THE BREAKDOWN: What’s Going on at Real Madrid & Tennis Players Threaten Grand Slam STRIKE (E19)

28:33Okay, just keep the numbers round. That 100 million a year is really, really significant. And I think if you go back and say, what was it like at Arsenal in the years after the Emirates was built? Those are tough years because effectively you've made this big investment, which is going to effectively benefit you over 30 to 40 years, but you've had to make a big upfront investment in it and you're paying the cost of it quite front-loadedly, right? So it might be over five years, it might be over 10 years, it might be over 15 years, but it's not over 30 or 40 years. So these interest payments and the repayment schedule, which has now kicked in, because they don't have a sugar daddy to say, okay, well, I'll cover three or 400 million of it, and then the rest of it will be in debt.

29:16Because the whole thing is pretty much in debt. The debt repayments and the interest payments are absolutely colossal. So the compensation that most clubs make, whether it be Arsenal in the dog days of the Arsene Wenger era or Spurs in the last five or six years. The compensation that most clubs make is to say, okay, look, we're going to have to spend a bit less on players. We have to be honest with our fan base. We've got mortgage payments. Sorry, that's just where we are. And fans don't like it and they whine about it and they'll shout a bit at the end, oh, why aren't we able to compete and all this type of stuff?

29:49But fundamentally, the majority of the fans understand it. We've just got to make this massive investment. okay the problem here is that perez's own personal strategy the thing which he's based his entire presidency over is while i am here we will sign the galacticos we will sign the best players in the world but when you're paying a hundred million pounds a year in interest payments and debt repayments you can't you basically you cannot by normal measures by normal measures so then you have to start looking at okay what are the other ways that we can try and engender to sort of get these top players to come to us and the answer is well we don't buy them when we want to buy them what we do is we sort of have a quiet word with them through back channels saying we will come and play for us in two years time once you run your contract down and that's all kind of like fine in theory but it it for whatever reason it's just not working from a performance perspective because what you're immediately putting in place there is a culture of entitlement yeah right so So if we're looking at that list that we just explained of what's happened in the last week, it's basically the result of players with an aura of entitlement.

30:57You just need to look at what's happened this season. Xabi Alonso, the most coveted manager coming out of Bayer Leverkusen, back to Real Madrid with his squad that you would back him to go and succeed. Massive, massive, massive top player. He's not one of these managers who you can say, show us your medals to. No, he has. Xabi Alonso. And also as a coach. Yeah. Right. Total credibility. He took Bayer Leverkusen to an unbeaten season. They lost one game, a Europa League final. But what happened when he came in? Hey, it was a division down the middle. It was supposedly Camp Vini Jr. and Camp Mbappe.

31:31Player power once again winning out. Now, you then look at Abelhoa who's come in. Reportedly, they call him the cone. The manager of Real Madrid is being called the cone, i.e. the training cone. very little authority on the training pitch so if i'm being recruited by a club that is encouraging me to run down a contract and giving me this air of authority that they have but also giving me a huge amount of power in that decision making process i'm going to bring that into my experience at a club i think that's really i think that's totally true i think that's a really smart point if we're looking at the problems they have now it's the outcome of that whole mentality that Perez has built in from the top.

32:13And it even goes to him almost being untouchable. I mean, in his press conference this week, he pretty much said, I think you'd have to shoot me to get me out of here. But this is supposedly a democracy. So you don't shoot someone to get them out of there, you vote them out. The culture that exists in this club, the great football club, we're talking about an incredible revenue generating business that is not reliant on an independent owner to fund it. Yet this whole situation and having to look to someone like Jose Mourinho to come in and almost, it's like a school teacher, bang everyone together and go, get back to what is important and remind them who the real boss is in a football club environment.

32:55It's an interesting choice because effectively, as you say, from a coaching perspective, Mourinho has been on a downward slide for five, six, seven years now. So no one believes that Jose is the guy who's got the new coaching ideas that perhaps 25 years ago he did, right? He had various different new ideas and theories 25 years ago. He's now well on that downward slide compared to other younger coaches who've come in with new ideas. But what's the one thing you do know about him? Is it any club that he's in charge of? Who's the number one? He's the boss. He's the boss, right? I mean, without any question.

33:27And it's a question of his own history, both at Real and at other massive clubs. But it's also a function of his personality because you need to have that sharp tongue. You need to have that quick put down. You need to have that self-confidence to be able to look people in the eye, no matter how rich they are, no matter how successful they are, and say, yeah, right, really? You're trying that with me? And of course, Jose is one of the few managers who can pull that particular trick off. But from a coaching perspective, you're going back in time. So if I was one of Real's big rivals, I'd be looking at that going, this is great right you know jose's been well off the pace for some time yeah he might stop them like all fighting each other but is he going to be the guy who's going to get real playing like psg i don't think so uh you know that's that seems seems highly unlikely to me so i think you're right in saying that this is symptomatic of a whole bunch of baggage that's hanging around in the background that gradually over time has changed the nature of the club and has made it into something which any person who works in super elite sport would say no that's not how you do it that's not how you do it it starts with teamwork it starts with a work ethic it starts with clarity about team objectives not individual objectives it starts with an understanding of who your competition is and respecting that competition and being determined to beat that competition All of those things under Perez are out the window.

34:54We're the big guys. We don't have to worry about the competition. We bring the biggest stars in here. And because we're Real, we can afford to have all of them in one place and we don't have to worry about it because it's Real and they'll understand that Real is that big. And it's all exploded. It's all exploded in quite a sort of like tawdry way, I'd say. Which is again, why you were kind of questioning me on the validity of this topic to actually talk about on this show. Yeah, it's gossip. It felt like a lot of gossip. But I do think, you know, when you pull a lot of that back, what sits underneath it is actually the whole operational side of this club and how it sits aside from so many others with entitlement at the heart of it.

35:32And while entitlement can be leveraged in a great way and has in the past created the most incredible teams for Real Madrid, this is now seeing a slightly separate side of it where if it doesn't quite work and you go two trophy-less seasons and you get a bit of disgruntlement in the group and you don't have a manager leading you Which, by the way, is starting to have an impact on revenue. So I just pulled the numbers today. Because they are fan-owned, they update their socios in much more real time than normal football clubs do when you get a set of accounts that relates to something that happened 15 months ago.

36:03At Real, you actually get given much more up-to-date numbers. So in the first half of season 25-26, the revenue was down by 3.1 % in actual terms. So including inflation, quite a bit more than that, right? Really? And that's starting to drive a negative net banking position where you start to look at the debt interest payments and you say, are they going to have to sell some players here? I think they might have to sell some players. They're going to have to start moving into a net transfer positive trading situation to be able to meet their debt repayment. Because ultimately, the bottom line is they are a business.

36:39and they don't have the release valve that your club had back in the um you know bramovich days where you can simply say sorry boss things aren't going so well can you inject 50 to 100 million here because we're struggling a little bit we'll call it equity yeah yeah um so it's a fascinating situation it's a fascinating study in the reality of elite sport and what it really means which is that ultimately it is actually about the core principles of sport and however much you can create a great stadium with great match day revenues however much you can say well we're going to be this we're going to be that we need galacticos and all this type of stuff in the end it's a team sport and players have to run around and players have to fight for each other and players have to want to believe what the coach says all this type of stuff in football really really really matters and i stress this out a little bit further thinking about the galacticos teams that I grew up watching early 2000s, which is really what I would call it.

37:35So Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, Raul, Hierro, great players, Casillas. They were brilliant individual brands, but it was a team. Well, encapsulates in Raul, right? So you still have to have players who are heart and soul in the club, which again, keep going back to your club at Chelsea. For all the big money signings, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Drogba, these were the Czech. These were club guys who were there for long periods of time who really believed in the whole project and believed in each other. It doesn't exist there right now. It just doesn't look like that right now. In Real Madrid, not...

38:13Well, actually, in Chelsea as well. Chelsea as well. And obviously, a big fundamental flaw. Won't go down there. But if you look at this with Real Madrid, it was the evolution of that kind of, we're still a team, to this now, just from the outside, absolute fragmentation of your core players not being able to sit in a dressing room together and operate as a professional entity. I mean, yeah, Valverde and Chiuameni summed it up, but Valverde is your captain. On that particular point, right, players getting competitive with each other, players not liking each other, players occasionally letting things boil over.

38:52This in itself is not necessarily a big problem, okay? It does happen. And sometimes one of my biggest fears when I'm running a football club is if the training ground's too quiet and everyone seems okay and everyone's just going through the motions. You want training to have a bit of bite about it. You want training to be a bit like this. The problem here is it's seen as part of a greater whole. It's not just a one-off incident, which is, okay, these players have got a bit of a problem with each other. It looks like a symptom of a greater malaise. Yeah, because, Charlie, that doesn't happen when they're winning five Champions Leagues in a row.

39:26It may do. three champ whatever they want I tell you it may do and it happens more often than you might think perhaps not quite to that level where a player gets hospitalised it happens more often than you might think fans overestimate the extent to which a lot of footballers playing the same club like each other quite often they don't like each other very much and quite often they feel very competitive about who's trying to take their place or who's done this for me in that game or who didn't cover for me in that game it can get quite rebarbative so I'm not going to sit here saying that players falling out or players having a bit of a scrap is a big problem.

39:59The issue here is it's part of three, four, five, six, seven separate pieces of news. It's part of a broader pattern of disunity. But anyway, look, it is still the biggest club in the world, right? And what they've done with the Bernabeu is amazing. You just look at the situation, you think it needs new leadership. It needs a clarity of strategic direction, which is able to take this amazing, huge, monstrous football club onto the next level from where it is right now, which frankly is, you know, nowhere near where it should be. If that's the solution, I'm just going to give you a couple of points from his press conference.

40:37So Perez gave a press conference this week after the loss to Barcelona, after all of this happened. He cited his 74 trophies as evidence that he's the greatest president in the club's history, making it abundantly clear that he'd not be leaving his post voluntarily. He brought up the Barcelona and refereeing scandal, which is brilliant deflection as always, as you'd expect from him. But he also described himself as a supernatural animal and a beast before then arguing with reporters threatening to restrict media access to the Real Madrid training ground if they disagreed. So while that may be the case, this doesn't look like a guy that has any intention of moving forward despite his 79 years.

41:19And Jose going there guarantees that the circus is going to continue, right? it's just that now Jose is going to be at the front of it so we've had this situation where you've had players at the front of it you've had Perez at the front of it from now on the main character I'm gutted is going to be Jose I'm gutted I thought he could come home I thought he could come back the Premier League with Jose is a better place right yeah look really interesting let's move on let's move on let's get stuck into talking of entitled people is that the position you're going to come at this from come on bring it on okay so uh tennis pay tennis pay pay and tennis pay and tennis it's been a really important topic for a long time it's been should we say a a battle between the tennis players and the tournaments most notably the grand slams between how much players are compensated for in comparison to how much revenue the tournaments are making so last week the reason we're talking about it now is arena sabalenka the women's world number one, stated that she was, well, the players were very disappointed with the French Open's prize money.

42:28Put it a bit stronger than that. They were willing to strike. Go on strike. Go on strike because they felt that the representation, well, the proportional representation for players to total revenue was significantly under where it should be. And this has kind of opened a bit of a box for a number of players to now come out and go, well, one person said it and so I'm going to back it. Coco Gauff, Yannick Sinner on the men's side as well. I do get the feeling now that with these Grand Slams making the most money they've ever made and the French Open now particularly being around the corner, it seems to have got an extra bit of traction that makes it particularly interesting to cover.

43:00So the big challenge for tennis players with the Grand Slams is that they do not get more than about 15 to 17 percent. It's more like 17 now. 17 percent of revenue now. I know the French Open is a bit less than that, but there are one or two others which are a bit higher than that. But so interesting you correct me on that. So right now, the big argument here is that while the French Open increased the prize money by 10 million euros, the percentage of revenue that the players are getting has actually decreased from about 15.5 % to just under 15%. Yet the prize pool went up by 10 million euros.

43:35So the total prize pool for this year is 61.7 million euros for the French Open. That represents 14.3 % of total revenue. if you're putting this into context of broader sports and we we talked about american sports and how they've compensated the athletes in the past quite often you can get up to 50 percent the ask of the players to me is pretty reasonable considering the contribution that players make to tennis so what they really want is they want a 22 percent of revenue contribution from the grand slams to the prize pool. So to put that into context, if the French Open was to give 22%, it would go from 61 million euros to 88 million euros.

44:19This year, they are predicted to make 400 million euros. We're not talking about them requesting 50 % of the pool of revenue going back to the players, but we're talking about them having greater say, or sorry, greater receipt and greater say, as it happens, of the money. This has caused some people to push back because it's come from the top players. The world number one, Irina Sabalenka. The world number one, Yannick Sinner. You may say, I'm an idiot. I believe. Charles, I wouldn't say that. I don't think Sabalenka minds whether she gets an extra two to 300 grand based on her winning or not.

45:00what I do think this conversation really stretches to is how sustainable it is for the majority of players to play tennis further down where they are getting smaller packets relying on grand slams to fund their year's worth of tennis because if you lose in the first round of some of these tournaments you can make anywhere between 60 to 80 000 pounds let's say that is a huge part of their ability to keep competitive on tour and to actually make a living out of it if the grand slams if the French Open gave 27 million more euros to that there would be a significant amount of money that they may be able to put into that total prize pot which takes some of that money up a little bit more and if each grand slam gave first round losers an extra 20 ,000 pounds that's an extra 80 ,000 pounds a year I get that that may be fanciful if it's coming from a one and one you think no this is just brilliant capitalist corporate mentality but for the players to be asking for this I don't think is unreasonable where do you think this money currently goes.

46:00So that's the key. So the underlying assumption here, and I'm not saying it's your assumption, I'm saying that the underlying assumption of the players seems to be that there is profiteering going on by Roland Garros and by the All England Club and by the US Tennis Federation and Tennis Australia, that they are nicking all this money, which would rightfully be the players and, I don't know, stuffing it in their back pockets, paying the chief executive another 10 million a year or, you know, having much plush of boardrooms or whatever it might be. that is not the case let's be quite clear here so if you look at wimbledon right which is also around the corner relatively speaking and it's our home grand slam so something that we sort of keep a close eye on 90 of wimbledon's profits are given to the lawn tennis association which is britain's governing body of tennis for grassroots tennis promotion right so that's encouraging young kids to play the game.

46:55Now, I think there's communications problems on both sides here, right? And I think you've alluded to one of them already. So the first communications problem is I don't think currently that the Grand Slams individually, and particularly as a group, communicate what it is they're trying to do. What are we doing here? What's the point of our existence, right? We're not just, we're not like a football club, which is, or American football franchise, which is owned by a really rich guy. And if he pays the players less, he gets more, right? That's not the situation. These are not shareholder organizations where there's a dividend being paid out to wealthy owners.

47:30So there's a lack of communication going on there. And all I see from the grand slams individually is quite defensive, quite, well, we put it up by 10 % this year. Okay. But that in itself doesn't answer the question, which is if you put it up by 10 % and actually it should go up by 30%, then you haven't really sort of solved the problem here. So there's a communication problem there. And then there's a communication problem on the players side because you've put it quite nicely there which is if it were the case in a sport where historically the lower ranked players have actually been relatively poorly compensated although actually that has changed quite a bit recently we'll come back on to that in a moment but let's just say that arena sabalenka and yannick sinner said we earned 20 million a year each last year in prize money before we get on to endorsements we earned 20 million a year each in prize money this year.

48:17And far be it from us to say that we deserve more. But we feel incumbent on us to speak up on behalf of our fellow pros, the ones that fall on hard times, the ones who aren't quite as good as us, etc. But who we need to make a circuit. And we want to see these guys and these girls being paid more money. And we want to see their pensions being looked after better. And actually, we'd be very comfortable with the first place prize money staying exactly where it is. I think there'd be a lot of public sympathy for that situation. It's not what they've said. They haven't said that. Explicitly not. Okay.

48:49And as I said, also the Grand Slam saying, well, bear in mind that actually the money that we're talking about here currently gets given to encourage kids to play this sport, which is where you guys and girls have all come from. So please just be aware that we are actually fundamentally charitable organizations. That point is also not being made. So it ends up in this rather unseemly sort of, you know, arm wrestle in terms of whether it should be 8 % extra this year or 9 % extra this year, which I just don't think really gets us anywhere. I think they're asking for proportional representation on growth of revenue to growth of price money.

49:21Are they individually responsible for that growth in revenue? There's a strong argument to say that the athletes are absolutely responsible for that. No chance, Charlie. But the athletes are the core product. Oh, yeah. So, okay, you're basically saying that Yannick Sinner is somehow much more attractive than Roger Federer was. Really? Absolutely not. What's happening here, quite the opposite, in fact. Roger Federer was a much bigger draw than Yannick Sinner will ever be. What's actually happening here is that the Grand Slams, and we've discussed actually Tennis Australia being in particular progenitor, have become better at commercialising their own event.

49:54That's what's happened. I mean, no one can say with any degree of seriousness that Irina Sabalenka is a bigger commercial draw than Serena Williams. I mean, forget it. No chance whatsoever. Is that what they're saying? No, but what you've just said is it's the players who are responsible for the increase in revenue. It's not. It's absolutely not. You would argue right now that with the possible exception of Alcaraz, but there isn't really any of the very top players who is on that level of Serena and Federer and Nadal who are really themselves as individual people massively globally famous. I don't think that those players yet have achieved that kind of it.

50:29Or that Borg and McEnroe were and Connors in the past or Becker and Lendl. They're not quite there yet. I'm not criticising them for that. They're just not quite there yet. They haven't quite achieved quite the same levels. they haven't won as many Grand Slams they haven't been around quite as long their personalities in Sinner's case less than Sabalenka's case are not quite as well developed whatever mind no criticism of them they are reaping the rewards in what they get paid from the work that Borg and McEnroe and Becker and Connors and Nadal and Federer did before them in making tennis this massive global thing bully for them congratulations if Tennis Australia are super smart at adding an extra week onto the front end of the Australian Open which makes it into a three-week tennis festival rather than a two-week tournament, that has got nothing to do with Irina Sabalenka and Yannick Sinner.

51:16That's Tennis Australia being smart to make more money, to put more money into grassroots tennis in Australia. Why should they be giving that money to the top players? I don't think they should. I think they should face them down. And there's another point here. There's one last point I want to make, which is that Grand Slam audiences, and we discussed this before with the Masters, what's the biggest star? The US Masters or Bryson DeChambeau? Are people not going to watch the Masters because Bryson decides to go on YouTube? I bet there will not be a single person who says, I'm not bothering me to watch the US Masters because Bryson DeChambeau is not playing in it.

51:54I would love to see the concept tested that Wimbledon viewing figures will massively decrease because Yannick Sinner is not playing. Don't believe it. So I completely agree. And I think the point I was going to bring up next was... Sorry, Charlie. No, no. Getting on a bit of a rant there. No, I love it. No, but this is... The pint's halfway down. He's already in ran mode. No, no, but I do think this is an impassioned topic. The biggest challenge that you've got with something like Liv that we have criticised previously is that the players are the absolute stars because there's no heritage to the tournaments they are playing in.

52:27And so the executive have basically left himself beholden to the negotiation power of those players. Where I find this interesting is to that point, you can say boycott and that's to be very clear right that is what the players are talking about in this discussion they are saying we will strike they're floating it they haven't quite gone as far as saying that's what we will do right that's been the narrative in the last week right we are prepared to go that far to that length to which case you just get a separation right fine Grand Slams have no players players have no Grand Slams playing Grand Slams will still have players Grand Slams will still have players exactly so how far how far down does that strike go?

53:06I'd be fascinated to see that because fundamentally tennis and as with golf is a selfish sport and the winning of a major is the making of a career and the making of fortune. You also look at Arena Sablenka's current earnings of 20 million a year and say how much of that, even if she thinks the prize money is not high enough, how much of that 20 million is currently coming from the majors? And the answer is a massive chunk of it, about half. How great would it be, right? If you did have, let's say the top 20 players all go on strike. It'd be very insane. In fact, let's be honest, if the top five, in the men's game, if Sinner and Alcaraz went on strike.

53:39Well, Alcaraz is injured, so. Zverev is in. Yeah. Zverev's going, this is my shot, right? So that's your number three seed. He's probably going, well, with those two out, I may actually finally fulfill my Grand Slam prophecy. Yeah. So collective strike action, all bundling together for this greater good. If actually any of those players who didn't strike suddenly participated because the Grand Slam's still going on and suddenly realized, hey, do you know what? I've got a chance to win$4 million. dollars well they're highly likely to go and participate in that tournament absolutely right so again all of these threats where where does it actually net out i think this to me sounds like a sensible negotiation in an industry which rarely sees sensible conversation around this type of topic so they are asking for 22 they're not coming to the table with a completely unrealistic proposal.

54:29Now, they supposedly wrote letters last year to the four grand slams. They didn't receive a single response on the points that they had raised. You want, surely in this environment, where talent is increasingly more influential, to secure the quality of that product. Is it? Is it? Is it? Do you think so? I don't think it is. I think Liv has been, and the Saudi Pro League and various other things have been the control study, the test case, for the idea that it's not about the competition. It's about which other players happen to be there at one time. And I think where this has sort of come from is the freak one-off case that's Lionel Messi, the greatest footballer in history, who is simultaneously a genius, a graceful person, a legend.

55:15Everyone can buy into Messi. And he... The power of a continent. And in the world's most popular sport. so Messi and his journey and going to Miami and since attracting vast amounts of attention to Miami and there being huge competition people who want to go and see Messi one time and all this type of stuff I think that has given a general sense and idea that this applies more broadly to really great players of other sports as well and indeed football and I'm just not quite sure that that's the case. And I think the US PGA Tour versus Live has rather proven that to me at least, which is that I think it's incumbent on the big brands, the big tournaments to hold their nerve on this and say, we believe that the best players should want to play an R of M.

56:06I'd love to see what the percentage of revenue that the Masters makes that it devotes to prize money. I don't think it'll be much more than that. I'd have to go back because obviously, as we said before, they leave an awful lot of revenue on the table, right? So we know that. But fundamentally... It was low, I remember. Right. But fundamentally, it's still a tournament that's making 150, 200 million bucks, right? So are we saying that they're giving $100 million in prize money at the Masters? Of course not. They're not, right? But ultimately, they hold the line of saying, if you don't want to play at Augusta National, if when you receive that invitation, you decide that you don't want to play here, if when you receive that invitation to come and play at the All England Club in Wimbledon, if you decide that actually you'd rather not, knock yourself out there'll be a lot of players that will there'll be a lot of players that will interestingly going back a little bit in time and certainly I mean to be honest with you a bit before my time but certainly I don't know if you're your time the Australian Open was a bit of a take it or leave it event for some of the top players well it's probably when travel was far more complex right yeah exactly and the time of year and so on and so forth the prize money wasn't great and so some players decided they did want to play in Australia did the Australian Open say well the answer to this is quadrupling our prize money well they could have done but they decided not to I think it is also worth reflecting what has happened in prize money, right?

57:20So if you look at Wimbledon, which has broadly similar prize money levels to what you were discussing, so it's 55 million pounds of prize money, which is almost exactly double what it was in 2014. Okay, so in 2014, you're talking about 25 million. Now you're talking about 55 million. If you add inflation to that number in 2014, bear in mind, this was an epic era, we've been talking about Federer and Co. That inflationary number of 25 million by now would be about 34 million. So there has been a big increase, right? In terms of first round money, it's gone up by 128 % in that time. So this is the people, again, talking about the journeymen, the ones who don't necessarily always make it to the later stages.

58:05And therefore this underlying money, as you say, forms a big part in their whole personal business model. It's gone up by 128%. 100 % qualifiers up by 309 % during that time. So that's for the ones who get far in the qualifying rounds. Like there have been very, very considerable increases in prize money. Now, what you're saying is, yeah, but the tournaments themselves are making even more money. So they should be devoting even more back into the players. And when it comes to the ATP tour and the WTA tour, where each individual tournament has either no heritage or at least some heritage, but nothing worth writing home about.

58:39So they have to compete for the top players. They have to make the decision. Any top player could easily make the decision not to play in my tournament. So unless I pay them as much as I possibly can, they won't come. And if they don't come, I won't fill the stands and I won't get another TV deal. This is not a problem facing the Grand Slams. The Grand Slams are going to fill their stands and they're going to get their TV deals, which are often on very long terms anyway. So the jeopardy just isn't there for the Grand Slams. And I just hope that they're able to get their heads together and make the case, make the case that actually what we're doing here is we're trying to grow the game of tennis as a whole.

59:21And actually whether Marina Sabalenka earns 20 million bucks a year or 23 million bucks a year, that's a matter for her. And if she decides like Bryson DeChambeau that she wants to go and play on YouTube, she should knock herself out. She could crack on with that. What we're about here is providing a competitive tennis tournament which attracts the best players in the world who do want to be here and paying them what by any stretch of the imagination is a very considerable sum of money. I do think there is a broader discussion. It's probably maybe it's one for another day. And I think we've said before we'd have a much bigger look at the finances of tennis and the ATP's baseline program and the minimum salaries, etc.

59:53But while you put a very strong argument there and convinced me in lots of ways, we're still looking at players that are fighting hard to earn a proper living and be really competitive on tour yeah so i'm then partially looking at it going okay well i while all of your justifications are correct i still want a thriving tennis environment for the top 128 players in my competition and and right now if i'm let's just say okay let's say i lose in all the first rounds of the grand slams and i and i make 250 000 pounds a year right that after tax goes down to... Charlie, it's got a lot better. So actually, because I was thinking in your way of thinking when I approached this topic, because certainly five or ten years ago, it was sort of renowned in sports business that tennis players ranked between 50 and 100 basically were struggling.

1:00:43But it turns out actually the situation has changed quite considerably. So we've spoken already about how Alcarez and Sabalenka are making 20 million bucks a year. Fantastic. Well done. You're the best player in the world, in your gender, at a sport which is globally competitive you deserve it absolutely no problem with that whatsoever by the way the world number 30 last year in men's tennis was a british guy called cameron norrie and he made two million us last year okay so that's quite a big drop off but even so you'd say a pretty good living even after expenses and so on and so forth what i was really interested in actually is that the world number 100 in women's tennis anna bondar made 650 000 bucks right so did i say to you earlier when you sent this to me?

1:01:24Yeah. You said it's not as big a discrepancy as you thought. You said, is that annual or is that career earnings? Yeah. No, annual. Annual earnings. So that was way bigger than I anticipated. Do you remember what I said earlier on? I said first round money is up by 128%. Yeah. There has been a considerable effort to improve the lot of the journeyman players to the point where if you look at 650 grand, you say, okay, after paying some tax on it, probably 400 grand, after paying travel expenses and coaches, physios, and blah, blah, blah. maybe 200 grand net. Not saying that she's getting rich out of it, but she's definitely making a living out of it and she's the 100th best player in the world.

1:02:01So look. It's an improving environment. It's been an improving environment at all levels. It's, you know, a legitimate debate. I'm not saying it's not a legitimate debate. I think where I would rather see it go from the player perspective is if they formed a players association and if the head of the players association was not Arena Sabalenka and Yannick Sinner, And if the head was more like a mid-ranking type player. Well, it was Novak Djokovic and Vasek Pospisil. So the PTPA, the Professional Tennis Players Association, really brought this properly up and tried to unionize that group of players.

1:02:36Pospisil, obviously, of a far lesser ranking than Djokovic. Djokovic has actually stepped back from that now. I think partially because of the optics of having a player that earns incredible money and always has done on tour. but that's maybe where my naivety and where and where you turn around and go no i completely disagree i just i struggle to see a world where sinner and sabalenka purely go on this fight because they want a few hundred grand more while they could make that on an instagram post well it's more than a few hundred grand more because if you're talking about going from 60 to 80 that's a 40 increase right so they're actually talking about going from you know 20 million a year to 30 million a year you know if you're talking about it as a year as a whole now i know not all their earnings are grand slams so maybe it's from 20 million to 25 million and i'm not saying by the way that that is their sole intent because they have spoken about pensions they have spoken about various other things but i think it'd be super helpful if the leading players clarified that they were absolutely fine with what they were being paid what they were looking for is for the rest of the tour to be better looked after anyhow i rest my case and i fully expect other people to disagree with me on it.

1:03:45Okay. Excellent. It's fascinating. It's something that, particularly going into a tennis summer. Yeah, because you've got Roland Garros and Wimbledon coming up just literally in the next couple of months. Do you love it? Do you love your tennis? I love watching top tennis. I'm not somebody who will turn on Eurosport or whatever to go and watch the Warsaw Open, whatever it might be. If it's on, fine, it's on, but I'm not that fascinated by it but when it comes to grand slam tennis i do watch grand slam tennis um it's somehow the the ambiance of the whole thing they've all got their different styles don't know those grand slams all got their different styles and and just the history and just going back and remembering the great stars who you've seen in those events and it just imprints in your memory you know i remember the first memory i have of wimbledon which is on the tv not live um was of watching perry somebody wearing fred perry clothing charles um actually was not because it was john mackenrow and he was definitely not wearing fred perry clothing um stomping around wearing a bandana um shouting and swearing at the umpire and the line the linesman and that must have been like you know in the 82 83 84 that type of era um and it It just imprints itself on your memory.

1:05:06So yeah, very, very fond of the Grand Slam events, but probably not such a great viewer of the lesser events. It's been incredibly powerful as a sport over the years of individual style, and particularly for female sport. We talked previously about the top-earning athletes. The top-earning female athletes. It's almost always the tennis players. Always tennis players. Interesting question, which I can't answer, but maybe people in our audience who are more into tennis might be able to answer with the exception of the williams sisters and they've been one or two other examples but sport overwhelmingly dominated by you know russians czech slovakians belorussians stephi graf german in this case um yeah yeah but it's it has it has been sort of very much from that eastern europe is very strong for yeah i mean even right now uh let's go you got swiontet you You've got Sabaleka.

1:05:58You've got Rabakina. Yeah. Then you've got Pagula and Goff, two Americans. Yeah. But yes, I mean, you know. But going back even to Navratilova and, you know, Jano Novotna and Hanesukova, it's been a sport which has been, at the female end, very heavily dominated by what might historically be called Eastern Bloc female players, which has perhaps not entirely been the case on the male side. Who's got further through their pint glass, Charles?

1:06:28look at that i have for those of you listening uh i would say actually to be honest that's pretty good going as in that we've managed to sort of keep stride for stride yeah but also managed to keep it to two thirds of a pint i know it's pretty good i think uh i think it adds a little something yeah let's see how it all turns out this is this is a really important topic i'd love love to get some thoughts on it um i can't wait to see what happens over the next few weeks so i I have a feeling that it's going to keep cooking. But yeah, Charlie, between Madrid and tennis, what a week. I just want to see Jose confirmed in the hot seat and then we can all be happy.

1:07:03By the time we record, by the time we release next time, Chelsea could have won the FA Cup and put Spurs in a dire relegation. Hope springs eternal, Charles. Hope springs eternal. I can see in your... Anyway, my eyes lit up. Yeah, your eyes have lit up. It's quite sweet, actually. Three quarters of a pint of my eyes lit up. As always, thank you so much, Charlie. Thank you. Thanks, Charles. That was fun. Evening recordings could be the way forward. The Real Madrid situation is one that will be fascinating to follow over the coming weeks, and with Jose back in the picture, it makes for an even more enticing watch as they try to fix this seemingly unbridgeable gap currently separating their top stars.

1:07:39As for tennis, only time will tell. Charlie made some excellent points that should be considered, but I would still sit on the side of an increase to better reflect the contribution of the players and whether intentional or not support those in the earlier rounds with the financial stability it provides. I'd love to know your thoughts though. Thank you as always for listening and we'll see you next week. For this show, we are delighted to partner with Obelisk Sports. Here's a challenge every sporting director and CEO knows well. How do you attract and retain the best people when you can't match the salary offers of bigger clubs?

1:08:09The answer is performance incentives. Bigger bonuses for goals, appearances, promotions, trophies. The problem is that those incentives sit as uninsured liabilities the moment you write them into a contract. Obelisk Sports changes that equation entirely. By ensuring contracted performance incentives, you can offer more, meaningfully more, without taking on greater financial risk. The player or coach gets real upside. You stay protected if the targets are hit. Is your new signing on£500 ,000 appearance bonus you haven't insured? Is your head of performance on incentives tied to squad coaching, on incentives tied to league position, a points per game target, or a cup run that could trigger a significant payout before the season is out?

1:08:50These are solvable problems. Obelisk Sports. Helping sports organisations build insured performance structures that stabilise budgets, reduce risk, and unlock greater upside. Visit obeliskssports.com and let's talk. Obelisk Sports Ltd acts as a consultant to Gamepoint Capital, which is authorised and regulated for insurance business in its respective jurisdictions.