UP554 The Bundle World Cup Special

0:00Richard:Hello, welcome. It's Richard Gillis here and you're listening to Unofficial Partner, the Sports Business Conversation. Today it's The Bundle and we're doing a World Cup special just because we felt like it. The Bundle is our regular series on the sports media and streaming marketplace with my two co-hosts, Yannick Ramcke, General Manager of OTT at Streaming Service One Football, and Murray Barnett, founder of 26 West Consulting, formerly of Formula One, World Rugby and ESPN. This episode of Unofficial Partner is sponsored by our friends at the Institute of Sport Humanities, ISH. ISH educates sports current and future leaders around the world as the leading independent provider of leadership education and insight for the sector.

0:41Richard:Their Strategic Sport Leadership Masters, the MA, is for industry executives to study alongside their careers, designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking and connect with a global network of peers working across sport. Applications are now open for the next intake on the 2026 Strategic Sport Leadership MA starting in September. Visit sportshumanities.org for more information and there will be a link in the show notes.

1:20Richard:I just quite fancied doing a World Cup special, the Bundle World Cup special edition.

1:28Murray Barnett:It's like all these things, before the tournament, I think there's always kind of the negativity leading up to every single tournament, and then when that tournament actually starts, then you will get excited about it, albeit that it's interesting how FIFA have done the timings of the matches to be very much focused on the domestic market, and also maybe for some sort of health reasons with temperature and so on but it makes it a lot less time zone friendly for us in Europe so interesting to see how that works out yeah I am

1:57Richard:I think I'm looking forward to it I think it's one of those where we be you talk about it so much in advance and then once you just got once it gets going it's always like it's like an Olympics is like this it's always the stories and particularly in the sort of sports business media of area that all the stories are quite a lot of them are pretty aren't they so you're talking about broadcast and sponsors and blah blah and this one has obviously been very politically charged but if we just sort of move beyond that there are quite a lot of themes from a broadcast point of view so I guess there's a sort of comparison piece Murray four years is a long time in sports media but it feels like looking back at Qatar 2020 and what the model was there compared to what this is can you sort of summarise for us what do you think are the main shifts from 22 to this one

2:44Murray Barnett:there's lots of different elements to this so I think the first thing is that there's always this risk when you have an event every four years and we faced it with the rugby world cup as well which is on the one hand you want it to be the pinnacle in terms of the way that it's presented on tv but at the same time you're conscious of the fact that it's an event that happens once every four years and so the most important thing is that it's got a robust technical infrastructure that sits underneath it so you don't want innovation to break the system as it were but at the same time I think we're seeing such an accelerated process of change in terms of the way that people are consuming media that this really will feel quite different to some of the events that have gone before and everything in terms of the way that it's presented right through to the to the video that's available from it and certainly looking at how to attract a different and maybe obviously wider but also catering to that younger audience that consumes things in a different way and I think that'll manifest itself in lots of different ways which we can kind of dive into.

3:49Richard:Yeah what do you think Yannick about this shift? Is it always like this but to Murray's point it feels like there is a sort of acceleration and it just feels like there is more happening here that feels different than it was before?

4:03Yannick Ramcke:I mean I think it's inherent also to the FIFA national team world cup due to the fact that it's every four years so you pretty much digest like four years worth of like technological or any any other kind of progress like within like a four-week period so I don't think it's that much different than in the past that there just has a lot of things happened compared to four years ago and if you look at it historically I think sports in particular has always been at the innovation forefront when it comes to also introducing new technologies whether it's from radio to television or then television from black and white to color tv and i remember i think the world cup 26 here in germany was the first one with hg quality so i think it has always been like those pinnacle sports events have been or like sports in general has been at the innovation frontier in in that regard and i think it's not different this time around.

4:59Yannick Ramcke:I think the one thing to consider or like one of many things to consider is that just as consumption preferences fragment, I think also like the experience given that it's more tailor-made custom built fragments as well, which obviously has a bit of impact on like communal events and feelings and all experience the same thing at the same time. But at the same time, what I would also like the industry is that like a lot of that innovation sometimes is also just made for like a press announcement or like a two slide case study and it looks good and it looks shiny but when you look at use and consumer adoption it's actually never makes it into the mainstream I think nowadays technological innovation is less cost prohibitive in terms of really getting into different versions of the same event in different outputs that just one thing that came to mind as we look at the different innovation things for multiple personalized feeds ai assisted production i don't think we are in the streaming session but at least streaming and linear television in terms of techno and technological delivery is at least on on even par passive versus interactive viewing data-driven storytelling all these kind of things i think leads also to a lot of niche experiences where it will never be the mainstream and it will never be the one thing that is consumed by most i think the most common and the fourth option is still quite basic compared to the past couple of versions

6:25Richard:of the world cup yeah let's just take one bit of it which is the sort of clipping the industrialized clipping moment that we're in and the content mountain like the world cup every minute of all of these games expanded world cup i'm wondering how i'm going to consume it because you're right in the past i've always seen it and the cliche is that it brings everyone together you're going to watch it on the big screen or you're going to go to a pub or whatever it is and i'm wondering because of time the time differences but also because of the just the way in which things are now present that bit the youtube element to it let's just talk about that for a minute because

7:03Murray Barnett:it feels like there's something before we get onto the youtube i think that the key one of the key things here is is ai because i the ability that ai gives you to clip more and more content trawl through more and more content means and with the sort of if you're sitting in a european time zone the timing of the matches means that i think there'll be an avalanche of slop that you're dealing with on a monday morning like wherever you choose to go whether it's top facebook insta wherever it is even tv there'll be an awful lot of shit out there because everybody will be saying well i've got access to all of this so i'm going to do an alternative different feed coverage i'm going to do clipped this way clipped that way data led all the rest of it and i wonder if how much of it is actually going to be quality stuff and how much of it is

7:53Richard:just going to be an avalanche of quantity are you talking about the partners official partners are

7:59Murray Barnett:you talking about i mean we're going to talk about it i mean whether it's youtube or whoever the fact that people will either legitimately or illegally have access to so much content and everybody will be looking to feed off of this whether that is the sort of the watch the sort of watch along short form type stuff where you get people commenting on clips as they're done and so on I'm fully prepared to wake up on Friday morning to find that even after just the opening game that there's going to be like it's just going to be plastered everywhere official unofficial interesting uninteresting but it's going to be really difficult to escape it wherever you get

8:37Richard:your media from and i mean janet this might be a very british angle but the goal hanger thing so you've got this moment where a podcast or a vodcast has then gary linek has got to a point where i'm wondering what how that is going to impact on my behavior this is purely as a personal thing and i mean every market will have a version presumably but to murray's point if i am facing this AI slop mountain is it a slop mountain or a slop lake or a wave of slop but whatever the metaphor is if it's there a famous face a critic plays to a sort of okay I need some guide through this and whether the guide is I need an ITV or a BBC to navigate this on my behalf or I need Gary Lineker or I need someone that I trust to pick out the best there's a sort of curation job I think once you start to see and I think it's true that we're going to get an enormous amount of stuff some of it interesting a lot of it not what do you think what's the second bounce of this

9:43Yannick Ramcke:I mean there are many different facets in there what you two just brought up I think one point that I don't want to get too much into details but I think it's worth mentioning when it comes to AI slop is that I would consider sports and the IP domain sports quite well protected compared to many other domains out there because and it ultimately starts and stops with the IP owner and the rights owner in the form of FIFA they need to be on top of this because they are getting paid a bunch of money by those who want to utilize and exploit the IP that they license temporarily from the FIFA so I think point number one in terms of AI slop I think sports and the IP domain of sports is uniquely protected compared to many other facets of video entertainment or audio entertainment or whatever form of entertainment.

10:31Yannick Ramcke:Point number two is regarding authorities and help to navigate this abundance of content compared with, I think ultimately, since everyone is fighting for the same limited resources or consumer resources in the form of time and wallet share, even sports, even like a pinnacle like the World Cup needs to minimize the engagement barriers. How can you make it as simple as possible, including Murray, as you said, in a completely different time zone for many fans around the world. How can you make some form of engagement as easy and as simple as possible? And this is where a lot of short form, but also complimentary shoulder programming comes in.

11:11Yannick Ramcke:I think the challenge for like FIFA to that extent is that substitute or that form of content that engages users because they don't want to wake up in the middle of the night for a bit. Is it possible to the same form and fashion or is it like more empty calories, less monetizable eyeballs. So this whole topic of engagement barriers limit and minimize them to capture people around the world would be point number two. And then, as you said, I think like voices in that jungle of digital content, pinpoints or like guiding lights to navigate this as an end consumer. So I think like in your particular case with UK, like an entity like Goldhanger, it's not diminished in value, but with all the abundance of content that's going out there because it's an authority.

11:56Yannick Ramcke:It's like a destination that people seek out to maybe help navigating and identifying how to best follow along the World Cup.

12:04Richard:Just pausing on Goalhanger, just as a route into that creator question and how that is going to evolve. And sometimes World Cups are moments when people look back and say, well, it started there. But actually, it's because of the money and just the size of these things. They're like magnets. And so something is happening here. you've got a podcaster i guess there's a question about is this where podcasts or creators become proper rights holding partners for the next one and i know you'll mention kazay tv on in brazil or whatever but it's it's been very sporadic thus far but i'm just wondering about that particular category of outlet and what they look like to a major governing body like fifa so that as we've grown up on broadcast media feeds and how goal hanger looks to them what they see when they see

12:58Murray Barnett:this well the rest is football is why we're talking about this is not because it's the rest is football it's because they've done a deal with netflix yeah and so netflix is providing this unbelievably huge platform for the show and it has a big foothold obviously in the u.s but here as well and multiple other markets and so I'm not sure that I think it is a bit of a tipping point but I think it would have come regardless of whether it was the rest is football or not but the reason why we're talking about the rest is football is just because they've got this incredible broadcast platform it's accentuating this idea that started with the likes of Kazza TV and we've talked about Goldbridge and others in the past is that that it's increasingly becoming people following presenters or celebrities rather than the show itself and you know just as a quick aside I've had conversations with UK broadcasters in the past where they've told me oh the talent that we've got for our show is not the best broadcast talent but they're the ones with the biggest followings or the biggest level of fame and that is what's attracting people to watch our shows which conversely is then allowing them to sell advertising more easily or get their ratings or whatever their important metrics are to them but the point being is that this whole idea of let's call it shoulder programming that is celebrity-led is goes back to the 80s even or if not before it's accentuated now because it's being divorced from the live rights so the conceit is that people are going to watch something like the rest is football independently of the place where they watch the live rise.

14:45Yannick Ramcke:Yeah, I agree to the extent. And just to double down on what you said, that's the reason why personalities, and these are personalities, like, okay, let's be less UK-centric, like Stephen A. Smith at ESPN is getting paid 20 million plus US dollars per year.

15:01Murray Barnett:Pat McAfee has just been announced as 60 million. Let's say Rumors, right?

15:07Yannick Ramcke:but this is the difference between creator-led or personality-led and the platform that they are building upon and I think you too know my stance on that Free2Air, the creator-led distribution cannot sustain the economics that like for example if FIFA is seeking for its IP those personalities like Stephen A. Smith, like Kurt McAfee they are building upon the ESPN platform that has like the economics and the economic engine behind it In other words, I don't expect that the goal hanger will ever be, based on the platform that they're using today, which is YouTube, will ever be able to accommodate the economics and the rights fees that the FIFA would command.

15:48Yannick Ramcke:I think the challenge for FIFA is, if that complementary content, which by the way is also driven in terms of price tag, because Netflix is strategically investing into like driving podcast supply, driving engagement, driving the advertising revenue stream. So it's like a strategic price. I don't think it's a price that would be justified if you look at pure money in, money out. This is where the challenge for FIFA comes in. If that complementary slash supplementary content becomes the preferred option for consumers to follow along, if that becomes a substitute for the content that FIFA can highly monetize, which is still the IP protected match footage.

16:27Yannick Ramcke:So I think this is also like speaking of tipping point, a little bit of a point where we are right now, to which extent becomes the supplement the substitute and i think that is like more of a fundamental risk to the industry back to ability to monetize certain things but i don't expect any premium ip at scale showing up at on youtube channels like goal hanger or others anytime soon

16:52Murray Barnett:but don't you think that the way that fifa think about it is that if you're talking about shoulder programming is that it's a kind of Oscar Wildeism of anything worse than being talked about is not being talked about and so actually they actually want all of this noise to exist that because somehow that's going to drive interest and awareness towards the broadcasters and so even if you take the conceit of the rest is football and talent you could argue largely focused on a UK market that actually an ITV or a BBC is loving that because anything which is effectively building interest and previewing the games which are going to come up on the BBC and ITV is a good thing.

17:33Yannick Ramcke:I agree but here you are assuming that the net audience impact is positive. You don't assume a zero-sum game and I only say if it becomes a zero-sum game if the complement becomes a substitute and like the noise and the bells and whistles are not positively contributing to tune in but it's all the audience and the consumer wants then I think that's the risk. If you do not consider this a zero-sum game then I'm fully with you that the one can amplify the other but that's

18:01Murray Barnett:an assumption I was really surprised that I just before this I watched they've done a preview show of the rest is football which I think just dropped today on Netflix and I was surprised at how innovative the actual way that it was being presented bearing in mind Netflix allegedly spent 14 million pounds on on on acquiring this it's very conforms very much to the kind of way in which are done and yes okay it's a lovely set and all the rest of it but it wasn't I didn't look at it and think oh this is particularly new or innovative or different it was very much just the standard kind of sofa chat of kind of let's pick our England starting 11 let's think about who's going to win the world cup in either the presentation or the content it wasn't very different and so it does talk to that whole thing about it just being about how you feel about the presenters and I have a pretty strong view about Michael Richards but he's obviously got a big following and so that in fact all three of them I find quite not the most compelling I think it's

19:05Richard:sort of I think it's interesting you because what you're getting at is there's a sort of what is it what is the category that is emerging and how how is it going to evolve and at the moment its value to Netflix and to YouTube is as cheap television or it's television sort of television it's podcasts have evolved at the top end we might as well call them different things because actually what they are is our TV programs with TV producers and production budgets which is going to be available for a very sort of small number in any particular genre or vertical and that's fine because they're sort of competing for ITV ad money they're going for that's it's a different market now it's quite an interesting question that you've raised there about well actually what do we do with that and do we evolve into actually a TV show because you can sort of imagine people say no okay well we're now getting paid enough to have a proper production which actually you start to say right okay well what's the difference and what's the point other than the distribution mechanism then it becomes much more like television and so one of the questions I think is actually does that what the audience want because quite often you might say well actually I went there because it felt like an authentic other voice it felt like Gary Leonard talking in a different way than he does on match of the day with his makeup on and in the studio if he's turning back into a match of the day version then what's the point so i think because that's a fight that television can get into and they can probably win it so i think there's a question there about what these things are going to be and in any particular market you can see now that people are adding production cost onto podcasts and then looking to sort of monetize in that way and i wonder if that's the route for most i think there'll be a one percent that will get that sort of product away and make a lot of money whether that actually stands for the majority I've got my doubts but that's a that's a sort of ongoing question so in terms of well what is it what's the point of it and again that idea that you're sort of tapping into something authentic which is a tricky word to nail down but it's what is it that the audience has signed up for and is this a journey that the

21:20Yannick Ramcke:audience has actually signed up to do I think all these products are competing for the same limited consumer resources, time at the very least and sometimes money. How can you innovate as a product? You either can be a superior product or you can be a cheaper product. You either compete based on price or you compete based on quality. And if you can satisfy the same consumer needs with a significantly lower cost base, this is per definition innovation. This might be the way for those kinds of programs to go that they still fulfill the need of a big chunk of the consumer market but as a significantly lower price point because they can do it without the fancy production set they can do it without the ip rights to the match footage and they come with a built-in audience that you should also not completely disturb by all of a sudden losing quote-unquote authenticity because you are like doubling down on production values and come up with something that is not where and why the audience came from the first place we had i had i've just it's not

22:23Richard:been published yet but we've just had a conversation with jonathan licks who's in charge of sky sports in the uk now one of the questions for him was the gary neville question in terms of well what i'd love to know what a contract looks like now because you've got there a major piece of talent sky talent very well paid by sky creating effectively a competitor in the marketplace in the digital marketplace and whether or not that's a sort of generational thing it's happened and they're going to try and retrofit it? Or what does the next generation of talent sign up to and what does Sky do and the BBC?

23:00Richard:Because these people are created, if you've got that sort of profile, chances are it's been created on television in those situations. Of course, there's a Mr. Beast example that is created more organically online. But actually, that relationship between the TV producers and the talent I think is this is quite an odd moment that we're in because you're seeing businesses being built very successful businesses being built by the talent that are effectively competing now we saw in the last world cup Lineker got into trouble for breaking stories on his podcast which you know that the beat that not on the BBC and the BBC then was starting to question well what what the heck so that is a challenge and it's a problem that's embedded in this at this particular time.

23:48Richard:And it's always been there. And like the BBC, people always moan about the BBC doing corporate events, news presenters suddenly picking, getting lucrative news at corporate events. But this feels at a different scale, or is it a different scale? So there's a sort of odd moment,

24:02Yannick Ramcke:I think, that we're in. And I think it's a matter of leverage between the talent and the corporate company in the sense of nowadays, it's much easier to directly connect with an audience to also, as you said, monetize it one way or the other as a talent, As a corporation, you obviously want to retain exclusivity to the full beneficiary of that talent contributing to your ecosystem. But again, taking Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee as an example, they have the leverage. They are granted certain rights to do things outside of the E, whether then outside activities are limited to non-sports genres like politics or whatever.

24:38Yannick Ramcke:but ultimately I think what you correctly identified it's like a conflict of interest that the one obviously want to accrue and capture as much value as possible from the talent the talent probably wants to realize and also capture as much value and spreading the wings might be also in terms of future leverage to not be fully independent on the platform and again I don't think we should underestimate the platform that a given talent is operating on that you become more independent and doing your own thing. But it's a matter of leverage. Both sides have a clear preference and then it's a bargain.

25:11Richard:Okay, let's move on to India and China. One of the stories running into it has been the blackout of vast proportion of people in the world, i.e. India and China hadn't signed a rights deal with FIFA. Is there just something specific to those markets at this moment? Was it just a tactical thing? Were FIFA too greedy in what they're asking for? Or is there something that we should know about the specifics of those marketplaces that is worth pausing on? Murray, what do you think?

25:43Murray Barnett:Well, just to give it some context, and albeit with a much more favourable time zone, Qatar figures in China meant that they counted for 50 % of digital and social reach and 18 % of linear TV reach for the Qatar World Cup. From a purely numbers perspective, certainly China and India to a certain degree are important for the overall numbers. But it's also this thing about, I think there's an assumption that you increase the size of the tournament, get more nations involved, albeit that India and China are not in the tournament, but more teams in means more extra money. and actually the size of the audience you do the the famous sort of coca-cola china thing of like if everybody in china bought one can of coke once a once a week all of a sudden it's x x billion dollar business for you and i think fifa have applied some of that kind of logic and by the way they've always been late in markets like china and in india or frequently very late to market and they you can argue it two ways you can either say they set this sort of carpet bizarre idea of We need to get between 250 and 300 million in China, knowing that they're only going to get a very small subset of that.

27:01Murray Barnett:But I think the truth is actually in the middle is that they genuinely believe that somewhere like China is worth that kind of number. But they don't understand the economics or they're not willing to understand the economics of how it works in China. and what's effectively a quasi-cartel operation in China with everybody from Migou right through to CCTV, sort of, I should say it the other way around, like CCTV effectively controlling what the others are allowed to do, especially when you've got these big scale events. So I don't think it's a surprise that it's so late, but it seems odd that we just keep having this same issue with over some of these markets.

27:40Murray Barnett:And there's a lot that needs to change in order to fix that going forward, I think.

27:44Richard:I remember we used to talk about China and the IOC used to say sort of quietly that China paid less than New Zealand in terms of rights fees. And they've always played that game of, obviously, as you would, leveraging the biggest population in the world and those numbers that can then be put into the central pot. Sorry, Yannick.