THE BREAKDOWN: Premier League Winners & Losers, Enhanced Games Makes Its Entrance, & The World of Rugby League (E21)

27:38Be interesting to see what happens. I'll give him a seven. I'll give him a seven. I'm not going to argue with you. That's a shame. That's not like you. However, there are a couple of clubs as we get towards the bottom. Big clubs. Yeah. Newcastle, we haven't spoken about a huge amount on this show. Yeah. We've given air time to Liverpool. We've given air time to Tottenham, of course. And of course, we've given air time to Chelsea, who I'm actually not going to bore you all with it. I think we all know that, you know, this is a disaster from a business perspective. It won't surprise, well, it may surprise you to know Chelsea aren't bottom of this table, Wolves are bottom of this table, on minus 27 points from where they were expected to be.

28:12Chelsea are second, bottom minus 22, with one of the highest wage bills at 359 million, the highest amortisation at 212 million, the highest agents fees, as we've discussed before, at 65 million, 20 million south of Sunderland's total wage bill. And... I mean, sorry, can we just repeat that? Chelsea's spend on player agents is not far off what Sunderland have been playing on their entire player wages. Okay, because don't forget the total wage bill you've got there is not just players. It's others as well. So Chelsea are spending the same on agents as Sunderland are on players. Look, and we know, and the highest total costs in this whole table.

28:53The highest total costs in the entire table. I would love to go into this. Even some of your comments previously have been, my God, is there anything more we can really say? I think the point there is very clear. No European football next season. Yeah, so I think, just to summarise that situation, Charlie. So in other words, the view is, there is a view of various people that Chelsea will benefit next season from not having Europa League or Europa Conference League football. It will enable them to hopefully... Do a manu. To build a more consistent starting line-up, although that will require a slight change of approach in general, and to get more of their best players on the pitch more often in Premier League games and also very often be playing on the weekend, as man you have had this season, against clubs who have been playing European football, which always, as we said earlier on with Villa playing against Spurs, always just gives you just a significant advantage when the other side three or four days ago was travelling away to some part of Europe and not really in a position to prepare properly for the Premier League game.

29:48So next season, in as much as there has been any excuse to date, my goodness me, next season there are no excuses for Chelsea. No. It feels like the pivotal season in lots of ways, doesn't it? Yeah. anyway having said we don't want to spend too much time on that the one thing i did just want to spend a few minutes on because we've had a huge amount of requests for it and because it's it seems like a pretty interesting time for them as well is newcastle yeah newcastle 14th place in this table 243 million in wages 100 million in amortization 20 million in agents fees and 363 million total costs minus five points from their expected points at the start of the season a team that was playing Champions League football this year a team that has been on the rise in lots of ways generally speaking you know four or five years but this season has just seemed like a step backwards yeah sometimes there's a rhythm to cycles that clubs go through in terms of a project that a head coach embarks upon the set up around them that's all we said there was Liverpool the other day didn't we where the Fenway project of Liverpool's been massively underachieving we want to put in place a long-term manager and a long-term data analytics structure because we want to move towards winning the Premier League and winning the Champions League and over six seven years they they achieved that and then the question is okay well what what where are we now and what are we doing now Klopp then leaves various other people leave and so okay well how do we reset and I think in in Newcastle's case it just feels like that sort of surge of energy that came into the club when amanda and murdad took it over from mike ashley and their very swift appointment of eddie howe and the normalization of the club and getting the fan base back on side supporting the team all of that positivity and the sort of the hopes and the dreams of what saudi ownership could potentially do to the club all of those things came together in a sort of two three four year sort of build towards kind of like this season or so we're in the Champions League, had a good season last season.

31:53And then this season has seen a tailing off, right? Quite clearly seen a tailing off. There's no doubt about that. The first time you're seeing some question marks over Eddie Howe's future, which is not surprising when a manager has been there that long because, you know, only the managerial greats like Guardiola and Ferguson and Wenger are able to constantly reinvent themselves and keep on coming up with a new idea, a new squad, a new team. For most even very, very good managers, one and one and a half cycles is about as much as they can do before things do start to tail off. So it's going to be interesting.

32:27Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see. I sort of look back over the last couple of years and think, did they manage their P &S situation as well as might be? When you're looking at the progress of Elliot Anderson and you're thinking about some of the players who were left in New Newcastle, you know, good players, big foreign players who bought in on lots of money and that type of stuff. And you think when you've got a generational English talent in Elliot Anderson, who you could build pretty much everything around, like Arsenal are building everything around rice. Anderson could have been that player for Newcastle.

33:01And it almost felt like that was the easy move. You know, he probably wouldn't complain much. He'd go quietly. Another club would mop him up because he's a young English player. And lots of clubs need that in their squads for various different reasons because to be clear the narrative has been that they can't spend again as near to the top teams as they would want to be so they've had to generate that money in other ways and the homegrown player is those of you you know who know that it's pure profit so selling him means 40 million goes straight into the club now they then go and sign jacob ramsey for about the same amount of money and i i just get the feeling now what rightly or wrongly for whatever there needs to just be a bit of a freshening up.

33:39It just feels like it's got a bit stale. Agreed. They did so well to climb up to where they were. But now, being out of the Champions League and European football altogether this year. Well, plus one big additional factor to that, which having lived in that part of the world, that will be painful. Watching Sunderland play European football will be devastating. It's very hard, unless you've lived up there, it's very hard to explain the superiority complex that Newcastle has to Sunderland. It's an absolute assumption that they will be bigger and better than Sunderland. Obviously, they recognise Sunderland's a big club, a historic club, but Newcastle fans carry a, let's not call it arrogance, let's call it a self-confidence that they are the big dogs of North East football to see Sunderland in a really good, it's not even the Conference League, they're in the Europa League and be playing at some quite big clubs and big European nights at the Stadium of Light.

34:36when Newcastle has weeks off during that time, that's going to be tough. And if we're being really honest, in the competition in Europe at the moment, it's not going to be surprising if Sunderland go deep in that competition. Any European football would have been welcome, I'd imagine, at clubs like Newcastle. It's all very well saying some of the clubs are better off without it, but that's some of the biggest ones if they're really looking in need of a proper reset. Newcastle aren't. They're just in need of continual development and competition and a trophy, as we've seen from Villa. An opportunity to win the Europa League is huge.

35:05A way into the Champions League as well. Anyway, great season. It has been a great season, hasn't it? Lots of it was, as you said, on the line at the end. It felt like we've had such damp squibs at the end of seasons with relegated clubs being confirmed so long before the end of the season. City have been winning pretty consistently until Liverpool last year. So now having three different winners in three different years. I'm going to guess that the gap between the highest-ranked relegated club and the side that actually won is probably smaller than it generally is. I haven't done the research on this, but I'm going to guess that that gap was not as big a gap as it normally would be.

35:4139 points to 85-ish? I mean, we've seen other seasons where that's been 30 points against 95 points. And so it all goes to show just the competitiveness of the Premier League and how deep the level is. Because as you say, when it comes to European competition, whilst there are some countries whose clubs can and do compete against the very biggest Premier League clubs in the Champions League, when it comes to the Europa League and the Conference League you're starting to see absolute domination I mean real domination by those upper mid Premier League clubs anyhow Forest most likely would have won the Europa League had Villa not been in it yes based on the state of Freiburg in that final so you know fascinating right new sport and one of the most requested ones we have had Rugby League is that good Rugby League Rugby League Rugby League the Challenge Cup final this weekend.

36:36This weekend is the Challenge Cup final. How many requests a week do we get to speak about rugby league, Charles? Many, many, many. Double-digit requests. Every week. And abuse as well. Posh Southerners talking about rugby. Do you know what? Actually, I've realised that sometimes the posh Southerner thing, they actually mean it is an endearing term because they're actually quite nice about the show and some of it. And then there was another bit and it really made me open my eyes to the size of this. when someone had a pop at us for every time we said rugby, not saying rugby union. So we apologise.

37:08I apologise for any misrepresentation of rugby is the total sport. I apologise for my attempt at a rugby league accent just now, just to get that out on the table before I get absolutely smashed. It won't stop it, of course. It won't, but that's part of the point. And I do want to say, you guys as well, those of you that have been requesting it, undoubtedly will know more about this than we do. we have a different lens of taking a look at some of these things. I want us to be able to unpack some of the things that you and I have been looking at this week to really understand what makes this sport so special to so many people.

37:41I've actually watched more live rugby league than I have rugby union. So have I just spoken for myself there, basically? Yes. It's okay, so you're at the level of the northern rugby audience here, and I'll plead a curse. You're going to plead a curse. Well, I'm going to plead a curse as well, just to get it out on the table. But there's probably more reflection on how much rugby union I watch, actually rather than rugby league but um some some close friends of mine um the family was the previous owners of wigan warriors um and in all sorts of trips up to the north i actually have watched a lot of rugby league it's also we're going to come on to this in a moment it's also played at a time of the year which is outside of a lot of it's outside of our football season so if you're working in the football industry as i mostly have been for the last 15 years you know when somebody says on a nice sort of you know nice forecast next week they say well why don't you come up and watch watch rugby league match in leeds i'm like you know what that's that sounds great let's do that so so the fact that we're even having this discussion at the start is part of this discussion you know one of the best sports in this country not properly discovered by much of it it's not covered much these days out of the specifically trade media or the northern local media so if you look at national media coverage of rugby league it's it's not great it used to be much much more so you know when i was a newspaper journalist every newspaper would have its rugby league correspondent and its matches were reasonably prominently displayed and that has really dropped off in recent times and i think that's a sort of slight indication of the dominance of football but also in some ways that prem rugby has perhaps done a better job over the last 10 to 15 years of pushing itself forward maybe it's also a function of a lot of media's based in the south so there's a little bit more well i kind of know that bartha playing bristol because you know that's part of if you're a sports editor on a newspaper i'm living down here i'm hearing about bath and bristol whereas perhaps i'm not hearing about warrington and castleford etc but is it worth just unpacking for those of our viewers and listeners who don't have um you know necessarily detailed understanding of the sport and of the difference between rugby league and rugby union is it worth just a quick recap on how this all came about can you play dominic sandbrook here this is when i say that i know what i'm talking about and then you take all the pot shots at me on the way basically right good let's do that right rugby league rugby league's origin can you do it in an accent no no i've done that bit and i know i'm gonna get slapped for it okay so rugby league's origin 1895 in yorkshire and this was a schism a split from the rugby football union over the issue of payments to players that is how long ago this fundamental issue which persisted until the 1990s okay so it was a hundred years when rugby league was operating in the north on a professional basis whilst rugby union continued to be an amateur game mostly in the south albeit there were some northern clubs as well northern rugby union clubs as well so the rugby league which is now called the rugby football league but was then called the northern rugby football union back in those days okay they start operating as a fully professional sport 130 years ago, a long, long time ago.

40:54And this was players who wanted compensation from the RFU, from national rugby, because they were having to go away. They were traveling and they were losing out on their wages, mostly from their industrial jobs in mills and shipyards. And so that was what they were asking for, right? Basically, if we're going to commit to this in an amateur sport, we need some form of financial compensation. Which was deemed to be totally out of court by the Rugby Football Union, as it was until the 1980s. In the 1980s, the RFU started to allow some sort of forms of payments of the kind that they were asking for back in 1895.

41:25So not full-time sort of professional employment, but yeah, you can get paid your expenses. Yeah, you can take a bit of appearance money. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. So, you know, what we're looking at here is a sport that then grew up in a specific part of the country for the first half of the 20th century. and then on into the post-war years etc being the the professional side of rugby but quite very clearly geographically delineated to the northwest of england and yorkshire and going over to hull okay so that's if you think about that stretch of the country is rugby league country um and meanwhile as we covered on a previous breakdown the rugby union side of the game carried on not just in an amateur state but it didn't even have a league they played friendly matches against each other and had an annual knockout cup competition so the the determination of the rugby football union to stay amateur and not just be amateur but be very amateurish about the way in which they were doing things was a huge huge deal and what it meant was is that throughout the 20th century but particularly after the war and particularly moving into the 70s and 80s, you would see very prominent rugby union players transferring to rugby league in order to be able to make a full time living from the game.

42:47So when I was, I don't know, in my mid teens, probably the top British rugby union player was a Welsh fly half called Jonathan Davies. It will be known to many as the BBC's rugby pundit these days, a great character, but was a genius fly half, absolute genius of a fly half. And he transferred from rugby union to rugby league in 1989. And when you think that rugby union started to go professional in the, properly professional in the mid-1990s, he was sort of, you know, the dying sort of gasp of that old era of rugby union players moving into rugby league. And this happened particularly for Welsh players where rugby union players in Wales often came from working class backgrounds.

43:28so if you think about a lot of the um english rugby union players they had all their alternative careers where you know brian moore was a solicitor some of them would be in the army so on and so forth there were you know exceptions like you know wade dooley being a you know actford and policeman and these types of things there were exceptions but broadly speaking a lot of the english rugby union side would have quite comfortable livings on as their main job and then would play England rugby and club rugby as a pastime, a very serious hobby, which they were very committed to, but they were drawing a salary from something totally different.

44:04But if you came in Wales, where rugby union is and always has been more of a working class game, that was always a bit more of a challenge. So you've got a world star, a global star, Jonathan Davies, who was a big star with the first rugby union World Cup in 1987. It was full back page news. I remember it when Jonathan Davies translated into rugby league and went to go and play for Widness. what you then find when rugby union goes professional and quite quickly and maybe a little bit too quickly in retrospect starts paying players quite a bit of money is you start to see players moving back in the opposite direction for the first time so if you look like jason robinson who was a young rugby league star for um for wigan moving into rugby union then becoming a key part of the England World Cup winning side in 2003.

44:51There are, of course, as the vast majority of our listening viewers will know, significant rule differences between the sports. Rugby Union being, and I please, you know, I fully understand there'll be many people going, for God's sake, we don't need to be told this. But there are others who won't. Rugby Union is a 15-person game and Rugby League is a 13-person game. In Rugby Union, the scrum is a central part of the sport. In Rugby League, it's fundamentally a way to get the game restarted. Things like rucks are totally different in rugby league compared to what they are in rugby union. So there are significant differences in the game, which give it a very, very different feel.

45:25And in fact, quite often, quite different body shapes, frankly, of the players who play these two games. Incredibly fit. I mean, it's like football fitness. I think they've done various tests to say the most fit sportsman around. If you take overall fitness, including cardiovascular, pace and power and pure strength, that if you take a combination of all those two things, which some people have tried to do, that rugby league players are the fittest sportsmen around. Do you know what? It'd be interesting. I should have had a look. Ball in play time has been a massive thing around broadcasts and people looking at where the other sports have fallen down.

45:58Rugby union has a horrendous number, like football does. It'd be interesting to see how much more the ball is in play. Rugby league, the ball's in play almost all the time. These guys are absolute powerhouses and ripped. I remember going around the Wigan Warriors training center after they'd completed a gym session. And, you know, it was extraordinary physical specimens. But looking at this now then, what we're really talking about, this is much more than a sport. You know, this is a political element. It's an act of defiance and even its formation. It's a class system in its own side as well.

46:32You know, you would have had your players, which would have been the kind of industrial proletariat versus the kind of public school system that would have done rugby union so i think it can be sort of encapsulated in in two words which is called andy farrell yeah so andy farrell who is one of the greatest rugby union coaches in the world um came to play rugby union right at the end of his career but was absolutely a rugby league legend before that and of course the father of owen farrell and sometimes you see sneaking into rugby union parlance a little bit of sort of you know andy farrell's style of rugby it's a bit rugby league it comes more from that tradition of things sean edwards would be another one who's one of the great defense coaches in the rugby union world but came from a rugby league background and again you'll hear people say well you know i'm sure it's very good technically but it rather destroys the fun of the game that sean edwards is so good at defending because rugby league traditionally was much more structured and much more professional as you might imagine is it worth just saying why we're talking about this right so that the hook is that this weekend is the challenge Cup final.

47:33That's the equivalent of the FA Cup final. Historically, rugby league was a winter sport. But when the Super League was formed, which was back in, I think, around about 1996, around about that time, it changed to being a summer sport to try and get it away from the football schedule and get it onto good pitches where free-flowing rugby could. And it was all part of the brave new world of Sky Sports. So let's get a proper Sky Sports contract. let's play the games at a time of year when we're not competing against football let's be different let's be bold let's be better and broadly speaking you know super league that's the main competition in in europe of rugby league the main club competition of rugby league has been in quotation marks a success okay so we haven't seen loads of clubs going bust we've seen one or two we haven't seen massive drop-offs in terms of spectator numbers or anything like this but at the same time it has been a little bit left behind and particularly left behind by the australian league right and the australian league is the monster of all rugby leagues bigger even than the french top 14 rugby union league it's an absolute beast of a commercial product i've just got some revenue numbers here to leave you with okay so if you're looking looking at Super League has got annual combined revenues of around about, you know, 100, 120 million pounds, that kind of thing.

48:57You know, Prem Rugby, we're talking about maybe 200 million pounds more, but, you know, not generationally more. The NRL, which is the Australian League, you're looking at 450 million pounds a year. And this has really started to cause a problem in terms of ability to retain the best players, retain commercial attention, and has led to just in recent weeks it becoming clear that there might be on the horizon a situation where the NRL, the Australian League, effectively almost takes over Super League. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a good entry point into the fundamental challenges facing it in this country.

49:37Because from my view and lack of experience in this, seeing the business side of it is quite eye-opening. The numbers are quite frightening for the longevity of the game in this country if it stays in the same form that it has. And that's where I think there's a lot of question marks at the moment. The Sky deal that they had previously, 40 million a season. 24 to 26, 21.5 million per season. That's a per club distribution of 1.24 million pounds per club. So in the context of a Premier League where you're getting 100 million, you're getting a rugby league club here, 1.24 million. If you remember, we were talking about Rugby Union's TV deal the other day, and we were saying how it was struggling in comparison to the French League.

50:19And we were saying that it was around about 35 million a year. Yeah. So three to four million for the clubs individually. Three to four million each for the clubs individually. So Rugby League, until relatively recently, had a bigger TV deal than Rugby Union's top division. Now it's a significantly smaller TV deal than top division. And when you look at the revenues of some of the top Rugby League clubs, the really famous ones in this country, Now, Wigan Warriors, which is probably the biggest name of all, total revenues of seven and a half, maybe eight million quid this year, that kind of thing.

50:50St. Helens, their traditional biggest rivals, eight and a half. Leeds, which currently is the biggest revenue club, 10, 11 maybe. So you're looking at revenue numbers, which roughly equate to a top end league two club in football. Yeah. I mean, what I said, I think I said to you the Wigan Warriors number was pretty much, there was very close to the conversation I had with Grimsby Town CEO Polly recently. which was 6.9 million. Wigan Warriors, Grimsby Town. So if you think about those two, with greatest respect to Grimsby Town, I've got a lot of affection for Grimsby. But I don't think even Grimsby fans would claim that in national sporting terms, it's on a level with Wigan Warriors.

51:25And yet their revenues are about the same as Wigan Warriors. So let's get back to the conversation we have regularly, which is sports need to financially make sense. Yeah. And it looks right now like, while Rugby League may have some fantastic following, and it is, you know, it's 10 ,000, let's say, average fans per week, which is still... Wigan averages 13 ,500 a week. 13 ,500, but that's the top, right? That is the top, yeah. So bring it to an average of 10. That's not enough just to keep this sport thriving. So it can be really interesting what happens this season. The London Broncos has been the subject of significant investment from Australians, okay?

51:59And this season have had a really good season in the second division, the championship, and it looks possible that, well, they will be applying. It looks possible they will be admitted to Super League. that geographic divide is a problem. And it's partially a problem because, you know, in terms of how many clubs there are in a very small geographic area, whereas you want to see the things spread out further. It's also a problem commercially, frankly. I think one of the biggest issues, when I looked at these revenues of rugby league clubs, was that their commercial revenues are absolutely tiny.

52:27Because you've got, you know, they come from a part of the country where there aren't necessarily a large number of private enterprises who have got the marketing budgets to put a lot of money behind a product which is really focusing very much on that local market. So if you go and sponsor the Wigan Warriors, you aren't necessarily going to be hitting a big national and international market on a regular basis. You are going to be hitting that northwest of England market. And without having that visibility in the capital, which is where a lot of marketing budgets are set for more national-type companies, there's definitely a challenge there.

53:02And then you've just got the other problem, which is that, and this is something I've said before about professional women's soccer, football is that we're in a tightening of the media rights market full stop where there's a sort of race to the top in terms of those broadcasters who pay these big tv deals including sky have come under pressure as broadly speaking fewer people are paying their monthly subscriptions as the years and the decades go by so then they have to start prioritizing right if we only have so much money to spend where are we going to spend it and they then start to look at some sports and and say, well, we'd still like to televise you, but we can't afford to pay you much for it, because where are you going to go?

53:42So Sky brings their total amount they're paying you down from$40 million to$25 million a year. Why do they feel able to do that? Because they're making a bet there isn't much competition. There's only really like TNT who could potentially say, OK, well, we'll do that. And you'll sort of say, OK, we don't think they're going to do that. So we think we can still get those rights of$25 million. And even if somebody else does do it, we don't care that much. So you've got the commercial challenge, which is that lots of clubs dotted in a small part of the country that is not necessarily the wealthiest part of the country.

54:12Then you've got the lack of geographic disparity in terms of commercial partners getting projection throughout at least this country, even if not on a more international basis. Then you've got a tightening media rights market. And then you've got the Australian League being very commercially strong and able to really push for some of the best players in the world and so on. So it's not straightforward for the English clubs to say, well, what we're going to do is we're going to attract some of the biggest stars to come and play and that's going to really push us forward. That's not going to happen.

54:36because the Australian clubs can pay so much more money. That's a huge risk right now for teams here. It's losing the best talent to Australia. I think you look at just some of the earning potential of those players. You mentioned it. I think the minimum salaries in Australia are about£70 ,000. The minimum salaries here are£35 ,000, maybe. The top players in Australia will earn nicely into six figures. Maybe even the top ones up to seven. They are national figures there. And they're huge. The top Australian rugby league players. It's just important to note, and again, we have many Australian listeners who might be throwing us up the screen saying, well, we know all this.

55:11But it might not be the case in this country. People don't understand that in Australia, which is a massive sports market, rugby league is considerably bigger than rugby union. Massively so, particularly commercially. It's prime time. Rugby league is real prime time in Australia. We have AFL and rugby league, wouldn't you? Yeah, I think rugby league, I think I saw something, the second most profitable sport behind AFL. Yeah. So, you know, huge. and I remember being in Australia and being absolutely shocked by that. But what they have started to do and they seem to be better at doing is furthering the ambitions of that league.

55:47And so being expansive, being creative, being ambitious, the AFL. Sorry, the NRL. What they've been doing in Las Vegas. I don't know if you've seen this. They've basically taken game out to the US and last year Super League did the same. So they actually played a game in Vegas. Now, trying to take this game into a US audience, it's an obvious tactic, but they actually went, put something on the ground in Vegas. They then saw a 600 % year-on-year increase. The average audience for that first season opened. The next year was 371 ,000 on Fox. It was actually on Fox. It was Wigan versus Warrington that played in Vegas in 2025.

56:23So moving things out into new markets is a key part of it. We don't seem to be even moving it into parts of the country here. Well, I think that they are trying. I honestly think that the governing, you know, the authorities of rugby league in this country are really trying. Hence, their openness to a discussion with the NRL. Now, I think it should be quite clear. We should be quite clear about what the implications that might be. We said earlier on that since the mid to late 1990s, rugby league in this country has been a summer sport. Now, in Australia, it's an Australian winter sport, which is our summer.

56:54So part of the proposed deal with the NRL would probably involve rugby league in this country becoming a winter sport again. so that it wouldn't clash with the NRL season. So those are the levels of compensation that English, British rugby league, and of course there's also a team from the Basque country. So it's not just a English league, but nonetheless it is broadly speaking an English league. They are willing to pump their teams out to Vegas. They are willing to enter discussions with the NRL. I think that it's quite clear to me that they are very, very aware that they have a looming, or already have a problem, and potentially a bigger problem.

57:31Two or three years ago, they did a partnership with IMG, which is the global sports management sort of giant, you know, has dominated sports like golf and tennis in the past and is one of the biggest agencies in the world. They actually came up with a bit of classic corporate speak. The point of the partnership is strategically repositioning the sport to maximize its commercial potential for long-term growth, build deeper relationships with fans, and attract new audiences. I mean, you know, so it's not exactly Belgian Football Federation talk. You know, it's quite sort of corporate speak. But it looks to me that that was about two or three years ago when that partnership was founded.

58:07It looks to me like basically having tried everything, they've ended up going, do you know what? We might be better off just being taken over by the Australians. Yeah. And there's been a bit of resistance to the words takeover. But then when you read some of the things that are being considered as part of this takeover, you look at it and go, yeah, he's basically a takeover. so it's going to be really interesting to see where that goes look the Challenge Cup final on this weekend is one of British Sports big showpiece events at Wembley 60 plus thousand people normally about 65 65 ,000 70 ,000 people this one is between Wigan and Hull Kingston Rovers and I think as of earlier on today they already sold 61 ,000 tickets for that so you can probably confidently expect that's going to be 65 ,000, 70 ,000 who will be attending that match on the day after this I hope for the players sake that the weather's not the same because playing rugby league in that kind of heat would be brutal.

59:01I'm feeling it just sitting in a chair right now. I'm sweating even imagining what that would be like. There's one thing which I think has really played against them in the last 20 years and in as much as they could do anything, my goodness me, they need to focus on this. When I was young and rugby league was a more nationally positioned sport, it was on the BBC quite a lot, et cetera, the British rugby league team and indeed the English rugby league team was genuinely competitive with the Australian National Rugby League team and indeed could and did sometimes win series against them. And there were some figures who during that period did become national figures, national sporting figures, people like Ellery Hanley and Martin O 'Fire of that period were national heroes.

59:46You know, sports personality of the year. I can't remember if they won it, but they were absolutely in the conversation. They were very much part of that whole thing. And probably for the general sports watching public these days, Some of them might struggle to identify a player, and that's probably because the national team has simply not been competitive against Australia for quite a long time, and that's when you start to drag in the broader audience. Isn't that kind of another problem, though? Yeah. You need to have rivalries. You need to have competition to make sports attractive. Yeah, but Australia is the big one, and if they could lift their level to become consistently competitive with the Australian national team, then I think we might start to look at a different situation.

1:00:25Okay. look as i would i'm genuinely pleased we really want this engage with us on this would love to really understand estimation on how many things we've got wrong in that conversation probably tons probably tons but what's the spread what spread of mistakes eight to nine eight to nine right is that what you think yeah i'm just the guest it's hard it's hard to hopefully none of the big things maybe a few figures or something in there because reporting is always a bit dodgy i won't blame that's a kirsty pleading kirsty but no there will be people here that live and breathe rugby league wanting to bring that passion to let us know about this because i'm genuinely intrigued moving on the world of rugby league from the world of rugby league hard-working grafting respectable legacy history all that's good in the sporting world to the enhanced games the enhanced games i don't know about you maybe it's because i've had some direct association with it for a few years but i can't believe when you said you have some direct I interviewed the CEO oh no the founder the founder am I am I regularly sitting across somebody who a chemically enhanced co-host yes can you not tell I am I am I'm performance enhancing drugs all over the place anyway the enhanced games I mean wow wow what a story this has I'm sorry my point was it's been a story in and around athletics broader sport for quite a long time can we just go back to what it is let's we'll give you a really simple understanding if you don't know what the enhanced games is it's basically the brainchild of a guy called Aaron D'Souza, who's an Australian lawyer.

1:01:57He had this idea that what if you could create a competition in athletics that celebrated the use of performance-enhancing drugs and technology that is legalized. Well, legalized but currently against the rules of the governing bodies. But I'm saying legal. Legal. And this is the key. This is going to be a key point because there is what the governing bodies allow and what the law allows. So really it's a, hey, if we got the top athletes and they were able to take the testosterone pills and all of that stuff, would they be breaking a lot more world records? We think they would. Do people want to see humans perform at the highest level, leveraging the best of science and technology?

1:02:38I think they do. Let's create an environment and a tournament that allows them to do that. But we have to do it in a way that is safe. And I say safe like this because I think there's a huge amount of unknowns with a lot of this. But also, most importantly, that also creates a system that pays athletes, that recognizes that they are extraordinary and that they should be compensated better than they traditionally are in athletics today. Now, this has been a conversation for a good few years. I did an interview with Aaron over two years ago. And back then we were talking about the games launching and it is only just this weekend gone by launched in a one-day event in Las Vegas.

1:03:20So not a kind of week-long, two-week-long Olympics type project. I think it's fair to say that the original ambition for this inaugural event was bigger than it ended up being. Is that fair, Charlie? Yeah. So I don't think that's being overly critical because sometimes you have to just understand that maybe it's a little bit harder to get the whole thing to the scale that you want it to straight away. So it's just a recognition of reality. It ended up being a, I would say, a somewhat underwhelming event. And I'm just saying this as a sports spectator and sports business spectator and sports executive.

1:03:55Somewhat underwhelming in terms of the venue it took place in Vegas looked pretty sort of small scale, pretty unambitious, just to the naked eye. the level of athlete that they were able to attract across what was a number of different sports athletics swimming weightlifting these types of olympic sports there were three or four or five six or seven recognizable names who you would know from watching the olympics um but there were you know probably the majority of the competitors were not even household names but the the fundamental underlying assumption of it i think and i just want to see what your view is i I think it's cynical, right?

1:04:37So I think the presumption is basically is a lot of these sports are enhanced anyway, which is something I hear an awful lot from the general public, which is, oh, come on, you know, they're all doping, you know, they're all doing it anyway. And that this effectively was a way of getting it all out into the open and saying, well, given that we all know that quite a few of the athletes are juicing, then we might as well just say, everyone do it. So at least then you get a level playing field. So there's a - Can I just read out your quote from there that Aaron said on our show two years ago. Go on.

1:05:07Literally to that. So this is from Aaron on Business of Sport. He said, according to some scientific research, 44 % of athletes competing at Olympics level have used banned performance enhancers at some point in their career, and yet 1 % have been caught. I'm going to leave aside whether those numbers are correct and also the extent of the usage, because sometimes it can be something as small as an asthma spray or something, right? Because the depth of what's now deemed to be a performance-enhancing drug goes so far into the detail of it that it's not always somebody pumping themselves full of testosterone.

1:05:39But Charlie, you're right. That's the narrative being peddled, right? So the original narrative fundamentally was cynical, right? So it starts off from, come on, you all know you can't believe what you're really watching. Why don't you at least watch an honest contest in that everyone's being honest that they are juicing? And the numbers who, in the enhanced games, 91 % of athletes admitted to having used testosterone and 79 % admitted to using human growth hormone as well. okay um so effectively what you're saying here is the vast majority of athletes taking part in this event over this last weekend were indeed quote enhanced or if you're being you know less kind doping right but the organizers would say yes and it's all out on the table so that was the first bit of cynicism the next bit of cynicism i think was basically they were saying well you know we're going to show that actually this is genuinely performance enhancing because a loads of our athletes who are going to perform at these games are going to break world records which will demonstrate that actually traditional sport is not only dishonest about it but it's also holding back human performance right so you're not even getting to see what the human body can achieve because they're trying to just block all sorts of things sometimes successfully sometimes not successfully whereas our athletes with all of that sort of nonsense off the table will be able to perform to the limit of what the human body can do and across you know there was no doubt because in terms of the financial structuring of the event, there were huge bonuses being paid for anyone who did break a world record.

1:07:06One million dollars. One million dollars. And across all of the events, there was one world record broken. There was. Which I think was in the 50 meters. Christian Colomy, he's the Greek swimmer. Interestingly, he never made a podium at four Olympics. Yeah. And he swam the 50 freestyle in 20.81 seconds, beating the official world record of 20.88. Yeah. So he won$250 ,000 for winning the event, plus a$1 million bonus for breaking the world record. Ben Proud, the British swimmer, very controversial in going across because he's an Olympic silver medalist for Britain. He came 0.05 off the 50 butterfly world record.

1:07:44So that's 0.05 away from a$1 million bonus. I do have a bit of empathy for Ben Proud in that situation. But Charlie, you're right. This is all about and has been all about taking humans to achieve the extraordinary. And what we've really seen here is what we'd expect to see at a normal athletics meet, which is good athletes get together and you're likely going to have a record broken at some stage across it. I said to you before, it reminded me of something. I don't know if you saw the documentary Icarus, which if you haven't seen it, it's an absolutely fascinating documentary on Netflix. I highly recommend you go and watch it.

1:08:20It's about the whole doping scandal that surrounded Russia and basically there's a guy that documents his the guy that makes the documentary documents him taking performance enhancing drugs to try and win a top cycling race and what you realize and this guy is a very high level competitive cyclist he could only get to eighth I think it was in in this competition despite pumping himself full of various different things and that tells you that these drugs they may take you so far I can't just assume you're going to take this and break records and if you're going to have a product here you need to get the top athletes in it and the reality is that probably most embarrassing not no sorry embarrassing is the wrong word most notably three of the headline event winners curly in the men's 100 meters uh evelyn in the women's 100 meters and hunter armstrong in the pool they all competed clean you don't have to compete enhanced so they basically did it and have put themselves in competition knowing that they want to still compete in the olympic games but they're here let's be very clear for the money now that side of this discussion yeah is where it does become interesting because i think it's very very easy and i'll read a couple out for us to sit here for the governing bodies to sit here and go this is ridiculous this is a joke this is stupid it's a gimmick blah blah blah but some athletes are still going fred curly quite entertainingly you know he did go and run but he's actually on a two-year ban for doping uh and won bronze in in paris um anyway sorry wadda said uh of the enhanced games the enhanced games are dangerous and irresponsible concept clearly this event would jeopardize athlete health as it seeks to promote the use of powerful powerful substances for the purpose of entertainment and marketing some athletes have died ioc if you want to destroy any concept of fair play and fair competition in sport this would be a very good way to do it the world aquatics actually are the first ones to i think they've said that anyone competing in enhanced games whether enhanced or not will be banned from competing yeah because don't forget that when an athlete says that they're competing clean in the enhanced games let's be quite clear that is purely what they are saying yes right yes so so there there is there are there is not testing for these substances or at least not publicly so interestingly there was testing by the u.s uh yeah anti-doping body over the weekend of athletes claiming to be clean there was testing on site i think at the enhanced games to ensure yeah that's interesting um i wonder if that was true for the british olympic um association as well well as far as i know well i'm ben proud and i think we had a female swimmer in it as well they're swimmers and world aquatics have said if you're swimming in the enhanced games you can't you can't swim anywhere else so i think that may be slightly different but in athletics you could do both curly once he's not banned next year um but charlie we we talked a few weeks ago about athletics the challenge of athletics, not a good distribution of cash to the athletes, you know, decades of extracting enormous value while paying them a fraction of what's generated from the IOC, from world athletics.

1:11:21Well, I just want to go back because it's really important to get the detail of this right because we did discuss it a couple of months ago. The problem you've got is that the, and we're just talking about athletics here before we go on swimming and that kind of, we're just talking about athletics, which is the main thing here, both in the Olympics, but also in the enhanced games. so the ioc which owns the olympics makes vast sums of money billions how much charlie eight to nine billion i think eight to nine billion a cycle so you're looking at two billion a year that they are making mostly if we're being honest with you out of athletics because if you think about where the eyeballs go during an olympic games it's heavily towards the athletics so when we were discussing a couple of weeks ago a bunch of spot brats who play tennis for living saying that they want to see 25 percent of all revenue produced by the grand slams going to them if the athletes were to receive 25 percent of even half of the two billion a year that they are producing for the ioc then that would be producing a vast amount of prize money to go to athletes which would then mean that these types of temptations simply were much much less relevant Whereas I think what you're about to say is that are we surprised that athletes in Olympic sports, where the IOC does not distribute any of its money to those athletes, despite the fact that it is being made off their backs, are we surprised then that some of them say$250 ,000 for winning an event, a million if I happen to do a really good time?

1:12:54Do you know what? There is literally no way in which I could earn that money doing it the traditional way. Is that what you're saying? Completely. and James Magnusson who was the first the Australian swimmer successful Australian swimmer first big name to sign up for this a couple of years ago he was on the radio literally for two minutes with Aaron having a conversation he then a few days later a message said he would be interested in doing enhanced games but he wanted that one million on the table for a world record so let's be very clear the athletes here are not saying oh we really want to go and compete enhanced they're not saying I'm desperate to take some of this stuff necessarily they're desperate because as you said there's a massive financial opportunity here.

1:13:33So while it's easy to chastise and target this competition as being ludicrous and lunacy and against sporting competition and all of that, it's the product of an environment that we've already discussed where there is a shortage of proper financial distribution to the areas that matter most in athletics and wider Olympic sport, shall we say. That's what allows things like this to come up. Yep, I agree with that. There's another side to it. Two other sides. That's two other sides to it, I think. I think, I don't know what you think. Look, my view on this, and it was a while ago, and I think it's become more apparent.

1:14:07I just see this as big pharma play. This is normalizing the use of performance enhancers to the general public through the eye of beautiful sporting competition. It's a marketing tool for a lot of those drugs or again, products, whatever we want to call them. And Aaron actually said at the launch in 2025, He said, every middle-aged guy who once played competitive sport and is now suffering from back pain is going to say, what is he on and how do I get it? So, if we're looking at this, right, is it the beauty of paying athletes more and creating an enhanced and technologically advanced population in a sporting environment?

1:14:48Maybe a bit. But let's be very clear. This is a huge financial play. Anyway, and you can see by who it's backed, Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal, Palantir, first investor on Facebook, Donald Trump Jr. You've got some big money in here. I'd be interested to see the linkage between the underlying financial structures of the Enhanced Games and any big pharma companies in terms of sponsorships, in terms of partnerships, all of that kind of stuff. I haven't seen any filings on that. Now, the reason I say filings, Chas, is because the Enhanced Games is a quoted company. Mad, isn't it? Right? Now, you might have, dear listener, dear viewer, you might have received the impression from Charlie in my discussion of the Enhanced Games over the last 20 minutes that this is a dead duck.

1:15:37Shows how much Charlie and Charlie Jr. know. What is the current market capitalization of the Enhanced Games on the stock market? It was 1.2 billion on the stock market EV. It jumped 20 % on debut. 20 % jumped. So 1.5 billion. The company's own SEC filings alongside this, by the way, admits this is their words. Unproven business model, limited operating history, and minimal revenue to date. So a far from secure investment on a flotation, but it comes back to the purpose of this Games and the belief of the people that have injected serious money into it, that this becomes a huge driver of value for one of the world's biggest industries.

1:16:24The pharmaceutical industry, make no mistake about it, if you could tie that into sport and have your shop window being this type of event, it would be huge. And Charlie, you know, it's always been a weird relationship talking about this because firstly, it's been kind of a non-starter because I must admit, two years after having the chat with Aaron and still nothing to show for it. I was kind of in the stage of, will this ever get off the ground? Now it has. I'm like, well, that was underwhelming in what it was. Did you actually know it was happening until I told you? Yeah. You did? Yeah. And actually a couple of people had commented on last week's show.

1:16:58But it didn't stand out as the first thing that we should talk about this week, which shows kind of, again, how much it registers. I was surprised in the structure when I saw it, because it was very different to how I thought it would be played out. And certainly around the vision. you know again if you're if you're talking like this the big challenger to the olympic games you expect more than one day in vegas with a few thousand people there and you know some maybe partly well-known athletes but you know i said no no massive headlines the interesting part is now they've just got an event sometimes you say you just got to you just got to get started right yeah they've proved that they can get started they've got a world record whether it's only one yeah they've got a world record in there athletes will have seen that money golem have said that this is transformational money to him of course it is um how does that translate to the rest of the industry from an athlete's perspective i would imagine you've got a few that have been sitting on the fence for a long time and you'll have a few that would never go near it this is almost like i mean i hesitate sex of course you know it's very very different in many ways similar some ways a bit like the live golf thing so you've got some first movers albeit they didn't know any of the really big ones you've got a very well-funded organization with links to entities as you say the farmer industry which have different reasons to make it work.

1:18:07And then you've got athletes and you've got other athletes sat out there earning very, very little money thinking, okay, he didn't get a world record because he's not good enough. But if I was taking that substance, I'm already very close to a world record and I can go and make a million bucks from doing something which I'm pretty sure I can do. That's Ben Proud. That's Ben Proud. Yeah. That is literally Ben Proud. Entirely plausible if they keep on holding these events that he will do so one question i asked you earlier on which i'm not sure that anyone has the answer to yet is clearly to make this work from a financial perspective for the athletes they can't have one every four years because they don't have an intervening world you know world championships and diamond league and all these types of things which which athletes you know they can't expect athletes to say oh that was great sorry i just missed out on the world on the world record but that 250 gram was great i'll see you in four years time financially that wouldn't be attractive so you know are they looking at having these events on a regular basis yeah and that was something that i saw again i thought i'd put it down somewhere but aaron said something along the lines of we need to make the athletes careers more viable outside of the once every four year cycle that it currently sits in i.e relying on the olympic games to build it so the frequency of these games now i think is a really good question we don't have the answer to it but this is the only competition that would allow enhanced athletes to compete in.

1:19:24So to your point, if athletes are taking performance enhancers, this will be the only events they can compete in and therefore they will need a cadence of competition. Well, to make it worth their while, but also to stay at the top of your game. The big critique of Live Golf was not necessarily just money. It was, will the golfers playing it be on the top of their game when they come back into how golf has traditionally been played, competing in four-day events? You'd throw this exact same piece here. To break a world record, you need to be competing relatively regularly to hit that mark so that will be the next challenge but i think us talking about it now having actually had an event yeah is a really um is a really key element and while again the craziness of it you read it first down you go that's just mad i do think the more you look behind it while i still don't think it's right i think it's it's It's hard to say it's dangerous, but I generally think it's getting into the dodgy lines of what you should and shouldn't be putting out and encouraging people to do.

1:20:28There's a reason this is here. And I do think there needs to be a point of reflection on the governing bodies, on the powers that be in major athletes as to why something like this comes about. And ask yourself, do you do a PGA type thing? and do you need to find a better way to keep your top talent supported so that they can achieve everything that they need to in the competitions that you've laid out? Because the IOC has never had a competition previously. It's never had a competitor. So if you start having athletes taken away from it, what happens? Look, it'll be interesting and I have no doubt if they do get a few more of these out, there will be a lot more talking points on it.

1:21:06Yeah, it sort of feels this time, I can't speak for how it felt like in the US, which is where it took place and where most of the big backers are in the US. And so it may be that there was more of a buzz around it in the US. I can say that over here in Europe, there was not much buzz around it. I think what we saw with Liv was however much you might have other reasons for doing it, however much you might have deep pockets, however much your opposition, i.e. the traditional legacy version of what you're doing, might be quite complacent. Ultimately, in the end, if you can't attract enough eyeballs to what you're doing enough general interest then commercially it will fail ultimately because these sums that they're paying to athletes have to be paid by somebody so i just want to finish on one thought which is that the biggest challenge with live and an even bigger challenge with this is in a way the death of the fairy tale this beautiful thing that is put in front of the general public that young people desperately want to play a sport.

1:22:10They do it mostly for the love of it. But because we all love watching it, they end up making money from it and good on them, right? That's the beautiful fairy tale that we all want to believe and that we're brought up to believe. And it's why sometimes football fans get very upset with professional footballers who play for their club, not playing for the badge or whatever it might be. It's because the fairy tale is that you've got 11 people out on the pitch there who love the club, who love the sport. And yeah, they get paid very well because a lot of us pay money to watch them and that's quite right.

1:22:37but it's the whole thing is a beautiful thing and we spoke about how the u.s masters is this beautiful thing this beautiful concept where they leave money on the table live um i was about to say was is an ugly thing um it's basically saying we could basically like in nice term bribe a whole load of players to come over and play in our tournaments rather than those tournaments and we will make the whole thing brash and sort of you know modern and this kind of stuff there's no beauty in that. It was a sort of brute financial economic calculation. Entertainment product. Yeah. But I think that was probably second or third.

1:23:13I think, you know, the main thing was the brute economic reality of if we paid him X, he could come here. Oh, yeah, definitely. Right. And that was very, very clear. And that became publicly clear. So the enhanced game is another, enhanced games is another situation where the fairy tale is being broken. Now, there are a lot of people out there who have been very cynical about traditional athletics and traditional swimming, institutional cycling, etc. So the view should be or must be that could we capture a big chunk of that audience who are already cynical about these main sports? But once they've lost the fairy tale, does that then mean that they actually then become really passionate about the brute, nasty, modern thing which accepts all of that cynicism and just says, hey, but you know, you should get really excited in this.

1:23:56I've just got a funny feeling that the people who have lost the fairy tale and often are very angry about having lost the fairy tale aren't them particularly likely to really sort of become passionate advocates of the thing that reflects their own cynicism i'm not convinced by that so we shall see as you say there's a lot of deep pockets behind it and if you're right the big pharma is actually the main driver behind all this kind of stuff then actually these types of sums of money that are being put out are absolutely tiny because what is definitely true is that these products things like you know testosterone supplementation and human growth hormone are very high margin products, which currently in the general population carry a significant stigma about them.

1:24:37So if over 5, 10, 15, 20 years, those products can gradually become de-stigmatized as people see that there are healthy young adults who use them totally openly and who go on to perform really well and have big smiles and do really well, the growth of those markets could be very, very considerable. It creates a new fairy tale. Charlie. Charlie. Top topics. Thank you. We'll see you next week. Indeed. It's a mad topic to finish on and I find the whole thing so confusing to wrap my moral compass around but now this has actually happened it will be so interesting to see how regularly the games come about and how many athletes start showing an interest after the million dollar payout has been realised.

1:25:17As always, so great to have you with us. Keep the comments coming and we'll see you next week. Sponsorship deals collapse for one reason more than any other. The valuation gap. The brand has a budget. The club has a number in mind. The two don't meet and a deal that could have worked for everyone falls away. Obelisk Sports bridges that gap. Here's how it works in practice. A brand commits to a base sponsorship fee they're comfortable with and ensures the performance-linked top-up. If the club wins promotion, qualifies for Europe or reaches a cup final, the payout triggers automatically, covering the increased sponsorship value.

1:25:51The club gets the deal done at a level that reflects their ambition. The brand gets in at a sensible entry point. Is your prospective sponsor telling you their budget doesn't stretch to what the partnership is worth? We can build a structure that makes it work for both sides. This is Obelisk Sports, helping sports organizations build insured performance structures that stabilize budgets, reduce risk and unlock greater upside. Visit obelisk sports dot com. Obelisk Sports Limited acts as a consultant to Gamepoint Capital, which is authorized and regulated for insurance business in its respective jurisdictions.

1:26:23This show has a number of ambitions. Education sits at the heart of it. No one does a better job or has a better success rate of providing the tools to access the opportunities to work in sports than the Global Institute of Sport. GIS's goal is to democratise access into the sports industry, a sector that has historically been a closed shop. Laying out a few stats, they have industry-leading graduate success. 79 % of GIS graduates are working in sport within six months. 99 % secure employment within six months. GIS is about outcomes. It's all about a global immersive learning experience. You can study online with flexibility to fit your busy lifestyle or on campus at world-class stadium venues, including London's Wembley Stadium, Miami, Toronto, Sydney, Brussels, learning in the very locations where elite sport happens.

1:27:10Flexible work placements and projects with clubs and organisations around the world integrated into your studies. It's the world's number one sports education network, ranked number one university for getting a job in sport by Sport Business Magazine. there's a real industry access a powerhouse network of 50 plus sports industry partners including the premier league the fa and other global giants an unrivaled global community of mentors executives and guest speakers offering real world insight and opportunity if you want to take your sports career to the next level visit www.gis.sport we'll have some exciting plans to share on our work with them in the coming weeks so please stay tuned