Money, Fashion and Influence at Leaders Week London

0:03Hello, and welcome to another episode of Leaders Worth Knowing, the sports business podcast from us here at Leaders in Sport. This is a podcast from Leaders in Sport for Leaders in Sport. It's also about Leaders in Sport. My name is James Emmett. I'm the editorial director here at Leaders in Sport. And with me, as ever, is my great good colleague, David Cushman. David, how are you? I am very well. Thank you, James. Here we are back in the studio, back at our regular base after a busy old Leaders' Week. Now, David, during Leaders Week, you'll recall that on the Tuesday, we spent the evening at the V &A, the Victoria and Albert Museum, splendid surrounds to honour a very worthy batch of award winners, including Hilary Mandel, who is the EVP of the Americas for IMG, who won one of the individual awards.

1:03And last week as well, you won't know this because you were busy prepping for the summit ahead. But I actually had Hilary right here in this room, in the studio. Good grief. Yes, that's right. We were recording something which we're going to release in a few weeks time. But Hilary came in here, took one look around and said, oh, my God, it's your bro room. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, for anybody who hasn't ever had the benefit of looking at some of the clips from this podcast on mainly LinkedIn, I suppose there is a little bit of a sort of bro vibe here. Well, it's sports stuff, isn't it? Yeah, it's classic sports.

1:43Sports stuff and podcast microphones. Yeah. It's classic bro. It's actually sort of step bro. Step bro stuff. Anyway, David, did you have overall, has the dust settled all over you and your involvement in Leaders Week? I've been cleaning the dust off for days now. But yeah, dust has settled. I actually learned on the weekend what the slang term for a moustache is. I'm not going to. No, it's NSFW. Not safe for podcasts. It's NSFW, but duster is in it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Nice leaders week. Thank you. Busy week. Lots going on. We should say, I think we said it enough times last week, but one more won't hurt.

2:23Thank you very much to everybody who came along and who spoke. And there were a lot of speakers and everybody who partnered with us, made it happen. And also a lot of people who said some very nice things during and after the summit as well. So, yeah, it was it's the culmination of a lot of work, a lot of energy, a lot of thinking time around here. And now we enter the debrief process, which is strictly internal, but always a very detailed affair. A few things happening, Dave, in and around the world of sports. Do you want my hot takes on them? Would have been useful had these things sort of happened during Leaders Week or just before.

3:12But big things. EA on the slate being bought for$55 billion. dollars gigantic Saudi the PIF and Silver Lake exactly would have would have been nice for us to be able to feature that yeah um Syria and La Liga have been given the go-ahead to do their foreign uh adventures to do their competitive league games abroad by UEFA there's still a couple of hurdles to uh overcome some some loops to behold some loops to jump through yes Etc. And also the Sumo's coming to London next week. Yeah. Fun. Yep. Fun, fun, fun. Exactly. Yeah, it's busy old stuff. The NBA's been in Abu Dhabi playing its pre-season games.

4:00So they weren't with us last week because they were out in force there. The NFL has been in town, in London town over the last weekend. The start of a three-game spin for them in London. And they've also got Madrid coming up as well this season. And they've announced they're going to Rio de Janeiro to build out their Brazilian slate next season when they'll be in Australia as well. So plenty happening there. And obviously, as we talked about last week and spool back on the feed, if you haven't listened to our episodes, our snap reaction episodes to Leaders Week, because there was a big NFL theme at the summit topped off by Roger Goodell, of course, who was with us.

4:41Yeah. Did you go to the NFL? Did I see you present at Tottenham Stadium? I was. My first ever visit to Tottenham Stadium. How did you find it? It's a fine stadium, isn't it? And you can very clearly see how it has been designed with the NFL in mind. Top-notch, as you would expect, event presentation from the NFL. I do think one of the things that they've got incredibly right about all these international games is they really nail the musical aspect. Tim Turbito leads the team at the NFL looking after presentation and music. But I do think they tap into, with the national anthems, with the halftime stuff, the right artists for the right location.

5:31And there've been some, I remember seeing some spine tingling clips of a local Brazilian singer singing the Brazilian national anthem when they played the game there a few weeks ago. Similarly, on Sunday, they get that absolutely spot on, clearly spend a lot of money on it. And as Netflix have been doing with the Christmas Day games, as we saw YouTube doing when they had the global coverage of the game in Brazil, these international games are being created and packaged up as an event. So there is the little halftime show, the little sort of mini Super Bowls, I think. And as we heard last week, of course, there's an expanded vision for the NFL and its international games.

6:15So I think we'll see more of that. They go for the sort of overall overarching sensory impact, don't they? They try and tick off a lot of the senses. It's actually, and this is purely anecdotal, it's actually quite a number of years since I've been to an NFL game in London. And I remember going to one of the very early ones in the first one, I think, even in 2007 at Wembley. And it was for the first few years. And we talked about it at the time, I'm sure, or wrote about it, whatever medium we were using at that time. But very much a sort of a bit of a novelty crowd, a bit of a novelty moment. There was the sort of cliche of, yes, every team is represented by its fans there.

6:57It's an NFL game. It's not necessarily particularly tribal. I think my experience of this is that there felt like there were a lot more American voices just around the around the venue, people coming in or maybe expats. It was a Cleveland Browns home game, but actually a load of Vikings fans as well. And I'm sure there were fans of other teams, but I do think it has moved very much on from that sort of novelty. I don't think there were too many people in that stadium who were going just because they'd seen an NFL game was happened to be on in London that weekend. It was either being built into trips, people coming over from the States or fans of the team, the teams taking the opportunity to come to a game when it's close to where they live.

7:42Yeah. Coming up on the episode today, we're going to take another little turn around the various sessions, the rooms at Leaders that we weren't able to cover on some of the Snap Rap podcasts last week. But in going through the material, there's plenty of interesting stuff. We're like the crows picking through the freshly tilled soil for juicy worms after the event, aren't we? That's what we're going to do today on the episode. Indeed. We've mined the footage to find the choicest cuts, the choicest worms. And there's a few interesting things as you sort of watch back. And one of the interesting things about working on the You Sweetland is you don't actually see an awful lot of it live.

8:31I haven't got a clue. So you really, we are really, as you may have heard last week, we're sort of flying by the seat of our pants in terms of reviewing what's said by who on site. Hopefully these are a few more considered reflections. And I think in some of the clips that we've picked out, you can start to see a few of the patterns and a few of the things that were being discussed quite widely on stage. But also, as we always like to talk about in the margins and around the venue, because there were quite a number of those points. And I suppose a useful starting point might be the wide world of sports investment, which certainly on the headline stage was pretty much a topic of conversation in every single session in some shape or form, whether that was actual investors on stage, whether it was organizations that have received investment or are looking to attract investment.

9:23And there's clearly an appetite and an interest from the audience and the industry to understand more about, I think, all aspects of that. And we programmed quite a lot of investment stuff very broadly because I think it is actually, it's an area where I think the sports industry want to know that the investment world, the high finance world is interested in them and energized by the sports industry. And that obviously comes across. It's also, should be said, unlikely that somebody would agree to speak at a sports business conference without that sort of positive mindset. And a lot of people talking very bullishly about the opportunity that sport presents and this idea of sport as an asset class and what that actually means and what that looks like.

10:15And we ran a couple of sessions that tried to focus in a little bit more on different aspects of investment. And one of those was a session, quite a punchy short session featuring Jeff Morad, the co-founder of MSP Sports Capital. So he's a really interesting guy. He is a former team executive. He's invested in sports teams. He was in the player representation business. And around about, I think it's about seven years ago, started MSP Capital as this investment platform with a guy called John Najafi. and Jeff was on stage talking about the art of the exit and what that looks like which I think is a topic that is increasingly becoming a front of mind topic for a good number of sports organizations most recently and the reason we wanted Jeff on stage and the reason he was keen to be on stage I think is was the news that MSP has exited from its minority investment in the McLaren F1 team and congratulations to McLaren as they wrapped up a second successive Constructors World Championship this past weekend in Singapore.

11:25Just a few weeks ago then the deal was done MSP have exited at a significant uplift on its initial investment in December 2020 and it's a real success story, I think, for the sports industry. It's certainly a success story for F1 team minority investment, which is something that we're seeing a lot more of. And Jeff was particularly interesting talking slightly more generally about the point at which when he's looking at an investment opportunity, he starts thinking about the exit. So let's listen to Jeff Murad. It's not really day two. The truth is, it's probably before we even invest. We at least begin to think about what an exit might look like.

12:15That having been said, we're very different than a traditional PE firm because we don't have a fund. Rather, we pass the hat and invest through SPVs, special purpose vehicles, and do individual partnerships for each one of our investments. So as a result, we don't have any fund pressure in terms of time, in terms of exit pressure or the like, but rather we can really assess each individual investment and make a determination as to what might make sense. John was in the Suns for 17 years. I was in my original representation business for 18 years. The truth is we're long-term with our focus. And if a circumstance ends up evolving sooner, certainly we're willing to consider.

13:08But the fact is we enter with a general proposition that this could be five, six years. It also could be 10 or 12. And the partners and LPs that come along with us for those rides have a clear understanding of the open-mindedness that we have in terms of exit. Geoff Morad there, the co-founder of MSP Capital, who was on the headline stage Leaders Week last week in conversation with the great Ebru Coxell. And on good form, they both were. Good. Do you think when you've sold a piece of your Formula One team, you remain invested in the sport? Do you think he watched the Singapore Grand Prix? Almost certainly.

13:48I think he told actually elsewhere in that session, he told a really good story and i nearly selected that clip but it was a little bit long but it's a really it really sort of exemplified or reinforced the power of uh connection and networking in that his relationship with um mclaren back in 2019 2020 was initially with um mum talakat the um bahraini sovereign Wealth Fund that is a major owner of the McLaren team. And he went to a race and he was granted 15 minutes with Zac Brown to sort of make the case for why MSP would like to sort of enter into a partnership. And it turned out, and he was sort of clocking it in real time as he was introduced to Zac Brown, that they actually knew each other back from the days when Jeff Mourad was involved in a NASCAR team and Zac Brown was selling sponsorship for NASCAR in his just marketing days.

14:50And they sort of, you know, instantly that breaks the ice. So that sort of power of relationship building without necessarily having an end goal, an end game, a business proposition in mind can sort of be very, very useful. Yeah. Someone else who will have been watching the Singapore Grand Prix with interest is James Foster, another of our headline stage speakers from last week. Now, James Foster is the SVP of Global Marketing and Communications at Hugo Boss, the fashion house. And actually, to your point on the sort of latent power of network, I hadn't realized this, but when I was walking James from the speaker room to the stage last week, He was chatting away about the shared connection that we have with Drew Barrand, who is the chief executive of GB Aquatics, Aquatics GB these days.

15:55And I think was around last week as well. But James went to school with him and remains very tired. Do you know what school, Dave? It's a good one. Oh, it would be one of the. It's called Gigglesworth. Gigglesworth. Yes. Yes. Very good. Early sports industry networking opportunities. Exactly. Anyway, old Gigglesworthian, James Foster, actually was involved in a really fascinating session halfway through the day on Thursday last week. one of a number of sessions that focused on this very fertile space for reaching people and marketing activity between fashion, sport, entertainment, culture, lifestyle, etc.

16:51And in fact, earlier in the week, we had been running a workshop where the suggestion was made that this idea of sport and fashion, sport and music, this no longer needs to be boxed off as a separate topic area in conferences. This is a constant presence that links, that everybody is now completely up to speed on. I would argue that maybe further down the pyramid in sport, it's not necessarily so intrinsically linked. Anyway, James Foster runs marketing at Hugo Boss, has a number of top-tier partnerships in sport, including with Aston Martin, the Formula One team. He'd come from some kind of swanky event on Regent Street to join us last week.

17:43So he would have been watching the Singapore Grand Prix with interest. I assume they didn't do anything, Aston Martin, in Singapore? I think they got some points. Fernando Alonso, seventh, yeah. Great. They've got Adrian Newey now, right? They have. So there's lots of high hopes around next season when there's a big rule change. Anyway, James Foster, really interesting on this space between sport and fashion. And he has serious chops in the marketing game. He was previously a marketing leader at Netflix, IKEA, and for many years before that, Adidas and Reebok. And we're going to play a clip in now where James in conversation with Corey Palat from Versus is talking about the rationale between Hugo behind Hugo Boss sponsorship activity he starts off by talking about the Formula One partnership with Aston Martin here and talks about really what they're what they are looking for is these money can't buy moments and more broadly when it comes to selecting marketing sponsorship properties.

18:56It is no longer about exposure, media value, etc. For Hugo Boss, at least, it is all about cultural traction, showing up in these cultural spaces that are going to make an impact with more than just sports fans. Anyway, here is James Foster, the SVP of Global Marketing and Communications at Hugo Boss. We have loyalty programs like a lot of brands and there's the money can't buy stuff and okay maybe if you've got a good bank account you can go to a paddock club or whatever thing but for us it's also how can we use that to bring our customers into a money can't buy experience and Aston Martin have been great partners in opening up those sort of doors which don't typically open and that's just helped us a great deal in building those long-term relationships with our customers but it's also helped them really build that brand so there's just so many different aspects to it.

19:48for sure and I think you've talked through so many ways in which these partnerships can be additive to the culture and experience of both fans but also those who work in the space however there's always a big commercial component in any sponsorship so when you're trying to find success for Hugo Boss in any sponsorship you look at you have things like visibility, sales, cultural relevance what are your personal yardsticks for what a good partnership and sponsorship looks like? So I would say all of those become hygiene factors to be honest the media value that you generate and things like that because I think anybody for any brand would say that's what we look for but for me what we look for is real cultural traction are we able to get people talking are they caring are they challenging us and it's fine that that we want people to challenge us but it's about not just having a one-way conversation it's about having a two-way flow and the partnerships whether it's in formula one or any of the sports that we're in it's not just about what happens on the field of play, it's about what happens in the culture around it and that's what's great because that allows us to engage with people and non-typical sport fans but just because we're doing something cool and interesting.

20:55So bringing our drivers or our tennis players or any of our athletes onto the catwalk or into the stores or doing things in an unexpected and interesting way so that we build the overall conversation outside of the typical audience, that's what I really look for. And doing things that prizes and delights and maybe challenges things a little bit that was james foster the svp of global marketing and communications at hugo boss in conversation with cory palat from versus last week uh at leaders week and i have to say james foster uh certainly in the top three for best dressed last week yeah you sort of have to be yeah yeah you you so have to be was our next clip speaker in the top three was our next clip speaker yes yeah what are you talking about was our next speaker who we've got a clip of in the top three basically we have got another fashion based clip so i'm i'm trying to clumsily i see what you mean draw a link uh there because fashion clearly something that is becoming more intertwined with sport and we've talked about that on the podcast it was a bit of a theme across the two days, I think, again, figuring out what that actually means in practice.

22:12Is it marketing? Is there a commercial play? There's a licensing element in all of this as well. And some of those themes, I think, came out in another session that you had eyes on. You're absolutely right. And you're talking about Foday Domboya, who is the founder and creative director at Labrum Fashion House. He was in a fascinating and impeccably well-presented session with Wretch32, who is a musician and executive. And yeah, really fascinating discussion between these two. And the link here is Arsenal. Yeah, well, they're Arsenal fans, yes. Wretch3-2 has also done work in sports spaces. He's written music for UEFA or for broadcasters who cover the Champions League.

23:10But yes, they were on stage with Alex Boateng from a UK arm of Def Jam. And they're all Arsenal fans, basically. But Foday Domboya has a partnership with Adidas and Arsenal for those in the know, either Arsenal fans or sports industry conoscente. First use of conoscente. You'll know that Foday Domboya has absolutely operated in this space where cultural traction happens for Arsenal. So the kind of triangle between Labrum, Adidas and Arsenal has produced a series of bits of work that have absolutely got on the hype train, got right to the front, chucked the driver out and ramped it up to 100 miles an hour.

24:10Labrum has this partnership with Adidas where they designed, or Fodde himself designed, Arsenal's third shirt last year. And it's part of the philosophy behind it is to celebrate Arsenal's African fan base. So the design and the colours are kind of pan-African and very clearly a nod to that part of the world and the role in which it plays in Arsenal's history, heritage and current fan base. and they have together participated in a number of really quite innovative bits of activity. They followed up the third kit last year with a serious fashion show which took place at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium and included Arsenal players walking for Labrum.

25:11this wasn't just Arsenal kit this was you know Labrum's serious fashion range and yeah absolutely creative innovative boundary breaking all of the things that James Foster in that previous Hugo Boss clip was saying that all of these best brand partnerships need to do but let's hear from Fodde Domboya now on the the kind of the genesis of that Arsenal partnership and how the runway show came about here's Foday Domboya the founder and creative director of Labyrinth it was literally when Adidas and Arsenal came to me about celebrating their Arsenal African fan base for me was it was everything because I'm African and I'm Londoner I grew up there and and celebrating that for me was so huge so what i did was the way we can actually make this more synonymous to everything that i believe and think of it's like let's take it back to where it all started for our parents when african countries start having their independence that's when our when our parents start moving and traveling migrates so that's why you've got the pan-african colors in it and when we've done the campaign we shot something in cireland where i was born so we were just thinking about how do we bring that from the fashion into sports and into the football pitch yeah and that's when I I say to Arsenal what would you feel like if we can have a runway in the stadium so hold on it happens and then it looks incredible but was that something you were confident they'd say yes to what take to ask a football club if you can use their stadium these are things that happen after you assess it but did you feel it shows a lot of the quality of the relationship you have with them or Were you just being brave and thinking, let's blow it out the water?

27:00How did you get to a point where a fashion designer has a show at the... In terms of that question, when you were going to ask it, were you confident they were going to say yes? Was it a wild idea? No, it was a wild idea. I just thought, me and my team was just thinking, you know what? The kit has lived now. Everyone knows the kit. It's here, the inspiration, what it is. And then we were like, where do we take it from here to take it around the world? And then I was like, you know what? I've always fascinated and walking out of the Emirate tunnel. I've never done that properly. I was like, you know, maybe we should ask this guy if we can do a show there where the place comes out in the kit.

27:37But in fashion, we literally threw it out there. And the first thing Arsenal said, I think that might be possible. So I was like, so what do we need to do? And I spoke to Adi that by then Anna was my contact. And the funny thing is, Anna was one of those people that always believed in everything. I thought to her, we can do it. maybe we do that and we've always delivered with everything she said so that arsenal was like let's see what we can do they're like do you need a floodlight you need xyz and then before we know within a week everything start moving so i had a space for the show initially because it's kind of a similar idea and then arsenal was like we're running it and then literally we just move within four weeks everything just come together that was fode domboya the founder and creative director at Labrum.

28:24Were you wearing Labrum last week, David? You were wearing an interesting colour on that final day. What was that? Yeah, it wasn't Labrum. It was sort of a khaki. I prefer to use the word olive. Olive, yes. No, very good. Yeah, I don't think I can be, I don't think I could pull off khaki. I don't know. Yeah. Let's see. Olive, though. Bloody nice suit, though. That's the headline. Is it? And I actually thought you were very well dressed through the week, actually. Do you know what? Something that we are missing here at Leaders is an official... A formal wear partner. An official presentation wear partner.

29:06And you and I are free for a fitting session at some stage over the next one to seven months, I'd say. Yeah. I mean, I think... Come and get us. Yeah. Lots of other stuff happening across the stages at Leaders Week. And I think, and we touched on this last week when we heard from Sue Day from the Football Association and from Sarah Massey. It's a new dawn. It's a Sue Day. Correct. Yeah. And from Sarah Massey, who's the managing director of the Women's Rugby World Cup, which was clearly a talking point through the whole week coming just off the back of the success of the England team, but also actually a successful tournament in global terms and a record breaking tournament.

29:52And of course, the the continued conversation and development around women's sport and its progress was a big theme. And I think one of the things we have tried to do actually consistently over a good five years now, I would say, at Leaders Week is to try and move that conversation forward, to try and avoid some of the cliches that you might find or to, you know, to do what we can to sort of help accelerate the conversation, the discussion around women's sport. And I think this is probably the year where we're starting to see now in all sorts of different ways, you know, in those record breaking tournaments, in sponsorship terms, in the financial models around carving out ownership of women's, particularly women's football teams.

30:45We're starting to see now the proof points and the case studies emerge and the sort of true end to end case studies. And in that regard, I think it was really interesting to hear from Britt Hadris from Pepsi, who and maybe the most notable thing here is Britt's job title. She's been at Pepsi for a long time, but seven months ago, she was given a new brief and a new role, which was and is director of global women's sport, which is quite a statement from, you know, one of the most recognizable consumer brands in the world. and I think a recognition of Pepsi's investment and attitude towards sponsorship of women's sport, most notably in June this year, a big renewal on its UEFA partnership running through to 2030, which includes not only the Pepsi brand, but the Lay's brand, which I think is only available in Europe, isn't it, Lay's?

31:47Or is it outside of UK? The Crisp brand. Frito Lay's, is that... Maybe there's a touch of America about it as well. Gatorade as well. But three very recognizable brands globally for sponsorship of UEFA's major competitions. And I know you watched a little bit of this as well, but there's great numbers. And Pepsi has collaborated with Nielsen Sport on a report to outline some of those big numbers around consumption of women's sport. But there's also, I think, this investment, investment beyond financial, investment in energy and time and new job titles like director of global women's sport. I think very significant in that they reflect how far women's sport has come.

32:42Yeah, and it's not just that. It is also a clear signal for people in the industry. Here is the person that you need to talk to. If you're involved in women's sport and you are looking to commercialise a particular area, we have a position that caters for that. It's Britt Hadris's. Shall we hear from Britt now? Let's do that. Here is Britt Hadris, the Director of Global Women's Sport at Pepsi. At PepsiCo, we look at our sponsorships the same, actually, across men's and women's, and it's across the three R's, which are reach, resonance, and ROI. It's probably not surprising that a lot of our women's partnerships do really, really well when it comes to resonance.

33:27Things like purchase intent, consideration, a brand for me, things like that. But we've also seen that they're performing really well in terms of ROI, because they really can drive growth for our business and our brands. We feel so strongly about that. We actually partnered with Nielsen Sport this year and created a white paper called Undervalued to Unstoppable, the unstoppable rise of women's sport. And in that, we see that women's football in particular is going to be a top five sport by 2030, which that is a massive scale audience. And by the way, it's predominantly a female audience. As Sue mentioned, women make 75 % of the purchasing decisions in the household.

34:13So suddenly this becomes a mass reach opportunity with a high value audience that then allows us to go into the business and explain that this is a good business decision for our business and our brands. And it's probably a good business decision for the other brands in the room as well. Britt Hadris, the director of global women's sport at Pepsi, who was speaking on the headline stage at Leaders Week London just last week and painting a picture of the health of women's sport as she sees it and Pepsi's investment in it as a major global brand. And the sponsorship is always something that we, you know, think a lot about in terms of what we program.

35:03And there are a number of really interesting brand conversations on stage. And by the way, if you were at Leaders Week last year, last year, last week, if you're at Leaders Week last year, you know, that's fine. But if you were at Leaders Week last week, you can. Do you know what? On that note. I'm just doing the plug for the app. Can I just interject, though? Because I've seen, it's amazing this year, and I'm not naming any names, but it's fantastic to see the write-ups from all the people who came along. But you absolutely can tell who's used AI to do the write-up. because sure, maybe there's an issue with our website, not categorizing very clearly who spoke in what year, but it is amazing to see reviews of speakers from previous years, you know, fit into the current reviews.