UP563 Jude Inc: 'I don't suppose you've got any Bellingham?'

0:00Dan Jamieson:Bellingham's star is already secure, isn't it? Doesn't matter now. Well, the discussion on the rest is football was, is he now or is he destined to be the greatest English player of all time? And I'm like, I think it's going to be Bobby Charlton until he wins the cup. Yeah. I think you have to win as well as being amazing. Yeah. Gary Pallister's got to be on that list, surely. Oh, Middlesbrough's finest.

0:27Dan Jamieson:Hi there, Richard Gillis here. That was me and Dan Jameson, CEO of Icons, the world's leading football memorabilia brand, sharing a bit of football badinage. This was recorded a few days before the World Cup final yesterday. So you can hear the hope in our voice that England might have got through to the final against Spain. That was dashed, obviously. So we focus on Jude Bellingham, the star of England and Real Madrid. And we talked to Dan, who did a deal with Jude a few days before the World Cup started. So how's your luck on that? But in reality, it was planned three years previously. They already have the exclusive deal for memorabilia with Lionel Messi, as they did with Diego Maradona.

1:11Dan Jamieson:And they were looking around at football and asking, who is the next global star that was going to transcend the game and sell a lot of memorabilia? And they landed on Jude Bellingham, which is beginning to look like a good decision. So we talk about the contract, the deal that's been done and what it means. And there's much broader stuff there about a word that I hope doesn't catch on, which is retail attainment, which is the blurring of the lines between retail, media, rights and IP. And they're collapsing into one space. We're seeing eBay Live, Fanatics Live, TikTok Shop all moving in that direction.

1:48Dan Jamieson:what happens when the aforementioned rest is football starts to view themselves as a live merchandise and retail site as well as a very popular podcast all of that is going into the mix for the next hour or so i hope you enjoy it

2:15Dan Jamieson:i'm starting to say right how was it for you you're over there you're in america you've been traveling around the world cup i want to just get a sense of before we talk about business stuff what's it been like i've not been so i just want to know what what it's like on the ground It's been fantastic. So, for example, I've been to games in the US and in Mexico. So I went to Mexico, England, which was like nothing on earth. So I have to compare and contrast with that. So that was incredible. I think what is fascinating is the kind of total immersion when you're at the games. So you go to a ground, it's like a normal World Cup and everybody's super excited and it's friendly and everyone's, I know, whole world is there.

2:56And then you sort of go back out into the cities and you wouldn't really know it's on.

3:01Dan Jamieson:Oh, right. Because America is so large. I mean, I'm in New York. There are sort of a few flags up, a few bars have sort of bunting on. But it's not like the all-consuming nature of one if it was in England or in France or where everybody is involved. It's funny that because you sort of think you get a distorted lens, don't you? I'm consuming it entirely by television, but I would say 90 % of it on clips and TikTok and YouTube stuff and shorts. So you do get it. It's a real filter. It's quite interesting hearing that. I can imagine that's true in terms of just there isn't the cars in the streets, flag stuff.

3:44I tell you what was fun. I was at the England Norway in Miami and the Americans had laid on public transport, which was very good so there was a car park very efficient organized line to get you out into miami took ages but free coaches and so on so that was great and then we eventually got back to our hotel it's like right we need to go and have some food it's really late so they're like okay just go a few blocks up turn left turn right and we got there and they just what they turned out was they'd recommended a a grill restaurant which was the epicenter of little argentina and it was the Argentina game going on and it was like being in South America it was cars it was flags it was 10 people deep watching TVs through windows it was dancing in the streets it was brilliant so we got and got the the best of both worlds so I was thinking about you the other day

4:36Dan Jamieson:during the Mexico game and just the rise of or just Jude Bellingham let's talk about Jude Bellingham you're the guy that signed Jude Bellingham a week before the World Cup or just talk to me about this because I'm fascinated by just him and he's just become this, you know, he was big anyway, but it's gone beyond that. Tell us about just the process and what's involved. So, I mean, we talent spot, but it's only just by watching TV and enjoying the game. So we first approached him three years, eight months ago. So he was at Dortmund and we're like, this guy's going to be great. We think he's got all the X factor.

5:20He's, what is interesting, he doesn't feel English. He feels like a foreign footballer who just happens to play for us. He has that kind of extra level of skill and bravado, but we don't generate that often in our country.

5:38Dan Jamieson:And it's also not, you know, the obvious point being, he doesn't and hasn't played. Well, you know, obviously he doesn't play for Birmingham, But his career, his fame has been built overseas, isn't it? So there is a distance there. There is. And I think there was a disconnect and a distance. I think distance is a good analogy. I think people were against us signing Bellingham. People thought he's quite divisive. Do England fans really like him? Is he popular enough? And I was like, no, treat him like he's a foreign footballer. he is the centerpiece of Real Madrid. They are the biggest commercial team in the world.

6:21They love him because of the bravado, because of the X factor, because of the arrogance. And it's slightly off-putting to England fans when he's having a row with Tuchel. But that's what makes him amazing. And I think what we've seen is the maturity of him, the incredible nature of his game, plus having the right platform. And now England fans love him because they know who he is and they see him as one of us and he's singing Hey Jude into the crowd. And I think his reputation is set now. I think he's the next. But also what's interesting, this is the thing where icons comes in, is I think he transcends Englishness.

7:00Dan Jamieson:Okay. What we look for in a star is someone where nationality isn't as crucial as the popularity of the player. So you would have a Leo Messi on your wall behind you because he's the greatest player. not because he's argentinian i think what we've tended to do is create very english superheroes harry kane yeah but kids in macau and australia and the philippines aren't crying out to have a harry kane on their wall yeah he's just quite yeoman like he's quite english whereas the the x factor of bellingham we're seeing international sales we're seeing people buying him in china North America the Middle East because he's got skills which kids love and he delivers and he's got a kind of way of being just got he's just so charismatic isn't he I mean so I guess we should delve into you say they're buying Bellingham what is it they're buying take me inside the deal as far as you can in terms of just what it is that you sell a player like Bellingham what's the relationship and just take us inside the process well it's i proposed a long-term deal because i wanted him also to work with us all the way to the euros because i was thinking 25 is actually going to be a real peak for him and he'll be the face of a home euros that was the kind of calculation his team are very controlled they're they're it's it's close-knit and it's it's the family make the decisions basically and they have a small amount of sponsors and commercial activities and what they basically wanted to do was for us to earn their trust so in the end we've done a short-term deal with a view to a long-term deal and we got it all done very quickly at the end of the very end of the Madrid season and yeah we just started working together so it's it's it's working out for both of us at the moment so I've seen him around Lucas Aid I've seen him in bits and bobs but again i'm not i'm sort of trying to remember now what and it's one of those tests that you sort of think oh i should know but actually i i quite like this is an excuse for being lazy but i quite like when people say oh he's done this that and that the other deal how many of these actually i do know and have noticed given it you know the i mean he's the centerpiece of the adidas advert yeah so that's right that's that's pretty big ee i think he works with i think he works with louis vatang i think i mean he's he's got commercial partners it's it's just not a namar long list yeah i think namar had 40 last time i counted so he's he's discerning it's he wants the a-list and it's his mom and dad doing it i see i see them around the place and is that yeah they're very yeah they're very involved and very astute so it's a good combination he's working for has he got an agent or is he worked with an agency yeah yeah it's a A guy who knew him from the FA and has also gained their trust and works with them now.

10:01So he's been great.

10:02Dan Jamieson:So what is it that he's giving you in practical terms? In practical terms, it is, let's say, an hour of his time. So we met him in Madrid and went into the Madrid training complex and did our signing. We were allowed to video it and create our own content as well at the same time. What is interesting is also there's Real Madrid need to be involved because of their image rights clauses. So we had to negotiate with Real Madrid as well. That's because they bought, as part of his contract with them, they own a part of his IP? I think they own a part of his IP. I think the argument is by playing for Real Madrid, we increase your commercialisation and your global superstarness and we want a piece of it.

10:46So it's relatively common with Real Madrid players.

10:49Dan Jamieson:So have you got to pay Real Madrid as well as Jude Berlingham? Yep. And do you have to pay the FA? No. Okay. So, and Jude Bellingham in an England shirt versus Jude Bellingham in a Real Madrid shirt. What's the difference? Can you use him in an England shirt? Yeah. Yeah. We, interestingly, split our signing about 50-50, just thinking which way it would go. We actually thought that Real Madrid would be a bigger seller because of the globalisation we were talking about. I mean, I know he's a brilliant player, but he's had a World Cup beyond dreams. So it's sort of, and it's not finished yet. So we shall see.

11:29But yeah, it's England fans right now, Bayern.

11:31Dan Jamieson:Longer term, you think it's Real Madrid. So Real Madrid's argument is that his fame is in part based on their shirt. And if he's going to sign their shirt and you're going to sell their shirt with Jude Bellingham on it, they need a cut. Yep. I mean, they're pretty smart. So yeah, they're like, I know, the halo effect of being a Real Madrid player will boost you around the world so you'll get bigger contracts as a result let's talk about that so how big a deal i can see that argument absolutely and it's quite interesting because you're sort of at the sharp end i always think conversations to you are interesting because you'll get it you really are looking at fame in quite an interesting way and you're you've got just a bit of market information that that quite often we gloss over so when you then say right okay we've got jude bellingham we've had an hour of him signing stuff we've created a sort of a set of inventory that you you're going to put out is it mainly shirts yeah something people and then you take that and then you sort of put it in frames you package it and you sort of add value in how do you what take me through that bit of the process before we get to the i'm going to buy it on somewhere but just take me through the okay i've got the shirts i've done the thing i filmed it so we know it's authentic it's not dodgy yeah i mean we so we have the license for the world cup and for the champions league okay so it's it's a kind of flagship spelling and product in both instances so we have all those frames ready to go back at the ranch in our operations center but it's only when we sell it that we know what type of license or frame it's being sold in so we then frame it in 24 hours and dispatch it so we it's it's our calling card is that literally we work with the biggest tournaments in the world we know how to work with their ip we sell through their channels and to their sponsors and to the fans so it's it's a really good thing it's like we are official that that's literally what we do we're official authentic exclusive there are three buzzwords and uh yeah we sort of we take the shirts and we well what we firstly we triple lock them which is our new authentication system so we video the entire signing we take it home we edit the video so you get the exact moment your shirt was signed so when you scan an nsc chip that's added to the shirt you scan it with your phone it pops up with the moment it was signed geolocated and time stamped and verifiable and it's all linked to the data record so it's it's that kind of level of consistency and authenticity that we bring to it and why do the FIFA deal then so you've signed a deal you've got a deal with Jude Bellingham you've got you've signed with Real Madrid who you've done a deal with them let's talk about the sort of official relationship with FIFA what you get from that that means that that unlocks stuff that you wouldn't able to wouldn't be able to do otherwise it unlocks the ability to use their marks and their IP so only we can say we're the official memorabilia partner of the World Cup also it doesn't really have icons on it so we have to subsume our kind of brand below theirs we're basically borrowing their brand and then using their ip it allows us to go onto official channels interestingly it allows us to tell google that we're the official sellers and they should stop directing people to all the other people saying that they're world cup related so do they respond does that work we're trying actually the people who are responding most effectively are the chinese actually so chinese and are asking for official letters from the IP owners to say that we are the real people so they can start taking down all the dodgy stuff in the background.

15:28So fair play to them.

15:29Dan Jamieson:I mean, yes, let's say that. It's fair play. We don't often say fair play to the Chinese Communist Party, but, you know, let's have at it. So, okay, so you've got the sort of collection of stuff of value. Your job is to protect that from the people that are trying to invade that world, and you've got that sort of wall around that, either both legal but also as you say that is it the triple lock is it or triple triple lost a sort of icons property that allows it to be authenticated so okay now then you get to taking the stuff to market so now you've got jude bellingham i'm just i'm just interested in the chain of things so yeah okay so distribution then and i've noticed ebay live popping up through the world cup and your stuff has appeared there's a there's a question at the end of this about what a media outlet is now but let's just well you know whether we want to get there how far but i talk me about the distribution of the stuff so we have our own sites and our own distribution channels we also work with say fanatics who are the official on on site seller of the world cup we're not in the official world cup shop unfortunately we couldn't actually strike I could deal with the e-commerce people of the World Cup, but that's all right.

16:48We sell to partners and licensees and other associated people with the World Cup. So being a partner doesn't get you in the shop.

16:57Dan Jamieson:You've got to do another deal to get in the official shop once you've done the official partnership. Yep. It was too expensive for them. And their negotiation was that we should go and negotiate better with our footballers because they wanted to take so much of the margin okay just take me through that a bit so they've the the shop pushed back yeah they want to buy a wholesale rate and then times it by four to put on their site because they're the world cup shop and we're like that's not how any other shop works could you just buy it at a reasonable price and then sell it at a reasonable price and then we'll all have a nice time and they didn't want to buy any and what so everything was taken off their shop it's extraordinary given you're an official you've paid through the front door it's not like you're trying to sort of do it in a in a way that isn't official you've you've you've done all the things that you're supposed to do so they've said right okay you're you're you should have i'm trying to get what they're saying trying to say they're saying that you should have got a better deal from so dude bellingham because we're using him as an example and therefore they would have been able to make more money by their four times markup yeah okay interesting but ultimately if you type it into the internet we've got 16 years of history of selling fifa world cup merchandise so they come to our site so i know we tried so you can then take the official world cup merch and take it to wherever you want to take it to you there's no restrictions on where you can put fifa merchandise we only really want to sell it in high-end areas and also again people i mean it is expensive so there aren't too many places that really want to really want to buy i mean like we've done a collaboration with classic football shirts who have opened operations over here so we work with them it's in their stores you can pop in and have a look at a messy on the wall and buy some shirts so great partners who understand what we're doing are really helpful so i interrupted you so you've got the sort of distribution bit i'm interested in the live thing because i think when i look at something like ebay let's take ebay as an example so ebay have been popping up around the world cup they're not an official partner i don't think or are they no and they're sort of looking at so through their eyes i'm thinking tiktok shop i imagine is a pain in their backside and facebook live and all these things that that that world which i don't know much about take me into that in terms of how powerful the live broad car that's a retail meets media sort of space yeah someone called it retail attainment it's sort of kind of telling us i'm gonna steal that yeah there you go trying to turn the the sort of excitement of auctioning and purchasing into a kind of live event.

19:55eBay are doing a summer of soccer, and we've been working with them because, I mean, we work with eBay anyway, to basically get famous footballers to come to a live studio, be interviewed for an hour, and by talent we've secured. And during that time, they sign things. And we also tend to create a sort of world 11 of the greatest players, which come from Icons Inventure. and then they're auctioned off during the show. And yeah, it's been a great collaboration. We've done stuff with the Americans, the UK, Australia, Germany. So in all their different markets, we try and find and help with stars and appropriate product and people tune in and live and bid on things.

20:39Dan Jamieson:How big a deal is it for you guys at the moment? I mean, again, there's a question about, there's a sort of, it's an America, it's an American World Cup. And one of the threads that's running through all the conversation is how much of an outlier is this or is this just now the new business as usual the way in which a world cup look what it looks like in america is that going to be the template for you know further down the road when we go to morocco and portugal and spain in four years time blah blah blah so just but how significant is that like i mean it's a nice story and a comms sort of thing but from your business perspective how significant is it at the moment and are you expecting that to grow that live retail bit i'll try and pluck some numbers from my head so it's about 10 of what we're doing for the world cup so it's fantastic experiment with a real great partner with three months to go we didn't know anything about it so they're basically like can you turn your staff into online talent can you build a studio can you get a stars can you work out how to do it can you produce a show and we're like yeah we're entrepreneurs we can we can do that so now we have a show we have a studio built as well in our operation center so we're we're going live ourselves every three days as well in the background as well as getting talent in into the u in us so this is like a sort of qvc type thing you've got people's sort of what is it like a podcast but you're selling stuff at the same time yeah for the old school old school british for the modern age there you go but i okay so then if i look at something like the rest is football okay so let's take that just go to the other end of the spectrum and say right okay big ticket podcasters netflix show running through the thing now do they do any of this do they do any retail could they should they do you think that's where it's going to go i don't think so i think they made enough money from netflix themselves and also netflix are very what's the word?

22:41Control, as you know. So what is interesting is that it's around the corner from where we're living and broadcasting. So we sent our team along with a Leo Messi shirt and they hung around in reception, talked to the security guards, butted them up, got it delivered up to Gary with a handwritten note saying we thought you'd like this. And then they came back two hours later and were invited up and watched a football game with all the gang. And then their first question was, I don't suppose you've got any Jude Bellingham.

23:11Dan Jamieson:Ah. So three days later, we deliver a Jude Beckham, Jude Bellingham. There you go. That's a slip of the tongue. And after England win, the opening of the show is zoomed in on our frame as they zoom backwards to Gary and Mika Richards and Joe Cole doing the Bellingham stance. So it all works. It all comes together. Perfect. If that was, what's your hunch in terms of that? you can see the question being Netflix will be alive to this there'll be you know it's because it feels like an obvious revenue stream and for ages we've said this is where fanatics will go you know because they you need a lot of money but you also need rights and you need brought you know there's a broadcast element to it but there's also the obvious place of okay there's just another revenue stream here that you could then bundle in what would be a traditional relationship and you're right that you know rest is football has made a lot of money from netflix and they're not bothered but someone might look at this and say yeah do you know what we're missing a trick here well i did what's your sense because you're right as again you're right in the middle of this well there's there's two equal strands that are coming in at the same time so again i'm in new york and on thursday fanatics are doing fanatics live in the center of new york so that is imagine sports personality of the year, but live over four days with every legend you've ever heard of.

24:36Dan Jamieson:That sounds awful, by the way, but yes, go on. I wouldn't go to that. I'd close the curtains if that was in the back garden. So it's basically, I think when Fanatics do a deal with someone or tops the trading card people, they basically say, and you have to come to our Fanatics live in New York. So I'll be going along and having a look around, see how the big boys do it. But yeah, I mean, it's LeBron James meets Tom Brady, meets the New York Knicks, meets Wembe Amo, it's everybody. So that's interesting. And then secondly, our eBay Live yesterday was with Christine Lilly, who is the most, until Leo overtook her, she was the most appearances in any World Cup.

25:14She was at five for the US women's team. She won twice. Anyway, the point was we're talking about the Women's World Cup in Brazil next year, which again, icons have the rights to because we're FIFA partners. and she says, what are you doing for that? We're discussing it. And she says, oh, yeah, of course it's being broadcast on Netflix. And I'm like, oh, I really didn't know that. That's interesting. So they're moving from – they're experimenting with Rest is Football, but they're diving into live rights.

25:42Dan Jamieson:Yeah, yeah. You should listen to the Bundle, our media podcast. Ah. Yeah, yeah. We talk about this at the time. And it's – so, okay, you've got the media bit and then – okay, So I'm just from your perspective, from the brand perspective, I never quite know where so icons plays with you mentioned fanatics, whether they are sort of friend or frenemy or whatever, because I'm trying to work out what fanatics is at this point is, again, is a sort of exam question or what it wants to be. But just talk to me about that. So they are a platform for you. They're just another place for you to sell icons sort of material.

26:22Yeah, I mean, they're the biggest in the States, so that helps. So there are three arms to Fanatics, but the two that we are interested in are Topps, the trading card company, and Fanatics, the e-commerce bunch. So we've been working with the e-commerce team in the memorabilia department for 15 years. In fact, we work with the guys who are now the memorabilia people before they were bought by Fanatics in the first place. So we've known them a long time. They're great guys, and we work closely with them. they will buy into our signing. They want a wide range. They want the authentication that we bring.

27:00And that's a really good connection. We also work with Tops, whereby we sign players all the time. So we're always traveling around the world. And sometimes it's more efficient for us to do a top signing for them. So we know how to do all the legal paperwork and the authenticity and the signing of stickers and cards. So we basically work with Tops and Panini as a subcontractor to deliver famous signed footballers so we're kind of in the trading card world we don't produce trading cards ourselves but we work with them so tops is fifa deal which again is one i wanted to

27:35Dan Jamieson:ask you about because i can't quite get my head around it in terms of what it is because it was and as you can imagine someone of my age and you know background on british panini has as a romantic you know i'm temperamentally a fan of panini although i haven't bought one of their products for 40 years which probably doesn't help them so talk to me about that because that felt like that deal was a big thing at the time but try to work out what it was and when it starts and what's in it and i was thought thinking of you guys and whether or not it impacted on you i couldn't work quite work out i'll have to tread lightly let's say it was a surprise yeah i'm not entirely sure how you give a license that's five years away so it starts at the saudi no starts at the saudi world cup yeah so once the next one is over wow in portugal and all that lot then it then the rights will revert well we'll move to fanatics so tops is part of fanatics yeah and so So they have got the deal from 20...

28:4531. Yeah. So it's announced as a big deal. They're taking over 2031. I'd be interested to know what the pitch process was. Okay.

28:54Dan Jamieson:So that's just about money. Is it? It's just a massive check has been written, presumably. Are we talking about FIFA? No. I'd assume so. And trying to second guess what Fanatics are in 2031 or what Topps is in 2031 is a sort of a bit of a mugs game presumably but they're just future-proofing trying to sort of stay in the tent or build out from the wherever they are in this tent analogy i think that i think they're trying to build a multi-story car park of tents and they're friends with they're friends with infantino now because they've done their on on-site rights they are i don't know the biggest so that i think they want to own all the goodies in the sweet shop so fanatics live in new york is a sort of is it like a comic-con type play exactly it's like a comic-con sport okay so that's the ambition that you can sort of see them rolling that out is that the first time they've done something like that or do they do that all the time i think this might be year three actually i'm not sure it's the first one i've been to and i you could see them in london couldn't you you could see them taking over the o2 and doing razzmatazz down there so they're very good at razzmatazz yeah yeah that's an american so they're all about buying ip that fits under that banner presumably so they they would be you mentioned beckham earlier you've got famous faces famous people but also teams and yeah they tend to do let's say league rights and then buy the superstars individually as contracted it's i mean it's it's what you do if you had all the money so you have the NFL they are the official partner of the NFL for all its merch and then they will have Brady on a specific contract but that contract will be as well as turn up at events and endorses and sign trading cards they'll also be do PR for us and go on this tv show and come to a white party in the Hamptons yeah which I haven't been invited to yet yeah nor me no I mean it'd have to be a t-shirt party for us.

31:04Dan Jamieson:I have been to a white party. They're a weird thing. Not a big white party, but someone invited me to a white party. But yeah, that's a completely different story. It wasn't as much fun as I thought it was going to be. Okay, back to Drew Bellingham then, the thread of this. Oh yeah, go on. Post-World Cup. Yep. You say you've got UEFA Champions League rights and you've done the deal with Real Madrid. how is this going to pan out and given as you say this just enormous world cup that he's had he's come out as this sort of global entity how do you see it panning out what's going to happen you you know in terms of have you you then run that into champions league yeah i mean one of the interesting conversations about two months ago i had in new york was meeting meeting relevant who are the american arm who now sell champions league rights and we're in negotiations for renewing our license for another six years and everyone seems happy at the moment i'm gonna push it through but we were saying look do they have also as a company the rights to promote la liga in north america okay yeah we're saying we're gonna get to bellingham we hope and fingers crossed is that the sort of thing you'd be interested in and they're like oh my god that's the absolute bomb for us because he's super popular speaks english works with our sponsors works with La Liga it's it's sort of like the I don't know Jordan meets what's the name Witos meets the Bulls meets yeah middle America it's it's the kind of perfect combo so there's interest in him everywhere now and it's only going to get bigger yeah I was talking to someone else last night actually saying so you've you've sort of you've done Leo Messi for 20 years and how do you get out of just being Leo Messi and I was like well we've just signed Jude and they're like oh my god that's amazing then i remembered actually we had diego maradona before we had that's not a bad midfield you've assessed so as talent spotting and continuity we've we've done quite well how many jude bellingham how many sort of bets do you have to make to get you bellingham was it just a one off one hit wonder or do you have to then spread a load of bets and say right okay we're going to have the french guy the spanish guy we're going to have there's a there's a sort of jude bellingham in every market and we're going to have to cover our bases talk me about the sort of risk reward thing we try to have so in any world cup there's probably eight contenders and then you've probably got a long tail of people who you just quite kind of like so as it happens we do jude for england leo for argentina exclusively we've signed with laminya mal so we have spain stuff and we partner with panini on mbappe so our current sort of marketing is like we've got the four biggest for the four biggest teams and the fact that it's the top four in the FIFA rankings and the the seeds as well it's kind of all ended up being for us the right people in the right place but at the same time we did a deal with five minutes to go before the end of the season for Anton Semenya so we did him we signed him in the very chaotic Ghana hotel in Wales before a friendly and he was brilliant then Semenyo could easily be the smiling face of the Premier League for the next five years.

34:19I think the way he plays with a smile on his face, explosive, goal scoring, I think you've always got to look for the next guy. So I was recommending people watch Garner and Semenyo to see a kind of a superstar you might not have heard of, but he's brilliant.

34:35Dan Jamieson:Talk a bit about the business model from your point of view. So the outlays on the contracts and the exclusivity and all of that, then you've got but you've got to buy shirts boots and balls i think we think we're the biggest purchaser of shirts in the world because we have to we have to buy thousands of them so we're always always around the back of the bike sheds trying to get stuff out the back of cfs so you've got the you've got all of this material and then you're sort of taking it to mark where is the where is the demand for it because again so this is someone won't shock you but i've got very limited knowledge so baseball cards i could i sort of get it in the states there's that whole culture that i'm aware of i've never been a part of but i know that it's big and and thriving shirts is interesting i see them sort of you know and i i i'm not a buyer myself but i can sort of see i might get to that at some point but where are the markets there's sort of geographical question but also some of the prices on the thing are really punchy and i think okay is there a is this a sort of 80 20 thing where you've got like a is it like a load of whales in the marketplace and they're trading them as assets and financial assets and they're trying to they're seeing this as an asset class that they can then sort of move around is that what's happening here because i'm trying to get to the the energy in the market on the demand side that's a very good question trading cards is more what you've described where it's a tradable commodity they've created a free-flowing frictionless market where you can just trade backers and forwards and up and down and yes it's baseball cards but now it's football cards and every other i know pokemon cards and so on and it's it's very american-centric but imagine how much japan is getting excited by atani and pokemon and all the other things so it's very international our stuff is not tradable really you can buy it and you can sell it to your mate down the street but it's not designed to be tradable and then secondly i never describe it as an investment some people do i describe it as you are a fan you love this guy or this woman put it on your wall and enjoy it that's that's what we're selling we're selling a fixed thing now trying to turn what we do into a tradable commodity is something we're thinking about but it's we're not there yet we're not doing it but i think people buy it because they love the star there is a future where that star is so famous that you could trade it for more but again it tends to be on secondary markets and there tends to be no referee so i'm not super trustworthy of how all those things get sold and moved around and your whole business is about the authenticity you know the video of jude bellingham signing my shirt i know it you know something happened at that end which means he did actually come into contact with it and the risk is that i don't care about that i guess is one of the questions in terms of okay well i've just got a shirt that's got bellingham on it i know it's real but does it matter fundamentally that it's real or not that's that's central to your brand isn't it that that has to be the value exchange yeah i mean our everything we do is about authenticity authenticity is everything for our company now if you don't quite care about authenticity there are a lot of places you can go that will serve serve that urge and it'll be a hell of a lot cheaper so it's it's sort of it is a wild west and we try to rise above it we just try to triple down on our authenticity get the best brands get the best players but there is a world of slop out there that i try to avoid yeah what did the nft moment do to the to the sector because again that felt like a time where you can imagine you know four years i don't know when it would have been four years ago where people came on the podcast and said right okay and we had people say right we're gonna do this it's gonna be an nft you're gonna have authentic sort of relationships with it and it's a digital asset and you sort of got there intellectually but didn't really quite feel it and and the rest of it and i'm not saying it's gone away completely but what do you what what happened in your marketplace because that might because there was a lot of money flying around on that bet that that was where it was going to go i mean i stood on the sidelines and watched because instinctively i'm a kind of real world tangible product person so i'm like i love what we do and you can point at it and touch it it's is it fungible or non-fungible you can you can you can move it around i kicked it around with someone who knew what they were talking about and tried to see how our stuff might work so for instance we have when we signed with diego maradona he signed our stuff while smoking a massive cigar and listening to reggaeton and having a fun time and he and he burned a cigar hole in the shirt so we were like oh he's ruined one that's really annoying we put it away in a cup it's like and i was talking to someone about nfts and he's like right imagine that was a like an art display and it's because it's a one of one we've got the video of diego smoking his big cheroot or whatever it was and we're his official partner so you can have a frame which was diego's one of one and then it could be owned on the blockchain and you could own a physical physical and a digital representation of the two things and you could have a screen at the bottom that says this was bought by richard and it was it's blocked here and then you could trade that physically and non-physically and i was like okay there's something there but i still have to have the original thing or else it doesn't mean anything yeah yeah it was like a sort of there there was the the thing itself wasn't it in terms of the the digital asset question and whether or not you know there was a market or people believed it but then there was also the financial bubble that surrounded it in terms of you know we'll take icons and make it an nft thing and then it that just by being in that marketplace blew the the valuation of companies up not talking about icons specifically but just in the market that we're seeing it in ai now aren't we about the relationship between the thing itself and also the financialization of it and i quite often think of you guys when that question came up because i thought oh blimey then you must be having conversations at that point it was i mean not to a tangible level because i think the people who were developing it were obsessed by the digital nature of it they were digital natives and that's what they wanted to do i think nobody had particularly thought about the combination of digital and physical which would have interested me but we know we never had any kind of i don't know no one came with a big check i wonder if it will come back yeah i don't think it's going of what i mean the sort of the blockchain as a as a thing as an idea certainly hasn't got away and i don't think you know but the the noise around it the financial noise around it has drifted away but there's still a sort of an argument i think like all new things it goes through iterations and people find like what didn't work last time okay we need to twist it and move it and then try again i think there's a germ of a good idea in it but i owning digital things is less exciting i mean sort of for example football clubs have digital signature rights from their players and it was somebody came along and offered leo loads of money and he did digital signatures for a while and they asked us whether we had a problem with it and i was like i hate that stuff it's just rubbish so we don't need to be involved and they you can add two pounds to the quality of a of a merchandising cup by having a digital signature but it doesn't mean anything to me okay let's just finish off by what a world cup win or what it does to so messy last time around what happened to messy shirts both in terms of scale numbers of people wanting them but also the value of them obviously there's a bellingham question but that this would have come and gone by the time this comes out.

42:57Dan Jamieson:But just give me a sense of what happens after the final. I've only really got the Leo experience. Actually, no, we had Ika Casillas in 2010, and we sold out. But that was smaller numbers. Leo went through the roof. We took three years' worth of revenue in three days. It was astonishing. But the critical thing was it was all pre-orders because we didn't have any shirts left. so what we had was a contract that said Leo will sign X and signings in the future so we had to put a pre-order up and then the critical thing was that Adidas didn't have any shirts Argentina shirts in the world there were no shirts so you had to basically wait pacify lots of customers who had spent their money and wait for Adidas to remanufacture the shirt so eventually they remanufactured the shirt six months later it takes that long to get them done and we buy loads and then we we have a sort of rolling thing with leo where he he clears up our pre-orders and it worked it worked brilliantly well so we were very if i bought a messy shirt at the final i wouldn't get it till christmas you wouldn't get it till well summer let's say so people were very patient but we had to do lots of comms to keep them happy and gave them extras and work with them and so on But we had to explain there are literally no shirts and Leo's quite busy.

44:24So we'll put the two things together on our contractual rotor coming up.