UP530 Spurs For Sale: Shirts, Gambling Bans and the Post-Levy Era

22:47Ryan Norys:If you look at their new business value, it's tripled by over 300 million in that same span. So there are, let's call it opportunities and growth across the premier league and including the front of shirt it really just goes back to i actually think you're you know similarly what's that what's happening in wsl is actually going to start happening in in the premier league because you'll see these these premium brands start to become on the front of shirt and betting will start to fall off which is i think what what they intended and hoped to do do you bundle the women's shirt into the men's shirt is that how you're selling it we we don't that's not the intention It possibly could happen, but women's are their own identity.

23:28Ryan Norys:It's their own platform and growth platform, if you will. So our intention is to not bundle it together. Ironically, it's interesting because you'll have certain conversations where brands will certainly only be interested in the women's. Then you have other brands that are interested in both, right? But I think the most important thing is we're getting that question a lot more, right? It used to just be where there was an assumption or it was just an add-on. hey, it's like, can you add this asset in? Can I get another minute of LED? It's certainly not anymore. It's a growth platform. And it's one that certainly takes intentional commercial planning as well.

24:04And so do Altius have that brief as well? Or are they just the men's front of shirt?

24:10Ryan Norys:So they are the entire front of shirt. But ideally, we will unbundle it. So technically, they could be selling two assets if you want to get granular. And in terms of the relative values, of those shirts, the men's and the women's shirt. What do you see there in terms of, if it is unbundled, what's the women's shirt worth, I guess is the question. I can't get into specifics, but I think every club is going to change. But I think the principles are going to be the same, right? I think what we can do or what we'll have is a little bit more access with the women's team in terms of the players are usually a bit more interested or able and willing to participate.

24:50Ryan Norys:I think the storytelling and the narrative that you can build around the women's is a bit more compelling. So I wouldn't say the value is certainly there. It's slightly different. I mean, obviously, if you look at the EPL and the Champions League, that audience directly is almost kind of having like a Super Bowl every 10 days. Right. So from the WSL, it's going to be a slightly different proposition from that perspective. but the value that we talked about in terms of access, content distribution, integrating creators still exists. So the value of the Spurs is obviously directly linked to the broadcast footprint of the Premier League and this season, the Champions League.

25:29And you're selling that as a global property. You're trying to sort of position it in that way. Yeah. So at the beginning, you said it's a performance marketing asset rather than a brand asset. that feels like the value is in actually a global awareness platform.

25:47Ryan Norys:Yeah, it's a bit of both, as I said. So it's basically a performance channel, right? So it's not only exposure, but the exposure and the awareness is critically important. But it's also the measurable outcomes, right? So the content you create around it, the distribution and the conversion all matter, right? And the shirt, I mean, it offers so many different opportunities because aside from wearing it every week, you know, when they play matches, the players, every key moment that happens, even a new signing, whether you score a goal celebration, they travel the farthest. I think if you look at the top in front of shirt, we have 16 million social users daily are seeing the brain on the front of the shirt, right?

26:29Ryan Norys:And that's, that's globally. So that becomes this kind of modern media commerce platform, if you will. Do you think there's a, there's a difference between seeing a brand on television compared to seeing it on tiktok i don't i mean i genuinely i don't know the obviously don't know the answer but i just in terms of the there's a sort of perception of premiumness i don't know what what do you think and and the just the longevity of the relationship you're you're sitting there with the brand the classic sort of we're beating the ad breaks by being in the content as a television product whereas on tiktok it flies by i'm seeing highlights clips and off I go.

27:06And I'm just wondering if that's an apples and pears type comparison.

27:11Ryan Norys:Yeah. I mean, you'd have to look at the data in science to know the answer to be kind of correct. My kind of view is I probably would lean more towards the social aspect being more valuable because it's short form content. You're glued into it. You can rewatch it over and over again in a broadcast. It's moving so quickly. So there's very few oftentimes where you're sitting there, you know, kind of focused honing in on the shirt. But all those moments that you are are typically those same exact moments that go on to social. Right. And now, I mean, if you look at TikTok, we have from a Tottenham perspective, have the biggest TikTok kind of following across all the Premier League clubs.

27:52Ryan Norys:But even social media in general, it's just scaling and growing at such a high level. And then when you start integrating creators into it, that value certainly would circumvent the broadcast. But I suppose it also depends on your audience, right? So maybe someone who is watching the game on television or going to the match, they'll probably get more value from watching it in a broadcast or live. Whereas if you're a Gen Z or someone in that kind of demographic, you're going to get more value on social media and those platforms. And do you know who Spurs fans are? I mean, it is, again, the classic question of over the years, football has passed its audience on to third parties.

28:37And YouTube, TikTok are this year's version of what happened previously with broadcasters. Do you know who a Spurs fan is on a granular level?

28:48Ryan Norys:I think we're getting closer and learning more every day, right? So one of the biggest shifts that would change commercially, and we talked about it, I've kind of titled it as digital application. But what it really means is that we have an ad tech platform that is integrated into our ecosystem, if you will, that allows us to monetize first party data. So what we effectively can do is if you're a brand that comes into the business or comes into Tottenham and says, this is the specific target market that I want, we'll be able to identify one who's within our first party data. So, So, you know, within our kind of owned and operated channels, we can use AI to create lookalike audiences in your specific market and be able to target those people.

29:34Ryan Norys:So we generally know who a Spurs fan is, but they also vary by market. Right. So you have to take that into consideration. There's there's a global holistic view, but there's also if you if you just look at that and say, hey, the fan in the UK is a fan globally, you're going to be wrong. so you have to be able to to geographically identify that but that's actually our biggest selling point is we can actually go to a brand and say who do you want to speak to what message do you want to deliver to them when do you want to do it and where do you want to do it right and that's still an advert that's still a sort of advertising demographic answer isn't it's not a platform answer you don't know me like amazon and youtube know me you don't you haven't got that granular data?

30:19Ryan Norys:No, not yet. But we will, I'd say at the moment, we're going through a digital transformation. So I think we're probably about four or five months away from it. So that was one of the key things around the Salesforce relationship was that we'd now be able to have a 360 degree view of not only our Spurs fans, but effectively everyone that comes to the stadium. So you'll see like the way that Tottenham communicates to you today is going to be much different in six months. And then even from a year from now, it's going to be even more different. So we will know where you're going, what you like, what shirts you're buying, where you're buying it from, what other events you go to.

30:56Ryan Norys:We will get to that level of detail. But it'd be unfair to say that we know that level. So just talk to me about that then. So the Salesforce relationship, when did that start? So it started not this past summer, but two summers ago was the initial partnership that we had. we were the first football club and premier league club that they've ever done a partnership with. It's both club and stadium, but effectively, let's put the marketing stuff aside from it. The real story is that one across all of our platforms internally from a technology standpoint, we'll be moving to, for the most part, into Salesforce in terms of that software aspect of it.

31:36Ryan Norys:But really the primary goal is for us to have that 360 degree view of fans. So to put it in a simple term, if you're a Bears fan that lives in Chicago, you travel here for the NFL game, you don't know that there's a, you know, what Tottenham is necessarily because you've, I don't know, you know, you've not been exposed to Premier League football. We can now start to make that connection. And then as soon as they get back to Chicago, we'll be able to email them and say, hey, you know, welcome to Tottenham Hotspur. Here's a XYZ gift for joining the stadium. and also every week within 20 miles from your house is the Chicago Supporters Club for Tottenham Hotspur and we'd love to connect you guys and now you're starting to create this community, right?

32:22Ryan Norys:So that's the type of information and kind of relationship that we'll have with our fan but you can see how powerful that is because now we can leverage all these other events to drive the brand and increase fan growth. So is that, it's interesting. So is that, because obviously on podcasts like this you get a lot of people coming on saying promising to deliver exactly what you've just articulated that you know we have got a black box now propelled by ai that is going to make a football club's relationship with its fan more analogous with that of a platform and a user so one it's more valuable so the the future enterprise value of tottenham hotspur football club is linked directly to being able to unlock that relationship on a very much more sophisticated way than has normally been traded thus far so you're very familiar with this argument i know so is that is the sales force your bet so you know again it's the question for every person in your position is well how do we do that we can all see that man united spurs valuation is a fraction of pinterest and tiktok and it's to do with that question of knowledge of fans in the UK, but also globally.

33:37So Salesforce is your bet on that. That's the promise that they're making.

33:44Ryan Norys:Yeah, so I would say Salesforce is one of them. Obviously, we have a lot of other partners in HP and HPE that do a lot to power the stadium. And we'll be announcing another partnership as well that will sit alongside Salesforce. So I would say I don't want to go out and say it's only going to be Salesforce, course, but that's kind of the end goal. The situation I described to you is where we want to go. And obviously, we're choosing all the best in class partners to help us along that journey. But it is our bet to say that we're the bundle of technology. And this is probably a better conversation for Rod Pickering, who's our CTO.

34:22Ryan Norys:But that is our bet is to get to where we need to get to, which is the situation I described. It's sort of interesting because you then get to the ai question and one of you know that's propelled this bit of the conversation and one of the questions is is the data too valuable to give away to or to to bundle into a sponsorship relationship so the tent you know from your incentivized to to turn salesforce into a sponsor into a partner and that's what has always happened in football in sport sports marketing the question now is okay do you do that because actually you're just giving it away again and one of the questions for everyone in the marketplace is what do you do with that ai data because it's incredibly valuable and we don't quite know the extent of it so it's a sort of future proofing question but that all of the incentives are short term to bundle it into a sponsorship relationship it?

35:21Ryan Norys:I think yes and no. So it goes back to that first party data, right? I think years ago, and to give you a slightly different example, and you can go to the Spotify Barcelona deal, but a lot of that deal was based on the fact that Spotify believed that Barcelona had, let's call it 1 billion fans, right? Which may be true that there's 1 billion people interested in the football club but when you start to bring that down and you start to say okay well how many people are actually in your crm the number is going to be significantly lower then you bring it further down of how many of those people can actually be contactable right so how many times can i actually communicate with them then even further is like how many of those can be contactable by a partner yeah right so that number goes even even smaller it goes to less than a million doesn't it i mean that that that that case study has become the definitive case study isn't it in the industry Exactly.

36:14Ryan Norys:So that's why what we've done by this ad tech platform is effectively, we're not giving away our first party data, but we're allowing partners to go directly to them through the ad tech platform, right? So we're not sharing the data, but they're able to communicate them. If they can convince them to join their platform or their subscription or their business, that's great. So that is a big difference because in today's world, if I go and I say, hey, I'm going to do a website, solace email to you and a website takeover, and you actually look at the conversion across that, it's going to be very, very low, right?

36:49Ryan Norys:Even if you have a high open rate on emails, because that big number is small, whereas what we call like we can address the messy middle, I'm able to almost guarantee a partner, and we've done this with a few of our partners, that I can't obviously guarantee conversions, but I can guarantee that we'll deliver XYZ people to your platform that not only fit within your demographic and your target market, but that also in the geographies and the regions that you want to target. I know we can deliver them, but obviously you have to have an offer and a business that makes them convert, right? So that's the big kind of secret sauce, if you will, is historically partners or rights holders are not able to do that.

37:31Ryan Norys:We can guarantee it. And if you look at ExpressVPN, they're a great example they've never done a deal in football or even in sponsorship or sports we have a great partnership with them but a majority of it is is really tied around performance marketing and media spend right and there's a basically a value driver we can drive them directly to to their audience and that's your reference to performance marketing of the shirt earlier that's that's the sort of argument behind that point yeah it's not just a badge it's a performance channel yeah okay Okay. I mean, I see his picture behind you, Sonny, my favourite player, Ho-Ming Son.

38:09So the career question, and because again, when you look at Spurs in the international market, he was one, a fantastic player, a lovely bloke, but also brought a huge audience from Korea. I've seen it compared to others in terms of just you've got this question that runs through football not just about Spurs but he's a good example of this in terms of the star audience versus the team audience and how that plays and it's probably different locally than it is globally and I think it's disproportionately more important when you talk about a global market. So talk to me about that and the sort of what you might call the post Sony period in Spurs sort of global audience.

38:51Ryan Norys:yeah so i think the to start i mean one as you've already alluded to sunny was a fantastic steward and a player for the football club i think one of the the benefits or things that we did and there was sacrifice because we weren't able to go any other markets but if you look at the last 10 years tottenham has visited the apac region if you will for pre-season eight of the last 10 years right? We have 11 partners in APAC, which is more than top six. And three of Spurs fans are from the region. Over 50 % of our followers, social media come from that region. And we also have over 150 supporters clubs from that region.

39:29Ryan Norys:So the foundation, while Sonny certainly contributed to it and built it in a very big way, we have a pretty good foundation that honestly, the big test for us is how many of those people can we retain and hope to continue that relationship with right the reality is that if you look at the our fan base in korea it's so far and above everybody else right but across our overall apac kind of fan base korea represents such a small number so i'd be lying to you if i said we didn't feel an impact because we do across retail match day sponsorship, it's very real because Sonny is one of those kind of generational talents, personalities, and players.

40:14Ryan Norys:However, we have other kind of, let's call it, strategies in place to try to maintain that Asian fan base. And we also know that we need to shift our focus slightly and start to go to the US and visit the United States and do a bit more in that region as well. Do you think there's a, because it's, again, one of the sort of unknowns really is the, It's an easy argument. It's the sort of Rene Marta PSG argument, you know, that gets banded around and that Ronaldo to whatever. And do we know yet the stickiness in terms of the residual affection for Spurs of a Korean fan as he, you know, Sonny goes to MLS.

40:56But if you generalize that, I'm always suspicious of easy arguments. And of course, the power of the star is very profound. and all of the research we talked ourselves into saying star over club brand. And there's a bit of me that wonders about that and actually likes to just poke at that for a minute. But what do we know about that really?

41:19Ryan Norys:I don't think we really know, right? So if you just look, and it's interesting because we're actually being transparent in the midst of this debate now as to how heavy do we go into Korea. because if you look at one data set, you could say we're actually over-indexing in a lot of areas in Korea still. We've shifted our strategy, more creator content. We've gone a little bit more into the lifestyle piece of it because we truly understand the culture. So using that to our advantage. But then also you can look at other data sets and say, our fan base not necessarily hasn't drawn off a cliff, but we're selling less shirts in Korea, right?

41:56So it's a bit of like understanding

41:59Ryan Norys:what that true value is. And I don't think at this stage that we know, obviously Sonny's only been gone for, you know, I'd say maybe eight months or so, but I don't think we really know the answer because I could paint three different pictures for you on both sides and you'd be convinced on either end. So I think what really comes out is in a year, you'll be able to look back, look at the previous year across all the same metrics and say, how much of this fan base did we actually lose or did we actually, you know, maintain? Yeah, it's difficult because you get into a sort of story versus data conversation, don't you?

42:34And there's, I mean, we've all met, I mean, you meet a lot of Liverpool fans of a certain age, a lot of Man United fans or a lot of, you know, Everton fans, and they're tied to a particular time in their lives. And I wonder how, whether, you know, again, that's the sort of strength of the relationship and that, and there's a local global aspect to it as well. A lot of Liverpool fans who fell in love with Kelly Dalglish or John Barnes or Michael Owen, but they are defined as Liverpool fans. So, you know, it's sort of, it doesn't feel like a complete picture of that. And I always, when you listen to people, research trends, people talk about Gen Z and Gen Alpha's behavior, I always wonder a bit in terms of, because you just don't know what the future is going to be, do you?

43:28Ryan Norys:Yeah, you don't. I mean, I think we're still trying to figure it out. And it's hard to even look at other sports as a basis because the NFL is going to be a team league. The NBA is a player league. So then if you go to there, if you go into cricket or rugby, it's certainly rugby's, in my opinion, probably a bit more of a team league. So it's a bit challenging to know where we go and what the answer is. But I actually think the platform and the system that you build around a club or a rights holder is going to be equally as important. If you look at F1, right now it seems like they can't miss, but they literally have all these little tent poles and content tent poles around them from Lego to Disney.

44:15Ryan Norys:So they're bringing in so many other different, let's call it genres and interests that still are tied back to F1. And I don't know that people necessarily still have a team, but there's a lot of F1 fans. you know even more so f1 fans and let's call it someone who you know particularly will relate to red bull or mercedes yeah i was surprised i went to a a do in london last year and it was on the same day as the mclaren sort of car reveal livery reveal in trafalgar square and i thought people were f1 fans i thought yeah i've been to monzo and i've seen ferrari fans and they're you know they're proper fans but i never really thought mclaren had that same sort of pull but yes they do and it's just because i'm not f1 fan but you sort of notice fandom and i think club fandom is the really hard bit it's the real asset that football clubs have over you know if you're starting a hundred cricket franchise or a you know a team in another sport if you're trying to sell the NFL London franchise or an NBA Europe franchise, it's really hard labor to turn those big eventers into proper fans as we would recognize them as a Premier League fan.

45:32Do you agree with that?

45:33Ryan Norys:I do, yeah. And I think it's one of the challenges. If you look at the NFL, the NFL in the UK is massive, right? But now you're starting to see these teams make a conscious effort of repeating or coming back. They have these international marketing rights of hiring people in this area. But it's very difficult to get them to all gravitate towards one team. Still, even this past summer, if you come to an NFL game at the stadium, you'll see 10 to 15 different jerseys, if not more. Right. So I think you're exactly right that if you were starting a new franchise today, it'd be very hard unless you focused it very, very heavily in terms of the community and the geographical location.

46:19Ryan Norys:Right. So if you put an NBA team in London and you only have one, you'll probably do pretty well because now everyone who is on the fence or doesn't have an NBA team is naturally going to start going towards that team because it's London's team. I think the NFL would be similar. But when you start putting two, three teams, you're going to do exactly what football does, where you start to create these pockets of people that support it. i'm interested because your background you know the nfl background that you've got when i look at the nfl from the other way you know it's a sort of it's interesting when americans talk about the premier league there's a sort of gap in their knowledge or understanding or the granular stuff and it's the same with me i look i understand the nfl as a sort of business idea but i'm not i don't feel it in the same way what the london games from an m from a miami perspective what was did you did you notice anything i'm just trying to identify because when you look at the the media rights for the nfl i think it's three percent is overseas so that they must look at that and that must irritate them they want that number to be bigger and this is all about you know developing a global fan and we're all going to converge on the global fan which again is a question we don't quite know the answer to but what what was the miami impact what did you see when you were sitting over there when when the nfl comes to london yeah so i think it depends on on how you approach it and back then it was a very different proposition than it is now it's much more sophisticated and advanced i think we were one of the the first teams as an example when i was at the dolphins and we came to london we played at wembley and then it was the the newness and the freshness just is what attracted people you're now the sophistication and understanding of the sport across UK fans are at a much higher level, right?

48:06Ryan Norys:I mean, even just walking into the stadium today, two, three, an Australian, an English person, and someone that is from Switzerland, all talked about the first game that was played last night between the Patriots and the Broncos, right? I don't think anyone stayed up for the later game, but all made comments about it. Maybe it's because I'm American in the NFL, but they all watched it, right? They don't understand some bits, but there's that natural curiosity to lean itself towards it. So I think it's just getting bigger and you will see more people watch it. I think one of the challenges that you have, unless you buy the zone like myself and you have the NFL game pass, if you're watching on Sky Sports, you only get maybe two games a year.

48:44Ryan Norys:You know what I mean? Two games a week, rather. Sorry. So I think the exposure to the games is a bit smaller. Whereas if you look at the Premier League, and again, going back to Manchester City, when I first joined the football club in 2011, very few games were shown in the US, right? You had to go to some, I lived in New York City for a while just before that move. You had to go to some pub at 4.30 in the morning, usually enter through the back door, and some group of fans was watching a game that was starting. Whereas now in the US, I can watch more Premier League matches than I can in the UK.

49:19Ryan Norys:So I think that is one of the advantages that the Premier League has over the NFL at this moment. But you'll see that shift starting to change, right? Because on the flip side of that, the Premier League has not played a regular season game in the U.S., but the NFL has. So I think there's a bit of a push and pull on both sides. But it will be interesting to see how, if you ever compared that growth to know which one is growing quicker. My guess is probably Premier League is growing quicker in the US. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's sort of what it looks like at that end. And there's a product as entertainment type thing where I look at Channel 5's NFL coverage and it's a sort of game show with some football.

50:02They're almost like afraid to show the sport because what they're trying to do is create a sort of entertainment offering, which is fine. There's a space for that. But actually, I sometimes think if I was interested in the NFL, it would really irritate me. But and then does that matter? and you get that friction between i'm a real fan but all you're you're aiming at someone who's just you know it could be love island or it could be this it just the sport has been diminished and that's the tussle that we're in at the moment isn't it in terms of the lack of there's sometimes a lack of confidence in the core product i think when the marketing industry gets hold of something and puts it through a broadcast sort of lens yeah i'm laughing because yesterday i had it on sky

50:41Ryan Norys:sports. And then every time that they went to a commercial break or there was like this moment, they switched to the commentators. And I just found it to be just a bit kind of frustrating and kind of ruining the flow of the match or the game, if you will. So I actually moved to a VPN on my iPad and change the channel so I can watch that. So I do agree with you that if you are someone who understands and is a fan of the sport, they are a bit shy of kind of pushing that product as forward as you would. You know, I can watch Match of the Day and all the different programs on Sky around football all day long.

51:17Ryan Norys:But it's because I understand football and it's authentic. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Conscious your time. You've got a board meeting this afternoon, haven't you? I think I will. We do, yeah. So there's a final question, which is to do, what's the link between on-the-field performance and the commercial performance? It's not a trick question, but just give me a sense because there's a lag. isn't there there's a time lag and obviously at the moment spurs are in champion they've got champions league football and the league is a you know a horror show so you've got this balance here but what do you see as the as the link yeah so i mean clearly as a football club everything that we do especially in the business side and more than anything else commercially is try to drive as much revenue as possible so we can reinvest in the team and be as successful as possible Right now, the challenge, especially where I sit is I can't control what happens on the pitch.

52:13Ryan Norys:Right. And I can't control the performance or the results. So I try to build value around what we control. So that is the audience, which we spent a lot of time talking about, still trying to make and give access to for brands to communicate and kind of do activations with our players, content distribution, year round engagement. So it's always a bit more difficult during the bad times. It's always a bit more fun during the good times, you know, but you can't really let yourself get too high or too low and you can't be emotional about it. You just have to build value around what you control. So it is, that's probably the best way to put it.

52:53Ryan Norys:You know, there's being as honest as possible. And it's an impossible question for you to answer. So it's a, you know, it's a, well, I just thought I'd throw it in just to see what your response would be. Right. Listen, Thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate it. And what's the bet on Sunday? I'm going 2-0 Tottenham. We're their bogey team, Man City. Yeah, I think it'll be 2-1. 2-1? Okay. I'll keep you on that one. Brilliant. Thank you very much, Ryan, for your time. Awesome. Thank you. Have a good night. Cheers.