THE BREAKDOWN: Infantino isn’t the REAL Problem at FIFA, Staveley's West Ham Move Unpacked, & The Jockey Club Quit the RCA (E31)

25:44So he is leading CONCACAF to come out against Infantino's position. And that's problematic for Infantino because a lot of the CONCACAF nations constitute his power base, the Caribbean nations. It's pretty clear that the African Federation is going to continue to support Infantino, right? So conspicuous by its absence has been any clear declaration from the African nations or from CAF itself against this whole thing. And then you've got Asia, which looks like it's split. There are some Asian nations who have come out against this. There are some who seem to be either keeping quiet or even somewhat supporting Infantino in general.

26:25And then you have Oceania, people that there's not very clear. New Zealand have been very much against it, as you'd expect, probably Australia will be as well. But the smaller Oceania countries, we don't know. And since they constitute a majority in that confederation, we don't know how they're going to go. Again, they're only 10 or 11 votes as well. And Combo, Latin America, have been fence-sitting, I would say. So at the moment, You have UEFA and CONCACAF that constitute about 100 votes between them, 105, 110 votes, who appear to be coming out against Infantino's presidency. But again, probably in CONCACAF's case, not en masse.

27:07I imagine there will still be nations within that who don't necessarily back Montigliani in that. And then you've got the other federations who are either fence-sitting or who are still in support of Infantino. So going back to your point, which I think was a point well made earlier, which is I don't see Infantino resigning here. I think he'll still back himself to try to pick off enough of the individual nations in the meantime to be able to hang on in power. because if he's got all the African nations, he's only 50 away then, isn't he, from having enough to hang on in there. So anyway, look, watch this space.

27:45Over the next weeks and months, gradually the politics bit will become apparent. But in a way, that horse trading that I've just mentioned, what's this federation saying? What's that federation thinking? In a way, that's all the problem, right? Which is actually, it doesn't matter because all that really matters is what UEFA think, really, right? But also, just to leave it on this point, your point, really, we can talk about this for a day's get-blue-in-the-face. Nothing really changes unless the voting system, the structural elements of FIFA change. So, you know, it's interesting to look at Infantino.

28:20It's interesting to assess the power dynamics. But really, as you said, you're replacing, it's a different head, right? And ultimately, as you said, when Inventino came in, Sepp Blatter was the greatest enemy of football. And now he's the spokesperson for integrity and righteous behaviour. If you've been following his Twitter feeds, sorry, X feeds, it's been brilliant. I think you should sit this one out, Sepp, I reckon.

28:49Anyway, anyway. So Charlie, from one very complex, convoluted, difficult pathway over the next six months from where we are right now to a conclusion. We move on to West Ham United Football Club, which is in a very similar situation with competing power blocks, all trying to wrestle for who controls probably one of the 10 top clubs in England, I'd say. Well, yeah. And the reason we're talking about this now, I guess, which is most important. So very conscious that this is a very quickly changing story as well. So just to be clear, we're recording this on Wednesday afternoon. What's been happening is, should we say, a partial takeover.

29:33Amanda Stavely and PCP Capital Partners, who formerly were invested in Newcastle, are looking to buy 25 % stake in West Ham. That, on the surface, should we say, looked like a good deal for the football club, because Charlie, I know we have relationships in there as well. I think they are very good operators. is I'm huge fans of her and her husband, Merdad, and their approach. I think they did a great job at Newcastle managing that situation and having been in the ground with them seeing the Newcastle affection for them. I think the prestige they're held in by the fans just shows that. West Ham is a club right now that needs a little bit of that love for its ownership.

30:12And so on paper, Amanda Stavely, PCP, and the consortium that she represents coming into West Ham to buy 25 % of that club would be a really good thing. Now, I think we talked about this previously in our West Ham conversation that we did a few months ago. But the ownership structure of West Ham itself is and has been quite interesting. You've had three key investors over the last few years. You've had the Gold family, David Gold's family, who very sadly died in 2023. But his family and trust, headed up by his daughter Vanessa, has held those shares. And that is 25 % of the club. You've had David Sullivan, who has recently gone through some pretty problematic issues for himself away from football, owning 38 % of the club.

30:53And you have Daniel Kratinsky, who is the Czech billionaire, who owns 27 % of the club. Now, Stavely, PCP, the consortium, has tried to buy or has put an offer in to buy the gold shares. And that looked like it was going through. and then as we got news of within the last, I don't know, 24 hours, it looked like Daniel Kratinsky has tried to block this move. Firstly, just looking at this from the outside without actually knowing anything, I was firstly, I was confused as to why Kratinsky wouldn't buy these shares himself, Charlie, because I remember when it came out, we were straight away going, oh, that's interesting.

31:27Surely this is just the opportunity for Kratinsky to come in and increase his ownership to bring you into it. There is a reason, isn't there? And this is where it's not buying these shares, then he was blocking these shares. Then, you know, I looked at the stuff around it and you see some of the articles that were put in place when he bought the shares. It actually starts to get quite messy with some of the articles association that were put in place and the ownership structures. So, you know, as normally, this is your area. So why don't you explain some of that? Well, I'll do my best, Charlie, but the truth is, is a lot of it's wrapped up in the deal that Kratinsky did to buy shares in the first place and then with shareholder agreements.

32:05And neither the original deal nor the shareholder agreements are subject to public scrutiny. So it's a bit of rumour and guesswork. Reported. Reported. Or rumoured to be, or said to be, or thought to be, or this type of stuff. Right. So when Kratinsky bought into the club, which was in 2021, five years ago, back end of COVID, that sort of time, he bought this 27%, didn't come from thin air. He bought it from Golden Sullivan. Up until then, Golden Sullivan had owned West Ham 50-50. They'd owned the entire thing as a joint venture together. So he bought his 27 % off Gold and Sullivan. And when you think about it, from Golden Sullivan's point of view, this was a good piece of sensible housekeeping.

32:53They'd bought into the club, and I think it was around 100 million, right, back in 2018. Three years later, Kretinsky's $168 million that he paid Golden Sullivan covered their entire purchase price combined with everything that they put into the club ever easily, comfortably, right? So effectively, they were taking money off the table, de-risking their entire thing. And basically from then on, they're owning 70 odd percent of West Ham for free because they haven't actually had, they've got all their original investment out. That was regarded at the time, by the way, as being a reasonably toppy price for West Ham.

33:34If you remember, it was a very similar time to when Amanda and Merdad were buying Newcastle with PIF, and they paid 300 million for Newcastle. And Newcastle and West Ham would be broadly comparable size clubs in terms of size of support, history, all that kind of stuff, stadium size, etc. So to be paying double, Kretinsky paying double the valuation that they paid at Newcastle, albeit that was a good deal, but nonetheless, it was still double, was regarded as being pretty punchy and Golden Sullivan got themselves a good deal. Because not just that they got a good valuation, they'd also maintained full control.

34:14Just to be really clear on that number, because I was just double checking. So he bought the 27 % for$168 million, meaning that your valuation is actually$600 odd million. Correct. Correct. So now, what it now looks like is that part of that deal, as a way of Sullivan and Gold protecting themselves, was what we would call a drag and tag arrangement. And what that meant was, is that if either Gold or Sullivan agreed to sell a sufficient number of shares to Kratinsky to take him into control position, i.e. more than 50%, that effectively Kratinsky would also have to offer the other party in that to buy out their shares, but at a higher price than the 600 million, which is broadly understood to be 1 billion.

35:10Right? Yeah. So in other words, David Gold dies. David Gold's shares get passed down to his wife and family, daughter, etc. They decide we don't want to be owners of West Ham United anymore. We'd just like to have our money out. Thanks very much. And we're not worried about this whole$1 billion valuation or whatever. We're just going to strike the best possible deal we can do with Kratinsky. So let's say that they had sold their whole 25%, remaining 25%, because don't forget there's been some substance in the meantime. But let's just say they sold their 25 % to Kratinsky, taking him then to 52%.

35:49Under that basis, he would then have to buy Sullivan out of his entire stake at a much higher valuation, right? So it would mean that Kratinsky, whatever deal he did with the Gold family, would end up paying David Sullivan hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds to not just have 51%, 52%, but to own the entire thing. Now, of course, what's happening... And most importantly, if that's in the Premier League, maybe he could stomach that and maybe that cleans up and he still looks at it as a good investment. When they got relegated, this whole thing became a real problem. Because you're not going to pay that excess for a club in the championship.

36:26Right. Even the 600 million valuation that he paid in the first place and that Amanda and Mairdad are talking about paying now is an outlandish valuation in the championship. I mean, utterly, utterly outlandish. The highest valuations ever paid in the championship are around about£150 million, which was for Ipswich Town a couple of years ago, you know, when they were on the turn between the championship and the Premier League, right? And even that was regarded, that$150,$170 million valuation for Ipswich Town, people thought at the time, my God, for a club in the championship, that's unbelievable.

37:01$600 million is off the scale, is a huge punt for anyone to pay a£600 million valuation for a club in the championship. Because if that club stays in the championship and loses its parachute payments, you're going to have a big problem down the track as Leeds United found, as Villa found, as Sunderland found, etc. But nonetheless, that's 600 million. A billion? You're way out of the ballpark because even big Premier League clubs like Everton was valued at 650 million pounds as an established Premier League club, etc. So Kratinsky couldn't allow that to happen, which is why he wasn't coming forward with a scheme to buy out all of the gold shares.

37:43Instead of which, what he did is he and Sullivan, before Sullivan had his personal problems, he and Sullivan both agreed to buy a certain proportion each of the gold shares, okay, to take them both up to, I think it was about 41 % each. So it wouldn't trigger the necessity for Kratinsky to buy all of Sullivan's shares. It would keep them both below 50%, and they would basically operate the club in a sort of JV. That was the deal that Kratinsky and Sullivan thought that they had agreed with the Gold family. They then got totally blindsided where instead of executing on that deal, the Gold family then effectively went behind their backs and agreed a deal to sell the entire of their 25 % stake to PCP, which is Amanda Stabley and Merdad Caducey and their backers.

38:33and the assumption would have been from PCP, from Amanda and Merdad and co the assumption would have been well Kratinsky's had a long time here to buy out these shares and to take a majority it looks like he doesn't really want to do that so actually what we can do here is we can probably start to enter into a negotiation with David Sullivan who's basically no longer even allowed to come to the club over his shareholding and we could actually end up leaving Kratinsky in there as a 27 % shareholder with us operating the rest of the club with 73%. And that would be absolutely fine. And we could then make an offer to Kratinsky at our leisure for those shares.

39:11So what's Kratinsky done? Kratinsky's done something really, really interesting. And, you know, I was going to say quite sneaky, but I guess he would feel that he's been had something quite sneaky done on him first. So what he's done is he's worked out that if he gets his 27 % down to 24.5%, he could then buy the 25 % of the gold shares and take himself up to 49.5%. And if prior to doing that, he'd sold that 2.5 % that he needs to sell to get himself down 24.5 % to a mate, effectively, he could have 49.5%, a mate of his could have 2.5%, and between him and his mate, they would have 52 % of the business without him triggering the need to buy Sullivan's shares.

39:58Okay. So that effectively is, and that's using a mechanism that we call preemption, right? Which is that effectively what you'll find in any shareholder agreement is that when one of the shareholders agrees a deal to sell their shares to an external party, those shares and that deal gets offered to the existing shareholders who can gazump it if they want by simply saying, we'll do that deal. We'll pay you the same amount for that deal. So in other words, Vanessa Gold says, right, I'm going to sell my 25 % for whatever it was, 150 million pounds, okay, to PCP. And that notification goes out to Kratinsky and to Sullivan.

40:39Sullivan says, no, thanks very much. I've already got too many shares in this club. I'm not even allowed to come to the stadium. I can't be a director of the club. I need to be thinking at some point, divesting myself of my shares. I don't want to be buying more shares, particularly. No, thanks very much. Kratinsky says, actually, yes, I'm going to buy them. Oh, and by the way, I've just sold 2.5 % of my existing shareholding to a mate. Right. So that is where we are right now. So effectively, he has, at least in theory, blocked the PCP offer by making the same offer himself. Now, the legal eagles will have to get involved to work out whether Kratinsky he's selling 2.5 % to a mate at short notice really does constitute or does not constitute him effectively getting into a control situation and then triggering the entire purchase by Sullivan.

41:33These things will play out, I guess, in the coming weeks and months. What do you reckon, Charlie? I just wanted to ask you a question, actually, and for fans as well, because from a business point, this is fascinating. We know that what matters most to football fans is obviously how this all translates to on the pitch. And we know that on the pitch has been a big problem for West Ham and they're going into their first season outside the top flight in many years. How much of a concern is this to the actual operations of the club ahead of this season? Fully appreciating that there are a number of issues that need to get sorted out behind the scenes.

42:05There's a huge amount of debt in the club. There's already challenges with the existing leadership, as we've said, even if you don't bring more people in. What do you think about that part of it? um well it's a totally valid question because at the moment effectively you've got a vacuum of control right so i guess at the moment in theory at least the club is being operated by a combination of um sullivan and kratinsky um they've got an interim chief executive in there who i know who's a really good guy of ronnie um and you know who was at rangers previously um and i think actually West Ham previous to that in a less senior position.

42:44Commercial though, wasn't it? He's a really good guy, actually. And I think the general consensus is that over the summer, for once, they've actually executed a pretty good transfer selling strategy. They've actually done a pretty good job of shipping out those big Premier League stars and they haven't been held over a barrel and sold them cheap. It looks like they've sold them quite expensively. They've persuaded Jarrett... Matias Fernandes, Crescensio Somerville, just to be clear, They're both going for, well, I think about 60 to 80 million each. And I think we covered on a previous episode that they had to do that.

43:18They had to do that because they had this enormous overhang of existing transfer liabilities from the previous seasons that they simply had to clear, right? But what they still then do have, of course, is parachute payments for the next year or two, which enable them to keep together quite a bit of that squad. And one thing they have been able to do is keep Jarrod Bowen in the club for one extra season. Now, the rumour is they've said to Bowen that if they don't get promoted this season, that he will then be sold next summer. And Bowen seems to be happy with that scenario. But there are obvious holes in their squad which they now need to fill.

43:57And the rhythms of a championship season compared to a Premier League season are a little bit different. So, first of all, the championship, or the Football League in general, tends to start a week to two weeks before the Premier League. And secondly, I think, generally speaking, football league clubs get their squads in place earlier and firmer so they can start the season, particularly if you're looking to get promoted where you can't afford too many losses. They tend to get their squads together a bit earlier to make sure that they don't go and ship a few early defeats, which can really jeopardise your ultimate promotion.

44:28Whereas in the Premier League, when the aim is simply to try and stay in the Premier League, I almost feel like sometimes Premier League clubs towards the bottom end think, well if we are still putting our squad together towards the back end of august early september and if we're not quite in the perfect position that might not be quite such a bad problem because you know we are going to lose matches on a regular basis anyway so we're not giving up quite as much so i guess my concern would be this go back to your original question is that notwithstanding them having operated rather more professionally this summer under verani than they have done under previous supposed leaderships, I guess Karen Brady being the one, nonetheless, they are still a bit of a shambles, right?

45:12That they are trying to repair that shambles. They're trying to get the whole thing sorted out, but it is still a bit of a shambles. And if you then get a slow start, and if after a month of the championship season, you are seven, eight, nine points off the pace, and there are other well-funded clubs or other parachute payment clubs who are banging away at the top of the table, you're simply making the likelihood of that quick return an awful lot harder. Now, what does that then mean? Well, that means if they don't go up this season, they're then staring down the abyss because it means you've only got one season of proper parachute payments left, which means you then have to start cutting your cloth in terms of your squad size and all that kind of thing.

45:51So this is crucial. And then we come back to this whole valuation piece of if you pay 600 million for something like this, it's incredibly problematic. and even Amanda and Merda buying in right now, if you're looking at their ability to influence, it's a huge amount of money to put into a club right now where you've got little influence over at least the performance side at the back end of a window. They haven't made a single signing this summer. They may have sold well, but they haven't made a single signing. And I thought even some of the decisions they sold without getting too technical on the player side, they sold Freddie Potts for 10 million to Club Bruges.

46:19This is a player that is championship proven. He's actually been carving out a fantastic career at that level who you'd be looking at as the squad going, do you know what? I'm not sure about Jean-Claire Tadibo's ability to operate. centre-back in the championship. That's an area of concern for me. But I am looking at a Freddie Potts, that type of player, to be a real kind of bring it together of that championship level football requirement. So, yeah, I'd be worried and I'm sure they are very worried. But mostly, as you say, if you don't go up, that's a huge concern on the business. I think you're absolutely right.

46:51I mean, there's something that Premier League fans haven't quite got their head around yet is how good the championship is, right? And I'm saying that on an objective basis So I saw the Opta league rankings recently. So Opta used data to determine the rankings of the leagues throughout the entire world and how they sit amongst or below each other. The championship is now the 10th top league in the world. About on a par with the Iridovacy in the Netherlands. So you would expect a top club in the championship would be about on a par these days with Ajax Amsterdam. That's about where things sit, right?

47:35So any sort of blithe assumptions that, oh, well, it's the championship, it's all very easy, should be fine, no problem, etc, etc, etc. I just don't think that's the case anymore. I think it's really, really tough. and the nature of the season when you have many more matches and where as the big dog, you are the cup final every single week, right? So every single week you're playing as a team that ups its game by 5 % because they're playing against West Ham United rather than playing against, dare I say from last year, my club Oxygen United, you know. So this is a big sporting challenge that awaits West Ham.

48:14And whilst they have been doing as good a job as they possibly could do during the summer in getting their shit together, getting things straight. It still feels to me like they're kind of a month to two months away from having a settled, proper championship squad that's worked out how to play with each other, that Nuno's worked out who fits where and all this type of stuff. So I'd be very concerned about that going forward. But actually, you know, on a bigger level, the bottom line is that once a club becomes subsumed with this kind of power struggles, internal fighting and all this type of stuff.

48:50You just have problems. You alluded to earlier on that Amanda and Murdad were broadly speaking popular with the Newcastle fan base because they took over a club that had been becalmed and not going in the right direction under Mike Ashley. And they were able to inject that bit of direction, bit of structure, and obviously new capital coming from Saudi Arabia. Without that, I don't know, they got very far. I noticed that the comments from the West Ham fans groups on this proposed takeover are not positive. They felt that under the Kratinsky and Sullivan scheme, which basically saw Kratinsky taking a bigger role in the club, that that was something which offered stability and a sort of platform to build off going forward.

49:30And they are very worried that this whole power struggle is going to basically derail this season and that that will have significant consequences going forward. Now, that's not obviously something that Amanda and Merdad are intending. That's not the point. They want to take over. They would want to be there in charge as quickly as possible. But once Kratinsky has pushed back and has said, I'm going to fight this, then you do have the prospect of there being wranglings going on over the coming weeks and months. Exactly. But I mean, less something on Madden Merdad Consortium PCP, more on anyone coming into this and derailing something at this stage because as you've highlighted now you know whether they like Kratinsky and Sullivan or not it's not really the point I think sensibly what they'll be looking at is they'll be realizing what the most important elements of West Ham are right now and it is to navigate the next however many months to try and get back to where they need to be the last thing they need to be doing is trying to do that on the pitch and in the boardroom with no one actually with the capacity to make decisions let's see it would be really problematic and it's a big a great club for them to have problems that put them you know further in the mire I hope I hope that doesn't happen Shall we have a quick little look at horse racing?

50:44Because the big old topic is back. I'm just going to sit back a little moment here. And it's nice and sunny outside. And I'm going to let a little shaft of sunlight come over and get a little halo over my head here. Because Charlie's about to cover me with warm, treacle words for having predicted three months ago. Or predicted or encouraged or said something that I think should happen. rather like I've just said, I think that UEFA need to now use the moment and take over control of world football. Back in March, Charlie, we had a look at the political landscape of horse racing in Great Britain and what a mess it was.

51:24And what I said was the Jockey Club need to leave the Race Course Association and take charge of horse racing. And that's exactly what seems to have happened. And that is what has, the first bit at least, has happened. Sorry, you meant, so I have to begrudgingly admit that you predicted this and now we must all, I mean, there's no begrudging about it. What happens when I predict something that doesn't come true is you dig up an old clip from two years ago and play it live on a show to try to embarrass me, just to give yourself a few kicks along the way. So in this case, whilst I'm not expecting you to replay the clip of me predicting that the Jockey Club would resign from the Racecourse Association and take full leadership of the industry, I am nonetheless grateful that you do at least remember me making this prediction.

52:11So what's happened? What's happened is this on Monday, that is two days ago, as we are recording on Wednesday, the jockey club put out a statement announcing that it had told the Racecourse Association that it would leave the RCA by the end of the year. Now, when we did our first survey of British horse racing, I said, look, don't get put off by all these three letter acronyms or TLAs, as I like to call them. That's just how racing rolls. OK, the reality about horse racing in the UK is it is a governance mess and has been ever since the Jockey Club gave up full control of the sport in the mid 1990s and was encouraged by the governments of that time to hand it over to a series of committees.

52:59And on those committees sat representatives of all the various different constituent parts of horse racing, a representative of the owners, a representative of the thoroughbred breeders, a representative of the trainers, and so on and so forth. But, crucially, the blocking vote was held by the Racecourse Association, the trade body of the racecourses. And because the Racecourse Association has the same voting structure as FIFA, one race course, one vote, what that meant was is that the entirety of British horse racing was held hostage and has been held hostage for 30 years by the small race courses because there are more small race courses than there are big race courses.

53:41Even though the big race courses account for 80 to 90 % of all of what's good about British racing, revenues, attention, TV, global appeal, all of that kind of stuff, Nonetheless, the small race courses, most of which are coagulated into a group called ARC, which is a race course group owned by the Rubin family, basically had the whip hand over the entire industry. Because whenever any proposal came up, the Race Course Association, which effectively was being driven by the small race courses, would just say, no, we're not doing that. right? And this was particularly relevant in terms of the number, just to recap what we said in March, in terms of the number of fixtures that there are in British racing.

54:28Unbelievably, in British racing, there are almost one and a half thousand fixtures, 1 ,500 fixtures. Yes, that's right. There are about four race meetings, sometimes five, sometimes six, every single day. And the central funding for fixtures, which comes from a betting tax imposed on the bookmakers, which creates something called the levy, which is then distributed to help fund all those race meetings through prize money, effectively is then spread throughout those 1 ,500 fixtures, which means that not enough of the funding reaches the bigger fixtures and the bigger courses, which then means that British horse racing is disadvantaged compared to the rest of the world, which then means that large owners and large breeders move their interests away from British racing to Hong Kong, to Australia, to South Africa, to America, even to Latin America, because there ain't enough money going around in UK horse racing.

55:26And this has been well known and well understood for a long while. But the small race courses who grab in this funding to fund their irrelevant, pathetic fixtures that no one wants to watch have simply said, no, we do not want to agree to anything, which means that we don't have as many fixtures, because that might mean that we, a small race course, cease to exist, right? So it's existential for them. If you are a small race course and you have 20 fixtures a year, and suddenly it's announced instead of having 20 fixtures a year, you're now going to have 10 fixtures a year, basically means you don't exist anymore.

56:04That means as a business, you can't function. Sorry, Charlie. So are we looking at a little bit of a FIFA challenge model in that, in the sense where you just got an imbalance in proportion? Yes. So what happened was, what happened back in March, which preempted our original discussion on what we call the civil war within racing, was the Ascot racecourse, the racecourse owned effectively by the king, but run for him by a committee that oversees, Basically, it's run by His Majesty's representative at Royal Ascot, Sir Francis Brooke. The Ascot had announced suddenly that it was going to leave the Racecourse Association because it did not believe that the Racecourse Association was representing the interests of British racing going forward.

56:50Huge row, huge controversy, very brave move, which I absolutely massively applaud Sir Francis Brooke for overseeing. Fantastic. Well done. And I speculate, I said, the jockey club now need to step forward. The jockey club now need to get out of their, you know, sort of self-imposed silence of the last 30 to 40 years. And they need to step forward. Why? Because to remind people, the jockey club is not just a private members club that used to run British horse racing. It also owns, other than Ascot, a majority of the biggest race courses in the country. It owns Cheltenham. It owns Aintree. It owns Newmarket.

57:25It owns Epsom. It owns Sandown Park. It owns Kempton Park. It owns most of the big race tracks in the country, and therefore, most of the big races in the country, the Derby, the Guineas, the Grand National, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, all of them, jockey club, right? So effectively, they are the ones, and their race courses and their races are the ones that are suffering the most from there being too many fixtures. Because money that should be being used to give the best possible prize money to the biggest possible races at the biggest possible race courses is being spread around all of these irrelevant small fixtures that no one cares about.

58:02So the jockey club now has stepped forward and said, right, that's it, we're out. And I just want to just before we hand over to you to start quizzing me on this. Their statement was neither a Belgian Football Federation statement nor a HP statement. It was a very good statement. It was well thought through in that it was diplomatically put together, but carried a punch. Right. We have begun discussions with the BHA. That's the British Horse Racing Authority. to explore the most appropriate framework for representing the interests of those within the industry who share a commitment to the long-term sustainability and quality of British racing.

58:45Remember that word, quality. It is our intention to work with ASCOT and other like-minded industry partners to pursue a new vision for racing. Now, this is big. This is really big. What this really means when we talk about like-minded industry partners, what we mean by that are the Owners Association and the Trainers Federation and the breeders. That's what we mean, right? So we mean basically the Jockey Club and their race courses and ASCOT, which is overseen by Jockey Club members, so it's the same thing really, basically saying we're fed up of being chucked in a bucket with the other race courses.

59:25They're a bunch of ass. We're not interested in them. we are now going to basically get together with the big owners, get together with the big trainers, get together with the big breeders. And we're basically going to start our campaign to fuck off all the small courses. That's what we're going to do. And is that because in this situation, you talked about 1 ,500, right? Which is an absolutely extraordinary number, as you said, five a day. I mean, that's absolute madness. Is that because this has to be a less is more? This has to be a quality control level at the top. You mentioned quality, right?

59:53100%. The biggest threat to the industry in this element is having too much crap, too much that doesn't matter. It devalues the broader product. You've got a few key elements here, which are hugely valuable, hugely attractive to punters, hugely valuable to the broader industry from a financial perspective of broadcasters. I mean, I just try and understand how, you say how big this is. You know, is this shifting power from the top institutions in racing? Are they basically making a stand trying to bring people with them? Or are they making a stand going, no, hang on, we need to be the controlling entity here.

1:00:24And it's like almost more like a land grab for a jockey club or is it a, we're making our position known and we want you to come with us, but if you don't, we're going to then go and do this anyway? Great question. Right. So behind all these three-letter acronyms and even just generic things like the jockey club and ASCOT and the Racehorse Owners Association and the Thoroughbred Breeders Association and the National Trains Federation, the thing to understand is a A lot of the people who fundamentally matter in these organizations are the same people, right? So the biggest owners are also members of the jockey club.

1:01:01The biggest breeders are also members of the jockey club. The people who sit on the committee that oversees ASCUS on behalf of the king are members of the jockey club. So it's all the same people, really. All they're saying is we're no longer going to be barricaded behind some bloody committee with a bunch of small race courses telling us what's good for racing. We are now going to work basically amongst ourselves to work out what is best for racing. Now, in the meantime, a new chairman of the British Horse Racing Authority has been appointed. Now, he's not a well-known person from within the industry.

1:01:38This is not somebody, and it's almost been, it feels to me like he's almost been deliberately chosen because no one really knows who he is. right um there were other candidates for the job um who had been major figures in public life and in racing so sir peter savile on the one hand um famous businessman from the 80s 90s and 2000s who's also a previous head of the british horse racing board minette batters the former head of the national farmers union you know these were high profile candidates for that position um but they chose somebody whose name I think is Simon Cox or something like that.

1:02:14His name escapes me because he just doesn't have any kind of profile or background within the industry, has been chosen to be chairman of the BHA. Now, he comes into an interesting situation, which is, does he read the writing on the wall and go and speak with the jockey club and ask it and the various other like-minded, as the jockey club puts them, like-minded souls? Or does he try and do the classic thing that happens on committees, which say, well, it's very important that we all get in the room together and we all agree, compromise and consensus. Because if he does that, he's going to fail.

1:02:47Because the jockey club have made it very, very clear that that's not where they're headed. The jockey club have basically said, we've had enough of all that committee stuff. We've had enough of all the consensus. We are now going to lead a conversation with the other groups and entities and people who we think matter in horse racing, and we are going to drive that forward. And that is what is going to happen now. And it's a long overdue conversation. But fundamentally, what it comes down to is, if at any point, rather like UEFA and FIFA, if at any point the jockey club really decided to throw its toys out the pram, right no one could stop it because it controls so such a big proportion of the revenues of of racing that fundamentally you couldn't really control it there's not that there's no other entity within the sport that can control it because its revenues are so much bigger i think we've said before the arc which owns all those small courses that their total revenues i think are something like 140 million a year something like that yeah for their entire group right but ASCOT's revenues as one course are higher than that, right?

1:03:55And that's just ASCOT. Before you get on to Cheltenham, we're even bigger, right? Aintree, even bigger, etc. So what we're talking about here is the big powers within racing saying, that's enough. These committees don't work. We're not going to be blocked by the RC anymore. We're not going to work that way. We are now going to work out how many fixtures there should be. So just to your point, Charlie, to cap this conversation, There are two problems to having as many fixtures as there currently are. One of those problems is that the sport cannot afford it. So the total amount of betting levy that we receive in effectively taxed from the bookmakers is not sufficient to fund that number of fixtures.

1:04:35The second problem, which you actually alluded to, which sometimes I think people in racing don't fully understand, perhaps as you do, is you can't expect the sporting public to keep focus and concentration on a narrative surrounding a sport when they're being asked to look at 1 ,500 fixtures. It's just totally impossible. It's implausible. It's like, even if you're absolutely devoted to the sport and really care about it, and it's your main love in life, you are not going to be able to pay attention to 1 ,500 fixtures every season. And once you are not paying attention to all of them, then inevitably you start to say, well, what's the point of trying at all?

1:05:17Because if I can't see the whole picture, then there's no point in me really paying attention to the whole lot. And I think we see this a little bit sometimes with the basketball season in America. where there are just so many fixtures in the main season that a lot of even quite committed basketball fans go, do you know what? I'm just going to wait until the playoffs. I'm just not interested. I can't follow this. This is just totally mind-boggling, the amount of matches I'm being expected to watch. So I think this is a watershed moment. It's a decision that will not have been come too lightly.

1:05:46I'm absolutely delighted that they have come to that decision. And I cannot believe, having come to that decision, that the jockey club is now going to agree to some sort of bullshit committee structure being put back in again. They're going to want to see a fully independent British Horse Racing Authority board and they are going to want to control the agenda of that independent British Horse Racing Authority board basically by saying, this is the direction you need to be going in. Fantastic. As usual. I sit here and I just sit back and I learn. It's great. I'm sure everyone else does as well.

1:06:21The passion, Charlie, the passion. And we'll give you the credit, right? You lead the conversation. You brought this up. I was joking before when I didn't want to say it. We'll find the clip and make sure the team can play it. I can't just play clips of you saying Tottenham will forever be a top six side. I can't just do it.

1:06:38We'll make sure to give you credit where credit's due. But yeah, well, let's see. Maybe they'll get back there. But yeah, it's a serious week. There's a huge amount there. We're going to go and talk about even another huge thing that's happened, which was the, should we say, what many people believe is a very light punishment that was given to Chelsea for 74 breaches of regulation and then also look at the more broader challenge of regulation in football and what accurate punishment should really be. So we're going to go and do that on Substack. Now, if you want to come and join us for that, it'd be fantastic.

1:07:09But otherwise, we will see you next week and I hope there is plenty in there for you to get on board with and speak to us about. So a huge thank you from Cornwall, Charlie. Appreciate you tapping in for the grind and we'll see you next week. Let's do more. let's get over the sub stack and keep going Chas Fantastic see you next week guys

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