What can and can’t be sold? And other questions Gianni Infantino might be asking himself

18:16David Cushnan:And the next broadcast media contract, I think, is going to be quite pivotal in that. And if there is an upswing in that, then that probably does you know from a sort of overall point of view help justify despite all the teething troubles that you mentioned renaming teams to things like MI um you know to to bringing in uh the nomenclature of um multi-club franchises with a home a heartland in India I wonder whether

18:52James Emmett:you know the um cricket is in the olympics obviously for the first time um in 2028 um too much fanfare of course they're going to be playing 2020 um cricket uh to the 2020 format the 100 of course has sprung up has it did it obviously it's six years old that came after the decision to include cricket in the la olympics did it oh not sure not sure because i do wonder So whether the 100 is perhaps a better format for Olympic cricket, a more sort of immediately understandable and, you know, obvious model to do double headers and whatnot.

19:34David Cushnan:Yeah, it's quite possible. It is still a format that is unique. It hasn't been taken up elsewhere as T20 leagues continue to sprout up. And, you know, one, another one of those T20 leagues to keep an eye on is the new European T20 Premier League, which will have six franchises, which I think is starting in a few weeks time and has, again, some ownership from India and former players are involved in that as well. So these short form cricket franchise competitions continue to spring up and grow. And the 100 sort of sits as part of that, but slightly distinct. What else is going on, David? Well, since we have been off for a few days, James, I have to tell you, quite a lot has been happening.

20:29David Cushnan:Let's start, shall we, with Larry Berg, who has been named the next commissioner of Major League Soccer. Berg is the co-owner of LAFC and he will succeed Don Garber at the turn of the year with Garber transitioning into a chairman's role. Berg will divest his stake in LAFC before he assumes the, is this a word, commissionership? But yes, a new man at the helm of Major League Soccer, which is really significant after 27 years of Don Garber.

20:58James Emmett:Isn't the word commission? Perhaps.

21:03David Cushnan:Elsewhere, former McLaren F1 team principal Eric Boulier has been named CEO of WRC Promoter, the operator of the World Rally Championship, as part of an agreement which sees French tech platform Cosmobilis and Park Square Capital acquire the organisation. World Motorsport governing body, the FIA, called it the biggest deal in the history of the World Rally Championship. And Professional Fighters League has merged with most valuable promotions, the combat sports company set up by Jake Paul and Nikisa Bedarian. PFL's John Martin will run the newly combined business, but it's the MVP brand that will be retained across the joint entities boxing and MMA activity.

21:44James Emmett:Nesta Richardson has joined Fenway Sports Management as director of global partnerships for Liverpool. There are new senior hires at Love Pro Volleyball. Tiffany Reeves has come in as Chief Marketing Officer and Kinsey Powell Fleming as CFO. Mar Ofowaku is the new Chief of Staff. A consortium led by former Newcastle United co-owner Amanda Stavely is buying a 25 % stake in West Ham United, acquiring the shares held by the family of David Gold. However, West Ham co-chair Daniel Kutinsky, who acquired 27 % of the Championship Club then in the Premier League in 2021, is believed to be against PCP Capital Partners, that's Stavely's group's plan, to take control of the club.

22:36James Emmett:So one to watch there. Wow, it's been a busy week, two weeks in the sports industry. Things happen, yes.

22:44David Cushnan:I feel like we're missing something, though, in terms of a big thing that's happened?

22:49James Emmett:I've heard so many opinions about this Gianni Infantino plan to sell off a stake in a new commercial entity in FIFA, an entity designed to commercialise the World Cup. I've heard so much stuff about this, David, on my break. Once you've been trampolining, I've been listening to podcasts. us and what i found i i really enjoy it when um a sports this is obviously the very top end of the you know a sports industry story but i love it when sports industry sports business stories get covered in the mainstream because uh it's it's it's fascinating the angu obviously there There's a huge amount of cynicism and built-in negativity with which these developments get covered.

23:51James Emmett:But there's an automatic sort of fans' view being taken, I always think. And I found it very entertaining to watch all of these, and listen to all of these football journalists mainly, sort of clutching their pearls at what an awful plan this is to ruin football forever from Jenny Anfantino.

24:12David Cushnan:Yeah, there's a visceral reaction to this that I'm not sure you would get for anything else. We should, you know, in the name of great journalism, tip our hat to Martin Ziegler of the Times. And I think the team at the Financial Times as well who broke this story at about the same time. So all the flowers to those guys. And it seemed as if this is a situation where that, you know, those scoops, that early reporting of this has kind of scuppered the comms plan around this such as it was because it prompted a big rush to try and outline what this plan that was being cooked up by, it seems, Gianni Infantino and a very small cohort of people around him.

25:05James Emmett:I wonder what the plan would have been, though. I wonder what the plan was. Had it not come out? Because I hear in the reporting that Infantino actually wanted to go public with this, you know, on the final weekend of the World Cup. And he obviously didn't for some reason. And then more or less a week afterwards, it comes out via Martin Ziegler and the Financial Times guys. it seems the negative reaction from football bodies at least has been partly stoked by a huge negative reaction from the media but also from their outrage, justified or otherwise, that they were not included in the planning process.

25:46James Emmett:I wonder if, had this not come out, was Infantino's next move to kind of garner internal support around the football family? You have to imagine it.

25:58David Cushnan:must have been. You know, that would be a charitable reading of this, I suppose, that actually the fact that the media got hold of this story and published it, prevent, you know, they did that before Infantino had had the chance to put this together. Now, against that, the counterpoint to that is actually when FIFA quite quickly after the story broke, put out its statement detailing this, there was such a level of detail in the plan that it looked like a sort of done deal that was, you know, should have been presented weeks, months, potentially years ago to the key stakeholders, which is, as you say, has stoked sort of, you know, this reaction within football, which sort of takes us to where we are now.

26:44David Cushnan:The plan has been dropped for now. Let's see if it re-emerges in any, you know, shape or form in the future. Now the story seems to be evolving into what is the future of Gianni Infantino as he loses much of the support that he thought he had sewn up ahead of the FIFA presidential election next March. Where will a challenger emerge from? And actually, what does the role of or the office of the presidency or the top person at FIFA actually look like? And is there structural change to rein in the powers of a president and how that works within the current structures of not just FIFA, but the world of football?

27:34David Cushnan:And I guess more broadly, what can and should be for sale in sport and who decides that?

27:42James Emmett:Indeed. It does strike me, again, in the reporting of this and the pearl clutching around it, people complain sort of about governance structures in sport when there are these old fashioned historical federation entities that exist. to both govern a sport, uphold its rules, et cetera, set its calendar, but also to commercialize it in an increasingly modern and lucrative way. that is often that conflict or that balance which happens at FIFA which happens at UEFA which happens at the IOC which happens at pretty much any sports federation that balance is often held up and criticized as a very difficult one to strike effectively the fact that you're both running the game and commercializing it puts you in the line of all sorts of conflicts of interest That being the case, is Infantino's plan to spin out commercial operations at FIFA not exactly the sort of thing that a modern sports federation should be doing and should be applauded for?

29:13James Emmett:Now, I accept that bringing in private investment into that vehicle is very challenging and, you know, is another different element for, you know, pushing for let's have more breaks. Let's putting money at the center of everything that FIFA tournaments should be about. The initial concept, though, is surely a sound one.

29:39David Cushnan:Well, the initial concept has happened in a number of other sports. If you look at volleyball, if you look at actually at a national governing body level, what British Cycling is just doing, and we'll have Darren Henry on the podcast in a few weeks who can explain that, creating a separate entity to handle your commercial affairs, essentially, is something that...

30:00James Emmett:Well, in tennis as well, WTA with commercial backing, CVC in for WTA Ventures.

30:06David Cushnan:Yeah. And if you look at F1, you have F1 as the commercial rights holder and the FIA, the World Motorsport Governing Body, as the regulator, as the governance entity, as the governing body. It is the modern sports model. It is the modern sports model. But you make a very good point. And the question is, how much modernizing do we want from our governing bodies? and there is maybe not a straightforward answer and maybe it is absolutely dependent on what is for sale and what is being proposed here because i was thinking about because there is also an element here and this is the world cup it is football there is nothing that is going to provoke as visceral a reaction of this but i think there's a very short list a very small list i'm going to read some events, things in sport that I would suggest can't or shouldn't be sold.

31:03David Cushnan:Or are events, tournaments that would, if it was, you know, if it was suggested that they were to be sold, would provoke such a strong public reaction, public industry reaction, that it would just make it impossible. So clearly, as we have seen over the last few days, the World Cup seems off the table. You could make the very same argument for the Olympics, I think, straightforwardly. How about these as others that are probably not sellable? I would suggest Wimbledon. I would suggest the Ashes. I would suggest the Masters. I would suggest potentially the Open Championship and Ryder Cup. I would suggest in England, the FA Cup.

31:54David Cushnan:And as we have seen, despite several attempts, I would suggest in Germany, the Bundesliga. I'm not sure genuinely, I mean, feel free to add suggestions. I'm not sure there is much else that would fall into that category in sport at the moment. I think you might have said a few years ago, the All Blacks, But of course, three or four years ago, New Zealand rugby did finalise a deal to bring in Silver Lake to, and this might sound familiar, acquire a minority stake in a new commercial holding company that was set up to better commercialise the All Blacks.

32:32James Emmett:I think the thing that all of those things that you've listed out have in common is that they are above most other sports properties in the world. They hold heritage and tradition at the core of what their brand is about. Now, in modern sports marketing parlance, the brand of all of those events, properties that you just listed, trades on heritage and history. I think if you started, if you started a new tennis major, I mean, obviously it wouldn't happen, but if you just invented a new Grand Slam tomorrow, Indian Wells, for example, becomes a Grand Slam. You could very straightforwardly, and it has exactly the same right space on the calendar, whatever, let's get rid of Wimbledon as a Grand Slam.

33:24James Emmett:Let's put Indian Wells in there. Of course, you could absolutely spin that out as a private enterprise. Likewise, any of the golf tournaments. Likewise, a new football competition. It's to do...

33:35David Cushnan:Well, likewise, a new cricket competition.

33:36James Emmett:It's to do with history and heritage at the sort of core of a brand.

33:41David Cushnan:Absolutely. On the J.P. Morgan, and there's so many angles to this, but on the J.P. Morgan piece, I read an interesting article in something called The Banker, where a person involved in the J.P. Morgan team had said, was quoted as saying, that they'd absolutely expected the public reaction to this to be, quote, hysterical. And anything with soccer gets the same reaction. The only thing maybe more polarizing is politics. So that's the sort of, you know, somebody close to the JP Morgan transaction or the involvement here. That's their take on this.

34:20James Emmett:Cynical old bankers versus cynical old journalists.

34:22David Cushnan:Yeah, but it does depend ultimately, you know, your reaction to this story, I think, depends on your belief system, really. Do you think, are you somebody who thinks that everything in the world has a price? are you somebody who sort of values to whatever extent as you say tradition and heritage and you know the idea of the world cup um not being simply a product but being something that is you know that fifa are the very much the custodian of rather than the owner of and you know we can debate debate that because my view would be that world cup is absolutely a product but can also It can also be what the vast majority of people have been saying over the last week or so, but also something that isn't within FIFA's mandate to be able to hive it off.

35:19James Emmett:Totally. And you'd much rather the lesser of two evils in FIFA and the confederation system be in charge of divvying out where the World Cup goes every four years, the fact that it happens every four years, where it sits in a calendar. you'd rather the fairness that that system imparts on the world cup be in place than commercially focused entities who want to drive the most revenue every time because we'll see a world cup every two years and it will happen in america every time um and that's just what it will become um it does just bamboozle me that you know people can hold these two different belief systems in their mind at the same time i'd point to someone like henry winter right who is an established uh football journalism doyen right over here in the uk and he's got a very good podcast actually with christian purslow um sort of looking at the business aspects of football but it still sort of dumbfounds me that he can be so outraged by this impersonally outraged by this proposal he can put across the point that the world cup is absolutely not a product but at the same time and on the very same day he can be opining that such and such a football player should be transferred to another club for for 80 million pounds not 60 million pounds this player is worth 80 million pounds where does he think all that money in the game comes from Like, why is a player worth 80 million pounds?

36:54James Emmett:It's only because they're part of a productized system which generates all of this revenue that you can arbitrarily decide this player is worth this extraordinary sum of money, not this extraordinary sum of money. This is generated by media rights and sponsorship rights and ticket sales. It absolutely is a product. Football is a product and is, you know, subject to this swirl of business around products.

37:25David Cushnan:it's it's going to be fascinating there's obviously now you know this is now moving into okay as we said what is the future of infantino does he survive this um he has lost a lot of support he has some support still from uh several member associations um clearly there is a sort of credibility and perception issue that he's got to change if he does want to stay on. Honestly, if he does still have the stomach to stay on after this, this will be pretty chastening one way or another for him. A challenger seems almost certain to emerge, assuming Infantino doesn't drop out, resign or feel the need to go.

38:09David Cushnan:And he does commit to fighting what it now seems will be an election campaign rather than a coronation. And several names have been mentioned. Victor Montaliani's name has come up a lot. The president of CONCACAF, very well known to us at Leaders, been on the Leaders stage a number of times. He's a very good communicator. He is, you know, he's been in all the right rooms in terms of football governance and politics for a while. And as much as it was the sort of infantino show over the summer at the World Cup, CONCACAF clearly played an important role in making that happen. So he would be one probably standout candidate.

38:51David Cushnan:I just wonder whether there's other maybe slightly more left field candidates who could emerge and be supported by a UEFA as a block, if that block does hold the 55 member associations that make up FIFA. And that will be a fascinating element moving forward. As well as, again, as we mentioned, this idea of how can you rein in the powers of a president in an organization like FIFA and what new balances, controls and checks can you put on this office to avoid this kind of thing happening seemingly fairly independently again. And that's going to need some thinking through. I'm not quite clear who makes the decision on that kind of thing.

39:51David Cushnan:You know, there could be an element of sort of turkeys or potential future FIFA presidents being convinced to try and vote for Christmas here in terms of fundamental changes to the sort of powers that a FIFA president or whatever that role, that top role is and FIFA council role is. so there's a lot to there's a lot to play out here my other question would be and there's more questions than answers at the moment is the original plan off the table forever or does it come back in some shape or form by stealth in a new way with consultation and collaboration and thinking through and proper checks and balances at some point in the future

40:37James Emmett:well that would be where i would suggest the direction of travel should go and it shouldn't be the world cup to begin with it should be a commercial vehicle which includes the club world cup which people would not care about because it doesn't have the same history and heritage as the world cup and that is a model that can prove out before it has the world cup in it

40:57David Cushnan:yeah but any challenger to gianni infantino has to run against it well has to run against it

41:02James Emmett:cannot stand on any sort of platform that would think about outside investment. But yeah, exactly. It's the private investment. It's a good idea without the private investment in it. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

41:14David Cushnan:FIFA's got plenty of money in the bank. Yes.

41:17James Emmett:Let's leave it there, David. I'm going to see you next week. Goodbye. Cheerio.