UP534 Barney Francis on Media Rights and Wrongs

0:00Hello, welcome to Unofficial Partner, the sports business podcast. I'm Richard Gillis. Today's guest is Barney Francis, who is executive vice president of IMG Studios and was formerly managing director of Sky Sports.

0:14Barney Francis:It's a really interesting step that they've made into six nations because they feel they can monetize that because there are enough number of households in this country. But can you do that for the Premier League? No, you don't have enough homes to pay the advertising yield that's going to pay the Premier League. you know, billion and a half quid a year. So it's a real insider's view of the sports media economy. And the conversation spans new formats in sport, piracy, streaming disruption, rights economics, the creation of the hundred, the state of rugby, the Premier League's move in-house with its production, what that means.

0:50And the consistent thread is what it is that the fan wants and what does the money want? What do the financial markets want? And are they the same thing? 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 Substack newsletter goes out every Thursday. So if Substack is your thing, then you'll find us there.

1:30I thought you were very good on the, I saw you on the, whatever that morning was, at EY, Nick Keller's. Oh yeah, yeah,

1:36Barney Francis:the sports industry thing, yeah. Yeah, so it sort of prompted me and I wanted to get you on for ages and so thank you. That's all right. Because I think there's so many different bits of the conversation and to your point, varying degrees of people wanting to embrace the new, whatever the new is and there's a sort of interesting question about what that is and what the stories are, you know, and what the expensive stories are. I was looking at Baller League in Germany and thinking that story has, there's been a lot of money bet on Gen Z behaviours, shortening of things, you know, the sort of playbook that the Bola League represents.

2:11And this is sort of not about the Bola League, but it's about those sort of industry narratives that the money wants, frankly. So it's quite an interesting sort of moment. What do you make of the Bola League?

2:21Barney Francis:So, I mean, obviously it followed on from Gerard Piquet's version of it. Yeah. And I watched, look, I watched a bit of it on Sky this year. I get its place. I get its role. Everybody is looking for new sort of IP creation. Yeah. I guess it comes down really to what is the expectation, you know, what you're hoping to achieve. You know, as we're talking now, it is Super Bowl weekend. and it is NBC's turn and they'll hope to beat last year's 127 million households that watched it in the US. And if they can get 128, then hallelujah, it'll be more cameras than ever before, etc, etc. So the big stuff is still attracting huge audiences.

3:09Barney Francis:And so it kind of depends what the expectations are. Whenever I watched it this year, and obviously it was on Sky in the UK, finding a clear window is really really hard so it tended to be up against football it was sort of scheduled from 6 p.m i think i'm right saying 6 p.m till 10 in the evening normally up against other live football so you know what are the expectations all around i guess from the broadcaster's point of view it is here's something that's appealing to a new generation influences packed or seemingly a packed copper box etc but it's not trying to take away clearly are not trying to take away the football ardent football fan who's watching probably a live game yeah so so from the broadcaster's point of view it is okay here's something different and we'll offer up choice and choice has been the name of our industry for the last 30 odd years from a broadcast point of view from the baller league point of view or the investors in it what are they hoping to do to usurp the live game uh live professional league football or cup football no they wouldn't have wanted that but they just think there is a there is another seam of a attention that they can that they can grab and grab hold of and monetize it sort of feels that you're right it sort of feels additive you know to the yeah because you've got this sort of rate again it's that scenario where you've got a load of money you know sitting in various funds that are popping up waiting to be deployed and then yeah it's looking at the different types of as you say choice and baller league you put into one category with like tgl golf for example feels similar you know okay it's not gonna take over the world but it's not for me but it's for someone you know hopefully they've done their homework and you know there's a there's a model there but then you've one of the themes of i think the last six months to a year has been the sort of resilience of the incumbent rights holder yeah i think that's look i think that's i think you're absolutely right and i don't think that's just the last year i think that's been the last i think since COVID, right?

5:08Barney Francis:We can almost frame COVID as a key defining moment, certainly in the UK market, but globally as well. Key defining moment where what we might call the sort of traditional leagues and formats had another boon and had another boost. It's interesting you mentioned TGL because I was actually thinking about that driving in this morning. TGL's window, right? So it's a really interesting concept. And Mike McCarley, who sort of created it, you know, long, long-standing former NBC golf diehard specialist, creator, etc. So it's a really good concept. And it's being positioned right now as the season, both seasons are underway pretty much.

5:48Barney Francis:You know, they're both, you know, the FedEx doesn't signal everyone takes a break till Christmas, just as, you know, the road to Dubai doesn't signal the end of the DP World Tour. Things carry on. But it really feels in January, you know, we're in this sort of the Arab swing on the DP World Tour. in Qatar this week. On the US tour, you know, Brooks is back and that gives the PGA Tour sort of another boost. So the tours are really sort of up and running and yet still that is the window for TGL because they're sort of up and running but not everybody is playing in everything yet. You know, so by sort of March time as we're heading towards Augusta, everyone's back on tour and playing stuff seriously.

6:27Barney Francis:So the window for TGL is really quite narrow but their ambition would never have been let's stop people watching uh the tours it's just here's something that's additive that's fun that of course has a virality to the it's it's digital and social after the live uh live event uh and just just creates different a different or grabs different attentions so but you know but the heart of it is the peaks we know the peaks in golf this year will be around the four majors you know there's no rider cup this year obviously it may be around the the players which is always is the best field in terms of the world's top 50.

7:05Barney Francis:So it's the same with football. You know, it is baller league, serves an audience. But this weekend, well, last weekend's big game, I guess, was Spurs-Man City. This weekend, I can't remember. Have we got Liverpool? Have we got Liverpool-Arsenal this weekend? You know, but it's those big games that really get everybody truly, truly excited. And I think, you know, if you hear the way that Sky Talk at the moment you know my old my old home they it is very much that since covid live sport and fundamental the heartland of live sport that we all know and love is what's really really really delivered you know cricket we've got a world cup this year but still everyone's talking about the ashes as calamitous as the ashes might have been from a results point of view it's still a still bigger in the uk audience than viewing to say ipl well i think there's a again there's a tendency to overplay individual case studies you know and my point being i think probably i'm over reading live golf and its relationship the pga tour and its its inability to disrupt a major global sport with a new thing and the pga tour has responded we're seeing it in rugby the response of the the big unions and federations has been fierce in you know as r360 comes into the picture or attempts to so you've got that the defense position and then you sort of think okay am i over reading live golf is that typical or is it outright in the same way i'm probably in danger of over reading the baller league individual case studies don't necessarily mean that the idea is wrong or the story is flawed no no that's right you know i've got a i've always i've always said this i've got uh 20 year old and 18 year old boys who are sports mad and i i probe them all the time as to their viewing habits.

8:58Barney Francis:My 20-year-old student lives with another group, and I sort of interrogate their viewing habits, their views on piracy and all these sorts of things. Do they realize they can pay a subscription? Or is it just an option to pay? Right. Here's a point, which is, and I've long held this view. 15 years ago, when piracy was really starting to create an impact, I remember talking to various Premier League chief execs and saying, you know, from a Skype perspective, we really need your help here. We need you to be telling your fans that ultimately this is going to lead to loss of broadcast revenue that's going to impact the revenue into each club and therefore the players that the season ticket holders get to see, right?

9:43Barney Francis:So it is a, you know, it is a spiral into an abyss ultimately. And at the time, the clubs always felt that it was the broadcasters' issue rather than the club's issue. but at the time then 15 years ago you know piracy was a nudge and a wink in a pub yeah it was hey richard you know i've got this thing i've heard of this way you don't have to pay your subscription fast forward 15 years i go to my my son's digs in bath where he's at university and chat to his mates and sort of say you know when you emerge with your degree and you hopefully you know there are some jobs out there and you will earn an income how are you going to consume your sport and they all say the same thing right it is it is a fire stick or it is a illegal illegal stream somehow that they'll access as a as a cultural norm yeah yeah right the nudge in the wink 15 years ago is now for the next generation a cultural norm so that's the the existential problem that sport faces is a a new generation and therefore the generations that follow who don't expect to pay for anything i remember talking to bill bush about this it was at premier league for a long time and you know he sort of became this sort of global expert on this question yeah that's right and that's right it was you know it was fascinating i really enjoyed it but he so there's the sort of hard this is theft this is you know against richard scumor on it gets very properly crossed if you start to you know make pseudo-intellectual arguments for this is real demand you know this is this is sort of no one pirates rubbish things it's a it's a all of that all of that stuff and he you know bill bush said you know that's just a middle-class dinner party conversation you know this is theft and this is ip theft and you have to go after this you know this is proper criminality and there is a it's interesting that cultural thing because you're right in that it's not in the margins anymore you know you go to a you know I've got a mate who's an accountant, you know, very upstanding member of, you know, and he's in the fire stick goes and away he goes.

11:45And it's sort of thing. Well, actually, if that's happening there, then I don't quite know. But you said something I mentioned at the beginning, your appearance at the EY event. And you mentioned something about the sort of market taking care of the problem of almost like the super platforms. Can you just explain what you meant by that? Because you were saying that actually there's going to be a sort of that we're in a transition period here.

12:08Barney Francis:okay well i'll i did say that and i'll approach it slightly differently in sort of uh and asking a question of you is do you hear of people saying that they pirate netflix right no no right password sharing idea there's a bit of that going on okay just sort of middle class piracy isn't it that's right but it's not a because the entry point the entry point to netflix is relatively cheap versus premium sports subscriptions. Yeah. And therefore, the accessibility is much greater. People don't mind parting with 15 pounds a month versus, say, 100 pounds a month. Therefore, the likelihood of people looking for cheaper ways or free ways to stream sport work to be on Netflix is less because 15 pounds a month is far more savoury.

13:01Barney Francis:And there's also a brand halo with Netflix. it feels like value, right? When you turn on, they've got a brilliant user interface, brilliant selection of algorithmically driven search and navigation that suits your viewing habits and suits mine. And therefore, you feel it is a service that is very palatable and certainly really good value. And so it's the value equation. So therefore, we're seeing Netflix. It's a really interesting approach they're taking to sport right now where you've seen the numbers that they drive for NFL on Christmas Day. Their most recent boxing, obviously, was AJ versus Jake Paul.

13:42Barney Francis:If you go back to Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson and the numbers they were doing. Katie Taylor. So they've driven some really interesting numbers there. They've obviously announced that they're going to be doing Fury's comeback fight in April. So they're looking at sport in a slightly different way. They're not getting involved in leagues right now. You know, they obviously, they take WWE Raw, but that's sports and entertainment, which is slightly different. But that's the only thing they've got right now, which is the, that has a regularity and a seasonality to it. Otherwise, they're popping up.

14:14Barney Francis:And it's available to us all. So their sports strategy right now is really interesting. The challenge, as we know, is it for the pay TV sports subscription market, wherever you are in the world, is piracy is driving at the heart of the revenue generation for that, whilst the costs have all going up because every federation, every governing body wants more money. So we're at a really interesting point in the sports economy and piracy's got a huge role to play in that and it needs to be combated. The problem is which side owns the pen on dealing with piracy. and the that netflix sort of incentive in the market again it's interesting because you start to say right okay if that's what they want you know the eventization of sport or whatever you want to call it how you then if you're a governing body or a rights holder respond i mean and again i was trying again talk about over reading individual case studies uh there is you've got that sort of relevant uefa moment where they had to sort of come and get me to the stream and that felt like okay that's directly aimed at netflix or whatever and it didn't didn't happen and paramount have sort of come in and got that but what do you what was your reading of that because am i put it sort of putting two and two together and making about eight there or are they was that just their response the way they're packaging their rights and they're looking at netflix and saying right okay is this what you want or a zone or whatever yeah look look i think i think the answer to that is every governing body is looking at how it can drive more value you know as i said as i sort of keep saying since covid the value of premium sport has has gone up but everybody wants to every federation has it for due to responsibility to its its its members right its clubs etc etc so it's always trying to eke out additional value additional revenue for that so every federation every league approaches it differently you know we saw we work very closely with mls and i think it was four years ago coming where they did that global deal with with apple yeah which kind of made us all stop you know in the industry it's like wow okay so here's a here's a league that's clearly on the up with a sport where participation and grassroots is increasing as some of the other traditional american sports were facing sort of grassroots challenges um that are all you know that are well known and they've done a deal with one of the biggest companies in the world and that's suddenly really interesting and there are that hasn't that's not happened many times with many many properties so the jury's out on on whether you know are we going to be in 10 years time are we in a world where all the big sports are are taken by the big streamers i don't know is that the hope of all the federations no they're all they all have different challenges we talk to leagues and federations all the time and of course what what most hope is that in their domestic market in the primary market that the the broadcast rights are going to go up so you need competitive tension for that whether that is the traditional pay tv operators some of the telcos who are still around or the streamers and then of course what every league and federation wants as well is an increase in its overseas revenue that it's driving but that's a really really congested space.

17:42Barney Francis:So part of what we do is advise, you know, scrutinous data capture on the likelihood of increased viewership that leads to increased revenues, etc. There's a lot of money in the system, but there's not enough money perhaps to meet everybody's ambitions and hopes and desires. And that's when leagues and federations then have to start addressing their cost base. If you take the Premier League, for example, the international market just keeps on growing, the domestic market's been relatively flat. I couldn't speak with absolute knowledge, but I would imagine that every Premier League club's wage bill has only gone up in that time.

18:17Barney Francis:And that's been helped by the overseas revenue and the interest in the Premier League, which is, you know, which is unstoppable. Whereas the domestic revenue has been pretty flat. That's the challenge for the Premier League will deal with the next rights market. Yeah, yeah. And one of the sort of strategies is to break up the big number. So if broadcasters don't want to take the big risk with a huge sort of outlay they're carving that up which again gets back to the previous conversation about piracy so one of the seemingly incentives of people pirating is actually the pain in the ass of my thing being across many different outlets yeah well it's it it's really interesting and i'll just give you two really obvious examples right which are very apparent now so it's we're speaking on the thursday it's the start of the six nations yeah and the six nations is just on ITV, right?

19:03Barney Francis:So it is in one home. And of course, the debates over the last sort of couple of days has been around them taking ads, picture-in-picture ads during play. You know, they're free-to-air broadcast that needs to monetize its asset. They've taken a risk on bringing it all under one roof. So no doubt where the Six Nations is going to be. It's all on ITV, but they have to monetize it. So I have some sympathy against some of the criticism that's come their way. But interestingly, last week, the FIFA Women's Champions Cup was in the UK. And I had breakfast with Jessica, who's the commissioner of the NWSL.

19:39Barney Francis:So the North American Women's Soccer League. And they're just thinking about their future. They're currently across five different broadcasters. And they've got good relationships with them all. But is that right for their future? Should they be in one place? Should they be in two places? Should they be in five places. And, you know, I was out of the country Monday, Tuesday, talking to another European League federation where they're assessing their future and centralization of productions, you know, should they own the production piece, which is what makes it easier to bring in the super platforms to the marketplace.

20:21Barney Francis:Anyway, we have this sort of debate. And right now they're in their rights are spread across a couple of broadcasters and i just asked the key question is you know what research have you done into what your consumers want right and that's at the heart of every you know you and i can pontificate and postulate theories and all these sorts of things but ultimately it's the consumer that matters most so if i go back to nwsl split across five different licensees and right now that means that most of their games are broadcast if you're a fan of a certain club, then you know exactly where you're going to find them.

20:55Barney Francis:So that's good. Bringing it all into one place, does that make it better? Maybe, but maybe not because maybe the money's not as good, therefore the development of the league, et cetera. So these are all the quandaries that we face at IMG, that all the leagues and federations face. But ultimately the heart of the sports economy is the consumer. And without that consumer, back to the rugby, every rugby fan knows for the Six Nations for the next five or six weekends exactly where to go yeah yeah and you know itv have to drive some commercial return on that how much sport do you think a channel needs to be the home of question so that's a really you know what how much of it is necessary to to build a destination for a particular sport and how many sports can sustain a home for a broadcaster well i think i think if you take the world's biggest sport by league number of professional leagues and participation football what would the home of football mean here in the uk uh do you have to have every league my old place right do you have to have every league or do you have to have the the leagues that matter here so sky obviously have premier league efl sbfl no longer has Champions League hasn't for the last three cycles but is back with the Europa League at the next cycle so Sky the home of football well they're certainly the home of English and Scottish football yeah is it the home of football it's a really hard thing to argue and of course back to the consumer and the customer it is actually for them to define whether they see something as the home of sometimes No, it's because I sort of see it from the outside as a marketing position.

22:50But I just don't know whether it's a strategic internal position as well, whether actually there is more depth to it than just, okay, I get it. You know, it's a sales tool.

22:58Barney Francis:Yeah, it is a sales tool. Back to my old place, if you go back to golf, you know, they have the two principal tours, DP World Tour and the PGA Tour, and they have the four majors. They have the Ryder Cup. They have the President's Cup. They don't have Live. But you would still say right now that's the home of golf for the UK market. There is one principal tour that they don't show. But other than that, you can pretty much get everything. And then, of course, they will, through the digital and social, through all the assets, whether it be the URL and the apps, they will cover all stories in all of golf.

23:37Barney Francis:So therefore, there's a real legitimacy to call yourself the home of golf in the UK market. So, of course, you need to have critical mass, right? If you and I were to start up a broadcast network today, and I hope you can bring the capital that will enable us to do that, you know, how could we sit here and strategize on, well, let's become the home of football? Now, we might be able to. I don't know their exploitation, but we might be able to buy the Estonian League in the UK, and therefore we could call ourselves the home of football in the UK for the Estonian League, right? But it's, you know, critical mass is obviously really important.

24:16One of the things, so on the bundle where we do with, you know, Murray and Yannick, and it's sort of one of the themes that comes back. There's a question about, do broadcasters have long memories? Do they hold grudges? Is there, when you were at Sky, so when, and the case study that Murray quite often references is Sky and rugby. And, you know, having been for a period of supporting the sport, being the bank, doing the Sky job, and then they go off somewhere else yeah and then there's another these are all cycles and they come back again yeah what how is how does that play into that sort of process because everyone you sort of assume it's a big grown-up corporate conversation but there's also the you know what you stitched me up last time i just wonder how long those memories last and whether there's a sort of grudge against particular sports okay or you know like champions league and sky

25:10Barney Francis:So first things first, so we'll come back to rugby. I'll give you the best story about that. Sky is a customer business and therefore every single day, every single decision is about making sure Richard is getting value for his subscription. Yeah, honestly, and I could not speak more positively about that as a culture within the organization as a B2C. So a senior sports executive came in to see me once and wanted to sell something to Sky. And I said, not going to buy that. Why not? And I said, because that won't add a single subscriber. And therefore, it's just adding cost to the base. so there might be a little bit of incremental value to you Richard you might have been interested in the sport and you might get a bit more but actually if I'm adding more cost to the base then that leads to more cost for the subscriber ultimately and this person turned to me and said you don't like my sport that's why you're not buying it and I said to him whoa whoa I'm just a I just occupy the chair right I'm a custodian for Richard's money and my job is to spend it as wisely as possible.

26:23Barney Francis:It's got nothing to do with what I like. And I remember saying to him, if I made decisions for me and my interests, I'd have Aston Villa at four o 'clock every Sunday. Right? Not that you could, right? The way that it's packaged, right? But it's not. And I remember saying to him, you've got to understand, I'm not making decisions based on whether you and I like each other, whether I like your sport. That's not my job. My job is to aggregate the subscription revenue and spend it in a way that best drives value for Richard so that tomorrow he doesn't wake up and think, actually, I'm not getting as much value anymore.

26:58Barney Francis:So that's kind of the precursor to the rugby conversation. So rugby, when we were thinking about moving from numbered channels to genre channels, the obvious one that wasn't creative was rugby. There was a time early 2010s where I think we were contracting with 14 or 15 different rugby organisations. All the home nations individually, various leagues, various overseas organizations, et cetera, et cetera. And I used to say to them, why do you coalesce? Rather than coming in, you run a home nation, you're coming in the day after somebody else who runs another home nation has come in and you want a pound more from me and you don't care if that means to take a pound out of the next person through the door.

27:44Barney Francis:why don't you coalesce and create a calendar and create a system and a framework you know back then i would always say to world rugby that's that's incumbent on you to create that but rugby couldn't do that and i felt at the time in the early 2010s that part of the problem was the the ultimate executives the administrators of rugby at the time were so subjective in their views and their thoughts and because they were diehard died in the wall of rugby fans yeah at heart and therefore there was a layer of objectivity that wasn't there and they weren't thinking about the consumer they were thinking about you know just just pull more money from broadcasters for your own federation and slowly uh to create a when we move move forward a few years in creating a genre channels for rugby channel to have existed, Sky needed one of two leagues, needed either the domestic league, Premiership Rugby, or it needed what we used to have in the Heineken Cup that went through various different iterations.

28:52Barney Francis:And I've never said this before, but I can tell you now, the reason they weren't on Sky was not lack of appetite for Sky. It was decision-making their end for whatever reason. And those reasons weren't always commercial. So Sky certainly didn't walk away from rugby. You know, we would have created a rugby channel because we knew from the consumer insight and data and the segmentation of audiences and sports fans that a rugby channel would work. But at the time, rugby chose different pathways. And I don't think rugby, you know, here we sit in 2026, I don't think rugby in this country has come out of that particularly well and needs to probably reassess and re-aggregate into one or two or three homes and destinations.

29:42Barney Francis:Right now, I think rugby is spread quite far and wide. So if it wasn't a commercial, so you're saying that it wasn't just about taking more money from whatever it was, BT at that point, what was it about then? Why make that decision on that? what what what's in that decision come on come on we've only just met each other

30:05Barney Francis:but sometimes look so i'm not i'm not you know i'm not i'm not here to sort of criticize and sort of lay sort of suspicious theories and what have you but some but sometimes organizations make them make decisions for different reasons okay what okay so it wasn't it certainly wasn't sky walking away from rugby well i think it's interesting you're saying about there's there's there was a couple of things one is that it makes me think about cvc and actually what the story of cvc and rugby was was sort of founding like i'm going to answer barney's question there we're going to have some sort of unity and whether or not they've got a big enough stick is the question and they've got yeah they haven't got a big enough proportion or percentage of the of the thing to wield that sort of clout yeah i mean i remember having this I did have this very conversation with Nick from CVC many many years ago about you know the ability of rugby to aggregate and drive meaningful broadcast revenue and interest from from its fans and what have you you know even going wider than that I used to talk to Ian Ritchie when he was in the big chair at the RFU there about you know together you know a broadcaster, let's say Sky, and rugby can lobby government.

31:17Barney Francis:Part of the problem with rugby, I think, in this country is only 5 % of schools play rugby. Therefore, it's a complex game. Therefore, how can you build audiences for a game that only 5 % of kids play? I didn't play rugby at school. I'll take my kids to the Six Nations. They played rugby at school, but they still ask me questions, I don't know. I don't know what that penalty is being given for. There's a complexity to the game, which creates a bit of a barrier. So we'd say, you know, there's a broadcast opportunity here and a revenue opportunity here. But actually, what we really need to work on is who are the next generation of subscribers from a pay TV point of view?

32:01Barney Francis:Who are the next generation of debenture holders at Twickenham? Well, if you're only pooling from 5 % of the population every year that sort of tricks over into you know back to my my 20 year old as soon as he becomes a uh a worker and generates an income if he hasn't played rugby he's not going to be part of that story so it's really and i used to i remember discussing that with with with nick as well so whether they've got the the leverage to aggregate rugby in the right way i'm i'm not sure i'm not i'm not i'm not close to them now but i think the the fundamental problem lies actually a bit deeper than that, which is certainly in this country, which obviously you don't get in New Zealand.

32:42Barney Francis:You don't get in South Africa where it's the number one sport. It's not the number one sport in this country. And part of the problem with that is grassroots and playing in schools. And we used to, you know, the one thing I would say that I inherited at Sky when I took over that job there was the criticality and the importance that we would place on developing partnerships with governing bodies and rights holders such that they made sure they had a participation programme because without young people coming through, without the sport being played at grassroots, then we're just playing around until the sport ends.

33:22Barney Francis:You know, you never have that problem with football, but rugby has that problem. You know, cricket, go back to the deal, the big five-year deal that we did back in 2017, which created the 100. part of the part of the issue there was a lot of ecb initiatives had rid had sort of worked to a degree but weren't driving increase in participation they had quick cricket and stars cricket and these sorts of things and i remember saying to tom harrison who was ecb chief exec at the time and i'd known tom we'd played cricket against each other at university and therefore we and we played club cricket in the same league uh and it was he was at tellington i was at hamstered right so it It was in our heart.