THE BREAKDOWN: Should the Olympics Pay Athletes, The Problem Facing Women’s Football, & F1 Lands Another Mega Deal (E22)

28:10Which again is why I'm kind of going in here. Sorry, Kirsty. I hate to keep on picking you up on your own blithering incompetence, but that is just a total red herring. Their comeback will be that they distribute 90 % of that revenue to international federations and governing bodies. Now, while that may be well and good, there is very little system of accountability within those systems as to how the athletes then get paid from there. To put it mildly. To put it mildly. So you don't have a situation where your athletes are then really benefiting from that. That will go into so many different areas.

28:41So you're still getting a group of people expected to dedicate an entire life, well, a young life, to featuring in a Games that will leverage them as brands. Their name, image, likeness will be completely exposed by the organization and they will receive no money for competing in it. Now, the money that they may receive, World Athletics led the charge on this in Paris in 2024. they said that they will pay and they did pay$50 ,000 to a gold medal in athletics. Now, that's good. It's a good start. But the reality is again of what$50 ,000 does for you in the context of how much you've had to put into your training and career to that date is very, very small.

29:19Matt Richards, British swimmer, gold medalist, brilliant guy. Had him on the show. I picked out a comment that he said when I spoke with him a few months ago. He said, I was on£15 ,000 when I won gold. And when he says, I was on£15 ,000. That is the allowance that was being given to him by the British Olympic Association. I was on£15 ,000 when I won gold and you have to be a multi-gold medal winner in multiple years to get to the top band of funding which is£28 ,000. That's what Adam Peaty level. This is 23 years old, double Olympic gold medalist. He'll be going again in LA. He's been very vocal actually since.

29:58He's actually been very prominent this week. Super smart. really like pretty properly invested in all of this and there's no inflammatory comments coming out around it it's very much baked in the theory and look to me what we have to look at is you can't live off the legacy of the values the olympics was built on in the early 1900s because i actually had a look you know and and saw how the revenue generating commercial entity of the olympics has changed throughout that time in 1950 the budget for olympic games was 10 million dollars which is the equivalent of$140 million today. From 70, 80 onwards, you started to build a commercial powerhouse.

30:36And the minute you built a commercial powerhouse, and I mean the level of production that goes into it, the stadia that goes into it, the sponsorship, all of this. The minute you create that, you have to start paying the key contributors to that, which is still the athletes. Now, whatever that percentage is to make that make sense, fine. You guys go and have that discussion. But with that being zero, in a sport where this is the pinnacle of your athletic prowess, And people have thrown this back recently. They said, yeah, but the Ryder Cup, we have this issue every time. It's like, ah, but it's different because do you know what?

31:04McElroy and DeChambeau and all of that lot are getting alongside it for$5 million paychecks pretty much every time they turn up on a golf course or at least win a golf tournament, right? So this, for the athletes, is their opportunity to make money. That's their cycle. And outside of that cycle, it's few and far between. What happens, and the reason, Charlie, sorry, is finally why I find this even more extraordinary. It's a timing perspective. Because what did we talk about last week and trying to defend the purity of athletics? We talked about the enhanced games. Now, the enhanced games happened.

31:38Kirstie makes these comments. If I'm an athlete and I'm looking at this and she's sitting here, the pinnacle of my elite performance, and these guys are sitting here going, I'll pay you a million dollars to break a world record, 250 grand to win an event and some and some. I'm starting to see this come a little bit closer together. if I'm an athlete who is sitting here going, I cannot make this work under current circumstances. And that's the threat. Yeah. Let me try and imagine myself to be in the unfortunate position of being one of Kirsty's communications people. I'm just asking you to just imagine that for a moment.

32:12So you're in some office at IOC Central knowing that if any point in time your boss makes a mistake, you're probably going to get fired. And in any case, even if it isn't your mistake, she's going to go and say something stupid anyway. But nonetheless, you are basically having to give advice. So I think this is what I would say. I would say I don't think it's appropriate for the Olympics to itself pay prize money because this is the pinnacle of the sport and we want people to come here for the greater glory. and furthermore if we put all the prize money into that one event those athletes who happen to be injured at that particular time are basically losing out on that money for the entire cycle and that cause it just makes massively disproportionate just one mistake in in one event and suddenly they don't turn anything so instead what we're going to do is we're going to distribute portions of the IOC's earnings to the governing bodies of those sports and make sure that they spread that as prize money in the intervening years in between our Summer Olympics to make sure that our athletes are able to put bread on the table during that period to make sure they're able to come back as good as they possibly can be.

33:25I think that would be a totally logical thing is if they said right okay who we got here we've got um the iaaf we've got into well is it called world athletics so we we are going to work with them on how that is apportioned throughout the the cycle we're going to work with these various different bodies on how they use ioc money to make sure the athletes are earning okay in between the olympic games i think that would be perfectly logical and reasonable thing to do and they could then still keep the olympics itself as something which is unpaid. I think what is not tenable is for them to say, we are the one, because you've got to remember that the Olympic Games does not exist in a commercial vacuum.

34:06So when they go and attract a commercial sponsor to get involved, a commercial partner to get involved with them, that is a commercial partner who's apportioning marketing budgets to the Olympics that they then will not have to apportion to world athletics or the various different other bodies right so they're sucking in all of the money which might otherwise be spread more evenly throughout the four-year cycle on different events and different circuits and all this type of stuff and they're basically then saying having sucked it all in no no we're going to keep that all for ourselves now there is one last thing i want to say on this charlie which is that part of what drives behind this is the voting mechanism for um the ioc so rather like with fifa and the reason frankly why kirsty is in that position rather than sebastian co is that each individual Olympic federation, each individual country gets a vote.

34:51And the way in which FIFA presidents and IOC presidents keep their presidency going is basically by doling out goodies, financial goodies to these individual federations. And dare I say it, sometimes those things might end up not always in time. Being put in the places where they should be. Yeah, putting it very politely. That's giving it political, yeah. Thank you very much. So effectively, that funding model is what works for the president, the current president of the IOC, whoever that president might be. It's rather like in UK politics, where we have a first-past-the-post voting system. When a party, a political party, is out of power, it always says, well, we should have proportional representation, we have proportional voting.

35:34And then the moment they get into power, they say, well, I'll tell you what, this first-past-the-post system ain't half great, isn't it, right? And it's a bit like that here, where if you were to say to Kirsty, I'll tell you what, of your$2 billion a year, we suggest that you take a billion of that and hand it out to the governing bodies of these sports to make sure the athletes are okay, there'll be a bit of her thinking, well, how am I going to get the votes of all those small countries who are relying on me to push a few million quid in their direction to, I'm sure, do some very good things?

35:59Because that's how I get re-elected, right? If I go to them and say I'm pulling that money out to give it to the athletes, that's going to cause a big problem for me when somebody comes along and challenges me for the presidency of the IOC. So once again, the power mechanism is completely out of touch with the outcomes. So the downside... So I saw the downside, which you've just alighted on. Just be clear on the jeopardy, because there's a bit of these things where you can say, and I say this with Grand Slam tournaments, say, look, what are they going to do? Right. And the thing here is, as you've outlined, in the case of tennis players, and they're earning 20, 25 million bucks a year, a big chunk of which is coming from the Grand Slam tennis tournaments.

36:36But what are they going to do question is very opposite. Is Irina Sabanenka really going to give up three or four million dollars because she feels so strongly about prize money? Or as it turns out, no, she won't. Right. now when it comes to the Olympics and athletes particularly those who are already big stars who may well already have won a gold medal so they've already scratched that itch and then the enhanced games comes along and says tell you what, since Kirstie says she doesn't want to give you any money you kind of haven't got a lot to lose here you'll always already be an Olympic gold medalist how about if you come and earn some money?

37:06I would be very tempted which is just what you're saying exactly and whether it's the enhanced games or anything else it leaves them wide open and it comes back to I think a point we made the other day they've never really had genuine competition at this level I'm also looking at it and I saw they sit on 5 billion in cash reserves. So it's not like the cash isn't there. No, it's not. It's not. So we talk a lot about this, don't we, Charlie? I mean, this is coming up a lot as in just pay in general sport. Pay in sport costs. Because I tell you, the reason why it comes up a lot, Charlie, is because it's a critical element of running a sports business, right?

37:33Which is that in any sports business that you're running, a large chunk of your cost base and therefore your business model is basically how much do we pay the athletes? We're about to come on to that in a moment. That's why I said, because whenever we've talked about football, it's generally swung the other way. It's been out of control wages and cost far too much going to players based on the proportional revenue that is generated by clubs and federations. And we've been wanting to touch on women's football for a while, and we've been looking for the right time to do it. I've been a bit wary, Charles.

38:07I'd be a bit wary too. I'm a bit wary, and I'll tell you why. Because I've spoken about it and written about it in the past, and you find yourself in a bit of what i would call almost a not a no win situation but you are basically a sitting duck for some fairly cheap shots and so therefore i think the only time we've mentioned it on the show so far in the last five months that we've been doing the show was really in relation to women's rugby yeah and i mentioned in passing that i felt that the big success that women's rugby was having provided lessons that could be learned by professional women's football um but which would not be learned and then we sort of parked it um but eventually you come around you know when a topic is a significant topic at some point we wouldn't be being ourselves if we didn't address it and last weekend um was apart from the ua for champions league final the following day after that was the women's fa cup final here in england so in the final man city beat brighton 4-0 um in front of a crowd of 45 000 people now 45 000 people it's a lot of people it's equivalent to having a full villa park right so it's not it's not nothing but for the showpiece final of the whole year in a sport which we are told by numerous of the cognoscente of the sports world but actually often the investment world is the big coming sport the booming sport The sport, which is growing faster than anything else, is, I think, a disappointing number.

39:38We have to go back to the 2023 Women's FA Cup and find that 78 ,000 people attended that match. Now, obviously, the Women's FA Cup final should not be expected to have the same level of prestige as the Men's FA Cup final. And that's reflected in the ticket prices. The ticket prices are, I think the phrase is, cheap as chips. So 15 quid for an adult, 10 quid for a concession, 5 quid for a junior, right? So you're talking about the equivalent pricing for a non-league men's game. So they're basically saying, we don't want to price anybody out, because that really doesn't price anybody out. Even somebody on a very low income or on welfare can afford 10 quid, 15 quid.

40:18That is absolutely achievable. So we want everybody who wants to come should be able to come. Weather was great. No men's matches on. So no clashes and all this type of stuff. so 45 000 people down from 78 000 people and this is part of a broader pattern which is that for all the noise that there is out there that women's professional football is growing the hard facts that people in the sports industry like me look at is it's shrinking but charlie i saw a report that said the 2025 26 attendances were 2.7 percent higher than they had been before that when when When you say that they have been before, you mean last season.

41:00And that season in turn was 10 % lower than the previous season, right? So in other words, attendances this season are 7 % lower than they were two seasons ago, right? You didn't bite on that. Do you know, honestly, do you know the reason for that, which is ridiculous in this reporting? If you take Arsenal out of that, Arsenal account for 41%. Arsenal women. 41 % of WSL attendances. So the headline number that I saw reported was 2.7 % increase in attendance on the previous year. But Arsenal had contributed to that. If you take that Arsenal out of it, it was a 17 % decline over the last two seasons.

41:41Yes. So just please, everyone clock that, right? Which is, if you take Arsenal women out of these numbers, you're looking at double digit declines in attendance. at a time where we are being told that this is a booming growth story. Now, just go back a few weeks, Women's Professional Rugby, one of the biggest shows we've ever done, right? Yeah, the biggest audio show we've ever done. The biggest audio show we've ever done. And there are an awful lot of people communicating around it. I had no idea, right? And I'm so glad that you chose that topic because I simply had no idea that Women's Professional Rugby is growing attendance-wise at 92 % a year.

42:2592 % a year. And not over one year, over multiple years, right? And when you look at their showpiece occasions, the attendances are increasing by 15, 20, 25, 30 % on their showpiece, from what were already quite good numbers. Their international matches are packing out Twickenham at 80 ,000, okay? And this is a semi-pro and amateur sport. This is a sport where there is a member of the England national team who's a dentist. Okay. So I just want everyone to bear that in mind in the debate that we're about to have, right? Which is that this is not about being pro or anti women's sport. This is about how to create a growth sport, how to create a successful sport, how to create a sport which actually has a meaningful commercial future.

43:11And what we're going to look at now is what women's professional football has done and ultimately why it is failing. Is that fair enough? It is fair enough. And just to add to it, and I think whether it's men's sport, women's sport, we have to treat everything fairly. Absolutely. And with the same review. Now, we say now almost weekly, no one has a right to exist. You have to earn your fandom. You have to earn the money that you generate. You have to earn your right to be a competitive sport. That's what this is really a look at. Correct. Do you want me to kick off with the history? Go for it.

43:41Yeah. Right. So women's elite league football has existed in this country since 1991. with the FA Women's Premier League National. And effectively, elite women's football, which at the time was, as women's rugby is now, a mixture of sort of semi-pro amateur, was put into a league system. There was, in the first instance, no relegation. So it was a closed league. And then they opened it up. But it's quite interesting that when it started in 1991, it was actually a closed system, a franchise system, as women's professional rugbyers. We'll come back onto that as a theme about where things might have gone wrong.

44:21It then changed, and they did bring in promotion and relegation to the division below that, which was an amateur league, effectively. Then they innovated further, which is they decided to go into playing in the summer rather than in the winter. Why? Because they didn't want to clash with men's professional football. They wanted to give their sport every opportunity to attract broader football fans at a time of year when both their wallet and their mind space wasn't being totally taken up by men's professional football. That was 2011 until 2016-17, I think. Then in 2017-2018, they went back into winter football, so matching up with the men's professional season, and the women's championship, that's the second division, started to go in a sort of more serious basis.

45:05So you started to move towards a system much more similar in every way to the men's system. And it was around this time that some of the independent teams that had grown up started to struggle a little bit and it started to become much more or some of the teams which were attached to even small men's professional clubs so you have the Donkester Bells and the Millwall Lionesses and these types of clubs which were either attached or not quite attached or semi-attached to smaller men's professional clubs where effectively they almost had the air to become bigger entities themselves those clubs started to drop away and you started to see them being replaced by the women's arms of the bigger clubs And in 2018, the top division turned pro, full pro, right?

45:51So this is still under the leadership and the governance of the Football Association. It was a department of the Football Association. The women's football department oversaw the elite football leagues until just before COVID, really. And so it went. But there was always a sort of feeling within the FA, look, at some point, we would rather not oversee this. And I think that's legitimate. I think that's absolutely fair. I haven't got any sort of problem with that. But what they did is they commissioned something called the Carney Report. Now, that is a former elite women's player called Karen Carney, who had recently or just retired from the professional full-time game.

46:33And she was commissioned to write a report on what the future should look like for elite women's football. What you've said there to me sounds like they got it right originally and they've now got it wrong again. They've fallen into the traps. The biggest challenge that I see seems like this determination to replicate the men's game, which by all accounts, if it was created today, if you had a fresh slate, would be very, very different to how it was created back in the day. God, yes. So why is that happening is a broader question. and we'll go into this, but I think the key is there are so many routes.

47:11There are societal routes. There's the types of fandom that both of these sports individually create that make it completely impossible to replicate in the same way. Because, by the way, let's be very clear, this is a sport created from resistance, really. Women were not allowed to play football from 1921 to 1971 in this country. I wrote it down, women, it's wholly unsuitable for females, was the was like in quotes comment so even just looking at the feeling that must have existed right behind the scenes you can you can already see where this desire for parity this desire to be locked into something that the men have because we've been marginalized from this for so long comes from i completely get that and i don't think you're about to pull that down but what we really want to see is it's not about that this isn't about being the same as something else it's about creating the best product for the people that most want to engage with it right yes exactly right so um so carney report carney herself said that the aim of this was to effectively create two fully professional divisions women's super league and wsl2 or the women's championship and the aim of that was to create world leading standards for players staff and fans right i just want to unpick that because it relates to what charlie has just been saying always listen to what people say what people say is what they generally speaking what they mean the aim of this whole exercise was to create world leading stands for players oh and staff and fans players players first this is a as you've implied this whole thing has been created by what we call producer interest right so producer interest for those who don't know the term is when an entity or a business or an industry is set up fundamentally for the benefit of the people who work in it the whole thing is set up to make life as easy as possible and as well paid as possible for the people who produce it rather than being run to the benefit of those who consume it but professional sport is the most brutal um darwinian uh industry you can possibly be in because it's all about the scores on the doors it's fundamentally about what the punters want in every sport and if there are enough punters who pay enough money, either by going live or by watching on TV, creating the eyeballs which then drive higher TV rights, then and only then is there the money to push towards the producers, the players and the coaches and so on and so forth.

49:44But effectively, women's professional football has started from the other end, which is saying the primary consideration here, the primary target is to pay the players really well. Now, the justification, if I was to explain it the other side, because we'll definitely get this, is, but the only way in which we're going to make this sport attractive to the general public is if we have the very best players playing here. The only way in which we will get the very best players in the world playing here is if we pay the very, very highest salaries. So we're back on to pay. Yes, but we're looking at it through the other end of the prism.

50:21So you're starting off the Olympics where vast amounts of money is generated and then the question is, well surely some of that should be given to the athletes. Here we're saying there's no money being generated but there is an underlying presumption that the world leading stands for players is the main point of this. I just want to just do a quote from Karen Carney here. Professionalisation across the top two tiers, the aim of which is to attract the best players in the world and for a lack of diversity to be addressed more investment in facilities and access for females so there's a whole bunch of societal stuff packed in there diversity access for females there's a bunch of stuff there about attracting the best players in the world and paying world leading amounts and all this type of stuff but nowhere in there is there any sentiment around we need to try and work out what the paying spectator might want because ultimately in the long run, that's the only way in which we'll have a worthwhile industry.

51:16Now, there's another quote from this time. This is now three years ago from the person who was then the Secretary of State for Departure of Culture, Media and Sport, a lady called Lucy Fraser, who was in the then Conservative administration. This has been in sort of around about the time that Rishi Sunak took over from Liz Truss. It was around that sort of time, right? Okay. So 2022, 2023 so lucy fraser said what we need to do is to make sure that the women's game is more commercial and that it attracts more broadcast income because if we do that then the women will be enabled to be paid more that was the voice of good sense right now i was on a couple of conference calls at the time i was a director of a football league club and she was astonishingly ignorant about football uh i mean eye-wateringly ignorant about football but not a stupid person right she can understand that in professional sport for the performers to be paid well that stuff has to be done to enable this to to warrant the spectators becoming interested and paying money which can then be transferred to achieving this entire thing but that piece of work that lucy phrase was recommending was never done.

52:28It was never actually genuinely considered what is it that we need to do to actually generate income. It was simply assumed there would be big broadcast deals. It was assumed that attendances would go up and up and up and up. It was assumed that massive commercial deals would land. None of that has happened. And that in turn has led to a rather a sort of resentful tone where there's almost like societal pressure being placed on the broadcasters and on big commercial you should be spending more money on women's football you should be sponsoring women's football because if you don't it shows that you don't really care about women there's that read across being being made there and that pressure being put on why does that need to happen the reason it needs to happen is because there aren't the punters turning up and there aren't the eyeballs on the TV to make that an automatic commercial transaction.

53:23And that is where the fundamental problems come from. I just want to just leave you here for a moment with what the TV rights deal is. There are 140 odd games being shown on TV in this country, shared between Sky and the BBC, mostly on Sky. And it's a deal which is 65 million quid over five years. So you're talking about around about 12, 13 million quid a year shared between all of the teams in the women's super league that's about kind of the same level we're talking about with the national league right the fifth division of men's football that's kind of what we're talking in terms of the amount that's being paid here and then some of the audience numbers that are going with that you know there was the marquee match arsenal against chelsea arsenal women against chelsea women on sky this year got a peak peak peak audience of 70 000 with an average audience of 59 ,000, I mean, you're going a long, long way down the pecking order, right?

54:18There are sports which you haven't even heard of that get those types of numbers. So whether it be live in stadium attendance, whether it be eyeballs on TV, whether it be commercial rights deals, whether it be genuine commercial deals, as opposed to ones which have been apportioned out of men's club sponsorships, the numbers have consistently disappointed. And the result of that is that we're seeing huge losses being incurred by the women's arms of the big men's professional football clubs so what happens england win euros in 2022 that creates a massive buzz we then have what we would call an activated audience not a fan base and this is the difference that i think people have really struggled to get to grips with activated audience will be there for a short amount of time but it is much different to a fan base that will turn up on a tuesday night when it's pissing with rain and be there consistently throughout a season giving you their attention and their money i had a look at some statistics just in the u.s because that's the market held up as the real prominent one for women's football right and i just wanted to see whether the quality of that product was recognized there maybe in a different way to what it is here the u.s women national team achieved a peak attendance of 32 000 in 2025 for a friendly against brazil at a 70 000 capacity stadium in Los Angeles.

55:35That was the only crowd at their 15 won five home matches to break 30 ,000 and only three others attracted more than 20 ,000 spectators. So even in the prime market for women's football, there is an attendance issue. There is a challenge with getting enough people through the gates. Product. Product innovation. Let's just call it that more broadly. What I do want to talk about just is pay. It's where we started the conversation, but we've been through a history and a landscape, etc. And I've just mentioned the fact that women's Super League clubs are losing such large sums of money that significant clubs outside of WSL1 do not want to be in WSL1 because you lose too much money.

56:18Okay, that's how unattractive being in that. If you are expected just to stand still to lose three, four, five million pounds a year and growing all the time, then of course, for anyone other than a very large men's Premier League club who can effectively afford to make it as a CSR payment out of their revenues of 300 million, then for any other kind of enterprise, female football enterprise, that becomes a very off-putting thing, which is, again, not a good thing. So what have they done to address this? They've moved from a situation of having almost no cost controls whatsoever. Just think about that for a moment.

56:51Just as men's football is desperately trying to bring in cost controls and largely succeeding, women's football has bravely decided, no, we don't want cost controls. and now they have brought in a cost control the cost control is that on player wages you're allowed to spend 80 of your revenue and then on top of that either an additional 25 or an additional 4 million whichever is greater right so either 105 or 80 plus 4 million which will be a minimum of at least 110 by definition whichever is greater so if you look at a typical um wsl club taking out to Arsenal for a moment. Typical women's Super League club, let's say, revenues around about sort of£5 million, you know,£4 or£5 million, can spend basically around about£7 million, £8 million on playing wages.

57:40So they're basically able to spend about 180 % of their revenues on playing wages at a time when men's football is crunching it down to 60%, 70%, maybe 75%. okay so just as men's football is trying to put the genie back in the bottle at all levels even going down into leagues where frankly the pay is not as big as as is sometimes in wsl1 just as men's football is trying to get the genie back in the bottle and trying to make its club sustainable and safe women's football is saying tell you what 150 160 of revenue spent on playing wages that's all great and the reason that's up to seven million do you say for some of those clubs on wages.

58:21Well, obviously for other clubs, I mean, when it comes to Chelsea and Arsenal, we're talking about 11, 12 million. Yeah. Right? I was only just thinking it because you said similar to men's. I mean, I was in that conversation we referenced last week when I sat down with Grimsby CEO Polly. She was talking about their wage bill at three and a half to four. Yep. Absolutely. No, I mean, women's Super League clubs, in some cases, are edging up towards men's championship budgets. Okay? For clubs, in the case of your club, Chelsea Women, that get 6 ,000 or 7 ,000 people through the gate and are then spending 11, 12 million on playing wages, which is a small men's championship club.

58:55You know, you're looking at absolutely massive imbalances going on here, particularly the ticket prices aren't all that great as well. Now, when it comes to the growth profile of women's football and women's sports in general, particularly women's football, I often hear the argument, and bear in mind, my professional background is basically trying to flog tickets, right? So, you know, let's not put too much. I'm the guy in the trenches at a sports organization or advising a sports organization saying, how can we get more punters through the gate? And when they do come, how can we get them to spend more on food, beer, and merchandise?

59:25Right? So it's not a very glamorous trade, but it does mean that unlike a lot of people who comment on this very freely, I have done this at the sharp end, including for women's professional football clubs, by the way, at both Sunderland and at Charlton. Had to think about how can we get more people through the gate? And the argument I'm often told about the growth potential of women's sport but women's football in particular is well 50 percent of the population of women and they're currently not served at all by men's sport so we're just leaving this massive open goal and all these women basically are natural women's professional football spectators i don't believe in that read across it is a fundamental underlying presumption of a lot of the the growth narrative that sits around women's sports in general and around women's professional football in particular is the thought that basically all women should rather watch women play football than watch men play football now i have no doubt that there are some women who would and who do equally there are actually some men who prefer watching women's sport than men's sport and i actually just said i prefer watching women's rugby to men's rugby for instance as it happens so this is not about sort of you know all i'm saying is is that you can be a man who prefers watching certain women's sport and you can be a woman absolutely very much can be who prefers watching men's sport but there is no entitlement to support just on the basis of gender solidarity that's not how people spend their leisure pound giles no no and and i think i said you know i in the few times where i've had disagreements with people over this the first question i'll always ask if someone says anything about um this discussion topic is do you go and watch a women's football match and the majority of the time, the answer is no.

1:01:09They go and watch a men's football match if they want. Who is it? Who are you having that conversation with? People around, friends. Is this girls or boys? Girls. Girls, right. If the question comes back, do you go? Do you go? Then their answer the majority of the time is no. Yeah. And the reason that men's football is where it is is because it has a tribalism. And look, there's a really bad element to a lot of men's football fandom. What women have been able to do for women's sport in the community side and this is a this is a deep conversation the groundings of women's football we mentioned it in marginalization but how it's been built out of that the openness the inclusivity the communities that it serves the fans that it does generate that is an amazingly valuable thing in sport men's football toxic aggression tribalism you know there are things in there that are absolutely not what we should aspire to but unfortunately those same cultures they produce attachment routine a sense of belonging and that if we're looking at this fundamentally for me that is the difference women's football doesn't have that kind of cultural grounding and therefore it's much harder for them to create the fan base in the same way that men's football has so it comes back to the point of why be the same product but it has to doesn't it charles because who else is going to pay the subsidies that's the problem right so i just want to just go back to you know in other words if there are massive losses being made every single year who is going to pick up those losses now karen carney effectively has created those losses okay through her report and the fa's acceptance of that report and there was what was never addressed in her report was who pays the bill yeah now i know from speaking to people inside women's professional football that the assumption has always been well the men's clubs should pay it it's part of their social duty now i always want to tell you what i think is great about girls and women's football and you know speaking as somebody who's got a little six-year-old girl who plays football every week, runs around in her Charleston athletic kit with her friends every single week playing football.

1:03:07And the sport which I want to see her play the most is football. So the opening up of opportunity for as many girls as possible to come in and play football is one which I wholeheartedly support. Number two, I believe in every sport there should be the opportunity to take that up to an elite level. I think it's absolutely crucial to provide the aspiration to drive those who are ambitious to be able to take it up to an elite level. So yes, an elite league, absolutely, yes, that should exist. So what we're talking about here is not whether there should be women's football, girls football, not whether there even should be elite women's football, elite girls football.

1:03:45The question is simply a sports industry one, which is, has the cart been put before the horse here? In other words, in predetermining that these athletes who not many people want to watch are going to get paid at the same level as other sports who are watched by an awful lot of people and then creating this enormous financial void effectively which is a black hole which people just have to throw money into to keep the carny reports dream alive is that actually serving the long-term interests of elite football in this country right and because what it does do and that just leave you this thought is it makes it vulnerable it makes it really vulnerable i'm seeing some stuff happening that a couple of seasons ago wolves who were in the premier league at the time their women's side was promoted or was in one the league which promotes into the women's championship and wolves basically said no we don't want it right i saw the other day that plymouth who have run a very successful girls and women's program for a number of years have made the decision that they no longer want to be a semi-professional club they want to go back to being an amateur club and one of the reasons for that is really super interesting, which is, hang on a second, what are we actually doing here?

1:04:54We're bringing in players from all areas outside of Devon and Cornwall to try and make us competitive in a system where there are no business and financial reasons for us to be elite and super competitive. And in so doing, we're actually narrowing the opportunities for local girls to be able to make their way through into a competitive first team, right? So actually, what are we doing existentially? What is the point of what we're doing? And that is the question I asked about the Carney report. That is the question I asked about women's super league which is what are we actually trying to do why could we not have stuck with the original thought which is you know a closed league maybe playing in the summer establishing franchises in the right parts of the country where everyone has access to them not pinning them into men's teams not expecting men's teams to pick up the bill and instead as women's rugby is doing gradually growing an ecosystem that finds its own place in the world and can then not be vulnerable to when a men's football club decides you know what we need to cut costs sorry we're just going to get rid of you good stuff well managed I'm not sure about that I think you'll find we're in the stocks Charles but there we are let's see F1 sponsorship Charlie F1 sponsorship this comes off the back of Gucci racing coming into the space so if any of you saw last week there was a pretty big announcement as Gucci became the title sponsor of Alpine from the start of next season so just in case anyone can hear sound effects that's not my tummy as a result of not having had lunch there's an enormous thunderstorm happening outside which might well be the god's judgment on charlie and charlie discussing women's professional football it's quite incredible isn't it the studio is literally like a reinforced box as well and we can still hear it it's quite incredible sorry back on to gucci racing gucci formula one so reportedly 150 million dollar multi-year deal to be the title sponsor how many years was it charles i couldn't well i couldn't find out it said multi-year multi-year could be anywhere between i'd imagine it two and five my guess would be a three-year deal right Yeah.

1:06:44I think five years would be a long time for this. You're talking about 50 million a year for three years. Based on where the market's at at the moment, that would be a complete guess. And it is a guess because, as you said, it hasn't been specifically outlined. Either way, Gucci and Formula One, not as a minority partner on a car, but actually taking full control of the naming rights of one of the 11 teams. It's quite an extraordinary development. And just the latest iteration, I would say, of the shift in types of companies that are now building value off the back of Formula One really in the last five to six years at scale.

1:07:17So I thought it was worth us having a quick look at this sponsorship piece because it's highly relevant for Formula One and what it actually shows about the development of the sport. But it's also a really interesting pointer to how all sports need to be looking and how this market and the key commercial driver, we're talking about women's football there and challenge to generate money. Are you speaking to the best people to actually help you do that? because the landscape has changed in the last 20 years significantly and nothing shows it better than Formula 1. But if we just give a little bit of the oversight of Formula 1 as a commercial entity, let me know, let's not get bogged down.

1:07:52It's been huge since Liberty Media bought it. Drive Survive gave it a massive profile. I actually looked this up, Chas. It's almost 10 years ago. Yeah, incredible, isn't it? Well, nine seasons of Drive Survive. Nine seasons, right? So I'm just going to sort of hold my hand up here to sort of dinosaurism. I was working in Formula 1 at the time and this was 2017. and I remember having a dinner with a bunch of Formula One journalists and Formula One journalists were like sort of Stockholm Syndrome victims, right? So they were locked in this relationship with Bernie Eccleston where they couldn't live with him, couldn't live without him.

1:08:21He would haul them into his motorhome and give them a few tidbits about the politics behind the sport and in return would expect the sport to be publicised and this type of stuff. And they just couldn't imagine a world without Bernie, right? What, you know, since so much of the drama around Formula One was effectively being generated by and around one man, if you took that man out, what might happen? Now, I remember it was quite funny because I remember that the first two American representatives of Liberty who came into the paddock, one was called Chase Carey, who was distinctive looking fellow with big moustaches.

1:09:00And then there was a commercial guy called Sean Bratches, and they arrived in the paddock, and a significant portion of the press pack that covers F1, both for the English media, the British media, but also for what you might call the international media, are British journalists. and Fleet Street British journalists are somewhat sort of cynical, sceptical people at the best of times. But this particular group who were in Stockholm Syndrome with Bernie, when they saw these characters, these rather colourful characters turning up in the paddock, talking in that, you know, slightly Ted Lasso style about what was going to happen to the sport, believe me, they didn't, they, and I have to include myself in this because I remember the dinner when it was all being discussed and I was not the one there saying, do you know what, I think this is all going to work.

1:09:43Like, well, my goodness me, have they slash we all been proven wrong in the last 10 years? It comes back, doesn't it, to when we talk about how a sports organization needs to behave once it's taken over by an entity. And, you know, a lot of people saying, well, you know, Formula One's been successful from Drive Survive. It's like, yeah, but they'll forget that the people actually put in, the executive put in to go and make these decisions needs to be of the quality to understand where opportunity actually lies. These things don't just happen. They don't just happen. Do you remember the distinction I made a few moments ago when talking about women's professional football about the distinction between producer interest and consumer interest?

1:10:15So, you know, funny enough, F1 under Bernie started with producer interest. He himself was a team owner. And he basically said to his former team, his fellow team owners, albeit who are slightly grander teams than he had been. Hey, look, if you give me the rights to your TV, to the TV rights, the whole thing, and I can put the whole thing together, I can make us all rich. I can make you all rich, et cetera. And that's where it all starts from. When Liberty came in, they sort of, so it had always been run as this sort of like thing where it's Bernie, former team owner, Ron Dennis, Frank Williams, all these guys that sort of, you know, and then the Ferrari people, all starting basically from, this is our thing.

1:10:51We need to make as much money out of it as possible. Okay, what can we sort of do to make money out of it? And Liberty, as far as I can tell, being a media organization fundamentally previously, looked at it through the exact other telescope. They said, okay, we will look after the producers exceptionally well if we work out what the consumers actually really want. And they then made a bunch of bets on what the consumers would actually want. Take a helmet off a driver. Bring the real characters from the paddock to the forefront of the sport. You can't have learned to someone like Gunter Steiner.

1:11:24Cost controls. Cost controls was huge. Really the biggest. That's the biggest thing. To make it more competitive. The first thing they did was more visible, more entertaining, more characters being brought to the fore, all of these things, because they thought that that's what the competitive world of global sports eyeballs, for them to buy into our sports, our industry, we need to give them more of what we think they want. and if that happens then a whole bunch of other really good stuff will start to happen right which is that with that extra audience will come more sponsorship with more sponsorship and more cost controls will become more investors with more investment coming in the whole thing will lift off even more and it's just been like some sort of business school case study of how to get it right and there's no better way to test uh the effectiveness of that than to actually look at the commercial appeal of it so some of these numbers 2.54 billion dollars was generated in 2025 recently released numbers.

1:12:17$2.54 billion was generated in commercial revenue. Second highest of any sports series in the world. And only just behind the NFL. About$100 million behind. So the top three, dear viewers and listeners, the top three commercial generators in the world are the NFL first. $2.6-ish. $2.6 billion. Formula One second,$2.5 billion. And the Premier League third,$2.1. Between$2.2 and$2.1. $2.1. that kind of thing. So you're talking about three sports entities in the world that are colouring in more than$2 billion a year of commercial revenue. And now Formula One is one of those three. And Mercedes contributed$558 million of that.

1:13:00Doesn't that show you how competitive it is? Because we just said they're a fifth of the total. There aren't that many teams. So that means that even teams like Alpina, who are the ones who have just brought in Gucci as their main sponsor, we just reckon$50 million a year to be their title sponsor. Even those teams further down the grid, that back when I was working in F1, they were all on their knees, desperate for sponsorship. We listened to Claire Williams when she was, and she was telling us 10 years ago, she'd be selling the family silver to try and get sponsors in. Now, the battle for 50 to 100 million title deals per year is rife.

1:13:33Now, this is where there's a really interesting shift. It's the who. Technology, AI, businesses coming into this space. So in 2000, I just had a look, right? So in 2000, your sponsor - This is going to be hilarious. This is Shell, Marlborough, B &H, British American Tobacco, Orange, and Red Bull was actually a sponsor of Sauber in 2000. Tobacco spent$250 million with almost every car having a tobacco partner. 2026, Oracle, HP, MasterCard, Revolut, Atlassian, Visa Cash App, Gucci, LVMH have a$1 billion 10-year deal with Formula One Central. Yeah. You've gone from booze, petrol, fags, with maybe a telco company in there.

1:14:19Yeah. Just starting to happen, yeah. To some of the most innovative, valuable entities in global industry. Yeah. So technology sector is the biggest contributor to that sponsorship with 769 million. That's a rise of 40%. And that's kind of your Oracle's CrowdStrikes team viewer who you sponsor Man United. AI companies have emerged as a huge participant in this now with things like Anthropik leveraging Claude, 11 Labs, and then financial things like, you know, whether it's just traditional financial services or fintech, MasterCards, Revolut, these kind of platforms that have recognized that there's a huge value to be had while trying to speak to a younger audience and converting them into higher value, should we say higher ticket sponsorships.

1:15:05formula one's the place where they're going to do this then there's a why and this is where i think we hit a massive problem in sports sponsorship in general at the moment identifying it is one thing who can we reach out to but what's the compelling proposition to put in front of them do we know fully what we have at our disposal i.e rights holder individual asset do i understand fully what I can give to this partner to make that valuable to them. Formula One is a brilliant way to show how teams have started to realize that. So I spoke to Antoine Lanel at the start of the year, who's the chief marketing officer of Revolut.

1:15:42And this was a few weeks before they did their big launch with Audi. And some of the things he said on the show were fascinating when trying to understand why a multi-billion fintech was taking on a, let's say, between a 50 and 100 million partnership with the formula one team which by the way is about the same as a front of shirt sponsorship for one of the biggest football clubs in the world yeah exactly pretty much so it's a huge investment it's like sponsoring man united and he said this right he said this is a massive sponsorship decision this is a huge business decision he said a company like revolute will activate more than a company like aramco for the sport like formula one a super innovative tech company is bringing the sport to the audience as well as the sport bringing us the audience the incredible thing with this sport is we're doing a great job of modernizing it but we're building on its legacy it's really hard to take ip from scratch and develop it without any legacy so what i really liked about that is he wasn't saying that we're suddenly extracting value that hasn't existed before he's saying even the tobacco companies even the petrol companies they always extracted a level of value out of formula one that one they wanted to return to the difference was.

1:16:48They were just speaking to a slightly different type of consumer. So what a revolute has realized now is that to hit the objectives that they have in a sponsorship category, Formula One has become a place where the people they most want to speak to are spending their time. We talk about our attention economies and the competition variables and all of this. The hardest thing to do when you're trying to build commercial validity is to showcase that you can sell those businesses to their audience. And Formula One is doing a great job of doing that. And even when he started breaking down the markets and he said, well, they're in 17 of our 20 markets.

1:17:18So what he meant by that is he said, I can split that total cost across 17 different budgets. So while it may be, let's say 70 million, just split it down the middle, that can go across 17 different countries. And that makes that a far more investable commitment than it would be just lumping a whole 70 million out of one P &L. Also, Audi, Revolut, premium brand, but it's relatable. He said it's an accessible luxury. So he'd looked at it and he said, Audi, premium brand, not accessible to the majority of people. Ferrari, I said I said Audi. You said Audi. That's what I was thinking, slightly puzzledly.

1:18:02As a man who has driven an Audi in the past, I've never thought of myself as being a plutocratic sort of, you know, Bentley driver. So you meant Ferrari. Ferrari. Ferrari, non-accessible. Audi accessible. Premium brand, non-accessible. Audi, premium brand, accessible. Revolut, want to be a premium brand on the finance side, but we want to be accessible. So that's the level of detail. Now, that's just at the surface. Then you start to go into what they really want. I won't just speak for Revolut on this, but let's speak for the technology companies in general. What they really want to be doing is integrating products into organizations and then into the everyday lives of the audiences that they're interacting with.

1:18:41So if it's a payments app, How can we make sure every transaction is Revolut driven if we're going to use that example? Or Airwallex for McLaren or Mastercard for McLaren or whatever. They want to have the teams that are using them or sponsoring them actually providing value, not just from, oh, this is a nice shop window, Premier League problem. Oh, we sell a shirt space. We sell a sleeve. We sell a hoarding. No, no, no. We want to get you integrated into our business. Sometimes more convincing than the other. Do you remember our infamous HP statement when they got involved with Ferrari? Oh, brilliant.

1:19:10we weren't quite clear that somebody in Ferrari using an HP computer was definitely going to revolutionize Ferrari as a technological innovation hub. But anyway, so yeah, obviously I agree with you that there has been a much more creative element to recent partnerships than was historically the case. But I think I just want to come back to something that you said a few minutes ago, which is it's matching the audience that the sponsors want with stuff that you have now only so many people out there in the world even in our audience have actually been the business of going out and selling sponsorships but i believe that in this room we have two where you want to be is when you walk into the room knowing that what you have to sell is actually genuinely in their interest to buy but all too often when you're selling a sports sponsorship like as you say just a front of shirt for a football club, you're kind of aware that actually, are you really going to be able to deliver something that really makes significant difference to that business?

1:20:13Being cognizant of the fact of what their corporate aims are. And all too often, the answer to that is not really. What you're hoping is almost you catch them in a moment of weakness, or you catch a marketing director who happens to be a football fan, even better, if he happens to be a football fan in the club you're trying to sell him, or just that they will just have it as part of their general allocation to sports as a whole we probably should be involved in football in some way shape or form but what we're talking about here is something much more sustainable which is that global corp after global corp is deciding in a very deliberate way that the best way for them to gain access to high spending segments of the global audience is through formula one and i looked down that list of formula one corporate sponsors the ones who sponsor the f1 as a whole as opposed to individual teams.

1:20:59And it was almost like it's got to the stage where it's almost a bit embarrassing not to be a sponsor of Formula One, right? Are there any really large international corps that are not sponsoring? Are you guys poor? Hard times? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, really? So you've actually made a decision not to get involved in F1. What does that say about you, right? You don't want to be involved in the fastest moving, most innovative sports on earth, which also has really affluent global audiences. What does that say about you? So that is over 10 years. Now, towards the end of At the back end of Bernie's time, of course, the tobacco sponsorship had largely gone for regulatory reasons.

1:21:33But it was tough times in the sponsorship time, in the teams at that point. Because the tobacco had gone and it hadn't been replaced with new categories. I remember speaking to the McLaren salespeople around that time, 10, 11, 12 years ago. And they were like, you know, this is really, really tough. And basically, just to explain Formula One team's business models to people, they, of course, do not themselves get ticketing revenue, right? Ticketing revenue is coming into a mixture of Formula One Central and the venues themselves. They do get a central distribution payment, but that's never going to keep them afloat.

1:22:07So fundamentally, they are actually sponsorship businesses, right? Sponsorship is the lifeblood of Formula One teams and really largely outside of the works teams, which obviously do have greater support from the infrastructure of the car brands that own them. But in terms of the independent teams, they've always had to survive on the sponsorship. But you know what, Charlie? It's astonishing. It's also, it's not even just the money. It's watching Gucci create Gucci racing. Yeah. Create a new logo. Yeah. Like you're talking about proper heritage brand here. This isn't them going, do you know what?

1:22:37We've got a bit of budget. Let's go and test it out. This is proper buying. Are you a Gucci guy, by the way? I would love to be. As in, do you have any Gucci garb? No? No. Gucci loafers, obviously, you wear occasionally. I haven't. You're not in? genuinely my problem if I'd ever wanted them no one makes big enough shoes oh this is back into Norwegian ski jumper stuff it's a big problem but no no it lives in premium like elite premium and the thing about premium brands generally is it takes a huge amount for them to shift branding so to have this alongside the deal where it's now got it's own category if you are opinion like this is so exciting we could do so much with this this will be so much more valuable to them as a racing team than just some of the cash that comes through if they nail it.

1:23:24But the challenge is these organizations, if you're a football club, they're there for you too. AI companies need credibility and cultural relevance fast. This year, I think there's 11 or 12 or 13, something around, football clubs that last year in the Premier League were sponsored by betting companies in their front of shirts. From next year, betting companies will no longer be allowed on the front of shirts in the Premier League. where are you going for these new partners these people these these companies should absolutely be on the radar but what you can't do and this is where the challenge has dropped previously is you can't go in there with your little deck showing your front of shirt your sleeve we are we are a historic club with an established established fan base structured partnership programs tiered multi-touch point activation built in it can't you know it's not just fabric space show them the audience show them the integration show them the reach show them the don't give all our secrets way chas but but in all seriousness like you're looking at this now as a massively um impactful moment in sponsorship if you're actually breaking down the difference in spend there is a lot out there that you can grab onto but you have to be good enough and you have to understand how to go and speak to these organizations and that's where you need to level up it's a way of reflecting back on 10 years since the acquisition and if somebody had said down the track that all of these massive luxury brands would be piling into it that teams would be making profits and their valuations would have gone up by 10x.

1:24:47That sceptical press call would have been looking extremely disbelieving. So it's an amazing job well done and let's see what the next five to ten year holds. Brilliant. A lot covered today, Charlie. I think that looking for all that. Thank you so much. Thank you, Charlie. Some pretty mega topics in there and no doubt ones that stir up a lot of emotion. We hope that in breaking it down like this, the conversation can be built on what needs to happen to create the strongest environment for success and how that can be achieved. The Athlete Pay chat is also a big one and another people will have plenty of opinions on so please do share them and keep commenting as always.

1:25:22And of course, with the launch of our sub stack the opportunities to engage more deeply in all of this will only increase. Thanks for tuning in as always and we'll see you next week. The best sports sponsorships aren't transactions. They're partnerships that grow as both sides succeed but most sponsorship structures don't reflect that. A brand signs a fixed deal, the club gets promoted to a bigger stage and the commercial terms are suddenly completely out of step with the new reality. Obelisk Sports helps brands and clubs build multi-year structures that scale with success. A brand commits to a championship-level partnership today, ensures the step-up to Premier League valuation, and if promotion happens, they're already in place, already embedded, realising the full benefit of the relationship they invested in early.

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