THE BREAKDOWN: There’s NO Excuse if Arsenal Collapse & Why Women’s Rugby is Nailing its Development (E15)

28:46That creates a hole of 50, 70, 80, 90, 100 million. how did Arsenal fill that hole did they fill it by selling players no I'll tell you how they filled it the owner filled it himself the owner is 330 million in right on filling that hole and that is because Arteta has underperformed in not getting them to qualify for the Champions League and because the club as a whole has underperformed in terms of not being able to sell players to sort of slightly try and make sense out of things when you are heading in slightly the wrong direction. So Arteta's been on the most extraordinary luxury ride. He's had one of the biggest wage budgets in Europe.

29:29He's had one of the highest net transfer spends in Europe, probably the second or third highest net transfer spend in Europe. He's been allowed to basically garage all the top talent without being under any pressure to sell anybody. And he's had an owner chuck in the thick end of$350 million to effectively fund his underperformance during that time. and as you say that's all been in pursuit of their first title since 2003 2004 now I'm going to put my cards on the table I hope they win I hope they win because I think that it's important for the Premier League that somebody other than Man City and occasionally Liverpool wins and we're now going back to the last Chelsea title before we get somebody out of those two which was 2017 2017 so you're heading towards a decade with only two clubs winning it.

30:19And one of the big things that the Premier League sells itself on is we're not like La Liga. It's not just two clubs. So if you're not like La Liga and it's not just two clubs, you can't have Liverpool and Man City winning it every season, right? So I think it's important they do win. Secondly, I do think actually, notwithstanding what I've said about Arteta's underperformance, as you know, in general terms, I do think that clubs are too quick to move managers on. Yeah. I do think it would be unhelpful if it was perceived that a club that really went in the opposite direction and tried and stayed stuck behind their head coach for considerable time were then perceived to have failed in that because that will give, you know, sort of encouragement to other boardrooms to think, well, might as well get rid of them.

31:03It doesn't really matter because, you know, even Arsenal kept hold of Arteta for six or seven years and he didn't really achieve anything. So there's no points in it. so I'm willing to I'm willing to survive a summer of Arsenal fan smugness because I think in the bigger picture for the Premier League and the bigger picture for manager and retention strategy I think it would be helpful for them to win you nearly had me there you so nearly had me I was like he's speaking a lot of sense it would be good Premier League can't be the Farmers League you know we couldn't have this and then I just no and then I thought of a few people in my head who are going to be running around or summer with too much joy and I just couldn't, I couldn't hack it.

31:40But as a business, you know, so they did nearly 700 million pounds in revenue. Eighth biggest revenue in the world. And, you know, you'd like to think that what they've built around this and the six year tenure of Arteta will play into it because it's all part of image. Chelsea's image was a hiring and firing club and it was inconsistent and chaotic and Klopp and, well, Ferguson really and Wenger traditionally, right, those were the two that had built the stability. People wanted a lot of stability. It played into the image of a club, and I'm sure it enhanced the image of a club in lots of ways.

32:12Strong commercial performance in that time as well. It's 270 million versus 280 million of media rights. So they're really starting to balance out their reliance on centralized revenue alongside it. They've developed well behind the scenes. You're just looking at this moment, which they need to switch. And again, I keep coming back to that moment in that stadium with the fans, because what I keep hearing, and it reminds me of a conversation that we had with Petr Cech on the show, you know, he just kept drilling in, don't give a shit how you play, win, right? Win. And Arteta and the club have come under a certain amount of scrutiny over the last couple of years for how they play.

32:52And particularly from people loving again to go at them and they melt on social media. It's brilliant. Set piece FC, you know, Stoke-a-loaner or whatever you want to call it. But, you know, basically utilizing those unsexy ways of scoring and doing the dark arts. But ultimately, when you walk out with three points at the end of it, your fan base is happy because they've won. For the critique that we've given other sports people within this space, Brendan McCollum springs to mind with England. The minute you stop winning, you create yourself a problem. No matter how good everything else is, no matter how good the story is, if Arsenal don't win, then it's much easier to criticise and everything comes into it.

33:30And so when you sit there and watch that performance at the weekend, it was pretty abject. It was pretty rubbish. Bournemouth played well, but you could feel that in the stands. And there's no doubt, Charlie, and again, you'll be able to explain better than anyone having owned clubs and been in that stadium. But when you have that feeling, that translates onto the pitch. And you can't allow that to happen at this stage of the season where you are needing that extra man, the crowd on side to get you across the line. It feels like right now they have that moment where either the fan base, you know, you've got Man City in two days after this comes out.

34:11I think we've got the massive match this weekend. And come Monday or Tuesday when we record next week, we could be turning around going, that's the title. or we could be going, this is getting tense. But it feels like this moment now where the fans really have got to push them that little bit further because you've got a lot of very good players in there, but you do not have a lot of experience either from the manager or the players of winning big trophies. Yes. So going back on to your point you made about Brendan McCullum, because I never want, well, I mean, it's inevitable that occasionally one gets accused of hypocrisy, but I never want it to be a right, sort of correct judgment.

34:47I think if you're going to play boring sport with the aim of winning, then you do need to win. Right. Because there's nothing else to fall back on. I think the funny thing with McCullum and Baz Ball, et cetera, is that they were allowed to get away with not winning for quite a long time because it was entertaining. And they were given a lot more latitude and leeway than would have been the case. And really, the failure in Australia was not so much not winning, but was totally failing to be competitive. I think that if in the ashes we had lost, if that had been a humdinger of a series and we'd lost 3-2 with it being closely contested along the way, I think that he probably would have ridden it out quite well.

35:37Difficult to win down under. We gave it a right to go. A few key moments went against us, et cetera, et cetera. The problem with the Arteta situation, where you are absolutely sacrificing style for substance, is that then the trophy has to be on the sideboard. It just has to be. There's no other way around it, because you have absolutely staked yourself on that being the outcome that you're aiming for. Clearly understanding there are going to be many times during the season when people go, God, it's boring. Why am I paying so much money to watch this? This is really, really dull. well the answer comes when the trophy's on the sideboard yeah and it can be the very hard moment the very hard moment in sport and life and business and lots of things someone said it to me recently and it really stuck um and you know so what gets you there isn't always what takes you forward they've done a good job to get to where they are now but a fourth second place and again no trophy will really ask that question i mean the fight i was having not fight sorry discussion i was having with people i mentioned at the start we'd had a few chats over the weekend was if they don't win the Premier League this year, do you keep Arteta?

36:40And I straight away said no. And they, interestingly, a lot of Arsenal fans that I spoke to said yes. And I was speaking to the team beforehand and they said, strangely, they'd had similar conversations over the weekend and they got the same response. So that surprised me based on the fact that we're talking about this mostly because of that reaction in the stadium triggering, in my mind, some form of fan dissatisfaction. What do you think? Well, I certainly wouldn't be taking any advice from fan bases on when to keep and change managers. That takes you to very strange places. I'll be honest with you.

37:15So what do I think? I think that if they win neither the Premier League nor the Champions League this season, then I think he has to go. Do you think he falls on his own sword? Or do you think that's a decision made in a boardroom? If you ruin a boardroom, how do you navigate that situation? I think if you have close personal relationships, um which they probably do um then it's probably one of those situations where you're taking the the revolver and the glass of whiskey into the room and saying hey look mikhail there's a there's a nice way of doing this and there's a not so nice way of doing this we'd love to do it the nice way right what would be great would be for you to say that you feel like you've given it your all you've come very close you've had six or seven very intense years you want to take a bit of a break for family time whatever it might be and you hugely appreciate the arsenal ball support during that period and we will come to a very reasonable assessment with you um about what that might mean for a financial perspective um so that that's the that's the ideal way the other way which i'm afraid is the more normal way because managers always think they can turn it around they always think if only this if only that if one more player or if this guy hadn't made that mistake managers always think that, and they find it very difficult to be self-critical managers in general.

38:34They almost need that level of hubristic confidence to carry them through all the abuse that they do get. It then becomes very, very hard for them to look in the mirror. But the question I'd be asking is, if not now, then why ever? What is going to meaningfully change as the seasons go on? Because all that I see is this. I see Liverpool have been in a season of transition with some of their most senior players clearly aging before our eyes. They're unlikely to be as bad next season as they were this season. Man United are, broadly speaking, on their way back. Man City have successfully transitioned their team away from the previous era, and they've got lots of young new stars coming through, and Villa are forcing themselves up into the top four conversation.

39:26Every season that goes by with them qualifying for Champions League, they're going to get stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. So this season, this is the season. This is the easy season. This is the season when it's straightforward for Arsenal to win it because City have been transitioning. Liverpool have been even deeper transitioning. Chelsea, we speak about plenty and Spurs have been out the picture. And Man United are in their reparation season. This was the season when Arsenal was the only club, really, who approached the season at the start, feeling this is our thing. They were at the peak of their project.

39:59City were falling out of their project. And Liverpool, I mean, I must admit, it was very easy at the beginning of the season to look at the transfer business Liverpool was doing and go, my God, they're going to walk this because the players they bought on paper were amazing. But we all know what it's like integrating half a new team, right? So yeah, but that again is, I think that plays into and probably wraps up the whole feeling that must exist around this club now, which is this absolute, like they're just shitting themselves. The fans are literally sitting there going, three weeks ago or four weeks ago, we were talking about a quadruple.

40:31Now there's a very genuine conversation asking whether they will win anything. Now, no matter how good you are at taking banter, that hurts. I can feel that. I understand that. Because a trophy-less season this year, we just opened them up to a huge amount of critique. But hey - I feel like we've done our bit then. Financially, Arsenal's in a good position. in theory on the pitch they should be in a great position they've done everything quote right to get there but in sport as McElroy showed you do still have to hold the final putt you do you do you do even if it's just an inch Charlie I may or may not have just fallen into a pub this weekend and when I went into that pub I looked at the TV and the women's Six Nations was on and the women's Six Nations was on with a virtually packed Twickenham.

41:2777 ,000 people for England versus Ireland. And it was on all the TVs in the pub. And I was like, wow, this is cool. And then I watched a bit of it again and was like, yeah, actually, this is really good. This is great. Is that really patronizing to say that in a way? I've been telling you for months now that we need to look at women's rugby, right? And one of the reasons why I've been on a sort of tear about women's rugby is that I'm reasonably well known in the sports industry as somebody who's been very sceptical and cynical about professional women's football, soccer. In as much as I think it's massively oversold with a horrific structure and governance set up, I think they've made big mistakes.

42:19The players are way overpaid. they're copying all the mistakes of the men's game but not learning from the successes of the men's game I've been very open and public and have received in the midst of a lot of people saying I'm so glad that somebody's saying this thank you very much I've also of course received a lot of criticism basically accusing me of being a sexist and I say no I'm not I'm not a sexist I'm married to somebody who played international elite sport my wife I love watching women's sport and in many cases I prefer in some sports watching the women's version I do to the men's version but even that doesn't totally get me off the hook because I can be accused of being patronizing in terms of well yeah you say it's nice but actually basically what you're saying is it can never be a business it can never become something successful professionally and I say to people okay listen to me hear me out on this one and I've been saying this for the last two years, women's rugby is going to become a big thing professionally as a sports product, entertainment product.

43:26And the reason I said that to start with was because I watched it and it was great. It was really exciting because a lot of the weak spots of men's professional rugby, too many stoppages, the ball being buried too often in a midst of melee of very, very large men even when the ball does get spun the pitch is so clogged up with these monsters that it's actually quite hard sometimes for the game to really flow comfortably yeah so a lot of those things have happened in men's professional rugby and i've got views on and questions on why they've allowed things like multiple substitutions and all this stuff to allow the forwards to carry around 20 kilos more than they should do because they're only going to play 40 or 50 minutes i've got all sorts of views on men's rugby but women's rugby obviates a lot of these problems because it is a very very physical game but the ball moves quicker and slicker than it does in men's rugby and a lot of sevens value that you know you look for in the speed of the game while not having obviously the the openness we're going to come on to sevens we're going to come on sevens because it's an interesting part of the conversation are we excellent yeah so um i uh my view is right from a start, this could work.

44:39This could work. This is exciting. And for some reason, I'm not quite sure what physiologically it seems to work for women, which is they seem to be able to execute the same skill levels that the professional men's players execute within their game. So it's rather like I was saying in tennis being another good example of that, where when you're watching it, you still get those wow moments. You know what I mean? Because one of the things I've been quite critical about professional women's football for is that by playing on the same size of pitch and with the same size of goal, it's very difficult to get those moments that lift you off your seat.

45:12But in women's rugby, for whatever reason, they can execute the big, skillful wow moments which really make the whole thing work. And there are some players who I've watched who are just, I don't know, Eddie Kildun, the current World Player of the Year, England's fullback. Brilliant, isn't she? Sensational to watch. I mean, we haven't seen a men's back like that for a long time. Somebody with that level of style and panache, somebody who can slalom their way through, you know, miles to different places. Anyway, I want to ground this first, just, you know, while you're talking about this, because I think it's really important, in some audience data.

45:49Because as we know, people actually turning up shows you whether or not you've got a product to follow on with. And the numbers most recently around women's rugby have been incredible. I mentioned at the start we had 77 ,000. England had 77 ,000 in the stadium at Twickenham for the 33-12 win over Ireland. That followed on from the 81 ,000 that was in for the World Cup final when England beat Canada most recently. Now you'd expect that maybe, could they follow it up? That was a big question I read a lot. Getting so many people in for that first game of the Six Nations was a fantastic way to consolidate the new audience growth that they had been enjoying in the World Cup.

46:23But I then was just kind of having a look around some of the data that had come before. And the record before was 58 ,000 that came in the Grand Slam decider for England in 2023. you know still a very good number and and highlighted that it was becoming a popular game a few years ago but what you were talking about 10 years ago was 2 500 watched england narrowly beat ireland at the same venue so from 2 500 to now 77 000 it's an incredible jump i think what the critic will say to you is um that yeah but these are international matches and women's football also does big numbers on international football and this has proved that there is always an audience when someone's putting the england shirt on or whatever it might be it was an audience what i'm actually more interested in um than that although that is interesting and you're right it shows the explosive growth from a low base which you want to see in a new sports product but what i'm interested in is the club rugby numbers yeah so same so the club um competition for those who don't know is called premiership women's rugby p w r there are nine teams nine franchises because it's a closed league, right?

47:33Which I know some people might snir at, but it has to be, right? Charlie, do you know what the squad salary cap is in Premiership Women's Rugby? Tell me. £250 ,000 for the squad. Yeah. Right? Now, they're allowed to pay accommodation on top of that, up to£30 ,000 per player, right? So, in other words, particularly what players come from overseas, that you can get them a flat. and in many cases the club will then organize for them to have other employment as well in terms of going out and coaching kids teams or whatever it might be so i don't think anyone's pretending that the 10 to 15 000 they're getting from their club is the limit of what they're earning in total but sorry 250 grand did you say 250 000 for the squad for the squad okay so that's 2 million 250 000 across the league if we're looking at total that's right do you know what the wage cost rose to in the WSL in the last accounts, which were released?

48:2952 million. Right. Against a revenue of 65, which was an 81 % ratio from wage to revenue. Right. So bear that in mind, right? So the WSL, that's Women's Professional Football in England, is paying its players 50 million a year, whilst Women's Professional Rugby is paying their players 2.5 million quid a year. Break the counter of that straight away, because this is really important to a lot of your points that you make around women's football because people will turn around, the ones that maybe don't understand it as well, and going, well, why are they not being paid better? How can they live off the money that will be distributed in a 250 ,000 budget across 25 plus players?

49:10But we're not fully professional in that game yet at every level. What I mean by that is it won't be their only source of income. Indeed. So the Premiership Women's Rugby is self-avowedly semi-professional, which means that the players have other roles, jobs, whatever it might be. Now, sometimes there is a player in the England squad who is also a dentist, but more normally, and she's one of the older players, more normally the players will help their club out coaching the youth teams or help out with some marketing activities or whatever it might be. So it is semi-professional, but it's trying to make sure that the players can be as professional as they possibly can be.

49:52Now, if they are in the England squad, the Red Roses, who are the world champions, then they will earn an extra£30 ,000 a year through a central contract. And that's 32 English players. So 32 English players from those nine franchises in Women's Super League, 32 players will also earn, on top of the 10 or 15 they're getting from their club, they will also earn another£30 ,000 from their central contract with England. And on top of that, of course, they have endorsements. And I'm going to come on to endorsements shortly. But what I find interesting, Charlie, is that there's always been this fake connection made between professionalism slash paying players a lot of money and the product therefore becoming more exciting and more attractive.

50:36So in theory, with WSL, that's professional women's soccer, being full-time and women's rugby in theory being part-time, although in practice they probably train not for dissimilar amounts overall. all in theory what you'd expect to see is the women's super league product being much better and exploding in popularity and the women's rugby product being worse and therefore struggling the opposite is happening right attendances in premiership women's rugby this year are up 92 percent and outside of arsenal women on the football side the women's rugby clubs are now attracting a similar level of paid attendance to all of the rest of women's super league right so So we're talking about...

51:16Really? So like 5 ,000, 6 ,000? Yep. Really? Well, don't forget, 5 ,000 or 6 ,000 is only a couple of the clubs in WSL after Arsenal. There are a lot down there who are at 1 ,000 or 2 ,000, right? So the professional women's rugby clubs are at 3 ,000, 4 ,000, 5 ,000, that type of level paid, paid for, right? Because they don't have the same level of subsidy that's coming in to chuck out free tickets all the time. This is paid for spectating, okay? So what have the clubs turned out of interest? What are some of those clubs turning over? It's difficult because the nine franchises are in a variety of different structures.

51:54There are a few which are literally the women's departments of the men's club. Harlequins, for instance, big example of that. Saracens, another example of that. You've got Gloucester, whose women's team play effectively as part of Hartpreet University. It's called Gloucester Hartpreet. They're the champions, actually, as it happens at the moment. and they've got a lot of young players who effectively come there to go through college and play elite rugby at the same time. You've got Loughborough, Loughborough Lightning, who play in a sort of joint venture with Northampton Saints, but also supported by Loughborough University.

52:28So what I admire about this is that they're all finding ways to make the thing work sustainably. Whatever that way might be, they are finding ways to make it work sustainably. I'm just going to, you know, we often criticise governing bodies, Charlie. The RFUs played a blinder on this, because if you look at what the Football Association did with the disastrous Carney report that created the mess that's professional women's football, the RFU have got this spot on. Right. So their regulations around squad caps, it's in the RFU rulebook as follows. These regulations aim to achieve the following objectives.

53:05A, ensuring financial viability of all clubs. B, providing a level playing field. C, controlling inflationary pressures. D, ensuring a competitive women's club competition. E, ensuring that the level of remuneration paid by clubs is in line with the competition's business model. So the RFU has set out, unlike the Carney report, written in an entirely economically illiterate way, they've actually said, right, hang on a second, we can create something super good here and really valuable. It's going to take a bit of time, but the one thing we need to make sure is that there isn't so much money going out the side door to the players as to obviate the amount that then gets spent on marketing.

53:46And this is what I find really interesting, that women's rugby is marketed brilliantly. Women's football is marketed terribly. Women's rugby is marketed brilliantly and innovatively. And it's starting to contain some of the biggest social media stars in the world. Now, if you just take the case of Ilona Maher. Ilona Maher is an American women's rugby player who plays mostly on the sevens circuit, but also played for the women's 15s team in the Women's World Cup last year. So you're talking about, it's about 10 million followers on social media that she has. And she is earning in endorsements around 9 million a year.

54:33I said I'd speak about sevens. And the reason I'm going to speak about sevens is the rugby sevens circuit, which you'll be aware of, but a lot of viewers and listeners won't, it's a men and women's travelling circus that goes from place to place around the world. So you've got the Hong Kong sevens, you've got the Dubai sevens, you've got the Sydney sevens, and so on and so forth. So it's played in an international team format. So the players play for their country. It's obviously rugby sevens, so it's many fewer people on the pitch, and the times of the games are much shorter and split down in two quarters and so on and so forth.

55:09It is substantially a different game, but it is still rugby. This has been an economically successful sport for quite some time. It attracts a lot of sponsorship, and it gets very good TV viewing numbers all around the world. It has been professional. that is to say that the women's players playing sevens have been professional for quite some time they they travel around the world just playing sevens right so when you go to the hong kong sevens which is a massive event in hong kong which all the expats love right the men and the women playing there are professional rugby players so one of the things i'm often told by people in the wsl or people in women's football is yeah you don't understand like we have to compete against like you know the spanish league or whatever blah blah blah unless we pay our players a billion pounds a year you know we'll lose all the best players and then we won't have any good players here and all this type of stuff and whatever um and women's rugby of course you know the argument would go well they don't have to compete for players no they do they do have to compete for players they have to compete for players against sevens which is a full professionalized product where the very highest profile players like ilona maher of america portia woodman of new zealand and Madison Levi of Australia, who are the ones with the massive profiles with the huge social media followings, they all play sevens.

56:26So in other words, Premiership Women's Rugby has made peace right from the start with the idea that some of the most marketable rugby players around are going not to play in their competition. They are going to play sevens, which is fully professionalised, whereas Premiership Women's Rugby is not fully professionalised. Haven't they? Sorry. Yet what they've got their head around is that you can create a successful sporting product by focusing on making it competitive, by making sure that the base product that you're pumping out is interesting and engaging and all this type of stuff. You do not need to have the best players playing in every single game.

57:06It's not the way it works. And you don't need to replicate the men's game. Sorry, not even you don't need to. You shouldn't. You are very, very ill-advised to try to replicate the men's football game, particularly the elements of it which the men's football industry is trying to get rid of, just as the women's football industry is trying to introduce them. So there was lots of interesting things in there. And when I was looking at this, some of the statistics around it. So World Rugby said the fan base of women's rugby has recently been 138 million, with 113 million of those having followed the sport for less than five years.

57:37You know, that's a young market, not an inherited one. It also found 73 % of fans agree that brands play an authentic role in boosting visibility. And I found that very interesting because what it said to me is that it's selling it as a fresh product. It's selling it with a distinct audience. This is not men's rugby, nor should it be recognized as. So what we're creating as women's rugby is going to have its nuances. It's going to be special in its own ways. It's going to have talent that moves in different ways to the men's game. It's going to have a different type of audience. And they seem to have packaged the game in a far better way because of this.

58:19And Charlie, when we're looking, we talk about the attention economy, we talk about eyeballs, we talk about do I ever have time? What am I following as a fan? You know, in this age now where there's so much competition for that, scarcity has become a big topic. We talked about it with the NFL and the value of and how football quite often there is so much. again with rugby it feels like i'm far more aware of the moments when it's there and therefore i'm maybe more likely to engage whether football you still have this broader challenge of there is so much how can you pin it down i mean i was quite interested to see the wsl's latest figures were down 10 on average attendances well you know this is this is the point charlie this is the point which is that when you are a growth sport as opposed to a legacy sport what you're looking for is exponential growth.

59:05Because if what you've got is interesting and engaging, and it's going to be interesting to engage people quickly, because in the current attention economy, where basically content finds you, so in other words, just because of the stuff that I follow on my social media, on YouTube and so on and so forth, women's super league finds me, right? So in other words, I get WSL content pushed to me on a regular basis. I also get women's rugby content pushed to me on a regular basis because I'm a sports fan. So it's not like 30, 40 years ago where you'd have to wait until somebody said to you, well, I'll tell you what, would you like to come and watch a women's rugby match?

59:42No, this stuff's getting pushed at people all the time. Now, the question is, is when it gets pushed at them, they watch it once. Do they say, wow, I want more of that? Or do they go, do you know what? I can leave that. Not a problem, right? Well, it was interesting. There was an explanation on the question marks around the percentage drop in attendance. and one of the things they said was that there was no major international tournament and that some of the relegated clubs had drawn stronger crowds. What that screamed out to me, we just talked about this being a closed league, right? Or should we say a semi-closed league?

1:00:15Football's challenge, women's football's challenge has been in its replicating of the men's structure, whether it's a closed system that allows a lot of these teams to build the audience, the fan base, the brands, etc. around it. that's really what this is needed because there isn't a strength in the pyramid to facilitate this promotion relegation structure right now, nor the money. To be able to come out and say that the attendance has dropped because some of your relegated clubs have gone down with good audiences, says that the clubs coming up don't have audience. And therefore you don't have a system which supports clubs growing and building into a league naturally.

1:00:51What you need to do here right now That was control of product to get it to the level where you can then develop it and open it up. So the value of said business builds its fan base well, builds its economic strength off the back of that, builds its audience. That is the problem that I've often heard you refer to with women's football. We've created a system that doesn't allow it to properly succeed. It's not saying that there isn't a sport to enjoy there. It's saying that it exists in the wrong model. I'm not going to repeat everything you've just said because everything you've said is correct.

1:01:23As it happens, I personally think there are some fundamental problems with the product itself as it happens. Now, I accept that that's a matter of taste, and that is particular to me. I'm more of a football guy than I am a rugby guy by quite some distance. It's the sport that I played. It's the sport that I've watched all my life. I did not take a strong interest in rugby growing up, and even now my interest in men's rugby is peripheral. But I'm able to see straight away that women's rugby is a winner. It just lifts me off my seat. There's stuff that happens in those matches that lifts me off my seat.

1:01:55Women's Super League product is not something that lifts me out of my seat. But that's just me, and I fully accept that's a taste matter. But if we're going to finish it, because you have articulated it to me very well, and even if it's just a few minutes, why is that structure so important? Why do you see the nine clubs, starting with nine clubs, having an opportunity to bring more in, but they have to hit certain criteria to do it, so that you can keep and maintain a good control of quality in that league, but also the businesses that can afford to compete and that are able to participate in that league to maintain that quality.

1:02:24Why is that the move rather than try and fight for this open system that can't actually support this but still looks like it should be the product that men's has been created? Right, okay. So promotion and relegation is a luxury that basically only men's professional, European men's professional football, Latin American men's professional football can sustain. Because what it basically means is that an almighty fight goes on for those who don't want to get relegated and those who do want to get promoted. and that fight basically involves paying the players more. The money that gets expended on paying the players more means that the facilities and the marketing, which should be having money invested in them as a growth sport, that money then doesn't get spent because it's all going on to the players, right?

1:03:03And it doesn't matter. You can keep on paying the players more and more. They don't become better players. They don't become more exciting players, the same players. So effectively, you've got the same problem you've got in men's football, but without the big legacy audiences. That's the problem. Second problem, closed systems, contrary to what people think, can promote very, very strong narratives because everyone knows that from season to season to season, the club that they have decided to support will definitely be in the top division of what it is that you're watching. and you can then commit to it and you can be, you know, patient but engaged in the process.

1:03:39We've always described Arsenal's process over the last five or six years of Arteta, which the Arsenal fans have been very engaged in, by the way. Now, Arsenal effectively are kind of in a closed league because Arsenal aren't going to get relegated from the Premier League. I know we said that about Spurs, but Arsenal really are not going to get relegated from the Premier League, right? So what you see with Arsenal is a fan base engaged on a project, in a project where they're saying, right over a course of five six years we're going to watch this team grow together improve and all stuff and this is what you see in sports with closed leagues what you see in sports with promotion and relegation which is mostly european men's football let's face it right is a lot of churn a lot of overspending a lot of desperation a lot of panic in a way it's drama but it's not really engaging the fan on a median term sort of get interested in these players understand understand their personalities, get used to them because they're going to be here for a while.

1:04:32And in closed leagues, that's what you get. Brilliant. Watch the product, guys. If you haven't seen it yet, get in front of a women's rugby game, see what you think. I think you'll enjoy it. Can I get back to my holiday now? Yeah, you can. You can get back to your holiday. Thank you for joining us. I'm more than, I'm sure everyone else is in there. I'm sure Mrs. Methvin, please, you know, send her my apologies. No, actually, do you know what? She's probably had a lovely time. She says, she actually texted me saying, can you make it three hours? so we're ending we're ending a bit short but no no appreciate it you know we we can't break the content so yeah thanks for joining right thanks jolly thank you so much for tuning in to another week it's Friday the big conversation will be born out of what happens against Man City this weekend for Arsenal either way this is a real test of whether a team has what it takes to win when it matters most and on the other side get those TVs on for the next women's Six Nations game.

1:05:26It's a great watch and a sport riding a wave of public interest. You'll enjoy it if you haven't got into it already. Thanks as always for joining us and we'll see you next week.