THE BREAKDOWN: Eileen Gu & The Politics of Sport, Pakistan’s Hundred Challenge & Referees vs VAR (E08)

28:43Jack Charlton became manager of the Ireland, Republic of Ireland football team. And really, the Republic of Ireland football team had not had much of a history of success. But around that time, the rules were changed to say that if you had a grandparent who came from a specific country, you could choose to play for that country. Now, I know a bit about this story because of the football club that I grew up supporting, Oxford United. At the time, they had an attacking right back called Dave Langan, who was, is actually still Irish. Irish accent, grew up in Ireland, etc. Played for Ireland, played top flight football in England, but played for Ireland.

29:16and when Jack Charlton told his Irish team, go back into your dressing rooms and ask if any of them have got an Irish granny, he came back into the Oxford United dressing room and asked if anyone had an Irish granny and two young players called John Aldridge and Ray Houghton put their hands up and the rest was history. These are two players who would have gone on definitely to play for England and Scotland respectively, but they were swiped to play for Ireland early on at a moment when they thought, well, maybe I won't play international football for England or whatever it might be. So this has happened and continues to happen on a very regular basis for all sorts of different reasons.

29:47I mean, we're going to talk about Naomi Osaka. I mean, she is the prime example that you can set alongside this. But Japan, to put a point, is far more favorable to America. Let's just be quite clear. Naomi Osaka, the tennis player who could play for America and could play for Japan, chooses to play for Japan and has been commercially successful beyond the bounds of what her tennis ranking would suggest. as a result of that. Even in the last year, when she was not successful from a tennis perspective, I think she was about 20th in the world last year, something like that. She was the eighth highest paid athlete, female athlete on earth.

30:27Not, you know, not far behind Eileen Gu. And when she was winning. And when she was winning, she was the highest. Pretty much the top. She earned$57 million in 2021. Yeah. $57 million. Now, massively backed by her ability to represent. I think the highest paid this year, or the highest earning this year was Coco Goff, the tennis player on about 35 million. So that gives you an idea of just, if Naomi Osaka is winning big tennis tournaments, her level of earning potential is double that of the current world number one, Irina Sabalenka. Exactly. And you look at the brands. You know, she's got a perfect balance between the two, Osaka.

31:06She's had Nike, Nissan, Yonex, Louis Vuitton, Mastercard, Panasonic. Japan, for them, third largest economy in the world. Their corporate industry to be able to leverage off her is a fantastic opportunity. Again, a relative paucity of genuinely world-class female Japanese athletes, if I'm being honest. She stands out a mile. And she has been, again, successful enough to carry that flag for them. Hideki Matsuyama in golf does the same for Japan. You have the individual athletes when you get them in these countries where they do shine. yeah look I mean it's like Sonny from Korea has his own TV channel and at Tottenham when he was there had his own revenue stream yeah you'd have you know ticketing media merch etc song so that's how big these these athletes can become if they come from a geography can I ask you can I ask you about this because this was something I was thinking about when when we were looking at this and everyone kept mentioning controversy and damage to reputation you know at what point do brands get put off by things?

32:10And as I was thinking, I was like, well, do they care? There's obviously one side of it, which is all press is good press to some extent. So she's in everyone's mind where she may not have been if there wasn't this kind of upset. But then there's also the side of, I was looking at where the critique was coming from. I don't think it harms her because I don't think the place where the critique is coming from is a major concern. That's not why she's being hard. She's being hard by these brands for sales into China, not for sales into the US. She was not actually, until JD Vance did this, She was actually not that well-known in the US.

32:38Despite being very successful at the last games. Very successful at an obscure sport. I mean, this is a very obscure sport. This is a, to call it a minority sport, there's a good reason why the prize money for the best athletes in the world in this sport was 100 ,000 bucks last year. It's because no one watches it, right? It is an obscure sport, which not so long ago was a pastime, not a sport. So I think, look, I don't want to be a hypocrite about the idea of people transferring nationalities. We need to accept, if you look at the England cricket team, to take one example, Jofra Archer and Jacob Bethel are West Indian, born and bred.

33:12And they have deliberately chosen to represent England. Why? Well, you've got to assume it's for commercial reasons, right? Because when you are a cricketer in England and you're on central contracts and you get the endorsements and all these things, then you can flourish in that way. And we, as English people go, great, you know, Jofra, Jacob, brilliant, fantastic. We love to have these guys playing for us and that's been a long history of people with west indian background who have played cricket for england and we don't really question it too much so this is not actually about my my irritation just to conclude on this topic is not about somebody doing the best for themselves or even somebody deciding for reasons best known to themselves to represent this country rather than that country i'm fine with all that people need to do within the rules what they need to do please don't try and persuade us it's a moral crusade to go and deliberately represent a tyrannical autocracy.

34:04Please, please, really. It's a hard one to argue against. I didn't know your position coming into it, but I think you put a very strong case across. And I think the fact that it can relate to a lot of other situations in sport where this has happened. Interesting, it looks like China have bent the rules for her because under normal circumstances, China does not allow dual nationality. So in theory, her representing China means she needs a Chinese passport, right? In theory, that means that she should then have to give up her US passport. but all indications are and she has been put on the spot on this and has refused to comment all indications are she's kept her US passport so it looks like a deal's been done behind the scenes where China has allowed her to maintain her US citizenship so just be honest just be honest just be clear be honest or or as the late Queen used to say just don't say anything at all say anything at all Kirsty Coventry well indeed a different type of doing it Kirsty it feeds into topic two because we've got a couple of statements where I think where you're looking at people maybe we could say that we're about to be taken for mugs by the ECB in the 100 I get it I'm seeing the connection being taken for mugs but I don't believe that guys we're back on cricket do you know what it's the gift that keeps on giving I promise you when we started doing this podcast if somebody had said to me that in four of the first six episodes we're going to discuss the International Cricket Council, the BCCI, international cricket politics, and this type of stuff, I would have gently disagreed with that prognosis.

35:39I'm very, very surprised. But it just keeps on coming. And it's all coming from the same place, effectively. Charlie, over to you. I got so many messages when this came out last week. There was a BBC notification that popped up on my phone and it said, Indian-owned 100 teams may not select Pakistani-born players. How many Indian-owned 100 teams are there, Charlie? There are four. There are four. So now four of the eight teams in the 100. Can you name them or are you going to need to take a custody? Mumbai, London, Manchester Super Giants, Sunrisers, Leeds, and the Southern Brave. Very impressed.

36:15And I bet your staff are relieved. They are. But I also do my own research. So I would only fire myself. Now, look, I want to be, let's be open here. we're not again we're not just coming after Indian cricket I'm actually not coming after Indian cricket really at all here because we had these conversations I'm coming after the ECB here again is that really true yeah it is because but you're coming okay I'll tell you what let's just lay out the story let's have the argument let's have the story first the story is that those four teams that I've just mentioned have been rumoured and it is still rumoured a confidential memo sent by a senior ECB official to players agents suggested that interest in Pakistani players at the 100 auction on March the 12th will be limited to non-IPL owned sites.

37:04So what we're really saying here is half of the 100 teams will not bid in the auction for 60 plus Pakistani registered players in that auction based on the political situation that has existed between India and Pakistan now for many years. so we are looking at selective representation based on things beyond sport is it is it worth going back and explaining how how we got here so the hundred which for those listeners who are not as into cricket as as others the hundred is a relatively new format which is created in this country which takes the previous shortest form format which is 2020 which is 20 overs and it says no we're going to cut it down even further than that and we're going to have 100 balls per side yep okay new format even shorter new format and and instead of having all of the english counties playing in it um of which there are uh 18 was it um i think yeah i'm gonna have to i'll have to plead a curse on that one um i'll come back on exactly how many english i think there at 18.

38:17Anyhow, the bottom line is, is that really the seven biggest counties plus the MCC, which owns Lords, were effectively awarded franchises in this new competition. And they were then allowed to sell half, their half of these franchises, because the other half being owned by the England Cricket Board, they were allowed to sell their half to in an auction to whoever might want to buy them like what happened in football clubs and whatever it might be but they were all sold at the same time that was the interesting part about it and this happened last summer yeah this and i had friends of mine who were involved in the orchard process and it was quite something so the theory being that instead of selling them on day one you create some value around the product prove that value over a few seasons and then once you think it's got a number that can actually increase the amount you'd be able to have invested in it you sell it so i think this was the third it's the fourth this is gonna be the fourth season this is gonna be the fourth season three seasons where it's been basically owned by the ecb and the counties this is the first year we've got external investment that's right so the eight franchises between them were valued at a billion pounds so the sales of the 50 stakes realized 500 million pounds um and those monies were split between the country, the clubs, the counties who are host teams received 18 million for their 51 % and the 11 who were non-hosts.

39:48So the eight host teams include the MCCs, that's seven counties, that's correct, there's 18 in total. The 11 non-hosts received 24 million each. Now, it's difficult to overemphasize how important this money is for the non-host teams. These are the teams in English County cricket, whose stadiums, their grounds, are not big enough to host test cricket. And they have been really suffering financially in the last few years. In fact, recently Sussex pretty much went bust and had to be put into special measures by the ECB. But that's happened to a number of different counties in the last few years. The ones who don't host test matches or international cricket are really, really struggling.

40:26So this 24 million is absolute manner from heaven for those counties i mean i'm saying that the 18 millions the host teams is pretty good as well by the way but the the 24 million for the 11 non-hosts is absolutely critical because that is going to be the lifeline that keeps these counties alive um in business terms and also therefore enables them to carry on providing the academies which provide the performance pathway for english players so the whole concept was conceived and brought off brilliantly. It has brought 500 million of external capital into English county cricket, which means the ECB can then make sure that English county cricket becomes more sustainable and doesn't need constant cash bailouts from the ECB, which then means the ECB has less money to spend on promoting the game more generally.

41:15So the whole concept is brilliant and has, from a sports business perspective, been executed phenomenally. We always call organizations out when they don't get stuff right. This one has been absolutely nailed. However, in that process, has a deal been done with the devil? Has someone sold their soul here? And the soul being the soul of not just English cricket, but English society. Has something quietly, tacitly, with a little tap on the side of the nose been sold, a deal been done, which has enabled a lot of this investment, because as we said, four of the buying entities of the eight franchise teams are Indian.

42:02Has there been a deal done with the devil here? Completely expected, completely expected, right? You look at who the most likely buyers of these organizations were going to be. It was a fair assumption to say that based on the expansion of IPL teams, which we have seen in previous T20 tournaments, and what I mean by that is IPL teams buying other teams in South Africa, in the West Indies, in the UAE, to build part of a portfolio, so the Mumbai Indians group of teams, when the 100 teams came available, that these organizations would look to acquire those assets and make them part of a group. In fact, all six teams in South Africa's T20 competition are owned by IPL ownership groups.

42:43And as we've mentioned before, share a sponsorship, often share players. They are intrinsically linked. now because of the market here and the quality of cricket here we were always looking at a situation these owners come in and say yeah we'll pay that money and and we'll back this this tournament now but is this charlie just before we go there it is big money i mean let's let's be absolutely clear about this it's huge i've just said i've just said that the team valuations of the eight teams was one billion and i think that the amount that was paid for um london spirit for But for London Spirit, which is now called Mumbai Indians London?

43:19No, no. So London Spirit is still London Spirit out of Lords. It's called MI London. That's the Oval. So that used to be Oval Invincibles. So that's Surrey's team. That's Surrey's one. Okay. London Spirit is Middlesex. And the reason for the London Spirit valuation is near on$300 million. You're absolutely right. And I completely understand this. People got quite upset about this, going, how can that be worth that when it turns over a tiny amount in comparison? and you are buying a piece of sporting access and heritage here that is incomparable. By buying 49 % of these franchises, do Indian ownership groups, which as we've seen are effectively capable of being ordered around, not just by the BCCI, but by the Indian government, are they then able to circumvent the rules and regulations, not just of the ECB and its competition, but also arguably the law of this land?

44:11Are they able to? We'll find out. will they try i think we're getting a good indication of this so let's be very clear when we're saying that they won't bid in the auction for pakistani players you said like that's politically motivated selection which is not something that would be accepted over here now in response to that and charlie back to my point about why i feel a bit gaslit if we're using that term yeah here when the ecb come out and say you know they they will not accept this and they'll open the door to disciplinary measures you go okay fine that that makes sense you then look at it and you go right well okay it's one thing to warn someone it's a different thing to prove discriminatory intent in an auction process that's a very hard thing to do you can't there's a very legitimate reason for the owners to turn around and go well we actually just don't like him as a player it has nothing to do with his nationality so you've got a challenge around that statement but the reason I have an issue is this kind of approach of, oh well we didn't know this was going to happen.

45:09You actually sent me a message yesterday that was Richard Gould who is the CEO of the ECB where he made a statement in 2025. It was last summer, it was just at the end of the auction process. And what we're really looking at here, Moe and Ali doubled down on this in an article. Well actually I think I'd like to come into Moe and Ali's quotes in a moment. Do you have that quote from Richard Gould, the head of the ECB? Because this was something that was clearly raised. It wasn't very prominently raised. Everyone was so excited about the auction process. But it was clearly raised back last July because it had to have been raised for Richard Gould to then come out with this quote.

45:47So he said, I expect players from all nations to be selected for all teams. We haven't had any need to have any discussions at this point. We have got very clear anti-discrimination policies within cricket in England. If those are not adhered to, our cricket regulator will take action. Now, my argument, and you can come back at me in this if you disagree. But when you bring those groups into a tournament like this, there is every likelihood that they will run these organizations as they have run their other organizations in cricket. A Pakistan player has not played in the IPL since 2008. In South Africa, in the UAE, in other leagues where they then have their teams, Pakistan players are not selected for those teams.

46:34Therefore, if suddenly the Mumbai Indians takes over the Oval Invincibles, are you telling me that you are genuinely surprised or not anticipating those owners to not select Pakistan-born players? It's a deliberate turning of the blind eye because the business necessity of getting those franchises away and knowing that four of, probably more than four, but many of the most likely bidders for these huge numbers that they were looking to achieve were going to be people from India, it would have made it much harder for them to get those franchises away. It was almost like let's kick the can down the road and let's hope that somehow we'll cross that bridge when we come to it or whatever it might be.

47:13So I said at the beginning my issue here isn't necessarily with Indian cricket. Here it's with the ECB. The reason I say that is because I find it hard for me to have an issue with Indian cricket for consistency. Whether we like it or not, this is consistent behaviour. And we've talked about the reasons why we've disagreed with some of this previously. Why I really don't like this from the ECB is because this was absolutely predictable that the situation would arise. And their ability to counteract that situation is very, very difficult. OK, so they refer to the cricket regulator. And I think it's worth just rather than just throwing that out there and letting people sort of make their own assumptions, it's worth just outlining what the cricket regulator is not like the football regulator, an independent body which is separated from the governing body.

47:58is actually part of the ECB. And it's headed by, so the actual regulator himself is a guy called Nick Coward, who I've actually met a few times. He used to be chief executive of the British Horse Racing Authority. Very nice guy. And a competent man. And a good man, actually. And I think did a half decent job in horse racing. So is he allowed, within the rules of this competition and within the remit of his regulatory authority, is he allowed to make a judgment is he allowed to make a judgment on this because as you say proving it in a court of law that's not going to wash it's gonna be very straightforward for any team selection process to say well we didn't fancy that player was too expensive whatever it might be so it'll actually come down to a matter of judgment and this is where regulators have more leeway than courts of law and this time of stuff because normally competitions are set up with a specific reference to the regulator's ability to make judgments rather like a referee on a football pitch or a rugby pitch ultimately in the end that they make a judgment and that's accepted as being part of the whole thing now if that is the case and if nick howard is allowed to make a judgment then it'll be very interesting to see what his judgment is if by coincidence i put that in adverted commas if by coincidence all four indian-owned teams do not select a single pakistani player, despite there being 67 Pakistani players who have submitted themselves for the Orchard process.

49:25And by the way, we should say that the Orchard process is happening on March the 11th and 12th. So it's pretty soon. If that happens, then what does the cricket regulator Nick Coward do? There's another question I've got, which is around what's going to happen with English Pakistani origin players. Because what we've started to see in recent times is that even Pakistani origin players are starting to have problems in their dealings with Indian cricket. As Indian cricket gets more confident and as Indian cricket pushes the envelope more, we're starting to see that even Pakistan origin players are starting to have problems.

50:04As we've seen with the visas we mentioned before. As we've seen with the visas we've mentioned before. And it was quite interesting. Someone who's been very vocal on this is somebody, a character I absolutely love called Moeen Ali. Moeen obviously played international cricket for England for many, many years. And I think he's said that he wants to go. He's going into coaching full time. If he didn't, I'd love to see him in the media because he's really smart, fascinating judge of the game, but also very honest and says what he thinks and says it without fear or favor. And he says this in the UK.

50:33I'm not sure that that can happen as in should not happen in the terms of, you know, leaving Pakistan players out. It should not happen. and there will be a group of players who will speak up, including himself, I respect, especially at the top. No one really mentions it. Now, this was the other part of his quote. So he speaks, first of all, about what he thinks and what he thinks players will do. But he then says, especially at the top, by which he means the ECB, no one really mentions it. So this is somebody who is part of the broader England setup, both as a player before but now as a coach, somebody who is of Pakistani origin and one of our most senior and sort of you know well-established Pakistan origin players who's saying that his perception is is that at the ECB there is a see no evil hear no evil thing going on here and just in case people think that Moeen is speaking from a position of partiality being a Pakistan heritage English person Michael Vaughan and the former England test captain who's another person who I hugely respect says this the ECB has come up with empty words.

51:38The statement, that is the statement of the ECB, said nothing, and they cannot be allowed to hide behind it. If this ban happens, then we know who really runs the competition, and it's not the ECB. Moeen also said, interestingly, and this is his opinion, I'll admit that, but he said the ECB would not have anticipated this problem. It probably didn't even cross their mind our mindset is not like that in england how how i think i think he's being very charitable there how can it not across the mind i mean charlie but let's be clear that this is a this is a this is a major not just cricketing but it's a major cultural and political issue one of the teams that is owned by an indian group is the sunrise as leeds i i was up in i was up in leeds and bradford last week and it will not surprise many of our british listeners and viewers to know that the Pakistani population of that conurbation is about 25 to 30 percent.

52:38It is substantially Pakistani. Actually, I had a fantastic lunch at a Pakistani restaurant. I mean, it was one of the best curries I've ever had. So you're buying a club in Leeds, which has a massive, well, Leeds-Bradford is a conurbation, a massive Pakistani population. and then as the new owners of that club you're saying i'm not saying well they haven't said this yet but let's just imagine for a moment the yorkton process goes as we imagine you're then saying well we're not gonna we're not gonna have any pakistanis in our team i mean this is majorly culturally controversial and when you think obviously that team will be playing it headingly when you think of some of the controversies that have happened in recent times of yorkshire county cricket club and discrimination against people of pakistani the origin where a lot of work has been done recently a huge amount and people and people have lost their jobs and there's been massive reshuffles and there've been even people being pulled into parliament to explain themselves and this is on individual moments of racism over a long period of time which in theory related to a more structural kind of race so this was taken very very seriously over the last two to three years i mean it was taken so seriously that it even went beyond cricket into the broader you know british sort of system effectively we cannot have people of Pakistani origin in Leeds being discriminated against when they want to play cricket.

54:00What we're looking at here is a far bigger form of structural racism, if it's true, and if it happens, and if the rumours are true, than anything that happened at Yorkshire County Cricket Club. So where does the rubber hit the road? It's a key part of English cricket, the Pakistani community, right? As you've highlighted, we've had players. Adil Rashid. we have had amazing players. Adil Rashid would be probably currently their most famous player. So this political situation that we have talked about in different parts of the world, you know, with their ability to govern however they wish, coming here, that's the big problem.

54:36We talk about precedence all the time, I feel, but it's because in sport they are so important. Yeah. They set the tone and if you have selective representation in these teams, in cricket, a sport that is so diverse for incredible reasons in this country. We haven't discussed Bangladesh either by the way well you know because there's obviously been much more recent political problems between india and bangladesh if you remember the original story when we said that you know bangladeshi players were being excluded from the ipl are bangladeshi players also going to be excluded from the hundred look i mean what what you've got here is a situation i don't buy any of this we didn't realize we didn't think it was coming we were offered a lot of money for franchises and that money as you've highlighted will be used to further the game in this country and support institutions that have been struggling for a number of years.

55:19So we have no issue with money coming into the game in this way. We have no issue with selling in franchises and bringing in international ownership. But I have issue with it being framed in a way of, well, we couldn't have seen this coming or, you know, we've now got these situations that we need to handle, but actually we don't have any real plans to handle it because we didn't think about these consequences before. So I just want them. The ECB are pleading a cursty. They are pleading a cursty. They're pleading a cursty on it and they can't plead a cursty on it And they certainly shouldn't be firing anybody for it.

55:47One last thought on this. I noticed in some of the backwards and forwards about the 100 full stop in general, that there is a suggestion that at some point the 100 might be changed to become a T20 competition. And at the behest of Indian owners, fundamentally. Now, I don't hold a view on it. I actually prefer T20 to the 100. So format-wise, I'm not fussed. but again it shows what a massive influence has been given to these people who have brought these bought these franchises and i also think it points to and we've just mentioned this once before what the ultimate ambition of these franchise owners are the one that the groups who own an IPL franchise a South African franchise now an English franchise an American franchise are we ultimately going to see effectively cricket at the very top level in terms of financially at the very top level becoming a t20 world tour where players assigned to an ownership group and they travel around that ownership groups various franchises on a rolling basis around the world um that it just feels to me from a business perspective that that's the ultimate aim here if you have non-international t20 cricket that would make complete sense wouldn't it you have consistency across the calendar fans can consume it you can follow the same teams so your fandom moves often internationally i think vic vanagy who's a md of the hundred has even referenced it in in recent communications where he said look we've got all of these uh owners coming in why wouldn't we look to take their expertise and change some of the stuff that we do so that's it's another one to watch this space i am i really really hope that this doesn't happen i think it's very hard to prove as we've said but again i just want honesty and we we need a situation here that that addresses this issue with complete openness which i don't feel we've had so far anyway um as i say much more on the english side here than than criticizing the indians from my perspective at least just yeah just to lay that out i mean i think we've already laid out that we don't agree with india's policy discriminating against cricketers from other countries previously So it certainly doesn't change that.

57:55But we have also said many times that the ECB needs to take a leadership role. It's not good enough. It's not good enough. And the ECB needs to be on the front foot in fronting it up. So watch this space. That auction happens in the next couple of weeks. Two weeks. I'm sure we'll be commenting on it. Yeah. Topic three. I think this could be our first time VAR comes into it. Have we talked about VAR before? Nope. I don't think we have. it's not generally really our kind of thing because it's very much a sporting matter and we try and talk about business um i was quite interested in this because i do think there's a good business angle to it there is i agree with that by the way and look we're not going to break down the whole var discussion point in in one session the reason we're talking about it this week is because there have been some reports that the referees are now unhappy in particular with the new semi-automated offside system that has been brought in this year.

58:51Now, let's just lay a bit of the groundwork. We know that VAR has been a part of the English game for a long time. We know that it has been, well, four years. It might seem a long time when you're 31 years old. I'm telling you, it doesn't feel a long time to me. Since it's been brought in, people have obviously had their gripes with it. when you look at the numbers around decision making accuracy 82 percent of decisions were classed as accurate pre 96 percent are now accurate so almost from one in five decisions being wrong to one in 25 decisions being wrong and this is where i'll throw the business angle in charlie is you know now with football being a business product to the extent that it is accuracy and getting consistency across the performance and the results that now are the difference between promotion relegation winning trophies and not it's absolutely integral that we have the best system that facilitates i totally disagree those those results i totally disagree the semi-automated offside you just keep on going no i was just gonna give the rest of the context come back come back to it but the semi-automated offside system is just a new this is a new thing that's come in and the referees have basically come out and said we don't trust it and it's struggled but it's been a different provider genius sports are providing this technology, not Hawkeye.

1:00:04And it's particularly struggled, interestingly, I saw when the goalkeeper's not the last man. So think a corner, the goalkeeper's come out to claim a ball and someone's headed it in. It's taken five plus minutes and even then the referees aren't convinced it's worked. This is the first time I've seen the officials actually being linked publicly with their dissatisfaction to technology. The economics of football are driven entirely by the fans. The fans provide the ticketing revenue, the media revenue, the merchandise revenue, the hospitality revenue, the only thing that matters to the fans. The rest of it frankly is window dressing.

1:00:40We are a professional sport. We are not an amateur sport, we are a professional sport. And the way in which professional sport works is that effectively people want to pay to watch it, players want to play it, and then people like me sit in the middle and transfer money from the fans to the players. And that movement of money is the foundation of all professional sport. And without having the fans, the sport might happen, but it's not a professional sport. So professional sport is by definition a circus. The point about it is the spectacle. And when you start doing things which makes a professional sporting product less of a spectacle, you are making it a less successful business.

1:01:30Now, in terms of the purity of the game, there are understandable disinclinations to change the nature of the game to make it more of a spectacle. And I totally get that and I support that. In other words, the game should stand as it always has stood, more or less, as much as it possibly can. And the idea that you would go and change stuff to make it more of a spectacle for fans. I think as tradition, because part of what you're setting is also tradition and legacy as well. That's part of the commercial side of sport is the multi-generational support. It's being able to go back in the archives, compare different clubs and teams and players and all this type of stuff.

1:02:07And once you fundamentally change the nature of a sport, then that gets chipped away at. So where does VAR sit in all this? Really, VAR is more of a tool for the benefit of the participants. it's not for the benefit of the fans it's not for the benefit of commercial partners because actually it removes a core part of any sporting proposition which is what doesn't entirely remove but it mitigates this particular moment which is the dopamine drug that keeps people coming back for more goal goes in you're lifted off your seat in a moment of pure enjoyment and ecstasy and that moment is absolutely sacrosanct.

1:02:51That is what you're paying for. There are huge chunks of a football match which even those of us professionally involved in the game would say are fundamentally quite dull and you're all building up to the expectation. Why do you go there on a Saturday when you drag yourself off to the bridge hungover on a Saturday? You are waiting for that moment that lifts you off your seat. You're waiting for Palmer to pick the ball up, drop a shoulder and smash the ball in that's what i sell and everything when you look at the the marketing the merchant everything that we do in our imaging is about that moment and those and those bonding moments okay and what var what var introduces in the interest of quote fairness to the participants var introduces the idea that you cannot wholly celebrate the goal it's not a moment of pure ecstasy.

1:03:41It's a moment of paused ecstasy, deferred ecstasy. So you get to celebrate 50 % now and 50 % later. But neither of those 50 % are as good as the full 100%. And I strongly believe that the reason why EFL live attendances and television attendances are rising faster than the Premier League, which indeed are flatline, we're even slightly coming down in some cases, is because they haven't given in to this. It's still raw, unfiltered excitement when a team scores. VAR came in because there were decisions being made that were impacting games and end-of-season results so much that the accuracy was basically looked at.

1:04:21And the modern-day product has gone, that's not acceptable. That accuracy isn't sufficient. So it's basically about luck, isn't it? It's basically about luck. Fans wanted it because they wanted these clangers. they wanted these clangers removed and that was always where it was interesting the narrative around VL was the clear and obvious errors it was the absolute shockers, it was the things Neil Warnock would come out and scream about

1:04:45even sensible people let's say more measured individuals than Neil would find certain decisions during the season which were so palpably wrong that they would complain about them so you have the reasoning behind this, we're going to improve the accuracy of the game but again it comes down to did the people implementing it actually think about that knock-on effect? Did they have the fans in consideration of what it would do for that in stadia experience? Did the fans know? Did the fans understand what the implication of it would be? No, of course not. All the fans were asked was, would you prefer it if there weren't really bad refereeing mistakes?

1:05:18Sure. Let's just say you've got somebody who, or somebody who represents a much broader group of people, somebody who thinks, well, you know what, I'm not finding the Premier League particularly exciting right now, which a lot of people do say It's become quite programmatic and quite, you know, defensively astute and all this type of stuff. And, oh, God, this VAR thing as well is just an absolute mess. Do you know what? And once a group of people who are perhaps a bit less tribally passionate about their clubs and a bit less massively into it, but who nonetheless are valuable paying fans, once a group of people find part of the motivation for getting them to go there on a Saturday or to pay their subscription of the TV, once they just find that just dropping off a little bit, it's a very dangerous moment you know for me this whole var thing is an indulgence in professional sports terms it's something which has been brought in not because anyone really thinks it improves the spectacle but because it means that managers will feel less unfairly done by but managers are paid employees and therefore i do not think that we should be too worried about the managers being upset from time to time we should understand this and accept it because what we're really talking about here is luck.

1:06:25As long as one accepts and denies the conspiracy theories about refs being institutionally corrupt, which they definitely are not, by the way, then effectively what we're talking about here is the bad luck of having a bad decision. But the bad luck of having a bad decision is only one of many different kinds of bad luck, a piece of bad luck that can happen in a game. Football is actually, as funnily enough, we mentioned Ian Graham out of Iran, anyone who reads his wonderful book, How to Win the Premier League, will find that there's a substantial section on there by the UK's foremost football data analyst on the extent to which luck plays a very significant part in footballing success.

1:07:01Now, do we believe that over a long period of time, luck evens itself out? Probably yes. But in the short run, no. Short run luck can make a difference. So this is all part of luck and it's trying to eliminate luck from the game, which unfortunately I do not think makes it a better spectator sport. So we're saying we have an acceptance of the likelihood of making mistakes because we've seen what the other side is. If you strive for something that is not, it'll never be 100 % accurate. Goal line technology is fine, by the way. It's black and white. It's black and white. And it's also immediate as well.

1:07:31It's absolutely immediate. Exactly. They look at it, it's not going over great. And that's the thing, there's some parts of the technology great. But the minute it's not removing human decision, you're just shifting the responsibility of human decision onto someone else. It's just putting it from the referee into a room. There are two things I would use technology for because they wouldn't delay the game and it would prevent some egregious mistakes. First is goal line technology. The second one of which is when a penalty actually has been given. Because what happens when a penalty has been given and there's a substantial space there where you can make sure that a clear and obvious mistake has not been made.

1:08:05But then what's clear and obvious mistake? Well, I think, or even any mistake. But my point is, once you start interposing it into the general run of the game and having five-minute hold-ups when there would otherwise not be a five-minute hold-up, you've got a big problem. That's a massive financial cost for the implementation of however many penalties there are again for a league to have all the technologies to look at that. The thing that I would be interested in your thoughts on this, what do you think it says that the referees supposedly are now coming out and saying actually we're not happy with this?

1:08:36Because they're the object of everyone's disapproval when these mistakes happen. The referees generally speaking have been supportive of VAR for the reasons mentioned earlier on. It reduces the number of mistakes and therefore reduces the amount of abuse they get and so on and so forth. even if it does also remove a bit of their efficacy in terms of how important they are to the game nonetheless it is what it is um so on this very specific point if they say well this piece of technology isn't working as well as it should do we either shouldn't be using it or we should swap it out for something else obviously that will be taken seriously but ultimately from my perspective i see it in sports business terms as opposed to sports performance time i see it in the broader scheme of things where you're competing for eyeballs and you're competing for the next generation and the generation after that and if you remove that moment of intense excitement from the game i think that that is not not a good thing to do if you're looking at it better accuracy supports the product right the better the more decisions right the better the game you're just looking at it very simply what you're putting away there is as you've just highlighted the essence of what the actual business the foundations of what the business is built on yes so while you may be right that we want more decisions right than wrong no one can argue with that yeah of course we do but at what cost yeah because to get those decisions right you're risking everything that football has been built on yeah or at least a large chunk of it i'd say tribalism combined with moments of intense excitement those are the two things that the professional club football is based on yeah i'd love to not have to watch these kind of like goal celebrations that happen five minutes after yeah that decision where then the fans try and pretend to be celebrated it's desperate stuff and the players charlie what you should really do like me is watch more EFL.

1:10:17Watch more EFL is where the real football is. Do you reckon it would be unanimous with fans now if you said, right, would you rather have it or not? I think if you were to go to the EFL fans and say, do you want to put in VAR? The answer will be no. I haven't seen the data on the Premier League fans on what they would be, but I suspect it's trending towards no. I'll have a look. Before next week, I'll have a look. I'm not going to take a Kirstie here. I'm not going to start firing your staff I will go away and have a look and see what the weight of recent polling, there has been polling done on this so I'm going to have a look at it be interesting, we're done, we're done another week under the belt another week we've got a new saying built in now which is brilliant, doing a Kirstie, fantastic we've had our first proper interview integration rather than us reading out a statement, someone actually playing it, I think it needed the video and the player and hopefully the guys will be able to, our team that we haven't fired for those reasons.

1:11:12The remaining beleaguered staff members. Business and sports team. We'll be able to put that particularly into the YouTube video so you can have a look. But it is quite an extraordinary statement, so it was well worth it. But yeah, I mean, more amazing topics in here and more things to build on. And I think also at the beginning, a few stories that we think will probably develop over the coming weeks as well. Keep the comments coming in. Keep them coming in and yeah, let us know what you like. And thank you again, as always, for joining us. Super, thank you. thank you as ever for tuning in to another breakdown big week of sport big stories emerging i think there's a few things today that will run into the next few weeks you now get a feel for how much we enjoy that thank you as always for joining keep the engagement coming and we'll see you next week