:52And there are the odd exceptions in elite sport who, for whatever reason, can or do perform at a super, super, super level, despite having lifestyles which would not obviously be those of an elite sports person. And probably that's happened more in cricket than it has done in some other sports, right? Let's just accept that out there. However, this is not fundamentally the way, right? Now, whether it be, if I think about the sports that I've worked in, right, they require formidable discipline. And I want to stick away from football where alcohol use has almost disappeared from elite football now, right?

1:08:27So even if I'm looking after a championship club, not even a Premier League club, brought even my players, the team in Belgium, will drink very, very rarely, very, very rarely. And then it'll be one bottle of beer maybe after a win, right? But that'll be it, right? Because they know that every little thing that they put into their body will affect how they train the next time they train, one day after or two days after. That will then affect their ability to get selected for the next match. That'll affect everything, right? They know that the quality of sleep is crucial. And one of the things that alcohol really affects badly is people's sleep.

1:09:02Now, in a team sport where you're also responsible for your teammates and their performance levels as well, you have a duty and a responsibility to keep yourself in great shape. And it's only for a short period of your life. And you're getting paid really, really well to do it. And for 10 years, you are basically meant to be in the best shape you can possibly be to achieve what you're trying to achieve. Now, let's just look at the physical output required in playing cricket in Australia. Famous, they said it's a hard place with hard pitches, hard balls and hard people. When you go to Australia, you need to understand that you are going to be physically tested.

1:09:39It's going to be really hot. So your ability to keep focused and keep concentrating will be a function of your physical levels, right? It's going to be debilitating in terms you want to be there for a long period of time, right? So you're not going to be able to just go back home, have a nice sleep in your own bed, etc. So every single thing you do is going to have an impact in terms of your ability to deliver your absolute best on the big stage. So we've been building up to this series for how long? Nearly four years. Right. They come in after the last ashes away failure. And the vision is by the time we come back here, we are going to be fighting fit.

1:10:13We're going to be ready to really serve it up. Now, leave aside all the preparation bits that all the former cricketers have got into massively and that type of stuff. Prima facie, I agree. I don't know enough about it. But I mean, basically, I agree with what both of them and Afton and Co say, which is you need to play some more warm-up matches, of course. Right. But putting that to one side, just as somebody who operates and manages professional sports organizations if I heard that players who I was responsible for under any circumstances were even going to nightclubs let alone having fights with bouncers outside of nightclubs let alone having videos of them taken outside bars where they don't even seem to understand where they are and all this type of stuff I would be ashamed as the leader of that organization I would be coming the next morning with a very clear idea about how I was going to get to grips with what seems to be that this culture and the thing that really worried me about all this is that after we lost the ashes so this is at the just after the third test right I think it was the Adelaide test Michael after Nasser Hussain did a an interview with Rob Key, the managing director of the England Cricket Board, a former England batsman himself, but mostly played county cricket for Kent, and by all accounts, a very affable, decent man, and clearly, by the standards of a lot of professional sports people, quite smart as well, etc.

1:11:38What I took away from that interview was, it was flabby. So we just lost the ashes, and what you were looking for is somebody who turned up, looking the part, dressed smartly. Atherton and Hussain were looking the part, they looked absolutely razor fit and subsequently there were pictures of Hussein going out running and all this type of stuff it actually looked like Hussein was in better shape not just in key but than most of our players and they were putting the types of questions they knew that the fans would want asked and the question the answers were didn't show the level of accountability that is required when you are the leader of a sports organization you have to take very seriously the fact that people out there are angry that people out there want to see that you understand how serious the failure is and want to see that you understand in order to repair that there are things that you have to do and there are things that you are going to have to commit to doing which are going to be uncomfortable.

1:12:30But the whole interview sounded, on Rob Key's side, comfortable. Everyone was basically a pretty good person. Everyone had basically done a pretty good job. Yeah, sure, that might be the odd thing that we might need to have a look at. But that was basically the tenor of it. And as the interview went on, Hussain was getting increasingly agitated. It was really interesting to watch. and because he's an elite sports person, that will be his antenna going saying, this doesn't feel like accountability. This doesn't feel like accountability. Now, if you've got that happening at the top of an organization, inevitably that culture is going to feed down through the rest of the organization, right?

1:13:04So if the leader of the organization is not really on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, driving standards, demanding things of himself and of his players, and when things go wrong, stepping out and saying, I made that decision, got it wrong, I need to have a serious look at my own position, I'll be having, you know, except whatever it might be, then effectively, how can you then expect people further down the organisation to be accountable? The whole picture to me looks ugly. It looks like it started from a good place, which is players need to enjoy playing for England and it's developed into something which now has lost connection with the essential elements of elite sport.

1:13:40I think the key point is that there was an acceptance of a disregard for external accountability because we saw something different was happening. It was quite an exciting transformation. And continually, Ben Stokes, Brendan McClellan, anyone associated with it, was so steadfast in their beliefs that what they were doing was the right way forward. It was like, let us get on with it. And this tour was really meant to be the moment where everything came together. And without it, you know, keeping it, without emotion coming too much into it and trying to be, you know, very, very clear about it, I think I feel, and many fans feel, a bit cheated by this because we've been led to believe something that has so disappointingly, not just fallen by the wayside, but been smashed to pieces almost.

1:14:30And that trust, that faith that's been given to this group of players has now turned out to be a complete and utter disaster. There were some major red flashing lights for me. I remember it was a few months ago, maybe it was last summer, when Stokes said something like, well, you know, Alistair Cook, I wouldn't select him. He wouldn't make our team, etc. I thought, that's quite extraordinary. Alistair Cook is probably one of the top 20 batsmen of all time. To say that you wouldn't have one of England's greatest ever players in your team is a statement so bold that if you then don't back it up by winning, for me, you have to resign.

1:15:06You have been proven comprehensively wrong. And it was quite interesting in the final test, watching Bethel play, who's a player who has not been in that setup much. He's young. And for the thick end of 300 balls, he basically played like a test batsman would normally play, right? Which is he left the ball outside of stump. He defended good balls. He waited for bad balls. He was happy to push singles around. he was playing like Jeff Boycott would say a test batsman should play and that was probably the best innings of the entire series by an England player so you look at that as a sort of how you'd say a control study right so you've got a player like Olly Pope who's been in and around the basketball setup for four years and then you've got a player like Bethel who was not right so what you'd want to see to really prove their theory right right the basball theory right is the pope comes into this series as the guy who then bashes the ball to all parts of the ground and then they give the interview at the end of the series when we've won the series 3-1 and they go do you know what all of you naysayers out there in the last few years this is what we've been doing this is what we've been working about so put that in your pipe and you know we're going to enjoy ourselves because we proved a lot of people wrong unfortunately for you to be able to have that right you've also got to see it the other way as well which is when it all goes horribly wrong you have to hold your hands up and say we got that horribly wrong we're resigning yeah and i just don't feel that at the moment there's that accountability and that is something which is just is that so the drinking thing in a way has to be seen as part of the whole piece rather than simply a one-off they've had it they've had a few drinks but it really is one word isn't it it's that it's accountability yeah they're all in charge if you're looking at mccullum you know you're looking at kind of an ideology if you're looking at stokes you're looking at an on field and you're looking at key you know it's it's construction and selection philosophy but they all own culture yeah they all they're all responsible in their own different way and therefore when you have these situations now the only thing that we really ask for again after a disaster like that is that you front up yeah and that you own it yeah and i and just as i don't feel like they owned a wicket that they gave away i don't feel like there's been any ownership of this packaged disaster and on that note and on that note wow I mean there's these are fun I hope I better not have a drink before coming in doing these things it was my dream to do one of these in a pub one day so maybe we have high performance in the pub Charlie as always a lot of fun and plenty more to come next week thanks a lot Thank you so much for joining us for our first episode of this weekly run.

1:18:01This show is really all about you. So we want to know your feedback, your thoughts, your requests, all with the aim of bringing you the best dissection of the behind the scenes news and hopefully some new perspectives. Please comment below whether you're listening or watching on YouTube and we'll see you next week.