UP556 'Serviette Maths': Sky Sports Boss On The Premflix Threat

0:00Jonathan Licht:Hello, it's Richard Gillis here and welcome to Unofficial Partner, the sports business conversation. Today's guest is one of the most influential people in the British sports industry. He is Jonathan Licht, chief sports officer at Sky Sports. So we discuss their dominant position in the UK sports broadcasting market, the nature and the changing nature of their relationships and partnerships across the board, and the future, not just of Sky, but of the sector itself. It's a very broad and deep conversation with someone who has been at Sky since the mid-90s. And he's been at Sky Sports since 2005.

0:35Jonathan Licht:So we talk about portfolio, dominance, the home of football, 225 Premier League matches. What does that do? 1 ,000 plus EFL games, 118 WSL matches, Formula One, cricket, golf, NFL, tennis, darts, netball. Sky has the lot. So what is a sports broadcaster today in a world of global streaming? What's the role in co-creation, for example, in The 100? And how does that play in terms of the relationship between broadcaster and governing body? He's also very good on Sky's relationship with its own talent. Gary Neville set up a business almost in competition with Sky, whilst being one of its most highly paid on-air stars.

1:17Jonathan Licht:So what are the blurring lines between Sky's platforms and independent creator channels like The Overlap? YouTube and highlights distribution free to air content as a funnel or is it a risk of training audiences not to pay and women's sports investment what's the business rationale and the higher purpose and I would hang around for that because it's a really interesting argument from the person who writes the checks 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.

1:59Jonathan Licht: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'll be a link in the show notes starts to gear up now this time of year obviously you get into the sort of summer stuff Wimbledon and cricket which I want to talk to you about and the men's and women's you've got the World Cup coming up Absolutely, three World Cups this week obviously the men's football the women's cricket and the World Cup of Darts which presumably we'll be covering in great length during this conversation I can be honest, the World Cup of Darts has passed me by I was like, that wasn't on my Don't worry about it, we'll be okay I think England have a decent chance it's probably more likely to win that of the three always with people with jobs like yours i'm always interested in what do you do all day do you know what i mean that i'm not doing podcasts or vodcast when you're not when you're not recording good question uh spent a lot of time sitting on the north circular commuting to australia but i i always think about um i tend to think about my role in sort of three buckets there's a sort of the internal sky sports piece how are we thinking about whatever our priorities are and we'll talk about some of those I'm sure over the conversation.

3:43Then there's a lot of interaction with the broader Sky business so you know how is Sky Sports helping the marketing team, the advertising team, are we aligned on whatever we need to be doing, what else is going on with the rest of business that we need to be across and you know in my with my position I spend quite a lot of time in that space and around the sort of divisional leads across Sky and then there's the interaction with the industry our partners so those at the leagues rights holders whoever we should be or teams where we have relationships with and I enjoy all aspects of the role in in different ways but clearly I've had a lot of longevity in my certainly at Sky and Sky Sports so got to know lots of people around the industry and of course there's lots of people at Sky Sports I've been working with for a long time.

4:29Jonathan Licht:I started in 1998 so my first job at Sky was working in advertising research in Sky Media so based up in in Victoria so supporting the the media arm but also because it was research I was doing a lot of like audience analysis and working with the people that ran the content team so Vic Wakeling in sport and the various people that ran entertainment including people like Dawn Airy over the time so I started in Sky in in 1998 and then I moved over to sports 2005 and uh i moved over to sport after i wrote a letter to vic wakeling saying i was really interested in a role in uh in sky sports i may be one of the last people to get a job by virtue of writing a letter rather than sending an email yeah so i mean so the job then was what audience analysis in the early days yeah exactly audience analysis type roles working with the ad sales team that were trying to engage clients in why they should be buying into sky whether that was sport or whatever it is um so at that time you're you know it was a time where we were taking bigger positions in sport clearly you know the premier league was i don't know probably only four or five years old at that point and there was still you know a much bigger question i'd guess about sort of pay tv and the audiences around pay tv and how they were going to grow and what the sort of trade-offs were around reach and revenue and all those sorts of things so we were doing helping with presentations that were also being made to the different sports to think about what a partnership with Sky could look like.

6:05Jonathan Licht:And when you then joined in 2005, so I'm just trying to think, so that year rings a bell because of cricket. That was the year before Channel 4 to Sky and the Ashes. That happened. What others, and obviously the Premier League, I'm just wondering if the portfolio looks considerably different now or you've still got the sort of pillars that were still in place. Yes, Premier League would have been almost 15 years. We had a relationship with ECB, but it's not as sort of exclusive as it is now. With the EFL, we'd be in partnership with them. Clearly lots going on in the world of golf, tours, golf, netball.

6:44So lots of Super League, lots of sports. They would be similar, but the dynamic was slightly different. I think 2005, we had some rights were being broadcast by Satanta, I think, that year. So they'd had a position in FA Cup. I think they had a position in US Tour Golf for a period. I think that was a little bit later because I remember when that happened, when I was at Sky Sports. Boxing as well. We had a position in boxing, but they did as well. so yeah there was a lot that we a lot that we partnered with that we still we still do but there's obviously been you know an evolution of Sky Sports since then Formula One comes quite a bit later and our position within a lot of the sports you know with the sort of deeper partnerships in terms of the amount of content that we're showing and the sort of history of the relationship type

7:37Jonathan Licht:thing yeah and and then you then get I suppose there's a question about what that means so the relationship between a you know a long-term relationship with sky and from there from the because i always think so i'm sorry this is a way into i want to talk about i wish i'd remind him on all my histories on my own history my memory's not what it used to be well we've got your bad memory you've got your my wonky ai assistant so between us we're going to have to call together your your backstory make it up between us yeah but there's a i i remember there was we had um um we're talking about cricket and obviously it's a big summer you got the women's world cup we got you know just had a test match which you know that finished in two and a half days three days but cricket is an interesting one because if you go over the span of the time you've got the rise of 2020 cricket obviously that sort of appeared and then you've got the hundred and i'm always interested in the hundred because obviously people underestimate the role that sky played in that in the development of that and i just want to sort of use that as a as a sort of a way in really just to say can you explain what sky's role was in it because i remember sky labs being mentioned as part of that and your name was always associated you know was in the sort of in that area because i remember you as the strategy guy at sky so talk to me about how that evolved okay so i'm not quite sure where the question started the question is the question is it's effectively because there's been a few pieces written recently about 20 years of a more exclusive relationship uh with sky and saw a lot of history about 2005 and the audience figures and the history of that deal um and yeah i think you know english cricket have had a lot of successes in that period that we're talking about that you know the women's team won a home world cup in 2017 50 overs the men's uh did 2019 I think I don't know quite how many Home Ashes series have been won across that period but I think at least three so there's been a period of success for English cricket in not the last deal but the deal before there was a very specific ambition on the ECB's behalf to look at effectively I guess more expansive audience or how do you sort of protect the long-term health of cricket in this country so how do you sort of broaden the appeal of cricket and a big part of that was going to be a um a franchise competition obviously the IPL had probably been up and running I don't know maybe sort of six seven years I don't quite know exactly when what year that would have would have started um so to bring a version of that that already there already was county 2020 cricket the blast competition which is is important for the counties and you know is a good way for them to be filling their grounds but you know almost how do you take that to the next stage and it was the ECB that came up with the sort of the headline concept around the sort of change in the format but then there was a whole load of work about you know what needs to go on around that what are the important factors what is going to make this work what's the experience going to be like in the grounds how's that going to relate to the broadcast experience and that was the sort of process that that went into Sky Labs and I absolutely can't take too much credit although the team were very very very closely involved it was almost like a sort of two or three week immersive experience where you had a group of people from the ECB a group of people from from Sky and there you bring in lots of external expertise from sort of all different and surprising uh sort of walks of life it could be someone that was an expert and experiential it could be some I know professor that was an expert on time or something like that, that would just help people think about what is it that's going to be important?

11:26What's it going to catch people's attention? How are you going to get more families interested in coming to cricket or younger people? And a big sort of premise around that, one of the ideas is that people need to know who's winning, you know, kind of almost any point of the game. And that was sort of why one of the ideas is sort of like the balls go down and then the balls go up. There's sort of a simplicity to it all. So there was very much a sort of co-creation work that went on with the 100. And I think, you know, there's been, it's fair to say, quite a bit of noise about the competition in the sort of intervening years.

12:01But for me, there's no doubt, particularly for the experience of going to a 100 game and what it's done for the equity of the women's game. The fact that you have those sort of the double headers, the head to heads, the experience in the ground, the noises that you hear in the ground from younger people that are going to cricket is undoubtedly been a success for the 100. I think for Sky, audience-wise, yes, we've broadened our appeal, but I don't think it's been quite as remarkably stark as you potentially see in the venues. And what you've had in the last year, you've had this moment where the English cricket has had investment levels from external, whether quite a few people associated with the IPL or people coming out of investment houses in the US have committed amounts of money to English cricket that would have just seemed unprecedented going back.

12:53Yeah, astonishing numbers. So absolutely bought in to this sort of concept of growth and sort of owning a position in English cricket. And, you know, that hopefully is going to be something that puts English cricket in sort of great strength. You know, the game itself is not without its challenges. You know, clearly, the future of Test cricket is something that's debated, but as you said, we've just seen the finish of a Test match. Actually, we had a pretty strong audience. We had a peak of around a million people watching Sunday lunchtime when the game finished. There's still a sort of healthy audience of people that want to engage with Test cricket, lots of people that want to go to the game.

13:30But through the 100, what we're doing is effectively broadening that appeal and trying to sort of make sure the health of cricket overall is going to be strong long into the future. And I hope that English cricket, men's and women's, is going to be in a strong place as a result of that.

13:47Jonathan Licht:Well, it's sort of, I mean, I wasn't teeing you up for a sort of 2005 conversation because I've had that on the podcast many times and so have you. And it wasn't about that, but it's sort of interesting about what a broad, it gets to sort of what a broadcaster is now, you know, and what sky, how it's sort of worldview, if you like, and how it sees itself in a market that is changing in many different ways. And it's sort of interesting that because we've got the renewal of the hundred coming up in 2008. We had Larlit Modi on here talking about, you know, where the money, what's going to happen at that moment.

14:18Jonathan Licht:And we've had the ECB on and various people. But it's sort of interesting to look at it and say, right, OK, that it doesn't feel like a normal broadcast rights holder relationship in that way. Because if I was Sky, I would say, well, if you take the hundred somewhere else, I'm going to be pretty pissed off. because we were there at the beginning. Yeah, look, I think there's, as I said, we do feel like we were there at the beginning, the co-creation. We were answering a very specific challenge together with our partner about how you grow interest in the game. And that is a kind of extreme version, but it's kind of not dissimilar to any of the partnerships that we have in terms of, you know, the slight, I don't know how you call it, an irony or whatever the right word would be.

15:01But you go back to wherever you go start, you talk about Premier League, you talk about darts, you talk about anything is you know we are working to make these sports successful so that you know people want to watch people want to engage and we have had you know we have been successful that but we're kind of like slightly our punishment is these rights then come back to market and there's a competitive process around that so yes it's great that we can we can prove the growth of a sport and we can really get more people you know to the start line but you know then we come and get sort of that that relationship gets tested the kind of the good news is we think we're a very good partner to sport particularly in this market and you know we have more right certainty than we've probably ever had so effectively something is working for our partners as well yes our money is good and that helps you know them and you know partnering with with sky gives them a certain certainty but for customers we think that's good as well like the the choices that we've made where to invest our money we're kind of seeing the returns in good audience stories across the board and you know actually the choice and the value that we're giving people is is being well recognized by by customers so yeah i get the point around the hundreds and you know wouldn't it be you know we've done this and we've done that but it's kind of not dissimilar to any of the relationships that we have where we've helped grow games i mean you wouldn't have thought four years ago three years ago you'd be getting four million audiences for for the world darts but that's what's happened through the phenomenon that's luke littler you know there's a lot of people that have been involved in in the sort of that success and that sort of trajectory but actually the platform that we give a sport is is a really significant part of that same yeah if you look at the audience growth for formula one over the years you know so any number of these stories in theory what we're doing is we're creating the conditions to make it harder for us to kind of to renew these rights.

16:59But the good news is kind of it tends to be playing out OK for us and good for customers.

17:04Jonathan Licht:And that at the moment, that sort of marketing role of Sky and, you know, the broadcast, the retail end of broadcast, if you like, use a crude term. But you've got I think is, again, a bit underestimated. We get a lot of people coming on the podcast who are sort of launching single sport or direct to consumer sort of ideas. and you get it intellectually but you haven't got the marketing sort of muscle and front and presentation that a major broadcaster in particular you know a sky brings to that and i'm wondering how that now plays because i think sort of five years at least but probably more you'd have gone back and said yeah the future is streaming ott direct d2c all of these acronyms and now we're thinking do you know what i i'm getting you know i'm not only rose-tinted glasses for newspapers i'm a bit rose-tinted for you know just give me one ticket yeah no i look i think that's right that you know at various points people have written the story wanted to write the story written the story that you know the demise of this demise of that someone's coming to eat your lunch um and i you know the evidence is actually today as has not been that if anything We feel more robust.

18:16We feel in better shape with our partnerships than ever before. Our position as the UK's leading sports broadcaster, we don't say that in an arrogant way, but we say it in a slight confidence because actually we've got a really positive story to tell, whether that's record audiences in 2025 for Sky Sports over a weekend or over a day or over a month or over a year. they're kind of they're kind of all there so the the the offering is really robust and resilient and in many places growing i think from a sort of positioning perspective and if you think maybe we'll come on to the streamers in a little bit but sort of sky i think where we've kind of increasingly see ourselves and sort of position ourselves as a kind of like a national champion like if we are the best people to help you connect with the uk interested sort of sports audience you know we have that whether it's what we're doing in super sunday or whether we're doing how we sort of complement that from a 360 perspective from sky sports news or our digital estate which i think in many the scale and the importance of that i think is often underestimated yes a streamer can let you sort of pop up in 100 markets overnight and some of them will do that brilliantly well but it's not going to be a specific experience for your market you know An example could be how you might watch the NFL.

19:36We have a studio show from our big studio in Austerlea. We have a great talent lineup, whether that's Jason Vale or Phoebe or Osi or Neil, whoever it is that we have presenting, comes on after, so around Super Sunday. So you've already had two or three million people watching a big Sunday afternoon game. You carry them through into Sunday night and they have a really sort of tailored experience around how a UK sport fan may want to engage with the NFL. You could also watch Red Zone or another channel. Actually, you can watch multiple Live Against events. If you watch that through a streamer, you're probably getting a version that's being seen in lots of countries that may not have any sort of thing tailored around that.

20:16You know, I'm not criticising it because that model works for them. But I think for us, what we're doing is we're really working with our partners to try and understand what's important to them, how we want to talk to audiences in our market in a way that's kind of relevant and authentic. So I think that players may become even more to the fore. Now that, you know, we do have streaming capability through the launch of Sky Sports Plus, through the volume of the EFL games that we do. So we have the technical ability. We don't necessarily have the geography. We have the relationship with Comcast.

20:48So through NBC and through some deals that they've done, effectively, they're acquiring rights in multiple territories or we're working with them on certain rights. But you're not getting 100 markets, but you're getting what we think is the best experience in the UK market. And the UK market remains very important to rights holders and leagues in the world.

21:08Jonathan Licht:There's a few things that bounce off that, which are really interesting and I just want to follow up on. So you've got, you mentioned that our money is good, which is a really interesting and certain. Yeah. And I think I hope it came across in the right way. That's an interesting phrase, because in other markets, at other times, things have gone wrong, not for Sky, but for other broadcasters. And I'm thinking, you know, France being a good example of where something has happened, which has sort of been cataclysmic for a league because of the broadcast. that nature of that question, where's the money going to come from?

21:44Jonathan Licht:And we're in a time of consolidation and people are putting things together. I think there's a question about that, the other broadcaster in the Premier League. And you mentioned Satanta and I can think, you know, who's been in that slot, BT, ESPN going back. There's sort of Amazon been popping in and out. How do you view that slot? It's obviously a legal sort of issue. Yeah, there's a position where no single buyer for Premier League. And we could talk about the legacy of that and what the unintended consequences of that sort of decision have been for the punter and the viewer and for the rights market.

22:22Jonathan Licht:But where do you see that bit of the jigsaw? Because it's very hard to come at Sky from that position. So we've got a moment where you know that there's a Warner Brothers paramount merger happening and whether that is different than what's come in the past. I guess if we start with a sort of certainty point, and I think a really big, another sort of big moment for Sky and our partners was actually coming out of COVID. And I probably bore my colleagues talking about that, probably a lot of things, but that particularly that topic, because I do think that was such an unusual, like no one, you know, you could never imagine an experiment where sport didn't happen to try and help you understand sort of almost in a way how important sport was in people's lives.

23:06but it was such a sort of challenge to the sporting bodies to the leagues to sky in in many respects that we worked through in such a partnership way that we came through them in a really sort of strong sort of really feeling stronger and part of that was because actually i think that our partners understood that they were in good hands in dealing with sky not only good hands as we talk about sort of financial certainty and taking a long-term view that we'd had already to that point but going forward but also that when sport came back and it came back in a volume that had was sort of unprecedented all Premier League games were being covered and they were being covered in a way that was quite operationally challenging when you're partnering with Sky you're going to get hopefully a professionalism and an expertise that means that that's all going to be very suitably and well handled and it's all going to show up well for customers so I do think that gave us a kind of a real sort of strength and resilience around our partnerships and we've sort of come through that and I think that's been evidenced by deals that have happened subsequently which have given us sort of more longer term certainty than we've ever had that we can then pass on to customers so that's sort of a sort of a high level then you go sort of specifically to the to the Premier League and yeah you know you're absolutely right that there's been lots of different there's been lots of versions of broadcasters have had packs of games and you know there's been lots of you know in previous role i've spent a lot of time around football fixtures and the selection of football fixtures and people sort of talk about that as like a game of battleships or whatever it was when you were trying to select the games and the picks processes but it's you know now we're in a position that last year sky showed sky sports showed 225 games you know that's a i think that's 70 i think of all of all i may not have got that quite right but it there's 380 games in turtle someone can do the math it won't be too far off so there's lots of games being shown that actually I think our position it's particularly for Premier League that sort of leadership position is kind of clearer than it's ever been in a world where we came from where we might have

25:09Jonathan Licht:been sort of 98 40 or something like that yeah we might have got a bit more like oh this weekend we've got three games someone's got two games you know what's the leadership how people how our audience is thinking whereas I feel like it's now you know particularly for Premier League and it is fundamentally a backbone to our sports business, and we're comfortable to say that, that we're in a strong position now. Clearly, there are other football competitions where other people have their own positions, but overall, our position in football has never been broader or bigger. So 225 Premier League games.

25:44This last season was the first year of our five-year deal for WSL, we're 118 games. I think there's something like 90 % of all matches, although the league is expanding in this coming season. The year before, we extended our EFL deal where we've gone to over 1 ,000 games and we were making this commitment where we were going to show each of the teams at least 20 times in this last season, which was a fantastic SPFL season. We showed more games than ever before. So I think we sort of focus on what we're doing, focus on our leadership position. That's not to say that we're complacent, but we sort of judge ourselves on the relationship we have with customers.

26:19Are we giving them value? we have to prove that every day, every week, every month. So whether that's football or whether that's the breadth of what we do, that's kind of what we're focused on. And that's how does that story evolve? So then you have a tender process at the back end of last year. We come out of that with some UEFA rights on Thursday night competition. So season 27, 28, we'll have a new story where we go from 1 ,500 matches in total to 1 ,850. And I'm not saying you have to watch every one of those games. That's not how we judge ourselves. But we want to say if you're a fan of a certain team, that we're giving you more value and more choice than you ever before.

26:58You know, if you support an EFL team, now Sky Sports is giving you a sort of a level of commitment that didn't exist before.

27:05Jonathan Licht:The 70 % number is interesting. I sometimes ask, I ask Barney this question, about how much is enough to say that you're the home of something? Is 70 % the number-ish? Feels like that's a reasonable guess. Well, it's 70 % of all games, but I don't know what percentage of the televised games. I think, I don't think there's a, you know, different, in all the sports that, you know, if you think about almost like our genre channels, that will give you the clues to the sports that we sort of see ourselves where we sort of very much the leader. So whether that be tennis and the tours, okay, we have one of the four grand slams, but in terms of volume of tennis that's covered, you know, leadership, golf, I think, you know, every, you know, the US tour, the European tour, all the majors, men's and women's, cricket with ECB position, football we've talked about, Formula One.

27:53Jonathan Licht:So rugby and tennis are the obvious ones from my point of view that aren't there. Well, tennis is there for the Tours perspective, for the WTA and the ATP. You know, there's a huge volume. I think it's something like 4 ,000 games of tennis or something, but not three of the four Grand Slams. I accept that. But yeah, rugby union is, we don't have a genre channel. We have shown at various times over my time, probably virtually, even going back in 1998, I think we had some Six Nations games. And then, but, you know, whether that be Premiership or European rugby or the internationals, we've shown all the Lions tours.

28:34We showed the last one. Yeah, I mean, there'll be lots of reasons why we are where we are in rugby, but that's not because we sit here and say it's a sport we're not interested in or we don't think people are interested in.

28:45Jonathan Licht:Is it the sort of reverse of your COVID point? So, you know, in terms of not about COVID, but there is an idea that rugby broke the relationship with Sky by going elsewhere. And then you've got, not you personally, but Sky has got a long institutional memory and it's going to be hard for rugby to come back in. Is there anything in that framing? I think there was a point where someone saw more value in the rugby opportunity than we did. whether that was the deal that BET would have done for the premiership, I think, originally, you know, at a level that we weren't prepared to go to, whether we even specifically had that opportunity, I can't quite recall.

29:23But I think, again, sort of danger of oversharing type thing is like, because we talk about leadership within sport, but actually a big part for Sky Sports is the breadth of the portfolio. People want to have the opportunity to watch Formula One as well as cricket, as well as football, as well as tennis, as well as NFL boxing, etc. And so one piece coming out or make an analogy coming out of that doesn't necessarily make a big difference to the overall value proposition and our overall ability to generate revenue. So what then becomes problematic is if a sport comes out, can we then go and show the business case to say that bringing it back in is going to be able to drive that level of value?

30:07So it's like incrementally it becomes harder for us probably when a sport has moved on. And this will be, you know, there'll be a number of examples of sports that we've shown over the last 20, 25 years where we were paying a level of money that is well above the level that's being paid now, even for rights that may be out still in the market. But it's hard for us to create a business case for that because our business has moved on. there's no one sitting here saying we're not going to do business with that person or that league or that because you know we need to we we want to offer what's of value to customers that's how we'll be successful and um but the dynamics and you know as the investments get bigger in certain sports some of the ability to make significant investments in other sports and retain pricing at a level that we think is suitable and retain the level of profitability that we want to that that's where that becomes a challenge for us so you mentioned european and

31:04Jonathan Licht:the european games and that's again a sort of interesting bit of the jigsaw and the last round of rights the relevant sort of packaging of uefa rights the story running into that it was going to be a streamer package there was going to be a global thing paramount came in for that so in In terms of the packaging, you've now got your Netflix and you've got the sort of big global streamers. How do you see these rights holders evolving their offers in that world? Do you think that that is that sort of relevant package, as I'm calling it? Do you think that's going to be something others will look at and copy?

31:44Jonathan Licht:Or do you think actually, no, it didn't work? Well, they did come to market offering a global pack. and they also came to market running a number of big European markets at the same time, simultaneously. I think that was the first time that had been done to that level. I think it's, and look, again, you'd be much better off asking them, but my perspective is for these rights, these are quite unique rights in that they're not at a totally dissimilar value in these markets. People's ability to want to trade across markets or think about multiple markets at the same time is probably higher you know if you're running a let's say a premier league process across five european markets at the same time you know everyone's going to be disproportionately focused on the uk that kind of doesn't really make sense to be thinking about how are those markets going to trade in france or germany at that same time so it was quite it's quite a unique set of circumstances that's relevant to that excuse the term to that specific uh right so I think they were taking advantage of that that people may want to deal um in multiple markets at the same time I try and think you know when you talk about global streaming you think about the sort of the big sports you're always going to think about well what's the dynamic well yes okay so there's lots of talk in the market about uh US domestic NFL rights and um what's going to happen there but the numbers that you're talking about are so big there that the international component might just be an add-on as opposed to something that's sort of run very very separately or it might be that the entities that want to involve themselves in that process want to have an international position you know whether that be Netflix, YouTube, Amazon or maybe someone like Paramount, Paramount Plus, CBS or Disney or Comcast but they're not going to disrupt you know their key market they're not going to let that get in the way of of what what they're about and how many markets that they're going to pick up so i think there's you know there's there's almost so many sort of circumstances at play that there's very rarely a kind of one size fits all approach for these things um but you can see it emerging a little bit more because you've got these capable companies with the capability and the desire to take rights out across multiple territory i guess the there's a just the the risk reward of that please it talks back to your previous point about the the i guess the audience relationship that yeah yeah where you like do you want again you look at an example like the the premier league who who've been sort of rightly lauded for a long time about how successful that they've been internationally you know that they and they run i think virtually a bespoke process by market maybe they've sort of clumped together the more territories recently but over the years they've been out trying to understand who is the best partner in this market who understands you you know the go-to market here and what we need to do and they've been you know they've seen the value and that seems to have been vindicated in you know kind of like territory by territory approach and you know our view is if you have that view if you want to be in the UK then a you know a really strong partner is going to be working with Sky Sport.

35:00Jonathan Licht:Does it matter that the Premier League productions going in-house away from IMG, does that matter to Sky at all? Is it just something you're looking from the side? Well, it doesn't matter to us for the moment. We've, you know, three years left of our deal. As I said, we post-broadcasted 225 matches for our market, you know, including we had things like the last day ever, all games were being broadcast at the same time. that was a sort of a huge operational effort from our team and sort of credit editorially and everything operation that went on in delivering those sort of 10 host broadcasting matches so I'm a Spurs fan so it's quite a stressful day for me so I can imagine it wasn't stressful enough for us as in it never quite you know we wanted the idea that the league table would flip at some point but it never quite happened but not that you were in the market for that but um but still again you know a really good and big day for us but sort of going back to the original question And, you know, we have an interaction with Premier League or PLP and now we'll have an interaction with the new entity.

36:04But for the moment, it remains business as usual on that for us.