Mike Tindall: R360 will create household names like Joe Marler & Ilona Maher

10:58Mike Tindall:I'm probably better at that than the research I don't know how City allocate there

11:03Alex Payne:I just threw in an Oasis song

11:04Mike Tindall:Oh did you? What did you say?

11:06Alex Payne:Maybe you could do that Oh sorry Honestly you've been drinking too much champagne supernova With Angela

11:15Mike Tindall:I got that one You've changed

11:17Alex Payne:Ever since you met Angela Rippon Have we got time to quickly just name all six Of the sports personality of the year contenders this year because they were announced today. Hannah Hampton, Chloe Kelly, Ellie Kildun, Luke Littler, the ticket scrambling, Rory McIlroy and Lando Norris. I wonder if Lando just drove onto the list in the last week. I think probably he did. I think people seem to have received the list quite well.

11:44Mike Tindall:It looks like a good list. I could probably make a case for Joe Root to be on there, given the...

11:48Alex Payne:I think there was a strong argument for Joe Root, had things started better in Australia?

11:53Mike Tindall:yeah but well yes but then he got his I'm a fobbing for me too I agree I think

11:59Alex Payne:there's a case he was the way

12:01Mike Tindall:he's the one that stands out for me there but

12:05Alex Payne:okay get in touch with us you might have opinions you definitely do have opinions because we love getting your emails the sportsagents at global.com on email you can message us on social media or via the link in the episode description but

12:17Mike Tindall:if you're not on the list you shouldn't look back in anger should you really so there you go I'm there at the end. Subscribe or follow so you don't miss Friday's weekend edition. New content on that every week. This week, we're going to talk to Pippa York, who won several Tour de France stages as Robert Miller before transitioning.

12:35Alex Payne:Next up, though, it's former England Rugby World Cup captain Mike Tindall. And of course, he's host of the podcast alongside Alex Payne, who'll be with us, which is the good, the bad and the rugby. And they've got a book out. But Mike's got big plans to reinvent rugby with an F1 style global club league. R360. And we finally got the chance to ask him all about it.

12:55Mike Tindall:The Sports Agents.

12:59Mike Tindall:The Sports Agents.

13:01Alex Payne:With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. Mike and Alex, welcome to the Sports Agents. We're going to get into 360, first of all, R360, Mike, if we can, because the recent news that it's been put back a couple of seasons, I think we need to find out why and whether or not, as the cynics are saying, that means it's dead in the water and it's never going to come back. What was the main reason for you putting it back?

13:27Mike Tindall:Well, when we first came up with the idea, there were only two options of when you could start it. One was 2026, one was 2028. With it being built around the unions and built sort of for the unions, we thought we'd give it a run at 2026. and unfortunately when the unions came out with the stance that they took in terms of eight of them for the first time in their collective history coming out with a joint statement, it sort of left us in a tricky spot because it's been touted as a rebel league all along and that's never the point of it. If R360 doesn't add to the ecosystem, then the game is going to die quicker.

14:03Mike Tindall:That's the whole point of it. But there are issues around the game. You look at the Wales-South Africa game. How is that allowed to happen where Wales end up playing a game without 11 of their starting 15 just because the season is so mixed and matted. You know, you came out of those into one game of premiership before you're going into Europe again. So it's just a bit mangled. And that's what R260 is there to try and add to it. And I think then with the British and Irish Lions coming out with the women's and saying that the women wouldn't be allowed to play in the inaugural Lions tour, you know, you can't say you're building a league for the players and then have them not being able to either play for their country or play for the British and Irish Lions.

14:43Mike Tindall:So we clearly have to work with the stakeholders of the game a little bit better to make them understand the point of it. The whole thing of R360 is, even if the game was making money, which we don't want to focus on the financials because that's not positive, and I think rugby needs positivity right now, but even if the game was making money, there is still a window for a league, for the elite, who get asked to play too many games at the moment. the best players in the world and take it on like an F1 to showcase it to the world rather than it's only done in that guise in international rugby and with all the games that the tier one teams are playing now it doesn't help the tier two teams grow so you need something to help take it to those fans and help and help it grow in those areas and that's what we're trying to build and then what we've got to do obviously better off the back of how everyone's reacted to is fit into how it fits into the current ecosystem, the current stakeholders, and try and win some hearts and minds.

15:43Mike Tindall:So that's the main goal for going to 28 is it gives us a little chance to maybe do a bit of a PR. I have a follow-up question to that, but I just want to bring Alex in because as soon as Gabby started that question, Alex started laughing. So I'm guessing a lot of the promo for the book has focused on R360, has it? And you're just sitting there listening into the sort of same arguments over and over again. I just thought it was a wonderful, gentle loosener. I thought we might talk about mince pies and Christmas decorations, but we're straight in with the sword. I thought it was at the Gabba again.

16:14Mike Tindall:I thought it's my first... I'm facing my first pink ball under the lights. Regular listeners will know that Gabby does like the phrase Gabba-toir. So if you want to feel like you're in the Gabba-toir now, Mike, that's fine. There you go. But where you can come in on this, Alex, and I'm interested in Mike as well. You talk about eight unions issuing a joint statement, and me and Gabby both listened to Bill Sweeney when he was on your pod. It was a brilliant, brilliant forensic interview, which we not fully copied, but used as material for when he came on with us. But after his experience with you guys and after we spoke to him, I think we both felt, and Gabby may correct me if I'm wrong, quite a lot of sympathy for him.

17:00Mike Tindall:with the whole machination of rugby union and the different levels and the self-interest and committees and it sounded an absolute nightmare well i think phrase mark we we kind of came across

17:14Alex Payne:and stumbled across was fit for purpose yeah it's the governance of rugby fit for purpose for the game that it is today and i think you know my a lot of people have got a lot of kind of goodwill for you because they know that rugby needs something but that nobody's quite sure what that is and does throwing this in just create you know a bit more kind of chaos into the mix and and does it tell people you know kind of where they can see rugby this is the other thing as well it's all over the place as you pointed out coming back for a round of prem rugby then going into Europe you know and I just I just think it becomes so complicated doesn't it I mean it's

17:52Mike Tindall:complicated and just where you're viewing it like you know i turned i turned on to watch european rugby on the weekend and completely forgot where it was and had to go find it but yeah i think look something needs to happen and i'm just happy that i can be involved in something that is trying to do it i think on the pod we've lived this for a long time since covid and we've done how many state of the pod state of state of the game pods quite a few we've done like three or four of those and on one of them the simplest answer was you can't do anything within the current structures because they are a structure that just say no or it's what am i getting and at the moment rugby and i understand it every single part of it is fighting for what they get the club are fighting for every penny that they get now like the rfu for example they are paying for the grassroots game they're playing for the england team the women and the red roses team and then they're playing now£35 million for the professional game.

18:50Mike Tindall:And it's just like, well, so they need to raise more money to try and balance their books. But then by doing that, they're taking sponsorship that potentially could go away from Prem Rugby. And it's the same with whether it be Australia or New Zealand centrally contracted players. Their costs are so big, but yet they're also running other leagues. And it's just not working. Plus, then you throw in player welfare and what is player welfare. they keep touting 30 games, but yet no one who's at the top of their game. And rugby seems to punish the players who are the best at it because they're the ones who very rarely get rest.

19:25Mike Tindall:Yes, they get a week off before internationals, but they basically have a game in camp with Steve Borthwick at England trading. I think if you're going to get there, what we're trying to do is go, OK, well, why don't we build a league that's specifically for those people? You won't hit 30 games. take a little bit of the NFL model of going, less is more. We're mainly playing when there is no other club rugby on. Put you on a pedestal where it's all about the player. And the player can become a superstar because at the moment, that is one thing rugby doesn't really create.

19:55Alex Payne:There are shoots of, you know...

19:57Mike Tindall:There's Pollock shoots. There's Pollock shoots. There's Pollock shoots.

20:00Alex Payne:I mean, actually, there's Red Roses shaped shoots because I'm having covered the Red Roses for a few seasons, done the World Cup. They are unashamedly, you know, out there and put themselves out there. They love the sport that they play, but they also love life and they don't take themselves too seriously. And unlike the men's game at times, that's allowed, you know, Henry is an anathema because he doesn't give two hoots who thinks he's too much. And in prior generations, and you know this, Mike, that anybody like Henry would have been shot down because, you know...

20:35Mike Tindall:Well, James Haskell is a prime case in point, you know. Danny Cibriani. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There are players out there and you are actually, you're bang on. The model that people should be copying has already been put out there by Alona Marr, right? It literally has been unashamed of yourself. But again, you know, you look at Joe Marler right now. Would our game ever have gone, actually, Traitors is great for our game. Go do it whilst you're playing. And then how many people will come and watch you? But you don't because you're playing a 50 week season and you just don't have time. so so our 360 if you're not playing international you'll have so much time you would be able to go do those things and that brings eyeballs in so it's just looking at things from a completely different point of view you know Ilona Meyer has just gone off unashamedly being herself you say I know like Wayne Smith said didn't he one thing he had when he started coaching um the Black Ferns was he had to get they were doing their hair on the way to games and they were just they were singing up and down the bus and and it's complete but it's completely different and I'm not saying that men's rugby is going to go that way but you embrace both sides of it but you have to embrace the characters that do that and at the moment we've never we have not told those stories or allowed them to because tall poppy syndrome whatever you want to call it team comes first if you were jim marlis club teammate and i i'm i think traitors was filmed in the summer just gone i think it's april they filmed oh was it okay well well for the sake of this argument we'll say it was filmed in the summer but if it was filmed in the off it was filmed in the off season and i know i know international sports people don't have a great long time of off season would you as a teammate have gone oh yeah that if he takes two weeks off pre-season to do a four-week tv show how how do you think that would go down in a dressing because i agree with you there there are certain things within sports you go do you know what that is going to be so good for the club for the game for him.

22:31Alex Payne:You very rarely see current sports people on these kinds of shows. I don't remember anybody on Strictly that's ever, you've got loads of ex-sports people but it's tough to say you do it in the middle of your career, isn't it?

22:42Mike Tindall:You sometimes see non-league footballers on Love Island, don't you? I can't remember the... I don't watch it. No, I don't watch either but I do remember a non-league manager giving an interview going, I thought I was going to play him but I've just lost one of my team to Love Island. I can't remember who it was. On the other side of that, Travis Kelsey, he went on The Bachelor in the middle of his career for the sole reason of attracting a completely different audience for him, which is then paid into the podcast that they do, which is huge. And I mean, I would love to go on and know him with Jason Kelsey.

23:14Mike Tindall:I think me and him would vibe very well over a few beers. So it can work, but only if you're allowed to do it. Obviously, the season as it is at the moment, you're hammered. You are head down, ass up all the time. and that's the sort of model that we're looking at is that if you go with an NFL model where actually you only get the product for a very short period of time and then you monetize the outer bits about it, there's been talked about the draft idea and how we will draft players and everything else like that, it creates other things that interest the fans at the same time, which you would hope also would feed down the tree because you want to tell the story of where all the players come from and what clubs they are and then hopefully people are going, well which club's producing the most i'll go watch them or whatever and you try and push the audience

24:00Alex Payne:back down the tree should we move on to things related to your why you're essentially here today yeah and um and you have an excellent podcast which is producing books and shows and everything else and on on the autumn rugby that we just had you mentioned before alex that you know we saw some fantastic rugby this autumn it helps when england are flying how they are at the moment from a kind of England perspective. This team right now, you'd think, could challenge at the next World Cup. But what have they got to do over the next couple of years to be up there with South Africa, who look like the team, again, that's going to have to be beaten in the final?

24:37Mike Tindall:Well, it has been a mega November. I think the one big question that everyone in the World Game has got to find the answer to right now is how you match South Africa's power. And there's obviously been some really bad news this week for poor Will Stewart, who's had the most stellar 12 months, bath and england and lions of course as well he's done his achilles and i think he's going to be out for nine ten eleven months something like that so i think that is the big question for everybody now is how do you hold on to south africa i mean i think you know rassi erasmus love him or hate him is is one of those people at the moment he's sort of one of the great lightning conductors in our game um whatever he does fans of every country they're interested they're following uh they're reacting to it so i mean i think it has been an extraordinary if you think back to where england were this time last year.

25:20Mike Tindall:You know, it was a bumpy old autumn. There were massive question marks about Steve Borthwick going into the Six Nations. He had to win the first two games. The France game was a last throw of the dice that sort of salvaged, I think, probably his career. The Scotland game, they scrambled home and now suddenly here we are 10 months later, they've beaten the All Blacks. They've done for Australia and they've got a really solid set of players with massive strength and depth. I think, I mean, it's interesting going back to the Mike question, how you get players to buy or fans to buy into teams. I think what England will have seen and fans of England will have seen over the last year or so is just the effect of the players.

25:57Mike Tindall:And I was going to sort of throw in the line now. I look at my 13-year-old son who doesn't necessarily follow teams. He follows players. And we saw that with Ronaldo when he moved to Saudi. I mean, Mark, you all know the numbers on this. You know, the followership of that club grows by 70 million. And so I think there is something in around whether the Gen Z, I sound old saying it, but whether they follow clubs or whether they follow players. And I think what England fans will have seen over the last 12 months is the impact of someone like Pollock coming through. He's just refreshed the whole thing.

26:30Mike Tindall:You know, the whole thing has changed. I think Borthwick is now following Pollock rather than Pollock tucking in behind Borthwick. Has Borthwick been canny in allowing that energy? I don't think he could stop it. As Johnny May says, he's stressed right now. He's stressed. He doesn't know how to handle it, but he's got to deal with it. But some coaches would do everything possible to suppress it, though, wouldn't they? Back in the day, yes. Look, I know Steve, right? I've been fortunate to play rugby with Steve since I was 16 years old, and he's a little kid behind a sort of tough northern Preston North End exterior.

27:05Mike Tindall:He giggles a lot and he finds things funny. And I think as long as the boys are doing the work, I think it's not going to stress him out too much. The other thing, winning helps. If England are losing and they're doing TikTok dances, the roof falls in. If they're winning, I think they can do what they want. That's the mad thing of it. That shouldn't really matter. You know what I mean? If we're really looking forward, a personality is a personality, whatever. And sometimes in this world where people get so down on themselves and they feel pressure from every angle, how good would it be to know that someone's acting like an idiot even though they've lost a game?

27:41Mike Tindall:But yeah, suddenly the way the narrative spins is, oh my God, they're not taking it seriously. Of course they're taking it seriously, but you've still got to be able to relax.

27:50Alex Payne:That's what the Wales girls were attacked for, actually, weren't they? At the end of their opener against England in the Six Nations because they got hammered, but they were still doing their kind of TikTok dances.

28:01Mike Tindall:Yeah, but we say this all the time, right? The players are under stress all the time. and no one cares about winning more than any professional athlete. I'm sorry, you might buy tickets, you might go every week, season tickets. You don't care more than they care. But at the same time, that doesn't mean they have to live their life under a stress bubble just because you want to see them angry that they've lost the game.

28:24Alex Payne:Because you walk away from that ground as a fan and you forget about it within an hour of get back on with life. But their daily life is in that stress bubble.

28:32Mike Tindall:They've got two video sessions of scrutiny to go through. The Sports Agents.

28:42Mike Tindall:The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. We have to wrap this up in a moment, but can I just say, is it true, Mike, that you could have moved to sale but didn't because of your future wife's number of horses? Because I can tell you that there is... That is very niche. I know it is, but as a sale fan... Hello, Mark, it's the Hello podcast. knowing the area well there is a stables in carrington right i know the time has gone now but just you know just thought i'd throw that in no i i looked i did go up to sale and i did look at sale i'd probably been going i was at about five months so i'm not entirely sure we were right there she was going to move with me uh you know what i mean i'm not sure we're locked in and then move the horses i'd love to have seen the sales pitch over breakfast would you like to move to sail come with me five months in it was a rugby decision not an equine decision is what

29:37Alex Payne:you want to say um so obviously um a christmas with the royals again this year mike that's they

29:43Mike Tindall:your family jesus you're covering everything today by the way we have got a book it's called it's called rugby reloaded uh it's a wonderful read our last one was an award-winning novel it's their favorite book actually i've heard they've already bought they've already bought

29:57Alex Payne:it and completed it yeah so so is princess unquoted on the back my favorite book of the year

30:02Mike Tindall:no we we did have owen farrell quoted on the first book saying this has got nothing to do with me he's no he said i want nothing to do with this book and that was the top line that is a brilliant quote that is very good about it the good the bad and the rugby reloaded is out i feel after i feel after this bucket i do say it does have a chapter on r360 on it so you're gonna write for that The best thing about it as well is it burns for six hours. So if your log supply is running low, buy a couple of that and it'll keep you warm throughout the winter.

30:31Alex Payne:What's your favourite chapter, just so we can dip into the book a bit?

30:36Mike Tindall:The prologue, in which we all say thank you to the people that have helped us get to where we are, I think it is.

30:40Alex Payne:You're selling it well. That's about it.

30:41Mike Tindall:The best thing is, is you think that we've read each other's parts? We definitely have. We've read each other's and that was it. No idea what's in it. I'm looking forward to reading it. There we are, you see. Just asking for a friend, would you advise doing a book based on a podcast i don't know if you've had funny stories along the way if you've been sued as many times as we have and well there you go then then it would definitely work what goes behind a podcast is always intriguing because you guys obviously present it and are amazing at it and but there's always something going on behind closed doors that needs yeah exactly this is the second this is the second book we've done and the way that both have gone is that the book starts with each of us writing three or four pages.

31:21Mike Tindall:And by the end, Mike and I are a couple of lines and Hask's stories are about 32 pages. It just gets more and more and more of Jane. So if that's your thing, buy it now. Well, listen, thank you for coming into the gabbertoir. We appreciate it. I feel like I've been hit by a few bouncers, actually. I'm not even going to lie. Great fun. Thank you. Cheers, guys. Merry Christmas. The Sports Agents. Thank you very much for listening. You can catch up with all of our past episodes on YouTube, Global Player or wherever you get your pods.