THE BREAKDOWN: Walter & Boehly’s Rumoured Chelsea Exit, PFA Takes on the EFL, & The Meteoric Rise of Padel (E33)

29:10So to Mahetta's point, right, he's basically saying you're making the decisions to do this. To cap our players is the main reason for you overspending. This is not a cap. Clubs can pay as much as you want under this system as long as your revenue is vaguely supported. So interestingly, I checked in with the authorities and found out that overall wage spending in League One this summer is higher than it was previous to these regulations, right? So the idea that the entire point of this is to cap things, to force things down, to get rid of things is wrong. The idea here is to try and make sure that these social institutions, these aren't corner shops, which if they close down, there's no impact.

29:55These are social institutions. When they do go bust, whole cities are left in floods of tears. Now, I know Maheta doesn't give a damn about that. All he cares about is making more money for his punters, right? But fundamentally, the government has decided by instituting the independent football regulator, the IFR, that it does care. And his formal mandate is to introduce and enforce sustainability in English football. and I think by setting his heart against sustainability, Maheta is on the wrong side of this argument and the PFA is on the wrong side of this argument. There's a whole bunch of stuff as a trade unionist that I think footballers in many ways should have more of a say on, right?

30:35The calendar being a critical one. I think there's too much football. I think Maheta's right in this and the welfare and the career longevity of players is being put at risk and this is the kind of stuff which if I was a trade union leader, I would be absolutely staking my heart on, saying, this is important. This is really important. Do we actually think that League One players being paid£600 ,000 a year is a societal problem? No. No one thinks that. So can I ask, how would you do this? Knowing that this is going to be an issue, how should the EFL approach the PFA in this situation? What I would like to see...

31:18which given the attitude of the PFA is highly unlikely, is a much more German style attitude towards labour relations within our industry, where basically the trade union leaders and the business leaders both sit down together and say, right, how can we work together to make our industry as investable and sustainable and successful as possible? Because out the back of that will come profits. And out of profits becomes a real serious discussion about who gets a share of the profits. But when you're basically arguing that clubs should lose dump loads of money to make sure that players can get paid much more than the market revenue suggests that they should be getting, I don't think you're in a good place.

32:00And so in answer your question, here's what I think either this is what I think is going to happen. Either this case is actually lodged, and it's fought, right? And the case is, as you say, very much on what happened at PFNCC. It's not about whether cost caps are legal. Cost caps are legal. They exist in every other sport. So you're not to win a court case on whether this is a restrictive trade or something like that when cricket, rugby, Formula One, all the other sports have cost caps. That's not going to work. So really the debate here is about the specificity of what the PFNCC agreements relate to.

32:36And ultimately, either the EFL will win this debate or else they'll just walk out of the PFNCC. So I just don't see that as a win. I don't see why the EFL leaving the PFNCC will be a win for lower league footballers in this country. That will then unravel a whole load of other agreements between the trade union and the leagues across lots and lots of different things, which work to the benefit of both sides in many cases, right? So there'll be some things which the union can then say to the league, right, now you're at a PFNCC, we withdraw our agreement on X or Y. And there'll be other things where the football league says, okay, well, if you're going to withdraw your agreement on that, then we withdraw our agreements in terms of, you know, how much we pay into pensions and all this type of stuff.

33:18So it's a real hornet's nest. And what it comes down to is, is the football league, like the Premier League and UEFA, allowed through its members to run its own competition? The PFA says no. The football league says yes. So now we will see. We will see what happens. If it does come to court, it will be a real landmark case which will set out an awful lot of unintended consequences down the track. And I would much rather if there was a more constructive relationship which really went towards we need to make these clubs investable. If at any point in time these clubs do not attract investors, we've got big problems.

34:02Everyone's got big problems. So the direction of travel right now is in that direction where there are more clubs for sale than there are investors available, it absolutely should be in a responsible trade union's mind of saying, if we want this whole gravy train to continue, we need to make sure that there are enough investors around to keep on funding it. Because even if the outcome of these spending controls are to reduce annual losses in League One from 7 million to 3 million, that's still 3 million. You still need somebody to put in 3 million. The regulators mandate is sustainability. So when I was just looking at this, firstly, I just thought, well, surely the regulators' inclusion just massively favours the EFL rather than the PFA.

34:46But that assumes that the PFA doesn't care about sustainability, right? Which it absolutely should do and normal trade unions would do. And I can say that having been a trade union leader myself, I would have been horrified if the newspaper that I was representing journalists at lost money because I would know eventually where that would lead. in some way, shape or form that would lead to loss of jobs that would lead to loss of certainty. So I think that's the little wake up call that needs to happen here. But I'm very happy to discuss it with Mahetta. You know, he's a very different type of person to Gordon Taylor, he weighs a much better suit.

35:19You know, he's more articulate in many ways. But fundamentally, the cultural attitude of the PFA remains where it was when it was founded by Jimmy Hill and co. When in those days, we actually had, you know, effectively a maximum wage, you know, a very, very hard cap and they were and they were fighting against very low pay footballers finishing their career in poverty and i totally look back historically and think those guys as a trade union i'm still a trade union member now as a as a trade unionist i look back and say those guys are heroes they fought against genuine issues and they fought really hard against them um i i don't see that right here and right now and currently as i said i don't own an english football club right now, and I am still a trade union member.

36:04So I'm not a vested interest right now. I'm an onlooker who can see both sides and who looks at this and just thinks the PFA is getting itself into a really odd, weird position, which I don't think will command much public sympathy when it comes down to it. And when the first club goes bust, which by the way, is going to happen, it's going to happen soon, and the finger gets pointed as to why that has happened, under those circumstances, the government might well act and say, do you know what, the IFR needs much stronger powers here. The IFR needs to be able to set the spending controls. Because I think ultimately that's where it's going to go, right?

36:38Because if the independent football regulator has sustainability as part of his legal statutory mandate, but he has no control over how much is spent, how can he fulfil his statutory mandate, right? I'm very happy to debate the whole issue with Mehetta, with you invigilating Charlie. so let's bring it on yeah well you didn't like my devil's advocate there did you so I mean I can't wait to see what happens when I'm sitting properly in the middle of you two

37:07right I never thought I'd have an argument with you about cross control Charlie

37:14moving on Charlie should we take a look and move into the crazy world of Mark Walter the LA Lakers the empire that seems to be crumbling from a sports perspective the potential impact that it has on Chelsea FC because this is probably one of the biggest sports business stories in a very, very long time. I'll tell you what, let's just start off by explaining who Mark Walter is because he won't be a name that's necessarily all that familiar to European and Australasian sports fans. Mark Walter is a very successful financial services tycoon from the US. And he founded, co-founded a financial services business called Guggenheim Partners back in, I actually remember it happening.

38:01So I knew some people who were doing it with him back in the late 1990s, early 2000s, so that's what 25 years ago. And he's in his mid 60s now. So he wasn't even, you know, he was 40 years old when he founded what has gone on to become an enormously successful fund, basically asset manager, huge amounts of assets under management. He himself has effectively got his shares in Guggenheim. And that's held in an entity called TWG, where he also has holdings in other companies that he has acquired interest in along the way, including interaglia insurance businesses, and including sports businesses.

38:38And he has been successful in most everything that he has done. You know, the insurance business has been a very good business to be in over the last 25 years. And on the sports side, he, together with a guy who he had as an underling of his at Guggenheim around the turn of the century, a man known as Todd Bowley, then Bowley left Guggenheim Partners, but with Walter's blessing and still as very close friends to start doing his own things. But they came together to get into sport when they bought the Dodgers. It is broadly considered that since buying the Dodgers, they have done an outstanding job with the Dodgers.

39:20And more recently, they formed part of the new ownership group that took over Chelsea. Now, five years ago, Charlie, is that right? 2022, wasn't it? Yeah, four years ago. Okay, so four years ago. And even more recently, they bought the LA Lakers, the basketball team, for an absolutely colossal$10 billion a couple of years ago. So what you're looking at here is a massively expanding sports empire where you've got the LA Dodgers, you've got the LA Lakers, you've got between those two and their friend Hans-Jorg Weiss, they've got almost 40 % of Chelsea and therefore of Strasbourg through Blueco. So you've got this extraordinary successful looking portfolio of businesses that runs from states in guggenheim and massive asset management company to states and insurers to states in blue chip sports businesses across the world in in some of the biggest sports in the world and suddenly it now looks like the empire might be coming crashing down um and by the empire i do mean i do mean particularly his sports empire, because what has happened here, it is alleged and said, is that effectively part of his engine for buying these massive stakes in these hugely valuable sports franchises has come through financing provided by insurance businesses that he also controls.

40:43Now, you might say, well, so what? If he controls those businesses, then why shouldn't he use money from those businesses to buy sports stakes in sports enterprises? Well, the answer is that insurance is a highly regulated form of financial services for the obvious reason, which is if you have an insurance premium with an insurance firm, you need to know and expect that in the event that that premium needs to be activated into a payout, that that payout can and will be made. So insurance businesses have to be very clear about where it is that they put their money. And they have to be doubly clear when that money is being put into entities which have the same ownership as the insurance business because no one wants to be in a situation where money which should be being used to fund payouts on insurance premiums down the track has been, let's say, siphoned off and used in ways which people weren't really aware of.

41:38Now, the SEC... Well, it's overexposure. It's overexposure, sorry, is the key bit there. So you are actually allowed to do that, as you said, but generally the regulation would cap it at about 10 % so that if an individual who owned lots of these businesses had something happen to them and let's say their business empire collapsed, all of the businesses around it would be impacted by that. And if 40%, which is what the rumored number here that Mark Walter has exposed it to has happened, then that is a serious overexposure and therefore breaking the rules and regulations that exist around this.

42:11Exactly that. And the critical thing there is about the transparency, right, which is that you have to declare what it is that you're investing the money in, in order that people can then say, okay, that's 10%, right? If it then subsequently becomes clear that not everything has been declared in that way, and that the actual number isn't 10%, but it's 40%, then you've got a problem from a regulatory perspective. And that is what the SEC, which is the US's financial regulatory authority, and enormously powerful and scary, frankly has been investigating now whether the sec does or does does or does not end up bringing a case or if there is any proof of wrongdoing whatever it might be at this point we can't know and we don't know all we do know is that mark walter has decided for whatever reason that he is going to start replacing money that had been sourced from his insurance company with his own cash, right?

43:08Now, whether that's an omission of guilt on the one hand, or on the other hand, it might be him saying, I don't even want to go down that track of getting into a fight with the SEC. I just want to make sure that we're totally, absolutely fine here because I don't want to spend the rest of my life fighting lawsuits against the financial regulators. It could be either. But the reality is what he started to do is liquidate his positions in sports entities in order to fund the cash that had been provided to buy those sports entities by the insurance businesses, right? And here's where the rubber hits the road, right, Charlie, which is first of all, the Lakers were sold last week.

43:45Having bought them for 10 billion two years ago, he's now flipped the Lakers for 12 billion US to a consortium headed by who else than our recent friend, Joshua Kushner, who had previously been readying to buy FIFA Ford Enterprises from his mate Gianni Infantino. So that's brought in a big chunk of change for Walter to help to start the process of paying down the gap between what is allowable and what's not allowable under, as you say, the exposure rules within the insurance industry. And it is now strongly rumoured within the media that Mark Walter and his business partner, Todd Bowley, are entering discussions, let's say, about selling their stake in Blueco, the owners of Chelsea, to their partners at Clear Lake.

44:33$20 billion is reportedly what he needs to earn by the end of the year. Look, I mean, the$12.5 billion that he just sold the Lakers for, it made me laugh, Charlie. I mean, look, we know what it's like doing deals. A$12.5 billion deal done in 48 hours suggests that there's something going on behind the scenes that isn't quite right. I mean, that is for the biggest, let's be clear as well, that is the biggest sports transaction involving an asset in history. And it was when the Lakers were bought last time. And a 2.5 billion profit on that transaction does look good. But make no mistake, when Walter bought the Lakers, he would have wanted a far greater return.

45:16There would have been greater ambitions for this. He was in the middle of a serious business project behind the scenes that would have improved the Lakers' value exponentially, even beyond this, if he could have held onto it for a bit longer. That was always the plan. Bob Iger as well, who's joined Kushner on this, who's the former CEO of Disney, they were actually looking at an expansion franchise and were talking through a Las Vegas opportunity when this came up. Obviously, I think if you get the chance to buy into this, it's usually appealing, hence why probably the deal was done so quickly as well.

45:43But the key thing from Walter's side is, yes, it fixes a significant part of the problem, but he's still got a lot more to raise. Now, you mentioned Chelsea. He owns 12.8 % of Chelsea, equal to Todd Bowley, equal to Hans-Jörg Weiss. The Telegraph reported a£5 billion valuation on the club to sell those shares. Clear Lake reportedly are interested in buying these shares. As you'd expect, there's been tension at the Chelsea ownership level, very publicly reported for a very long time. So Clear Lake could look at this and go, oh, can we get these shares at a steal? On the flip side, if they buy them too cheap, then is it valuing the club far below potentially where they have bought it for and then invested money into and will that impact the club's valuation moving forward when clearly get to the stage as we've discussed previously where they will have to look at how they exit the club so let's say they bought the shares off uh sorry off boley and walter for about three billion pounds which i think from discussions in the market is where the financial experts have positioned the club and said that you'd be able to justify that they own 12 so it means their stake is worth about 400 million, let's say.

46:49Each. Each. Each. Yeah, but again, but Bowley's is Bowley's money, I think. So Walter needs this money to pay his problems unless Bowley's tied up in this, which I don't think he is. You know, it doesn't help. So Walter can get 400 million at a three billion pound valuation, but five billion pounds, right? So let's say that would be 700 million just under for Walter's stake. That's a billion dollars. So that's one twentieth of what he makes. So then let's say he's done$12.5 billion. That's taking him up to$13.5 billion. If he's going to use sports assets as his premium way of generating this cash, the only way it looks like he's going to be able to do that is by selling the Dodgers, which you mentioned has been a success story.

47:33I mean, I think it is one of the big success stories. They bought it, interestingly, off the McCourt family, who you may remember as the Marseille owners from conversations we've had previously, when McCourt got into a bit of financial distress in 2012. Professional Showjumping League, Charlie. Remember. And the Professional Showjumping League. They bought it for$2.15 billion, I think, in 2012. And it's now valued at over$8 billion. $8 billion would clear the$20 billion mark if all of that money is going to Walter's pocket. So does it mean much for Chelsea? Does it mean much for Walter if he sells Chelsea?

48:10His biggest plays here are selling his American assets. And I don't think it actually really changes much for Chelsea at all. because operationally, I don't think they have been hugely involved. And Walter's always done everything behind the scenes. Let me make some observations. So first of all, even if, let's say, that you did place a valuation on Chelsea of 5 billion, you would have to take into account the borrowing at Blueco level. So in other words, that borrowing is set against all of their equity, not just Clearlake's equity. That is Blueco borrowing, and that's believed to be about 1.5 billion.

48:42So let's just say that you say, okay, the club's valued at five, but has debt of one and a half, then the equity valuation, the valuation of the equity in that is 3.5. And therefore, Boley and Walter and Hansjog Vice's share of that 3.5 is, let's say, 1.3, right? And as you say, therefore, his share of that is a few hundred million. I'll be interested to see if Walter and Boley are as dissociated as you suggest. My instinct is that their links run very, very, very deep in financing terms. The fact that they're involved in all of these deals together, the fact that they work together for so long and have been involved 10, 12 years ago in slightly similar controversies around insurance funding and all this kind of stuff.

49:39I would be quite surprised to see Walter sell out of Blue Co. But Bowley stay in. I think that this will be a moment. I think it could just be Bowley's opportunity to get his money. I think it could be Bowley's opportunity to just get out. I think this could be not even an opportunity. I suspect that Clear Lake might well say, right, if you guys want to get out, we'll buy you out. If you don't, then we won't. but you know what we're not going to do is pick off every time that one individual of you says I don't fancy anymore we're not going to keep on sort of picking you off let's do it in one proper go as to your point about setting a valuation on the club I'm not sure if I was clear late that I would worry about that too much so I think I would hope that the market would recognize that my minority shareholders were in a weak position and that therefore whatever valuation they were afforded does not necessarily indicate the overall value of the majority shareholding in the club and And you've just mentioned how in the space of a couple of years, despite having done absolutely nothing with the Lakers yet, the valuation has gone from 10 to 12.5.

50:41Now, we've already discussed before that Clear Lake aren't going to be looking to get out of Chelsea until 2031, that sort of time. So we're still four to five years away from exit. So I would have thought this is actually quite a good moment for Clear Lake to put the squeeze on Burley, Walter and Co. And say, right, guys, you know, this is the moment you need out. You know, here you go. here's some money now, we're now in full control. In terms of what that means operationally at Chelsea, I think it might have a slightly bigger impact than one might think. I think I've said before on this podcast that when you've got turmoil behind the scenes amongst investor bases and ownership bases, it tends to have effects within the club that aren't easily seen from a fan perspective, tend to find that senior executives within the club attach themselves to one side or the other side.

51:29and there tend to be, you know, sort of team, let's say in this case, Team Clear Lake and Team Burley. We've mentioned there are five sporting directors and what you'll probably find is that one of those sporting directors is a bit close to Todd and one of them is a bit closer to Egbali and so on and so forth. I'm not saying I know that to be the case. This is an observation on how football clubs work in general. So I'm a great believer that football clubs benefit from having a clearly identifiable source of authority and power within a club who everyone then knows if that person or that entity speaks, then that's argument finished.

52:02That is then what is happening. And that then clears up a lot of the office politics and the internal sort of wranglings that go on in the meantime. So I think it would be to Chelsea's benefit if at this point, Burley and Walter, I can't speak for Hans-Jörg Weiss and his situation, but if those guys were to exit at this point, I think it would give Project Blueco a better chance of success going forward because it's been quite clear for some time that that relationship between Burley and Egg Barley have become dysfunctional. I expect things are going to move quite quickly on this one because as you say, Mark Walter needs to raise all this money by December of this year to prevent it becoming a broader issue.

52:42So, you know, let's see what happens and we can sort of, you know, keep people up to date as we go along. At the moment it's it's still quite you know um relatively early days charlie um is it worth breaching finally breaching broaching finally a topic which we've been asked about many many many times um because clearly a lot of our viewers and listeners are actually participants in this sport which is um paddle let's blitz paddle it's also the perfect moment charlie because actually the show we did on the on the interview show this week is with one of the team gb players so we're going to double header paddle double header paddle this week for the core fans you'll be a lot better in form than i am about it speak to me um it was it was quite nice preparation actually there's two parts of this that are fascinating one is a participation sport that is absolutely booming and the other is a professional sport which is struggling to match the interest and attention that has been given to it from a participation level there's a big discussion about how to make the professional and can the professional then catch up with the success that it is experiencing from people getting involved and playing the game?

53:47My chat with Nikhil this week, who represents Team GB, as I said, very much indicated that while it is doing brilliantly, if you are winning a major, the premium championship, just like in tennis, of which there are four each year, and the prize money is 47 ,000 euros, there is a big challenge to make that a successful career opportunity for players getting involved in it and right now paddle and the professionals in paddle are creating opportunities and generating cash away from the court far more than they are on the court should we start by just talking about again we kind of will will anglify it inevitably but we can mention it from the broader perspective as well because england and the uk gb are very new in the global scheme of paddle to taking this sport up?

54:38So I think just to give a bit of the historical framework, I had to look around for this. So I'm not claiming to have been an expert prior to looking at this yesterday. But as Charlie says, the anglospheric world is late to the paddle party. Paddle was conceived as a sport in Mexico in 1969. And for decades, it was really just a sport in Latin America, Central America and Spain, and really with very, very little infiltration of other major markets. It's absolutely spiralled in international popularity in the last five to 10 years. And I'm going to say in popularity, as Charlie rightly says earlier on, I mean participation.

55:23And to give you an idea, right, just in our country, the UK, where numbers are easily to hand, The LTA, the Law and Tennis Association, took over the governance of it in 2020 when the participation, the numbers of people playing paddle in the UK at that point was 15 ,000. It's now 1 million. Now, I'd have to go and run the numbers on other sports participation levels, but that is going to put it right towards the top of participation sports in this country. right so if you think about a population of 70 million of whom 55 or of ages where you might reasonably participate in which about 30 25 to 30 participate in any sport whatsoever and you've then got 1 million playing paddle that gives you an idea of the scale of it now paddle courts are very specific and require quite a lot of investment to put up and planning regulations can be quite tough against them for noise purposes and that means that fundamentally there aren't enough paddle courts in the country, which means that currently the amount of money that people are paying to access a paddle court is about£50 an hour, which is miles higher than for a normal tennis court.

56:33There are a lot of tennis courts in this country which are free to use. There are others which are£5 or£10 an hour to use. There are tennis clubs which are at most£50 a month. So you're paying the same for a paddle court for one hour as you are to being a member of a tennis club for a whole month. Just quickly to jump in there, you know, in London, it can comfortably hit£100 an hour. And the first comment on the show when it released yesterday was someone jumping on saying, I pay£180 a year for my tennis membership and don't pay for the courts. I pay£100 an hour for a paddle court at the nearest centre to me.

57:10We get a lot of discussion points about tennis being an elitist sport and that being a significant problem for tennis? In tennis's case, any perception that it is an elite sport is entirely perceptional, right? I mean, the truth is that tennis is very easily accessible and very cheap in this country. And that's after hundreds of millions of investment over the last 30 to 40 years, which we've covered in the past from the LTA, which has spun out of the profits made by Wimbledon. In the case of paddle, it is by necessity going to be a bit of an elite sport for the next five 10 to 15 years and that is going to constrain Britain's chance of success at elite levels because it's just not going to have the numbers to be able to compete with Spain but also the multi-decade experience of coaching it the tactics within it the nuances within it you know we in the UK and the US etc.

58:00we're miles off the pace right now if you go to one of these events you'll find that a heavy preponderance of the top players are Spanish or Latin American it may be just worth talking about Charlie It's a fine balance, though. It's a fine balance because infrastructure is the key player to improving this. The more courts you have, obviously, the demand can be met, the cheaper it gets. Now, there's the other flip side of you've highlighted they're expensive to build. There's a huge amount of investment going into this. They're capital intensive upfront, and they rely on interest continuing over the years so that you can make that money back plus plus on memberships, on court bookings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

58:36But there have been situations where, for example, in Sweden, a huge number of courts were built, massive demand for it, interest and participation dropped away, and hugely expensive business projects then were basically unable to pay back what they had taken in investment. Because what a lot of other sports are built on is generations worth of participation. As you've highlighted, 15 ,000 in 2019, 2020 to 1 million now. Who knows what could happen in 10 years' time? Is this something that's here to stay? Is there going to be a professional end to inspire people where we have the Djokovic's and the Federer's and the DALs, et cetera, that are going to drive interest.

59:11But these are really important questions I think they need to answer. There is still a lot that needs to be learned about Paddle as a business to sustain all of this interest. Yeah, there's a natural tension between the elite end, which would benefit from an oversupply, and the business end, which would benefit from an undersupply. So where that ends up, let's see. At the moment, there's an undersupply, which is meaning those businesses that do manage to get them built are making really good money. In Sweden, as you say, there was then an oversupply, which meant that doubtless that will help Sweden's paddle, so elite paddle program, because there are so many courts with availability and therefore lower pricing.

59:54But from a business perspective, it meant that lots of people lost their dough. I think it's just worth just topping and tailing this with a discussion about the elite end of it, which is a series called Premier Paddle. At the start, Charlie noted that the hook for doing this from our perspective as a British-based podcast, even if we discuss global sporting matters, is that the British event of the Premier Paddle Series happened a couple of weeks ago. I think it was regarded as being pretty successful, Charlie. Is that fair? Yeah, I think very successful. Great attendances, lots of activations around the tournament alongside the matches.

1:00:36They had little participation in show courts in there where you could get involved. And of course, at the top end, you had some of the best players in the world competing, which everyone seemed to enjoy. Heavy Spanish influence though, Charlie. I don't know if you saw some of the data around the players, but it was actually incredible. Of the 96 top ranked men, I believe that 75 are from Spain or Argentina. On the women's side, it was 42 of 56 were Spanish. just Spanish. So you're looking at a sport which is heavily dominated by one culture right now. How do you view it from a purely spectator basis, Charlie?

1:01:13Do you see it as having a serious future as a spectator sport? I struggle with it, if I'm honest. Do you know what? Nikhil, sorry, mentioning it because it was so interesting hearing a professional's perspective. He said he thought it was a better product because the points went on longer. and you'd have people running out the court. It's the finesse, it's the touch, lots of different shots in rallies. And he said, tennis, you can have an ace. You could have Sinner slamming down four aces in a game and it's over. And my issues with watching Paddle has actually been the points are too long. What I like in tennis is variation.

1:01:48I like the fact that it could be a serve or a 20-shot rally. And the 20-shot rally is so exciting because it doesn't happen every point. Instinctively, I agree with you. I tried watching some the other day in preparation for this program. And it was fine. I'm not sat there going, oh, this is terrible. Oh, I really can't stand this. This is awful, et cetera. No, it's not that. It's just if somebody had asked me straight afterwards, are you going to get into this? Are you going to follow this? I think probably my answer will be, well, I've got a lot of sports I do follow. I'm not sure that this is going to specifically elbow its way in.

1:02:30Now, when we did the show on MotoGP last week, I also, as I always try to do, watch the most recent MotoGP. And I was like, oh, wow. Okay, I'm really missing out here. This is great. This is so exciting. I almost felt like I last watched a motorcycle race 30 years ago. What have I been doing for the last 30 years? This is so much more exciting than F1. Because the truth is you are competing for audience against other sports that already exist, right? So what is the most fertile ground for MotoGP? The most fertile ground for MotoGP are petrolheads and petrolheads in many cases who already like Formula One.

1:03:08The question is, can you find enough petrolheads who like Formula One, who decide they like MotoGP even more? Absolutely, yes, I think. I think the question to your interview with Nikhil being, are we going to find lots of people who currently really enjoy watching tennis who decide that they actually prefer watching paddle? I think unless they themselves are very keen paddle players, I don't see that happening. Yeah, and I think the key is everything's about the attention economy that we talk about all the time and it's never been more competitive. There's two different types of attention economy here.

1:03:37There's one that's viewership and there's one that's participation. And I do have room in my participation attention economy if you want, particularly as we get older, for picking up another sport or a hobby. I don't have enough room in my viewership in my audience attention economy to go and watch something else particularly as a huge tennis fan and with players that we follow and as I said a legacy that matters I think it's really hard for them it's not taking anything away from the skill and the talent of the professionals who play it it's just the battles that it has to win are incredibly difficult for it to win so unless it comes up with some majestic way of capturing people and also building stars.

1:04:19You've got to build stars out of these individuals. If you can put them in the mainstream in some way, then people will start getting excited. Diversifying it away from a Spanish and Argentinian influence just purely at the top end of the game is really important. Interestingly, I think that's why the Olympics have held on it. You know, the Olympics doesn't need to have sports in there where there's competition and a realistic chance of winning medals from multiple countries. And if you just look at the major paddle tournaments, it is so one-sided that I think you'd have a lot of interest waning on there as well.

1:04:47So it's a long game. Other countries have some work to do. I think it's built in the ecosystems, the foundations and the grassroots that can be put together. But those then have to connect to that professional and the pathway programs, the LTAs, involvements, etc, which we haven't really discussed. But as now, as you said, has picked up significantly and they fund a lot of it. That all needs to link to that top end to create a really competitive elite sport. But fair play to this whole sport in general, right? Pretty impressive. Yeah, it's been an extraordinary five years for Paddle. I'm glad to have covered it last.

1:05:20But in the meantime, we need to head over to Substack because we need to cover the second half of the Premier League and what their current business vibe is ahead of the start of the Premier League season this weekend. Let's get going. We'll go and get stuck into that. If you're with us, we'll see you over there. If not, thank you as always, and we will catch you next week. Thank you as always for tuning into another week's show. I want to hear your thoughts on the PFA situation in particular and what the Football League should do to manage the interests of the players with the sustainability of the clubs also in mind.

1:05:51I think it's important to try and read it from both sides, but I guess it really does come down to the survival of the football business before anything else. We'll develop this one properly in the coming weeks, hopefully with some outside input. Come and join us now on Substack for the second half of our Premier League season preview. And if not, we'll see you next week. This show has a number of ambitions. Education sits at the heart of it. No one does a better job or has a better success rate of providing the tools to access the opportunities to work in sports than the Global Institute of Sport.

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