UP531 Winter Olympic Special: Lottery funding, Medals, Rule 40 and Private Schools

0:00Hiya, it's Richard Gillis here and welcome to Unofficial Partner, the Sports Business Conversation. Today we have got Sally Munday, who is Chief Executive of UK Sport, who is one of the most influential positions in the industry. And it's a good time to be talking to her because the Winter Olympics and Paralympics start on Friday, which bring together all sorts of questions about medals and funding, but also about social class and what's the point of the Winter Olympic Games. is there a participation legacy is it all about medals how is the national lottery money spent is it worth it all of that stuff we get into and just some details before we hear sally uk sport distributes about 100 million pounds annually in public funds from national lottery and exchequer sources to support high performance olympic and paralympic sports and athletes for the 2028 los angeles olympic cycle which is this one they have announced a record 330 million pound investment with around 11 million distributed directly to athletes annually through the athlete personal awards process so where does the money go why and does it work very interesting conversation and very honest candid conversation i think you'll enjoy it and there are plenty more where this came from so there's about 530 sports business conversations in our unofficial partner archive of podcasts you can go there for absolutely no money and access there across all different sports lots of different themes and subject areas there is something for everyone also if you're interested in this sort of stuff the unofficial partner sub stack newsletter goes out every thursday so if sub stack is your thing then you'll find us there this episode of the unofficial partner podcast is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport.

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2:38i said to you before that uk sport is one of those organizations that i know it but i don't know it i've got all sorts of probably outdated or misconceptions about it and at some point we'll talk about the winter olympics in a minute i've got some questions about that but can you just say what let's talk about your job what do you do what's the what's a day like gosh well probably

3:00Sally Munday:like most CEOs would tell you Richard there is no straightforward day right that there's no day that looks the same what's a good day you get in there and you think yeah okay you come out and yeah that was a good day those days are good days right I love my job I'm really lucky I think I've got one of the best jobs in the country but a good day for me is when I get to the end of the day and And I think actually the actions I've taken, the decisions I've made, the people I've led have had a positive impact on either an athlete being able to achieve their ambitions at an Olympic or Paralympic Games or increase the likelihood of us hosting a major sporting event in this country.

3:42Sally Munday:That's what a good day looks like. Do you interact with athletes much yourself or is it sort of decisions that you may filter down to them at some point? Yeah. So in this role, no, not a great deal of interaction with the athletes. You're that much more removed. When I was chief exec of hockey, a way more interaction with the athletes. But you're a bit more removed in this job. and but I think one of the joys of having of doing this job having come from the background that I did is that always in the back of my mind is how will this decision this choice this action this intervention end up impacting the sports which might end up impacting the athlete and their chances of achieving their ambition so I think because I've had that background you're it's never far from your mind so you were ceo of england and gb hockey that's right i was indeed yeah yeah yeah in 2019 you you got this job i did so i've been there just over six years what's the difference was it is it just a the breadth of it because now let's talk about uk sports so it's across all sports and the mistake i always make i always think that i always confuse sport england and UK sport yeah you don't want to do that so look we well Tim wouldn't have been very happy with you of that when he was there so look UK sport has two main things that it does the first that we do is that we invest lottery and public money into Olympic and Paralympic sports and athletes to directly to try and achieve Olympic and Paralympic success.

5:26Sally Munday:And we do that across around 50 sports and we support over a thousand athletes. At the moment, I think we're supporting about 1100 athletes. And the majority of those sports are what a lot of people, obviously, a lot of people would traditionally see as amateur type sports. So sports that aren't, don't find it that easy to generate commercial revenue or broadcast revenue, advertising revenue, etc etc and so if you go back 30 odd years to the 1996 atlanta games we came 36th on the medal table we won one gold medal we were dubbed the team of shame by our media and at the time that was just after national lottery money came in and john major uh at the prime minister at the time uh when that all got set up said we need to use some of this lottery money to directly impact on how we support Olympic and Paralympic athletes and so UK sport came into existence back in in 1997 and we have been supporting Olympic sport and Olympic athletes and Paralympic sport and Paralympic athletes since that time the second thing that we do is we are the UK agency for supporting sports to bring major and mega events to this country and so our remit there goes beyond Olympic and Paralympic sport and whilst we will work with Olympic and Paralympic sports to bring events here we also work directly with the professional sports so we're very closely involved in the Euros 2028 the bid for the Women's World Cup in 2035 we put quite a lot of funding into the Women's Rugby World Cup last year etc etc so those are the two main things we do investing in Olympic and Paralympic sport and major and mega events it's that Atlanta moment is quite an interesting way I always think because it's sort of it's year zero for this process the lottery funding and since then there's been people mention it a lot and I sort of remember it's Denise Lewis did she win a medal was that the only one we got so 1996 was actually Red Wave and Pinson they won the gold medal so it was they that won the gold the only gold medal in 96 in atlanta and that you mentioned their shame national shame that's how the media dubbed it it was all the headlines team of shame is is how it was dubbed longer term that's a big decision and a lot of money has been spent and always the question is counter history what would have been what would have happened if that money hadn't have come from the lottery the lottery then you know it untapped this this i guess a lot of money's gone into that sort of high performance area and its medals and we've been through london 2012 and out the other side and when you look back at that and it's a sort of i guess we've got an anniversary here we say what is it 26 30 years what's the legacy of that decision in terms of of where that money has been spent over the years how much has been spent Do we know how much money has been spent?

8:30Sally Munday:Oh, my gosh, that's such a good question. I don't know off the top of my head the total amount of money that's been spent. But to give you an idea, in the quadrennial that's going to the L.A. game, so through to 2028, we'll invest in sports and athlete grants and some of the other things that we put around them, around half a billion pounds worth of money, of which just over half is lottery money and the other half of his exchequer money. It sounds like a lot of money, but when you think about we're funding 50 sports and over 1 ,000 athletes getting grants to enable them to train full-time and a whole load of major and mega events, it actually isn't that much money.

9:16Sally Munday:And our turnover at UK Sport actually doing all of that is less than one of the professional sports like cricket. I'm just wondering if that comparison, just sort of thinking that through, but you mean that's the ECB budget you're comparing that to, is that? Yeah. But the ECB, and how much public money do the ECB get? I don't know without looking at their accounts. We don't directly fund the ECB because whilst they will feature in a future Olympic Games, they haven't today. We have supported them in some of their major events historically, but I think they get some money from Sport England, so need to check what they get.

9:56Sally Munday:but most of their money that they generate is their own commercial revenue and they're very good at it right the comparator isn't isn't said for criticism it's said for comparator reasons that you know we i think it's very easy to look at the amount of money that we invest and think it is a huge amount of money but the comparison is as i said we're funding over 50 sports we're funding a whole load of major events to come to this country and we're doing it on a turnover that's less than one of the professional sports. You're a sort of an interesting point between government and the sort of sports industry.

10:32What has the sort of, I don't know what the cliche is, mood music in Whitehall, all of that. What do they think of sport when they think of sport? What do they think of sport? What do they think of Olympic and Paralympic sport?

10:43Sally Munday:Okay, let's go with Olympic and Paralympic sport. They like the big moment. They do like the big moment and politicians love the big moment, right? But actually, if you go beyond that, it's really simple why the government like Olympic and Paralympic sport. They like it because British people like it. And when we do constant public attitude surveys to understand what people think of Olympic and Paralympic sport, and it consistently comes into the top three things that make British people feel proud to be British alongside the NHS and the armed services. And it is Olympic and Paralympic sport is probably collective, collectively, you know, Team GB and Paralympics GB.

11:30Sally Munday:Best best love brand in the UK, one of the best love brands. And the British people love engaging with the breadth of Olympic and Paralympic sport. They love the fact that a lot of the athletes feel like girl next door, boy next door, like somebody they know could have become an Olympian or a Paralympian. And I think that the whole feel good factor, this sense of pride that we have, because Olympic and Paralympic sport and about the event itself, it's one of the few truly shared national experience, one of the few shared national experiences that we now have. A lot of our shared experiences at the moment are pretty sad and negative, but it's one of the really few, really positive shared experiences that we have as a nation.

12:25Sally Munday:And it holds a really special place in people's hearts. And so, yeah, I feel really comfortable talking about the amount of investment and the amount of public and lottery money that goes into it. And by the way, on the lottery front, whilst we do benefit hugely from lottery money, if you think about all the money that goes to good causes, here you go, I'll throw a question back at you, Richard. If I was to say to you, take a guess, what percentage of the good cause money that the lottery generates do you think UK sport gets? well okay uh see i'm coming this is i'm going to go absurdly high which will please you because i'm sure that it's lower than your i think the question is framing me as going high i think 30 yeah and you know what when i came into this job i think i'd have probably said something similar it's just over 4.6 well okay it's a small amount and that story then the story that we have spent the national lottery money on Olympic medals which is one you've heard many times yeah um doesn't quite stand up does it no we've spent some of the lottery money on it but look the rest of the good cause money goes on brilliant stuff right there's sport England get I think something like 11 something percent sport Scotland sport Wales they all get some so sport gets about 20 percent you've then got heritage arts the community fund film they all get money from the national lottery as well and they get the other 80 percent between those organizations and heritage right they they all get the rest of the money so yeah we get just over 4.6 percent and what we do with that money and the way that we invest it in bringing major events to this country and giving people the opportunity to see a whole range of live sport just think about what the women's rugby world cup was like last year yeah and the investment that went into that but also what we do with the investment into sports and athletes and what the national governing bodies the olympic and paralympic national governing bodies do with that money is incredible in terms of what they wrap around athletes and we then give absolute moments of joy to the to the british public because everyone gets so engrossed and we'll see it again and we'll talk about the winters right but you will see this in the winter sports we've got this peculiar special place about the winter sports in in the hearts of us as brits which is quite peculiar given us as a as a nation and our lack of access to some of the the winter sports but we love it right we we love we love what it gives rona simpson and the stone of destiny torval and dean lizzie yarnold mena fitzpatrick became the most decorated winter paralympian in history and we're going again in milan cortina but yeah sorry we'll we'll talk about it now because i remember interviewing lizzie yarnold i thought she was fascinating you know she's really interesting and smart and everything and there is a sort of her story i don't know how typical her story is because she was sort of you know working on a farm and then has never seen a skeleton until the team gb got hold of her and then she was a promising athlete and then they turned her into a skeleton racer and skeleton is bloody scary isn't it i mean i've obviously never done it before so is she a typical example of that because one of the things was that you know you've taken this person of of generalized sporting ability and then put her towards a very highly specialized area and it is all about winning golds and winning medals and the criticism is it's sort of oh it's a bit chinese in terms of okay it's you know you're sort of going into schools and measuring forearms and all that story and saying right okay we're going to give money to this and we identify the easiest gold medals to get and all of those things so the sort of machinery of it i always find really quite interesting and talking to lizzie it it really brought it home because obviously she personizes that but how typical is she of that experience because i think the other the alternative is that again you say that we like the winter games i sort of do but i do think it's sort of well you'll expect me to say but i think as a non-skier i think it's it it isn't my people going down the mountains hold that thought if you would i'm carrying a massive class chip on my shoulder about the winter game you are and i'll i'll talk to that in a second if we can i'd love to come back to that but let me answer your first question first about is is lizzie is lizzie typical if you look across the board of a of summer and olympic uh and paralympic and winter summer and went to Olympic and Paralympic sports.

17:06Sally Munday:The majority of them have huge participation programs, a lot in schools and community clubs and recreational offers. And the majority of their athletes will come through those routes. So there'll be kids that went out and played that sport for the first time as a six or seven-year-old, fell in love with it, or might have fallen in love with loads of sports, and then finally find something they were really good at good at and got picked up by that sports talent pathway that's that's the majority there are some sports which are very specialized that uh you would be much more likely to be successful at if you have certain physical characteristics yeah so i'm five foot two i was probably never going to make a basketball player right to be fair i would never going to mate an international athlete but let's put that to one side but like there are certain physical characteristics that mean somebody is more likely to be successful in the sport so what uko sport has been able to do over various programs over the years since it's been in existence is run talent id programs for a collection of sports where they're looking for specific characteristics both physical characteristics uh emotional characteristics mental characteristics because you've got to have a certain frame of mind to throw yourself down a skeleton track right you've got a certain type of character for that and so what we've been able to do is work with those sports where there are specific characteristics required and run generic talent id programs with them that then can be very specialized in identifying people like lizzie and that's brilliant right because she could have been successful in another sport but she's ended up being hugely successful in skeleton.

18:55Sally Munday:And, you know, she's such a fantastic ambassador for Olympic sport as well. I think this is the other thing that why, again, we love the Olympic and Paralympics and the athletes so much is because so many of them, when they are successful, are so willing to then go and give back to their communities and go back and talk about how their success can inspire kids, not necessarily to become sports people or athletes, but to go after their dreams and actually really go for the things they want to do in life. And I think that's, again, I think a lot of our athletes are relatable, which probably takes me on to the second bit that you said about your chip on your shoulder.

19:39Sally Munday:So tell me about the chip on your shoulder and I will then respond. Well, I mean, it's a fairly obvious chip. It's a chip that says that I don't know the numbers, but I'm assuming a lot of our sort of ski snowboarding types are privately educated, could afford to do this anyway without public money. I don't think that the participation story in the winter games mostly doesn't stand up in the same way as the summer games. I buy it in the summer. I don't buy it in the winter games because I don't really think there is much of a participation legacy in winter sport. that would be my point but i do think it's coming from a very classist background uh you know argument that i think that uh yeah it's they're rich kids and we shouldn't be funding them okay and look your perception is probably shared by others right and look you're talking to a a state school kid who had a very ordinary upbringing and who is really determined to make sure that the people that represent Great Britain at the Olympic and Paralympic Games are truly reflective of British society and that includes class that includes gender that includes a colour and and and like it's something I feel and the team at UK Sport feel incredibly passionate about and we challenge the sports hard on how they're making their sports really reflective of British society put that to one side yeah the cohort of athletes that are we currently invest in uh nine percent of the athletes that we fund on world-class programs at the moment in the winter space say they're privately educated nine percent which is not much more than the population Alfred that went to private schools about seven percent isn't it I think it's seven percent at the moment so I think that that perception is actually not accurate at the moment the bit that I think is fair is how easy it is for somebody to watch the games and just go out and participate in it and one of the things that we've very deliberately chosen to do on on the snow is we very much uh at the moment investing in the snow sports that are the tricks and flips and jumps and we're doing that because actually people can go to a local snow dome and actually get into skiing and think about that and not necessarily need to be on a giant slalom course for example and we're seeing some incredible talent coming through the same way we're investing in a couple of our ice dancers at the moment our curlers who you know massive sport in scotland growing sport in in england but yeah i think the perception of where these athletes come from isn't currently accurate with our current winter co so which sports are then all the sort of state school kids what sports are they doing then are they that because that's much that no nine percent figure is much lower than the summer team, isn't it?

22:47The summer team is...

22:48Sally Munday:It is at the moment. Yeah, it is at the moment, which is why I said we're really challenging. We're really challenging the sports about what are you doing in how you're encouraging participation in your sport and how your talent pathways are working in your sport. What are you doing in that space to give people the opportunity to come through? The other thing that's worth noting, of course, is that what we see in a number of the summer sports are youngsters who are in state school become really good at their sport and then get a scholarship to go to a private school because they're good at their sport and so quite often we see kids who started in state school end up in a private school on a scholarship and they're then listed as as privately educated but to be fair the numbers of state school kids we we still truly state school kids is still not in the summers where it is with the with the winter cohort that we've got this time around.

23:42It was the summer I thought it was about 50%. I thought that was, it was really high.

23:46Sally Munday:Yeah, I haven't got the current list of athletes that we're funding data in front of me. I don't think it's as high as 50 % at the moment, but it's certainly higher than nine and that's fair. Okay, so when Tim Hollingsworth was on, and one of the questions we talked about, because it was very current at the time, it's less, you know, it's always there, but the flags question was quite interesting because he changed my mind on something because i again you can sort of fall into argument sometimes for the sake of it and one of the the things was the the role of major events just generally and the role of gold medals the inspiration story you know where and when it stands up and when it doesn't and those things and one of the things that tim said was that and you said it at the beginning which is the sort of opportunities for national pride are relatively few and far between sometimes and actually it can be it's a it's a very underrated part of the equation and it's quite difficult to measure and whatever but there is a sort of intangible there around major events i get sort of falling in and out of love of major events sometimes i think oh why are we funding hosting for that and blah blah blah and then i think actually yeah i've got a picture of my daughter at london 2012 waving the union jack flag and you know i think that's the only time she's ever done that and again coming from a certain political this way you're sort of thinking okay well the flags are always contentious and all those things but there is something in that that i think is is quite powerful and whether that argument resonates i can see it individual politicians and prime ministers and boris johnson and you know whoever loves a big event and they want to stand in front at the important moments but i'm interested in the sort of just the i I guess, is it the civil servants or the people in the middle, in the machinery of government and those major events and the arguments for major events?

25:39Are they becoming easier or harder to make?

25:44Sally Munday:That's a great question. I think that in some ways they are becoming easier. We've got an incredible track record of hosting the biggest and best sporting events in the world for over the last couple of decades. And they are loved. And what they do is they unite and inspire people at a national level. So this thing that we were talking about, you know, around drivers of national unity, civic pride, fandom, that those things are there around our major events. And we've got this amazing track record. We've also got a strong list of events coming to the UK over the next couple of years. We've got European Athletics Championships this summer, the Tour de France and Tour de France Grand Depart, which is, I don't know if you've seen the details on that, but it's an incredible event that we're going to be doing in 27.

26:44Sally Munday:It starts in Scotland, comes down through England into Wales, back into England. It's going to be the biggest free live or event that we've ever hosted in terms of the people, the people that will be able to get access to those incredible athletes and that incredible sporting spectacle live and free. We've also got the Men's Euros in 28. We're working on obviously this bid for the 2035 Women's World Cup and loads of events. And we've got huge advantages in the UK. around us bidding for these events because we have a fan base of people that love watching live sport we've also got incredible expertise and experience and what's really important is that we remain a strategic approach to which events we go after so the reason why it's becoming slightly easier in some ways is because hosting major sporting events actually contribute so much more than just the event itself.

27:50Sally Munday:So there is a huge amount of economic benefit that is given from hosting major events. And because we put them all over the country, we have towns and cities that get huge economic benefit and revenue. But also from a political point of view, there is massive benefit around some of the soft power things that the government want to do. and the reality is if you think about when you go to a live event and you're sat next to somebody and you're watching something for I don't know anything from an hour up to three or four hours and you're just sat next to the same person not looking at each other but looking at what's going on in front of you the type of conversations that happen in that sort of environment are conversations that are much harder to do across a desk or a table and you can get to know people and so the soft power bit that i'm talking about is something that the government really really recognized as opportunities for engaging with with other nations and to be honest this is why sporting events are so sought after by all of the emerging nations around the world because everybody knows the role it can play in in soft power as well as profile for tourism as well as the economic benefit and and and yeah it's interesting how that sort of sports washing argument when made against sort of regimes we don't like yeah i'm not talking about we me and you i'm talking about we as in yeah and it isn't often made you know it's quite often or look look you know it's a sort of cynic about the uh the the reputational sort of image of the of the country without actually thinking well we do it as well and we've always done it and it's and it works a lot of the time so it's quite you know it's interesting how that has shifted over the time let's talk about the sort of so individual sports wise and this is about the winter games but more broadly you're always i always see you in sort of would you say rows stand up rows or arguments with various people who are running the individual sports who always obviously want more money and you're saying they can't have that money and there's a sort of you know whether it's athletics or cycling or you know swimming down to some small ones where you know again you're sort of trying to work out what the budget is for them to take me inside that process because sometimes i think okay are you rewarding success or are you trying to balance out when they haven't had a good games you give them more money is that i don't know cycling had a moment and it was incredibly successful and we love watching it watching winning gold medals and whatever and then it has a drop in success what do you do with that data i'm trying to think what what the strategic approach is yeah so I'll come to that just a sec let me start with the first bit of your question which was you know do do we have difficult conversations with some of the sports yeah we do because we have finite resources and we've got to make decisions and of course everybody wants more and one of the joys of leadership right is that you've got to be prepared to be unpopular and if you are not willing to be unpopular you cannot do this job but we make our decisions with integrity at his heart and when we talk about integrity we mean about doing what we believe is the right thing and that is against a strategic backdrop so yeah look I've been doing this job for six years I would say of all of the governing bodies of 50 odd sports that we work with we have absolutely fantastic relationships with probably 80 percent of them and we have open adult strong relationships where we see each other as partners we're an investor but we also add value in many other ways because of our generic expertise that we've got yeah of course there's going to be sports sometimes that that don't like what what decisions we make and i think as long as i can look and i've always said this to my board as long as i can look any chief exec of a sport in the eye and say, we've made this decision for these reasons, and I am comfortable with that decision for these reasons.

32:03Sally Munday:I don't actually think that there's more that I can ask for. I've got to feel like I can look anyone in the eye. So put that to one side, how do we actually go about doing that? Well, we are very strategic in our nature. And we are very clear on what it is that we're going after. So strategically, at the moment, we are trying to become successful in a broader range of sports and have a broader range of champions and medalists we don't want just the sports that we sit down at to be good at and a lot of people for a while said you know you're great at cycling you're great at sailing you're great at rowing the sports that you're sitting down on you seem to be pretty good that's what the australians said though wasn't it yeah but we we want a broader range of champions and medalists and why do we want a broader range we want a broader range because we believe that can have the greatest impact of positivity on British society, how those athletes can go out and then have a real positive impact either in their local communities or on big national issues that have a direct impact on society.

33:06Sally Munday:So that's strategically what we're going after. But we've got to find a balance between that strategy of wanting a broader range, but not spreading ourselves too thin. So we don't fund every sport. And in answer to your question about do we reward success, or do we look to the future? Our investment is based on potential. So what do we think a sport is likely to do at the next games? How do we determine how likely they are to do at the next games? Well, of course, part of that is what is their history of being successful? Do they have a really good understanding of what it takes to win? Do they know how to wrap exactly the right support around their athletes to give their athletes the best chance of success.

33:51Sally Munday:Really importantly, do they have a cohort of athletes, a depth of athletes that are coming through? So they might have two or three brilliant athletes in this Games, but if we're looking for the future Games, if all those athletes are retiring, what are the next generation of athletes looking like that are in that sport? So all of our sports do depth charts of the athletes coming through, and we are constantly looking not just four years ahead, but eight and 12 years ahead to look at what is coming through in various sports and of course that varies from sport to sport depending on whether they're an early specialization sport or not and then what we have is really sophisticated modeling that understands what it costs to do things in that particular sport and so a sport that's really heavy equipment heavy they're going to need to spend a lot more money on buying equipment and shipping equipment around the world than a sport that doesn't need much equipment, for example.

34:47Sally Munday:And so we look very carefully at what the sport needs. And then of course, what we also do in terms of their likelihood of success is we are constantly tracking what our competitors are doing. So we look at every sport and who is doing what around the world, because we might be really good at something. But if there are 12 other nations that are doing it much better than we are, actually, it might not be our best investment if we're never even going to qualify for an Olympic Games. And actually what we're going after here is we want to win, but we want to win well. We want to do it with integrity, but we're unashamed about the fact that we want to win Olympic and Paralympic medals because it makes the country feel proud.

35:26So there's that question then of breadth for a minute. It's quite interesting because is that breadth across all of the disciplines? So, for example, athletics, there's lots of sports under that one banner. Does that, is athletics one thing or is it all the disciplines?

35:48Sally Munday:So we will talk discipline by discipline with each sport. OK. So whilst we would give them a budget to manage, there are some sports where we will say we're willing to invest in your sport. but first of all we're not investing in in disciplines that are not at the olympic and paralympic games they're not eligible but then we are uh you know cycling is actually a really good example if you go to the world championships there's there's a load of disciplines that aren't even in the olympic and paralympic games and then there are other disciplines that over time we've had really strong cohorts of athletes and then less strong cohorts of athletes and there are some disciplines where we'll say actually we don't think you should be you know we're giving you money but we don't think you should be investing in this but also separately from the money we give the sports for the programs as I said before we also give grants to the athletes and these are tax-free grants they don't have to pay tax on them which is why they're grants they're not a pay they're not they're not employed it's very deliberately done so they can have it to support their living costs and their sporting costs but it is very specifically a contribution towards their costs.

37:00Sally Munday:As I said at the beginning, Olympic and Paralympic sports, the majority of them are what you would describe as traditionally amateur sports. And what we're trying to do with the grants that we give athletes is give them enough money to contribute to living and sporting costs that enable them to really have their sport and training for their sport as their number one priority. So there's some sports that you think we should focus on and get successful at because it has a long tail of potential participation do you ever think about that or is it purely about just the performance bit so a little bit of both the most most of it is on the performance side of things but we are increasingly looking at the sports relevance and resonance with with the british public and so and and so within that goes actually are there opportunities to participate but look our job isn't to invest in sports to grow participation for some sports they use the platform of their success very successfully to drive participation if you think about a very simple demand and supply model they create demand by using the showcase of their success but then they make sure they've got really good programs and interventions to make the most of that to their supply demand and supply but we're not making decisions purely on that basis we're making decisions on is this sport likely to be successful at a future games and that's the primary driver albeit there are a load of other criteria that sit around that and we are interested in the relevance and resonance of that sport because you could get to mission creek it's like where do you stop um exactly what is it that you're not doing and all of those questions and this is where our relationship with sport england sport scotland sport well sport northern ireland is really important right because those organizations are investing in the sports to drive participation that's their job right and and if i go back to the beginning i was saying we've got two main roles in life around events and olympic and Paralympic sport, one of the joys of having that narrow focus is it's allowed us to become really, really good at what we do.

39:15Sally Munday:And one of the challenges for us in the Olympic and Paralympic space is we've become so good at Olympic and Paralympic sport that I think a lot of people have started to think it's easy and it's not. It's as hard as it's ever been. And so we've got to be really strategic and clever with making the most of every pound that we are able to invest I always find the the coaches that marketplace for coaches is I think interesting because when you talk to athletes sometimes you think yeah the coach is incredibly influential on them and I don't quite know because there's a sort of talent market there and how much they could hold this public purse to ransom to say right okay you want a gold medal you need that coach and is part of the package covering the coaches themselves are they self-employed or are they part of the team gb sort of network i never quite know where they where they fit so the vast majority of sports will directly employ their coaches right so they will have probably most of them will probably have a performance director that's overseeing all of their programs and then coaches in the specific disciplines that's how the majority of it works and the money that we give the sports allows them to pay coaches salaries hire facilities pay for transport and entry into competitions etc and one of the things that we are doing as a community is we are currently in the process of some pretty bold and transformative changes to the Olympic and Paralympic system in this country and part of that is about what we're doing around learning and development for everybody that works in our community not just coaches but the sports scientists, sport medics, the leaders, the chairs, the CEOs and so on and we're doing this because we really cherish Olympic and Paralympic sport And if we really cherish it and want it for the future, we've got to be prepared to make changes to safeguard its future.

41:26Sally Munday:And your question about coaches, a big part of some of the change we're trying to make is around really investing in future of development of coaches so that we can make sure that we've got a constant pipeline of brilliant quality people coming through our system. So the whole piece around learning and development is one of a number of things that we're doing in the transformation space for Olympic and Paralympic sport. And we describe it in our community. We have a big conference every year where we bring all the performance directors and coaches and people together. We had it just before Christmas.

42:03Sally Munday:And we said, you know, we're making these changes because we believe it will safeguard the future of Olympic and Paralympic sport in this country. and actually if I was our competitors looking over and looking at the changes we're making I'd be thinking oh gosh the Brits are coming again let's let's watch out here they come again we're reinventing ourselves again and part of that is around what we want to do around supporting coaches and and the other people in our community okay so what let's just finish off by going back to the winter games what's the plan is you must have a very good gauge on how many medals we're going to get presumably we do are you allowed to share that of course i am yeah i'd love to share it with you i'd love it look we are unbelievably excited about this winter games for milan and cortina uh and we're excited because we believe it could be our best ever winter games uh we have the most medals we've ever won at a winter games is five the most gold medals that we've ever won at our Winter Games is one.

43:05Sally Munday:So our current medal range, and we very deliberately talk about a range rather than being we're going to win X number, our medal range for Milan Cortina in the Olympics is four to eight medals. It's slightly lower for the Paralympics this time. We rely probably on fewer athletes to be successful at the moment. In the Paralympics, we haven't got the breadth and depth that we've got in the Olympic group. but that range of four to eight in the olympics is particularly exciting because of again the breadth of sports we could win medals in so we've current we've got the current world champion in skeleton in men's skeleton this time uh really exciting with with matt weston back-to-back world champion amazing athlete uh definitely one to look out for and his his compatriot marcus west uh wire also really really talented and snapping his heels the men's curling team my colleague describes them as the rock stars of curling again hugely successful go at going into this games we won our first uh ice dance medal uh since Torval and Dean our first world medal last year with Lila Fear and Lewis Gibson uh they're going in you know you know big ambitions to try and get on the podium and then some of our snow sport athletes that we were referring to earlier Mia brooks kirstie muir zoe atkin again really being really successful on the on the circuit uh a lot of the female athletes in snow sport really becoming more dominant in their own discipline so we're going into these games actually with a real possibility of having our best ever finish but i'll caveat all of that with one of the things why i think we like the winter games is its jeopardy yeah you know the the thrills and spills it's very slippery out there it is slippery out there right it is slippery out there so you know and that's part of the excitement right like the we you know anything can happen on the day but we're very very excited about what could happen and seeing how the investment decisions that we've made into the sports and into the athletes really comes to to fruition with the athletes being able to achieve their ambitions of becoming a an olympic or paralympic medalist and how does that in terms of the again this is a business podcast and i need to talk about return on investment but how much is a medal cost in the winter games compared to other to the summer games are they disproportionately expensive no no i mean we we invest uh around about 350 million if you if you take out the money we give to the athletes themselves so that the grants we give to the athletes uh is around 85 million over a four-year period okay then we invest about 350 million into the summer sports and we're about 32 and a half million into the winter sports but there's you know there's i think we're taking uh a cohort of 55 athletes to the to the winter games and i think the last summer summer olympics we we excess of 300 so yeah i mean it's not disproportionately more expensive they make they make good choices with the investments we give them one of the just to finish off just one of the things that comes back on from the the commercial markets around you know sport and sponsorship and people looking at okay we're working on for agencies around the winter games it's always around athletes and what they can and can't do and you've got the rule faulty i always confused yeah what's your sort of general position on that because that's the the lifting of that it always feels like that skewing towards the you know there's a a small handful of superstars who can milk the commercial markets and be brand ambassadors and but actually the when you look at the team it's not those people it's it's much bigger deeper and broader than that and they probably are gonna not benefit hugely from that lifting what do you think how do you how do you think that because there's a lot of pressure from the business side of sport or and it always seems to focus on rule 40 so the framing of your question probably leads to why we have the model that we have in this country so you will also hear that sometimes athletes will complain that they don't get a bonus from uh winning a medal and the other countries get bonuses they give their athletes a chunk of money when they win a medal we've chosen to take a very different approach because a lot of the countries that give bonuses or money for medals when they win don't give athletes grants the rest of the four-year cycle what we choose to do is to try and allow athletes with potential to train as close to full-time if not full-time which is why we give them the grants and the tax-free grants to contribute to their living uh their living costs and their sporting costs and we know that off the back of that there will be some that will become superstars that will be able to generate huge amounts of their own revenue and they get to a point right where they're ruled out of getting grants from us because they're they're earning enough of their own money they don't need it and we can invest it and invest it in a different athlete and other athletes but i think that look the the olympic and paralympic games it's the greatest show on earth and it's an expensive show to to put on and what we're seeing is an increasing number of athletes maximizing their own personal brand outside of games time and throughout the whole year four-year cycle and we want athletes to be able to do that we want them to be able to be ambassadors but it's we very deliberately have chosen to take the approach we have and look it's worked for us right we we have been since London 2012 we've in the summer games we've won in the mid 60s of medals every game since we were the first nation to ever win more medals in the games after hosting a games and so many countries then fall off a cliff we didn't we carried on winning more medals in tokyo again in paris and we are going to go big in la so i don't know perhaps we should have another conversation a couple of years time as we lead into the la games because the la games is probably going to be one of the most commercial games we've ever seen uh it's going to be where entertainment meets sport in the most spectacular fashion and i think will be quite an incredible thing to to to witness so yeah maybe another conversation in a few years time just but just on that sort of personal brand question you know the athletes because again what all of the incentives and a lot of people are saying oh you should be your own create you know athlete as creator and and actually you can start to see when you talk to athletes i say well look it's it's really hard being an olympic athlete you know it's your training and it's a different skill set and you need a team and you need the cost starts to go up and the quality bar starts to go up it needs to look better and the production costs and all those things and where does that cost reside that's not your job to fund that is it it's or is it so no but look different athletes want different things so some of them absolutely want to be content creators and want to do that others don't they just it's not their thing and again the joy of our system and the way that we invest is that it doesn't force them to go down that route at all however what we are looking and do already put money into but are it's part of this whole reinvention and what we're trying to do to make transformational change is one of the things that we have a challenge with with Olympic and Paralympic sport is that outside of the games the interest kind of drops off the cliff and we are doing some really exciting work with the British Olympic and British Paralympic associations and a number of agencies to look at how we create fan engagement for Olympic and Paralympic sports throughout the whole four-year cycle and we've done some we've been piloting different pieces of work so one of the things that we've been doing is a project where we've tested with six athletes how we could wrap around some content creation support with them for them to grow their own profile but then seeing how the growth of their profile can knock on into a growth of profile for the sport they're participating in and it's really interesting we're right in the middle of that pilot now and we've chosen a range of different athletes to try that with but if that's something that we see working it's something we would scale up because we believe that the relevancy of Olympic and Paralympic sport, if we can grow that throughout the four-year cycle, we'll stand a much better chance of growing revenue into Olympic and Paralympic sport.

52:04Sally Munday:And that can only benefit the athletes and the sports. Yeah. And there's a sort of the event marketplace. We talked about Olympics and Paralympics and, you know, winter games, summer games. But obviously there's a lot of the energy in the sports event marketplace is outside of those what would be official governing body led organizations and there's a lot of money waiting to be deployed into you know a live golf for athletics or michael johnson's thing or whatever whatever it is swimming cycling they've all got that marketplace and and in many ways that's great because there's a vibrant market for for talent and events but you can start to see that that question that you're landing on there about okay we're going to create help them become personalities you're almost sort of in danger of growing them out of your remit there is a market that you you know they become famous and then they go and milk it elsewhere I suppose the games are always going to be a pull yeah and look you know as I said the vast majority of our athletes uh in our sports come from having been a five or six year old or a 10 year old having tried that sport and fallen in love with it.

53:17Sally Munday:And the pull of wanting to become an Olympic or Paralympic champion is huge. And, you know, you see some of our great athletes, you know, Andy Murray, ask him how much he loved his Olympic experience, you know, but is the Olympics the top of the performance pyramid for tennis? No, it's not. For the vast majority of Olympic sports, it is the top of the pyramid. It's better than saying I was a world champion. if you ask most athletes in Olympic and Paralympic sport what's the order of what they want to win the Olympic medal is first a world medal is second a European medal is third and if they're in the Commonwealth Games that's normally fourth that that's normally the order of things so that draw will will always always be there and as I've always said to the athletes that I've worked with you know when you get selected for a Games you will always be an Olympian and if you win a medal and you become an Olympic champion, you will always be an Olympic champion.

54:17Sally Munday:Like no one can ever take that away from you. Yeah, no, it's a great answer. Listen, I'm going to let you go because I know you are stupidly busy. What's your favourite Winter Games event? Where do you head for? What are you most looking forward to? Oh my gosh. So I love them all. I'm really, really excited to see Lila Fear and Lewis Gibson in the ice, in the figure skating. I'm really excited about the skeleton. I was a snowboarder and now I ski I love the snowboard and ski cross and we've got in Charlotte Banks a snowboard cross athlete that could be doing something exciting in these games I actually really enjoy all of the sports that we are going into this games with potential in and who can not love curling like how many people will get out their mops and pretend to be curlers.

55:12Sally Munday:I think the precision and discipline of that sport is incredible. And, yeah, I realise I just kind of real, real, I love it, right? You can see why I love my job, Richard. I've got such an amazing job getting to work across all these incredible sports with people that are trying to give our athletes this chance of just becoming Olympic or Paralympic champion. It doesn't get a lot better than this, to be fair. Brilliant. Okay, well, good luck from all of everyone. and a safe journey. Thanks very much. Thanks, Sally.