THE BREAKDOWN: Norway’s Talent Machine Unpacked, Silverstone’s Record Weekend, & NBA Europe’s Billion Dollar Bids (E27)

28:06And now we're starting to really see it in football. So what we're seeing here, I tell you what, I want to take this story and use it as a comparison point against Scotland, right? Scotland is, you know, the land across the water from Viking land. and there have been all sorts of, you know, treaties in the past to do the Shetlands and all this type of stuff. So you've got two countries which are both geographically quite contiguous and also they're about the same size of country as well in terms of population, in terms of category of countries. So we're not talking about one country that's 50 million and another one that's 5 million.

28:38We're talking about, what's the population in Norway, Charlie? Five and a half. Five and a half. Both pretty much five and a half million. It's 5.4, 5.5. They're both same size of country, similar kind of climate for the most part. Probably you'd say Scotland has got the advantage in some ways of having some very large established football clubs who therefore do would have the finances to finance proper youth development systems and all that kind of stuff and they've got more footballing history as well and they've also got extreme proximity to England which means that their players players who are growing up in the Scottish system can translate into the English system very very easily both literally physically but also from a visa passport visa point of view so there's a whole lot of reasons why Scotland should be advantaged compared to Norway, and yet they're not.

29:22So what have Norway been doing that Scotland have not been doing? So let me lay out the Norway case and give you the explanation for how they've actually done this, and you can then tie that into how we could look at Scotland. So I just want to read this out at the beginning because this is going to build the fundamental structure of really how Norway have done it. So by the age of 25, 93 % of Norway's population has been involved in some kind of organised sports. Conversely, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported in 2024 that 70 % of youth athletes drop out of organized sports by the age of 13.

29:51Injury and burnout are the principal reasons why. Discontinuation of sports during childhood plays a role in more than 75 % of adolescents in the US who fail to meet physical activity recommendations. So the reason I read that out is because it plays the heart of Norway's thesis on sport, which is sport should be fun and it should be built around enjoyment. So Norway basically have this philosophy. when up to 12 years old, you will only play in a kind of local club environment. You will try lots of different sports. It will not be boring in its tactical sessions if you're playing football. It will be far more about how you enjoy and engage in the sport.

30:30So by the time you get to 12, when you're ready and starting to physically develop, you will hopefully be coming to that age going, I love this. I love it. I haven't been overexposed. I've got the exposure that I needed, but I haven't been overexposed. By the time I'm 12, I'm ready to push on. Not, I'm just, I'm feeling forced into doing this and I want to push back. That system has basically allowed them to go, right, you enjoy yourself, have a great time. Then at the right time, we'll start looking at how to develop you. They've done that in a number of ways. Firstly, they provided facilities, right?

31:08So tie this into Scotland as well. This would be a key point they've got a real challenge with the weather of course you know norway is incredibly cold and all the pitches freeze over for a huge part of the year so what they do they invested heavily in the infrastructure over 60 percent of pitches were artificial um by 20 to 15 most of them are free to play on so there is no barrier for entry they basically said you know sport and it's a very egalitarian country norway you know it's very much there's equal belief of access and rights so why would we change that with our sporting philosophy so we're not going to keep sports access for those that can afford it it's going to be for everyone what they then have done on top of that is created something called the landslag skollen is the elite academy post 12 that players will then get picked out of their football clubs to then go and play so 10 the top 10 will be nominated and they will then go and start playing in training camps together which is then centralized really to develop the future norwegian football team but it comes out of the clubs that have been rearing these players in a very specific way from whatever young age they've started this is the track that erling harland has taken this is the track that martin odegaard so i'm quite important to ask here so up until the age of 12 they play in local clubs local clubs not in professional clubs they play in local clubs and then at 12 the national system picks them up okay so at this point they're still not in professional football clubs no right so But they are not entering a professional football club environment until they're much closer to the point of their professional career.

32:40So if you look at, again, if we go back to that statement at the beginning about age, Erling Haaland, of course, is a great example, right? Erling Haaland physically is an absolute specimen, and that is a huge part of his game. He was actually quite small when he was younger. So until he... Do you think that's how he escaped being a ski jumper? I think it could be. You're the late developer. I'm delighted that he did escape. He's a late developer. Because he's found, yeah, he was. Or maybe not. I don't know. I was wondering that because I was looking at him the other day going, surely a ski jumper.

33:09Charlie, you can't make any assumptions. You can't make any assumptions. But he, you know, there's a very high chance that in a different ecosystem, Erling Haaland would have fallen through the cracks. He would have suffered from the fate that a lot of footballers do, particularly at a young age, where physically a coach will assess them and say, you're not quite up to it. You're not a striker. You don't have the physique, you know, whatever. However, in Norway's system, it's perfect because by the time he actually started to show his promise, he had had the physical chance to start developing into the player that he's now become.

33:40At 16, he then goes to Molde. See, now this is the revolutionary bit, right? This is the bit where they are different from everywhere else in Europe and indeed in Latin America, which is that the elite clubs are not being entrusted with developing these players. okay the very local system and then the national system is doing it up until the age of 15 at which point the boy is starting to become properly physically developed and more mentally developed and has decided i really enjoy this i love this this is something i want to do so effectively they are then put into professional clubs at the age at which a professional career is right in their eyeline right i'm two years away from making my first team debut so i'm going to probably play for the under 18 team this is probably what they have in the in the norwegian professional clubs and then i can see the pathway to the first team straight away now if you contrast that to the system that we have before we even go scotland has the same system as the rest of um europe effectively where youth development is entrusted to the professional elite clubs so in other words what happens is kid starts playing at five six seven shows some promises the best kid in the local schoolyard somebody somewhere says to the a scout who works on behalf of a local professional football club this kid's got some ability at nine years old they're brought into that professional football club and the professional football club will have a look at 80 of them at the same time so you've already sorry just on there a key point of difference there is you've already identified the sport that they're going to be playing absolutely now so so this this is a key weakness of this system, right, which is effectively then from the age of nine, they then only play football.

35:22Yeah, pretty much. Now that there's a lot of research that's been done that suggests that that is a leading contributor towards injuries in the medium to long term, because effectively you're repeating, you are repeating movement patterns, the same movement patterns as your body is developing. And there's quite a lot of sort of interest now at the better academies in right we actually need to get our kids in the academies doing other types of sport and moving in other types of ways first of all to keep them mentally fresh so they are you know not just football football football but also frankly so their bodies are moving in different ways otherwise we could end up with a lot of injury problems down the track what gives you a better chance of success right you if you're a small country you're five and a half million people again versus let's just say the us because it's 350 million you want to keep as many of those players in the system for as long as possible you've got a much higher likelihood of doing that that's true if they enjoy it yeah so again like a 95 percent rate of norwegians playing a team sport by the time they're 25 yeah that gives norway a far yes they're a small population but it gives them a really broad pool of athletes yes to then be able to go and build elite professionals across various different areas johannes clibo the record um winter olympian who won 11 gold medals uh smashing the record of eight previously in this winter olympics um let's just be clear he won six this winter olympics but 11 in total he was always going to be a footballer that was always what he thought but then as he develops and gets to the certain age where because he hasn't necessarily specialized or been pressured into one one or another hey cross-country skiing is actually not too bad and he's bloody good at it and so there was then a choice that was made purely off his own free will.

37:03Carsten Warholm, the 400-meter hurdle, gold medal in Tokyo. Jakob Ingebretson, we were talking about Josh Kerr the other week, the great rival of Josh Kerr in the 1500, and he's a 5 ,000-meter champion as well. Marcus Ruth, decathlon. They won the decathlon gold in Paris. So you're getting Olympic medal winners. You're getting Kaspar Ud, the tennis player, been top of tennis for a very long time. Victor Hovland, won eight PGA titles, really should be winning a major. Ryder Cups. Ada Hegerberg won the Ballon d 'Or Feminin just a few years ago. They've had players at the top of that game for a long time.

37:41We're just now starting to see the fruits of the work that they've been putting in place behind the scenes really start to show the value in the biggest sport of all. And whether it's Haaland, whether it's Odegaard, whether it's the team, I mean Berg in midfield, again, without getting too tactical, but he plays for Bodo Glimt. I was just watching the game and he just stood out a mile in the middle of the pitch. He was unbelievable. And you suddenly look at it, oh, part of the Bodo group. They've got this culture around the team, which also underpins it. I don't want to get too washy, but it's a really important point because it comes back to the, if you succeed in encouraging that enjoyment, you'll build better people, you'll build better team environments.

38:21And a huge part of what they have been able to achieve or are achieving as a team clearly comes from that collective approach and mentality. There are just a few things I want to pick up here on the football side, right? let's just summarize it thus first of all keep as many promising footballers playing football and enjoying playing football for as long as possible because you don't quite know at what stage a lot of them are going to develop and if you leave it to the elite clubs the elite clubs will start eliminating them at a much too early stage because basically it's costing them money and they have to start making choices they have to focus on certain players and all this type of stuff so that that's the first observation i'd make on that the second observation i make is cross-training, which is they're getting them to do other sports as well at a crucial physical developmental stage.

39:03Now, those two things are what I think is underpinning this. And they are two things that other small nations can copy. I think it's harder in a very big nation because that national piece, when you bring them all in at, you know, at whenever it is 15, right? what is it 12 you said actually between effectively that's 12 but harlan for example signed for molder when he was 16 16 so he didn't he didn't make it into yeah the professional like the top end professional environment until he was at the stage where wayne rooney was making his debut exactly right so max downman's at 15 running around an arsenal right so so my point here we get tying it back to scotland right and the reason we're discussing scotland and norway is because scotland had a terrible performance at the world cup and norway have had an outstanding performance of the world.

39:52And both hadn't participated for 28 years. You literally had exactly the same situations coming in. Same size populations, all that type of stuff. So if you look, first of all, on the club side, you've got Celtic and Rangers massively underperforming in Europe. And you've got relatively modest Norwegian clubs like Bodo Glimt massively outperforming in Europe. And then you go on the international stage and you've got the same thing. Right? So this is something which is quite consistent. And you can't just rise off saying they've got Haaland. Well, Bodo Glimt don't have Haaland. Bodo Glimt are doing...

40:23They don't have Odegaard. They've got Norwegian players. They've won five games in a row against Atletico, Man City and Inter Milan home and away. I mean... Yeah, so I think it's just something which might be interesting for Scotland to have a look at. Now, why won't that happen, Charlie? The reason that won't happen is because if we think that the FA in this country are stuffy blazers who never... who aren't particularly progressive, which is an unfair characterization, actually, I think. the Scottish FA and Scottish football as a whole is the most hidebound conservative backwards looking sports in terms of it being the national sport which it is it's it's quite extraordinary when I speak to people in Scottish football the amount of time that they reference the 1960s the 1970s as being that's what we need to get back to as opposed to looking forward they always look backwards and then you've got the politics that surrounds celtic and rangers being the dominant forces within scottish football and then basically being obviously constant loggerheads with each other and therefore the scottish fa not being in a strong position when you've got these two mega clubs who basically can easily the wealthiest parts of the whole ecosystem so this would need to be something that was being decided as happened in norway at a political level yeah this would have to be being decided up here and you look at the scottish government and bless them you know You can't see them having this kind of strategic over view or interest in excellence in any way.

41:47If they were listening to this, I know the response that would be given. But Norway, one of the richest countries in the world. Yes, but actually really what we're talking about here, a lot of this is societal. It's an approach. It's not the spend. If we're looking at spend, the spend here for Norway was creating a system, well, an infrastructure system that facilitated all year round football, if they could on pitches that didn't freeze over. That's an expensive product. The other side of it is coaching. So they have 17 ,000 coaches that come through a grassroots system. It's basically a coach every 320 players.

42:24Sorry, a coach every 320 people in the population. That's totally astonishing, especially coaching as a national sport. So coach, they also had 2 ,000 people, 2 ,000 that completed their UA for B licenses in the last decade. It's a really incredible model. It is, and you're bang on, I think. It is completely possible in the smaller countries that have much more control around this type of thing. And it would be very hard to do this in England, even at 60 million, let alone, as I said, it's a bit unfair. But the reason I brought the US into it is because a lot of the US sporting analysts have been looking at Norway, and they did during the Winter Olympics.

43:01That was their moment, to just try and understand how Norway would top the medals table for a third year in a row, for the third Olympics in a row. but anyway I think to conclude it's a really interesting sporting success story as you say it stretches across many different sports it's being brought to the fore particularly in football which is the world's global game and therefore you know having advantages such as loads of snow helping being good at ski jumping is not so relevant when it comes to football and then just casting a light on how countries can think differently to be able to enable themselves to compete in what otherwise simply becomes a numbers game.

43:39So in other words, if Scotland do the same as England, then England has 10 times as many people and therefore will do 10 times as well, right? So therefore, if Scotland really wants competing against England, it has to do it differently. And this is what Norway have done. Completely. Absolutely. So, well, I hope you get an absolute pasting. Sorry, by you, I mean Norway. I'm not, yeah, don't I? I hope Norway gets an absolute pasting. But if we were to have to lose, then we couldn't lose to better Vikings. Exactly. And just to be clear, I am firmly England shirt on the weekend. But it's fun. It's fun to give them the credit they deserve as and when.

44:13Indeed. So moving on. So another massive sporting event that happened last weekend, Charlie. And almost like just for once outside of petrol headland, a little bit under the radar because you had the World Cup going at full pelt right here, including the build up to the Big England game. You had Wimbledon building towards its finale here. and then the little master of the British Grand Prix comes along. Now, the race itself, did you watch it? No. Okay. I was at a one-year-old's birthday party, which is the social events now that really keep you going. Indeed. I did watch it, or at least I watched parts of it and it ended very unsatisfactorily and that would be a whole conversation for a different day and probably not on this podcast about why a major sporting event like that can finish behind a safety car meaning that you don't get any excitement or any sort of, you know, fulfilment even towards the end of the race, right?

45:11Basically, it was a sport. Are you calling for a rerun of the Lewis Hamilton Max Verstappen disaster? No, as I said, it's a very complex topic. I don't want to go into it right now. It was an unsatisfactory race. Let's just put it that way. Charles Leclerc won, didn't he? Charles Leclerc won. But then it was just a run of British drivers. Loads of them, loads of them. Anyway, look, we've got a lot to talk about here, so let's not talk about the race, right? The race was the race, and it was unsatisfactory, and it was what it was. But the event, the event was absolutely massive. Do you know how many people turned up at Silverstone over the weekend?

45:50564 ,000 people. 564 ,000 people over three days. The biggest F1 event in history. So you're talking about almost 200 ,000 a day, Charles? Four days. Oh, it was four days? Four days, yeah. because they include the Thursday as well. So it's 150 ,000 on average a day, right? 150 ,000 people on average a day over a four-day period. It was an absolute beast of an event. And I thought it'd be quite a useful moment to examine both the British Grand Prix itself, but also to have a think about this area of the Formula 1 industry, which is those countries and tracks that host events and the economics of that.

46:30We've been very focused since Liberty Media took over Formula One. We've been very focused on the top end, i.e. what Liberty are doing, and increasingly focused on the teams, of course. And we've discussed usefully over the last few months how the economics and the valuations of the teams have been moving dramatically. And meanwhile, the economics of the hosting side have dropped down the agenda, where 20 years ago, this was at the top of the Formula One sporting agenda. So where to start? Do you want to really start? I think the first thing, just based on how we're going to develop this, is to really look at who actually is responsible for putting on Silverstone itself.

47:06Indeed. That's right. So Silverstone is owned and operated by something called the British Racing Drivers Club, the BRDC. Were you aware of this body until I brought it up with you? I was. You were? Yes. Okay. But I was only relatively recently. Right. Because I've been spammed by Jake Humphrey's social media accounts as he has just recently been made a member of the BRDC, which he was absolutely ecstatic about. Because it's very meaningful within Petrolhead world. There are 850 members. And to become a member, you have to have achieved something of excellence within motorsport. This isn't something which is, okay, well, you know, I'm rich.

47:50I can just pay to get in. This is an invitation thing. You're proposed and seconded and accepted. But, you know, your proposal in a second, I have to explain, this is why this person has achieved something significant in motorsport. And you have to be either British or from the Commonwealth. Right? Now, they made a little exception to let Eddie Jordan in, the late Eddie Jordan, where they said, okay, well, if you were born in Ireland before the whole thing officially became a fully separated, if you were in the Irish free state or something like that, basically, it was, we want Eddie in. And we'll create a sort of exemption there for him because we like him.

48:25But it's 850 members. So it was founded in 1928. So we're coming up to the centenary of the BRDC. And it was founded by a man called Dr. Dudley Benserfield. And he was one of what was called the Bentley boys. And these were the early motor racing drivers. These are the ones who, back when just cars themselves were a relatively recent innovation, were racing some of the early, faster types of cars, including, obviously, Bentleys, hence what they're known as the Bentley Boys. And the BRDC was based at Brooklands, which was a track in Surrey. And it was an up-and-coming sport. And during the Second World War, actually, a lot of BRDC members died.

49:10A lot of them were involved in flying. So you have Battle of Britain, you know, sort of people who died in the Battle of Britain, etc. So it was still a relatively young organization as we come out the back of the Second World War. And this is when we start the sort of the move towards Silverstone. So they took over the lease of Silverstone in 1952, the BRDC did, as a motor racing track. and then in 1966 right so this is within some people's not mine before you uh mention it you cheeky sod um this is within living memory for some people who might be listening to this show um so the brdc um opened a subsidiary um which is called silverstone circuit limited which was specifically for the development of the british grand prix right so that's where we're going back to so over the following 20 years the british grand prix develops and grows as do other grand Grand Prix's around the world, but in slightly chaotic fashion.

50:09The whole thing wasn't sort of properly put together until, of course, famously Bernie Eccleston, who had been both a driver himself and then a team boss, came along and said to the other team owners, we need to organize this properly. We need to sell the rights properly. We need to do this whole thing in a much more structured way. And of course, by this point, the British Grand Prix is one of the established Grand Prix's, one of the legacy, the historic Grand Prix's, which Bernie's new F1 circuit, effectively circus inherits the british grand prix at silverstone as already being a major event this is the early 19 the late 1970s early 1980s so it's already a major sporting event um and uh bernie's business model then um starts to develop during the 1980s and one of the ways in which bernie starts to make money where previously they would say oh well you know the british racing drivers club is having a grand prix and that's that's great let's all go and race there and happy days bernie then starts saying to circuits if you want your grand prix to be in my circus if i'm going to bring all of these teams to race at your circuit you need to pay me money you need to pay formula one management from money it's what's called a hosting fee right so that starts off quite small but as bernie then starts to access grand prix's in different parts of the world where they're very happy to pay very large sums of money particularly the push into the middle east that started to happen 20 25 years ago um some of the historic circuits start to drop out because they can't afford to pay these hosting fees okay and eventually the hosting fees started to get so big that silverson started to struggle to pay them as well so this is around about 10 to 15 years ago.

52:00They've gone from 5 million to 10 million to 15 million a year, right? And by this point, what Bernie's done within Formula One is he's basically said, right, I keep pretty much all the commercial revenues for Formula One management. Obviously, we've taken the TV rights revenue. So as a host of the race, you don't get any TV rights revenue. You don't get any commercial revenue um the one thing you do get is ticketing congratulations right so you're starting to be confronted with quite a stark thing which is we pay formula one management 15 million pounds a year we then need to get 15 million pounds worth of ticketing just to cover our costs and there's chairman john grant i was i was just reading this i mean he very he effortlessly put it is the costs are more than the revenues.

52:45Yeah. Yes. Great. I mean, that's the kind of... So what happened was, by 2015, they're on the verge of bankruptcy. They were being bankrupted by Bernie Eccleston. And Bernie Eccleston's view was, well, guys, if you don't want to have a Grand Prix, don't have a Grand Prix, right? Oh, really? Interesting. Yeah. He used to... It's a terrible circuit anyway, terrible facilities. He was always slagging it off. He was always slagging off the BRDC, right? I think was there an element of sort of chip on shoulder about the whole thing that there was this rather sort of, you know, grand, you know, club, which include lots of dukes and earls.

53:21And there was Bernie, the Southeast London car salesman who wasn't really part of that whole set. Was there a bit of that going on, paying off old scores from what he saw as maybe he felt slighted in the 1970s by not being invited to be a member back then? Maybe there was a bit of all that going on. But the bottom line is that by 2015, which is just before when Liberty took over, they're tied into this contract with Bernie by which basically the amount they have to pay to host the race increases by a – like, it's the crimson of the pension triple lock – increases ahead of inflation every single year.

53:54Well, it was on 5 % escalators, weren't they? Exactly right. So each year it went up 5%. Yeah. And this is during a period when inflation was very, very low. But it's also interesting here because it's during a period where Formula One itself is struggling more than it has done in a very long time. And that was important. That's very important on both sides, right? So on Bernie's side, the fact that Formula One was struggling in general meant that the hosting fees had become an absolutely critical part of the entire financial ecosystem. Extracting money from Trax was becoming the main revenue line, right?

54:29Because they were going to Trax in the Middle East. Bernie was going, right, do you want to have a Grand Prix? Well, it's 40 million, right? Do you want to have a Grand Prix? It's 45 million. And then to Silverson saying, well, look, if you're not even willing to pay me 15, 20 million, then I'll just go and take another one somewhere else. You know, I'm not particularly interested in you, which of course was disastrous for the sport. And you lost some historic Grand Prix's, like the one in South Africa and the one in Argentina during this 20, 25 year period, because Bernie knew that they wouldn't pay the hosting fees and that he'd rather take it somewhere else.

54:59But of course, those were the places where you get massive crowds in big countries like South Africa and Argentina, whereas some of the places where Bernie then took Formula 1 too was a little bit more marginal. So John Grant, in effect, he activated the break clause, didn't he, for the BRDC? Correct. So he basically said, Exactly right. Exactly right. We're out. Fine, we're out. We're out. So just before Bernie sold, or CVC and Bernie sold to Liberty Media, which is 2017, I think, 2017, 2018, just before then Silverstone the British Racing Drivers Club had activated the brake clause in the contract and they basically said we can't afford this right so we were looking at the end of the British Grand Prix at that point and that was much discussed in the media at the time and then Liberty come along and Liberty take a totally different view of the industry and the sport and say no the British Grand Prix is a crucial bit of IP which lends into the value of the entire thing having a race where there are 200 ,000 people there and everyone's going absolutely mad.

56:00This is like the core of fandom and we're trying to build fandom. So they then went and cut a better deal with the BRDC, which meant the BRDC could then see, right, we are now going to carry on hosting this Grand Prix for a significant period of time, but we have much greater certainty over it being potentially affordable. But at the same time, the BRDC just said, okay, well, we also do need to get our own house in order, right? We need to become a more diversified business so that we can, you know, be, well, a proper business. Rather than a club that holds a Grand Prix, we actually need to be a motor racing business as a whole.

56:35And there's been a guy there, sort of an unsung hero of sports business, a guy there called Stuart Pringle, who's been the CEO, or I think originally was the secretary of the British Racing Drivers Club, but since then the title's been changed to CEO, since 2006. So we're talking about a 20-year regime stability there. the first 10 of which was extremely difficult when they were having to spend money on repairing facilities and when the hosting fees were going up and up and when Formula One as a whole was going down and down, leading to the verge of bankruptcy in 2015. Lo and behold, 10 years later, through both the efforts of Silverstone themselves, but also, of course, the efforts of Liberty Media in terms of the way in which they run Formula One, Silverstone now has an annual turnover of 110 million pounds, 50 % of which is from the British Grand Prix.

57:25So you can work it out, okay? It's about 50 to 60 million they get from the British Grand Prix, and 50 % from the rest of the year, from the stuff that they do during the rest of the year. And during that period, they have invested heavily in a heritage centre, conference centre, hotel, increased capacity, hospitality, all of this type of stuff. And Liberty have got a much more progressive model in terms of working with tracks, where these days the tracks do get to keep past the hospitality, right? So it's not the old days of the paddock club where that was all kept in-house. These days, tracks are incentivized to drive hospitality and to actually sort of become sort of part of the whole mix.

58:04The bottom line is they're now making pre-tax profit of 14 million quid and they've got cash reserves of almost 50 million quid. I mean, it's the most astonishing sports business turnaround, Johnny. In less than 10 years, yeah. In less than 10 years, you've gone from basically going, we can't afford this to now just this week gone by, hence why we're talking about it, the biggest event in Formula One history. Yes. That is actually most importantly, financially valuable. Profitable and massively valuable. So if you think, so let's just have a think about this, right? Just as a business, as a sports industry business, annual turnover of 110 million quid with a profit margin of getting on for 10%.

58:41No, but more than 10%, getting on for 15%, right? So you're looking at probably a business which the BRDC, if it were a private company, and was now to set itself, crikey, I don't know, what would it be worth? You're probably talking about certainly the thick end of 500 million, right? So you've gone from something on the verge of bankruptcy to something that's worth 500 odd million in the space of 10 years. So it's been a great – just quickly to give people a bit of a flavor of how idiosyncratic this organization is. So the president is David Coulthard, the former Formula One driver. And the vice presidents are Martin Brundle, former Formula One driver, media pundit.

59:22Ron Dennis, the former McLaren boss. Damon Hill, the former Formula One world champion. Nigel Mansell. Nigel Mansell, the Formula One world champion. Jackie Stewart. Derek Warwick, the former Formula One. So their diversity is very strong. The Lancashire cricket board test, they're not passing that. They're not, but they're actually doing a great job. They're actually doing a great job. They might not be ticking too many DEI boxes here, but the BRDC are doing a great job. And for all that sometimes on this show, we do pick apart things that aren't working. I think sometimes we have to take a step back and say that it wasn't Silverson's fault that this race was a mess.

1:00:04That was Formula One's problem. In terms of the event as a whole, obviously stonking weather as well, which helped. This was an absolutely epic sports business event. Yeah, and most interestingly, as I was going through it as well, it was looking at this compared to the other hosting organizations around. And this is the only private members club hosting. I think actually I'm going to say now because I think the Dutch Grand Prix was also similar, but they're losing their race. That's right. So it will now be the only independent. The rest of the models generally are funded by state. Yeah. So then there you're looking at countries like Azerbaijan, Qatar, Abu Dhabi.

1:00:39Bahrain. Bahrain, actually Australia part do it as well for the Melbourne Grand Prix. And really for those fees. I'm not quite sure how it works in Miami. So I do. You do? Yeah. But the fees attached on the state, naturally, Azerbaijan reportedly are paying$57 million a year, Qatar and Saudi 55, 10-year agreements locked in with Qatar, so that's$550 million, Abu Dhabi 42, Australia, Singapore 35, 40. You then have kind of a mixture of promoter and states, which is the Monaco and Monza Thai models. And they pay about 15 to$20 million. And that's, interestingly, they both recently doubled in the new extensions.

1:01:18So price is going up. Then you have Silverstone, a private members club. Then you have Miami and Vegas. F1 itself pays the hosting fee. And it's not hard to understand why. The value for Formula One. Of breaking the US market. Of breaking the US market and having Vegas. So those are generally the different ways in which Formula One makes its hosting fees. And it totals, you mentioned it was a big part. I mean, it's$700 million a year. In hosting fees. In hosting fees for F1's revenue. So that's the amount of money that the holding company of Formula One rakes in from places paying them for the privilege of having a Grand Prix.

1:01:58It's a huge business. It's about 20 % to 25 % of Formula One's revenue, which is extraordinarily high. It is. a key part of the pie. And you can sort of understand it. I advised the Bahrain Grand Prix for many, many years. Crikey, eight, nine years. And I would often ask, you know, is this worth it? Right? Absolutely, it's worth it. Right? This is one week of the year when the attention of a good chunk of the world is on our little island kingdom. You know, we struggle for attention. We struggle to drive a tourist ministry, even though we've got beautiful places for people to come to, how do we drive attention on that?

1:02:35How do we, you know, other countries might spend vast amounts of money on marketing tourism, but we find that by hosting a Grand Prix with all of the imagery that goes around that and the eyeballs that go onto that imagery is actually what helps drive our entire economy. It also means that they can then have a motor sports economy in Bahrain because they've got a Formula One trap there. So you can test cars, test products. It enables them to be a center for motorsports in the Middle East. So as an investment over a 20-year period, it's been extremely successful. So this has actually been, for most of these deals, it's been a happy thing.

1:03:11For the BRDC, it was a little bit different. They were there first, and they were a club. They're not trying to pay dividends and make big profits and all this type of stuff. But they've effectively been forced into the modern age, into the 21st century by the economics of hosting and growing. And they've done it. The F1 also have the flexibility to make the calls as and where they want to, on which countries and which host cities will pay more for it. So that's a balance of heritage versus these. And under Liberty, they've been much more cognizant of that, where under Bernie, it was getting very mercantile.

1:03:43It was whoever pays the most. It's the luxury of success. When you're successful, you can work out how to make those numbers work for you. When you're struggling for cash, you'll be making decisions. Liberty did this right from the start, didn't they? So they did it before they made a big success out of F1. They made decisions like, we need to keep the British Grand Prix. So it's a bit of chicken and egg involved here. But I think you have to give Liberty a lot of credit for saying, we're not losing the British Grand Prix. Brilliant. Right. Brilliant. Good stuff, Charlie. Now, if you want to stay with us, we're going to go and do a very nice segment on the absolutely crazy transfer of Elliot Anderson to Manchester City from Nottingham Forest because there's a little bit more than meets the eye to some of this, as there is with the broader footballing ecosystem when you start getting into the details of some of these transfers.

1:04:23Come and join us on Substack if you want to keep going. but otherwise thank you I really enjoyed that this week it was good fun yeah thanks Chas thank you so much for joining on another big week the Norway story is a fascinating one and questions what playing sport is really all about as we get lost in the obsession of results and elite performance from an age where it does more harm than good there will be a lot of views on the effectiveness of this and whether it's unique to Norway based on a number of variables that sit in their favour so please do get in touch and let us know your thoughts I'd love to hear them come and join us now for a big session on football transfers on Substack but if not, we'll see you next week.

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