THE BREAKDOWN: LIV on the Brink, The Premier League’s Big End of Season Showdown, & Snooker Back in the Big Time (E16)

26:58Okay, so let's talk about the players because we didn't go fully into it beforehand when we were talking about Bryson, but this is a huge part of the story. Yeah. To me, you have different tranches, of course, right? You have the biggest stars of Liv and a reintegration strategy. Now, if Liv disappears altogether, the PGA are not going to offer up the type of reintegration scheme they did for Brooks Koepka in January, February which was just to be clear you can come back and join us from Liv if you've won a major or the players in the last I think it was five years give or take five years and it was only really available it was their way of going to Brooks, Jon Rahm, DeChambeau come back in basically trying to nick their key stars there was a time limit there was a month I think they gave the players to make the decision.

27:44Koepka did it. And he didn't do badly at the Masters. He's done all right in a couple of the PGA Tour events. But he also came back, just to be very clear, with some very strict restrictions on he couldn't participate in the ownership scheme attached to the PGA Tour for the players. And he also had significant financial fines. But he was reintegrated very quickly. The reason they were able to do that was because Liv was still competing. If Liv goes, the PGA Tour have no need to do that. Now, it's a question for them of, are we a stronger tour with Bryson and John Rahn playing on it? Yes, we are.

28:17So will they make a decision to try and get those top players back competing sooner rather than later? I think they will. So for those guys I said, I don't think for Bryson it's a massive, massive challenge to make the decision by trying to drive up the price of his live contract. And if that doesn't work, I will find my way back to the PGA Tour and I'll deal with the consequences and try and find the solution that works for all parties. But what if you're one of the players that isn't those top golfers? What if you're one of the ones that suddenly has been given all of this opportunity? Remember, they're getting paid every time they step on course here.

28:48This is not you get paid after you make the cut. Their earning power has increased significantly from live. And in the middle of golf, a bit like in the middle of tennis, in the middle of a lot of sports where individual stars, the prize money at the top end is amazing. But if you're in the middle or in the lower half of those competitive fields, It can be much more of a challenge if you're out of form, if you're finishing in poor positions and you're covering your travel costs and your team and all the people that you need as part of that. So getting guaranteed income is huge. Now, those guys will have planned a huge amount of their immediate financial careers on the continuity of Liv because what Liv has always said, and remember, this is key, finances aren't a problem.

29:28This is the tour where we'll give you the security. and so you go in here feeling empowered as a player financially to get reintegrated into the PGA Tour if you're in the middle of that field not as easy the PGA Tour aren't probably as worried about getting you back on you're not driving their business up maybe significantly you end up in some of the outs you know the outer tours maybe you're back in a beat DP World Tour an Asian Tour and the opportunity for you to create that value diminishes that is a far more concerning situation for those players, those, should we say, employees of Liv than it is for the top stars.

30:06Yeah, I think that's absolutely fair comment. I mean, I wouldn't underplay the extent to which this would have been a very unwelcome piece of news in the Bryson DeChambeau camp, right? Because from the smirk on his face a month or two ago, he was pretty certain that he was about to extract 500 million. However much we say, yeah, well, he can get back on the US PGA Tour, he's never going to earn that 500 million, right? And if you think about his entry price to Liv was around about 120 million, which, by the way, is unbelievable money. There's no doubt about it. And of course, as a competitor who has done well on Liv, as in he's won a lot of tournaments on Liv, he has also made good money from doing well, etc.

30:46So perhaps Bryson DeChambeau is maybe 200 million, 250 million in from his time in Liv. Okay, that 500 million would quietly be banked in his head. he would have been thinking I've got them exactly where I want them and one thing I do know is that the Saudis are going to keep on funding this because every time I turn up to an event there's somebody there from PIF who tells me what a great guy I am how they couldn't do this without me and all this type of stuff so that 500 million is feeling really really good right now what did you say it's not there anymore oh okay they were also sold on you mentioned earlier there's money being left on the table for those top stars as well because again reported you know we're not deep in the financials there was a huge amount of money that was shared to the players up front but there was also a lot that i've read attached to the value of the assets they were supposedly getting shares in i.e the team so the team captains got 25 of the teams they played for and pif basically on 75 now that future earning value was based on billion dollar franchises coming out of these live teams and the captains would earn 25 so to be very clear there if it gets to a billion price is suddenly sitting on 250 millions worth of equity.

31:53So hey, guess what? We're not just paying you a salary, but you're an investor. You're a shareholder. This is about more than just your earning capacity today. And what are they about to not be a shareholder of? Anything. Well, the USPGA. Oh, sorry, yes. PGA Tour Enterprises, which McElroy and Woods have 100 million bucks stakes in, which is going to be worth something. They now do not have their stakes in that, and they won't be getting them any time soon. be interesting the locker room to see how that one goes it's been a good week for rory hasn't it it's been a good week for rory it's been a very good but what you would say on this is it's a reward for taking a cool hard look at the entire landscape and saying i'm gonna do what i think is the right thing for me and the game of golf and which also makes sense and not getting overexcited by a hard pitch which promises a lot of jam today and then promises more jam tomorrow, but without really any underpinning business case as to why that would be the case.

32:52And you know what? That's a really important point because, well, and I didn't mean it flippantly, but your point on Bryson is right. You know, still, as you said, that the Shambo household will be 500 million shorter, which is huge if this doesn't go through. The McElroy household was, give or take whatever you believed, about 700 million short from his decision to go, no, I'm not going to take this. I am going to stay here. so to hit for him to make that decision set you know seven and please again speculation might be very clear this was just rumored but if it was 700 million for macaroid to go and join live and you turn that down that takes some nuts it does and it also takes um good advice yeah good advice from people it takes um a cool head from a business perspective and having heard him speak on this topic many times before what it came down to was a deep disbelief that live would ever come to anything.

33:43He just didn't think it would come to anything. He couldn't see why. And this was always my issue with it, which is this supposed innovation. It's not innovation, which me as a golf person through and through, golf fan, golfer, absolutely a golf person. I go and watch golf events live. I watch on TV. My closest friends, we're all on golf. WhatsApp, I'm target market. And there was nothing about what Liv was doing innovation-wise that made me even interested in it. So effectively, Rory took a long hard look at it with his advisors and said I don't think it's going to work and therefore all of these promises they're making are not going to come to anything and therefore I'm better off using my leverage that I have right now the US PGA Tour to say I'm going to lead the charge in making sure the US PGA Tour ends up winning this but in return I want a big slice of equity in this new vehicle PGA Tour Ventures.

34:39So as you say he's the big winner and bully for him for so being. The players who have gone to live at the top level are not the big losers. They've made a phenomenal sum of money for only having to not do all that much. Let's be honest with you. That's DJ Fam, isn't he? Right. I'm getting paid more money to play less golf and spend more time. Right, right. Exactly. And then you come to the group that you mentioned, which is the middle-ranking professionals. I had a quick look before coming here at last week's tournament, which Ram won. Yeah. and I looked at the players second, third, fourth, fifth, etc I'd never heard of any of them right and these are guys who are taking home epic sums of money because basically there is no depth in these fields because if you look at a lot of the players who were brought across Charlie a lot of them outside the top three there are basically three different types of golfers who were brought in to live just to explain to viewers and listeners there were three types of professional golfers who live got a very small number of the absolute elite performers.

35:42So we're talking about John Ram, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, major winners who they paid very substantial sums as a signing on fee. Then there was a group of players who were what might be called like soon-to-be Legends Tour type players. Lee Westwood, Paul Casey, Ian Poulter, these types of guys, for whom it was one last payday. They got to the point in their career where they weren't actually making Mickelson. Mickelson. Mickelson actually is another one, probably somewhere in between those two, I guess. But he was 50 at the time, so 49 at the time. So these guys, not Mickelson actually, but the rest of them had got to the stage in their career where they weren't earning that much prize money from playing on the main tours because they weren't that good anymore, right?

36:22People like Lee Westwood were not earning significant money. So for them, it was four or five years of one last payday plus a signing on check. And Westwood, Poulter, Stenson, all equity holders in there. So again, future-proofing, right? You earn some value in the team. Generational wealth. Brilliant. you know, generational wealth. And then you've got the fields being filled out by rank and file players from the American US PGA Tour and the European Tour. Rank and file players, but with tour cards in those two tours, right? They weren't like just sort of rank, sort of club pros being pulled in from nowhere.

36:53They were players on those tours. But because they needed to fill out the fields, you have to go and get those guys. And those guys were not paid signing on fees, but they were guaranteed a certain level for turning up, a certain level of money for turning up, right? So it was better for them as well to leave the USPGA tour, where as you say, every week is on risk, effectively. They're traveling around with their coach and all this type of stuff. And God, I've missed the cut the last four or five weeks. You go into an environment with no cuts, guaranteed money for turning up, effectively an annual salary, effectively you say you're a very highly paid employee of that tour.

37:25What's their route back onto the USPGA tour? Because their places on those tours have been taken. I don't know if people understand how you qualify to go on the us pga tour and on the european tour it's well that's one way for a few of them but the brutal truth is that you're on how to go for something called qualifying school qualifying school right which is when you turn up you used to be at la manga for european tour i'm not quite sure where it is now where a whole bunch of people who want who are aspiring to be tour professionals turn up and over the course of four days play in basically roulette golf where at the end of it the top 20 get tour cards for the following year and the rest of them get told bugger off and go back to your clubs or play on much more minor tours for no money this is the one which eddie pepper had sort of five birdies in the last six holes to get back on the european tour um for this season so it's a very dramatic event but it's very competitive and quite random like it's it's one week right and then you've got as you say the minor tours where if you then go and spend a year on a minor tour earning very limited sums of money and if you finish in the top, you know, sort of limited number of top performers on the money list at the end of that year on that tour, then you might get an awesome, you will get an automatic promotion up to either the European tour or US PGA tour.

38:43But the point is, is that only a very limited number of players get either of those two routes onto the main tours every year. Okay. And suddenly you're going to have 60 odd players coming back off live trying to get back onto those tours with only a very limited number with their places on those tours having been taken already well you know that's that's that's gonna be tough that's gonna be tough for those guys for the next two or three years i would say completely agree particularly as i've mostly become less competitive golfers in the meantime okay right so i just want to finish it by playing a game actually no i want to finish it just to make an important point because it's going to come on to the final topic we talk about.

39:24But this also coincided with PIF's new investment strategy being released. And I just want to read out the quote finally before we wrap it up. It said, the 2026 to 30 strategy marks a natural evolution as PIF moves from a period of rapid growth and acceleration to a new phase of sustained value creation with strength and focus on maximizing impact, raising the efficiency of investment and applying the higher standards of governance, transparency and institutional excellence. What this really said, if you looked at it more broadly, was there's going to be a lot more focus on domestic value creation rather than spending on global kind of like the money on fire for favorable reputation building type projects.

40:01And as I just mentioned, we'll mention something towards the end where there's another example of that. Charlie, I wanted to play a quick game with you. Yeah. Okay. Biggest failures in sport? In sports business. In sports business. The most epic failures in sports business history. This would be the biggest. This is the biggest. I couldn't find it. Should we say to the listeners and viewers, if you can think of any bigger sports business failures than this, now, obviously, there's a financial element to it,$6 billion. So I don't think anyone's going to beat that. $6 billion has never been attempted to be invested again, effectively, on a new sports venture.

40:44there's another level of that which is the level of objective and hubris and public embarrassment effectively right so when you go out there and say we are going to become the dominant tour we are going to become the world tour we're going to break the US PGA tour and so on and so forth that's you know obviously another thing which has to be borne in mind in terms of judging the biggest the biggest failures I mean you know we're not talking about you know rugby 360 R360 not getting off the ground last year, where there's a bit of money being put in on a speculative way. Can we try to get some of the big players involved?

41:16Oh shit, no, we haven't. Right, okay, we better shelve that for now, right? So even six months later, no one's thinking about that. It hasn't had any medium-term impact on the game of rugby. Even the people who've been involved in it can look back and say, well, we gave it a go, but let's go back to our normal lives. This is failure on an epic scale. This is on an unimaginable scale. Probably you'll have to think about what was attempted with the Chinese football leagues um that those types of things you know um and a few in the u.s i know less about i must admit when i was having a look at this there's something called the xfl which was backed by wwe and vince mcmahon trying to disrupt the nfl in 2001 oh yes i don't know if you remember that but it's basically like quite gimmick heavy alternative and it lost 35 million dollars in its first season and it was canned but that's 35 million dollars 35 million dollars it's a lot of money to your point you're not going to find you couldn't find anything even close to six billion so if you do have anything please let us know i'd love i'd love to create a top five list it's quite incredible um anyway right let's move on because charlie you very you very gleefully i think partly because it was in reference to one of my team's terrible performance uh against manchester united at the weekend but you very gleefully sent me a message saying what a day of football on sunday um oh sorry, what a weekend of football on Sunday.

42:39Because in that weekend, we saw the title race properly blown wide open. We saw the race for European football from Champions League down to any European places blown wide open. And the relegation places started to look like they were really taking shape in the club's most vulnerable for the dreaded drop. And so when you said that, I just thought, you know what? he's right and it was rooted in obviously Chelsea's misery but it made me think far more about what this actually these last five games now there is something on every one of those key things that teams play for for the end of the season it's really up for grabs which is great from a fan's perspective for drama but also hugely interesting from the perspective we always look at this from which is what's the actual impact of a team winning the title or not what's the impact of qualifying for Europe or not what's the impact of relegation the business implications of these various different fights because they're radically different and not in the order which you would think in normal sports, right?

43:45So in normal sports, you'd imagine that the real financial implication, the biggest financial implication, as in golf, for instance, is whoever finishes first gets a massive amount of money. Whoever finishes second gets a lot less of money. And then it tails off quite quickly from there. So should we start with the title? So let's start with the title race. So title of the weekend, Manchester City beat Arsenal 2-1 at the Etihad, which meant that they are now three points behind Arsenal with a game in hand. They are one goal behind them on goal difference with that game in hand. So Manchester City, having been nine points behind, are now, well, within striking distance.

44:19Let's try and extract some of the emotion out of it and actually look at what the title means, or winning the title means financially. Because it's not that much as you've just highlighted. It's very minimal. So if you look at last season in the Premier League, Liverpool were the winners they got 53 million pounds of the sort of sliding scale money so when you look at the Premier League TV money what you're looking at is a certain level which is guaranteed so that's about 100 million which every team gets and then there's a certain amount which is on a sort of sliding scale what we call a merit rake is the technical term and the winners last season Liverpool on that merit rake got 53 million and the bottom place club, Southampton, got two and a half million.

45:06Okay, that's quite a big difference. But the second got 50 million. So the difference between Liverpool and City last season was three million in terms of actual prize money received, right? So basically, in terms of businesses with turnovers of 650, 700, 750 million, we're talking about an absolutely negligible difference. And even worse than that, Charlie, this is something which fans often don't fully compute. Players tend to be on bonuses for winning titles. So I had a quick look at this. The Liverpool players received a bonus pot of 4 million for winning the title last year, which means that actually, net-net, Liverpool were worse off for winning the title than City were for finishing second.

45:51Marginally, but it's very much of a muchness. So from Arsenal's perspective, there is no clear financial benefit to coming first rather than second, accepting this, which is that we don't know, and no one outside the C-suite at Arsenal does know, what the trigger payments are in their commercial deals. So their commercial deals may or may not include various triggers, one of which will be qualification for the Champions League or not. That'll probably be the biggest one, by the way. Another one of which will be winning this title, and one of which will almost certainly be winning the Premier League title.

46:25at which point a bunch of their sponsorships, a bunch of their sponsors will be obligated to pay an additional sum of money. So we don't know what that is. But I'm going to guess that we're probably talking about 20 million, 30 million, something like this. So meaningful, but not absolutely transformational. So the quest to win the title is very much a football quest and a fan quest as opposed to one which necessarily keeps the finance director up at night. What about brand value? Should we say looser? So being able to say the champions, you know. Commercial. Yeah, exactly. So both existing commercial deals being triggered to pay you out more, but also your negotiation of the next round of commercial deals, whatever they might be, your next shirt sponsor.

47:12But you wouldn't place huge weight on that narrative around, okay, we're title winners, we're now commercially so much more powerful. I mean, it's all part of the mix, and it all helps. And I think it slightly depends on which club, okay? So do I think that Man City would be massively more powerful commercially if they won the title this season? No. Why? Because they've won it in six of the last eight years anyway, right? So it's another Premier League title. The thing that would be more transformational than Man City was when they won the Champions League. That would have changed the metrics around City because they hadn't done it until that point.

47:47In Arsenal's case, probably it would and will make a difference because they haven't won the top flight for over 20 years. So it's re-establishing the club as being in that absolute top echelon, which until they do win the Premier League title, you know, arguably. At the moment, they kind of are where Spurs were a few years ago, where Spurs kept on finishing second. If you remember under Poch, towards the end of Poch's time there, they were sort of second, third, second, third, that type of thing. that's where Arsenal have been and winning the title this year would be taking them out of that bracket and saying no we are absolutely in that conversation with Liverpool and Man City for the top clubs of England right now yeah okay so key point there is look fans we understand it's everything to you but from your business standpoint it's not yeah but what is the biggest needle mover performance side should we say at the top end of the league we know what relegation is we'll get onto that is qualifying for Europe and beyond that qualifying for the Champions League versus Europa League versus the Europa Conference League.

48:47So the numbers around this are actually quite staggering for what you get from the Champions League and what you get for competing in others. And this year we have five places in the Premier League that are Champions League. So normally you would only have four, but the new UEFA coefficient means that the most successful leagues in Europe get an extra place. So the Premier League has secured five, I think with Arsenal's victory in Lisbon against sporting the other day. To put some numbers into what it means to qualify for European competition, just for reaching the group stage, the league stage of the Champions League, you get 18.75 million euros.

49:25You get 4.3 million euros for reaching the group stage of the Europa League, the league stage. You get 3.17 million euros for reaching the conference league so ultimately between four to five times the revenue if you get to the champions league compared to other european competition that adds up to broadly speaking if you qualify for the group stages of the champions league and win one or two matches in those sorry go to the knockout stages of the champions league you're going to make 60 or 70 million from your um ua for champions league tv i've got a decent run is between 55 75 million That's right.

50:02It's going to be 60 to 70 million. If you're in the Europa League, well, last year Spurs received 25 million for winning it. Euros. Euros. And Chelsea received 19 million for winning the Conference League. So Chelsea got the same for winning the Conference League. So going through the whole Thursday night football from, what, September through to May, they got the same as they would have got if they just qualified for the Champions League. Yeah, but put it in because Chelsea would always think they would qualify from the group stage, the knockout stage. So the basic difference in going to the Conference League and even winning it and going to the knockout stages of the Champions League is 50 million euros.

50:43So that is 45 million pounds. So let's just keep the numbers around and say there's a 50 million swing because they certainly couldn't guarantee winning the Conference League every single time you wanted it. There's a 50 million swing difference between Champions League football and Conference League football. 50 million. Now, bear in mind what we've said in previous podcasts about Chelsea's current run rate of losses and the problems that that is causing them and looks like causing them in the future in terms of compliance with financial fair play rules, profit and sustainability, or SCRs coming from UEFA, etc., etc.

51:18and what that then might mean going forward in terms of whether they're actually even able to play in European football in the future because they are teetering on the edge potentially of UEFA saying, do you know what, you've broken our rules so often that we're going to have to suspend you from European competition for a year so this is what Chelsea are playing for right now and it might just be worth you outlining how the table looks right now Charlie, right, because Chelsea are right on the edge I've got the table up in front of me and just very specifically here because there are games tonight and tomorrow night.

51:47We're recording on Tuesday. But the table as of Tuesday has Chelsea in sixth place, seven points behind Champions League football with Liverpool in fifth place. So Chelsea are on 48 points and Liverpool are on 55 points. With five games to go, that looks really like that ship's sailed. That's gone, right? But the biggest thing is look below because what you have below is quite an incredible build-up of clubs competing for European football. Chelsea on 48 points, Brentford on 48 points, Bournemouth on 48 points, Brighton, who Chelsea played tonight, on 47 points, Everton on 47 points, Sunderland on 46 points, and Fulham on 45 points.

52:28So from 6th to 12th, you're separated by three points, i.e. one win. Now, you and I were having a conversation about this last night. It's a really interesting point. What I want to do is I never want to devalue how important European football is. Crystal Palace playing in the semifinals of the Conference League is a massive deal for the club. And the reason why that is crucial for Palace is because until they won the FA Cup, they never won a trophy in their entire history and they never played in European football in their entire history. So for them to be in the semifinal of any European competition is, for Palace, an amazing thing.

53:00Fantastic, right? Money aside, that's business and fans. It's great. And if you look at the clubs I've just mentioned below Chelsea, for Brentford, it would be the first time they play European football. For Bournemouth, the same. Brighton have done it. Everton would be right back in there. Sunderland, incredible, you know, if they could get in there. So for those clubs stacking up below, Europa League football and Conference League football would be huge. And a very welcome financial boost as well. For Chelsea, it would be an inconvenience. Well, it would be financially, it wouldn't move the needle, right?

53:29So that 20 million of extra revenue, I mean, I'm not saying that they wouldn't want to have it because at the moment they need to take every quid they can get. But the problem is, is it clogs up your Thursday evenings to the point where it jeopardizes your chances of qualifying for the Champions League from the league the following year. Okay? So in other words, you know, you are out there slogging away in the outposts of European football every Thursday night, trying to win the Conference League to at least repair some of the damage, the financial damage you get from not qualifying. Manchester United showed that this year.

54:00They did. Man United have not been playing European football this year, whereas pretty much all their other rivals have. And it's made a massive difference to them. you know every weekend they're playing against tired rivals and we should say while we're talking about European football I don't think many people would have had Manchester United at third and Aston Villa at fourth so huge seasons for them financially massive their ability to go and strengthen in a transfer market particularly for Aston Villa who economically are sitting right on the balance between last year people giving them no chance because they thought they had to sell a huge amount to comply with profit and sustainability so you know there's some great stories in there in European qualification but I do I do think you can't underestimate the importance in the business models of that Champions League qualification particularly for those clubs for whom that's what they're depending on I think I said last week and I said Chelsea's in their justification of the record losses that they they had submitted to Premier League and to Europe if they were going to hit 700 million or so which is what they wanted to do that relies on them being in the Champions League let's have a look at relegation right let's have a look at the relegation area right Because normally what's the case is that you've got clubs fighting against each other for relegation who almost psychologically have been prepared for the possibility of relegation from the start of the season.

55:16They're the smaller clubs with the smaller squads and the smaller wage bills and so on and so forth. And the difference, and obviously they're used to a merit payment, which is much lower because they're normally consistently down towards the bottom of the league. So in other words, they're normally receiving, let's say,£110 million a year in TV revenue for the Premier League. if they get relegated to the championship their first year parachute payment that's the money which the premier league gives you after you've been relegated would be about 50 55 million pounds so they're looking at a 50 million pound revenue loss coming down from the premier league to the championship they might lose some commercial revenue as well so maybe actually that gap is more like 70 or 80 so what they then do is they sell sell a few players reduce their wage bill enough to then try and help those first two years of parachute payments, try and help them bounce back up again, whilst keeping an eye on what might be the case if they were not to achieve that.

56:07So that's your Wolves business model. That's the Wolves business model. That's the Burnley business model. So these guys are getting relegated, but they've kept a bit to one side. They've made sure that their model encapsulates the possibility of relegation. Disappointing, though, would be much as it reduces the value of their clubs, and that's a very significant thing for the owners. It's not risking them from a business model perspective. Spurs, if they got relegated, I mean, we were probably the first people to discuss that as a serious possibility, which is now about two months ago. Yeah, and you still read the comments and everyone was just like, you guys are just baiting.

56:44Yeah, exactly. So from two months ago, when we first speculated that Spurs could get relegated and it was a video seen by almost 300 ,000 people and with an awful lot of comments on it and there were an awful lot of people with Chardon Friday for Spurs but also a lot of Spurs fans going, you're just trolling us. We're not going to get relegated, right? But two months later, that's not what Spurs fans are thinking now. So we've just discussed how your Burnleys and your Wolves are looking at, you know, net-net, a revenue diminution of about 70 million quid, sell a couple of players, adjust your wage bill a little bit, make a few back office staff redundant, and away you go, okay?

57:17Spurs, if they get relegated, there's now speculation around, a bit of speculation around and what that might look like. And that is very, very different because their current revenue is not 150, 180, like Wolves and Burnley. It's 600. And the question is, is well, how much of that is vulnerable to a relegation? And the general estimate seems to be that they could lose 250 million of annual revenue if they go down through a mixture of TV rights, sponsorship, merchandise, match day, absolutely everything, because the entire club is geared up to being a top six club. So just looking at that, so last year Leicester got 116.9 million.

58:02That was media and placement for being in the Prem. So let's say Spurs finish in the same position, 18th. So they'd lose 60 million because they still get 50 million from a parachute. Match day, obviously you've got a 60 ,000 seat. But don't forget that 600 million is included European football as well. Right, because of course. Because they won the Europa League, which was 25 million. Yeah, plus then all the games that they were able to commercialize. So let's just say, I don't know, let's just say it was maybe 50 million. So you should get around 100 million for not playing in Europe and getting relegated just from the Premier League money.

58:36Then, of course, there's the stuff we don't necessarily know about, but you can assume, which is things like the commercial kickbacks that sponsors will have. You'll have match day where it'll be very interesting to see, won't it? I mean, genuinely, hospitality pricing, even match day attendance. You know, genuinely, will you get 60 ,000 Spurs fans going every week to those games? I don't know. Again, it depends on your pricing model. It depends on how the team's doing. But with their match day currently being, I think, around 150 million, is it, Charlie? Something like that, the Spurs match day.

59:08I mean, I would be absolutely shocked if they managed to maintain that above 100. Shocked, right? Because the hospitality is such a big chunk of it. Merchandise, again, there'd be a big chunk of merchandise in there, which had already taken a hit from SON not being there anymore, but will now come down substantially again. And then you've got your commercial. And of that 600, I think from memory, around about 250 million sponsorships. And obviously it depends on the structuring of those deals and how long they've got to run. But I've just made a rough calculation that it would be surprising to me if they didn't drop off at least 80 to 100 in sponsorships.

59:44So you add up all of that and you think, well, that's 250. Okay, so if their 600 comes down to 350 in year, one but in year two it would probably if they stayed in the championship for another season that 350 would probably come down to more like 250 because you lose a chunk of your parachute payments because the next parachute payment is lower but also some of those commercial deals that would have hung around for one more year then come out of contract at the end of that year and then you've got various hospitality deals because not all hospitality is sold seasonally quite often in big premier clubs you buy three seasons worth up front um and so on and so forth So, you know...

1:00:19This is, when you look... And I'm not doing this. This is what we're really facing. It's absolutely extraordinary. Yeah. I mean, the reason Leicester's achievement was so incredible was because it was over 38 games of a season, i.e. you have 38 opportunities to perform. People always talk about the greatest shocks, you know, and I don't know, let's use a Rugby World Cup when South Africa lost to Japan. Yeah. Incredible, but absolutely ridiculous. One-off game. But a one-off game. this is the same as the Leicester piece this is a team that has all of 600 million in revenues won the European competition the year before having a very bad Premier League season wage bill of 270 million and it could get relegated it's quite extraordinary where would you put West Ham in that discussion because again at time of recording what I'm really just saying just to be clear to people looking at the league we're really I think talking about West Ham or Spurs going down because Nottingham Forest had a big win against Burnley at the weekend and leads the same put you know pretty much safe now i'd say on 39 points where spurs are on 31 so west ham at 33 spurs at 31 17th 18th it's looking like it's between those two i would have had west ham down as another club that wouldn't have expected to be in a relegation battle but they wouldn't there's absolutely no way they would have been as clear in the strategic planning as spurs would have been from it no so so for memory west ham's revenues which have been climbing significantly, obviously since the move to the London Stadium.

1:01:47From memory, they're about the sort of 300, 350 million. That sort of, that type of area. I don't have it in front of me, but it was a wrap. I'd say between 250 to 350. 350, somewhere. Depending on what competitions they're in and what competitions they're in. I think they were in the top 20 of the Money League, weren't they? They were. They were. They sneaked into the top 20 of the Money League at around those types of levels. So their revenue at the moment is about half that of Spurs and would go down to including their parachute payments probably about in the first season back in the championship, so 150 to 200, that kind of thing.

1:02:20So they would see a very, very significant revenue drop, maybe 100, maybe 150 million, but it's not the 250 million that Spurs are facing. And I think that's the big challenge, is when you get a revenue decrease of that kind of magnitude and when you're being forced to look at, yeah, but what would you do if you stay in the championship one more year as well? effectively what you're going to have to do is they're going to have to sell pretty much every player that they possibly can. They cannot afford to take forward, along with their massive existing cost base of running that stadium, running that training site, running the huge office staff they have and all these kinds of things, they cannot afford to take that punt on keeping loads of their best played players on the books, which, to be honest with you, is what normally recently relegated clubs do do to enable themselves to bounce back.

1:03:08So the squad rebuilding operation there, where they go out and sign a whole bunch of players who they think can get them promoted, that'll be really interesting. The funny thing in all of this, to wrap it up, the thing that everyone competes for in the Premier League, i.e. the title, actually has the sport's financial impact. Where we're really looking at the biggest needle movers on the business side is the European qualification and relegation. It's great to have all these different outcomes in play, isn't it? Completely. Right. Ding, ding, ding. New sport alert. Well, not new sport to the extent where we're giving it the proper attention that I think it deserves at the right time.

1:03:40But we have discussed snooker in the context of some of our other conversations previously. Now, you're quite a... Is it fair to say you're quite a fan? I am. I'm a keen snooker fan and I play. Oh, do you? Yeah, I do. How well are we talking? Not bad, actually. Yeah, I'm sort of... What are you expecting? A visit to the table, what do you expect for a break? Well, I expect we'll be putting it strongly. But I'm probably, you know, if I'm going to play, you know, sort of best of five with a friend, I'd probably hope to have a couple of 30, 35, 40 breaks, that kind of thing, which is sort of, you know, middling amateur type level.

1:04:18Yeah. To put that into context for people that haven't played, I think that's actually pretty good. Generally, if you're consistently sinking a red and then sinking a colour, you're not a bad player. Well, I'd say it's probably the equivalent of having about a sort of five or a six handicap in golf. Yeah. Yeah, which is really good. I know, Charlie, that's around you as well. So your sporting achievement, we should do, you know, some form of filming to prove to people that you're actually as good at gold and snooker. But also note that these are sports that don't involve running around very much.

1:04:45Okay. Charlie, why are we talking about snooker this week? We're talking about snooker this week because it's the Snooker World Championships, Charlie. And the Snooker World Championships famously, legendarily held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. They were first held in 1927. 99 years ago was the first world championship. And the Snooker World Championship makes up the Triple Crown. That's the sort of top three events with the Masters, used to be called the Benson Hedges Masters, which held at Wembley, and the UK Championship, right? Those are the three majors, as it were, of snooker, the Triple Crown.

1:05:22So just put a bit of numbers around it. The prize money is a million quid this week, and the winner gets 500 ,000, which is, roughly speaking, funnily enough, the same as the Grand National we were talking about the other day. The difference is the Grand National takes about 10 minutes, whereas to win the World Snooker title, you have to put in quite a bit of elbow grease over two weeks, right? So it's not the most massively well-remunerated sport. Depending on who you are and depending on which country you come from, endorsement can be very, very significant. Because it's worth bearing in mind that this is a sport which is fundamentally very big in Britain and massive in China.

1:06:00And this is the thing which is transforming world snooker, okay world snooker it's it's arguable that the two biggest sports in china are basically horse racing and snooker horse racing for the betting snooker with hundreds of thousands of young kids wanting to be the next big thing in snooker why do you think that is i do you know what even as i was saying i was thinking why yeah i mean that there were some early trailblazers going back 20 years 25 years there were some early well first of all um asian players james watanar the typhoon it's always interesting that a lot of snooker players are named after meteorological phenomena i don't know if jimmy the well went right alex hurricane higgins so the typhoon was james what an hour who was sort of the first asian player to really make it big marco fu who was from um hong kong um and and then there was a procession after that of young chinese players coming through marco fu having been a hong kong chinese person chinese chinese players culminated in Zhao Jingtong winning the world title last year.

1:07:05Okay? So there's a young Chinese player becoming world champion. There have been a couple like Ding Zhongui had come close before, etc. But this was the first world champion. And when you look at what that meant for TV ratings, it just puts everything into perspective a little bit, right? So snooker in this country, big sport. Peak audience for the world title last year, the world championship final last year three three and a half million okay now that's not up at the levels where it was in the 1980s here where for a long time the most watched sporting event in history in this country was the world championship final of 1985 which was right in the middle of british snooker's heyday this is when the snooker players were front page news this is in the hurricane higgins and steve davis and whirlwind white era and this was dennis taylor from northern and beating steve davis the then dominating world champion on the final re-spotted black at about midnight and there were at one point 18 million people in this country watching that so we're not back at those levels in britain but it's still given that obviously there's been a fragmentation of tv audience not everyone watches the same channels anymore but around about three and a half million people watching the world final um to put that in terms of context the FA Cup final around about 8 million.

1:08:24The Grand National, we said, has come down from 10 million to 6 million. Wimbledon final about 7 or 8 million. So in terms of those protected assets that are still shown on terrestrial TV. It's highly competitive. It's competitive. It's competitive. It's sort of, you know, just below the FA Cup final, Wimbledon, and the Grand National. in China last year go on what Jiaxing Tong's final was watched by 210 million people 210 210 million people million people right how many people watched the Champions League final last year in China no 500 million no 100 million what 100 million right watching the whole thing live 100 million really right do you know 210 million Chinese people watched the world snooker final last year.

1:09:15So this gives the sport a really interesting future, right? Because what it means is, is in a fairly fast growing country with a growing middle class, with growing spending power, you've got a sport which is really dominant and that has young glamorous stars who are really making headlines over there. Xiao Jing Tong last year made about three million US dollars in endorsements. Okay, now it's not quite at Eileen Gu level, but it's still pretty healthy for what would be called a secondary or a tertiary sport, right? Three million in endorsements before you take into account prize money. So I was just having a look at that because the World Snooker revenue was broken down to emphasize the fact that it wasn't UK dominated anymore.

1:09:58UK is still a huge market with 21.6 million of revenue last year. Then it was 4.8 million from Europe, 7.4 million from Asia and the Middle East. Yeah. And that figure, most interestingly, was sharply up from 3.6 million the year before. So you're really saying that's double the revenue in one year from one region. But think about where that's going. Okay, so in other words, as the TV contracts go through their cycles, and as the ability to pay for subscriptions and these type of things in China goes up, so it going from being always free-to-air into more subscription-type models within China, if you start to get a situation where subscription pay-per-view TV channels in China are in competition to get the rights to screen something which 210 million people are going to watch, you're going to see those media rights increasing significantly over the next few years.

1:10:50I would imagine. I'd be amazed if that wasn't the case. And you mentioned prize money. I mean, that's always a good indication of a sports growth and development. In snooker, it's actually been pretty extraordinary if you look again at just the last few years of growth because the prize money paid out in 2024-25 reached a record£18.2 million, up from£14.2 million in 2023-24 and up from£11.2 million in 2022-23. And crucially, Charlie, up from£3.5 million in 2009. Now, why do I say crucially up from£3.5 million in 2009? 2009 was the moment at which snooker had its revolution in governance and structure terms.

1:11:27So it had long been governed, both in terms of the regulatory side, but also in terms of the professional snooker side by something called the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. That's the WPBSA. So that's the equivalent going back of the, you know, whatever it might be, the FA in football and, you know, the ECB or the TCCB as it used to be in cricket and so on and so forth. This was the governing body, but that also ran the commercial side of the game as well. and during the late 70s and 80s there was an explosion in popularity in the game that was driven i think by mass coverage on terrestrial tv but also combined with um the introduction into the sport of main energy characters right so people with big personalities we mentioned some of them jimmy white alex higgins these types of guys but they were being promoted mostly by Barry Hearn.

1:12:21This was where Barry Hearn cut his teeth. This was Barry Hearn's origin story. Barry Hearn of Matchroom. Of Matchroom, who we discussed extensively on the show in terms of his ongoing fights with Dana White at the moment in the boxing arena. But his origin story is snooker. And he was Steve Davis's manager. And he then took over various of the other players. And they were called the Rack Pack. And there was rather a good BBC film about them or sort of, you know, mockumentary about them recently, about what it was like in the 1980s where, you know, when Jimmy White and Alex Higgins, you know, locked themselves in the penthouse suite at the Europa Hotel in Belfast, I believe, at one point.

1:12:55You know, he had all the tabloid newspapers with their lenses going on up there. What the hell is going on up there? They're obviously having a week-long party and all this type of stuff. This was front page news. Proper sporting superstar. These guys were sporting superstars of the 1980s. You then see during the 90s a dropping off of interest and a diminution of prize money. So prize money was not only not going up, but it was coming down and not being helped by the fact, of course, that tobacco companies were being banned from sponsoring. Because you go back and you say, well, the embassy was sponsoring the world title, you had Benson Hedges sponsoring the Masters, and you had players back in those days smoking openly on TV.

1:13:30So what happened was, is that the players got increasingly involved in the governance of it, and they started to throw their toys out the pram at what they perceived to be the incompetence of the WPBSA when it comes to the running of their sport. And they basically, enacted a sort of revolution and asked they asked barry hearn barry can you take over the running of this sport okay and effectively then a deal was done where as we were discussing earlier on with the pga tour a separation was made between the regulatory body the wpbsa and then a commercial vehicle called world snooker which matchroom barry hearn's business took over 51 of the equity in that entity and then was therefore able to control professional snooker on the promise to the players which rather reminds me of the promise that Bernie Eccleston made to Formula 1 teams back in 1980s that Barry said to them give me a majority of the rights and I will pay you more money you will get more money because I know what I'm doing right and back in 2009 a lot of the players who he had looked after Steve Davis and Jimmy White were still being prominent in the game we're talking about 15-16 years ago and he has been true to his word because prize money that year was 3.5 million which when you bear in mind that there are upwards of 40, 50, 60 professional snooker players, that's getting pretty tight, you know.

1:14:48Let's be honest, right? A high-performing sport needs to have good prize money so that players can give their whole time to being snooker players. That's right. Right. So it's gone from 3.5 million in 2009 to 19 million today. An inflationary rise of 3.5 million would have taken it to 5.6 million. so effectively under Barry Hearn prize money has somewhere between tripled and quadrupled over that period so it has been a big success but what they have done and what he has done is made sure that prize money doesn't gallop away with itself so that world snooker and the whole thing is don't forget the WPBSA still owns 26 % of world snooker which kicks off the money which it needs to actually run the sport and to help the grassroots and all this type of stuff so the model has worked really, really well.

1:15:40Prize money has been increased very significantly, but not, as we were discussing with golf earlier on, in an unsustainable way. So the whole thing is moving forward. And I think it's just worth just putting one last thing on the table, which of course is that they signed their own big deal with the Saudis not that long ago. And it looks like snooker, or at least part of snooker in Saudi, might also be a victim of the pairing back of Vision 2030. So I think there were two events, two major events in Saudi, and they've confirmed one of them is gone. now Saudi I think for one of their tournaments uh in the Riyadh season kind of snooker championship I think it was the same as the um the world championships yeah it's half a million for the winner yeah they also uh started to introduce things like it wasn't at the golden ball um where it was if you got a 147 there was a golden ball on the table if you sunk that it was a 167 so a record break and for the first players to do a one million dollar prize money so they Saudi-ified it, should we say, in the way we'd only expect.

1:16:38But I was going to add this as a point, Charlie, and I'd like to know your thoughts. While all of this global growth is great, if your two key markets are, let's say, China and Saudi Arabia for that, driving the financial value of the sport up, does that also present a risk that you have to make sure you mitigate in some way, ensure that you're broadening that a little bit more? Because we mentioned the Chinese Super League, for example, being something that was built up massively and then fell off. We've investment that's gone into golf are now being taken away. So you need to make sure you don't hedge your bets on a small number of international markets.

1:17:13But this is different, isn't it? Because this is being built bottom up from audience. So in China, this is starting off with a massive organically grown audience that's been grown over 25 to 30 years, and is actually not yet being commercialized, really. I mean, it's still a small number. In terms of the snooker balance sheet, the amount of money they're getting from China is still, relatively speaking, a small number but it's the small number they're getting is a small reflection of an enormous audience both live commercial tv and all this type of stuff so i can only see one way from there i think the risk is actually a bit different the risk is is that um chinese players who are increasingly influential within the top 16 which is sort of the key denominating factor in snooker and therefore before the Chinese market, from an eyeballs perspective, becomes so dominant that actually at some point the Chinese players and their promoters say, why are we spending so much of our time in the UK?

1:18:11And why are we all on a tour, effectively, the WPBSA tour, which is basically a British-based tour? Why are these guys, why is this guy Barry Hearn eating so much of our lunch? I mean, they already have a number of tournaments in China, by the way, but basically shouldn't this tour be basically China based and the British players should be coming over and playing us here because we're where the big market is we're where you get the huge live audiences etc I mean yeah I'm sure we'll go back and play one or two tournaments over there but why is the whole thing based over here would it come back to the old discussion we often have of creating new leagues and leveraging existing IP the difference between the two how much is heritage a part of this sport and the Chinese players desire to play at a crucible and be a part of the history of the game rather than a do you know what there is an opportunity for something fresh and let's build it from scratch yeah well i'm not enough of an expert in the chinese sports market in general let alone the chinese snooker market to understand how much those things really matter to them i suspect they do at least at the moment because the fact that the first chinese world champion you know that that that's going to make a difference right that knowing the history the hundred year history of that and knowing that this is your first one gives it a relevance on the global stage which would be very hard to replicate in a newly created tournament remember we talked about eileen gu and the strive for china to have international yeah sports stars almost playing internationally playing in a different market letting your top sports stars be known in places like europe in places like the us probably plays a huge part in their appetite to create value and sport more globally if they bring it all into china do you do that as well do people follow it as well it's an no no answers to it but it's an interesting thing to watch it's been a big success and um you know i love the world championships i watch a lot of it much to other people's frustration sometimes mrs metham hasn't got into it as much as i would like just yet yeah it's not a big sport in germany um unlike darts um so there's there's still room for growth of course there's still room for growth you need to get there playing you need to teach her how to well we had a snooker table in our last house and i can't say that it was overused by mrs metham But by you, that's a different discussion.

1:20:18So, yes, go snooker. Again, well done, the Hearns. And I think the next five or ten years, crossing fingers could see more growth because even if they are left with that one, I saw that Riyadh is still keeping one tournament, right? And the other tournament is moving to Qatar, which is another geography which does pay for sporting events and which is, you know, snooker is a relatively small amount, but quite big in terms of the game of snooker. It's not like subsidizing live for a billion a year. You know, for a million quid a year, you have a meaningful addition to the snooker tour. So I think it's a growth sport again, but it's interesting going, just put this little asterisk down.

1:20:57What did they do? You know, they made sure that they made themselves commercial. You know, making sure they have a clear calendar, clear narrative, all the things that the Hearns always do, right? And this is the thing which other sports need to understand. is that it's not always more and more events equals more. Sometimes it is where those events are, what the rhythm of the calendar is, making characters out of the players who are playing in them and making sure they are more broadly known, all these different types of things. Great summary, Charlie. Great summary. As always, thank you. Really enjoyed that.

1:21:28Thank you, Charlie. Thanks so much for tuning into another Breakdown and I hope you enjoyed a relatively Chelsea rant-free show. This live story will be occupying the airspace for a while, I'm sure, so lock in on that. And I know we'll all be watching the end of the season with much more of an eye on the pitch rather than the finances. But it is an interesting reality when there is not a huge financial incentivisation placed on the ultimate success of the Premier League. Once again, thanks for joining and we'll see you next week. Most sports organisations have performance-linked financial commitments built into their contracts.

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