Charlie Marshall and Guy-Laurent Epstein push UC3 into the limelight

0:04Guy-Laurent Epstein:Hello and welcome to Worth Knowing, the sports industry podcast from Leaders, where we talk to the people worth knowing in the business of sport this week. I'm Leaders Editorial Director James Emmett, and the conversation you are about to hear is with myself and Content Director David Cushnon, as we trooped off into central London last week to meet Guy-Laurent Epstein and Charlie Marshall, the co-managing directors of UC3, which is the joint venture set up between the EFC, European Football Clubs, and UEFA to manage all European club football competitions, men's and women's. Guy Laurent and Charlie both have day jobs.

0:47Guy-Laurent Epstein:Guy Laurent has been at UEFA since 2002 and is the long-time marketing director there. And Charlie is the CEO of the EFC and joined when it was the ECA in 2018. UC3 itself has been around since 2017, but kicked off in earnest as an operational company and moved from advisory to managing last year. And as you'll hear from the conversation, is set on a course to be a much more influential body in European and indeed world football in the not too distant future. Enjoy the conversation. Well, Charlie Marshall and Gilo Epstein, thanks very much for seeing us here in, it has to be said, your beautiful house here in West London.

1:40Guy-Laurent Epstein:The house of UC3. The house of UC3. Now that's got a ring to it. That's got a ring to it. Can you explain for us, please, where we are and why we're here. I take you don't mean geographically speaking. No, I really want to zero in on the geography. Okay, well, we can start with the geography. It's good here to be in London. Thank you very much for having us on your show and talking to us a little bit today. A lot of things going on in London this week. Obviously, the FT Summit yesterday. And with our UC3 hats on, we're obviously very busy at work with the new commercial program that we are still in the early days of.

2:10Guy-Laurent Epstein:But it's, as we'll talk about a bit later, hopefully going quite well. This is all about the sales of the commercial rights to the European Club competitions post-2027. That's for the men's competitions. We may also talk about the other competitions, particularly the women's, which is under the banner of UC3. That's kind of why we are where we are geographically, at least. And today, you're obviously in your most important meeting right now. Without question. Without a shadow of a doubt. but you're speaking to various media across the day on a mission to sort of get the word out about UC3. Is that right?

2:44Guy-Laurent Epstein:You're explaining what UC3 is today. That's a very fair and well picked up on point. Yes. What is it, Charlie? What is UC3? Well, shall I start? Because there's a lot to say. UC3 is quite a new company. We've probably just had our first birthday officially, but the heritage and the story does go back quite a way. And I think that's important to start with because the context behind UC3 is as important as what we're doing now on a day-to-day basis. Almost a decade ago, back in 2017, part of the ongoing partnership and relationship between, as it was then, ECA and UEFA was to look more closely at the commercial side, the business side of the club competitions, and all of the amazing work that UEFA had done since the very beginning of the Champions League, back in the early 90s, and to try to find a way of bringing the clubs closer, both in terms of their understanding of how the commercial side of the competitions worked, but also in terms of the input that they could provide to try to continue to enhance, maximize, and improve the business side, the commercial side of the competition.

3:50Guy-Laurent Epstein:So back in 2017, there was a joint venture created, it was called the UEFA Club Competitions SA or company, and that existed for a number of years as an advisory company composed half of people nominated by ECA, so half clubs, and half of people nominated by UEFA, so half, let's say, competition organizer. And that body worked together. Giro and I sort of first started to work together within that body over a number of years. And I guess it was one or two cycles, maybe two, maybe three, maybe even three. So it was a kind of a gestation period, if you like, a new way of working. But ultimately, UEFA was still doing the entirety of the sales and the commercial program, of course, on the men's side, working with team marketing at the time.

4:32Guy-Laurent Epstein:But the view quite early on, really sort of as of 2018, 2019, was that this collaboration should ultimately become a company in and of itself, an independent company that was going to be tasked with actually managing the rights, not just advising on how they were commercialized, but managing and commercializing them itself. And through quite a turbulent time in football, particularly the early part of this decade, This was one of the core projects that ECA, I'm going to call it ECA until I get to the present day, because as you know, we rebranded last year. This is one of the core projects that we worked on together with UEFA that had a real momentum and a real persistence through all of that turbulent time.

5:12Guy-Laurent Epstein:And the reason for that was that it's a kind of highly strategic move in terms of the governance around European football, particularly on the commercial side. And it was well bought into by both UEFA and the clubs as a way of making sure that we could create an environment with much more partnership between the competition and the clubs when it came to designing and executing these commercial programs, which would then breed much more innovation in terms of how we can package, market, commercialize the rights, what we can offer to the commercial partners, how we can kind of become closer with them, all parts of the ecosystem, participants and competition organizer.

5:47Guy-Laurent Epstein:The stability that it brought was completely different from that of the past, which was sort of quite short term in its thinking. This is designed to be much longer term in its thinking, which also brings the ability to kind of take a few more risks, if you like, to look a bit longer, to do things differently, not necessarily just work in the kind of the established way of selling medium sponsorship rights on sort of three year basis and sort of think afresh every time, but actually start to become more sophisticated to blend certain elements together, to think about longer term cycles, to think about future investments, to think about where we want to take some risk and where we want to take some reward, short, medium and long term.

6:21Guy-Laurent Epstein:And all of that, all of those dynamics were really at the core of the thinking. And so early last year, we were able to bring this company to life. It now has some nice colors and a proper name. More importantly, it has a proper team. So it has a staff and it's actually doing all of the things that we planned it to do. Take us inside that a little bit, Gilo. You're running this jointly. You've both got other broader responsibilities as well within your organizations. Give us a sense of how much time you're spending on this, what the sort of, you know, how a regular week shapes up and a little bit about the team as it's growing and being assembled.

6:58Charlie Marshall:So we have a team of about today's 16 people, but meant to grow to another up to 20, 25 at one point in the coming month or years. Part of the team were working at UFR on these specific projects. So they basically moved from the UFR ad to the UC3 ad, but in a very similar capacity because they had the experience and it was important to keep this expertise that was created internally. But also we recruited new blood from outside because it's also important to bring new way of thinking as much as we did as well to bring a new narrative by moving from team marketing to relevant and we'll probably cover it a little bit later.

7:42Charlie Marshall:I mean, I don't know for Charlie, for myself, I spend a full time on UC3 and a full time on the UFA job. So 100 % on both. 100 % on both. So because and there is no week looking like the previous one. It's a permanent flow of needs on both of the jobs. So there is no real pattern in the workflow, but we cannot prioritize one to the other. So basically it's 200 % jobs. That sounds hard. Yeah, but fun. Yeah. Okay.

8:12Guy-Laurent Epstein:Two email addresses or one email address? Two email addresses. Two email addresses. Okay. Keep it compartmentalized.

8:18Charlie Marshall:Yeah, it's two different. We're quite good and we work extremely well with Charlie. This to be disciplined and making sure that we focus on the UC3 remit with the team because they need our support, obviously, to to make sure that we move ahead quite swiftly. And we're quite disciplined together to make sure that we are available anytime for the team to be able to push things forward. Let's cover the really important stuff once we can.

8:44Guy-Laurent Epstein:Talk us through the logo. And what does UC3 stand for?

8:47Charlie Marshall:It can stand for whatever you want somehow. The original thinking is that as the original name of the company is UFA Club Competition SA. That was not probably the most sexy name that you could find. Here, it's probably an acronym to reflect UFA Club Competition Company. So the three Cs. So you could have been U3C or UC3. So it's the background to the name and the logo, well, it's always subjective, I guess. So we try to create a connection with football. Maybe you could see some football panels into it. You could see a collaborative spirit into different parts. Basically, you can see whatever you want, but we feel that it's a brand that helps us to put things together.

9:40Charlie Marshall:It's in the eye of the beholder.

9:42Guy-Laurent Epstein:I often use it slightly more abstractly because I think the three key entities coming together here are UEFA, EFC and the clubs. If I can use the clubs, you know, as one entity. So that kind of, that trinity, if you like, is also kind of trying to be the holy trinity. Charlie, you ran through some of the key benefits behind the idea of going full-blooded into this venture. I wonder whether you can sort of move that conversation forwards a bit and talk about tangible opportunities ahead. And then likewise, the other side of that coin and the challenges that you're facing right now and anticipate facing in the future.

10:22Guy-Laurent Epstein:Yeah, sure. I think it's important to say that with any venture like this, you're on a journey. So you need to have a very clear understanding of the overall benefit story, you know, the strategy that underlies it, and then what ultimately the potential can be. But certainly in our world where you're dealing with transitions all the time, it's also important not to run too hard too fast. And also there's no need to. You know, this is not a kind of transformation story that has created because something was broken and needed fixing. You know, quite the opposite. This is a story that's been created because there's a huge amount of potential in the commercial story of these competitions going forwards.

11:03Guy-Laurent Epstein:And we wanted to put ourselves on the right track to be able to unleash that when the time is right. to try to get a bit more tangible. What we're already seeing is probably changes in the structure and the nature of the commercial program that would have been difficult to achieve before without this very high level of collaboration and without a kind of fully fledged joint venture to bring these partners together to make decisions together. And some examples of that all off the back, by the way, of a fantastic set of competitions. Ultimately, that's what we're here do. We're here to commercialize competitions.

11:37Guy-Laurent Epstein:And of course, you guys will have covered at length the evolving nature of the UEFA Club competitions, particularly the big change that was made in the format of those competitions earlier in the cycle, at the beginning of this cycle. So with that as our core, and it's a privilege to have that as our core, on the media side, you can see the new approach that we took to selling the rights in the top five markets, doing that as a simultaneous process, the change in the length of term, the first year that on a sort of holistic basis, we have moved to looking at four-year cycles rather than three-year cycles.

12:08Guy-Laurent Epstein:Next week, we'll launch a second wave of tenders across nearly 20 markets, something that's never been done before. And those things really designed to take advantage of the changing dynamics in the media markets, right? On the sponsorship side, a brand new structure for the commercial program, something that's very different to what existed before. And then I think particularly on the club side, a real push to have the clubs as participants in creating that commercial program that attracts and delivers value for our partners by, and again, this is not something that happens overnight, but by sort of trying to stretch and push the boundaries a little bit of how clubs can bring their own stories, their own content, their own rights, where it's appropriate to do so, more into the program and, you know, give more access, give more stories, give more sort of belonging and partnership to those partners that may not have existed before.

13:01Guy-Laurent Epstein:Gilo, we had you on the podcast just before the changes to the Champions League came into effect. We're sort of in the second season of that now. We've been through the biggest change, I suppose, in terms of the single group phase. What's your sort of report card and what have you heard from key stakeholders like the clubs, like the broadcasters, like your partners about what's worked and maybe what might still need to be tweaked?

13:25Charlie Marshall:I think collectively and globally, all the feedback is extremely positive from the various stakeholders. You could say that maybe the start was a bit slower because any change in the conservative sports environment is questioned. So the start of last season maybe was a bit slower. But the match day eight of the first season has been the trigger for a clear understanding of what it meant. The ability to qualify in the top eight, the ability to qualify in the top 24. I mean, everything came to life at the occasion of match date. And you can see that in the second season already, clubs and fans and broadcasters that made a bet in the first cycle because it was not existing, understood the dynamics of this new format, this new league format, by saying that you can't take the risk to be dependent on the results of other teams.

14:16Charlie Marshall:You're in charge of your own destiny, so you have to win as many games as you can and you have to score as many goals as you can. And we could see that the goal difference has been a huge factor for the qualification this season. So this is well understood and it has created a lot of jeopardy in all the games across the season, across the league phase, where there are a few elements that are extremely important. I believe is that there are more big clashes along the league phase. Every matchday, you have big matches that are not only relevant domestically, because obviously everybody that supports a team wants to see their team, whatever is the opponent, they will.

14:57Charlie Marshall:But it's extremely important globally, whereby as a football fan, you will watch matches that are not necessarily those of your own team, because it's great football that is made available. So that's, I think, the feedback from the fans has been extremely positive about this because it enhances the midweek football to a very large degree. And it's been also reported by the broadcasters that see their audience growth in a proper manner because of the interest that it has created. Broadcasters are also very interested and very positive about the extension of the league phase to include January fixtures.

15:34Charlie Marshall:because that was probably lacking in the past that there was a window from mid-December to mid-February where there was no European football. And January is very important for broadcasters for the subscription phase post-Christmas. And they saw it as a real benefit. The clubs, I would let Charlie answer on the clubs, but I mean, the response in this season and the way they play the competition is obviously extremely positive. We changed one thing that we tweaked after the first season is the fact that if you qualify in the first eight, you would host the return match at home, which was identified as probably a weakness or not as good as a benefit if you were performing in the first phase.

16:18Charlie Marshall:We tweaked that one to the satisfaction, I believe, of everybody, the participation, the participant clubs and the fans. And it gives an additional incentive to end up in the top eight. So Sporting League is very positive. So altogether, I mean, And we are extremely satisfied. The feedback we receive is extremely positive. And I'm happy to tweak anything more. But so far, we feel that we are in a very strong position with where we are today.

16:46Guy-Laurent Epstein:Interesting dynamic developing here where I'm interviewing Charlie and you're interviewing Gile. Shall we start? We're sort of taking it in turns. I'll start interviewing you. We can do that later. Charlie, I just wanted to pick up on the story. I expected that one. It's just because Charlie said something earlier that I thought David was going to follow up on, but he was desperate to speak to you instead. Now he's muffing your homework. Charlie, you mentioned the opportunity to get the clubs more involved and bring some rights to the table, potentially, and it's a work in progress and doesn't happen in an instant.

17:18Guy-Laurent Epstein:Can you expand on what that might look like? Yeah. The first thing to say is that we're always very, very cognizant of the need for clubs to run their own commercial programs outside of the centralized programs that sit within the competitions. That has been a continual and will always be a continual theme of the work that we do. And actually, that's another benefit of UC3, I think, from the kind of understanding point of view, that the more that clubs can understand the competition's context and the competition can understand the club's context, then the more we can work in symbiosis. So that's the really important thing, because what this is not is a land grab for more rights to come into the central program.

17:55Guy-Laurent Epstein:But there is a lot of white space, it involves quite a lot of sophistication and a lot of kind of case-by-case understanding of where various clubs are and their commercial programs. Also, the context of how clubs think about these things. Some clubs, and we've got many, many examples of some clubs, are very, very happy to be open access, much more open access. They like to get players to tell stories. We see this a lot in the women's game, for example, now, where the way that clubs manage and work with their players is very different to the way they work in the men's game. It's much more open.

18:24Guy-Laurent Epstein:There's much more of an understanding about the need for everyone to be promoters of a game that's trying to grow and the sport that's trying to grow. But even in the men's game, if we can find the right opportunities to sort of show that things can be done a bit differently, that stories can be told in a bit more of an open way, a bit more of an engaging way, that there's stuff around the match that maybe wasn't being brought into that story before that can be brought into the story without necessarily impacting on other kind of commercial deals or obligations that clubs might have, then that's going to bring value to the competition.

18:50Guy-Laurent Epstein:it's important to say it's not an easy one and it's not a one-size-fits-all approach it's not about creating a new set of commercial regulations and say everybody now has to do that no but it's about creating an environment where there's just much more cooperation and collaboration we can find those opportunities when those opportunities exist yeah to maximize the value for everyone and and so i'm going to keep giving you tangible examples because i know that's what you're after yeah um you know every every sponsor every main sponsor of the ucc commercial program has a different contract, right?

19:22Guy-Laurent Epstein:Has a different set of rights and a different kind of construction of that commercial program that best fits their needs. So now we can bring the clubs into each of those discussions at the right time. So, well, okay, sponsor X, what are your objectives? How can we help there? What can we find for you? What can we give you that's going to actually enhance the value of this package for you? And it will be a different answer to sponsor Y and sponsor Z. But because we work in the way we work now, it's much more of a two-way relationship between UEFA and the clubs, we can find those opportunities.

19:52Guy-Laurent Epstein:As in they might have specific markets or specific clubs even that they want to work particularly closely with. It can get very regional, it can get very local, it can focus on specific assets, specific clubs. Yeah, absolutely. And you're anticipating that being brought in for the cycle that's being sold now? Yes, you'll see examples of it in the cycle. Yeah, absolutely. A fairly seismic bit of industry news was obviously relevant coming in as your new partner after such a long period working with team. Give us the report card so far and how life is working with a new partner. You like your report cards.

20:31Guy-Laurent Epstein:Yeah, you do. Is that a second report card? That's a second report card. I'm unsure who to address this question to at this stage now. Well, we swap tickets. I'll take it. Yeah, I think the first thing to say is that the team has done an amazing job with these competitions over a long, long period of time. They've been fantastic stewards of them and fantastic partners and they knew them inside out. There was and there is kind of right now a time of change, right? We've been talking about it in the discussion so far. There's a number of different factors that are coming together to create that time of change.

21:04Guy-Laurent Epstein:The relationship between the clubs and UEFA is evolving. The competitions themselves are evolving. The markets are evolving at breakneck speed, whether we're looking at media or sponsorship. And in that kind of, in that very dynamic environment, we felt strongly that there was a need to tell a different story, to kind of get a different kind of a narrative out there. And that was the opportunity that we really had. And so with absolutely no disrespect to the team, because they did absolutely nothing wrong, we looked for a partner that could come and help us tell a different story, a different narrative that had an outside in perspective, which none of us were able to tell.

21:38Guy-Laurent Epstein:That's like the curse of the incumbent, isn't it really? So to bring a fresh set of eyes with a different kind of an experience, a different way of helping us tell the narrative, that was really what led to the switch. And how is it working practically, that relationship with Relevant? Obviously, with the, you know, getting behind this new UC3 venture, you talked about managing a set of rights rather than simply consulting on them, advising on them. Where does UC3 end and Relevant start? Who makes the decision on, You talked about the European going to all five big European markets at the same time.

22:10Guy-Laurent Epstein:Is that a UC3 kind of idea? Is that a relevant idea? How does it come together? Who's in charge? You know, who's got relationships with who? Yeah, how are the strings being pulled?

22:21Charlie Marshall:I believe it is somehow very similar to the way it was working in the past between UEFA that was the right holder in the previous cycles and team marketing in the sense that team at the time and relevant today are the marketing agency and sale agents of historically UFR and now UC3 that is the new rights holder assigning all the contracts for the club competition so basically the responsibility lies with UC3 so all the ultimate decisions are taken by UC3 upon recommendation and work together with relevant that is the arms and eyes on the market bring us the insight, making recommendations on how to approach the market and for optimizing the value.