UP564 Other People's Money: Andrea Radrizzani and Alistair Brownlee OBE

0:00Andrea Radrizzani:The hope and the wish of the fans is always there to live again in the back of the days.

0:04Alistair Brownlee OBE:Beat Man United, I think, is there? Yes, exactly. Hello, it's Richard Gillis here. Welcome to Unofficial Partner. This is an episode of Other People's Money, where we talk about sports finance. And we recorded it at Sports Pro Investment Summit last week in London. And so we took the opportunity of having a conversation with two very different but very interesting people. Andrea Radritzani, media entrepreneur and former Leeds United owner. And Alistair Brownlee, OBE, double Olympic triathlon champion turned investor. Alistair is a Leeds fan. Didn't know that. That came up. We talk about ownership of football clubs.

0:44Alistair Brownlee OBE:We talk about mass participation and the economics of things like high rocks and the ecosystem argument in investment. Athletes, what they bring to the cap table, which is one of my favourite terms. And Brownlee's path from athlete to investor. and we talk about Live Golf and the lessons of Live Golf. So there's a lot there. I just want to give some details and biography of our two guests. Andrea was born in Roe near Milan in 1974. He's an Italian businessman who built his fortune in sports media before moving into club ownership. He began his career in sports media in 1999 with digital content distributor Media Partners, brought in by Marco Bogarelli.

1:23Alistair Brownlee OBE:His breakthrough was co-founding the sports media rights agency MP and Silver with Ricardo Silver which became one of the world's most influential sports media rights companies managing global broadcasting rights across football, Formula One and the Olympics. After selling that business to a Chinese consortium he then set up his own investment vehicle Acer Ventures in 2015 and the same year founded Eleven Sports, a multi-territory streaming broadcaster which was later acquired by DAZN in 2023 in exchange for an equity stake and he sits on DAZN's board. His most public chapter, of course, was his ownership of Leeds United.

2:03Alistair Brownlee OBE:He purchased a 50 % stake in 2017 before taking full ownership from previous owner Massimo Cellino that May. The appointment of Marcelo Bielsa proved a masterstroke as Leeds won promotion back to the Premier League for the first time in 16 years. And Radar Zani also bought back Elland Road Stadium, which had been in private hands since 2004. His standing with fans began to sour when Bielsa was sacked in February 2022. After relegation in 2023, he sold his majority stake to 49ers Enterprises at a valuation of roughly£170 million. So about four times what he paid for it. He talked about that on stage at SportsPro and we reference it in the conversation.

2:49Alistair Brownlee OBE:Alistair Brownlee OBE was born in Dewsbury West Yorkshire in 1988 and educated at Bradford Grammar School and Leeds Beckett University where he studied for an MSc in finance. He's a double Olympic triathlon champion and the only athlete to defend an Olympic triathlon gold making him the most successful triathlete in Olympic history. His first gold was in the men's triathlon at London 2012 with younger brother Johnny claiming bronze before retaining the title in Rio. four years later. He is the only male triathlete to have completed a Grand Slam of Olympic World and Continental Championships. After Rio, he moved up to longer distances to Ironman in 2019, and he retired with a third place finish at the T100 Grand Final in Dubai, announcing his retirement in November 2024 at 36.

3:42Alistair Brownlee OBE:Off the course, he and Johnny founded the Brownlee Foundation in 2014 which has seen more than 66 ,000 youngsters take part in events as of March 2025 so I'm sure that number's higher now. He was appointed to the IOC Athletes Commission in 2022 and since retiring has moved into charitable governance and entrepreneurial activity including the investment work via Brownlee Racing and equity stakes in sports and health businesses. He was awarded the MBE in 2013 and the OBE in 2025 in the King's Birthday Honours for services to triathlon and to charity. It's a really interesting conversation, very varied and I really enjoyed it.

4:22Alistair Brownlee OBE:So we thank them both for their time and to SportsPro. The team there were very kind letting us in and allowing us to take advantage of the gathering of people that they got together. It's a very good event i recommend it but just talk to the top of them you're both hugely experienced media professionals so i'm not worried but just avoid getting angry banging on tables it buggers up sean's sort of just don't make me angry yeah i'll try not to you know i don't think i will i've got he can't help him he does all the time he loves it there's nothing here i was sitting in the audience when you were both on stage at SportsPro Investment Summit and there was a few things that I just wanted to sort of catch up on.

5:09Alistair Brownlee OBE:First of all, hello, Alistair Brownlee, OBE. Hello. Hello. And Andrea Razziani.

5:16Andrea Radrizzani:Radazziani. Hello. How are you? How do I say it? Difficult for you. Radazziani. Radazziani. Difficult for me. I apologise. Radazziani. My boy. Call me a rat like a United United fans.

5:31Andrea Radrizzani:That's me by the way, I don't, I'm a Leeds United fan, not the next bit. Did you own purpose to take me one?

5:39Alistair Brownlee OBE:No, not at all, it's a happy coincidence. I thought you were really interesting on the fans would rather go down with Bielsa.

5:47Andrea Radrizzani:Yeah, I mean, possibly many of them, yes, and I didn't realise that. I thought I was doing the best of the club and I still believe it was the best of the club because it was the only way to stay up. But it's incredible the love of the fans for this man, which obviously represented a lot in the success of Leeds coming back in the Premier League. But I could never imagine he even preferred him than staying in the Premier League, which was as soft as we had for 17 years. So maybe it's easy to say when this didn't happen. So I don't know if the realities like that.

6:27Alistair Brownlee OBE:No, you want to stay up at all costs. It's easy. I mean, I'm just old enough to remember, you know, the good old days of the early 2000s and then the difficult period after that. So, yeah, I think it's all about staying up. What was the price of the good old days that he's talking about?

6:48Andrea Radrizzani:The price in terms of...

6:50Alistair Brownlee OBE:What were the implications of the good old days?

6:52Andrea Radrizzani:The good old days, I think it's the strength and the weakness of Leeds United, because the expectation is very high. And the change, I mean, everything has changed, the time has changed, and to be competitive, Leeds United was one of the top clubs in Europe and in the football world, so it was the sixth biggest club with£90 million revenue in 2004, reaching the semi-final of Champions League. So to go back at that level, it's a lot of investment in money. Now you see you need to invest billions and it's another world. Everything has changed. It's about finance. And so unfortunately, when you are leads, the expectation stays at that time.

7:40Alistair Brownlee OBE:So Champions League semi-final, that was the expectation?

7:43Andrea Radrizzani:Oh, but they opened the wish of the fans. It's always there to live again in the back of the days.

7:49Alistair Brownlee OBE:Beat Man United I think I don't know if that's every fan I think the main thing about Leeds United is maybe probably every person from a place, I've been from Leeds my whole life so it says this but it's so connected with the city and the communities it's a big northern city with one football club in it it's quite a sporty city and quite a lot of cultural identity and it's just so tied into it. So I think there are many different fans who want many different things, but everyone just wants a kind of successful football team.

8:28Andrea Radrizzani:Yeah, it's true and I mean I don't want to remark as well we have done this, but I think the evidence is that the club got engaged with the city, with the community as a first step in my journey in 2018 when we started our project. We reconnect completely and we gave immediately an identity to the club that was inclusive to the city. We activated so many social initiatives since then. And also, at the end, also on the pitch, we had to bring back a culture and exciting football to dominate the game. And that's why we picked a coach like Marcelo Biesa. and then I think it's all together. At the end, probably the fans love when they can feel proud of the club and particularly in Leeds United.

9:17Andrea Radrizzani:And this probably is something that can rebalance the fact that we don't win a game like 30 years ago or 20 years ago, but they need to be proud of the club and the players representing the club.

9:29Alistair Brownlee OBE:Just before we move on, I wasn't going to talk about Leeds actually, but this is good that we're here. What's the school playground like, Ben? Because you've got one big team in in the city is it all Leeds or are there breakups yeah I think all Leeds yeah I actually went to school in Bradford and even Bradford City were relatively successful at the time so maybe it was a bit different but yeah I think it's dominated by Leeds and there's obviously quite a lot of other sport in Leeds the rugby league and the cricket but yeah football is all about Leeds United yeah yeah and just before we move on you said Leeds were the 6th most We're both Spurs fans.

10:09Alistair Brownlee OBE:We thought Spurs were the sixth most. We cling to this, Andrea. We're a Super League team for a weekend. We're taking our dream away. Let's talk about money. And this is a series that we do called Other People's Money. And it's about sports investment. Let's talk about teams for a minute. Because we've got traditional football teams, Leeds United, Premier League football teams. Then you've got a new generation of sports of which Super Tri-I put into that category. and we and sale gp gets a lot of mentions you know they've just been on the podcast talking about selling out their franchises when you andrea look at the idea of investing into the team as asset or franchise as asset quite often on stage people were talking about risk volatility all of those things just take me inside your lens onto that because you've lived through that ownership of team what does it mean and what are the sort of grades of risk yeah I see I'm approached

11:13Andrea Radrizzani:weakly by investor and or people that wants to buy a football club or I would like I participate in the in the project but often I see people that don't really understand exactly the reason why. I mean it's very sexy to own a football club but actually it's not always clear the objective and the objective should be the main important thing at the end. In terms of business you can have a turnaround project like Leeds United that obviously was 17 years forgotten club and came back to the map of the world of football and this has obviously an appreciation in terms of value but also a big risk because just one relegation can make it turn down in terms of value.

11:59Andrea Radrizzani:Or you have invested in a big club where, to be honest, at the moment the big clubs are only bought by sovereign funds or private equities. So it's a different world. There is no single individual owner owning a top club. So it's a game of billionaires and for finance or asset trophy for government funds. And that's difficult to compete in that level. and it's actually the the ratio there is also a medium long-term investment with the appreciation of the assets like if you buy them by state building normally over the time you would appreciate so it's similar logic if you look at paris saint germain everybody thought wow such a big investment one billion okay yes they invest one billion probably even more but the club now worth around 4.5, 5 billion value.

12:48Andrea Radrizzani:So over the time, sports is paying back in top premium brands. It's a luxury brands paying back for sure. But you need a lot of capital and with the capital you can make mistakes. When you do on the other side, turn around project, the level of mistaken and the level of capital is lower and the margin to make mistakes is much, much lower. So you can't make mistakes because if you go down again, it's a disaster. So a leg issue is actually a real problem financially for an investment point of view.

13:21Alistair Brownlee OBE:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you get a, so let's throw that into, so something like Brownlee Racing, which again, you put into that sort of scenario. Just talk to us about that, just to get us into that world, because I think I understand it, but I don't know anything about triathlon other than I've interviewed Johnny, your brother before, and I had to do a load of revision for that and i've done a load for this talk to me about yeah so i think in terms of triathlon it's clearly a very different sport it's a niche sport but um there has been an interest in external capital coming in in the last five to ten years go back 10 years i mean really the competition was international federation events that had actually been run by a third party lagadera at the top level for a long time to try and sell the rights for it kind of unsuccessfully so really hard to drive revenue the model is i mean for triathlon events one tv rights media rights to sponsorship and three mass participation and local host city fees is a kind of extra on top of that the change we've seen whether we were talking about super try there the two kind of big players that have come in i guess with external capital to try and make a commercial success of as SuperTri and PTO and their T100 brand, both using lots of external capital to do it.

14:45Alistair Brownlee OBE:Both started off with the model of effectively their revenue model being media rights to drive it. Both have effectively found to oversimplify it that media rights aren't going to be a big enough revenue stream to make it commercially successful. And so both have turned more to mass participation at that where i think mass participation is probably different in triathlon than it is football i mean i know football you get really super engaged fans but in these mass participation sports you get a really valuable consumer because they're you know paying quite a lot of money to enter the event and therefore brands pay so the sponsorship there just become quite valuable but in these niche sports maybe with the exception of SailGP none of them are finding you know managing to raise significant revenue from media rights is my understanding.

15:39Andrea Radrizzani:Only premium rights are growing the rest is flat or even decreasing and the model has to be changed much more free viewing in this sense I think one example is Irox. Irox is growing massively in terms of mass participation so I think every sport needs to find his identity and his way to monetize.

16:00Alistair Brownlee OBE:What does that mean then? Just pause that for a minute. You've got the pyramid of athletes in triathlon, in high rocks, and they are affluent and they are incredibly avid fans of the sport and obsessive to a degree it's like the cycling argument how does that change it as an investment property in terms of what what has to happen for that pyramid to be unlocked in terms

16:28Andrea Radrizzani:of the value i mean there are rumors in this period about ios to be sold from banda to a big private equity i think in that sense you buy a community that is a hardcore fans that practice the sport. So it's high-consuming, high-spending community. And probably I think in every sport, the new model should be defining who are the hardcore fans and how much they are willing to increase their output. Because even in football, it's mainstream, but I will see with the zone, there is a niche of people that is on top of the chain that would be willing to pay much more to have services that give their experience better also on TV.

17:12Andrea Radrizzani:And the same I think is even more actually in sports where people practice and they live the experience like Iox or the Tartum. More to you but I think the opportunities in that kind of niche that would pay even more and to be active and to be relevant in their own sports.

17:29Alistair Brownlee OBE:Yeah, so the business review put case is you know like every other business you have to pay so much to acquire a consumer and then how much can you extract out of that consumer over a period of time and that i think that is why these communities are so valuable because they are not only going to turn up at multiple events which high rock seem to have nailed you know people don't just want to do one necessarily they even though it's the same event all over the world they do it in a sports hall in stockholm and then a sports hall in uh so it was really interesting that but it it's happening so you know as long as you can acquire your consumer for a lot less than the revenue you extract in terms of participation fees and then ultimately what what else you can sell to them which is the boom that what we're seeing in high rocks at the moment are those adjacent businesses clothing nutrition training all those things the one caveat i don't think we know how this is playing out yet in the kind of let's call them in the mass participation endurance health sports and at high rocks is that um iron man is one of those cycling the big cycling rights holders are another one um i think five years ago you'd see someone do triathlon or cycling and they were kind of a cyclist or a triathlete you know the business model was a bit easier if you're iron man you acquire a consumer and you probably know that average consumer is going to do i don't know the stat but they're going to do five events or eight events or something i don't think we're seeing that so much anymore i think the the consumer wants to do more sport and wants to be more healthy so we have more consumers but they jump between they do high rocks this year and then an ironman next year and then a marathon the year after and then so that provides an interesting case and i i mean clearly that's what ironman have done well in that they've bought all these different assets to move the consumer within their own ecosystem but it'll be interesting to see how that plays out and it's quite fashion-led is it I mean I remember having this conversation about CrossFit it's interesting the guy on the panel earlier was talking about the X Games which again took me back 20 years more than 20 years you know surfboard surfing was the was the big thing and skateboarding and it was going to be that was the route to Jen whatever it was at that point but it was it was millennials we used to moan about but the core I suppose the core of the people are still the same people yeah I don't know in those kind of events i i really i guess that's what you're always trying to look at as an investment is it is whatever the trend that you're investing in is it relatively transitory or you know does it have some longevity to it i don't know i get that's the power of football that you absolutely know that a community like leeds united fans is never going to be trying to you know you've always got that well yeah high rocks i think he's probably got a lot more legs than than whatever else X Games or what's been in the past but you never know.

20:21Andrea Radrizzani:Yeah, yeah. It's a different audience as well. X Games was created for a young audience. I think Iox and everything that is wellness now is becoming trendy and particularly we see a change of generation and particularly over 35. I would say they are really focused on their own fitness and also spending a lot of money in terms of their own performance. and I think that the opportunity commercial is all the upselling as we said before like tech devices, nutrition, sports tourism, everything that can help the participant to have a better experience or perform better would be appreciated and welcome.

21:00Alistair Brownlee OBE:So investment in terms of there's a sort of picks and shovels argument in terms of where you know selling shovels in a gold rush where there's the team, there's investing in the media product, but then there's all this other stuff that you listed off the categories of sponsorship that there are. And what do you see then? When you look at the pyramid, where's the value would be bringing all that together?

21:27Andrea Radrizzani:Yes, the value is in the ecosystem altogether, in the connection, in the link between the different points. Connecting the different points is the value. and to own the ecosystem. So to own the world of mass participation event or toward a particular vertical and create an ecosystem where all the dots connect together is the value. Okay, yeah.

21:52Alistair Brownlee OBE:So about athletes, what is the value of a famous face, a famous name like a brownie on a cap table at a company, do you think? what what is it that you bring and what what's the reality because I get loads of press releases from saying you know and there's lots of an athlete has signed up for this sports tech thing and I think okay that's interesting but I don't quite know what is going on do you get a discount because you're bringing your fame and your network and your expertise is that how it works just talk me through that a little bit yeah I think there's lots of ways of doing that if we're talking specifically about how an athlete can you know leverage their name image likeness experience for some kind of equity there's lots of methods of doing that that the kind of technicalities of it um i think it can and that's it's not always done well and i think it's in my experience it's not necessarily done well when it is as you said just a name on a cap table or a face i i think more and more i think that the consumer the public is getting more switched on of um actually is this a genuine relationship does does the person whether it's an athlete or whoever's involved influence a business person you know do they believe in the product is it something they've stood before you know um obvious examples of a celebrity this you know i don't know uh representing a drugs company for that just to pick something out i i think the consumer is more wise to that so there's also a promiscuity on the you know in terms of the number of deal i mean i don't trust i you know i wouldn't hand on heart say i would trust what neymar is selling me or i wouldn't say what ronaldo is saying because they're selling hundreds of things and that's a challenge you're exactly right there is a cynicism that's been i've been educated because cynical about the endorsement relationship i'm sure at some point in the past i would say he's doing it so i should by that yeah i'd say i think done well it can be really valuable but i i think to do it well you have to have the athlete person has to have probably a genuine history in whatever that topic is so you know there's some authenticity there i think they have to probably bring more than the image you know can they credibly bring expertise in that area can they whether is that designing a product or in the financial strategy or do they know the consumer but you know whatever that if they can incredibly bring that kind of expertise uh i think that's really important um and then i think they have to have a a understanding that it is about driving an roi you know it's not just because the traditional sponsorship model is right you know turn up um whatever the shoe brand or nutrition brand will pay me x to do this yeah um and it can't be that it has to be are you also on the cap table to drive it in a proper investment sense?

24:50Alistair Brownlee OBE:Can you drive ROI, which ultimately is revenue?

24:52Andrea Radrizzani:Yeah. What do you think about that question? I absolutely agree. I think the percentage of brands that endorse athletes or ex-athletes or legends is massive. I think probably we are not 100 % but very close. I think there are so many brands that use legends or current athletes to sell the products. And some are genuine association and an embracement from the athletes or legend in the product and some not, some less. So I think the user, not the consumer or fan is much more mature to understand and to feel it. And it depends also on the engagement on the social, how this is done in terms of content and experience, I think.