UP511 What Just Happened: P/E for RFL; BBC, golf and Bill Murray; The Ashes of TNT

0:00We can't just let that go. all right i'll do it again uh sorry i'm late richard yeah uh i have been dealing with uh an absolute classic brighton and hove issue would you like to guess what it is right okay so it's going to be probably recycling related or it might be something to do with the green council's decisions of some sort it's let i don't i wouldn't describe it as political and think sort of uh fauna rather than sauna. Is it coastal erosion, James? It's a problem that's going to affect us all in the end, Dave, but it's not that. It's really an emergency, is it? Yeah. I've just been rebuilding a groin down at the beach.

0:41Sorry, I'm late for the podcast. There was some emergency coastal erosion. So, go on, tell me. I've had to remove a mulled seagull from my garden. Oh, this is taking a dark turn. Yeah, I've bin bagged it and I've collected all the feathers and bits of guts. Bin bagged it? Yeah, well, how do you get... Yeah, the foxes have gone buck wild on a seagull, it seems. It's a shame you said that, James, because just before you joined, Richard was saying that he's got a big new sponsorship deal with pets at home. Great. A seagull's not a pet, of course. And neither is a fox. but the foxes are i mean this is we'll cut all this bullshit but the foxes are out of control it's just like they're just roaming the streets foxes and rats well listen can i shock you the foxes the urban foxes are out in force here they've got to london have they northwest london as well it's a shocker it is it's really got they're sort of bold as brass as my nanny used to say yeah we've got a real problem i honestly uh they're just in the garden all the time digging stuff up, killing seagulls, obviously.

1:54I had to... That's where you bury your treasure, isn't it? It's where I bury my treasure. And you haven't got a big gun. So, you know, packs of foxes are going to be, you know, quite prominent. I've spent so much money. I've spent so much money on this issue, you know, putting down stuff that apparently is going to put them off. I've had to get my car serviced because they've gone underneath it and chewed all the wires up. hundreds and hundreds of pounds. Sounds like a personal vendetta rather than a... It is, yeah. They wrote off a neighbour's car because the neighbour... Wrote it off? Yeah. Well, it was joyriding.

2:32Took it for a spin. The fox mafia running around your house. The neighbour had left the door, one of the doors ever so slightly ajar. One of the neighbour's kids had left like a door on the car ever so slightly ajar. And the foxes got in and like ripped it to shreds inside. like the seatbelts were completely done that's why it was a write-off i'm trying to i'm trying to think why they would target your bit of town it's a it's a well it's a very nice bit of town but there's also there's not like a sort of obvious sort of pile of food that they're yeah i suppose you're we've got you're between got bad refuse got bad refuse you know the classic brighton yeah kind of rubbish issues who knows like listening to a council meter

3:16oh dear well i mean in other news i am now standing up so we haven't seen each other since yeah sort of my great decline as it's called in brighton and it's um i miss leaders i can't believe i miss leaders for the first time for a while actually and i look after all the promotion you've done i know i know i feel like a fraud i'm just encouraging everyone else to go and then uh Didn't turn up myself. Yeah, I heard it was excellent as ever. You two are off now for a year, are you? You sort of don't do anything between now and October. Yeah, yeah, back at it. Back at it, October the 1st, 2026. Do you go on holiday now or are you just sort of sun loungers out?

4:00Leaders Week is a distant memory. And it turns out that after a distant memory, what you've got to do is debrief it thoroughly, which is what we've been doing. um debriefing piece by piece um and then we've got loads of other stuff coming up such as the nature of the beast well always on always on always on it's the era that we live in so we've got a story each as per oh oh i haven't done it ever so welcome to unofficial partner the sports business podcast we this is what just happened with colleagues i now call them david cushman James Emmett from Leaders. Is it Leaders and Leaders in London?

4:44Is it Leaders, Leaders in London? What's the official title of the year? What's the question? You're asking what the sort of tax registration name is for the company. It's really going big on the colleagues bit, hasn't it? I like to be accurate. But sometimes I think, oh, it's just leaders. And then I see your promotional stuff. I think, oh, it's Leaders in Sport, is it? Or Leaders, I don't know. Well, Leaders in Sport is our organisation. Right. That's our AKA on the internet, isn't it? That's our URL. Yes. Yeah. And we've got Leaders Week London, which is our flagship. We do lots of other stuff as well, but a lot of people just know the London event as leaders.

5:23And we're okay with that. Yes, I think that's fine. Yes, we'll move on. But that's cleared that up for me. So we've got a story each. And the question, the basic question is what just happened. And we're looking at the week's news in the sports business. I think that David Kushnan should kick us off with your stories I think there's one of the good bits about doing this is that when we sort of line these up very scientifically obviously search them give each other enormous amounts of time to research and we do not swap this on a WhatsApp group half an hour before the uh before the start of the podcast we never do that but I think there is a I can sense something of a thread so but I'd like to start with David as a kick us off what's what just happened David?

6:09Well what just happened this week was Matt Hughes had an exclusive in the Guardian a couple of days ago reporting that the Rugby Football League in the UK the organisation that runs Super League and runs Rugby League in this country is in talks with several private equity firms about selling a stake in Super League. So Matt Hughes mentions Lioncap Global, an American firm, and Oakwell Sports Advisory, who I think we know have been, you know, working things ever so slightly under the radar for a little period of time now across lots of different sports. Andrew Umbers, Andrew Umbers numbers. Exactly, exactly.

6:56And there's a couple of there's a couple of pieces to this there's always obviously the private equity piece that we might want to come on to talk about but actually I think it's a good opportunity to maybe touch on the the curious case of rugby league and rugby league in the UK it's 30 years now since the super league was formed as this sort of all singing all dancing new top level of rugby league in the UK with sort of big backing from Sky and lots of hype and I think there was a mood at that time back in 1995-96 to maybe give it a little bit of the Premier League treatment and see what they could do with a sport that has plenty of tradition plenty of roots particularly in the the north of England.

7:4430 years have passed and you know the landscape has changed and a lot of stuff has has moved on and rugby league finds itself probably largely in the same position it was 30 years ago in in some respects benefits in the UK from quite a good amount of free-to-air TV coverage the Challenge Cup is still very much something that the BBC and I think is still on the one of the crown jewels protected sports events list certainly the final but in other respects there's still uh some question marks around how the sport should approach uh growing and i think lots of different views within the sport you've also got img that has was sort of parachuted in um a couple of years ago with a sort of very long-term deal and a mandate to sort of transform the sport a 12-year reimagining was the reimagining which has which is in process obviously but But along the way and in some of the early moves they've made, definitely, I think, ruffled a few feathers within the establishment in the sport, certainly in the way that they approached selection around which teams would be allowed to play in the Super League and judging not just on-field performance, but off-field criteria as well.

9:12you've also got the the nrl in australia which does big business and was at times last year in talks to either invest in super league or collaborate in a bit more of a formal way and there was this plan around a an nrl europe potentially um which has since fallen a little bit by the wayside so there's a few bits here and i think it's maybe a good opportunity to examine a sport that has a incredibly passionate fan base albeit in relative terms a you know a limited one certainly compared to other sports and a very geographically specific one but these clubs these teams do have pretty incredible community roots and sort of cultural currency within a within a local area within a region.

10:04So it's maybe striking that they too are knocking on private equity door and seeing what the answer is. James Emmett, what do you think? What's your immediate response to this? My immediate response to it is I am surprised that there are private equity entities interested in rugby league as a sport and in rugby league commercial specifically I'm not sure what kind of horizon what kind of return what kind of perhaps 12 year reimagining um that they might be able to uh um put on the sport themselves I find that rugby league certainly in the UK it is it is definitely different in Australia it's of a sort of major market rugby league really struggles with its demographics basically who likes it and crucially who doesn't like it I think we all know that there is a heavy weighting in the sports industry towards enthusiasm for an interest in rugby it's outsized the the enthusiasm for an interest in rugby within the sports industry compared to uh popularity within the general population but that does not extend to rugby league there there are very few sort of sports industry media industry supporters of rugby league and so i'm surprised that they're they're in this sort of game of seeking uh private equity but anyway it could be transformative well i disagree with my uh learned colleague i think i can see why what private equity are doing here because i do think there's you know the general point is is true we're we're well i sitting in southern england we don't you know rugby league has always been a northern game i know it's been attempted to expand it and one of the sort of questions for IMG when they came in in 2022 was what to do with that sort of you know geographical imbalance but there is there's an audience and there's a product and I can see that actually the NRL issue is a really pertinent one because it's sort of like a mini version of the IPL conversation that's where the the heartland of this is this game now and it's sort of migrated to that and the you know the media rights in australia are very significant and again that's a regional bit of australia i always forget which state is which in terms of which you know what the sports are but that's a part of this picture assuming private equities objectives is tricky and i think there's a sort of there are different uh routes different reasons for for getting involved the question i've got is the img question actually and in terms of well what now if you've got a private equity group coming in and the whole sort of modus operandi is to is operational expertise bringing that to bear isn't that what img are doing or is part of their their thing and by the way i'm a big fan of matt hughes i think he's a really good uh journalist in in this space in our space generally breaks a lot of stories and the analysis is really is really good.

13:29I think there's a question about why and why now Sport England there's a potential withdrawal of Sport England money from the RFL 16 million quid due to what they call governance issues. There is a planned expansion 12 to 14 clubs linked to the proposed sale which again so more more product, greater inventory, all of those sort of questions in terms of a bigger footprint in terms of the media rights. Looking at rugby as a whole, we know it's been a hot week for rugby news. We've had the NRL come out and say, right, you know, R360 defence, running defence against the Challenger League, saying that, OK, bans on players, etc., which again is quite predictable, but important in the scheme of things.

14:19So when you look at it from the player's perspective, NRL feels like that's from a rugby league's perspective. This is the heartland. Who has the sort of primacy on the commercial strategy going forward if you're going to come in and invest in rugby league? There's a whole load of things that they talked about initially. They came on my podcast and talked about what it is that this reimagining might look like. You get into the weeds of change, and that's really always really difficult so we're three years in is the sort of 12-year partnership of IMG it's meant to transform the commercial fortunes why after three years does the sport need a private equity bailout if that was a success so we then have to question is this the transference going on what's the difference between IMG and a private equity partner at this point and in terms of the sort of operational differences i can see value in here is there a big play blah blah blah and we jump onto that but i do think there is something here but it's not being captured but we're in the wrong bit of britain to understand culturally the real value of rugby league yeah and and it's worth saying that um the super league grand final was was last weekend and a pretty full Old Trafford for, if not sold out Old Trafford for that final.

15:43And you've got this dominant team this year in Hull KR. But we're also approaching this, again, moment in the spotlight for rugby league over the next few weeks when Australia come over to play England in three test matches, one at Wembley, one at Everton's new stadium and one, I think, in Leeds. Again, full live coverage on the BBC. So a sort of free-to-air moment. And, you know, we can talk about free-to-air and the power of free-to-air, but there's still a value there. This year's Challenge Cup final on the BBC had a peak audience of 1.2 million viewers on a Saturday afternoon. So again, throw that in with other with other sort of uh similar similarly timed uh sports events but it's probably it's probably not not bad um and also i think the best attended challenge cup final for for some time so there's there's there's something there but i do agree richard i think there's a it feels like if you're adding in a third party investor into what already seems quite a complicated governance organizational who has the influence who has the power who has the final say-so mix um i think it has the you know it has the potential to become very difficult and i think there are lots of competing views amongst the the teams as well in terms of what what the future direction is and there's there's some really interesting team owners in um in operating super league teams uh warrington walls for example is is owned by the guy who basically runs the the oasis tour as the promoter simon moran you've got the whole kr's owner um again a sort of local local businessman made good um a guy called neil um hudgel who was amongst other things the solicitor um and represented uh some of the victims of the the post office scandal so there's some interesting people from interesting areas here not necessarily multi-club owners or people who are operating in other sports to a large extent they're doing it you know it's a local team or it's uh you know it's their their sport because they're from that part of the world yeah but they bring different viewpoints from different businesses and i think i think there's there's probably not full alignment certainly looks as though there isn't full alignment on what that future path should be if we decouple the the sort of conversation i don't know much about lion cap global which is the company the private equity group that's coming in obviously we know a lot about oakwell oakwell are an advisory business and we're very involved in the hundred for example and other prominent sort of recent work but if you look at the cvc is cvc's sort of sports co So are other private equity groups looking at that and saying, OK, well, there's something that's interesting.

18:47They are sort of centralizing a whole load of different properties. They've got minority partnerships. They've got they own 33 percent of premiership rugby, for example. That's put in with other things like, you know, other bits of leagues and things. Now, the argument being a sort of, OK, we're going to centralize. we're going to play the back office game in terms of making sure that that's all running efficiently we can then start to sell things across all our properties so you start to then say right okay if that is the game for the next period of time that's the era that we're in that's cvc has sort of led that in terms of the way in which private equity is looking at sport and managing it the idea that they're going to come in and take on the incumbences and and shift them in a live golf type way well that's hard labour and that's going to be you know it's a very high risk potentially high reward route so the other route money is you know looking at lowering the risk so you might then say well actually a play in rugby league with other properties I can start to see that that might make sense but again we're second guessing the the objectives of of what the money wants which is always a key question and as you said Richard it's very difficult to determine the uh the objectives of money beyond just making more of it at some stage.

20:09I think what you outline there is probably the difference between, you know, operating capital and venture capital. And obviously, these sort of finance entities do view those things very differently. I'm not sure yet whether CVC's model is one that other financial groups are looking at as one to emulate. They're very early on in the formation of that new model. Just to spool back a little bit and go into your sort of concern that private equity-backed rugby league entity wouldn't necessarily sit easily with IMG three years into their 12-year thing themselves. I think that that would be quite straightforward, really.

21:00IMG have those kind of relationships all over. all over the place. IMG work with sports that have private backing routinely and in a long-term way. I mean, just look at their relationship with MotoGP, look at what they do for the WTA. The things that they own, even in the TKO group, are also backed by other financial entities. I don't think that that would be a cause for concern. just maybe to to draw a line under this uh topic um it's actually an incredibly topical topic because we're recording it's it's 9 58 uk time and i'm just seeing that uh the super league are going to announce the teams who will play in the expanded super league as part of this sort of img grading system at 10 a.m so later on in the podcast we can uh maybe two minutes to go because the other piece is London, the London team, the London Broncos, which has sort of existed in various forms and been in the Super League and out of the Super League.

22:04It was, I think, a couple of months ago, a new ownership group came in to there. And you can imagine on the decks as, you know, private equity is looking at what Super League could be and what rugby league in the UK could be. There'll be a big circle around London, maybe a big circle around the south of England and sort of working out, is there a way to sort of bring, you know, bring either new teams in or bring the level up and really, you know, hit the London market? And I suspect the new owners of the London Broncos have a similar idea. I think a future podcast will be the London fan. There's a whole question about this assumption that the demand for sports fandom in London, you can get there intellectually, But actually, you know, we're now seeing the NBA Europe looking at this question.

22:56OK, can we get from the ashes of whatever the basketball league is in England at this point? There's a London franchise question there. We've got, we're talking to London City Lionesses CEO Martin Simmons in a couple of weeks time. The other question for him is, is there enough appetite for a London women's football franchise? I can see you would want to get there, but actually the big eventer in London is doing a lot of traveling, a lot of tube work, because, you know, just how much can that market bear or does it need in terms of is it the best or worst place to launch a sports entertainment brand?

23:36Should we all bring a London story next week or is that ridiculous? No, I think London is a really interesting question. And it pops up in lots of different sports and lots of different areas. Why has Arsenal sort of owned the London women's football market? What's happened there? I think there's, you know, there's bits and bobsters. He might come back to that at some point. Okay, right. Excellent. we have James I think we need to jump from this to your question because I think there's a whole load there's a sort of iron could I stop you there Richard with the breaking news about Super League this is like being on the radio they've literally done it at 10 on the dot they've not done the preamble they've not got Pedro Pinto out to do it it's just a tweet The two new teams who have been added to Super League for 2026.

24:34So Bradford are already in because they're replacing Salford, who are in all sorts of trouble. And the two teams are the York Knights. OK. And Toulouse. Wow. So there we go. So what do I do with my London preamble there? Has that become completely irrelevant? Do you know what? let's go big on Toulouse I think let's all bring it let's pivot to Toulouse I'm more than happy to go to Toulouse and have a live podcast from Toulouse do you know what's great my um my sister lives there actually so we can right off we go we can stop off for lunch what just happened live on the road exactly yeah James Ari Emanuel has a podcast I hear yes well that was a supplementary uh sort of observation to what my main bit that I want to bring is and that is that Bill Murray the celebrated actor is going to be the front man for a new documentary series on golf and golf courses around Ireland so I think this is going to be a multi-part sort of travelogue series on Paramount Plus and the BBC Bill Murray and friends touring around the Emerald Isle It's being produced by Skydance Sports which is effectively the in-house sports documentary maker for Paramount Plus now since Skydance took over Paramount but they've got some form this production company based out of LA of course in that they have produced a number of documentaries for Netflix, ESPN, Amazon over the last few years, including the excellent recent documentary on Netflix around Jerry Jones and a certain vintage of the Dallas Cowboys.

26:40Sort of 80s. It's really good. Really, really good. But this piqued my interest because it's absolutely in the sweet spot of what a bit of sports programming probably any programming needs to be now in that you need to have the right star the right subject matter and the right platform uh and I love Bill Murray and I like golf and I've been to Ireland and I know how to access the BBC so it's it's bang in the bang in the sweet spot for me um but I think Bill Murray is a is is a great get like he he's a you You know, he doesn't do much of this sort of thing. There's all sorts of folklore and amazing stories around Bill Murray.

27:27And I just think that we, it's, it's, it's, it's an, yeah, it's a great get because we're entering this era of unprecedented media fragmentation where the star is more important than the star has ever been. in terms of bringing people into a bit of programming and keeping them there. And I also think we're living in an era of a fascinating era for what constitutes a star or a front person. And this is why I tagged on the Ari Emanuel bit. So it was surprising to me that Ari Emanuel has turned up on X, apparently at the behest of his good mate Elon Musk to front a new series of long-form interviews exclusively for X which is called Rushmore which essentially Ari Emanuel and mates discuss the best in a particular category so who is the best quarterback etc etc etc um and aria manuel is a i mean that's a great get as well because he's um he's a spiky character with the best black book you've ever seen um yeah those are my two those are my two bits what do you think david kushnan well i too am looking forward to this bill murray series and i looked at the um the way that the bbc were talking about this on their in the press release on their sort of media site and they've described it as a genre bending road trip which is a good line and not a line I expect to see on a BBC press release to be honest but they basically explicitly say what you have just sort of hinted at James where they say the series offers an intimate portrait into a country whose stories people and crack are just as unforgettable as Bill Murray himself.

29:33Golf is just the excuse. And I think it does get to this point of sport is just the excuse. And in this sort of era of stardom, we are, you know, you can sort of, I guess, trace a bit of a line to LinkedIn and sort of personal brand and how you, you know, how you profile yourself, how you have a sort of regular touch point with the masses as a celebrity or in Ari Emanuel's case as a sort of celebrity slash celebrity executive um you know a name around town um and yeah I think you're right James I think this is this is the this is the trend this is the pattern um marketing the person over the organization certainly over the institution marketing the person over the the topic the subject matter um you can you know it's maybe a tenuous link but you look it made me think of well first of all it made me think of sort of Stanley Tucci's you know the way he's carved out his wonders around Italy eating all the best food um but it also strangely from a sort of sports broadcast point of view made me think of the I think we can call it a sort of experiment that Channel 5 are doing with their NFL coverage in having you know very well-known TV personality Dermot O 'Leary as the front man for a game show that also you know is you know in between the game show bits there's a live NFL game that they're showing and that is their way of that's the way that Channel 5 believes they can do something different be distinct but also find capture a different audience which is you know as always going back to leaders week what everybody is looking to do yes okay so i this will lead into what i've got to my story as well so this is a sort of transition in there's a couple of things it's really interesting is the phrase golf is just the excuse actually on the bbc's it is because Because BBC's involvement in this, I think, is interesting, given it's almost deserted golf over the course of the last 10 years.

31:50And so. Well, golf is the excuse for them to get Bill Murray, right, to be able to have a thing around Bill Murray. It is, but it also shows a sort of, you know, is contempt the right word in terms of for the sport itself? So because, you know, golf fans and of which of I am one has noted the sort of exodus of the BBC from the Open Championship, the Masters, the Ryder Cup. Yes, it's got highlights, clips of bits and bobs, but it's it's sort of retained Wimbledon and exited golf. Golf used to be a very central sport for the BBC. It isn't anymore. So that's just the biggest story. It is interesting that the BBC is, you know, why it would put in a press release.

32:35Golf is just the excuse. I think it's quite a telling phrase without over sort of engineering it. I think it's quite a telling phrase just in terms of the attitude and where we are now in the relationship between broadcasters and audiences. And I'm not sure they know what they're doing, frankly, and I'm not sure they know who their audiences are. And this is not just a question about the BBC. It's a question about sport. You know, I look at the NFL show on Channel 5 and I'm wondering who is supposed to be attracted to this. And there is a it feels like a lack of confidence in the sport itself.

33:14So it's saying, actually, we'll have a game show with some famous people. And if we're lucky, some people might stay and watch the game. It's sort of almost like a game show with an NFL game attached in some way. And I get it. And we all get the sport and entertainment nexus. We're in a different world. We're in a YouTube era, blah, blah, blah. And we understand it. But I do think there is a real issue with where talent is now in terms of its relationship to production. And this gets to the sport and or entertainment. And what are you doing? Who are you targeting? because I'll just segue into my story.

33:56So my story is the release this week of TNT's Ashes Broadcasting Rollout. And I picked on this because it's quite often in our jobs, not much penetrates your other WhatsApp groups, if you see what I mean. Your other bits of life. This one really did. So I've got cricket mates because I played a lot of cricket and it was really noticeable how cross they were and it felt like what are they doing because I'll just sort of take you through some of the cross because because there's a football presenter and a cycling commentator on the cricket yes and right the lack of expertise in the commentary team there is the sort of decision it felt like the way in which the thing is going to be presented I don't want to jump on it before it starts but TNT is an interesting one from I think cricket fans generally because they've paid the ticket to watch cricket on Sky so Sky is the home of cricket and we and this is that's the phrase that is sort of is an interesting phrase in today's media environment because actually what does that mean how much of a sport is a question i asked simon denyer recently had a really interesting answer in terms of you know the the what is a home of a sport because it's a marketing thing obviously but it's also a signal to people who are actually paying the bills the the subscribers that there's a confidence that okay there's going to be enough there for me to justify my outlay sky has done brilliantly with cricket and this is not about you know a 25 year old or 20 year old sort of argument about leaving channel four it's not that at all but it's about sky's brilliant at cricket and it's got it treats it properly and it's focused on the game itself it's really it doesn't muck about with it it takes you really deep with real sector experts this feels like okay you've got alistair cook you've got stephen finn and You've got Graham Swan, who will be out there doing cricket coverage.

36:05But this feels like that's not what's going on here. And I really wonder what they're doing with the way in which they're fronting the whole thing. So, again, it's interesting. And TNT are a bit stuck with a brand which is a sort of add-on in the landscape. So they've got bits of Champions League. They've got bits of Premier League. They have got bits of cricket. it all of which you know on the bundle and other podcasts i hear arguments to say yeah look look they're being really clever they've divided the rights up and they split them up and when it comes back down to it i think well actually it's just another subscription and am i going to pay for this marginal stuff that is just out there in the ether so it's again it was interesting what a visceral response to the announcement was and think and it comes you know that phrase the gulf is just the excuse i think is that that is actually something that runs through this whole sort of sport as entertainment debate so for the channel five thing the production team is hungry bear which is michael mcintyre's producer you see okay well if that's where you're starting i can see where you ended up so i worry about the quality depth and confidence in the sport when it goes through an entertainment production company yeah yeah i think traditional broadcasters and i would class tnt or um whatever it's uh called now as a traditional broadcasters they're stuck in this middle ground now between the the old way of doing things and this fresh exciting modern objective of finding new viewers in different places and sometimes it comes across as a bit limp and i think we talked about the channel five thing a few weeks ago i don't think that's not necessarily for core nfl fans is it in the uk that that is not at all that is for a different audience and they're trying something new and so where do core nfl fans go well they'll go to sky or they'll get NFL pass.

38:20You call NFL fans who are not paying for subscription TV. They're, you know, they're in trouble. But I do think that these traditional broadcasters should wake up to the growing movement. You know, we were talking about it earlier with Bill Murray. Like stars are much more important than they used to be. I don't think it's because we're in a particular age where, you know, people are drawn to stars any more than they have been in the past. It's just the way that media works now gives them such a premium. We find things we want to watch because we're brought in by stars. They're easier to find.

38:58They're always on. The platforms are there for them. And I think, for example, with this TNT coverage, there are absolutely bona fide experts within their lineup. And if they put a little bit more juice behind it and, for example, took Graham Swan, who is one of their pundits that they have for the London studio wrap up show. and they said right Graham Swan you we're going to produce a separate kind of watch along or a separate stream for your social platforms Graham Swan you are the the sort of expert broadcaster pundit or your channels are and you've got a different option your hardcores can be drawn to Alistair Cook or whoever the people that they they follow and they don't want the watered down light entertainment version they've got another option for them there i was thinking this the other day you know richard i've got a uh i've got a niche interest in sumo wrestling and that's going on i was thinking about you this week with the uh albert hall well yeah it's going on at the moment in the royal albert hall and i was one of um it's very brave of the bbc now to publish the number of people who are watching uh stream on um uh on iplayer but i was one of 7 000 people watching sumo wrestling on Wednesday night, whatever time it was, on the BBC.

40:27And I thought to myself... Did the slightly fatter bloke win? In one instance, no. And that was a big shock. Tobizaru absolutely slammed him down. So James Richardson, a TV presenter who is often on TNT, is part of the presentation team in the Royal Albert Hall. And I thought to myself, if the organisers had paid James Richardson a little bit more and put some production support around him, I think they're getting more than 7 ,000 people watching if James Richardson's social platforms are broadcasting this sumo. and it is the way it's the direction of travel we've seen just the other day yet another influencer has um uh has bought or been given rights so zach nanny uh has got uh french under 21 football rights in france a french influencer on his platforms it's absolutely the direction of travel and i think traditional broadcasters need to wake up to the fact that this is happening and account for it and sort of take a bit of ownership of it.

41:46Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I think though it is hard for traditional broadcasters to bring some of that stuff in without it, without sort of slightly doing it in a traditional broadcaster-y way. And that's where it sort of loses the, you know, to use a word we don't like to use, authenticity. Just to go back to the TNT specific situation and just to, And I'm not a huge cricket fan, and so I'm not emotive about this topic, but I am emotive about great sports broadcasting. I'm not sure we've actually explained who's on this, who's on the show. So the lead commentators are Alistair Eakin and Rob Hatch.

42:27Alistair Eakin is Rugby Union, and Rob Hatch is a cycling commentator. They are the lead cricket commentators. the presenter is Becky Ives who is a very good TNT football and boxing reporter so that I think has been the bit that has got people's sort of irritation levels they can live with the so there's a there's a sort of the periphery of it is one thing I think the other bit we should say is that Sky didn't want to bid for this yeah there there's not a this isn't an argument to say you know oh they've outbid sky sky weren't interested in the ashes because yeah and there's a reason they weren't interested in the ashes and that's because it's on in the middle of the night and all the people who are getting really het up about this and writing articles about the the broadcast presentation they're not going to be watching there's an economic consideration here they're doing stuff in london they're doing stuff on site and they're being quite transparent about that in a way that other broadcasters sometimes aren't about who is on site and off site.

43:31And I think, you know, doesn't necessarily need to be commended. But I think it's I think it's I think it's broadly, you know, a nice bit of transparency that they're saying, look, here's the setup. All this all this talk about, you know, the commentators not being cricket commentators. I mean, Andrew Cotter is probably the finest commentator in the UK at the moment. And he there's not a sport that he doesn't commentate brilliantly on. Fair enough. You have, you know, some of the very best sports broadcasting, I would argue almost ever, is when Five Live does the Olympics and they have football commentators suddenly jumping in to do canoeing or judo or weightlifting.

44:16Alan Green, you know, brilliant in my view. um marmite football commentator for some but a brilliant sports broadcaster on football some of his olympic commentary but david that's because you're not i mean i'm a canoe fan and you know the whatsapp groups are going off when they bring in andrew cotter to do the canoeing at the he's clueless but i'm an that's not true he's excellent he's a brilliant broadcaster i am an f1 fan and i remember when jim rosenthal was brought in to do the f1 coverage which he did for many years. By his own admission, not an F1 fan, didn't know much about it, but he's a fantastic broadcaster and he's an all-rounder.

44:58And maybe we were just moving out of the world of all-rounders and into absolute specialists. And I appreciate from a cricket fan's point of view, you are very used to watching test matches through the summer on Sky and it's Nasser Hussain, it's Mike Atherton, it's your familiar group now of brilliant broadcasters who are, you know, in this sort of example, the stars, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not convinced there's anything to get to. I hear you on that. And I think it's a really, it's good counter. It quite often comes back to, are you interested in this sport or not? I'm all for experimentation in the NFL.

45:37I don't watch the NFL. You can do what you like with tennis because I'm not interested. Whereas if you play around with the stuff I'm interested in, then you get agitated. You start to sort of construct pseudo-intellectual arguments. But are you staying up to watch The Ashes or are you going to watch clips and listen to a podcast maybe at the end of play at a suitable time? So, again, it gets to audience, doesn't it? And I think one of the things that we don't quite yet know is what the value of the promiscuous outer layer fan is and how much time sport is devoting to capturing them. And in competition, it talks to the London question that we mentioned early on.