Why Revolut Are Investing In F1: Antoine Le Nel (Ep.101)

30:04Yeah, I think PSG is an amazing case study of how you build a brand. I think what they've done is quite remarkable in the sense that if you look at basically they started 10, 15 years ago when QIA came into PSG. They first brought a lot of very famous players. I mean, whether it was Latam, whether it was Beckham, Sergio Ramos, a bit later was Messi, Neymar, and obviously Mbappé. So what they started to do is by building the brand through the players. The players were bigger than the brand. And they kept on building this because little by little, the brand started to catch up with the players. And then they made a switch not so long ago where the brand became bigger than the players.

30:57And then they kind of refocused into team efficiency. And you can see that they've just won the Champions League. They've just won the Ballon d 'Or with assets that are not as marketable as what they were. You know, like even Dembélé, who just got the Ballon d 'Or, is nowhere near as marketable as what Neymar. And Neymar never won the Ballon d 'Or. Still Neymar, a lot more marketable. So if you look at from a brand perspective, as a partner, you were probably partnering five, 10 years ago with PSG for the players, while you would partner today for the team. And the shift that they've made in building the brand through the players and then making that swap into then suddenly having the PSG brand above the player brand, I think is quite remarkable.

31:49And now they've established an IP that is going to last for a very long time. Is this a challenging environment for a lot of sports organizations? We can look at something like football. We now have to maybe make a decision between do we make the most money and make ourselves the most appealing from a value perspective or do we win? Yeah, it is a challenge. It all depends on what you want to do from a brand perspective. But obviously what you're looking for is reach. You want to have reach and you want to have brand alignment. It's as well, how do you manage your risk? When you build your business case and let's say you assume no one wins, well, you want the marketable one, you know, at least, you know, because otherwise you get into the gambling business.

32:29Because as a brand, am I here to gamble and bet on a team that is probably not as marketable but has a chance to win? So, of course, if you win, it's going to be great, you know. But, like, that's a bet. And we as a business, we are not in the betting area, you know, so we can't really do that. But do you think, so it's interesting then, do you think being a, having a direct association with Hamilton right now, let's say, versus having a relationship with McLaren, using this season as an example, do you think it's more valuable than McLaren? You'd rather be with McLaren? I would rather be with McLaren, yeah.

33:05I mean, because they're winning and so on for the brand. I think it's much better. I mean, I think there's a bit of drama around Ferrari happening at the moment, which is not very good for the brands that are there. So you don't like noise, you know, when you're a brand, you know, you want to take calculated risk. And you want to control a little bit some of the things and you don't want to have your brand being exposed. How much do you have to consider risk when looking at something like Audi coming into the sport for all the good things about it? You know, we don't know how everything happens and how it performs and your brand closely tied to it.

33:40I mean, you know, title sponsor now. how much of that decision making process is incorporating that risk what do you think are the biggest risks? Yeah it's a calculated risk obviously when you come with a brand new car you don't know what the performance is going to be but at the same time you need to manage expectations especially in the first seasons that we're building everything from scratch and I think expectations from the public is that F1 is super hard so you probably don't expect Audi to win next year I don't think we're going to win next year. But then you look at the plan, the roadmap we have and so on, and the idea is to fight for a championship by 2030.

34:20And I think that's a good time horizon for us because that's what we want to do as well. We want to dominate the world of banking in the next five years. We have the same time frame, and we know it's going to be hard for us. It's going to be hard for Audi. And that's what I mean by calculated risk is that you bet into something that is extremely hard. Because the worst is, imagine you decide to sponsor Real Madrid and then the next three season they win nothing. That's an absolute disaster. How long, therefore, do you look for if you're doing one of these deals? What do you think is the optimal time to be able to achieve that and go?

35:04I hate using the word, but it's a bit of a journey, right? You've got to grow with this team. Yeah, because I mean, I mean, I think if you and this is what I think is quite new as well for for Revolut. If you exit too early, you will not capture the benefit of it. So I think depending on the type of sponsorship and obviously, I mean, with Audi, because we're building everything, it got to be a long term partnership because you don't want to be here, let's say, for the first two years. where everything is just being built and there's no performance, which makes sense. And then suddenly the performance comes later where you've paid for everything to build up, but you're not collecting the dividends in a way from it.

35:53So I think depending on what the roadmap of the team is, I think justifies how long the commitment is. And with that then, does your measurement of what success actually looks like, does that change? If you have the scale of success, you have the bedding in period, and then you have hopefully full optimization, you win a world championship. And in 2030, obviously, you're getting the McLaren exposure, hopefully now. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you obviously focus on this compounding effect that you're expecting from the repetition. I mean, the repetition of the exposure and the association, you know, from it will be super, super important.

36:32Because we'll be there from day one, we have the opportunity to become a generational sponsor. Because if we manage to really take the team to the top for a long period of time and so on, Revolut would have been there from day one. I think this idea of building generational sponsorship, the ones that kids have in their room, you know that's what we're aiming for and that requires long-term commitment tell us about then how you look at football you mentioned manchester city being the partnership i'd imagine now that you're in market and people know you're in market you are inundated with people trying to access the revolute brand how did you decide on manchester city and manchester city women in particular as that point for you to enter the market with yeah so i mean of course we talk to a lot of football teams and so on.

37:27I mean, trying to understand, you need to understand the market, you need to understand the opportunities and so on. I think with Manchester City, first of all, it's a great brand. I think we're looking for some level of innovation, some level of forward looking and so on. And women football in the UK is a huge thing. It's a huge thing. I mean, you saw the Euro this summer was absolutely fantastic. I mean, the enthusiasm that all the fans were having and so on is showing that women's football has a great, great future. And Man City is one of the best teams from a women's football perspective. So I think for us, it's a great sponsorship because you get both worlds at once.

38:17you get Man City as a great brand and you get women football which is a very progressive and sport that is on the rise. So you get really the best of both worlds. Great IP and great and great sport which is very inspiring in so many ways. So for us it was a really great sponsorship which was quite unique in the same way como is very unique at the same time you know because como is a new club in italy super lifestyle the stadium is by the como lake and so on you got a lot of celebrity coming in um it's really well managed and everything is makes it like such a unique sponsorship in this in the world why would tribal not be great for a brand like you You don't want to be divisive.

39:15I think you want to be super inclusive in everything that you're doing. And ultimately, I think you just need to be super careful with those things. it's probably a conservative approach that we have at the moment we've never really tried anything like that so I think right now we just we just try to be as inclusive as possible so almost answering this question and therefore asking it backwards do you think that's the value that women's football has over men's football from a brand perspective I mean honestly so I mean I go a lot with my kids uh in Barcelona I mean we have an amazing team in in Barcelona we went to see the the Classico the other day.

40:04It's lovely. I mean, honestly, it's lovely. The quality of football is really strong. I mean, when you see Aitana playing and so on, it's - Bad injury. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, but Alexa Puteyasa is super strong as well. But I mean, honestly, the quality of the show is strong. The experience is really good, you know, at the moment. so you just got to experience it i mean while men football i think there's nothing like men football in terms of getting you like really really i mean it's amazing it's amazing i love i love football you know i love football it's just that maybe for a brand you need to be very selective and very careful about what you do and similar to the brand value that we've talked about for the male athletes what about the brand value now that we have for the female athletes I know you have Alex Greenwood as part of the Man City Deal as one of the partners how do they build that value?

41:03where have you seen the great work that they can do for you alongside? they are great ambassadors for us we've leveraged the team and the players the level of recognition that those athletes have currently in the market is astonishing and honestly the the gap the gap between men and women is is I mean it's closing as we speak so it's really really exciting really exciting what about the different kind of like assets I guess when you're going into these deals yeah front of shirt is so well known let's say for football right but there's so much more now particularly as the games developed and digitalization and media and and all of this, what are the types of assets that you have the opportunities to purchase?

41:48So for us, it's what is very important. So of course, you want the logo, I mean, being as present as possible. But I think for us, where we've put a lot of emphasis is on the product integration. Product integration is critical. We've realized that in airports, you know, when we took all the jet bridges in 18 airports, what we've done, we've put the logos, but then you have vending machines in the terminals where you can get the cards. That is a product integration. And we're doing the same in sport. So we talked about the ticketing. Obviously, I mean, doing stuff on ticketing is important. Co-branded cards as well is super important.

42:30The B2B integration is super important. For example, we manage FX for Como. So when the transfers are processed through Revolut, because we have great effects. So at the end of the day, we make them save money and so on, and you do this. We process payments as well. RevPay is integrated into this. So for example, with Audi or the Adidas merch, when you buy Adidas merch with Audi and so on, it's processed through RevPay. So you manage to integrate the product as deep as possible because not only you get some return investment, but as well people can experience Revolut firsthand. So they're experiencing the sport they're watching, but at the same time, Revolut is just here.

43:23And I think that's critical. How do the ways that fans convert through your relationship with football assets change to how you foresee them converting through Formula 1? Yeah, it's pure, well, I mean, you have a lot of hospitality, So I think we're going to do a lot of B2B hospitality and so on and take that opportunity as well to engage with some of our best B2B and enterprise clients and try to close as many deals as we can. I think that's on the B2B side. On F1. On F1, which is really powerful. That's what all the big brands are all doing. So I think that's going to be very, I mean, that's what all the big AWS and so on, they're all activating, you know, through that.

44:10So we will demonstrate that Revolut as a product has the ability to run an F1 team. So once you can run an F1 team and your business here and so on, like, can probably run my business too, you know. And using this, again, product integration, if the whole team is running on Revel business, well, I mean, then we can probably run a lot of businesses in a highly, highly efficient way. What do you think about something like Stadium Sponsorships and Naming Rise with the value they can bring, especially when it comes down to product integration? Yeah, I think naming is interesting. So first of all, when you look at naming, you need to look at the legacy of the stadium.

44:57So you probably need to have a stadium that doesn't have too much legacy, because that legacy will always be, well, at least at the beginning, will be stronger than your brand. So you will struggle to overtake that legacy. You know, for example, if you look at CompNow, the CompNow Spotify, is it going to be CompNow Spotify or is it going to be CompNow? It's tricky. You know what I mean? While Emirates Stadium, there's no legacy in Emirates Stadium. It was Emirates Stadium. It will always be the Emirates Stadium, you know. So I think that's the first thing that you need to look at. Then as a bank, you need to see how you can run your product integration.

45:40So if you can manage payment across the whole stadium, if you can manage some ticketing, etc., etc., I think it's important. I think the other thing you need to look at is how much the audience is being refreshed event after event. So that's where football is not so good in some ways because you tend to have the same audience coming every weekend to the place. while if you look at the O2 Arena, it's a different audience when it's a Metallica concert or a Lady Gaga concert, you know. So it's very, you reshuffle a lot more the audience if it's a concert venue versus if it's a sport venue. But then you have sport venues that bring a lot of concerts at the same time or that are multi-sport and so on.

46:30so that can so it's I don't think you can just put a price on a stadium of 50 ,000 is that much a stadium of I think it really it's really a case by case I think but why not I'm I've nothing against it we've not we haven't done it yet but I can see where the business case is I can see it it's interesting because Tottenham you know being in market they have that incredible new stadium I don't know if you've been no I haven't been it pains me to say it as a Chelsea fan, but it is so impressive when you go in there. And it incorporates so many different businesses in one. It's amazing experiential.

47:10They have, you know, Formula One carting under the pitch. It's obviously an NFL stadium as well. They host concerts there. So in my head, I'm looking at it and I'm going, you know, it's so interesting they actually haven't managed to nail that down because from what you said, you get a relatively good refreshing of people coming through the door because you've got multi-entertainment properties that do use it. You've got a brand new stadium, so no one has an association with anything. It's not White Hart Lane to the extent of the old one. Yeah, the challenge you have is that at that price point, you don't have that many brands that can afford it.

47:42Okay, and because the price point is really high. So the selection of brands that can afford going there is limited and many of them are getting more and more equipped because naming rights, you have more and more naming rights because if you add up all the front of shirt of football, all the F1 sponsorship, all the big sponsors, it's already a lot of properties. And brands that can afford that price tag, you don't have like a hundred of them. You know, so I think at some point there's a high level of competition between all those properties to actually bring a partner. So I think that's a little bit the struggle you have.

48:36You look at America, the biggest teams across those sports in general.

48:43Dodgers or Giants or pick any of those top teams. Yep. They will brand their stadiums. Yep. Now, you apply that here into the market. Spotify camp now, that's a unique example. If you're looking at the teams with heritage, I can only imagine what would happen if you turned around to Anfield and put a brand on it or Old Trafford. Yeah, you can't. And again, that's the interesting difference here. It almost comes back to that revenue commercialization, total value recognition versus the importance of heritage and legacy. Would that be valuable for Liverpool and Man United? Absolutely. Man City, as you said, they're a different brand and they stand for different things.

49:24The Etihad is now synonymous. Airlines have been the big thing here. I'm trying to, you'll know better than me, but even just trying to think, a tech business, i.e. Spotify, coming into Barcelona, that's very progressive for Europe. Yep, yep. So it'll be interesting to see if there's a little bit more of that type of involvement from what we would class as tech brands, not legacy heritage brands that are like airlines, that are like banks. And I think the teams in Europe, they realize that. They are very much aware of that. And I think that's why as well they are very interested. That's why I talk to a lot of different teams.

50:01They are very interested in working with Revolut. A brand like Revolut is really good for them. It's really, really good. I mean, I think the work that Spotify is doing with Barcelona is amazing. I think the activations that they are doing, it's really world class. What about it is really good? So they use the front of shirt, for example, for any release of new albums and stuff and so on. I think it's just super cool. It's really, it's not rocket science, you know, but suddenly it makes as well every jersey collector because then they sell them. And so people are now buying jersey for the sponsor.

50:41We have the Rolling Stones one in the office. It gets more comments than anything else. Exactly. So they become collectibles. And they become collectibles not because of the team, but because of, I think it's genius. And I think it has a halo effect on Barca itself. Because suddenly it makes Barca a lot more modern, a lot more innovative, etc., etc. And now they just signed Uber as a sponsor as well. So suddenly you get into a place with Barca that has big tech. The big tech are working with Barca, which I think is going to help. And then they're having the super innovative comp now, which hopefully will be finished at some point.

51:27It looks like it's taking a bit of time. But they're really repositioning the team. They have a super young team. They have tech sponsors. They will have best stadium in the world and so on. I think they are doing a great job at that. They just need to fix their finance and all of that. And then they'll be in an amazing place when you look in the future. So you see, this is where teams don't select the sponsors only just for the money. They are really working. It's really working hand in hand. And that's how we are working with all our different teams. That's why we'd rather call it as a partnership rather than a sponsorship, because we actually help as well the team, because it's the way you activate.

52:15Because when you work with oil companies, et cetera, et cetera, yes, they bring a lot of money. But how are they going to really help the brand and the IP in making the IP even bigger and so on? And that's where companies like Revolut will really help in doing that. So it's a win-win thing. So we work with them to leverage their IP. they work with us to leverage our IP. Yeah. I was just thinking as you were saying that about what we've got now in Formula One, for example, because you do, that shift you can actually see happening. You've got Airwallex, you know, involved with McLaren. We obviously mentioned Google Chrome, the wheels.

52:51You have Atlassian, Williams. You now will be Audi. You know, the Patronuses of the world in Mercedes, where that may have used to dominate along with booze and cigarettes. Yeah. You know, it's now moving into this side of, of the world, which is great because it does bring, again, the total value of the proposition up. It's not just a cash transaction. Exactly. Which is great. We just need some of the other sports to follow. Football is a little bit stuck at the moment with Middle Eastern airlines. It's a lot of Middle Eastern airlines. Paris is Qatar, is Barca. I mean, Real Madrid is Emirates.

53:28Now, Atletico Madrid is Rio de Janeiro and so on. So it's like, it's very, I think the fans, they probably want to see something else. They probably want to see something else. How do you break those cycles? Because that is the hard bit, right? You need to get people into those organizations to understand how to speak to a business like Revolut, not a team like Emirates. Yeah, yeah. But because, I mean, at the end of the day, when you present a deal to a team, you have the money aspect, but you have the partnership aspect. and the teams are looking at both. They are looking at, okay, fine, this is the money.

54:04Okay, I need the money, you know, to run my team. But at the same time, I have a long-term strategy into developing my IP. And each time they have a deal on the table, they will compare the deals, not just money to money. They will look at the bigger picture and try to understand, okay, how is that actually helping me? As well as, you know, the sponsors, the partners have their say as well. In the sense, when you're the front of shirt of a team, you do have a say into who the team is going to put on the sleeve. Because the best place is when those two brands between the front of shirt and the sleeves are complementary and therefore are willing to work together, to build activations together and so on, rather than being completely disconnected with nothing and nothing at all and so on.

54:58In the same way, we are super excited to work with Adidas on Audi F1. It's really good. I think there's a lot of things that we can do together, which is great. Being a bank, how important is age and that profile, capturing people at the right time? Yeah, I mean, of course, you need to look at your segment, at your audience. each sport has its own audience, whether it's more male-focused or female-focused. That's why we liked as well F1. It's actually very balanced. I think it's very spread by age and by gender, which is really strong. But you can do different things, you know? Like, you should not have every partnership to cover all your segments.

55:46It's more how you build your portfolio in order to address your wide audience. But that's why we look at, I just don't look at sport to do that. That's why I do sport and music festivals, whether it's Primavera Sound, whether it's Seagate, et cetera, et cetera, where we are the main partner there. But so it's a portfolio strategy to make sure that when you put all the Lego together, you're actually spot on covering your whole audience. So is that where the value of rugby is for you as well? Exactly. So rugby is great. So we are with the Stade Toulousain, which is really helpful because it's a different audience.

56:27It's a bit more B2B. It's a great B2B platform. For example, rugby, a lot more than football. In one way, just the fact that people, you can give a really good experience on a... Yeah, and as well, the audience is quite a B2B. And you can see as well that the demographic is slightly older, unfortunately. It's basically the age of and the gender of decision makers. It's a little bit like golf. In a way, golf is very B2B as well. It's a great B2B platform. Tennis as well somehow is a pretty good B2B platform compared to football with a lot more B2C from that perspective. So you look at it from all that perspective.

57:15So tell me then, we've got all of this you've already achieved. within sport and now you mentioned there's things coming on the horizon i know you won't be able to speak specifically about them but where are we looking at developing everything that we've talked about here how are you looking at the future of this side of the business so the future the the future of it is i think it's to continue expanding our um local penetration I think we're in 39 markets. I think we can be smart in doing things in some markets. You have markets that have their own specific things. For example, I mean like whether it's in Greece or Lithuania, it's a basketball country, you know, in Poland they love volleyball in Scandinavia they love hockey you know so you need you need to make sure you do things that are super relevant and I think we can do more of as well smaller deals I think I think right now there's a lot of effort on the big one the flagship one then it's about how do you activate locally with some smart deals you know maybe not the ones that you will see all over your TV you know all the time and so on but that actually locally would feel ultra relevant i think that's that's very interesting because the price tag is very different but the way you activate it etc etc i think can be can be super powerful and now i have like 39 markets to to cover so how do i get into uh into um into a deal that actually make and makes make sense and it sounds like a lot of fun i mean we can't we can't deny it this job must must be taking you to some pretty great things yeah yeah it's fun but you need to be very very agnostic of things.

59:03You need to be very rational and make sure you don't let your emotions speak. So it's fun, but actually I think it's killing the fun. So I think it's from the outside, people say, oh, you got the best job in the world and so on. But because you need to always make rational decisions about everything, each time I go to a game and so on, I don't really look at the game. I look at the business opportunity, which is the exact opposite of what you go when you go watch sport. You know, before, I mean, for me, watching sport is actually doing the opposite than thinking about work. It's not thinking about work.

59:40It's about relaxing, being with friends, you know, having a beer and so on and just having fun. Now, it's the opposite. Like, I can't watch sport without thinking about work, which is, so you think, yeah, I do a lot. But then is it actually fun? It's debatable. it's debatable you can still go and decompress watching Marseille no? oh yeah yeah I love Marseille look on that note we I've loved it honestly this is fascinating we haven't as I said dived into this side of the industry properly from someone on your side of the table so getting a little bit of an understanding about this I know people will be so pleased so relieved to hear us ask some different questions as well so thank you so much for joining I've so enjoyed it thank you for having me thank you so much to Antoine for joining us today.

1:00:28It was a lot of fun asking a completely different set of questions to someone with a perspective and set of experiences we haven't yet shared on the show. Brands like Revolut are funding the global sporting commercial charge, so to properly understand why they are doing this and where the value lies most clearly for them is so important as we continue to strive to understand the power levers shaping sport today. It was a pleasure to record and I hope you enjoyed the show too. Now if you want to see more from today's show you can do so by going to YouTube or any of our other social channels across Instagram and TikTok, there are more snippets to share and bite-sized chunks to consume.

1:01:04And whilst you're there, please do like, subscribe and follow the show. As you'll hear from your other favourite pods, it makes a huge difference when bringing you the best guests and conversations from the world of sport, which is of course our endless aim. Thank you again for tuning in and we'll see you next week. Did you know less than half football transfers produce a return on investment. I'd argue the reason for that is most sporting directors don't have the information they need as fast as they need it in a format they can understand. Sometimes transfers can feel like back when you had music on your iPod, playlists on your computer and mixed CDs in your car.

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1:02:49We'll see you next time.