THE BREAKDOWN: Italian football in Crisis, is the Grand National losing it’s magic, & Chelsea break ANOTHER unwanted record (E14)

23:17In July 2006, Juve were stripped of the 2004 to 2005 title that they had won, and they were relegated back to Serie B. Now what happened in the years that followed, slightly typical Italian style, dare I say, is that there were various sort of attempts or moves towards indicting some of the people who were involved in this, but eventually these took so long that they got timed out. In 2015, I saw that they all got overturned. Well, they didn't even get overturned. It was a statute of limitations. These trials have gone on too long, therefore these people are free to go type thing. There was one one-year sentence for a ref.

23:52Right, let's not go into too much detail on this, other than to say that when you have, in any sport, a proof, public proof of systemic corruption within that sport. It leads to a massive level of cynicism and skepticism amongst the fans and potential fans of that sport or of that rights holder or that entity, whatever it might be, which inevitably leads to a diminution of audience. Yeah. And linking to the media, it is important because it actually led to significant governance type shift. So what I mean by that is there was something called the Malandry Law that was brought in, which meant as a result of this, a media deal couldn't be made that was longer than three years.

24:34It meant that there could be no single buyer and big clubs were no longer allowed to negotiate the deal. So previously, the clubs had negotiated the media deal. So Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milan just using those three. Again, they would negotiate the deals from the big media partners and then the smaller clubs would have to be basically sweeping up the scraps. Then it was all centralised in this deal. Now, the whole point is that obviously they want to make it more equal. They want to raise the competitive balance. and they want to stop the clubs being able to do things like they've been able to do, which have corrupted the sport in the eyes of many.

25:04It's partially system, isn't it? It's partially just a problem, which is when you've proven that your competition is corrupt, that's a hard sell. Yeah. I mean, that is a hard sell. And that's leaving aside the fact that major clubs within it have been relegated, right? So you're also looking at a situation that you don't even necessarily have the biggest clubs competing in the top division because of relegations. I think what is true is that the mess that Calcio Polly created over a four-year period in every way, commercially, in terms of the actual integrity of the competition itself, in terms of the public reputation of football within Italy, in terms of just the amount of mind space and media space that was being taken up with basically corruption.

25:41I think that is just unbelievably unhelpful. So let's just say that it is indisputable that Calciapoli was a massive negative for Italian football as a whole. But it's not the only thing, is it, Charlie? There's another glaring thing that stands out, which is we call it match day we call it stadiums infrastructure yeah um the ability of clubs to generate really important revenues that other clubs across other leagues are now doing with increasing power and influence and this is a problem in italy because a lot of the clubs don't actually own their own stadiums so they lease their stadiums from the local councils yeah juventus own their own stadium and juventus when they really got their themselves sorted out here they got their shit together they won nine titles in a row they made a ton of money off the back of it they kept all of that spending and they could put that back into the performance and the team and hey presto they started they started winning and competing at the top level in europe as well as as in italy so if you don't own your own stadium you don't get the revenues that or should we say all of the revenues yeah i mean it will depend from case to case okay so when we were running oxford united and we had a one of the oxford united's former landlords landlords as our as our sorry one of oxford united's former owners as our landlord and he was taking and still is taking to this day, all the hospitality revenues, food and beverage revenues, etc.

26:59There are other situations like at Charlton Athletic when I ran Charlton and another former owner of Charlton was our landlord and we had just a full repairing lease. We kept all the revenues. So actually, we had a pretty much total security of tenure. We could invest in the stadium knowing that whatever happened, okay, we were paying a rent, but whatever happened over time, it was worth investing in the stadium. So I think if you look at the Italian clubs, each of them had a slightly different situation, a slightly different arrangement with the local government. I think the issue is there was a degree of stasis where local governments would say, well, we're giving you a stadium.

27:34You should be bloody happy about that. You don't have to build your own stadium. You're lucky. The clubs at the time in the late 1990s and 2000s, which is when you think about it, when English clubs and German clubs started to really develop their stadiums. Italian clubs at the time, well, we're the biggest dogs in town. We don't worry about that. We can spend our money on players. as we don't want to spend our money on stadiums, particularly as we're not even the freeholder. Like, you know, the local government should spend money on the stadium, et cetera, et cetera. So effectively, it wasn't a problem until it was a problem.

28:03And I think that one theme that I want to draw out here, which I'm going to come on to a bit more later on, is that what has happened in England and Germany, and probably was already the case in Germany, but it is certainly the case in England and the case in Spain, is that football has managed to mop up the middle class as well as the working class. So in terms of match day attendance, if you just take English football being the one that we know about the best, you go back to my childhood and 90 % of the crowd, 95 % of the crowd would be what would be termed working class people. It was the working man's sport, working man's theater, whatever you might call it.

28:37And the facilities were very rudimentary and ticket prices were modest for obvious reasons. And hospitality was very, very limited. go forward 30 years and for better or for worse it is now more like a national sport where people from all types of different social backgrounds feel comfortable coming to watch live football and if you want to spend a bit more to be in more comfortable seats etc that's fine the incipient threat of violence and hooliganism is very very low in england now so you can be pretty sure that you're gonna be able to bring your family without it turning out the wrong way in italy crumbling stadiums dominated by ultras and having watched a lot of live football in Italy and quite liking having a bit of edge in the crowd myself I'm partially Argentine I like watching football in Argentina as well I quite like it but it's not necessary to everyone's taste when it comes to young mums thinking about whether to take their seven or eight year olds to the football that kind of ultra style and that ultra edge with smoke bombs going off and with thousands of black shirted people jumping up and down chanting in a sort of fairly intimidating way is just not calculated to draw the most money possible out of the local population into that football stadium so compare that sorry not compare add that to the fact that then a lot of stadiums are just not very nice places to actually be in absolutely right and there's no there's no need to go someone actually said to me the other day they said oh my god you got to go to the sancero before it gets knocked down we'll get around to it soon go to the sancero before it gets knocked down but don't go to the loo there.

30:07Right. And the reason was that was purely just because it is in such a bad state. It's a terrible state. I went there last year. It's in a terrible state. And when people say it goes to San Siro before it's knocked down, it reminds me of people telling me you need to go to Havana, Cuba, before the whole Castro regime goes. Okay, before that whole sort of communist state falls. Just to see basically how crap it is, right? Just to actually get a sort of window in time in saying, wow, this is how it was. This is what it's like. And that's what it's like going to the San Siro now. And the whole atmosphere is like being transported back to Stamford Bridge 1988.

30:47Right. It's quite dark. It's quite intimidating. There's quite clearly large groups of, you know, people for whom even if they're not going there for violence, it's certainly an option. It's certainly something that could happen and so on and so forth. Last time I went to Lazio, it was the same. Now, this isn't particular to Italy. I mean, I've noticed in Belgium, where I currently am co-owner of a club in Belgium, as you know, that even at our small club in Belgium, it's very dominated by the ultras. So if we have a crowd of 2 ,500 people, 500 or 600 of them will be the ultras, all wearing black shirts.

31:26The leader of the ultras, as is the case in Italy, will sing for the whole game with his back to the football. so he won't be watching the football and the ultras will sing and chant almost regardless of what is happening on the pitch and there will be smoke bombs etc and do you have an idea about how that culture works we had an away match the other day and the team that we were playing away at not unreasonably said we're a very small stadium we can't accommodate all of your ultras right we've only got room for 250 whatever 152 250 of them because we're a small club and we don't have the arrangements in place to deal with more than that so the ultras then said well if not all of us can come then none of us are going to come right so they then all go there and stand outside the ground chanting outside the ground rather than 200 of them actually coming inside the ground as they would have been allowed to do to watch the game to give you an insight into the mindset the ultras believe in Italian football that they are the real owners of the club the true owners of the club and that their culture is more important than anything else to do with that club.

32:33Now, it's not for me to say whether that's right or wrong. It's for me to observe the fact that that has been a bar to the middle classes becoming actively involved in being football spectators in what is a very large, quite wealthy country. And this point about the ultras being very significant in Italian football, it's not me saying this, just because I've been there a few times. Fabio Capello said when he was the England manager and he was asked about Italian football and he said, not in a positive way, the ultras are in control of Italian football. So this isn't just a marginal thing. This isn't just, well, you know, it's nice, it's all the old days with the working class.

33:08This is a very particular culture, a very particular movement, often quite politicized as well. So there'll be some clubs where the ultras will be regarded as being far right and other clubs where the ultras will be seen as being far left, which again is fundamentally divisive. So you're then not necessarily making a welcoming environment for people who don't share those political views. So it just comes with lots of complications. It comes with great atmosphere, by the way. So, you know, that's great, but it does come with complications from a business perspective, which then in terms of the money available, both to invest in the stadium and in the football product on the pitch and in your academy and in so on and so forth, that has been gradually diminishing in comparison to other European leagues.

33:45And let's run this through. The middle classes have been really important in other clubs being able to gain more revenue in their match days and hospitality. And those revenues have allowed clubs to go then and eventually spend more. And there was a stat I was looking at, which is interesting, on the Napoli front, where it's 54 ,000-seater stadium. They did 41 million euros in revenue. Now, if you're looking at, let's say, just another Premier League club, you'd be doing three times that in some of the stadiums for a similar number of people. So that is 80 million more that that club can then put to use in other areas.

34:14If you're just keeping it really simple, that's what we're talking about. So we're looking at Italian football going from the absolute heights of Europe to now being a long way behind a number of the leagues. And stadium and infrastructure is really important. Euro 2032, they are hosting. They're co-hosting Euro 2032. Currently, only Juventus' stadium meets the requirements. San Siro, after however many years of Inter and AC trying to get control of this site so they could actually do something to it. But at the end of 2025, Inter and AC struck an agreement for the land that San Siro sits on for 197 million euros, leading to them being able to now develop a one plus billion super San Siro stadium.

34:55Let's keep moving because there's lots of stuff to get into here. So we've got Calciopoli, the corruption scandal. We've got the gradual diminution of TV revenues compared to other leagues for various reasons, some of them related to Calciopoli. And then we've got the ultra culture, which is combined with crumbling stadiums is making the stadiums unattractive to a certain type of potential spectator, leading to less revenue for top flight clubs and so on and so forth. However, it's not just about that, because I think a lot of those things would also apply to some other European countries that have been competitive.

35:28I actually just named Belgium. Belgium, that would all apply to Belgium. Crumbling stadiums, diminishing TV revenues, ultra culture would all apply to Belgium. and yet Belgium's national team over the last 10 to 15 years has been one of the best in the world. So it's clearly not just about that. Well, interestingly, most of their players play abroad. Yes, a lot of them do, but they start out in Belgium normally and to a high level end up with, you know, at Anderlecht and FC Bruges. Good academies in Belgium. Well, this is where you really get into. Is this where you were getting excited? Well, this is where I was getting interested in terms of just from a technical football perspective as opposed to the obvious more cultural things that go on because sometimes it is about the technical side.

36:09Yeah. And it's boring. That's why people don't... It's much easier to say... Stick with us, guys. It's not boring to me. It might be boring to some people. It's much easier for somebody to flick a switch that says ultra culture, crumbling stadiums. It's all true, but I don't think it's the whole story. So in 2010, and this was almost at the start of the great underperformance, okay? But nonetheless, it was recognised that there was underperformance. Inter Milan won the Champions League in 2010. It was around then, wasn't it? Diego Milita. That was the last time they won a Champions League. That's interesting.

36:41Thank you. So in 2010, the Italian great Roberto Baggio was appointed president of the Italian Football Federation Technical Board, effectively technical director of the Italian Football Federation. And clearly it had been recognized that there were problems. Otherwise, Baggio would not have been appointed. Because what Baggio then went off and did is he spent a year researching and then writing a 900-page blueprint called, called slightly blandly, Renewing the Future, whatever that means. But 900 pages. From what I'm told, this document was scathing. And what it was scathing about were the things that I think lie at the real heart of this, at the real heart of this problem.

37:23So he produced this document, was really about development pathways and about coaching and about academies and all of these technical things. Now, this work was being done in England at the same time. OK, so England, if you remember, also had significant underperformance at this moment. England then produced the EPPP Academy system, which whatever else one might say about it, has led to a much more consistent flow of elite players coming into the English national team. Fair? OK. So what happened to Baggio's document? Instead of, as happened in England, it being implemented, it was put on a dusty shelf by the Italian Football Federation.

38:02Now, you have to have a look at the Italian Football Federation. The Italian Football Federation is structured like the FA used to be structured. So in other words, it's large committees. It's people voted for by the local county or, in their case, the local region. It's schools and all these different types of people have a stake in it, which all sounds great. but rule by committee in the sport doesn't work. You end up with Blazers and you end up with Blazers who don't necessarily have a professional background in these types of areas because the elite game is quite different from the sport as a whole.

38:35So Baggio's report got sat on. Baggio then resigned in 2013 and he, I can't remember the exact statement, he said basically I'm wasting my time. Okay? Now this is the moment at which everybody should have gone, oh dear, right? there's real, real, real problems here. But of course the thing is is that while things keep on going and bear in mind that at this point they're just qualifying for the 2014 World Cup. Okay, they got knocked out in 2010 and played poorly but they're still qualifying for the 2014 World Cup. So it's a bit of see no evil, hear no evil going on. Okay. But if you look at some of the themes that Baggio apparently developed in this blueprint which I haven't read and it's in Italian obviously.

39:15I'm not sure there's an English translation. 900 pages of Italian. Yeah, it's a little bit beyond me. Disappointing. I like to think you're well-researched for this. I've still got time to try and improve my Italian. It's coming from a low base. So to prepare for this item, I called the sports industry sage that is Roger Mitchell, the former chief executive of the Scottish Premier League who has lived in Como in Italy for the last 15 to 20 years. And Roger said to me, he said, look, all of that other stuff is true. Are the stadiums crumbling? Yes. Is there an ultra culture? Yes. Was there a massive corruption scandal?

39:53Yes, absolutely. Were any of these things helpful? Are any of these things helpful? Absolutely not. In his view, and ultimately in the view of Roberto Baggio 15 years ago, the real problem is about effectively the player performance pathway, as we would call it in football. What that basically means is how does a potentially elite young player get from being a really good 15-year-old? And by the way, Italy's international age group teams have performed quite well during the last 15 years. So that's another thing just to bear in mind. Their under-16s and under-18s have basically done broadly quite well in international competition.

40:26Not as well as England's have, but still pretty well. How do they get from there to actually playing for one of the top Italian clubs and therefore being exposed to a level of competition which enables them to progress to being elite players? And the answer is that nowhere near enough of them have. you're looking at about 70-75 % of the players in Serie A being foreign. Now, people will say that is largely also true of the English Premier League. I would make an observation that even in the less storied clubs in the Premier League, the current level of play is very, very high. And even if a very promising young player does get budged down to one of those clubs or the top end of the championship even, they're playing at a level which is higher than at the bottom end of Serie A.

41:14so if a player cannot get into Serie A right now then they are not going to be playing in a sufficiently high level of competition to enable them to progress and I just want to jump in can I just jump in that that Spain La Liga is about 50-55 % and the Bundesliga is about 50 % right 50-50 if you're looking at the comparative leagues for them where they go Premier League is out and it's a different case fine but your two other very close competitors have half of the players in their leagues domestic this is what Jürgen Klinsmann said this week so he's a man of international football former obviously great striker himself but also the former manager of the UN's men's national team.

41:50He's also managed the US men, not the UN's. I'd love to see the UN's football team. I wonder what that would look like. They'd have to have sort of split votes on who took the captaincy every game with China having a veto. Anyhow, so Klinsman says in Italy, Yamal and Musiala would probably play in Serie B to get experience that cannot be right so that's Klinsmann taking a global football person's view on Italian football and pointing out that even really talented young Italian players just don't get given a chance now there are two reasons for this I think one of which is the supremely tactical nature of Italian football so Italian coaches historically have and still do today I think play a game which is let's say where the defensive structure is very much taken into account at all times and therefore players who quote you know what you're going to get from them etc are valued more highly than they would be in some leagues where pace and power are more sort of valued in terms of like what can you give me going forward it's no now it's like well is he going to make a mistake in positional terms which then lets them score one goal which they then hang on to so that's one thing which I think is a systemic problem for Italian football that dates back decades and decades so is there a lack of attacking or just a defensive let's just say euphemistically a very tactical approach to football and I don't think that it would be controversial to say that Italian football in general has been regarded as outstanding at defence and what might be called the dark arts of football probably more than it's been known for outstanding attacking patterns of play.

43:30I had another stat very roughed and write it down so I probably just go with I think there were about 460 goals scored in the Champions League group phase this year eight scored by Italians. Striking, striking. Look, I think when we're talking about under-representation of Italians and sort of the lack of a performance pathway, it can all sometimes seem a bit theoretical. But actually, let's just drill down into it to make it real. And the reality is, is that yesterday, on Easter Bank holiday Monday, when Udinese played against Como, if you take the two starting 11s of those two clubs, only one of those players was Italian.

44:04So you've got 22 players playing an Italian Serie A match in a league which, as we've said, is not necessarily the best in the world. And even despite that, there are 21 foreigners and one Italian player playing. And that just can't be, that can't be dismissed as just a sort of, well, you know, there aren't enough good Italian players around. No, of course there are. Of course there are enough players, Italian players, who can play in what are, you know, good but not absolutely outstanding Serie A teams against each other. Italy get knocked out of World Cup on Wednesday, complaints or should we say reasoning for said knockout is poor performance pathway systems and the lack of Italian talent in Serie A.

44:44Serie A match happens on Monday with one Italian player on the pitch, which previously would have been unheard of. I mean, there's your chain of events, right? It makes sense. Now, the other thing which is put forward by critics is that over and above the style of play, there is a predilection for signing foreign players in general. And that some of those deals create, let's say, money, which then gets distributed in certain ways, which is good for people who are in the industry as a whole. So there are commissions being paid here. There are commissions being paid there. Sometimes this person's receiving a commission, but then he might recycle past that commission around to somebody who might have helped make the deal happen on the club side and all these types of things.

45:28There is a suspicion amongst people who are close observers of Italian football that this kind of practice, which has largely come out of the English game, the German game and the Spanish game in the last 20 years, what we might call brown envelope culture, that that still exists in parts of Italian football. and that therefore the alignment is, for those who are executives in football, is to be signing senior players because that's what makes the whole world go round. Whereas developing young players through your pathway is just not going to be as remunerative for everybody involved as it might be.

46:01I've been very careful with my words. I'm not actually saying that these are corrupt practices. Doubtless there are some within them in all leagues, not just in Italy, where there are some corrupt practices from time to time. But the idea that basically agents, other agents, brokers and executives somehow are more likely to benefit when there is a lot of transfer money being circulated around in the system, that seems to be an idea which a lot of people who look at Italian football are concerned about. They're concerned that that is something which Italian football is still addicted to in a way that other European leagues have gradually been weaning themselves off those kinds of practices.

46:39Not to say, of course, other European leagues don't spend money on transfers. They do. But given half a chance, they would rather develop one of their own ones. Really? Because that's pure profit in terms of what goes into your SMP and so on and so forth. So, look, I think we've traversed quite a number of topics here. We've mentioned the stadiums. We've mentioned the ultras. We've mentioned the big corruption scandal. All of that is true. We've mentioned the fact that even with the players that they do have, they should still be qualifying for World Cups. But I think, really, it all goes back to Roberto Baggio's document.

47:09That 2010 was when England turned themselves around and they took on board, I can't remember what the report was, but they took on board that report and implemented it at the same time as the Italian Football Federation put it on a dusty shelf and forgot about it. I don't know, it's really important here. This is absolutely not meant to be a bashing of Italian football. I think for me, my perspective, I said right at the beginning, it was amazing when Italy was strong as a footballing country. It brought great value into the competitions that we love. A strong Italy from a domestic football product is great for European football.

47:39and world football. I also find it very interesting that this comes at a time where actually Italian sport more broadly is doing very well. Absolutely. And I mean, Yannick Sinner in tennis, but actually they've got a number of players. They've got Caboli, they've got Lorenzo Massetti. Kimi Antonelli is winning Grand Prix's Formula One, younger than anyone else has. They had a record medals hall at the Winter Olympics. Did very well at the last Summer Olympics, had a recent 100 metre sprint champion, Jamal Jacobs. So you've got some excellent work going on. in Italian sport it's funny that football the most historic is the one that's going through its time of struggle yeah um anyway a really interesting look is a couple of English guys taking a look at this I'm sure the people those of you that are deep in it will will have many opinions please share them with us you know I'd love to love to hear different points of view on it but moving on to a very different subject matter we go very different and we go into your area of speciality where I see I think I say these days I don't think it's a stretch to say You're a bit of a star in the world of horse racing analysis.

48:39That's from my side. I can hear from the offices of the Racing Post a sort of a curled lip and a vague sort of gnashing of teeth as you say that, Charlie, because there will be others there who know far more about it than I do and who spend their whole life in it, whereas that's something that I used to do, whereas now, obviously, I only dip in and out of horse racing. So I have to accept that there are many people out there right now who are more on top of the detail than I am. But sometimes a little bit of distance lends you a little bit of objectivity and the ability to see the thing for what it is.

49:07And the subject matter that I wanted to focus on today is the world's biggest horse race. Well, maybe it fights for that title with the Melbourne Cup. Well, it's certainly from a broadcast, international broadcast. From an international broadcast perspective, you're talking about, you know, 500 odd million people watching it. So it is probably the biggest horse race in the world. It's the Grand National. The Grand National, that thing which I think sort of evocative childhood memories of the entire family watching the Grand National, most British people have had that experience. It's a sort of binding experience.

49:39Probably the only time of year people still, well, some people will buy a paper, actually buy the physical paper. And it's often to do the sweepstakes. To do the sweepstakes, indeed. Yeah, which will also be happening in offices around the country. So even as this comes out on Friday, the day before the Grand National, there'll be many people in offices who have, you know, probably taken their one annual interest in horse racing a year through having a stake in the sweepstake. But it's also a thing which, you know, many, many people bet on, take their own, you know, go to the bookmakers or go online.

50:10In 2022, around about 13 million people in the UK had a bet on the Grand National, and probably a total of around 250 to 300 million bet by the UK public on the race. That's like one in four adults. Yeah. In the UK. It's a lot. It's incredible, isn't it? Yeah, that's about right. About 25 % of the adult population takes financial interest in the outcome of the Grand National. I'm sorry, 250 to 300 million. bet on the race. Is the total amount bet in the UK on the race, yeah. Something like that. Obviously it fluctuates from, I think bookmakers will say that the weather makes a difference. So if the weather's not as good and more people are inside then you'll get more people betting on it.

50:53If it's a gloriously sunny day and more people are doing other pursuits sometimes they might miss it or forget about it whatever it might be. Charlie, can I ask a question? Yeah, please. For the lay horse racing person like myself that is one of those people that tuned in for the big events and this being one of them. What is it about the Grand National? Why was it the Grand National that became this historic event that's a great question um shall i start off by explaining what it is yeah um in racing terms so its first run in 1839 so we're coming up you know not that far away from its 200th running um or the be it though there were a few which weren't run for one reason or another but you know it's 200 years since it was started it's a handicap steeplechase do you understand what of handicapped steeplechases, Charles.

51:37Tell me. A steeplechase is a horse race where you're jumping over the big fences. And the reason it's called a steeplechase is because in its origin, groups of people would decide to have a race from one village to the next village. And the finishing line would be the steeple of the church. That would be your guiding line as you were racing across country from one village to the next. It's also a steeplechase, obviously, in running. So is that the same? But I always thought it was something to do with the fact there's water when they often jump over there. That's because it's an approximation of what a jumps race looks like.

52:07So the steeplechasing running comes a long way after the steeplechasing in the horse world, the racing world. So the steeplechasing would have been happening even before the Grand National happened, right? So the Grand National is a more organized version of a steeplechase, okay? Because steeplechases were basically like, hey, we're going to be racing over there. Come on, lads. You know, who's going to get there first type thing? You know, beers are on me if you beat me. Right. So it's run in an organized form, obviously, from 1839 onwards at Liverpool. Originally, I think it was known as something like the Liverpool Grand Steeplechase or whatever it might be, until eventually it becomes known as the Grand National.

52:47And it's a handicap. And a handicap means, and this is something which people outside of horse racing find sort of often totally perplexing. A handicap basically is where the horses that are entered in a race are assessed on a continual running basis, but before the race. And the ones that are better carry more weight to try and mean that they all end up having the same chance in the race. That's what a handicap is. And handicaps happen both in jump racing and in flat racing. Is it measured off the worst horse? It's measured off the top horse. The top horse. Right. So it's measured off the top horse.

53:21The highest weight that you're allowed to carry in the race will be, say, 12 stone, more or less. And then for every pound or one rating point less, the next horse carries a pound less and then half a stone less. Or if they're seven points lower in the ratings, it's half a stone less and so on and so forth, down to a minimum racing weight of 10 stone or 10 stone forward, depending on which type of race it is. And at the end of the race, they have to weigh back in to make sure they haven't got rid of some of the weight out there on the course. OK, so you'll often find at the end of a race, after the results is already known, the tannoy announcement will go, weighed in, weighed in.

54:00And that means that the jockeys have all weighed in, which means that the race result is formal. Cannot be changed after that point. Okay. So that is what a handicapped steeplechase is. Now, the Grand National takes place over four and a quarter miles. And that is, give or take, the longest race in the English racing calendar and indeed in the entire jump racing calendar. Because effectively, British and Irish and French jump racing is kind of where it's at. Four and a quarter miles is a long, long way. Normally, what might be called a long-distance steeplechase would be three miles, three and a quarter miles, gold cup, go to three and a half miles at Cheltenham, et cetera.

54:40And those regard as being what we call quite staying chases where you need quite a lot of stamina. To go to four and a quarter miles, that is a proper stamina test. But the Aintree, unlike Cheltenham, is flat, which helps a little bit. so historically what aintree was known for was being very long distance and with very difficult fences and these very difficult fences were what made aintree which is the the name of the race course where the grand national happens which is the liverpool race course aintree obviously anfield it's the same sort of um sophology um so effectively going back in time the fences were so difficult and so potentially dangerous that the very best horses, the type of horse that would run in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, would not be entered in the Grand National because they were too valuable, the fences were too difficult, and it was really more a race for slightly, well not slightly, often much less good horses who happen to be very good at jumping or sometimes a small-time trainer or small-time owner saying, let's give it a go, okay, let's just give it a go.

55:48It's the people's race. Let's see what happens. So that's the history of the race. And that's what the legend was built off. The legend was built off imprints from our childhood of watching horses tumble over at Beecher's Brook, watching jockeys being flung sideways from the saddle, watching sort of fields of 40 horses galloping down towards the first at pace and then various horses falling at the first and all this type of stuff. It's even contributed to the sort of the popular sort of, you know, Mancature of British life. You know, they'll say about a difficult challenge, well, it's a bit of Beechers Brook, which is one of the fences in the Grand National.

56:22It's called Beechers Brook. It's historically one of the hardest fences. So it wasn't necessarily the elite of the elite. It wasn't where you go and watch the best horses. It was about more than that. It was a different type of race. You had the other meets for that type of competition. Chopt them for the best horses. The Grand National was something totally different. And it was that difference that caught the national imagination, that caught the national psyche. Because you could have a situation. Anyone can win mentality type. Yeah, it is. So on a regular basis, you're getting your Leicester City winning the Premier League.

56:55And that was the thing. So you could have the most famous instance of all, of course, was Red Rum, who was trained by a very small-time trainer. And he trained Red Rum on the beach to try and save his legs, but also because, frankly, he didn't have a great training set up at home. So he was just training him by running him down the beach. And Red Rum, who was not a high-caliber horse who could go and win the Cheltenham Gold Cup or something like that, won three Grand Nationals and was one of the most famous sporting names in British history over the last 50 to 60 years in a way that almost no Cheltenham Gold Cup winner could be said to be.

57:27Red Roma would be said to be more famous than any of those great horses that have actually been the best horse in the sport by winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Charlie, based on your tone, I'm anticipating that there's been a slight shift. A but. There's a but. That is no longer like that. Yeah, in my view. and I think my view is reflective of the viewing figures. Okay, so just bear in mind that we're talking about something that even now is massive. So it is the most watched sporting occasion in the UK on an annual basis. Of course, if England get through to the final of the Euros or something once every two or once every four years, that individual moment can be seen by more people.

58:07But in terms of repetitive audience, the Grand National is the biggest, both domestically and internationally of any British sporting event and I think pretty much of any sporting event actually in terms of 500 million every year as opposed to the Olympics or the World Cup happening once every four years. But it is in extreme decline, a decline the level of which I think is being swept under the table by racing because it doesn't want yet to face up to the reality. If you go back 10 years, you get upwards of 9 to 10 million people domestically watching this race. And that had been the case for a long, long time previous to that.

58:43So back when I was covering horse racing as a horse racing journalist, probably the number was about 11 million, 12 million, that kind of thing, when it used to be on the BBC back in those days, with Des Lynham presenting and so on and so forth. So 2015, you're looking at about 9 to 10 million. 2021, down to 8 to 9 million. 2023, 7.5 million. 2024, 6.1 million. And this is all on domestic terrestrial TV. So you can't say, well, they've jacked the prices up or they've made it harder to access or whatever it might be. This is on ITV, right? So it's actually moved in recent times being on Channel 4, where you would normally have slightly lower viewing figures, to being on ITV, which is much more comparable with the BBC.

59:22So basically, you're seeing a situation where it's viewing numbers have halved over the course of 20 years domestically. So it's going from being that can't-miss national occasion that drives the narrative for the week to two weeks before the race and everyone's talking about it and everyone's going to watch it together is going from being there to being a very big sporting event. Why? Well, because they've made the fences easier and the prize money bigger. Do you want me to explain what that does? Which means you now get a better class of horse running in the race, which means that you lose the fairy tales and you lose the fallers.

1:00:00There was a Grand National recently where not a single horse fell. And I think that... That's going to be quite a controversial statement. I'm observing it. I'm not saying that it's morally right or wrong. I'll come back onto that later. I'm observing the fact that effectively, going back about 10 years, the Grand National became, in fact, it's been the subject of animal rights protesters for a lot longer than that, who think that fundamentally the sport of steeplechasing is cruel, and that Aintree, given its sort of state of difficulty, is the cruelest race of all. And we'll come on to one particular Grand National that was disrupted by animal rights protesters.

1:00:34so effectively what racing's done is rather than fight its corner and say no we're going to stand up for this event this is a national event and we're going to really put the case forward that this is a very important thing that this is a national jewel it's part of uk plc and messing with it is going to cause a big problem racing sort of took the lower road and said okay i'll tell you what we'll do we'll make the fences much easier and we'll increase the prize money and not just easier in terms of the the height of them but also in terms of the design of them going from an old hard wood frame into plastic frames to make them more forgiving and so on and so forth.

1:01:08So you can totally see what the instincts are. In terms of actually the effect it's had on the number of horses that die on the race, I'm sad to report it has not been a very dramatic change. So in the 1970s and 1980s, I think around about 12 horses died from around about 800 entrants. From 1990 until 2010, that was more like 16, I think, something like that. and over the last sort of 20 years it's been more like eight or nine yeah um but what you're starting to see is more horses dying post the race from exhaustion rather than horses dying from injuries incurred through falling within the race and that's because the race has become faster you've got better horses running on easier fences which means that the whole thing becomes faster and yet it's still four and a quarter miles so in other words the amount that's being asked in stamina terms is really quite extraordinary rather like we're seeing the premier league in terms of soft tissue injuries.

1:02:00Once you start asking more in terms of stamina and in terms of the amount of output that a participant is expending, then you start to have other physical effects rather than necessarily the physical effects that might have happened before. So they fix one problem to create another, basically. Yes. And it's not even fixing. It is fair to say that there has been a drop in the number of fatalities in the Grand National. A very small drop in terms of the total number here. Because we've got to bear in mind also, they've also significantly reduced the number of entrants. So there used to be 40 horses per Grand National.

1:02:32That has been reduced to 32. Okay, so that's quite a significant annual drop in terms of the number of horses that are taking part. So effectively, a whole load of stuff has been done to try as racing's rulers believe it to save the race. Because the danger was that the animal rights protesters would persuade a government basically to ban it. Yep. Okay, that was the thinking. Now, I would love to see that thinking tested. I would love to see a government really decide we're going to be the ones that ban the Grand National because a few animal rights protesters don't like it. I'm sceptical about that.

1:03:09I think it's the type of thing which when you're in the middle of the firestorm with the animal rights people going crazy, seems like it could kind of happen. But when you look at it a bit more closely, you think that politician is probably not going to be brave enough to actually make that decision to ban something which is such a massive national event. is there a having having sorry sorry charlie go on no i was just gonna say is there for you know the powers that be at horse racing would there be some of that that's a commercial element and you look at the money that the race makes and needs whether it's media or broader commercial agreements with sponsors and partners and you know now often you can be guilty just by association so whether it's you know true or not that this is more dangerous than there ever has been if you're looking at getting you know big sponsors randox does it right now for example but if you're looking at getting big sponsors and you just have a decline in interest on a commercial element because companies, big organisers would just rather not be involved with something that's controversial.

1:03:56And you start making that enough, that becomes more and more of a problem. You actually get a commercial element there that's a problem. Two questions. Number one, would you say that halving your audience causes a commercial problem? Yes. Okay. So six of one, half a dozen of the other. Damn if you do, damn if you don't on that one. Second one is I'm deeply sceptical that the Grand National should be putting up this prize money. Because fundamentally what you're doing is you're incentivising the very biggest trainers with the very biggest owners to send their horses that aren't quite good enough to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup to win the Grand National because it's one million pounds of prize money, 500 ,000 to the winner.

1:04:33Now, I want to go back down the last eight runnings of the race, okay? Two of them have been won by Willie Mullins, the undisputed world champion of jump racing, massive Irish yard. Two of them have been won by Gordon Elliott, Willie Mullins' big rival. Again, these are trainers for listeners and viewers who don't know. These are trainers who have 250 horses in their stables. These are the Man United's of horse racing. There is no fairy tale here. This is a numbers game with big businesses, with huge owners behind them, who are looking to basically monopolize all the big prizes in horse racing.

1:05:06One of them has been run by Emmett Mullins, another of the big Irish trainers. Another one by Henry de Bromhead, probably the third biggest Irish trainer. So of the last eight runnings, six of them have been won by the big Irish trainers. Now, I have got no problem with Irish trainers winning this race, by the way. There are also small Irish trainers who are part of the historic fabric of this race. So this is not a point about England versus Ireland. This is a point about the opportunity for smaller owners and smaller trainers and less well-known jockeys to pull something off which puts their name on the history books forever.

1:05:39That's what's going. And in my mind, that's what's driving the audience away. because those fairy tales are what takes the sport onto the front page. No one is going to go and stick another Willie Mullins winner, particularly as it's a horse they're not particularly going to have heard of because it's not going to be a very, very, very top-rate horse. Now, there was Gordon Elliott won it a couple of times a Tiger Roll who became more famous by winning it more times, okay? So it does happen from time to time. But generally speaking... Tiger Roll also won at Cheltenham, though. So again, you're talking about the top.

1:06:06But not the Gold Cup. No, not the Gold Cup, but it did the cross-country race, which is also not a top race, being honest with you. So fundamentally, what we're talking about here is we're talking about a race that has been significantly changed and whose audience is diving, its TV audience is diving as a result. Now, I should say in defense that the live audience, so that's the audience on course, is holding up exceptionally well. It's basically like, for anyone who hasn't been to Waintree, how would I describe it? Liverpool's big day out. Okay, so what does that look like? A dreads thing. Aintree Ladies' Day, which happens this Friday.

1:06:46In fact, it's on the day that this podcast comes out, is one of the great sporting event spectacles that anyone should ever, everyone must go and see it. A magical afternoon is the way I put it. The Grand National itself, Grand National Day on the Saturday, would generally have about 70 ,000 people on course, which by the standards of any live sporting event is big, okay? And they've made significant investments into the stadium, into the stand infrastructure over the last 20 to 30 years, which makes that a much more comfortable experience than it once was. So Grand National is there. The Grand National is big.

1:07:18The Grand National is a massive international sporting event that is one of the UK's sporting crown jewels. Is it the race it once was? No. Is it from a TV audience perspective, which is the hardest measure of these things, because a lot of people who are going on course are going, not because of the race itself, but for the whole day out experience. From a TV audience perspective, it's cratering. And my instinct and my view on that is that is heavily, heavily linked to the intrinsic changes which have been made to the event. It would be an interesting study on the psychology of sporting interest because this is what I'd look at and say what you're looking at there is gradual.

1:08:02So people may be not consciously going, I'm not interested in it this year and therefore I'm not watching it. If Formula One changes regulations and people don't like the racing, then they can stop and they'll consciously know that they're not as in favor of that product versus the old one. But this looks a little bit more like, it's been boring maybe, it's a bit maybe like the boat race that we've just had this weekend where something stops becoming hugely interesting because the boat's just filled with former Olympians, post-graduates, you know, doing PhDs and stuff. It's not the undergrad kind of competition that you may want to go and see that's one for everyone.

1:08:34It feels a little bit more like this is in that way or just just gradually losing people because it's not as exciting as it once was yeah because it's it's losing or has lost the things that made it different yeah um and once it becomes a another long distance handicap race no particularly different in type to the midlands grand national at utoxata or whatever it might be i just want to make a few comments on this thing about animal welfare now one of the grand nationals that was either delayed or postponed or whatever it might be was in 2023 when the start was delayed by protesters from an organization called animal rising um it's a organization which is significantly criminal um as in their members activists regularly get jailed for criminal offenses um and the organization is proud of that um sees that as a necessary price to pay for promoting animal rights activism these protesters want to see the end of Horse racing, right?

1:09:31The Grand National is a useful moment to highlight their cause because they know it's going to go to a big national and international audience. But the Grand National is not the end of it. Once you enter horse racing full stop, which is a point of view, but I think that it's one which needs to be tested and understood properly, which is that the horses who take part in horse racing are bred for horse racing. They are thoroughbreds who are deliberately bred and then sold to take part in racing. There is not a future where these horses are just galloping around the field to themselves. They either are bred for horse racing or they are not bred at all.

1:10:13So in other words, the end of racing in this country would not see a glorious future of loads of horses just being left to their own devices. It would lead to many fewer horses. Is that a good thing for this country? is that a good thing for the animal life and the ecosystem of this country? Everyone will have to take their own temperature on that one. I read something in the papers this morning, actually, and it was from somebody called Lady Batters, who used to be – it was a rather wonderful name. She used to be the head of the National Farmers Union, and she's now taken on the leadership of one of these equine welfare boards or whatever it might be.

1:10:50In general terms, she's seen to be quite a sensible person and someone who can work with government and all this type of stuff. a farmer by origin who's now almost a politician. She's in the House of Lords and so on and so forth. And she said something in this about how, obviously, we all want to reduce the risk as much as possible. The risk being the risk of any equine fatalities in horse racing, right? Obviously, we all want to reduce the risk as much as possible.

1:11:19Well, where does that lead? The best way to reduce the risk as much as possible is by getting rid of the fences. The next step after that is to actually stop having starts and finishes. The next step after that is actually stop having horses race at all. And the next step after that is to stop horses being bred to race, because ultimately you shouldn't be breeding something for a purpose for which it then cannot fulfill. That's its own form of cruelty. So I fundamentally disagree with her. I think that we have to decide, as a society, as a country, what levels of risk we're willing to tolerate in order to perpetuate things which are part of the fabric of our country.

1:11:52if you go to formula one and say well the best way to reduce risk is say no overtaking okay but no overtaking in formula one is going to mean that the industry ultimately ceases to exist so that's a level of risk that we don't want we do want some overtaking we had the discussion last week about how much and etc etc so it does seem to me that there is a i i would think personally it's easy for me to say i'm not sat there at the british horse racing association or the jockey club in the positions of power but i think at some point particularly if there were to be a sympathetic government, dare I say it, maybe one reform government, which was perhaps a little bit less on the side of criminal animal welfare protesters and perhaps more on the side of English tradition, where I would say, can we have a serious conversation about this?

1:12:32Do we actually want to lose things like the Grand National? Is it so important for us to control to the nth degree equine fatalities over a 20 to 30 year period in the sport which these horses have been bred for, that we actually ditch one of these massive international events? If so, let's be clear that that's what we're doing. Let's not try and think that we can have it both ways. Powerful. Well, there'll be many who disagree. It's the whole point. It's a discussion. Look, Charlie, as always fascinating on that side of it, I think it's something that you know a lot more about than a lot of people, and so hearing those perspectives is great.

1:13:06Now onto something I know a lot more about, just to sign off. I'm very conscious we've had, obviously, two very in-depth topics there, so we will keep this one brief. But we can't do a show where there's been big news about Chelsea and not actually discuss it, particularly because people won't know. But I had to do a quick last minute edit last week because in my introduction, I joked with you that, you know, it'd been a great week and there'd be no new losses announced or fines being given out for Chelsea only to see Chelsea record highest ever Premier League loss on Thursday morning. and top the table of payments made to agents which I think is one that you should be particularly proud of because finishing top of any table is something to be proud of well we finished top of the biggest ever loss in Premier League history so that's a 262 boom 262 million pound deficit for 2024-2025 eclipsing the great Man City the fantastic 2011 Man City who bagged 197.5 million in losses that year just as when they were on the spike of really trying to establish themselves at the top of football.

1:14:14You know, the kind of spending you're not allowed to do anymore. They're kind of unregulated spending. Now, we talked about a few weeks ago, and I'm sorry, yes, it is Chelsea again, but we do just have to touch on it because it is a quite extraordinary figure. We talked about the UEFA losses that they had been registered, which we were talking about in Euros because it was UEFA. It was about 407 million Euros, I think, so about 360 million pounds. But this, you know, is kind of unprecedented in a domestic level because in the Premier League's figures, you are actually allowed to include some of the things that Chelsea have been really proud that they've been able to sell, i.e.

1:14:45selling the women's team to themselves, selling hotels and car parks to themselves, trading players in between Chelsea and its sister club, Strasbourg, pulling mechanisms here that allow them to inflate these numbers and basically allow them to post a profit last year in the eyes of the Premier League. Now it's kind of caught up with them a little bit. They actually recorded their second highest ever revenue at£490 million and still lost£262 million. You mentioned there about the agent's fees, quite extraordinary. So Chelsea last year spent£61 million on agent's fees. The second highest was Aston Villa at£38.4 million.

1:15:22So in other words, they spent nearly double. Just to put this in context, right? So a sort of, let's say you've got a club who's coming up into the Premier League. They're getting used to paying the kind of wages that you need to pay to Premier League players. but some of their players they brought up with them are on championship wages with the Premier League uplift. So they're in adjustment territory. Let's say that my old club Sunderland right now. Some of these clubs, entire annual wage bill is around the same as what Chelsea are paying in agents fees. Just think about that. Chelsea are paying the same to agents as some clubs are to their entire playing staff.

1:15:59Yeah. And it's actually over three years, it's been reportedly 200 million pounds in the last three years now it won't surprise anyone because if there's one thing we all know is that chelsea love well signing and selling players in the last few years and funnily enough that is actually the reason they've given for this very high number and was the same reason it was given last year for about 75 million pound spend on on agents it was the fact that they had sold so many players and they actually made you know according to their accounts this year which Chelsea just just to be clear Chelsea have pre-released some of these numbers so their official accounts are yet to be released the full accounts but they released a select choice of information on the club website one of which was a 57 million profit from player sales selling over 300 million last summer but the real reason for that which they've attributed that agent spend is obviously because they had to comply with UEFA to stop getting well to not get even greater fines or kicked out of competition because UEFA wouldn't accept their other money making schemes so the 300 million in player sales was a really important number to for them to get to um we talked a lot about the ownership and and how it's running this business how they communicate has been a particular of particular interest particularly to me and i can speak as a fan because it's been a project club right this has always been about what they can do over a 10-year cycle and we've talked about why that's important in private equity terms previously 10-year max.

1:17:2610-year max, unless they're going to roll it into another fund if it wasn't doing well enough. This again is negative news. And when it's financial to this extent, you really start to wonder and start to question if and when this turns around. What made me laugh is the fact that as part of this discussion, there's been a number of reported outlets claiming that Chelsea see next year as the record revenue year. they can incorporate the full club world cup uh revenue in which was reportedly about 87 to 90 million pounds some of which will have gone into this account because it's year end june but not all of it because i think the club world cup ended mid-july yeah and they'll have about 80 million champions league revenue this year they'll obviously still have no big shirt contract the ifs deal is a short-term deal um and the stadium still sits significantly below top capacity and top money-making capacity in the Premier League.

1:18:23So they said, reportedly, and I'm being very careful, but I've seen it on a few reputable sides, including Sky Sports, where the ownership believe that next year they'll make 700 million. Revenue. Revenue. Which is what Liverpool, after the record number Liverpool have just put through, that's what they just made. It's where you're starting to look at the Bayern Munichs of the world in Europe. But with a very significant one-off windfall in terms of the Club World Cup. Completely. But even then, Charlie, I was looking at it going, how? Well, I guess, you know, let's wait and see. Let's wait and see.

1:18:56I think recently they've been more like around 500. Yeah. Okay. Well, 490 million pounds. 490 million pounds. Is the second highest they've ever produced. Yeah. Right. And I remember because the stadium is smaller, the matchday income, which some of the other clubs have been able to really exploit, as we've talked about in the previous segment, you know, Chelsea's 42 ,000-seater Stamford Bridge, that is not, should we say, in the best condition compared to other Premier League clubs, prohibits the amount of money it can generate from that mechanism. We know the commercial challenges they've had.

1:19:28So there's got to be a significant shift outside of, as you say, quite rightly. But even if it's 50 million from the Club World Cup and 80 million from Champions League revenue, even if they maintain it this year, then you're looking at just over 600 million. So it'll be really interesting to see. Well, let's see. I mean, I think it's very important that I maintain my promise to numerous viewers and listeners to try and keep the Chelsea chat down to an absolute minimum. This is pure business. Suffice it to say that I am delighted for you that you finished top of a league table. Yeah. This ownership, once again, it comes back to if I was an investor looking at this and I'm pouring money into Clear Lake and I'm looking at where my money's going and when my asset's finally going to turn around.

1:20:08And we are still talking about no development here on the big project, the one big project that we got promised and come into, which is a big infrastructure play that actually will use up some money. We haven't even got going there. And we are hemorrhaging money across the board without, I would say most concerningly, and this is where it matters, a clear path to improvement. Because if we're judged on results, the results that Chelsea are throwing up this year are unlikely to better those that they did last year. Fourth in the Premier League, Club World Cup champions, one of the European tournament.

1:20:37They may win an FA Cup this year. They'll do very well to finish fourth. Then that will be about it. So that's not improvement. And therefore, where does accountability sit for this group? That's what I'll be interested to see. But hey, it all comes back down to the mighty Waltham and Hersham. So congratulations to you and everyone on that. Thank you, Charlie. And we'll see you next week. Thanks, Charlie. Thank you so much for tuning into another breakdown. I would really like to stop talking about Chelsea's finances soon. So fingers crossed they behave for a few weeks. The Italian football situation is genuinely fascinating.

1:21:10And I'd love to know the thoughts of those of you who are more well-versed in these issues than we are. we have highlighted just a few of the major challenges we believe they face and that have contributed to the situation i'd love to know what you think thank you as always for tuning in and we'll see you next week