UP489 Expected Goals Live @ SOOO London

15:36Maggie Murphy:So it's all very well to have a women's team, but if you don't have a sexual harassment policy in place, if you're not articulate about what your pay split is by gender, if perhaps the facilities that you have for the women have been very much neglected and under-invested in, then that would probably raise alarm bells in terms of lack of alignment. And just thinking about your investment, your purchase, essentially of Mavericks, the netball team, does that mean that equity for you, you would rather go all out 100 % rather than 10 % as Alexis Ohanian has done with Chelsea? Because the London Mavericks is something that I wanted to be really close to and have very direct involvement with, I obviously wanted to have as much influence around the table to be able to spend time with them and nurture the Mavericks and indeed netball to the product I think it can be.

16:29Maggie Murphy:If I was looking for football in this country, therefore I'd want something that's complementary, probably with the London Mavericks, I'd be really looking in the London area so that we can achieve some economies of scale. But then in other ways, in kind of indirect investments I've got in soccer in the US, I'm quite happy to be a tiny shareholder because the piece of the pie is so much bigger but there of course my learnings are a little bit less direct and my ability to influence is much smaller Amazing, okay, and then Anne on to you your three non-negotiables

17:03Nikki Boyd:Okay, I'm going to give you four but there's some similarity here which is good, similar themes So, you know, like Nikki we certainly care about the talent development and the academy the ability to grow a global brand. So it could be there's an interesting, unique storyline that we could tell a story about, or it's a market, as you can tell, I'm not from here. It's a market that has sort of global recognition, and we can utilize that to drive interest in the club globally. So talent catchment area, ability to build a global brand, the strength of the league. We're very interested in whether the league itself is committed and excited and building energy and is competitive.

17:47Nikki Boyd:Parity is interesting to us. You know, leagues with perennial sort of 18-time champions, maybe less so. And then our last lever is real estate. When we think from a commercial standpoint, you know, being the landlord instead of the tenant is where a lot of the revenue opportunity is. Certainly much easier for your commercial team to sell signage because they own inventory, they can sell naming rights. Training facility, they can sell naming rights. And so it's a critical piece of the economic flywheel. And it's also about being a priority, you know, in the women's space. And I think that, you know, a little different.

18:22Nikki Boyd:We haven't talked about that yet, but that one's critical for us.

18:25Maggie Murphy:Yeah, I'm always talking about infrastructure and the ability to own and not just be a tenant, but also control it.

18:33Nikki Boyd:Someone should make a podcast about that.

18:34Maggie Murphy:Maybe, maybe. Matt, you're staring at me like, do you want to come in? I've got loads more.

18:39Richard Thomas:I find it quite interesting the two of you mentioned academies stroke player trading in a world where we haven't had the first million pound player transfer in global women's football, soccer yet. How soon do you think that player trading is going to be, I guess not necessarily a viable, but like a meaningful revenue stream for a football club?

19:04Matt Cutler:I mean when we think about investing we think about where can we take something from today and then in three four five six years time what are we going to be selling on to the next investor by a strategic owner and what's the story that they're going to be telling and what are they going to be buying into is there enough growth for them and so yeah I don't I don't it's not it's not the next one two or even three years but I think by the time we're thinking about towards the end of our investment journey, if it is that partnership period, I think that's when it's going to start to become quite material.

19:39Nikki Boyd:Yeah, just to add to that, look, player acquisition is a cost lever and a revenue lever, and so it's important to develop your ecosystem to keep your costs down as transfers rise, like outbound transfers rise. But the other thing is it's such a critical part of the community when your players are local and getting fans out to matches and getting people to care and also developing like the more broader coaching ecosystem, physiotherapists, you know, front office staff, you know, it's a full life cycle thing for players and for the community. And I think it's an important point of engagement.

20:14Richard Thomas:Great. And I'm really interested to know, because all four of you have interests and are interested in the kind of the global landscape. Where's where's hot at the moment, would you say, when it comes to football clubs? Where's the activity going to be? Where's where are the the best investments to be made who wants to start that one yeah happy to i mean we've all

20:35Matt Cutler:seen what's happened in the us with the nwsl and you know if you speak to some of the recent investors in the recent franchise expansions uh you know some eye-watering numbers it's because they believe that you know in the growth that market and look let's never bet against the growth of the us market you know we feel it's probably a little bit forward valued right now we think there is probably more exciting value opportunity across Europe and if you had to rank markets if you're only investing a single geography I think if you're looking at something multi-club then you might think about there's going to be different factors coming into play but look definitely would bet on the UK for lots of obvious reasons the establishment of the football here its heritage you know the premier league and its global reach so and you know what we're doing with the separation of the women's um and then to varying degrees the other sort of what we call sort of big four european markets so germany france spain and italy who are in kind of varying stages of development um ease of doing business um etc so um in those markets um yeah all worth looking at but there's quite specific factors at play um just focusing on the uk what i think is particularly

21:57Maggie Murphy:interesting is this like city multi-sport model that we're seeing a bit more of so bristol were pioneers in that space nottingham forest now have nottingham forest netball as well as football birmingham's doing the same so i would say uk and looking at you know city hubs if we could see more kind of scaling or grouping together at different sports entities within cities i think that becomes really interesting especially for women's sport where we really need to innovate um we're very

22:27Nikki Boyd:new we're about 90 days in just to set expectations here so because we're dealing with the men and the women's side um i'd say the most inbound we get is from parts of western europe spain and france italy um parts of central europe mexico a lot of dynamics are changing the mexican league on the on the men's side which will affect the women's side so that's very interesting um some parts of APAC. Richard can speak more eloquently about that than I can, but really we have a global purview. We haven't been as involved in the U.S. for all the, you know, reasons that Nikki described, but that doesn't mean that we don't have conversations there.

23:05Nikki Boyd:It's our home country. We know it very well. My business partner, Corey Woolfolk, was a professional player for 10 years in addition to being a collegiate athlete, and so our network there is quite strong. I've run two clubs in the region, so we'll see.

23:21Olivia Hal:I'm obviously going to say Australia, because that's what everyone has asked me to say. No, I agree. Australia. And the reason we like Australia is because it's got a heritage, a strong football heritage. Football is the number one participation for women and girls in the country. And so we think that provides a really nice base. We think it's massively undercooked at the moment, comedically badly undercooked, and therefore we think there's a fantastic upside opportunity. And we think that's a market place that has strong media value over time in other sports so we think there's a good commercial outcome there so that's my australia pitch um i i and then when we look up in this part of the world we've looked at and continue to look at uh the champion i don't know if it's called the championship anymore is it still called the championship thank you wsl2 um and that's i think because of a value equation um we think there's still a market up here where those can those teams are undervalued and that's so that's attractive from our perspective all things being

24:17Maggie Murphy:equal if you got the right amount of equity if you had the right amount of alignment from the owner would you prefer a club that was it kind of follows on from you Richard a club that was on the way up or a club that was already at the top and my part b to that is uh would the WSL be more

24:35Olivia Hal:investable if it was a closed league i love closed leagues and i know you have criticized it on your podcast and australia is a closed league um we like closed leagues because um we feel a slightly more secure investment on protecting on the downside frankly um uh we think it's therefore attractive for new money coming in um and um so that's a positive thing from a from a closed league perspective um we probably like the look of teams that have potential more than than necessarily at the top, but that's just more the style of investing that we're interested in doing. We're looking to create growth and change and transformation perhaps more than investing in something that's already kind of maybe where it needs to be.

25:17Olivia Hal:And that's partly because we believe a lot of these teams are nowhere near it. And Olivia said something about data before, which we would 100 % agree with, but actually our issue is that a lot of teams don't have any data. No one's invested in data for women. We're often situations where there's no P &L separated. So we think that opportunity and therefore the growth is where we're most interested.

25:41Matt Cutler:I wasn't going to comment on the close versus open, so don't worry. Don't want your wrath, Maggie. I was going to comment on where do you want to be and it depends on value. So if the, you know, let's assume that, let's just talk about multiples rather than profit. If it's just on a multiple basis, you know, what are you buying in at today? what's the multiple you're buying in it today where do you think you can take it what's the potential of it in all sorts of ways and then what are you going to be selling at and the problem is you know if you'll get what I was talking about the US paying a forward value that's a kind way of saying overvalued is you know you're buying in a value of you know two or three years time then you have limited upside to your you know in terms of returns to your you know your exit in you know the following three or four years so we very much think about it from that and I think thanks Alexis with Alexis's investment in Chelsea I think it does then play to a bit more of the WSL2 opportunities especially given the changes in promotion and so betting on a WSL2 team and doing the work to you know take it you know would be inevitably part of your investment thesis it would be to take it up to WSL1.

26:56Maggie Murphy:Perfect does anyone else want to comment before we move away from football clubs.

26:59Richard Thomas:Can I ask one last question on football clubs before we move on? In coming across investment opportunities, how much of a barrier or maybe an opportunity is it that the vast majority of women's football clubs don't own their own stadium, physical infrastructure?

27:14Maggie Murphy:Well, I own a club that doesn't actually have its own stadium, albeit in netball, but it's, you know, I understand the pain economically and, you know, practically that that brings. But it didn't stop me from making the investment. I think it's a very different type of investment, investing in the stadium. You are then speaking with a whole different set of investors. Real estate investors in the stadium would obviously likely be very different to those who might want to invest in an operational club. And that was kind of going to be my answer to your last question, was that there are many different points of intervention or investment in the women's sports or the women's football ecosystem.

27:52Maggie Murphy:So, you know, it's not all about investing in the club per se and where it sits in the league. It might be, you know, the rights of a much higher, you know, higher playing club or lower, more development club if you're buying the club in its entirety. Or perhaps you just are a real estate investor and therefore you want to invest in the stadium, you know, that fits your budget at that time. But the most important thing, I guess, is to see it as a long-term investment at whatever point you're looking to intervene in the system. Because as much as we'd like to think that women's sport is going to turn a profit in the next few years, you need people who are really, really committed in the long term.

28:32Nikki Boyd:I mean, great answer. For us, it's central to our thesis, and it's helpful in that case to look at both genders because then you're the landlord for both teams. and you can create scenarios where the pitch is maintained the right way, you have the right sort of booking windows and the right fan experience plan for both teams. And so, you know, without a proper stadium plan or a long-term lease and management contract, you know, the model can fall apart, certainly on the revenue side, but also on the availability to both genders. But that said, like, and this is where the case for the U.S. pops up, right?

29:10Nikki Boyd:There's a lot more real estate opportunity there than there are in some older European towns. We just have a bigger country with more suburbs that are growing and cheaper land deals to be had. We also have a lot more participation in the sport. And so I think that's where the U.S. does become interesting. But I think, like you said, there's a lot of ways to support the ecosystem.

29:35Richard Thomas:Great. a lot of our pictures that we're coming up next there are a wide range of different types of business within the women's football ecosystem. Olivia I'm going to come to you on this one first if that's alright, sorry just as you sipped water. You've invested in rights holders, you've invested in suppliers, apparel companies you've got quite a wide investment portfolio I'm interested to know when you're making an investment into any number of these different businesses within the women's sport women's football ecosystem, is the mindset any different in terms of where you're going to invest or there are parallels from what you said before in terms of those three negotiables.

30:08Richard Thomas:I'm thinking in terms of stuff like, you know, entrepreneurial ownership or leadership, I guess, is a key one still, right?

30:14Maggie Murphy:No, I mean, that's what I love about the women's sports sector is that there are so many similarities. You can invest in a number of different businesses and they'll all share pretty much the same pains, but also have many of the same opportunities. And I don't think I've ever worked in a sector that has such a driven group of collaborative people. It's really quite phenomenal. many of whom are in this room today. But yeah, I actually go even further in that I kind of invest in things that are never going to bring me any money. So that was where I first met Maggie was through a grant to Lewis Football Club.

30:50Maggie Murphy:Sorry, no offence Maggie. We didn't set out to make any money. It was a grant and so I compliment my investment just because this is, I'm not saying this is the right thing to do, but it's what I get the most joy from. We also learn a huge amount that is complementary to our investments by working with partners to whom we kind of give money to in football and in other sports. And I do find that everything that we invest in across that kind of spectrum of capital in the women's sports ecosystem ends up being complementary to your other investments. So I love investing across the ecosystem and working with such an incredibly driven group who are very ambitious, and that's why I think the future is in UK women's sport.

31:44Maggie Murphy:Any of the rest of you, if you took your eye off a club investment, is there something else you'd be looking at?

31:49Matt Cutler:Yeah, so our investment thesis is investing around the thematic of accelerating women's sport, So equally relatively broad, looking across teams, leagues, federations, commercial rights and ancillary, but specifically where there is that thematic, where a combination of skills, expertise that we can bring or that partners or other companies within our portfolio can bring. So it goes very much to the, I think, to the same point that Olivia is talking about.

32:18Maggie Murphy:and just just to follow up because you've literally invested into a league just 10 days ago just announced what did that feel like a more sure investment than for example looking at another

32:29Matt Cutler:type of business yeah great question it's um it's a new league so in that sense like oh god that's scary it's a new league um we don't think it has startup risk in the same way as most startups because it's plugging into an ecosystem. So it's a development basketball league which sits below the WNBA and it's endorsed by the WNBA. So there's a sort of structural need. There's clear commercial demand. And we can see all of that at the gate. We're backing an operator who already operates ice hockey teams in the same geography. So I think if we were brought a completely new concept of a league as we're seeing, you know, format proliferation, that probably sits a bit outside our skill set.

33:16Matt Cutler:We're looking for things which are a little bit more established that we can then help professionalise and commercialise and unlock growth from rather than betting on kind of new concepts. And we think this falls a bit more into that category. But yeah, loads of great tailwinds. Everyone knows the data about women's basketball in the US. All those owners and bidders for expansion franchises to the WNBA at 240 million who've lost out and want to then come and get a little franchise in our league in due course. So, yeah, so that's some of the reasons we're excited by them.

33:51Olivia Hal:Yeah, I was going to say league because, I mean, we think leagues are still, are a great opportunity. I think you've got stronger control. I think there's good models in certain leagues where you can also own teams for a period of time that you can then ultimately sell. and we think that creates another underpinning value for perhaps an aggressive multiple at the beginning. So we like that space as well.

34:19Richard Thomas:If anyone's got any questions, grab my attention.

34:23Maggie Murphy:If not, I'll jump in.

34:24Richard Thomas:Yeah, go for it.

34:25Maggie Murphy:Obviously, we've got a set of pictures that are coming up in just a moment across a broad spectrum of issues and opportunities. If you had one piece of advice for them, what would it be? and I'm going to look at you and start with you um choose why and by the way sorry I don't mean

34:42Nikki Boyd:for them tonight I mean just in in general yeah I think choose why wisely and be prepared for the process so if you know you're going to go to market make sure you've got your go-to-market information ready that is not the time to start creating a P &L it is you know which we've had we've been in a couple of those so you know be prepared and and choose wisely um you know there is some scarcity at play here you you need to value yourself and so you know get focused on on finding the right partner and be prepared for that conversation it's two pieces but it's free

35:15Maggie Murphy:um ask your community you know ask for advice uh there's no question probably too stupid or question that none of us have kind of come across in this room and in our bright in our broader women's sport football network. So I'd say get smart by collaborating with others and find the answers to the questions from people who are already there and have experienced the same thing.

35:41Matt Cutler:I'd go resilience. It's a marathon, not a sprint. You're going to get tons of no's. You're going to get lots of advice. You're going to get lots of different advice. And it's great to get advice. But ultimately, you've got to find your way through, take on board and have your own views on what it is you're going after to the point on resilience it's one of the reasons i again love being in this sector lots of athletes ex-athletes current athletes and resilience is really inherent in them and you know to to help support you with that resilience i think you know building your tribe and support network around you i think it's really hard to do things as a solo founder so ideally having co-founders so you can have your peaks and troughs at separate times but you know friends, family keeping your exercise up all of those other kind of things to keep yourself somewhat sane along the journey

36:36Olivia Hal:We see a lot of founders who've got a powerpoint and an idea and that's about it so I would say get more than that get either a contract or a deal or data or don't just turn up with a PowerPoint an idea and think someone's going to give you plenty of money and there are a lot of people who do.

36:57Maggie Murphy:I've got loads of ideas. We represent some of them.

37:01Richard Thomas:I've got loads of PowerPoints. Question here, can you introduce yourself first please?

37:08Olivia Hal:Alex Singlot, so I was wondering beyond the kind of what we might call tier A sports like football and basketball, are there other sports that either particularly excite you or particularly worry you. I'm thinking of things like paddle, which is growing, but I'm also thinking about volleyball in America, which is about to have four leagues battle it out for a market, which for me feels like a recipe to pull momentum for women's sport because they might eat each other up and then all fail, and that will be a sob story, which doesn't help the genuine momentum of women's sport. So, yeah, just is there anything outside of the two top leagues that you are excited about or scared about?

37:53Maggie Murphy:Well, obviously netball. No, but in all seriousness, that's why I got into netball, because my fear was that despite, you know, it being the most played kind of team sport every week, and I think it is just still for women and girls above football. I'm sure I'll be quickly corrected if that's wrong. you know it's really an untapped asset and it has this incredible grassroots following but very little commercialization and professionalization and I thought in a generation this incredible sport that so much so many of the women's sport community grow up with just won't exist because other women's sports backed by men's sports will be you know leading the charge and it's a much lower cost to entry because it is a you know relatively uncommercialized sport.

38:41Maggie Murphy:It has got an incredibly rich fan base who've never really grown up experiencing the live game or a game that they love being on TV or accessible for them to go and see in their local town or even at Wembley. So for me, netball has my vote.

38:59Nikki Boyd:Yeah, I hear you on the volleyball situation in the US. It's a congested marketplace and I think investors have that concern is which league will win because eventually, you know, we would anticipate consolidation. I'm looking at LA-28. Shout out to my former employer and the incoming sports that are really interesting. You know, U.S., we don't have a cricket culture, but it's now included in the games. Lacrosse, I'm on the board of USA Lacrosse. Was never in danger of representing our national team on the field, but they let me in the boardroom. And, you know, the participation is picking up.

39:34Nikki Boyd:it's a sport of the Native Americans and the First Nations people of Canada, and so very popular in North America and growing globally. And flag football is really skyrocketing with a tremendous amount of investment from the NFL. So those of you who don't follow the American marketplace, that's a story I'd tune into. It's a good growth lever globally for the NFL. And so they're backing that pretty hard. and I think it's cannibalizing participation in other sports and with that kind of a minimal cannibalized sponsorship dollars. I'm not saying it's all bad, right? It's a high-profile sport. It's going to create opportunity for those athletes, but it's coming and it's coming fast.

40:15Olivia Hal:I guess the only other one I'd add is we quite like sports that are genuinely dual gender and it really is, not just it's a man's sport, a back-end woman's sport, or it's a woman's sport, back-end man's sport, that they're dual gender. and that also is on trend for what consumers are looking at. So we're interested in, at the moment, for instance, endurance sports like triathlon, dual gender, really on trend for how people are living in health and wanting to get out and about. You can properly back female and male solutions and we think it's still got upside commercially.

40:53Maggie Murphy:Amazing. That is a wrap. You guys have been so incredibly generous and open and honest. or honest, I guess, with your insight and sharing that with the room, it's not often that people get to speak directly to investors or the people advising investors. So we are very, very grateful. So thank you, Nikki and Richard and Olivia. And Anne, give them a round of applause.

41:18Richard Thomas:You can go and get a more comfortable seat. We are surely going to go into our lightning pitches. but before we do Adam from Evelyn Partners is going to come up and just give us a couple of minutes Hi so firstly thanks for having us along Maggie gets a tick you get a black mark 99 % of people called us Evelyn Partners we're Evelyn Partners and you got it right

41:45Maggie Murphy:I've been telling them all it's Evelyn

41:50Richard Thomas:so I think we spoke a few weeks ago So, and probably from that first conversation that we had, Maggie's Values, the event, what you were doing, sort of aligned with where we are as a business and what we're doing in this space at the minute. So, for those of you, most of you who probably don't know what we do, we are a wealth management firm. Some people don't know what that means. I'm a financial planner. I give financial planning advice. I help people sort of plan for their future. and as well as that once we've got the plan in place we help people sort of where to invest their money for 16 years i have worked in the sports entertainment space i work with about sort of 70 to 80 athletes across sort of football music cricket boxing cycling and for the past five years we've worked across the women's game as well in all of those areas and obviously we've seen it develop and grow throughout the time in working with sport we've always been a big advocate of financial education so three years ago with Anthony Joshua's boxing management company 258 management we created the first financial education program for boxing and we run that with the agency across the men and women's sort of athletes this year as as our practice has grown and working in the women's game, we've launched various initiatives and sponsorships.

43:15Richard Thomas:So we've just actually, a little while ago, announced that we've partnered and we're sponsoring the Women's Super League Netball League, which would sort of make somebody happy over there. We've announced a partnership with Saracens Rugby across men and women's. We announced today that we've got a partnership with women in football, and in the next two weeks we're about to, is there somebody here from Women's, there you go, there you go, hi, hi, and we're about to announce a partnership with one of the WLS teams, the Women's Super League team. One of the things that we've done across all of these sports is one of the key components when we found and worked out the partners that we want to work with is for us to be able to deliver financial education.

44:01Richard Thomas:So we will be going in to the athletes and delivering financial education to them because obviously it's a new, all of these sports are new, football's obviously new, it's growing massively, it's really exciting. The athletes will be earning more money so we're providing education to them and a whole host of educations and to help them on their journey so that when they finish whatever sport they're in, they're in a much stronger financial position and to help them with that transition out of whatever sport they're in, also potentially into our industry as well because we're an underserviced industry as well within the female space and we're keen to improve that as well.

44:36Richard Thomas:So that is us. That's what we do. Very happy to be involved. Thanks, Adam. Thank you.

44:43Maggie Murphy:It's amazing. Thank you so much, Adam.