UP569 Rushman's Rules: Deals, Woke and the Lost World of Langan's

0:00Nigel Rushman:The accreditation business and the media management business made money. It didn't make huge money, but it made good money. The money for me came more out of the deals that PR and sport led me into. Sport is a fabulous opener. You'll very rarely find a politician who will say, I really don't like sport. because politicians sadly in this day and age want one thing, votes. They want to stay in power. They're more crazed by power than they are by money. For me, that led to opportunities. OK, strap yourselves in. That was Nigel Rushman. People listening will be familiar with that name as being synonymous with major event accreditation and media services over the years, but that's just a small bit of the story.

0:49He was strategic advisor on Qatar's successful bid to host the FIFA 2022 World Cup and has done significant business all around the world, including Cuba, where he sold the country's baseball rights for the first time. He now lives in Monaco and Dubai and runs Rushman's Decision Intelligence, an AI-assisted advisory platform, which he's pitching as faster, cheaper and sharper than the big management consultancies. This is a conversation that goes across his career and talks about a sort of vanished world, really, of Langan's Restaurant and deals and buccaneers. DEI, which you may be surprised to hear he's not in favour of, and the future of Clips betting and what he's building now.

1:34There's loads in there. I think you'll enjoy it. This episode of Unofficial Partner is sponsored by our friends at Leaders in Sport. There's a new home, a new setup and plenty more to get excited about at Leaders Week London 2026 coming up in October. The move brings the summit into central London with a new campus style experience designed to make it easier to move between the people you want to meet, the conversations you want to hear and the business you're there to do. There'll be all new agenda formats, three stages of insight, three stages of insight and more ways to connect throughout the day.

2:10When day one finishes, Leaders After Dark, which sounds a bit sinister now I've read it out, takes the networking into the evening across Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea Football Club. It's a proper evolution of Leaders Week and one we're looking forward to. We'll see you there in October. Visit leadersinsport.com stroke up for more information and use up15 for a whole 15 % off your Summit Pass. Here is Nigel Rushman.

2:44you've just come from lunch i had lunch with nick keller okay who did you have lunch with

2:48Nigel Rushman:andrew croker and simon bryden john gleesia blew us out what was the conversation around that table fifa yeah what's going to happen with fifa clips over mainstream content yeah who's going to make money who isn't going to make money yeah that's what we're talking about not mentioned history I was going to ask you about Live Golf because I was really interested in the people who weren't paid or haven't been paid at the end of it. And I was wondering. Poor business. Do you ever not get paid by events and things that fall over? Very rarely. Only when I break my rules. Very rarely. What are the Rushman rules?

3:27Nigel Rushman:The Rushman's rules are if they can't afford to pay me now, they can't afford to pay me afterwards. And they may not because there's no future value for them. so we've had pretty rigid rules on getting paid and to be honest we've had spectacular clients where other people have said oh they never pay and things people like the Qataris yeah Qataris have been wonderful for us they was paid on the nail they were superb so do you does that mean you don't take risks do you say right okay I need them to be paying up front I'll take a lot of risk on a deal on my terms not on a fee paying client that's a different catfish i'm not a bank so i will take a risk on a deal which is different to a fee paying client but i won't take a risk on a fee paying client no it's not my job that's a bank's job we'll come back to that it was interesting when you're talking about you know what gets talked about over lunch with those with those with those names and both of them have been on the podcast actually in various guys Andrew certainly has and Simon has as well let's go back because we know so Kevin is an old mate of both of ours Kevin Roberts and when I first met Kevin in sort of 99 2000 and then I was working at Sport Business he you you were a sort of figure around the place you were the bank weren't you or you were the you set the whole thing up didn't you well Sport Business I'll tell you a story there's a funny story about kevin when i first met kevin he was working on a free sheet newspaper down in folkestone in kent yeah and i was introduced to him by my accountant who was also in kent and i met kevin in a pub there's a shock there's a shock and they were sitting at the bar and i instantly warmed to him because he'd he'd had a couple of drinks but he was a lovely man and he was just he knew nothing about sport nothing he'd never worked in sport and i had my pr company and i cutting a long story short i recruited kevin to come work in our pr company and we had very varied clients not many in sport at that time kevin worked on them and then we the big thing for us that happened was the i think it was the 1992 america's cut and peter de savary and not working not getting too deep into this but peter became our biggest and first sporting client his challenge for america's cup in newport road island yeah and kevin joined the company all sorts there's so much that happened that i can't even begin to tell you but we ended up developing the sports side of the business with rugby ball cup and the european championships and things kevin came to work for us in mayfair he still lived in kent and then i met a bloke in a bar who published something called sport business his day his name is david passmore and he published two sheets of paper printed almost photocopied on yellow paper a bit like sport intern used to be and that was sport business and i met him in the bar at the top of uh please square can't remember what it was called but club and i met him and i did a deal with him to buy it from him and he he was four and sixpence and so i got this thing and thought what am i going to do so i went back to the office the next day and i made kevin the editor i said kevin you're now the editor of something called sports business and i'll tell you what we're going to do we're going to model it on pr week because we were a pr company yeah i said we're going to make it like pr week but we can't afford to do that so we'll have no color but we launch it and we develop it up my finance director commercial finance director was a bloke called crispin low yeah and crispin loved it he started getting involved with it i'd done a deal to sell rushman's and crispin had 10 shares in rushman's he wasn't straightforward in the way he was dealing with sport business so i said to him I'll swap your shares in Rushman's for sport business.

7:36Nigel Rushman:That was a big mistake for him. I made seven million quid and Crispin didn't make anything. And that was a big mistake for him, actually. But he went off with sport business. I kept a level of control of it for some time until it was of limited interest as a money-making opportunity, to be honest, sport business. Difficult to make. Unlike you guys, an unofficial partner, all making, you know, your gazillions. Hey, Dirt. But it's a beguiling name, sport business, because it draws people in. There's more than one now, of course. It was the first, and now it's a completely different marketplace, and it's much more competitive.

8:15Nigel Rushman:Not run by sports people. No. And there's a whole load. You get into podcasts, and you get into LinkedIn world, and Substack, and newsletters. and it's just, it's a completely different sort of environment. But I've got like a sort of very rose-tinted view probably of those in my time. I was only there for four years, but it was fantastic fun. It was a great, it was a great publication. Kevin was a great guy. What a Rolodex. Yeah, yeah. You know, and everyone liked Kevin. Yeah. For all his peccadillos and the fun and the stories we can all tell about Kevin, he was marvellous. And, you know, I could ring Kevin and say, Kevin, I want to talk to Seb Blatter.

8:58Yeah.

8:58Nigel Rushman:He'd say, well, Nigel, when would you like to speak to him? I mean, you know, he was such a nice man. Yeah, yeah. And I thought he was a huge friend. Honestly, Kevin had so many scrapes. Yeah. But he was a huge friend of mine. I'd have done anything for Kevin. Yeah, yeah. I know. Still a shock, actually. Huge shock. Sometimes I'm on the train and I think, oh, you know, you inadvertently, because I'd quite often be coming into town and you had like some time spare. You think, oh, I'll see what Kevin's up to. And you sort of reach for your phone. Do you know what I mean? And grief is weird, isn't it?

9:33Because it comes at you, side swipes you sometimes. Yeah. It's not a linear thing.

9:38Nigel Rushman:Yeah, it's sad. I miss Kevin. Yeah, I miss him. Often there's projects I'm doing. Shit, Kevin would be perfect for this. Yeah, yeah. Perfect. Yeah, yeah. I could sign him into this. He'd make a few, Bob. yeah and i'd just plug into him but sadly no more yeah yeah so what so people would know rushman's so rushman's as the sort of accreditation the security just talk me about that bit of it because all right so who was around this world to paint this picture of this world right so the the way that really kicked off was we were a pr company as i said we did the america's cup yeah and pizza savry ultimately became a 20 shareholder in our company yeah when we went through a machination of different names with different partners and then in 1991 the rugby world cup came along yeah and we got introduced to the tournament director of rugby world cup and they were looking for somebody to look after the media management which nobody knew what that meant yeah and the accreditation yeah or the media and the accreditation i don't think they'd called it media management at that time and the rugby world was cross because we weren't traditional rugby people we weren't known around things but you know we had a big management job to do it it's very complex it was in five nations England Scotland Ireland Wales and France and it was a big job to do and I think we did it very well and in those days this was pre-LinkedIn so it was a tough thing to do that business all changed because of LinkedIn because you had to have a network of people who could do it so you had to have a network of people who understood accreditation understood media management what it took to look after media at tournament and be able to deploy them somewhere in the world like cricket world cup in the Caribbean or something in the Middle East or wherever and for a good few years we were pretty much the only people who could do that yeah and then it sort of started catching up other people got into the accreditation market other people got and I I'd started to look elsewhere by then because certainly as soon as people had networks that could do as much as us I'm not a great one for competitive markets I you know I'd like to move on then you like a monopoly yeah I'd love a monopoly ideally but if you can't get a monopoly get at least an advantage yeah and so I've moved on by then and we were doing other things in sport and of course there was the the the big term that we were all known by was the fact that I merged with Alan Callen of CPMA.

12:09Yeah.

12:09Nigel Rushman:And we put the two businesses together. And, you know, we were talking at the dance today, actually, about who were the big wheeler dealers and the colourful characters of sport. And you've got the Patrick Nally's, Alan Callen's, Ciclatera, Ian Todd, and all of those guys, legends of the industry. And Alan was certainly one of them. He was ferociously smart and bright, very difficult to deal with it's very tricky character he and i would go head to head all the time merge the companies and then eventually we were working rugby world cup for a long time together cpma had the rights for rugby world cup in perpetuity which was a hell of a deal and then ultimately it all exploded all blew up we all went our own separate ways and we continued in sport and I've always been doing my deals on the side and the other part of the business which people have never recognised that was that we were doing our consultancy business with a lot of firms in the states Apple Pratt and Whitney all sorts of American firms are consulting business Matt sat alongside but it wasn't visible to the sports business of course where was the money where was the sort of engine of the thing look the accreditation business and the media management business made money it didn't make huge money but it made good money the money for me came more out of the deals that pr and sport led me into so i would always look for an opportunity so i could be perhaps in guyana working on a cricket world cup and spot an opportunity or inst vincent's tiny country you get introduced to the prime minister sit with the prime minister and then maybe there's an opportunity there sport is a fabulous opener you'll very rarely find a politician who will say i really don't like sport yeah because they politicians sadly in this day and age want one thing votes they want to stay in power they're more crazed by power than they are by money and for me that led to opportunities so i could always find an opportunity like i don't know whether they wanted to market their sugar or sell their sugar or there was something else going on or some other deal.

14:32Nigel Rushman:So that's where the real money came from. I made some good money out of Cuba. Cuba was very good to me. I was good to Cuba. As Miguel Diaz-Canal, the current Prime Minister of Cuba, or President of Cuba, would say, I'm the only person who's ever made Cuba any money in sport. What did you make do for Cuba? Baseball rights. I sold baseball rights for them and got very close to making them more money than you could imagine. But that got kiboshed by a New York lawyer who was worried about the sanctions. He's probably a smart guy. But, you know, those sort of deals would make good money. They still do.

15:09Nigel Rushman:I'm always looking for deals. But I'm always looking to develop the best value I can for a client, whatever it is, PR company or in our business now, which is helping them to deal with their challenges and opportunities. it's always about delivering value for the client because they'll always pay well for that if you can deliver them good value so they don't feel like they've had a bum deal afterwards there's a book in you by the way and i'm not offering to write it for you but when when you look at so patrick nally you mentioned michael payne's had a book out the last year i know michael david stubley all these are are sort of telling stories about that era they're lucky to have the time aren't they do you think it's been told in the way that you think it should be has that era and the previous era been uncovered in a way that you think is real and true i think they i haven't read patrick's book yet i've read michael's and not michael knows that I thought his first book was impenetrable yeah his second book I think is very good it's a good read and I think it's pretty true to life I think the problem with these guys and it's not their fault at all is totally devoid of the color and that's why I probably couldn't write a book because although I don't mind being sued but I think it needs the real color of what went on in the room yeah and who told who to do the other one yeah you know I'm trying to be polite because i'm on your podcast but i feel no but that's honestly you know the friction the tension the almost aggression at times when these deals were happening was much more exciting in the day you know langans used to be hq yeah langans you know was hq for all of us and you'd have the table you'd have ITV Sport you'd have Sky you'd have Rushman's IMG all those round tables as you walked into Langans and thereby hang all the tails yeah that was all the stuff of legend really and the you know the Ian Todds and the all the madness that went on but it was great because people you know the foundation of the Premier League and everything was all there the Trevor Easts these were big characters in their day and you know they were pirates and bandits yeah and everyone was up for a punch-up and you were out for a deal and it was fun and I was a an observer on the side being very gentle picking up deals where I could but staying out of the main fright because I wasn't in the tv rights business as Mike Murphy said at the time we're glad you're not Nigel he said that in joe berg do you think there's a it's been professionalized is what you're saying isn't it there's a sort of smoothing over of that that's life in general that's business in general as well as the sports industry yeah yeah i think it i think i hope it comes back a bit because there's a character and a an excitement that's left it and i think it's duller for it but there's probably a lot more money at risk personally for people so they're going to be a bit more cautious now you know if you've got if you've got a number of millions in play in that business in the old days you know personally at risk you'd probably lose a couple hundred grand and it might not be life-changing nowadays for some people i think it's life-changing and there's a different corporate environment now you know dare i mention the word woke you know but it's very different You know, in those days, your PAs used to come down to Langan's, sit on your knee, drink a glass of champagne, and everyone was very happy.

19:07Nigel Rushman:And we all had a lovely time and everyone did deals. And we'd swap deals between the tables and shout across the restaurant about who's doing what. And you know, Frank Warren would come in and it was, they were great times. I miss them, to be honest. Okay, let's just unpick that then. You mentioned woke. What does that mean for you? is it about dei where are you on that i'm nowhere on that absolutely nowhere i think it's meaningless i mean it's nonsense isn't it the best person for the job needs to do the job and i i think it's it's a massive retro retrograde step for the world to have dei because if you boil and i know people will pillory me for this but if you're thinking about business what is the purpose of business yes there's a social purpose to business as well but ultimately business doesn't survive unless it makes money if his purpose is to make money then you need the best person to do the job and it doesn't matter what the diversity equity and inclusion and all this stuff and trying to give people to let them play catch up please i mean i dealt with all that in south africa with the world cup in south africa having to employ quotas of people i don't think it did them any good it certainly didn't do us any good but i really would say it didn't do them any good to have 30 people who were there employed on our programs who did absolutely nothing meant they learned nothing they didn't progress anything why didn't they do anything they weren't there they were there because they were of a certain ethnic group and so we were told we had to take them on purpose no no purpose to that for them doesn't help them and i mean you know look i think it's been a massive retrograde step dei i think it's not helped i don't see unless someone can prove to me otherwise that it's helped anyone i think that what you have to do is you know it doesn't matter on the background or the ethnicity or anything or even the culture of anyone it's do they want to get on and do they want to progress not everyone wants to do deals not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur some people can be really good at their job just generally doing their job look after them that's fine good employers do that if you're smart you look after them it's much more expensive to keep re-employing people do you want to look after people who wants to go into the office in the morning and have a miserable crew everyone wants a happy crew but you don't need you don't need governments and people to legislate to tell you to do that do you think that how do you change then how does how does change happen if you change for what if you've got people who you think are talented but because they are outside of the group that is rewarded by society I don't believe that.

22:05Nigel Rushman:I don't believe that. If they're talented, cream will rise to the top. If they're talented, a good entrepreneur, a good businessman grabs them. It doesn't matter where they are in that spectrum. If they're a good person, you get them in and you get them working for you. But they don't get to the starting line without some sort of change happening structurally. Why do you say that? Well, how would it happen? How do people get recruited in sport? How does it happen? People constantly writing letters and letters and letters. And it's normally, but it's also normally networks of people who are from the same group.

22:43So again, you know, it's you then carry on rewarding, over-rewarding white men, presumably, is what we're saying. You say that in West Indian cricket, would you? No, of course not, because they're from West Indies, from the Caribbean.

23:01Nigel Rushman:beard right so English cricket is English white men you can't you know look the thing is it's a natural thing I mean you're really talking to the wrong man about this because I don't believe in it I think if someone really wants an opportunity they will go for it and it doesn't matter to me if he's a black guy from Tottenham if he keeps writing to me every other week eventually he's going to wear me down exactly the same way as some boy from Harrow is he's got much more chance for me than some boy from Harrow just the final question on it though is there a again this is where sport the argument in sport and in particular in the the sort of off the field is that people need to see it to be it they need to be able to say right okay there is a black guy who is running this thing there is a woman who is prospered in this environment and how do you get beyond that problem of okay well if that doesn't happen because it won't happen if people keep on rewarding the people that look like me how do you solve that because you've got these wells of talent and we won't disagree presumably that in populations of people who aren't white men there is a lot of unused talent going missing but we're not tapping into it this is beyond sport it's about started but i don't quite get how you get from that starting position to without saying okay i need to see someone succeed what you're talking about is the equality of opportunity yeah isn't it now if you were in africa and you looked at the african sports businesses which you won't have had many of those on your podcast no because you don't talk to them but i do and some of those guys out in africa who are invariably black running sports businesses in Africa, with the exception possibly of South Africa.

24:54Nigel Rushman:But if you went through Nigeria and Ghana and everywhere else, I've not met a white man running any of their sports marketing businesses. Now, if you're in England and you've got a population of this country which is 6 % what you would call, or other people would call, ethnic minorities, you're going to find a predominance of white guys. Okay. Let's get back to the career. FIFA. When I look, again, there's a sort of culture question here, but it's in a different guise, which is when I look at FIFA now, and you talked about the sort of days of buccaneers and pirates in the sort of 80s and 90s, do you see a line between the sort of Horst Dassler era and today?

25:42Do you think that culturally there is a link there? No. Or do you think it's fundamentally a different thing going on?

25:48Nigel Rushman:It's fundamentally different. I think from those days of Horst Dassler into Soccer 4, Patrick Nally and all of that, I think it's, you know, a long forgotten David Maybee. Have you ever heard of David Maybee? No. I mean, many people would say David Maybee invented the perimeter board business. Fabulous, fabulous guy. Very, very funny. His son, James, is still in the business. You should get him on your thing. Now, I think it was buccaneering. now I think it's corporate and it's a very different game very different game and Infantino is rewarded, he knows that game and he plays that game brilliantly and he is rewarded by that knowledge and that understanding of it I think sports politics has grown enormously and you know you have to be it's an unfortunate position he finds himself in he was obviously, I would assume, badly advised in how he launched that if he'd launched it a different way i think there'd have been a lot less fuss around it as it is it's blown up it's politics now sport is politics do you think there's a good idea at the center of it ffe private you know i want your view on quite often on this podcast like this you you bump into where the line is in terms of the private it's almost like a private public sort of debate and and people things like fifa the fa play a role like almost like the nhs and you then get where the market is allowed to thrive and where it isn't, regulation, all of that stuff.

27:23And that line's always under pressure from both sides. But where do you sort of sit? I'm assuming you're on the private side. It's really difficult, Richard, isn't it? No, not necessarily, because there's also the golden goose.

27:36Nigel Rushman:You've got to be very careful. Football is a passion for people. And you've got to be careful. it's not just a business is it you know so people have a passionate engagement i mean years ago the buzzwords were wasn't it you when you were selling sport it's that connection with the consumer that you can only get through sport well i think there's a lot of truth in that and i think if you kill the golden goose i think i don't know enough about that deal it seems that it was terribly undervalued doesn't it i mean if you're just having a deal i'd like to do that deal but anyone would spit out of my league but anyone would like to do that deal look i think the reality of it is you've got to be really careful because the intrinsic value is still that emotional connection if you start to take it into the realms of pure commercialism you can overextend that and then stretch that and it will snap and then your value of your rights is going to come down so i think it's right for football to take that pause take apart from the infantino thing whether that's a right or not i think it's a good idea for football to say hang on a minute let's put the brakes on this is a sport and it's valueless without its fans let's just make sure the fans are looked after first and foremost the sport and the business is about people it's not about rights it's about people but you're the okay so the business is there's a difference between business and sort of financialization i think and just there's a there's a question about your era that the business word my projection onto that was that it was and it was an argument that i could buy into which was that there was inefficiency on the governing body side you had sport that was badly run business in inverted commas would come in and make things better people would make money from sport but the externality of it would be that actually the events get better you know stadia get better there's a there's a whole the product improves over time i could absolutely buy that and we argue the toss about where the line is i wonder and I'm interested in your view on whether that's the same view of what business is now.

30:00And actually what we're talking about when you get to private equity and you get to sort of solving what you're looking at a financial instrument almost being applied to sport. And your bit about the fans, which is where we all land and say we need to protect the fans and all of that stuff. I get it, but I wonder if that's anywhere near the decision-making process anymore. Well, probably not.

30:22Nigel Rushman:I mean the reality is back if you look back then I don't want to sound like a bit of a historical old toad but you know if you look back then the big arguments then were Corinthian values of sport as against commerciality and if you want all these benefits then you have to take the commercial pain if you like or you're going to take the sponsor's dollar then you're going to have to stump up your rights and whatever and lose some control. That's very different now. Now we're in financial markets and there's no chairman's whim anymore. There's none of all of that old stuff. Live Golf was chairman's whim, wasn't it?

31:07Nigel Rushman:Live Golf, yeah. You could say some of that. You could say some of the sovereign wealth funds which I've been at the behest of a national... Sorry, I interrupted you, but yeah, I get you. It's a financialisation question. Yeah, it's now all about, it's a commercial, there's very little consideration of the base emotion. Yeah. And the thing about it, sport is worth no more than anything else if you take the emotion out. I know it's a hackneyed old phrase, but the emotional connection with the consumer is where the true value is. Without that, and you know, you could look at loads of deals at the moment and there's so many deals which i'd be very cautious to talk about but especially in football and the ownership football clubs and where that's gone and things you think i can't see that ever making any money because you're never going to increase the bond with with the supporters of that club and therefore the exploitation of the rights it's i'm not as clever as these people obviously you know there's a there's a big enough pool of greater force is the argument that the capital value just keeps going up regardless of how these companies are run or how these clubs are run and what they spend their money we're spurs fans you know we're looking at this window and thinking you know i don't know who's going to come back you know just astonishing amounts of money everything that goes up richard must come down and and i don't believe you know i know that everyone says no no you're wrong Nigel keep going it keep going you know we're going to get a correction in the AI business very soon every I think that's you know we had a correction in the internet I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing by the way those corrections put a little bit of reality back into the market the difference is is when it's sport it becomes pain it becomes pain for the fans.

33:09Nigel Rushman:It's not, you know, yeah, of course it's pain for the owners. But you know, if you're sitting there on a pot and you're worth three billion and you lose 300 million, it doesn't affect what you do tomorrow. It doesn't affect what you do on Friday. But it does for the fans. I sometimes think sport is really good at and football is brilliant at. Taking something and making it understandable to people in a way that other things aren't. So what I mean is these things that are happening in football about the valuation of clubs and amortisation and Todd Bowley's cleverness, you know, moving insurance money around and all of these things that are floating around football.

33:51Football is the channel by which these stories reach the back pages of the Daily Mail. And that's actually quite a useful device because it means, you know, know these things are happening we're in london they're happening all day every day around us in every sector of of industry so actually sports the the bit that coke and mcdonald's like about sport it gets to a mass market the same thing happens to these sorts of conversations people you know i live in brighton the pub conversation has gone downhill since you know tony bloom took

34:21Nigel Rushman:over and it's all about data analysis and you know you know i don't say it but the guy in the pub doesn't care does he honestly the guy in the pub does i don't care about joe lewis's money you're not the guy in the pub richard with respect you know far too much to be the guy in the boozer the guy in the boozer who's the tottenham fan he sort of knows who owns the club today he doesn't care about the machinations the man united fan doesn't care what inios is doing and jim rackliffe is doing he cares about the performance of the team on the pitch and how his team's doing and we're too close to it because we're all in the industry so we're looking at the deals we're looking at who's got what value the fan isn't the fan is loyal to his club which is unique as we know in the uk premier league we know that if you're not going to become a man's united fan next week that's never going to happen so and that's quite unique and it's still there just not for long if people keep messing around with the heritage of clubs they'll upset the fan base in my opinion and it won't be there the the premier league is one of the best competitions on i'm not even a football fan but it's one of the best competitions on earth why isn't rugby up with football because you can't understand the rules anymore however smart someone is and however a follower of rugby there is they change it all the time so no one knows whether you're out in the side of a ruck or this or that and what's it what why's the referee blown that whistle it doesn't matter that he's trying to explain it no one understands it even though i've got friends who have played rugby all their life and they're premiership rugby people they don't understand it and they give you a gobbledygook explanation which is why football mustn't overcomplicate itself because it's it is the beautiful game it's so simple even my I won't say that, I was going to say, my wife understands it, apart from the offside rule, obviously.

36:21Nigel Rushman:But, you know, it's a simple game, and once you get started to get people pushing in commercial breaks and water breaks and things, and your man, your buddies in the pub, listen to you about Joe Lewis and whatever's happening at Tottenham. They don't know. They don't care. Who won last week? Who's going to win next week? Who are we playing? Who's in the team? I'm not sure about that. I know what you mean, but I don't. That's because you've educated your mates in the pub. You just talk to them too much. The idea that I'd educate them about accounting stuff is hysterical. Listen, when you look at today's marketplace, we talked about where the money was when you started out and the deals and whatever.

37:06When you look around the place at media, you mentioned clips earlier. Where do you see that? you've got a nose for a deal where would you point that

37:18Nigel Rushman:that's definitely the future we all know that we all know that clips you know you've got various bits of the market haven't you look at what's happening in betting gambling look at what's happening in the US and the various deals the legislation coming about look you will have FIFA and the world governing bodies with full content for full matches. Everyone else is going to be on clips. No one else is interested in watching a full match. It's my opinion. I'm sure everyone will scream. Everyone's going to scream and argue. I don't think that's argument. That's not controversial. Clips is where it's at because the attention span of people and I don't see, you know, I believe that in this, in the AI internet age, people are going to become more disjointed because they will sit working on their laptops and things and get all the information they need.

38:17Nigel Rushman:Two things will bring people together in masses, sport and live events, big gatherings of people. And they'll be very important because humans, we're social animals, we're a social breed, we like to be together, but we're becoming disjointed. People are being pushed apart. Now, if you take that with the attention span and the lack of attention span, you can look at all the stats it's phenomenal you know everyone knows about the attention span of a goldfish and blah blah blah but it is phenomenal that you know that the degradation of that across youth and things is going to be a big challenge for people so we're going to see clips which will run which will be an aligned with gambling because people won't gamble on the outcomes and matches their gamble on clip rights and things and that for me that's probably the biggest change in sport in my lifetime that people won't be looking for full content a full competition they look for clips that market though you've got i suppose sport radar genius in the middle of that who have sort of wholesaled the pipes between you know they've done the deals and whatever is that where the value still is i mean again i agree with you about betting i always think you know the word fan engagement is a euphemism for betting i think most of the time and i think there's the betting is hugely underestimated in private what private equity looks at when it sees sport and we talk about fans and the patterns where you take the layer the layers of the value isn't it yeah you've got layers of you know the ultimate fan engagement layer then you've got the rights holder layer and then you've got a distributor in the middle and it depends who's making the most value out of that and that depends on the skill of the brokers or negotiators but i don't think it's necessarily in favor of the rights holder anymore you know i think that will be a challenge for them as as things go forward but why'd you say that

40:32Nigel Rushman:i'm trying not to be too controversial i think there's i think there's sharper people in the negotiation at the front end than on the rights holder end. I think some of those people, because they live more on the edge. And what's the nature of the deal? What are they negotiating over? The connection with the consumer. That's the ultimate. The ultimate is that connection. And everything else is a downstream value. Yeah. You know. So the rights holder will sell that to third parties who will then make more money from that, which has always happened, I guess, but this will happen. It's always happened.

41:06Nigel Rushman:But, you know, you saw the swing, didn't you? In the old days, it was the rights owners would sell to an agency and an agency would sell to them. Then they started taking the rights back in the house. But I wonder how many of those rights holders now have the expertise in a massively fragmented market with clip rights and clip sales and things. I think you'll see some sharper edges popping up in the market. Yeah. Interesting. I could be completely wrong. Who knows? Well, what do you do now? I know you're over from Monaco. You live in Monaco? I live between Monaco and Dubai. And so now the business, I've spent the last three years developing a platform that looks at people's challenges and opportunities in whatever field they're in.

41:55Nigel Rushman:And so we ingest hundreds of experts and all of their open source information. So every book they've read, every podcast they've done, unofficial partners we scrape all your data we scrape everyone's data for free and this is my payback to you yeah and that's very nice we prefer money but yeah all right we're in the pub in the pub in a minute so and we take all that information in and then we have all of the mental models that we can find 43 currently all the cognitive biases of people all the shane parish stuff yes shane parish yes very good shane i know shane do you know shane i don't know personally i was a long time sort of farnham street we're talking about oh farnham street that was i thought that was very smart i remember following that for a long time canadian intelligence shane yeah yeah and yeah and i'm well and so you know and flow projects and things like that so we we take all of that into our engine so you could say for instance unofficial partner is at x how do we grow it to why yeah and we pose that into the system it goes through a load of what we call human dynamic calibration it sounds a bit complicated but it's not and it depends on the level you go to and that will produce a report for you which is we always challenge people run it through chat gpt first same question then run it through our system and see the difference yeah results and it's been phenomenal i mean we do a lot of work on that in sport actually so we've a lot of the major sports broadcasters that you would know a lot of big sports brands clubs leagues and that goes everything from a small question you know right up to a full-blown we would do a three two or three day workshop edge tank immersive technology bring all the best brains into a room in their people as well and get them to debate it and run through structured visual thinking and come out with a solution for them for any challenge any opportunity probably three or four solutions they could do ranked show them all the thinking data how that's come about phenomenal it's fantastic it's taken me a long time to build it and it's it's fascinating with a lot of people like shane that you would know but it's been a terrific so who are the clients so on from sports point of view it's that's always my problem i could tell you that they are sports broadcasters okay they are so what was it just give me a hypothetical use case so of a broadcast okay there is xyz sports broadcaster who has done this deal and they've acquired this company we're interested in acquiring them what would the valuation be or should we continue to consider them given this criteria given that we want to grow like this or we want to do that or it could be we have an ebit of why we'd like to increase that by 10 per cent per annum for the next four years what would be a good strategy if we were limited within the european sports market should we look outside of europe for our next deal all sorts of things so okay that's interesting so we're on the supply So the ingesting of stuff.

45:19So the scraping question. What are the limitations of this model? Because when you start, when people look at the foundational models, the conversation is about, okay, they've scraped the public internet. They're now after the private internet, which is much bigger and deeper and much more complex. And that's going to be a question for them is what they do, because there's all once everyone has got everything how do you then differentiate so there's a sort of you're looking at through it from a different lens but essentially the same question might apply and i can see that you've got a decision making layer which is smart but