THE BREAKDOWN: Super Bowl & The Power of The NFL, Baller League Warning Signs, Winter Olympics Fights for Superstars (E05)

27:09I don't even have the attention span to be able to follow it. Like there's just so much of it going on that the moment I check back in again, I find that a whole bunch of stuff's happened that I haven't even noticed. Did you have any of the numbers just in similar ways from those sports compared to the NFL? I'm not sure what. Yes. How they're. Well, I can tell you the TV. Yeah. The TV revenue is quite interesting. OK, so let's look at the TV revenue because that's a good marker for how the sport's doing as a whole. Because obviously the TV revenues relates to eyeballs. Eyeballs is what relates to everything else.

27:37Right. OK, so in the case of the NFL, they're raking in about$10 billion a year in TV revenues, 95 % of which is coming from their domestic market, right? They are not getting much of their international rights. They're pretty much giving their international rights away to try and create a global audience, but they're getting vast amounts in from their domestic audience. The NBA is at$7 billion, right? So it's still very, very, very substantial. Now, it's worth noting that the NFL has 32 teams and the NBA has 30 teams. To put this in some context, the EPL, the Premier League, the English Premier League, does 5 billion.

28:19That's for 20 teams, not for 30 or 32 teams. So the comparable roughly, if you just do some very basic mathematics, the NFL is generating about 300 million per team. and the Premier League is generating around about 250 million per team. So these are comparable leagues and the NBA a little bit less than that, right? The interesting thing is for me is that the Premier League, the Premier League's global revenues, i.e. the TV revenues that are generated from outside of England, have now surpassed the TV revenues generated from the English market. It's now moving towards about 60-40. Right. So if you think about that five billion, 2.2 billion or so are generated domestically and then 2.7 or 8 billion are generated internationally.

29:09Whereas, as we were saying earlier on, the NFL's case, almost all of that 10 billion is being generated from within the US. Probably I would guess that this is means strategically you'd probably rather be broader based like that, Because the dirty truth is, is in very mature markets, the domestic TV audience is slightly reducing, just as younger generations don't watch as much TV because they have so much optionality. And I noticed that the viewership of the NFL in 2024 declined by, I think, two and a half percent, right? Not a lot. It's still huge, as you said earlier on. It's still absolutely vast.

29:48But it's a trend line that says that they have reached absolute saturation. And indeed, everything we know about the viewing patterns of Gen Zers, etc., is that probably it is going to start tailing off over time, a very steady decline. Now, what the Premier League is doing, it's filling up those gradually lost eyeballs in England very fast with eyeballs around the world, right? So actually, the Premier League's total number of eyeballs is increasing. But we're seeing a push now from the NFL to recognize that, aren't we? For the first time this year, I think there's going to be nine games that are played outside of the US.

30:28So there are 272 regular season games. Nine of them will be played, three in London, one in Paris, one in Munich, one in Madrid, one in Mexico City, one in Rio, one in Melbourne. That's a clear indicator that they recognize that their reliance on the domestic audience needs to shift a little bit. they want to build value in a broader geography to to keep that league growing yeah and i think they're doing a really good job by the way i mean i do think that if you if you were to take and this is very much finger in the air but if i compare the level of exposure that my generation had growing up to nfl in this country to my son who's 19 his generation have had much more exposure to both nfl on tv but also nfl live and indeed online because when when i was growing up we didn't have YouTube, etc.

31:13So they are much more au fait with kind of that generation, not all of them, but a significant chunk of the sports loving segment of Gen Z is more au fait with what's happening in NFL than we were 30 years ago. So that gives some hope to the idea that over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, the NFL will become more prevalent. And that's because they haven't just come over and just had a match. They've put on a big weekend around it, right? They've really throwing the kitchen sink at it. So it does feel like the NFL is getting a grip on this core strategic, I wouldn't even say problem, like they're so dominant domestically that they could just sit on their ass and just say, do you know what?

31:52Doesn't matter. We're huge. We make vast amounts of money. We don't need to go and push the envelope in other geographies, but they are. Now, the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodall, who is, I think he earns something like 60 million himself, right? I mean, he must be the best paid sports exec in the whole world. You said earlier on that revenues were at sort of 18 billion to 20 billion. He's declared that he wants them to be 25 billion, right? And realistically, you've got to think, given the moves they're making, that they're reckoning that that increase in revenue is largely going to come from international markets.

32:25Yeah. The Nike deal they have is interesting. So they centralize the manufacturing deal for all of the apparel. That includes training, wear, includes matchday kits. and I had a look at some of the numbers around that and interestingly it was about, again, relatively hidden but between$150 to$200 million a year for Nike to kit out all 32 teams. I was quite surprised about that. I was expecting it to be bigger. Yes, I would expect it to be bigger. Adidas pay I think$90 million to Man United right now. Real Madrid are about$100 million. Charlie, I'd love to see the detail of that deal because my experience of kit deals, which is reasonably extensive, is that the devil is in the detail.

33:05Like there's an upfront payment, but there's also sometimes revenue sharing. There's all sorts of other stuff that goes on. So without, I wouldn't want to comment in too much detail on that deal without knowing more about it. But yes, prima facie, it seems like a relatively low number. So I hope that listeners sort of, you know, feel that we've given them a sort of, a bit of an insight into where the NFL is from a business perspective. There will be, you know, huge eyeballs on that event this coming weekend. But the interesting thing is, when you think about it, strategically compared to where people like Infantino are trying to take football, Super Bowl finishes.

33:42From then until August, September, there is no NFL, right? So you asked earlier on, what would the Premier League take out from what the NFL are doing? Well, I mentioned a few things I thought the Premier League could do. But the big lesson here to people like Infantino is stop creating more matches. You destroy value by creating more matches. And however much you might think you're winning your silly little ego games with UEFA, you're destroying the long-term attractiveness of the sport that you are in charge of. Football needs fewer matches, as does baseball, as does basketball. That is what Formula One and NFL are proving.

34:17I've got a question for you. Do you know who's headlining the halftime show? Oh, I think I did see this. Was it Kid Rock? No. Do you know Bad Bunny? Do you know who that is? Are you familiar? It escaped my attention. You're familiar with the music of Bad Bunny? No, no, I'm not familiar with the music of Bad Bunny. Well, it sounds quite intriguing though. What does Bad Bunny do? He's a very successful artist. One of the most successful artists in the world at the moment. I'm sure you'll be tuning in on Sunday. What do you think of it as a sport, just finally? Because it's very different to watch, isn't it?

34:47I quite like it. Does it entrance me in the same way that a really good football match does? Or a top, top test cricket can entrance me more than anything else? or even a tournament going down the stretch of the big golf tournament? Probably not, but I do like it. What about you? Yeah, I struggle with it a little bit. I find it very stop-start, quite slow. It's certainly very stop-start. That's the entire nature of it. And obviously, I mean, the easy comparison is to something like rugby. The frustrating thing about rugby is that there are things that they could do to rugby to make rugby an amazing viewing prospect, but for one reason or another, they won't do it.

35:26Anyhow, that's a discussion for another day. Should we move on? Let's go. It's been a big time for topic number two, which is a look at Baller League and more broadly, challenger competitions and formats in football. How do you even begin to disrupt the biggest and most successful sport in the world, Charlie? So, Baller League is a challenger football product. It's a short-form football tournament alongside something called the Kings League. Kings League is seven-a-side, founded by Gerard Piquet. Baller League, founded by a guy called Felix Stark. Six-a-side league, both indoor football, both really digital-driven.

36:03They were distributed in the early days on platforms rather than going central media contracts. They were heavily created to engage the fans. Really social-first football tournaments. Now, they have big stars behind both of them, Baller League in particular. They started in Germany. Felix is German, so that was the home market. And they had people like Lukasz Podolski, Mats Hummels, Alicia Lehman, fronting a lot of these teams. And it did amazingly well. It was one of the most watched, if not the most watched sports product on Twitch. And they built an audience pretty much straight away off the bat.

36:37That brought in great sponsorships. And therefore, a year after setting up in Germany, They laid out the expansion plans to go and build a product in the UK and the US. The UK has indeed started. It has. We've just had the second season. We've just had the second season. And the US has not yet started. It's slated, in theory, to start in the next month or two. March, yeah. In theory. I haven't seen enough detail there to really convince me that that is happening. But nonetheless, that's the theory. But I think where you were about to go then is go back to its home market of Germany. That's the reason why we're talking about it this week, because they recently announced that they will be pausing the operation in Germany.

37:17I just want to put a quote here about which the Borla League says about Germany. The home market, this is where the founders come from. Germany will always remain an important part of the Borla League, but the market currently lacks the size and conditions to succeed. Right. This statement really worried me because, why did it worry me? I think Germany is probably the biggest football market in the world, I would say. Yeah. Right. Give or take. Right. Brazil might have a dog in that fight. But Brazil and Germany. One of the biggest. Massive populations where football is the only show in town. Right.

37:58England is, football's huge, but so is cricket, so is rugby, so is golf, etc. Really in Germany, it's football, football, football, football. And we've discussed before what it's like going to a big Bundesliga match in Germany. It's the whole state's behind it and the whole thing is really... So when you say that Germany lacks the size of market, of football market, to carry this off, it leaves me thinking, well, who has a big enough market if Germany doesn't? Germany is vast. I mean, it's got a population quite a bit larger than the UK's. And it's a significantly more football-focused population than is the case in the UK.

38:36and then you look at America big population but how many of them really into football much much much less so I just want to have a quick look at some of the numbers right let's look at I don't have the German numbers but let's suffice it to say they clearly weren't good enough otherwise they wouldn't have suspended operations in Germany in season one there was a very very significant number of match days hitting one million and that's not necessarily been the case all the way since so you get this big splash of interest this big sort of push of sort of like wow, this is new. I want to have a look at this.

39:08This is something, could be something very different. And the issue is not really whether people like it or don't like it. The problem is the bar is very high. They've got to really like it. They've got to buy into it so much. They want to keep on coming back for more and more and more and more because the in-stadium or the in-arena attendances are never going to be enough to make a significant difference here. You're playing in the copper box in the case of London, which fits four or 5 ,000 people. And actually weren't charging for a lot of tickets. And even the tickets they were charging for, it's 15 quid, right?

39:39So if you think about your, quote, match day revenues, right, what we talk about in professional football terms, you're really not looking at anything which is particularly significant. You're looking at about 50 ,000 maybe per match day. But, of course, the rent of the copper box is going to be significant as well, the stewarding and the staffing and all this type of stuff. And then in the final, which gets played in a bigger place, You're looking at maybe 10 ,000 to 15 ,000 people and you might have 200 ,000 quid. Anyway, it's a long way around of saying that the ticketing revenue clearly is not intended to be a big part of this.

40:13So then it becomes a question of how many people can be watching on social media and how can that be monetized through sponsorship, which is then played off against the expense of staging the whole thing. Right. Because we've got to bear in mind that when you talk about the celebs that are involved in this as managers or, you know, sort of attached celebrities, these guys don't come cheap. And I think they had the same ambition as we talked about with Live, where the franchises these celebrities were associated with would be equity plays for them and they get real value through ownership. Yeah, that's right.

40:44You know, I do think that with all these things, like there's got to be some sort of visibility on the idea that you might eventually end up making some money. right I think you're right in saying that okay that on a one-off basis there might be a particular reason why an entity might buy into a sell GP team because it wants to do it but that's not gonna be the case with this kind of stuff right this is really isn't gonna care at some point this has to make financial sense being very specific you know when I'm talking about that as I said I think it has to be something that's built around an absolutely incredible offering that is an experience to someone.

41:16Lifestyle. Lifestyle piece. For a while, F1 was like part of the reason you got involved was to be in the paddock and all that type of stuff. Going to the Copper Box to watch my Sixerside football team managed by John Terry. Yeah. I'm not here. I'm not here for the lifestyle piece. That's not a lifestyle thing, right? I just want to just think about this in terms of disruption, right? In terms of doing innovation, doing something new. before your time um sometimes great way i love it when you start things like this sometime before your time um there was a very prominent five-a-side indoor football tournament called the daily express five-a-sides which the top football teams football clubs in england would put teams into this tournament right and it was televised on the bbc it was played at wembley arena in front of 20 ,000 people.

42:10In fact, my home team, Oxford United, won it in 1985. John Aldridge scoring the winner after Kenny Samson had put Arsenal in front. So it was a big deal. This isn't you. This has all happened before. And they had razzmatazz around us and all this type of stuff. There was much more of that than there would have been in traditional football at that time. I used to love Masters football. Did you watch Masters football? It was a sort of spin-off of that, effectively. So watching ex-footballers playing five-a-side football, etc. So this is not a new concept right i just want to know where are you actually taking this because at the offset it looks so cool the names you bring into it i you can sell me on that disrupting something creating an experience different formats that are cool i've been to i've been to baller league and i've been yeah and i really enjoyed it and it was different and it was a novelty but am i going back and tuning in every week like i do with my traditional football i'm not i may not be their target market but when it comes back to but it comes back to longevity right and and and this with all of this when whether it's we're talking about live or these emerging r360 or baller league you're going up against traditional sport which is so powerful in its ability to be habitual i'm programmed to go to my 11 aside football team my premier league football team championship football team I'm programmed on the experience of stadia and going to watch this stuff and to to create that consistency to create that habit these new leagues have to find a way to to draw me in beyond just a novelty concept just falls down a bit on what the level of ambition is I mean because the the founder of the baller league has been very ballsy um he's gone out and said some big things.

43:58I've noticed that the Kings League, which is the version that was founded in Spain by Gerard Pique, has been a bit more reserved in its public pronouncements. Their CEO said this, we are tapping into the market of the young generation who are changing the way they consume sports. Traditional football is far from dead. That would be ridiculous. We simply think that this is also an alternative that can be successful in its own way. So once you sort of chop it back to if we keep a control on costs, if we try and make sure that we're doing things that generate enough eyeballs, can we have a circus here that gradually over time becomes part of the landscape that the new generation becomes accustomed to and they start to form a degree of interest and loyalty to some of the teams, even if it's nowhere near what they might be towards a traditional level side team.

44:49Once you start accepting that it's not going to be like a multi-billion dollar enterprise, but actually it can gradually develop value in its own way, then I think you can make more sense out of it. I think it's when you go balls in and say, right, no, we are going to fundamentally disrupt the football market and we're going to spend a lot of money doing that and we're going to need, therefore, to have big early success to do that and all this type of stuff. I think that it becomes a lot more challenging to make the sums that up and then you need more and more investment, which is just sort of very painful when you're doing new funding rounds.

45:22all the time so look the bottom line is as we said to start with when people try new stuff you know we are interested we're interested we're fascinated and there are new things trying to think of a good example that's off my head there are new things that do work um the IPL which actually was born out of an English cricket invention called T20 cricket right T20 cricket has massively worked yeah there is a core point here right i think which is the creators of t20 believed that t20 cricket would be more exciting than 50 over cricket genuinely more exciting yeah for everybody for a normal audience that this is going to be more exciting this is going to be genuinely better and whatever i might think about as a traditionalist who loves test cricket that has proven to be the case more people like watching t20 cricket than ever liked watching 50 over cricket do we actually believe does anyone really believe that six a side football is more entertaining than 11 side football has anyone said that because i've just said what the king's league guy said which is basically no it's not isn't that it's not that at all because basically otherwise you're in the business of trying to fix something that's not broken i was going to say my final question to you on it was going to be, do you think football needs to be disrupted?

46:41No. I think there are elements we've discussed earlier on in terms of the cost control structures, in terms of multiplicity of match occasions, in terms of how often the players are asked to perform. All these things, I think, are things that need to be tightened up, right? But in terms of the core product, every available metric tells you that more and more and more people want to watch it live in stadium and on TV. So you're trying to disrupt something that is in any modern sporting media metric term that you choose to use is exploding with success. As opposed to, I think, in cricket, where the 50-over game was already on its way down.

47:16So 2020 was coming along, disrupting something that wasn't working. These things seem to me, if they are genuinely trying to be disruptive, they're trying to disrupt something that, to me, doesn't really look like it needs disrupting. And that then creates a problem. That said, it should be said that this season, The baller league did happen in the UK. It did happen successfully. The finals seem to be, I watched the final back, and it went off well, etc. Now, I can't tell you what the economics are behind the entire thing and why if the English league is doing better than Germany. I can't speak to any of that because I don't know what the numbers are behind the scenes.

47:54But it is only fair to recognise that we've just completed season two. It looks to have been passed off. The whole thing was run well. there were celebrities there, there were significant senior football figures like John Terry and Alan Shearer involved. It's not us sitting here saying it is a failure. It's us sitting here saying the fact that they have abandoned ship in Germany is a little red flashing light on the dashboard saying, is this really going to work medium to long term? And I think I wouldn't want to put it more strongly than that. No, I agree. And also on the Kingsley side, I mean, it's an industry estimate.

48:29But if they really have generated$99.7 million in revenue in the last year, then that's a pretty huge achievement for any sporting organization that's, well, pretty young in the context. Let's watch this space. But I watch it and I'm always aware, I'm self-critical of to know I'm a late adopter. I'm not the guy who jumps on every new thing in technology and sport or whatever it might be. So perhaps I'm always going to be the one who is a bit more skeptical, whereas I think you will be more open to something new and all this type of stuff. There's just something in the back of my mind that just questions a model which depends entirely on sponsorship.

49:07You nailed it. Talking about things that rely entirely on sponsorship, I want to move on to the Winter Olympics. Wow. When I was looking at the Winter Olympics, what a segue, right? Wow. Is that good? Yeah, I love that. So the Winter Olympics is about to start in its core Milano Cortina, but of course the majority of the events will be happening in the mountains at Cortina above Milan. And it's just time, I think, to have a little look at the Winter Olympics as an event, but also at winter sports in general. Because I came across in researching this item, I came across an athlete which I'd actually never heard of before.

49:40Her name is Eileen Gu, and I'm sure plenty of listeners will have heard of Eileen Gu. She's a freestyle skier and arguably the best freestyle skier in the world. and last year she earned 23 million dollars which by any standards is a loss of money for a sports person to earn i mean i think we said the other day that the top women's tennis players were at sort of 17 18 million in terms of on court and then obviously maybe an extra 10 million off court so eileen gu um is has you know she's really i mean i'm sure she's worked very hard and she must have done um but she's also fortunate to be both american and chinese which is two quite big markets for brands to hit.

50:20So she has Red Bull, Porsche, TCL, all sponsoring her. Of her 23 million euros, 100 ,000 was earnings from her skiing. What a business model. We were saying earlier on, be careful of business models that rely on sponsorship. But I'm guessing if you're Eileen Yu, you're not turning it down, right? You're not saying, well, actually, do you know what? I think I should really depend more. My model would be more sustainable if it was all about my earnings from being a freestyle skier. Anyhow. But she's one of the best freestyle skis. So is that just, there's just no money in. I think the best. Yeah.

50:53I mean, I was looking at the best female downhill skier of the last 20 to 30 years, Lindsay Vaughn. Astonishing story. We don't know if she's fit yet, do we? She hasn't said if she's going to make it. Depends on your definition of fitness, Charlie. Careering down a mountain. So she retired in 2019 saying, my body is broken beyond repair and it isn't letting me having that it isn't letting me have the final season i dreamed of right that was in 2019 right when she was in her mid-30s which is the end of you know for most professional athletes if you make it to your mid-30s you've done great she then had a titanium knee put in and returned in 2024 aged 40 is now 41 and one of the favorites for the women's downhill.

51:46And I was looking forward to this. What an amazing narrative, right? What an amazing narrative. The only sports person I can think of that's pulled off this kind of trick is her ex-boyfriend, Tiger Woods. Yes. Similar kinds of ages, right? It's such a good point. Right? So, Lindsay Vaughn, it's difficult to decipher exactly what Lindsay Vaughn has earned over the last 20 years. There are differing accounts of it. But broadly speaking, She's been the highest profile downhill skier of that era, men or women, right? And during that time, she has earned in total something like$40 million,$40 to$50 million.

52:27It's difficult to decipher exactly how much. But of that, not much more than$5 or$6 million has been through her skiing earnings. The rest of it has been commercial partnerships. Red Bull, again, Under Armour, Rolex, Head, Land Rover Jaguar, Oakley. These are all long-term sponsors of Lindsey Vonn. Premium brands. Really premium brands. And it's interesting something that she said that was basically even to sustain yourself financially as a top skier, really, without help from your governing body, from your home country's governing body, which you get in some countries but don't in others and don't really in the US, you need to be in the top 10.

53:06if you're not in the top 10 then you are going to be driving around in a camper van you know bumming lifts and hoping to someone will have you to stay and all this type of stuff so it's extraordinary isn't it's this sport which is quite hard to categorize how big is skiing right so it's a mass participation sport right lots of people ski and in its heyday and we're talking in the uk here ski sunday ski sunday which is i was gonna say was still is the bbc's flagship sort of program covering the competitive skiing season. In its heyday in the 1980s, this was watched by 5.5 million English or British people, I should say, a Sunday, a weekend.

53:50Unbelievable. I mean, huge viewing numbers. It happened at a brilliant time of the day. It was about 5 p.m. on a Sunday. So if you think about a time during the winter, of course, we're talking about from November, December through until March, right? So it's a time of the day and a time of the year when a lot of the family are huddled inside, etc. So you have a choice between Songs of Praise or Ski Sunday. Go for Ski Sunday. And it was hosted by a man called David Vine, who was a lovely man, who also did the snooker as well. He was a national sports figure. Anyway, it's still going. And it still gets more than a million viewers a weekend.

54:23But that is nonetheless quite a severe diminution. And I was looking at the TV audiences for the Winter Olympics over the last few iterations, right? And they are on their way down, right? And when I say they're on their way down, they are on their way down quite significant. Really? Yeah, they are. I love it. I love it as well. So if I just give you an idea, within the US market, Sochi was 21 million, Beijing 19 million, expecting 11.5 million, these types of things. So you're seeing an audience which is getting close to halving over the course of a sort of 10, 15 year period, that type of thing.

55:03I think it was Pyongyang was the one in between. So I would just be a little bit concerned about that. You just said you loved it. Out of interest, which bits of it do you like? Skiing is absolutely one. Look, we've had obviously a brilliant time in the last few Olympics on the curling. That's been fantastic for people. I mean curling has been because we've actually been quite good at it and so naturally it's been something that people have talked and focused on a little bit more but I love watching curling so the four most popular sports in the Winter Olympics to watch in the UK and the US are bobsleigh including the various different iterations there are which we've also done well at in the UK and the Americans do well at as well figure skating yeah brilliant right skiing and ski jumping these are the four dominant sports in what people want to watch in the Winter Olympics.

55:54At the risk of sounding like a stick in the mud and somebody who just doesn't like new things and disruption, I wonder that over the last two or three Winter Olympics, they started including an awful lot of more like lifestyle winter sports, things that are judged in points terms rather than in who's quicker or who jumps further or whatever it might be. So you're talking, obviously we've mentioned freestyle skiing being one, but you're talking about various other all sorts of different iterations of jumping and acrobatics and all these types of things a bit like skateboarding being in the olympics absolutely yeah and just looking at these numbers here knowing that it's the last three olympics when those sports have come in prima facie i would say it hasn't worked but how are those numbers being measured are they just total across the olympics because i i agree i may not watch i may not watch the freestyle just like i may not watch skateboarding in the olympics but i'm still tuning in for the athletics and I'm still tuning in for the skiing.

56:50So I'm just being more selective. But I'm still watching this. I know. But the point I'm making is that remember what we said earlier on about focus and scarcity value and being very clear about what your core product is and only asking people to watch the stuff that really matters and so on and so forth. I just wonder whether the Winter Olympics in terms of the proliferation of number of disciplines and events has ended up becoming a bit of a sprawling beast and the numbers which as i said have been significantly heading down reflect that we also probably need more lindsey vons we need more people to carry that torch i was about to say with exception with lindsey von it's quite hard to say a skier over the last 10 or 15 years michael schifrin maybe who's also become like really famous i actually looked up who the current men's world champion downhill skier was and to my shame i didn't know i had never heard of him before it wasn't just that it didn't spring to mind i i saw the name and i was like i have no idea who you are absolutely no idea which of course is no but if you're prior reflection on me than it is on him clearly he's an outstanding athlete right but but at the same time you know if i'm running world skiing or winter sports i think you know for sports nuts like us we need to know who the leading proponents are like if i go back to my youth um there were globally famous skiers like Alberto Tomba, Tomba La Bomba, who was the slalom champion, etc.

58:14There was a really famous skier. And I just wonder whether the winter sports needs to take a bit of a step back, a bit of a look at things and say, right, we've only got people's attention so much of the year and so much of the Olympic cycle. We really do need to focus on these core sports, skiing, ski jumping, bobsleigh, figure skating, these core sports, which really captures people's attention. We need the attention on those things. I just want to talk very briefly, Charlie, about the cost of staging, of hosting the Winter Olympics. Do you want to kick off on that? I loved this because when I was taking a look at it, it's something we've talked about in Olympic Games for a while.

58:52There's been a shift recently in the summer games between host cities, trying to reduce the overall cost of hosting because it is extreme. And we saw in Paris the use of a lot of existing infrastructure to host events. So I think they used, you know, for like the fencing and stuff, they did it in... Was it Versailles? I think it was Versailles. Was it Versailles? I'm sure someone was. But it's similar. Instead of building these brand new stadiums, you try and create value by using the heritage sites that are synonymous to the city. And that's been very effective. And looking at Winter Olympics costs, they're still pretty hefty when you're looking at the total cost.

59:29So Milan Cortina, they say about 7.7 billion euros for total. But they actually said that 1.6 billion was strictly for the Olympic competition venues and for the organization. So a huge amount of that work was going into the surrounding infrastructure in the area, whether that's roads and transport links. Which has benefits which go on. Exactly. So almost like the Olympics are being used as a good excuse to level up national infrastructure. But the actual operating budget for the Games was 1.6 billion euros. So, okay, I was like, interesting. Then I had a look at some of the costs that previous games.

1:00:06Sochi? Now, this one was excellent. I did. So multiple analysis estimate a total cost of Sochi at about$50 billion. That's$5-0 billion. I'm glad you saw that as well. And that's the most expensive ever games across all summer and winter Olympics. Yeah. Around$10-16 billion was directly on sports-related venues. Yeah. And of course, subjected to considerable democratic oversight because it's such a strong democracy. Well, exactly. Yeah. And, you know, it's been hugely successful in maintaining its use of those venues ever since the Olympics was over. But Beijing also was up to 38 billion. Beijing was big as well.

1:00:44Now, again, rumours, you know, put numbers at different areas. But I think there was a realistic estimate that 38 billion accounted for the infrastructure, the transport, the venues and the snow making. Of course. Snow is not reliable. But the IOC contributes, interestingly,$845 million, about$900 million said to help with these costs. So Salt Lake, which is an upcoming Olympics. Now, interestingly, it was at Salt Lake not all that long ago, right? But it's an upcoming Winter Olympics at Salt Lake. And one of the reasons for this is precisely because you don't have to go and build all the infrastructure again.

1:01:22So that says to me that it's becoming, and I think we saw this a bit with the bidding for the FIFA World Cup, obviously which was given to Saudi Arabia unopposed. With all their existing infrastructure. Part of that is obviously because the dealings between Infantino and Saudi Arabia. I think also part of it is most countries who could potentially host these things now starting to think much more carefully about is it really worth it, right? The cost versus the reward is starting to look potentially a little bit lopsided. So that Salt Lake Games is estimated to cost$3 billion, right? Now, if you go down from Sochi at$50 billion to Beijing at$35 billion to Salt Lake costing$3 billion, you're then starting to arrive at the types of numbers where you really can make sense out of it, right?

1:02:13Where you can actually say, do you know what? That's absolutely fine. That's a realistic amount of money for an area which is, you know, obviously derives a great benefit from people who then say, hey, that looks nice. I might take my next ski holiday there, et cetera. You start to get into those types of more direct trade-off numbers where you can make the numbers add up better. Was it Brisbane that pulled out of the Commonwealth Games recently? The Commonwealth Games have had big problems. Because the problem is that you're... It doesn't have the prestige of some of the others. So you're incurring lots of infrastructure costs without necessarily getting the outturn of the big prestigious events like the Olympics.

1:02:48I'm sort of nostalgic about Cortina, both having been there and loved it, but also... You got some downhill experience there? Well, I skied downhill. I wouldn't quite say that I... Does that mean you went down a ski slope? I definitely went down a ski slope. Did I go down the ski slope that's used? Probably not. I probably wimped out of that knowing me. Are you a big skier? Yeah, very keen skier. Yeah, very keen skier. I go every year. Actually, last year we were in Colorado where my wife grew up. Skiing in America, apparently. Vale and Aspen, and it was absolutely terrific. Anyway, back on to Cortina.

1:03:25listeners of my generation may remember that Cortina figured heavily in a James Bond film For Your Eyes Only oh is that it's For Your Eyes Only Cortina yeah so where the biathlon that's where the biathlon happens and where Luigi Ferrara gets killed that is Bond's agent out there so that is a great and remember the ski jump scene yeah when the thugs are coming down with him and he's elbowing them and this time so Cortina will always hold that Roger Moore blue sort of puffy jacket. It's very blue, isn't it? It's very blue. It's bright blue. So yeah, Cortina, let's hope they have a terrific few weeks.

1:04:01If you haven't seen that, that's a great film. That's a great movie. And with some great ski scenes. But it's absolutely prompting in my mind and perhaps this is why hosting the Olympics does work to conclude on this point. Is it prompting in my mind the thought that I need to get out to Cortina soon? Yeah. Well, I'm actually going. You're going for the Olympics? Yeah. Freebies, junkets. All these junkets get sent in here and you basically just stick them in your top drawer and yeah I'm sorry I take it Harry's not even coming either so men's ice hockey final we'll probably revisit this next week at some stage just to see how it's all kicked off it's very exciting Friday I think it all starts so the day this is released so we'll be at the Olympics as well the Six Nations will be underway and the T20 World Cup so lots to look forward to so much to look forward to as always Charlie an absolute pleasure Thank you as ever for tuning into another breakdown.

1:04:55Finding our stride and bringing the best stories of the week continues to be thoroughly enjoyable and your involvement in guiding us to talk through the things you want to hear about is becoming far more prominent. So thank you and keep it coming. We'll see you next week.