THE BREAKDOWN: Football’s Media Rights Reckoning, Darts Goes Mainstream & Rugby’s Identity Crisis (E02)

28:11I mean now they own 10 % do they become the most likely buyer of this? They're probably one of the only buyers because if I'm Netflix already have what they're looking at as a relatively established and effective sports strategy. Amazon are already pretty entrenched in it. Apple TV have their own piece. So if it's not to them, then it is probably the bigger funds, the multi-billion ones that are going to leverage some of the access they have and clean up, I would say, some of that 9.8 billion, but make sure you're not losing, as you've highlighted, core markets, which are driving huge value for your subscriber base.

28:43It's a real puzzle, and I think it's going to be quite interesting to see what happens this year because it sort of feels somehow that things are coming to a head so let's just put an asterisk by it and um and come back to it in coming months and the other theme within this by the way is that what's happened to the french league and the belgian league whilst one can and just we just have effectively criticized a zone for ditching them the other side of that story is okay but once the zone have ditched them is there somebody else out there who runs along to pick up those rights and the answer has been no right so it basically almost says to me that that you know DAZN have made in a way the right decision right it's just the way it's gone about it has been unfortunate um and then what does that mean for other European football leagues coming down the track in terms of the valuation of these bundled TV rights particularly in domestic markets one for another day I is I mean look we can leave it on this and hear people's thoughts but if you're creating the bull case for it, you would say, well, are we in a position where global rights are hitting a major issue now?

29:43They're going to get cheaper. DeZone is suddenly saying, well, we're recognizing this. We're going to be spending less in the future for this. So our models are going to increase and we are going to be able to do this. That would be your case for the other side of it. But look, fascinating. I don't think we could ever cover rights in one sitting, in one session. We'll definitely have something I'd imagine coming up around that DTC play, because I do think it's a fascinating insight into where this model is most likely moving longer term but for now let's let's park it and um let's move on to the second topic one thing we really want to do on this show we've said it before is we really want to engage the audience and these topics are things we find interesting but they're also moments where we want you to tell us what you find interesting and ask for us to be able to do things so i was really pleased when on the show we released last week, Oscar put a really, really good question to us.

30:36And that's going to form some of what we're going to talk about in a second. And Oscar said, it'd be great to hear your thoughts on Matchroom and whether you feel it's healthy for an entire professional game to be under one operator. Of course, the sport is thriving right now. The million pound winner's prize money for the first time was a big deal. So hard to argue it isn't, but curious about how it works. Now, we are, of course, talking about darts here. And thank you, Oscar, for sending that in. Charlie, should we give a bit of background on the world of darts before we actually dive into what we think is a hugely exciting sport right now from a business perspective?

31:15Because it goes back a long way to properly understand this. Firstly, I think there's been almost two eras for darts. You've had the PDC, which came in 1992. but before that there was something called the British Darts Organisation. BDO. BDO and basically the PDC was established when 16 players broke away from the BDO looking to create a more professional environment around darts and darts previous to that had been massively popular and hugely successful in terms of attracting audience but it had not done a very good job of what we would call professionalising a sport. So this dates back to the 1980s, right, when I was around.

31:56You probably either weren't or were very, very, very, very, very, very young. No, I wasn't. You were not. Depressing. Yeah. So darts' first golden era happens in the 1980s when I'm a young boy, and I absolutely loved it. and you had nationally famous people like Eric the Crafty Cottney Bristow and Jackie Wilson and Ted Lowe and these guys. And they were nationally famous partially because of the World Championship, which happened, as it does now, at a great time of year over New Year when it gets dark early and all the families are sat inside in front of the TV. but also because of a primetime BBC show called Bullseye which has come back in a slightly sort of bastardised form more recently it was hosted by a man called Jim Bowen which was a darts game show really mostly for punters to try and throw to win prizes and all this type of stuff but at the end of the show one of the top darts players would come on and effectively play against the punter who'd won and the whole thing was great fun and it really did make these guys national figures.

33:11Eric Bristow in the 1980s was pretty much as famous as a sports person could be. You're talking about Ian Botham, you're talking about Steve Davis, you're talking about Eric Bristow, you're talking about Gary Lineker. These were the big sports stars of the 1980s. But effectively, the way they made their money mostly was through exhibition matches. So effectively, the BDO final would make their name, because then you'd be the world champion. I think Bristow won it seven times. And Bristow was a big character. I mean, he was a really charismatic sort of, you know, and he wasn't above sort of, you know, geeing the crowd up and using it against his opponent, et cetera, et cetera.

33:44He was a big, big character. And effectively, the BDO gave him the stage to become famous, as did Bullseye and these types of things. But then they would leverage off that. Their own individual agents and managers would organize exhibition matches around the rest. So you find that Bristow would go and play Jockey Wilson in Glasgow. Jockey Wilson was a Scotsman in front of several thousand people, all of them booing Bristow. It was almost more like wrestling, right? The whole thing was a bit like that. And the BDO itself was a very crusty, blazer-y type organization that sort of really focused on amateur darts, which was a county-based game.

34:18So you'd come up through the pub scene, you'd play locally, then you'd get selected for your county, you'd play for your county against another county, and the World Championship was sort of the crowning event of the year. And the BDO was very happy with this. And they were very happy with the fact that darts was becoming more prominent because it meant the BDO itself was making more money and becoming a better organisation, a wealthier organisation. But they didn't really see why that they should try and create anything particularly for the players. And there's this wonderful quote that the BDO chairman, Olly Croft, said in 1989 that was the starting point, the starting pistol for what happened subsequently.

34:53Because there were already murmurings of discontent from people like Bristow. This isn't working. And Olly Croft came out and said, I don't owe any darts players a living. Right. And at that point, the darts players realized that the BDO was not just not very good, but was actually more or less determined that they should not become properly professional as a sport. So in 1992, the 16 top pros formed the WDC, the World's Darts Council. There was then a few years of legal disputes between the BDO and the WDC. And it was difficult for the players because effectively the legal bills and all this type of stuff, it was really not straightforward.

35:30And the whole thing was quite ugly. Anyhow, eventually, around about 1997, it all gets somewhat settled and the WDC turns into the PDC, the Professional Darts Council, and the thing starts to grow from there. The whole thing starts effectively 30 years ago. And going back to the question that Oscar asked, the players effectively needed to have commercial advice to turn what they had created into something special. and Barry Hearn had done that for snooker in the 1980s. Snooker had been in a very similar position previously to darts, not being properly professionalised, being mostly exhibition match-based, slightly crusty and all this type of stuff and Barry Hearn, who was Steve Davis' agent, had started making it more professional.

36:19Steve Davis being prime attraction at the time from a talent perspective. Steve Davis from a sporting perspective was probably the most famous sportsman of the 1980s and famously the World Darts Final. So the World Snooker Final in 1985 attracted 18.5 million viewers domestically. That was the most watched sports event of all time. And I think 18.5 million people watched the World Snooker Final of 1985 between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor, which went down to the final black. That was the most watched TV event in British sporting history and was until quite recently, I think. I think maybe the Euros final or some of that might have just surpassed it.

36:57right? Anyway, the bottom line is that Barry Hearn sharpened his teeth, and Matchroom, his company, sharpened their teeth on snooker. They didn't own the snooker tour, but they were massively influential in snooker in the 1980s. And snooker players were huge stars. And it's, I mean, for those who are under the age of 40, it's quite hard to imagine how famous Steve Davis, Jimmy White, Hurricane Higgins, these guys were. They were front page news. So effectively, it's coming out the back of that that Matchroom and Barry Hearn get involved with darts and they were the obvious solution right because they had already made the snooker players rich so if you're a darts player if you're Phil the power tailor in 1995 and you are the best player in the world and you're thinking how do I get rich working with Barry Hearn seems like a great idea yeah right because what we're really talking about by the way it was a great idea it was a great idea it's been the marriage made in heaven and one of the great sporting commercial triumphs of all time.

37:59Well, it lays the foundation of what professional sport is, really. Structured global tour, big prize money, consistent TV availability. You know, that fan access that we have now to it is key. The relationship it built with Sky. Nailing the slot over Christmas, you know, the World Championship. Even the detailing of it, right? The partnership with Sky, an understanding that within a partnership, it requires you to think like a partner, right? So instead of saying, we play on a Saturday, therefore we want you to televise on a Saturday. Matchroom went to Sky and said what time of the week is currently empty in your schedules and let's put darts on then.

38:33Let's help you. Let's help Sky. Let's build an audience for your Thursday evenings. So when you see the Premier League coming along which then became this huge thing throughout the summer months where they fill these arenas around the country but they were also filling three hours of what would otherwise be quite shoulder content in terms of where Sky were as well. They're also buying, building Sky's bass as well. So, you know, the way it's been executed has been unbelievably strategic, super, super smart. And the players have been along for the ride all the way because they created it in the first place.

39:08So when you think about how much the players buy into the walk-on music, onto taking on their nicknames, onto doing, you know, stuff which other sports people might find a little bit like, oh, really? with the cheerleaders and all this type of stuff. But because the darts players were creating their own thing from scratch with Matchroom, they were able to create the perfect sporting product. And that's what it is. It's the perfect sporting product. Do you like it, by the way? Oh, I love it. Oh, I love it. I mean, I absolutely love it. I mean, it's now part of Christmas. Do you ever find yourself watching it at any other time of the year?

39:39Put it like this. When it's on, I'll watch it. And if you're looking at it now, you're looking at that relationship it's got with Sky Sports. They've just signed a$125 million deal with Sky, which is an incredible amount of money for it. Just remember what we're talking about with the French League. So the French League and the Belgian League, not able to nail down contracts at these types of levels, right? These are major historic legacy football leagues with big brand names behind them. And yet just domestically in the UK, Darts is able to achieve this. And it's done on numbers, by the way. So the peak audience for the world final this year, bear in mind this is on a subscription channel.

40:14So this is not open. If the number had been on free to wear, It would have been huge, of course, but 2.5 million, right, is peak audience for watching it, watching the World Final this year. Now, if you're thinking about the Premier League, right, which is the biggest product on Sky, the average peak viewing per match is 1.5 million. So the World Darts Final is doing more than the average Premier League match. Then if you go on the free-to-air side, you're looking at$7 million for the FA Cup final and$5.5 million for the Grand National, which are the two biggest annual sporting events. So darts is starting to become part of the elite pecking order of viewing figures in this country.

41:02But it's then also now starting to get other European and indeed international audiences as well. so the growth has only just started because you're watching them now start to get big attendances, live attendances in Germany Holland, Belgium, these types of places Germany averaged 2 million viewers for the final, averaged in Germany, 2 million viewers, no German in that final so again, building that, now, it's just the most astonishing success and I've just got to tip my hat off my hat to Barry Hearn because I mean, and the players and the players who created it, it's nice being positive about it, isn't it, I mean what a when somebody does an unbelievable job you've just got to tip your hat um and and i don't really see like the potential for growth is really considerable right because if you think about the type the demographic that this is targeted at right which is basically young to middle-aged men who want to go out and have beers together and have a sporting activity to watch which they can sort of in a slightly pantomime-y way get involved with.

42:04So it's a bit like WWE, but the action is real, right? The competition is real. It's not fake. It's not made up, etc., etc. And where you can sort of interact with the players in an arena situation or through TV and effectively get some interaction back. I thought it was really interesting to see the evolution of Luke Littler, the world champion, who last year was this cute young guy. Oh my God, it's amazing. A 17-year-old has won the World Final, whatever it might be. And over even over the last year he's evolving and he's becoming a villain figure in Germany I've noticed and even starting to come occasionally a bit of a villain figure here He was being booed at times during the world dots like that This is going to take his level of fame to Unbelievable levels and and sports like these need Breakout figures and break out people who take them to different levels We've spoken before about Ilona maha for women's rugby, you know when you have somebody who becomes globally famous and drags their sport with them as those snooker players did in the 1980s so that they become part of the national conversation the type of thing which when you're traveling on the London Underground you hear people talking about it looks like Luke Littler is going to be that guy because he's not just a good darts player he's somebody who if people are giving him jit from the audience he turns around and gives it back and and that is transformational for these kinds of sports.

43:23Well I thought it was the biggest compliment to him that the audience were giving him jit because it just showed it showed the evolution from the cute boy up on stage outperforming where people thought he should be to now a seriously respected coveted top level player the best sports people generally unless you're roger federer always inspire a bit of the one side or the other i mean the one the one thing which is going to take its stratospheric from here on in is if they can find like a serious rival to luke littler who is from germany for instance something like that right because i think van I thought he looked quite good.

43:53It was a shame about the final because it was a bit dominant. Because if you look at, so, Matchroom's other sport, Snooker, which is also quietly enjoying something of a second golden age, some of the numbers that Snooker is now doing from a viewing figure perspective in China is, like, it just makes all other viewing figures just seem kind of irrelevant, right? So, you know, when a Chinese player won the world title this year for the first time, you're looking at, They estimate that the live viewing of that final in China, 200 million people watching, right? So you're going on to sort of stratospheric numbers, which are challenging some of the big traditional sports.

44:31So for Matchroom to be centrally involved with snooker, which is involving having a second wind as a sport, and darts, which is having really its first big sort of surge up onto the global arena, It shows what can be done if sports understand where their strengths and weaknesses are, deploy their capital in the right way, and have a group of players who are willing to grow with it, as opposed to, as I've said in the past, in women's professional football, where they come in right from the start and say, well, we need to be paid huge amounts of money. We don't necessarily see that we have to do anything particularly different.

45:06That's our entitlement. In darts and snookies, you're seeing players who want to grow the sport with them. And I think, I'll give a little shout out to this, because I think they've got another one on the horizon as well with Nineball Pool, which I went to the Moscone Cup before Christmas. I did a show with the awesome Emily Fraser, who is Match and Multisport CEO. Yeah, I listened to it. And I tell you, like she promised me, she said, come and you won't regret it, you'll be hooked. And we went in there, I took a few mates, and it was exactly this, right? It was that unbelievable environment. You had the fans there, the players were playing up to the audience.

45:41it was Europe versus the US it's basically the Ryder Cup but that's been going on for a long time so what are they doing to supercharge it now well they're putting a production around it you really felt it was the flashing lights it was the well Sky Sports as well they've got a Sky Sports deal so there's money coming into it from a broadcaster who you think is probably going to back it in a similar way so they've done with a dart so I think they can be a little bit more adventurous but she's been brilliant at creating an experience the biggest thing I'd say is the shame really was that it was very much apart from us core pool fans.

46:13And that should be a Christmas. It was on the 3rd or 4th of December we went, What does a pool fan look like? I like playing pool. I love playing pool. They love wearing the tops of the guys. Everyone was in stash. Everyone. Really? And that's how you kind of knew it was the core fans because it was either in the red US kit or the blue and gold European kit. But honestly, it was a mix of everyone. But it was very, you could tell it was the core fans. They, it was maybe 40-ish pounds a ticket. It wasn't full for the first couple of days. It was for the last couple, but it wasn't full for the first couple.

46:46And they need to open that up a little bit, get the fans in, get them experiencing it. Because I promised you now I would pay 40 quid for it. But if I was just looking for something to do, maybe I wouldn't have paid that. I would have paid 20, but would I pay 40? So get people through the door, get them understanding what you're doing. But my point is, it's again another example of them identifying something, they get an opportunity, they can pretty much own the sport. They're active in all markets. It's huge in Asia as well. They do brilliantly in Southeast Asia, and they've put a lot of work into building tournaments around there.

47:14There's another one called the Reyes Cup, which is similar to the Moscone Cup with countries over there. And they're building profiles of athletes. Well, that's true and all. And I think, just to finish, I want to go back to Oscar's question again, which is, is there a danger to darts in the fact that it has such a symbiotic relationship with one promoter? And I would say no, that's not a danger. It's a strength. and the reason for that is that as consummate professionals within sports business, Matrim will be very well aware that effectively, if at any point the players perceive that Matrim isn't doing a great job for them, the barrier to entry in terms of doing what they did 30 years ago and creating their own thing, whatever it might be, is pretty low, right?

47:59And there's a playbook now. So effectively, if again, the 16 top players in the world decided, well actually Matrim isn't doing a good enough job for us, we're going to go and do our own thing, Well, they can do that, right? They can go and do that. And so I think Matchroom is such a smart organization because it's always in partnerships. It's always like leaving all the parties that are involved with it always end up doing well. Like Sky does well out of Matchroom. Snooker players do well out of Matchroom. Darts players do well out of Matchroom. Commercial sponsors do well out of Matchroom. They're always leaving enough on the table for other people, right?

48:33And not ever seeking. that's just speaking anecdotally from people within all these different sports who have had dealings with them, they always seem positive, like if you speak to people at Sky about Matchroom they'll always be really positive about the Hearns, that they've always had good dealings, good relations, they've delivered, they've followed through on stuff, they've done things right, so that just speaks to me of a really smart company and I think even if you look at who they've employed, and you've mentioned one but I've met others outside of the family they've brought really smart people into the organisation as well.

49:04They give opportunity. Yeah, they do. Emily from internship, Frank Smith, who runs the boxing from internship. You know, it's a story. And almost on the flip side of the critique, we were levelling at DAZN. My God, if you get Matt from having a sniff of what you want to do, you'd be saying, yeah, come in, come on, come work with us. Well, it's interesting that they sold part of what they, part of themselves, they sold to Pitch International, the global international TV rights seller, last year, I think it was, which was an interesting, That was sort of the first time that you saw them entering into more like an equity partnership rather than a sort of commercial partnership, etc.

49:39And I think that gave a really interesting indication of how the market as a whole see real growth in what Matchroom are doing. Amazing. Thank you, Oscar. That was a brilliant question. And I'll re-emphasize, please, when you have ideas on topics, let us know. We love to discuss them and kind of know what you guys really want to hear about. Right, should we move on to the final one? We shall. And I'm going to tee you up on this one. but it's quite a good segue actually because effectively one of the questions that oscar was asking about darts is is it a good idea for a sport to have one kind of almost like benevolent dictator one entity that really directs that sport and my view is that fundamentally if you ever can get to that situation if that person really knows what they're doing that is a good thing we now move on to a sport which hit you know infamously has generally speaking been done by people in blazers right committees blazers and um it's a sport which i never played um growing up but you did which is rugby um and rugby over the last couple of years a year or two has been undergoing various ruptures some of which will have come to everyone's attention some of which won't um but uh shortly before christmas we saw the postponement of something called r360 and i want to just tee you up to sort of tell the story of what's been happening behind the scenes in rugby over over the last few months and years yeah i think if we're going to talk about this i want to start by saying that i do i never want us to be seen as critiquing people with ideas trying to disrupt things being innovative showing initiative we've just been speaking about what the herns have done in darts and snooker and it's absolutely revolutionized sports sports needs it sports needs people coming up with big ideas and and and we love to see that but there still has to be some method behind it if you're actually going to be going out into market and putting a proposition down there needs to be a really good case to actually achieve it because otherwise it can be very damaging for broader sport if these things don't work and in rugby r360 has been you know it's been a fascinating piece and mike tindall's been fronting it with a small executive team it's pitched as franchise style rugby an f1 style kind of tour around the world go and play in the best cities kick off with i think it was eight men's teams four women's teams and you have a number of weekends in a calendar that hopefully aligns with the international game so that you don't have clashes and decisions between whether players have to play in international tournaments or this i mean there are broader challenges to that which assumes that world rugby would let them play in internationals if they signed up to this but it's been this growing initiative and there's been a huge amount of chatter around rugby for it but it's been quite hard we've had a number we had we've had brian habana on the show we've had dan bigger on the show and you know from the players perspective we've asked them about it and and it's interesting they've actually come back said oh well you know it seems interesting but we don't know anything about it so it's all been quite secretive.

52:40I think it had to be done behind the scenes. I don't think, you know, when you are seeking to disrupt major established bodies like World Rugby, like the RFU, like the various other unions, and indeed the clubs who currently have these players under contract, right? So if you're trying to disrupt these established bodies, of course, the initial stages have to be done behind the scenes. I thought what was quite interesting was the Genesis of it right so that rugby is in a peculiar situation compared to other sports really where it's The audience for the international level of the sport is pretty big and pretty lucrative The audience for the club level of the sport is pretty small in this it probably most Accurately represents like what sort of looks like what cricket was like pre t20 where you had loads of people turning up to watch test matches and one-day internationals.

53:36But if you were to go to a county cricket game or the equivalent in most of the main nations in the world, you'd find a man and his dog there, right? So people were interested in the international bit, not interested in the local bit. So cricket disintermediated that by creating effectively a new format of the game. And this was being done from within the sport. So it was originally actually done here in England. And T20 was started off here before the Indians really turbocharged it and ran with it. And probably the most successful example of the creation of a new league. But based off a new format, right?

54:09It wasn't just saying, hey, let's just have a new league. It was saying, let's actually create a new version of this sport, which we think is going to be attractive to different audiences. And clearly, it's been hugely successful. Whatever one thinks about the other ramifications of it, and I have my thoughts, but it has been hugely successful. There's no doubt about it. Now, this disruption was not based around having a new format. So it wasn't the perception of the creator of the T20 was most sports fans don't want to watch club level cricket or franchise level cricket because actually they think it's boring and we agree with them.

54:42So we are now going to create something which is actually exciting for them because it excites us as well. That isn't international. That is not international. Exactly. So T20 was a way of making non-international cricket exciting. R360 did not seek to disrupt the actual game so the assumption that the creators of R360 were making was no the game's brilliant it's just that people aren't being shown like the right sort of set up of it that the league isn't right or the set up of it is not correct and if we put in place this franchise based system which is not with players some players playing in England some players playing in France some players playing in South Africa exception no this is going to be bringing all of those top players together and they're going to play with each other like happens in the IPL but the difference is they're still going to play the same sport the same rules it's because we don't have a huge amount of information that it's hard I think there were a few things they were going to change I'm sure so I'm sure as in like the amount of time ball in play well but in theory they weren't changing the number of players yeah they weren't changing the size of a pitch no all the length of the game etc etc the basic tenets were going to be the same.

55:49And the idea was, rather like with Live Golf, that this was going to be brilliant for the rugby players, right? Because effectively, they were going to be paid more money for playing less rugby, right? And one of the big complaints about professional rugby from professional rugby players is they have to play too much in what is a very physically taxing game. So it ran the risk, as I saw it, of being, again, rather like we said with Live Golf, being producer-led, where it was like, well, we need to get the rugby players on side. so now let's make it as nice as possible for the rugby players without necessarily thinking too much of what does the spectator really want and i think it's interesting just have a look to see what appetite there is at the moment for non-international rugby and then ask ourselves the question i'm going to ask you the question because you're a consumer more than i am um is is the reason why non-international rugby is not popular because of the way in which it's set up or just because actually there's something about international rugby which is disproportionately popular, which you can't replicate outside of international rugby?

56:50You said something to me yesterday when we were chatting that actually rang true and answers that question so well, and it brings football into it. But it comes down to the absolute unique and most powerful part of football, which is it is so entrenched in identity. Tribal. Right. And so for you to ask me that question, why would I not consume club rugby? Let's say, why would I not go to Quinn's on a Saturday? And you do a bit. And I have done. You do, yeah. But very, very seldom. Yeah. And the answer to it really is that there are other things if I'm watching sport on a weekend that I'm likely to be doing.

57:30I am not going to be going to the stoop. Most likely, I am most likely going to be going to Stamford Bridge or Graven Cottage if I'm forced to. now if that is on at the same time that's taking up my time i only have a finite amount of time to go to something live a weekend i have a family i don't always want to be you know doing something externally and i'm choosing football because my identity my sporting you are a chelsea fan i'm a chelsea fan my wife is a full of fans so that's why i you know but so let's let's turn the question the other way around and say would you rather go to watch england play a big international match match at twickenham or england play a football match at wembley so great question i was going to flip it and I said we do that which one would you do?

58:10the two Six Nations coming up this year you'd rather go to Twickenham to watch England and then rather go to Chelsea to watch football completely but also when it's England internationals we go to Twickenham over me going to Chelsea so not only would I go to one not the other but I actually choose them now fine it's because there's only so many opportunities to go and watch international rugby but at the same time that's important isn't it? that's really important the scarcity is really important and also the extent to which you're talking about identity. So you are identifying as two things. One is a Chelsea fan.

58:47Secondly is an England rugby fan. The type of guy who goes to Twickenham. Right. You know, Gilles. Car park. Plus, yeah. Just an ugly thought. But you know, it's not my scene. Not for me to judge. It's not your scene. Come on. It's not my scene. I do have a gilet. Someone gave it to me, but it's not my scene. So the question is really that there's a bunch of stuff tied up in international rugby, which has long been tied. We're talking rather like with club football. We're talking this is 100, 150 year tie up, right? This is stuff that's been going on a lot. It's multi-generational. It's spread throughout families.

59:29It's built through sort of ground up over long, long periods of time. and the practice of converting that into watching non-international rugby is not necessarily as easy as people might think as in i think it's potentially impossible right now if i was looking at another sport that is my thing which is horse racing horse racing also has rather like international rugby it has certain marquee events which really do capture the attention of the whole country like during Cheltenham week Cheltenham for the general sports community of the UK is the biggest show in town it's bigger than any football match that week it's bigger than anything that's happening in rugby and that type of stuff Cheltenham 70 ,000 people a day on course massive TV numbers huge amounts of money being spent everywhere Cheltenham is the focus of everything Grand National is one of the biggest TV audiences for any for sport at any time in the year and even things like the Derby are looking at several million people watching and all this type of stuff.

1:00:24So there's certain flagship moments when horse racing has its moments in the sun. And one of the big challenges for those marketing horse racing, a challenge which has proven to be insurmountable, I have to say, is persuading that mass market that switches on to racing at certain times in the year, that it's also worth going to Kempton Park on a Saturday to watch a normal race meeting, which does not have the nation's attention in it. So effectively, they then pivoted saying, well, if we can't persuade them to come to watch the sport, we'll try and turn it into more of like a day out type thing, right?

1:01:01And have a few drinks and whatever it might be. So in a way, I think there are these constant attempts to innovate in horse racing, which remind me a bit of 360. Let's have the Racing League. Let's put them into teams. Let's try the jockeys, I'm saying, into teams. Let's try and have a sort of US against Europe type thing, the Shergard Cup. They're constantly trying to think of ways to do something And yet the market is constantly saying Stop it We don't want it We're happy watching Cheltenham The Grand National The Derby Goodwood And York We're okay with that Don't try to make us do something we don't want And Club Rugby Feels to me like the level that it's currently at Where audiences are Live audiences I'm talking about Are not that dissimilar to what they were in the old amateur days We're talking about 6 ,000 average per match, that type of thing.

1:01:54Bristol do really well, but then they did back in the day as well. Leicester, 15 ,000. Northampton Saints, 14 ,000. But then below that, you're talking about even Saracens, who are the biggest name of the last 20 years. They've won everything. They're getting 6 ,000 or 7 ,000 a game. We're talking about League 2 football levels, right? So even with those routes... Sorry, just quickly, that's legacy as well, right? So those are legacy assets. So those are things that people could have a heritage piece to go to. That's going to encourage them to go. So you then look at something where you're creating a brand new set of IP and products, if you want.

1:02:24You're going from scratch. You're assuming that we would want to go and watch it. I'm a rugby fan. You're a sports fan. We'd be a target market for something like R360. Yeah, I couldn't sit here and say, I'd go to that. And it's because of something really interesting that you said, which is how you divide up. Because there's only so much time, spare time, that you've got to watch sport. Even somebody who is as devoted to it as you are, even somebody who, broadly speaking, works in it like you do, only has so much time, only has so much mind space, only has so much money to devote to your pursuit of watching sport before Mrs.

1:02:58Stebbings finally says, right, I've had enough. That's it. She loves it. That's why I married her. Oh, okay. She took me to Fulham, Fulham Man U on our first date. Apart from obviously the fact that... Was that like a test? Well, it was. But she was testing me, not me testing her. Indeed, indeed. It was perfect. But completely agree. So let's go back to R360, right? So the detail on what happened with R360. R360 launched. It announced publicly that it was going to be in place for this coming next season. So season 26-27. And that it would basically recruit many, if not most, of the world's leading players, put them into these franchises, and it would all be going ahead.

1:03:46Now, in about, was it November or December of last year? It came out or it was announced that they were postponing that launch until 2028. Now, we can't know and we can't comment on the reasons behind that postponement. But the general perception in the sports market was that the moves made by the unions, the traditional unions, had been effective in preventing some of the leading players from joining. and that probably in turn that had sort of stalled the momentum of the whole project, which then probably made it harder to raise money, which then made it harder to secure the right deals in terms of which venues it was going to be at and all this type of stuff.

1:04:25So they've effectively had to take a step back and say, we still believe in the idea, but we can't make it work now. We're now going to take a bit of a longer run up at it to make it work in two years' time. But Johnny, the easy piece here is for me to sit here and go, we don't think it's financially viable. But you've actually brought a side to it here, which looks a little bit deeper and says, even if you could make it financially viable, I question the appetite of an audience for a non-international rugby product in the current sports market today. That's the question, right? And I massively respect the people behind R360 who want to challenge that.

1:05:02And who want to, effectively what they're saying is, that's the easy answer. What Charlie Methven's saying there, that there just isn't the appetite for it. That's the easy answer because actually we will never know until the product is put in front of the rugby-loving public, which is actually an elite world-class product that is the equivalent of what Barry Hearn does in snooker and darts. We will never know what that audience could have been. And I accept that. And I also admire some of the people behind R360 for having the boldness and the entrepreneurial determination to say this does need to be tested.

1:05:37because effectively what they're saying is, and it's quite interesting, if we don't test it and if rugby does not test it, rugby is going to face a long and slow decline because without having that bedrock of non-international rugby followership, whilst it is still this only peak moment, certain peak moments during the year, you're not building a young enough audience base to really be able to sustain the sport as a professional sport over the next 30 to 40 years. So I respect the underlying question. I respect the people who have taken it on. I respect the fact they have taken it on. My instincts are that this is not a sport that is easily going to translate into a week-to-week, or in their case, month-to-month or fortnight-to-fortnight product of this kind.

1:06:19Okay, so finally then, just if we're leveraging our learnings from having these conversations, last week we said Liv wasn't wrong to try and disrupt golf. We suggested that the European Tour was a far better investment for them to make to properly challenge the structures of golf at the time. do you think you could apply that here do you think you could say to the guys running r360 what about some of the rugby domestic rugby assets now that do have legacy value that do have the talent and have a lot of the legal framework on their side that you're not going to have to contest maybe in the same way you do from creating something new what about going and looking at putting whatever money that you're going to need to do to set r360 up into one of those established organizations and create something that has a bit of a backbone to it already wow that's a really interesting point um so i guess you'd be talking about effectively buying up the english premiership which because the french rugby league is strong right financially strong and powerful and probably not buyable right there's no reason why they would because they're already doing well and etc but the english premiership is you know despite the protestations of its senior people is is still basically struggling they still owe the government close to 100 million quid from their COVID loans, right?

1:07:33And whilst in football terms, professional football terms, that might seem like a relatively small amount of money, in professional rugby terms, that is a huge amount of money, right? So, as I said, it's a league which currently is doing 7 ,000 or 8 ,000, you know, average attendance per match, et cetera, which is sort of League 1, League 2 level in football. But they've got huge playing staffs because, you know, it's a 15-man game. They've got loads of substitutes and lots of players injured all the time. So they've got huge costs. so all the clubs most of the clubs almost all the clubs are losing money um they don't have the sort of the golden pot at the end of the rainbow that football has of well if you do do really well then at some point you will get a check for 100 million right so from the ownership point of view it's really struggling so i guess have to give that more thought because i think one of the underlying precepts of rugby 360 was to make it more of a global game but perhaps the lesson of the english premier league is actually the physical location of the sport these days matters a little bit less than the global nature of the players that you're able to get on board.

1:08:34So potentially you could, and you could take those games abroad, right? You could take those brands abroad. There's no reason if you created a really big, strong London brand, they couldn't go and play a match abroad. So it's a complex landscape, and I'm very aware when talking about rugby that I'm not a rugby guy, so it's very hard for me to say that something isn't going to have appeal when I'm not probably the target market, whereas you are. Yeah, but it's really important to be able to stand back and look at sport as well. You know, when you're too entrenched in it, it can become very difficult to have opinions that aren't skewed.

1:09:07And so, you know, I think it's a very interesting point, and I hadn't thought about it as deeply as you had when you brought the broader piece of whether club rugby or non-international rugby was where the market was really in need of something. Is the market crying out for it? Exactly. So I think it's a really good question to ask. Look, I think it'll be fascinating to see what happens with R360. Proof is always in the eating, isn't it? Yeah, indeed. So we'll see. Yeah. But look, any ideas from you guys on that would be fascinated to hear. If you think there's a rugby project or product out there that they could take a look at that isn't starting something from scratch, let us know, because that'd be a very interesting way to start next week if we have a couple of good comments.

1:09:48Yeah, I'm entirely open, by the way, to the idea that whenever I speak about rugby, I'm talking absolute nonsense. Brilliant. So, yeah. Pile in on it. Pile in. Pile in. Brilliant. Knackered. Again. Knackered again. Yeah. I don't know what you've got on for the rest of the week. Do we get the rest of the day off? I think so. No, I'm joking. Obviously, straight back to it. Brilliant, as always. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks, Charlie. Thank you so much for joining us for another exhausting episode. This show is really all about you. So we want to know your feedback, your thoughts, your requests.

1:10:22all 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.