E181: The business of jeopardy

Today we’re talking about one of the most fundamental parts of the sports business: the product. And specifically the process of creating and adapting competition formats to increase jeopardy, fan connection and commercial value.  

This is a conversation about the way in which leagues, tournaments and competitions are structured, and its relationship to the commercial value of sport, both as a way of driving demand but also on the supply side, creating opportunities for investment. 

This is true whether we’re talking about Twenty20 cricket and the rise of the IPL or the current questions around the ECB’s new brainchild, The Hundred; the Premier League play-offs; The Super League; or FIBA’s 3x3 basketball format and Rugby Sevens, both of which feature at the Olympics. 
Could a better format have saved The Super League? How can big tournaments be made more fun to watch but avoid contrived gimmicks? How can competitive balance be achieved without punishing excellence? And what does the data say about how women’s football, cricket and rugby could benefit by balancing components such as jeopardy, quality and connection with fans?  

Our guests are Omar Chauduri and Ben Marlow, from Twenty First Group, who have thought about this question a great deal, and created a model that approaches the format question through a data led decision making framework. I find the results of their work fascinating, for what it says about sport and the questions it poses for everyone, from fans, teams and event rights holders through to television and media owners and financial investors. So wherever you are in the sports biz jungle, this is a topic that talks directly to your day job.   

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Transcript

Unofficial Partner x Twenty First Group

Guests: Omar Chauduri and Ben Marlow.

Unofficial Partner: [00:00:00] Hello, welcome to Unofficial Partner, the sports business podcast. I'm Richard Gillis. 

[00:00:04]Today, we're talking about one of the most fundamental parts of the sports business, the product. And specifically the business of creating and adapting competition formats the way in which leagues tournament's and competitions are structured. 

[00:00:18] And the relationship to the commercial value of sport, both as a way of driving demand, but also on the supply side, creating opportunities for investment. This is true, whether we're talking about 20, 20 cricket and the rise of the IPL or the current questions around the ECB new brainchild, the hundred. 

[00:00:35] We're asking what are the common themes around successful new additions, such as the premier league playoffs, for example, fevers three by three basketball format or rugby sevens,  both of which. Feature at the Olympics. And what does the data say about how women's football, cricket and rugby could benefit by balancing components such as jeopardy, quality and connection with fans. 

[00:00:57]Our guests are Omar Choudhry and Ben Marlow from Twenty First Group, who have thought about this question a great deal and created a model that approaches the format question through a data led decision-making framework. And I find the results of their work fascinating for what it says about sport, but also about the questions it poses for everyone from fans, teams and event rights holders through to television media and the financial investment community. So, whatever your day job, I think this is a topic that talks directly to you. 

[00:01:29] If you like the podcasts, you'll love the Unofficial part of the newsletter that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of senior executives across the global sports business every thursday to join them sign up by Unofficial Partner dot com

[00:01:42] First of all, Omar, Ben, thanks for joining, looking forward to the session.  Before we get into the detail, we're going to be talking about quite a few things today, but 21st group, I first, the first came across my radar in, and this is  a while ago at a Ryder cup. I wrote a book about the Ryder cup, captain captaincy and  there was talk of data. It was ex around the golf circuit, people were saying, this, mysterious data group. And they're taking all of the information out there it's his secret weapon.

[00:02:12] So there was  a story there, which I found interesting, obviously I've then seen,  you're in football. So again, I guess my point is I always associated you with the performance side of the business, so that Moneyball story, the whole player data part.

[00:02:29] And I just want you to bring me up to speed. Cause I think that's slightly out of date in terms of what 21st Group is and what it does. And I want to  draw a line between that side of the jungle into the more  commercial side's use of data. Omar, I think you're the guy to do this for us.

[00:02:49]Just give us a bit of context, both on the company and where it is today. 

[00:02:55] Omar Chauduri: [00:02:55] Yeah, that's right. So we're 21st Group today, but we started out as 21st Club and the initial thinking around the brand and the name was 20 clubs in major European leagues with if we were the 21st Club, how would we think about things differently and do things differently in order to gain a competitive edge?

[00:03:13] And a lot of our work was focused on that quality performance side of working with clubs, working with associations to improve performance, particularly on the longer term strategic aspect of football and opportunistically we got ourselves into golf and call ourselves the 15th Club, which was a nice parallel to what we had.

[00:03:33]In football it's you had 14 clubs in your bag. 50th club would be. That extra helping hand in golf. And we entered that through the Ryder cup. As you said, working with Darren Clark in 2016 and then Thomas Bjorn and in 2018, really helping do the analytics on pairings and strategies going into the Ryder cup and.

[00:03:55] As you say that a lot of our focus and a lot of what we were known for was on that performance side. But as we spent more and more time in the industry, working with data to help solve some of these issues on the performance side, we began to see how everything is joined up in many ways and began to get involved in projects with leagues around competition reform and using analytics to forecast out how things can be done differently in order to make the competitions more compelling and interesting to broadcasters brands and ultimately fans, and also working with brands on their activations and helping them tell better stories through data in the way that they worked with various competitions that they sponsored.

[00:04:34]And so it started off very much as a kind of performance data story. But we've converted that, and the rebrand was in many ways, a catching up of what we've been doing for the last two or three years now. And so we've moved from 21st club, 15 clubs. Separate brands in golf and football at the 21st group, which is now a catch off all the work we do in sport.

[00:04:54] And we're now across multiple sports working. And not just that performance space, but across across a number of different areas. Now,

[00:05:01]Unofficial Partner: [00:05:01] Ben, give us an idea of the sorts of people that you're working with or have done in the past just to get, again, a bit of just a bit of context. So listeners can then position us in terms of the conversation.

[00:05:13] Ben Marlow: [00:05:13] Sure. So a lot of our work started out on the format side, as eMAR said with teams, players, agencies around that performance side. So how can we help. You win those involved with actually playing the sport on the pitch, on the field, on the course. So we still do a lot of that work with the likes of Tottenham Hotspur.

[00:05:32] We work with the right seems still a number of other football clubs globally, some in MLS, Mexico, Japan. So we're doing a lot of work in that performance today still, and it remains an important part of the business, but we've increasingly started working with rights holders around kind of competition structure.

[00:05:51] So premier league is a big client of ours. We've done some work with J league. We've done some work with Belgium pro league era DVC CA Canadian premier league. Again, a a number of areas that we focused on, but often around how we can improve competitions to make them more exciting, interesting how we can get the sort of sporting product to be more, more engaging for fans.

[00:06:13] And then we've done a lot of work with brands and broadcast is more lots of really around how do they maximize the value from that? Kind of activations and the rights that they have. So looking at how you can tell performance stories that align with both the reasons fans are interested in a sport, but also a brand's business objectives, for example.

[00:06:32] And then likewise with broadcast is understanding what it is that drives fans to, to watch or subscribe and using that information to define what rights they should be going after and at what value. So a number of areas, a number of clients across that spectrum. 

[00:06:46] Unofficial Partner: [00:06:46] It's interesting time because you've got that relationship between the product.

[00:06:50] Let's call it the product, which is an unpopular word, but we're in the business of sports. So we can use it without being accused of various things.  So you've got the sporting product itself and then you've got the commercial. In terms of making money for the rights holder.

[00:07:06] So let's just focus on that for a minute, because what I'm wondering, what the difference between a good one and a bad one is, and whether or not  there are any  rules emerging or any themes emerging between a boring tournament or league structure and a consistently exciting one. And what the component parts, what are the levers that you've got to play with to  dial up or dial down certain bits?

[00:07:36] Ben Marlow: [00:07:36] it's a sort of astute observation of how we see the world now. So we've defined our view of the sports ecosystem in this kind of big idea and in its briefest form, it's that it's sporting success that ultimately drives commercial outcomes and commercial value. So if you have a good sporting product that people want to watch, then that's, what's going to ultimately drive high media rights, values, or high commercial rights values from brands, et cetera.

[00:08:04] And I think historically the industry's seeing those two things as separate. So we're really trying to bring them together in a way that says how exciting the title races in a football league or how exciting. Last six holes in a major are a fundamental to how valuable your rights will be and how many people will want to watch.

[00:08:20]So that's the concept that, that sporting success is really the ultimate driver of commercial value. And the way we bring that to life and in our work is to try and define the components of sporting success that equate to a good product. So generally speaking, we break it up into three areas, so quality, jeopardy, and connection.

[00:08:42] So when we talk about quality, we're talking about how you can ensure that you're providing the best possible example of the exponents of that particular sport. People want to watch the best fans have an acute appreciation of quality, and therefore they're more likely to watch the premier league and the championship, for example, and quality is the main reason behind that.

[00:09:01] The next one is Japanese. It's all very well watching a high quality sports, but if you know what the outcome's going to be, then it's less interesting. It becomes more of a kind of exhibition. So you'd need a sporting product to deliver excitement to fans, such that they are unsure what the outcome's going to be.

[00:09:15] And you have that edge of the seat. Feeling, we summarize Japanese being when high stakes meet uncertainty. So the high stakes mean, that there's gotta be something, hang on the line that matters. And uncertainty means you just don't know how it's going to end up. And I think we all recognize that feeling of excitement that only sport can bring relative to other forms of entertainment.

[00:09:35] And then the final one is connection. And in many ways, this is the. Most broad but it's really giving fans a reason to care about the action outside of just an appreciation of the quality and the Japanese. So why are they invested in this particular sport? And that's pretty broad and it can be quite authentic because you could live in Manchester and therefore support Manchester United in the way that your parents and their parents did before them.

[00:10:00] So you have this kind of authentic connection with a team that naturally means you're interested in the outcome, but there are other ways in which you can build that connection through, betting products or fancy products. That mean that you're invested in the outcome of that sports in a way that you might not otherwise be where you not, where you're not playing those games or those kinds of ancillary things that are outside of that authentic connection.

[00:10:22] So if you can deliver high quality sports, that's exciting through jeopardy. That people can connect to then generally speaking, we feel you're going to be pretty, pretty successful. I think the one other thing as well is that, Ben mentioned that there's been a historic focus on the commercial side and that's what a lot of the best rights holders would be like the premier league being a really good case that you've done really well is, looking to new broadcasters, trying to pit them against each other, trying to drive up media rights value, and then reinvesting that money back into the product.

[00:10:52] We see it as a bit of a flywheel where you generate and you try and generate that extra revenue. You put it back into the product, the teams or players are able to invest to become high quality. It becomes more exciting. There's more Japanese fans care a bit more, and then you grow the value of immediate rights.

[00:11:06] But I think what's particularly relevant right now is that with COVID and with a general, what we were seeing pre COVID a general plateauing of media rights in a sense that there is a bit more of a zero sum game in the sports media rights model. Therefore just as in any other industry, there needs to be a focus on the product and trying to make the product is as interesting as possible, or trying to make sure that fans care about the product as much as possible.

[00:11:33] And ultimately what we're talking about here is trying to increase the volume of fans and the extent to which they care and in the product.

[00:11:40] Unofficial Partner: Okay. So I've got a load of questions that fall out of that analysis. , I've just been writing down as you were saying that. One is I'm trying to think of exciting, recent, exciting formats.

[00:11:52] And by recent, I probably talking the last 20 years, the IPL always jumps out in this conversation as being something that has appeared grown both commercially, but also as a, authentic sporting product. The other one  is something like the league playoffs to get into the Premier League again, has energized the end of the season.

[00:12:15] There's a part of me that wonders whether or not those things were happy accidents . And the other bit is the concern I would have is contrivance one of the reasons we really like it is that we believe in it. And we think that talent best be best and the best without that's the sort of fundamental bit of it.

[00:12:34] And if somebody on is manipulating my emotions, it's a sort of analogous with the drug arguments in terms of, is this real that I'm seeing, if my emotions are being manipulated, does it matter? And actually, do I care in the end or do I need to know, but you can see where I'm going from there.

[00:12:55] So I'm really interested in exciting sport. I don't want to sit there and I've for a lot of boring sport and we all have, and whole season, I'm a spurs fan, whole seasons of boring sports, over the years. And I've got no interest in that, but also, there's a bit of me that doesn't want to be manipulated.

[00:13:12] So could, can you just tackle those questions?

Omar Chauduri: Yeah. It's about competitions being authentic in what they're delivering. And I think there's a bit of a cultural mindset around certain types of competitions. So in European football, we're very used to watching, nine months, 10 months, long seasons, everyone plays each other twice.

[00:13:30] And so on has become very ingrained and fans are very happy to accept to the end of the season. The best team won, even though the numbers perhaps suggested that's not always the case. I think there's a resistance to change there. But I think the perspective we take is that if you look at other competitions that European football fans engage with that also perceived as authentic.

[00:13:50] One of which would be the euros of the world cup, which is something much as long for the winner. Everyone's very happy saying France were the best team in the world after the 2018 world cup. And, even though they were losing to Argentina at one stage and the second round could easily gone out at that time everyone very happy post Euro 2020, saying Italy with the best team in the tournament, possibly the best team in Europe at the moment, but just went through on penalties against Spain.

[00:14:14] France had beaten Switzerland could have been a very different outcome. We got a really entertaining tournament in the talking and that's just now and I don't think anyone feels put out by that doesn't feel put out by the fact that there was, a drawer that was skewed towards one group of death.

[00:14:26] And the fact that, England a lot of own gains. Yeah. There's a few grumbles around that, but no more so than what you'd have in a typical title, running where a team plays a club that's maybe in the latter stage of the championship, maybe gets an easy running and as a result or whatever it is. I think there is fans have certain tendencies and historical connections and we'll probably get onto this and some of the Superleague stuff and how new competitions needs to be pitched and so on. But I think there is scope. When you look at the fact that you have these two vastly different competitions in the euros and domestic leagues, and they're both seen as authentic, but it's usually valuable competitions that, that fans engage with.

[00:15:01] There's a distinction between being entertained by something and being passionate about something. And I think if you resort to gimmicks in a way that you can try the sport through. A framework that you think will work that could be entertaining, but won't elicit passion. Then I think that's where you tip over that line.

[00:15:23] But I think if you're able to deliver sport in a way that's still fundamentally sport, but it's dialing up those kind of quality, Japanese connection components of it such that it's a better product. That's still a sporting product. Then I think you can be very successful, but you're right, that there is a point at which innovation can become gimmicky and you need to make sure you steer clear of that and that the products, your, again, referring to sports as a product, but the sporting kind of competition.

[00:15:54] On whatever that you're putting on are sporting competitions first and foremost, and not entertainment products. And I think there is a distinction between those two things.

[00:16:04]Unofficial Partner: [00:16:04] You mentioned that the commercial angle to this,  I covered as a journalist, the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup in the Caribbean, and  Malcolm Speed, who was the CEO of ICC at this point said, this is the worst event he's ever been to.

[00:16:19]He said, it was 'an event from hell'. There's lots of things went wrong. And one of the reasons was the structure of the thing, it went on for about three months. He had a super eights. And when you drill down into this, you had an, a first round of games in group stages.

[00:16:35] And then the second phase where everyone played everyone. There was very little jeopardy and it was all about trying to keep India in the tournament. And that was obviously with a strong commercial, that, that was, it felt the mistake was that balance between the performance and the commercial question.

[00:16:56]They were weighing commercial far too heavily. They needed India to go through. They were trying to just hedge against Indian failure. And the result of that was a really tedious product. How do you stop that from happening? Because we're in the sports business and we know the incentives are quite often skew towards commercial rather than any great  emphasis on the product or the quality of the entertainment bit, over and above, they want people in the door and they want telly to pay for it.

[00:17:26] Omar Chauduri: [00:17:26] I think there's a short and long-term perspective. So I think the 2019 Cricket World Cup almost went the other way, where you're guaranteed. Was it nine group matches for India? You guaranteed an India puck style and much which you didn't have in 2007 in many ways that competition wasn't that great.

[00:17:42] Either England made it interesting by messing it up a bit at the end, but managing to get through the short term imperative is to have India go deep in the tournament in the same way in the champions league, the short-term imperative is to have man United Liverpool around Madrid, Barcelona playing in the lighter stages because they are the teams that, huge proportion of football fans follow in tennis, you want Djokovic, Nadal, Federer and Serena making the last stage of the competitions, but the longer term perspective has to focus on strength and depth and think about where you're going to be attracting new fans and where you're going to drive narrative within the company.

[00:18:19] So from crickets perspective, Cricket's been historically really poor at developing smaller nations in cricket compared to say rugby, which managed to get self in the Olympics and therefore seek a lot of investment from countries that wouldn't otherwise be investing in rugby, cricket, it's being famously quite insulin.

[00:18:37] And the fact that the last world cup was only 10 teams and a great reflection of that. But in the long-term a cricket is able to grow markets in the U S being an obvious one. But even in some of these middle Eastern markets where we're having, greater number of teams and so on coming through.

[00:18:52] That probably benefits cricket commercially in the longterm, more so than what they're trying to do in the short term around maximize the competition. And it's the same, it's the same in football around trying to develop competitive balance. Have other teams have the ability to Leicester city and so on to be competitive at the top end of the game, because then suddenly you're opening up to a broader set of fans in the longer term.

[00:19:12] Ben Marlow: [00:19:12] I think that's right. We we raised a piece relatively recently that was looking at the longevity of some of the best sporting products around this was particularly focused on the big five leagues. And now they're all a hundred years plus old. And fundamentally they've been the same thing during the day, the best teams in England playing against each other in a league format.

[00:19:32] But the, that they've evolved over time to remain relevant to people and narratives have risen and fallen. And the sporting product has kept people engaged. And I think you, you have to remember that. As a kind of right soldier or someone planning strategy around sport, you're almost a custodian of that sport rather than someone who's trying to make a return in a very short timeframe.

[00:19:53] And there's a sort of historical context that adds to the value of that product that you have today, because it's been. It's old and it's got all of those different narratives and all those different reasons for people to connect with it. And I think you have to find that balance between the short imperative to to grow and generate commercial value with the longterm recognition that what you're dealing in is something that has historical significance and therefore needs to be authentic in how you deliver it to, to fans in a way that makes it interesting.

[00:20:25] I think the other thing is you can actually test some of that stuff as well. And we do a lot of this work you're really talking about jeopardy and the example of the 2007 world cup and to some degree connection because there was no jeopardy people lost interest in and became unengaged with the competition.

[00:20:38] When you see things like that happen, you can just see a fall off in things like viewing figures and social engagements, et cetera. And you can therefore show that actually creating a long competition. Isn't a good sporting product is not a good commercial proposition either because people will lose interest in it.

[00:20:55] And ultimately what you're trying to do through a sporting product is elicit the passion of fans and as high a number as you possibly can to deliver value to broadcast partners, brands, et cetera, because that's what ultimately determines the economic kind of ecosystem. And that has to be done through a good competition because fans get turned off pretty quickly.

[00:21:14] If it's not, 

[00:21:15] Unofficial Partner: [00:21:15] there's a danger of punishing excellence. I think formula one suffers from this quite a bit.  You've got great teams, but the same teams win all the time. Buenas league by a Munich dominates, you've got tiger woods. The tiger woods era was fantastic because he was so charismatic when he won everything and that reduces jeopardy  how can you solve that problem? The other question is how data helps this. 

[00:21:38] Ben Marlow: [00:21:38] There's a trade off that to some degree between jeopardy and connection. And I think you've seen that with the big three and tennis with tiger woods, where people really connect with those sort of all time great exponents of the sport because of that success.

[00:21:54] And actually that excellent. This is what drives them to watch because they've driven this sort of greater connection that has compensated for potentially a drop in jeopardy. So I think that can work in your favor through delivering greater connection. I think actually F1 is a great example of where they've done.

[00:22:11] Very well by saying, okay, we have this problem with jeopardy in the fastest car tends to win, and they've tried to do various things with the format. And they've tried to be quite innovative with that. Some of which they've succeeded in some which they haven't liked the reverse grid, for example. So they are trying to explore that jeopardy issue, but they've also done other things say, okay if we can't deliver.

[00:22:33] Jeopardy to the extent that we'd like, what else can we do in the connection space and the drive to survive series a great example of where they've said, look, there's more to F1 than just understanding who's going to win the race. There's a huge amount of narrative and personality and value in the midfield battles.

[00:22:49] So how do we get people to be aware of that and engaged with that? And they've done that very effectively to say there's more to it than the winner. And that's been a key driver of kind of fan interest for them, I think, but you are right that it's a little bit of a trade off.

[00:23:01] Omar Chauduri: [00:23:01] And the role data plays to try and understand all this is that you can look at the relationship between the sporting product and the value it's creating. So you can look at the reviewers or the social media interactions or the number of people attending the event or whatever it is and see what are the things that are influencing.

[00:23:22] That interest in the sport. So you can look at, we've done this for a number of football leagues, but also look at it in those sports as well, and look at, okay when you have this type of match, that's happening, how much additional interest as a generate or when you have these types of teams playing well, this type of athlete involved, how much does it generate?

[00:23:41] W one of the things we've looked at for is Christiana Ronaldo. When he left round Madrid attendance at round Madrid away games, home games for their opponents dropped by about four percentage points and it rose at eventers by three percentage points. So you can actually put a dollar value in many ways on the impact Rinaldo is having on Lalita and Syria in terms of ticket revenue.

[00:24:02]And you can begin to understand, okay it doesn't really exist for that many other players, but it can do in other sports in particular, if you think, particularly individual sports and then going back to what we were talking about, the top is all about. Being able to tweak things, but not becoming inauthentic in the way that you do it.

[00:24:17] So clearly formula one fans enjoy overtaking. So they introduced DRS in order to increase overtake initially came across it. They're going to keep it as become part of the sport. Then obviously redesigned the cars and outdoors, trying to improve that. So really deep into data and doing modeling to understand those relationships controlling for all the other factors enables you to go, okay we can see that fans are particularly interested in this thing, or it could be around a viewership scheduling.

[00:24:44] Then we can see fans and particularly to anyone at this time, therefore we need to ensure that our games and matches and so on hits in these times, lots for this particular. Just another good example, actually, just while we're on it is tennis. So we looked at recently, this is bringing together the idea of jeopardy and data in one space.

[00:25:02] So if you compare the affiliation that people have with Serena Williams relative to the big three is quite an interesting kind of case study to explore this. So we were looking at the role that the league format plays in Serena Williams, his career relative to Novak Djokovich and the three set format, because it's shorter, introduces greater levels of jeopardy into the competition because high quality has a shorter time over which to prevail it.

[00:25:28] And that's true in principle, have any sports. So if Manchester city are going to play crystal Palestinian one-off game, They're more likely to lose that than they are to finish below crystal Palestinian league season, because there's less that there's more opportunity for quality to prevail and for randomness to be limited.

[00:25:44] So in tennis, having a three set format in the women's game creates more jeopardy, which in principle makes it more exciting. But what it actually does is it allocates jeopardy to the wrong parts of the competition because the best players are more likely to fall out in the earlier rounds when eyeballs are less engaged with it.

[00:26:02] Whereas the five set format means that the biggest players, the best players are more likely to reach the end of the competition and therefore have tight close contest when they get there. And as a result, you're getting jeopardy at the moment of maximum interest or maximum commercial value for the sport.

[00:26:19] And that's where you're getting the maximum out of the jeopardy. And there's. Peripheral benefits from that because Djokovich Nadal and Federer. And to a lesser extent, Murray have Matt at the backend of tournament's. I think Djokovich a dollar better have met 40 times at semifinal leads. In the grand slams, you get this huge narrative value about all of their historical battles and which ones have one more on which surface and blah, blah, blah.

[00:26:43] And that all adds greater anticipation to the match. Whereas if you compare that to Serena Williams, where her rivals might've been knocked out earlier, by going to two sets down, to, to a player who's ranked well below them, you don't get that opportunity for those narratives to develop. And even in the French open this year, Djokovich came down.

[00:26:59] He came back from two sets down twice. And in principle it may have turned out differently. You never know, but in principle, he wouldn't have made the final and he wouldn't have had that epic against the doll had, he'd been playing over three sets. He'd have been out in the fourth round. So yes, in limiting jeopardy through having a five set tournament, you can still use the structure and data can help you define this.

[00:27:21] You could still use it to allocate jeopardy where it's most valuable to you from a commercial perspective. So it's very multifaceted, but that's another way that sort of data can help. 

[00:27:30] Unofficial Partner: [00:27:30] So I'm. Interested in this because, and obviously the reason that you've, the business exists is that there is an enormous opportunity here to create new things.

[00:27:41] So we've got, in sport, we're always dancing with the sort of past and the future. And we, there is the traditional lists and, then you've got the sort of world, why don't we try something new now that the sort of entry of things like private equity and what they're looking for is something to invest in, to build quickly, to get to a sort of.

[00:28:02]Competitive excellence quickly and to bed it in with fans quickly. So they can then establish value  and from a rights holders perspective, and particularly some of the traditional federations and governing bodies, what they're trying to do is again, balance.

[00:28:16] They need the money, they want money, they need expertise to come in and help them whilst also being, the guardians in inverted commerce of the, the grassroots, but also of the soul of the sport and sport now is becoming framed in that way. And you're in an interesting area.

[00:28:34] This conversation is very central to that because actually it's about creating new things that people can invest in and gather around. And the hundred is a classic example of this. And we'll talk about that. Perhaps there's also women's sport in this question because I keep coming back to what. There are a number of jobs that need to happen in women's football.

[00:28:55] One of them is to create team brands for people to invent, for fans to gather around, to invest in, again, something the hundred is trialing in an interesting way. What's the key to navigating this because it could go wrong. But what's the, where, what are your favorite case studies of the moment you would talk about the hundred.

[00:29:17] Omar Chauduri: [00:29:17] Yeah. And that's, I think it's helpful to come back to the framework of quality, jeopardy connection with the a hundred as well, where quality is guaranteed because they yes. Been affected by COVID this year, that they're attracting the best players in the world. W we've seen, particularly with, within England, the depth of white bull talent.

[00:29:34] So people going to the games, no they're going to be watching, really high-end cricket. Jeopardy was something that came through in that opening game with with the women's game where it looked like it was going to be a bit of a damp squib, a bit of a letdown for the first game, but it's suddenly turned into this contest with high quality players.

[00:29:49]I called this African players turning it round. The big question that I think a lot of. Private equity groups or any kind of rights sold, or even the broadcasters and brands that are throwing money at things is how much connection do fans have. And that's a big question around the hundred where you are inventing these teams that haven't existed before.

[00:30:07] I have no history and you're expecting people to care for them. And there's a big group of people who, have a belong with affinity with the counter game and just cricket in England in general, who are going to be very dismissive of the a hundred and not gonna engage with it and not going to find that connection with it.

[00:30:21] And that's fine, but what the ECB are clearly banking on is that they are going to find that connection with a whole sway. The people who don't really care about county cricket don't really connect with the sorry or cans or whatever. And actually, yeah, I want to be able to go with their families and be able to watch things easily accessible in the BBC, or, have an app that enables them to engage in the game in a different way.

[00:30:42] And I I was at the opening game and it was, you could vote for you, but here are the match during the game. There, there was certainly a feeling that, but there were. You felt more a part of the action in many ways. And it was, really easy to understand the rules and so on. So I think it worked really well.

[00:30:56] I think in a lot of spaces it's that connection space that a lot of organizers are gonna have to grapple and deal with. And certainly in the short-term in the long-term, what they'll be looking to do is develop that quality base of players. So we work with the Canadian premier league as an example.

[00:31:12] And one of the things that they have to do is in the longterm raise quality of the league. That's not going to happen overnight. So developing the talent, developing the international players that come in is something that will take a bit of time in the longterm will hopefully pay off. So there's a kind of a mix of things that a lot of it comes down to the sort of macro factors that are influencing the game or the sort of environment in which you're operating as well.

[00:31:34] I think with cricket, they were reacting to demographics and the nature of the audience and the changing kind of interests or. Young fans, they would have to attract to survive. So you do you have to protect the soul of the sport. I think that's right. We talked about being custodians. If you're a rights holder, for example, I do believe that's something or that concept is pertinent to the sport, but you've also got to be a pragmatist to some degree.

[00:32:00] And if the sports is no longer relevant to the audience and to enough people, then it needs to adapt in order to remain relevant. And I think the a hundred is a great example of where there was a kind of recognition. I can't remember what the phrase was it, male pale and stale or something. They pithy.

[00:32:18] So some the sort of existing audience for cricket was, and England, which has becoming increasingly multicultural and, they wanted to change that. And I think you could argue. Being able to adapt is not at odds with protecting the soul to the sports. It's just recognizing that the sport needs to change, to survive and actually cricket with T 20 or whenever it was 20, 20, 25 years ago has been very effective at doing that.

[00:32:43] Unofficial Partner: [00:32:43] Cricket is an interesting one because obviously it's seen as this great traditional sport, but it has enormous amounts of it. If you look at, in terms of the innovation and the way it's moved forward in 2020 being the obvious example, and you will have heard a hundred times as I have sports rights holders saying this is our 2020 and there, there was an aspiration to try and create something.

[00:33:02] And that normally comes with  a series of increasingly wonky assumptions about, Jen's Ed's attention spans and blah, blah, blah. So it means it's short, it's snappy. It's it does all those things that you would expect. I'm wondering, and I've often wondered whether the IPL people have misread the IPL success and whether or not actually it's to do with India and money.

[00:33:25] And just the end, it was an entertainment product of its time, which has grown and whether or not that there is a danger of basing strategy on the IPL, because there are a number, there are enough questions that would suggest it's an anomaly rather than something that is. A cookie cutter thing that you can just then replicate.

[00:33:47] It's brilliant. Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan. But I'm wondering if it's something that you just say, the temptation is say, okay we'll have an IPL cause it's got all of the bits that we're where we want. What do you think? 

[00:33:59] Omar Chauduri: [00:33:59] Yeah, I think you're right in that the there's often this perceived idea that it needs to be sure it needs to be, have an app that goes alongside it, have dancers and DJs and cheerleaders which is obviously a big thing with the IPO when it started.

[00:34:12] But when we reflect on it, we certainly see those clearly moment in time. The one, the world they're the Welty 20 and it was a bit of a groundswell around it. Ultimately they got the sporting products, absolutely nailed on. They managed to attract the world's best players. There was the ICL that proceeded that failed to do that for it, for a number of different reasons.

[00:34:32]But clearly didn't have that quality aspect. The first tournament had that unbelievable final with the underdog winning. I think if you'd had a team rampaging their way to the final and created a dynasty perhaps early on, you might not have had that. And statement that at and T 20 cricket is one of those sports where you look at the odds before any game there, roughly even so of teams, roughly 50 50, you don't really get that in tennis.

[00:34:57] In fact, in a lot of tennis matches, the favorite is often 80, 90% to win. And actually perhaps one of the things they should be thinking about and tennis is not, it is not necessarily around a court guideline judges or shortening the sets, whatever it's around, trying to bring those odds close to 50 50.

[00:35:14] And that's something that T 20 did really well in the IPL did really well because it had its salary caps and it had its system of trying to spread the talent and connection. Even though these were brand new teams that they had, they're able to develop that connection quite quickly because they had these amazing generation of Indian players that they're able to allocate to the eight teams.

[00:35:32] So immediately, if you weren't from Chennai, it might be that you're a Macedonia fan. Or even if you went from you might be a massive 10 door combat and therefore had a connection with those. So I think. That's what they got really. And obviously that amazing first season, everything. And it's gone into that flywheel where they've been able to generate, huge TV deals and reinvest that, and being able to then attract even more or better players in the latter years.

[00:35:55] And and players who historically might've played for their country, because they weren't really sure about it. Now signing up to the IPL, you've got whole sway, the players that where the IPL is the first choice, even above international cricket. So I think they've, they really nailed the product.

[00:36:09] And that's for me, the big lesson from the IPL and its success, particularly as you think about new products coming to market, we've, we talked a little bit about tweaking start products. It's really hard. And so I think a big part. Looking at historic products is either trying to generate greater connection through new fans, or probably expanding the women's aspect of those products, but creating a new product as it is quite hard to know what leavers to pull them up.

[00:36:35] Those are the kind of key lessons from the IPL. 

[00:36:37] Ben Marlow: [00:36:37] Yeah, I think they did all three quality jeopardy connection. And I think connection is arguably the most important and perhaps they delivered connection and quality in the same breath because having representation from the world's best players both delivers the quality side of the equation.

[00:36:58] But also it's one of the things that attracts people to watch sport is seeing the very best and people connect with the fact that Shane Warne was captured at the register and Royals and in the first installment and having that connection is what determines success long term. And I think you could have, for example, a sport, that's got a smaller, natural.

[00:37:18] Following among fans and deliver the highest quality products. That's super exciting, but because it's, doesn't elicit a connection with people, it's not going to be as big as say the world cup in football and you have to deliver all three. So I think connection is particularly important when you think about scale and commercializing a sport, because what it ultimately comes down to for broadcasters and brands is how many eyeballs am I going to get?

[00:37:46] And how much are they going to be willing to pay me? And that's driven by how many people are wanting to watch and the extent to which they want to watch, and therefore the extent to which they're willing to pay for something. And you really get that through them, having a connection, a reason to care, and a reason to watch and engage with the sport.

[00:38:01]Quality in Japanese fundamental to that, but it also needs to be exists in a sport and in a kind of. Yeah. I don't know, segment of the sporting market that has enough people watching and interested to, to be of sufficient volume to, to matter.

[00:38:16]Unofficial Partner: [00:38:16] So on that connection bit, which again goes back to the point about I, I think the women's sport sector and we should, I'm not bracketing every sport into this, but I'm looking at, I find the hundred really interesting in terms of the messaging, but also the substance of the way in which they've created.

[00:38:33] Women's team brands. I think that's really important because obviously you've got this problem of women's sport traditionally, which is we watch at an Olympics or a quadrennial event, and the same is happening in football. You gather around a national team, there are stars, there are people, individuals, but what's missing quite often is the week to week narrative of you know, 

[00:38:55] A team, a spurs for me and whoever it is for you, but it's something just, I might not care for years, but there were just the, you just have an intro. There's a residual interest, which that's what team brands do. And that's important. And that's quite often a gap. 

[00:39:11] Omar, you wrote a really interesting piece about the jeopardy or upping the jeopardy of women's sport by attaching it or combining the leagues in some way. And you make a really good point about the Olympics that we don't look at the Olympics we're agendas lens. We're saying  team GB won a gold medal and we don't care where it came from.

[00:39:34] Whereas then between the Olympics, we start to then divide up and say, oh, it's, I'm a spurs fan, but I'm a, it's the bloke's team that I'm talking about. All of that stuff that comes with women's sport and that's a limit on the growth. And I can see that in terms of your  framing of connection and jeopardy and the rest of it, that is in there.

[00:39:53] But can you just what's your view on that? Because the women's game. Is important for its own sake, but there's also a lot of money hovering around wanting the women's game to be successful. And it does come down to this conversation does of making both the tournament, the product. Good enough. 

[00:40:10] Omar Chauduri: [00:40:10] So the idea is that there's no such thing as a women's Olympics,  the BBC don't get up a table saying this is the men's metal table and look having Hungary done well at eighth and the men's metal table.

[00:40:19] And this is the women's metal table. And that kind of implicit assumption that women's sport is just as valuable as the biggest sporting prize men's sport means that we're equally invested in the stories of women sports and Helen Glover, going to Olympics as a story we really care about because we know that the possibility for a gold medal or any metal after her story is just as valuable as any other, any of the other metals that we might win or the cycling or the athletics or whatever it is.

[00:40:46] And it also leads to joint investment. So if you look at British Rowing as an example, They distribute as much money to the men and the women because they know that the sporting prize in the Olympics that the national private is generated from medals and whatever else is equal, whether it's a man or a woman.

[00:41:01]But we don't apply that in any other sporting realm. And women's sports suffers from either one of two things either. It's not the default. And so you have Manchester United and Manchester, United women. And so it's just in your brain, you just switches to it being this other thing, this sidecar on the side, or it has no connection to the male products.

[00:41:21] There might be like a W Series or NWSL where it has to organically grow from a very low base. And I'm really interested in this concept of take, take the a hundred. And as an example, what if in the hundred you just had one league. Yeah. Was men and women's results contributing to that league table equally at, and suddenly what you've got then is a whole suede of fans who might've only been interested in the men's four, but in order for them, if you're supporting them oval invincibles in order for them to be supporting open invincibles, they've got to care equally about the women's game, because those games contribute as he plays the men's games to the final league table.

[00:41:58]And I, and if you think about unlocking women's sport, that's how you suddenly draw a huge amount of fans, volume of fans to care about women's sport. And that's ultimately, as we say, this is what this Bible's about. It's increasing the number of fans, that there are the extent to which they care. And that just doesn't happen with women's sports at the moment.

[00:42:16] And as a result of that interest, what you're then able to do is increased quality because suddenly let's say happened in the premiere. Liverpool wouldn't be competing at the top of the premier league if there was a joint and women's men and women's football competition, because the liberals women's team hasn't done anywhere near as well as the men's team in the last couple of years.

[00:42:33] So suddenly Liverpool would be forced to invest in the women's team and you'd be raising, you'd be trying to increase participation. You'd be trying to increase training standards, professionalization in at the club and you'd be driving up quality. And that would, again, lead to further fans, caring about the appreciating that the quality of the women's sport.

[00:42:50] So it's quite a radical idea in some respects. So you can never imagine the premier league doing that, but there is a huge precedent and the Olympics. And I wonder if there are smaller sports leagues out there, like the Swedish league as an example that isn't going to be attracting major media rights.

[00:43:04] Certainly not internationally. That could go well, I think there's an opportunity here for us to be this new men and women sports. We combined that really draws out, not just Swedish fans to be benched in the women's side, but potentially a global set of fans. 

[00:43:17] Unofficial Partner: [00:43:17] That's such a. Good idea that I'm wondering why it doesn't happen or what are the, do you think in the room, which is, why would that  not make it through because I'm sold on that as an idea, but I never see it around the place.

[00:43:34] Omar Chauduri: [00:43:34] I think there's a couple of things. I think there is a danger of dilution of the men's side and protecting what you have is in any industry, let alone sport where we are often very risk averse is something that, you're very afraid to do. You want to make sure that if you did it in Spain, you want to have your Madrid Darby twice a year in the mans.

[00:43:55] You don't want to have four Madrid. Darby's that's, potentially diluting the product and it doesn't become as valuable because there's only. Yeah, 50% for what it was previously worth. So there's an element of that. I think the fact that a lot of decision makers in sport are male and, don't perhaps it's just difficult when you have always followed men's sport and only really appreciate that.

[00:44:15] And I think, that there's an element of that, but otherwise I think, there's a world out there to be truly understanding what the future fan of women's sports is. And I think a big chunk of that is existing fans of men's what I know from my own personal experience.

[00:44:29] Now I'm, hugely invested now in, in women's sport and taking a much greater interest in that. And that's come from my interest in men's sport. And it's such a clear way to bring across those sports and men's fans of men's sport into women's sport by just going that here it is. And I often think about, Twitter channels, football clubs have separate men and women's Twitter.

[00:44:48] What's the downside of having it on one Twitter channel. We've got all the supports at the men's clubs. What's the worst that can happen. You lose a few followers, but you're gonna be gaining so much more interest in that women's team. So I think there's a lot that can be done there. It just probably just takes a bit of boldness and properly being prepared to take a lot of abuse from people below the line on articles that are.

[00:45:09] But it is a calculation, isn't it bit like the a hundred is making a calculation that the risk of alienating their existing and traditional fan base is outweighed by the number or the opportunity of acquiring new fans through the a hundred competitions. So the number of fans and connections with fans that will lose because we'll alienate them will be outweighed by the number that we'll gain.

[00:45:30] I suspect it's that calculation that people make when thinking we've got all these fans who have a connection with them and the sports, they may be turned off by, if we combine them or if we made women's sport part of the competition and I'm not sure the upside would equate or account for.

[00:45:44] For the downside, but I think that's probably true of some competitions, but I'm sure as eMAR says, I'm sure there are plenty where the upside is significant in relative terms to what they get today. Not only from their traditional, probably domestic markets, but also we just generate a lot of interest in as a kind of experiment in terms of being innovative and being different and cyber in the house a lot of what you're seeing in sports as well, particularly with brands is brands wanting to align themselves with sports that are purpose driven or making a sort of positive difference in the world.

[00:46:17] And obviously gender equality is a big part of that. And you may find that your commercial value through doing something like this would be. Increased significantly, not only because you might be opening up connection with a totally new audience, but also because the attraction of your product and your commercial rights to brands who want to be purpose-driven would, would be increased too.

[00:46:40] So I think it's really worth considering for a a lot of rights holders, but yeah, as I must say it's a challenging one in a, in an industry that can be concerned about change. 

[00:46:50] Unofficial Partner: [00:46:50] We had Jennifer McClearin on the podcast who has written a really good book about women's in the UFC. And UFC is a brand where there's enormously benefited from.

[00:47:00] Basically Ronda Rousey and a handful of very talented women boxes because it's broadened, there's an audience argument, but there's also a perception of argument. Basically, blokes beating the shit out of each other in a cage as then move to something broader as a, entertainment and women have carried a lot of the marketing load of that.

[00:47:18] They haven't been rewarded for that is the point apart from a couple of, superstars at the top, you can see that in other sports. And one of the things I always think about when this topic comes up is there is a conservative, radical trade off here, and it varies from sport to sport region to region.

[00:47:38]But quite often I'm wondering, I'm getting to the point where in terms of the women's sport argument or conversation, we have all sat at conferences and, and. Talked about it for forever and whether or not actually  it needs to be more radical. They need to be, to make bigger decisions rather than the sort of, the peripheral ornaments that, that gather around, as you said earlier about apps and presentation, and look and feel, actually what we're talking about here is fundamental and that's a hard decision and they probably shy away from that.

[00:48:10] But I do think we're getting to the point where if you've got a. A women's only product or even even in football, there is money that would back you to develop something and it might have to be outside of the governing body, the major governing bodies, because they are just too conservative to be, to allow that sort of solution to come through. What do you think?

[00:48:33]Ben Marlow: [00:48:33] I think that's the risk that governing bodies run by allowing checks happened to them rather than by them. And that in a number of sports where, like golf, for example, the emergence of this kind of super league concepts, et cetera, have been a threat to the established order.

[00:48:47] And maybe they, those types of things could be avoided through a sort of coherent global strategy for evolving golf in a way that kind of grows the game globally. And at the same is true of anything. If you're not able to be proactive enough to take advantage of the commercial opportunities that exist and are available to you in the event that you're able to make relevant changes, then it's likely that they'll just happen outside of the system.

[00:49:12]it, But it's something that we've seen. We've done a lot of work with football leagues, for example, And even within the same league, you have a huge level of diversity in the interests and the objectives of stakeholders and the governance structures often give an equal, say to all parties in a decision.

[00:49:30] And as a result, you end up having to tow a hugely compromised line in order to find something that satisfies everyone. And that really makes it difficult to innovate. And one of the, one of the things that we've learned the hard way, I is learning how to navigate the governance structures of sports governing bodies, because the interests are often so diametrically opposed that it's very difficult to find the right way forward.

[00:49:52] And actually, that's another reason why we think. Data and objectivity is very useful because you can turn conversations from what's historically been opinion based or subjective. I, I'm someone who's played the sport or been involved in sport for a long time. I view of it into something a bit more kind of tangible and evidence-based, and I think that's beginning to build consensus among governing bodies where it's historically been quite difficult to generate that consensus.

[00:50:20] But it's definitely a, it's definitely a very interesting era. And it's one of the reasons why I think private equity is very interested in sport because they see some of these opportunities that aren't being captured.

[00:50:29]Unofficial Partner: [00:50:29] You're right  our instinct and our is different by experience quite often, in education, in teaching people often say education strategy is essentially autobiography, so it's where you went to school shapes everything, because you just cannot get out of that lens.

[00:50:41] And there's a little bit of that, quite a bit of that, I think in sports decision-making in terms of it just, it dictates what, where you want to go, because it's just so embedded over such a long period of time. We mentioned super leagues and there's one in golf, but there's one also, that dominated the news.

[00:50:56]And it's almost, you can't get beyond it as a story, which is obviously the super league in football. When that story came through, there was a lot of things wrong with it, but it was a really boring idea. And I'm wondering, could data have saved the super league or at least made the super league more and more interesting concept.

[00:51:18] Omar Chauduri: [00:51:18] I think this is where there's dangers of misinterpreting data in many ways where you can look at, I think one of the natural conclusions that maybe some of the organizers of the Superleague had was you look at champions league games where you look at when liberal, they man United in the premier league.

[00:51:37] And. The size of the audience relative to when Bernie played Brighton or when Maribel played midget or whatever. And you go, okay people are watching these games, so why wouldn't they watch loads more of these? And you could just draw that extrapolation and go, let's play, let's get a league of 12 each other twice.

[00:51:55] And we've got probably a more valuable product than playing over 38 games against smaller teams. But I think you can see the relevance of relegation in particular and the impact that has on games that would otherwise not be interesting to to fans. And you can see that in viewing figures and attendances, where fans do turn up and turn on to, to watch those games.

[00:52:17] And obviously that was a huge issue with the bowl. But mostly I think that there was a huge issue of lack of grit, the ability around you could have teams finishing the table at premier league, but remaining in the super league. And the fact that there's this. You could name the MoMA, certain teams.

[00:52:35] I should say that were more like this finished mid table. And no one was more surprised that, spurs was in the, in a super league than spurs fans. And then, there's the issue of of the connection and the fact that. The champions league which this competition would have superseded has been going since the night, late 1950s, I think, and has a history to it and has narrative to it and has, significance to it that when teams, when they went for the first time and so on, that's a story that people engage with.

[00:53:03]I'm not sure, even if you think about all the ancillary actors in in European football, like broadcast as value, that type of thing, they recognize that fans are connected, still have that connection as they pick up the, the F they got huge FAA cup deal. And I think if you set up a new Anglo Scottish cup, that was brand new and you wouldn't have the same appeal, cause it doesn't have going back to the 1870s, whatever it was, brands recognize that they recognize that, there are certain aspects of competitions that fans really engage with.

[00:53:33] And in the champions league, it is that, and the double leg jeopardy that the fact that you have a, a final, a neutral venue or all this kind of stuff, there's a kind of builds it to an occasion. And that's what they put money into it. And we weren't sure, it wasn't, it certainly wasn't a done thing that they were going to be broadcast that came to the super league and they were going to be brands that invested in it.

[00:53:52] And it was going to be a big success. I think it fell down at a number of years. And it's I say, wasn't it? Is that a foregone conclusion? Yeah, I think very simply in the, again, I hate to go back to the flywheel, but just the way we see the world, I think if you think of quality, jeopardy connection, it was obviously going to be the highest quality arguably sporting competition on the planet.

[00:54:12]We would take the view that the best footballers on the basis that it's the biggest meritocracy in the world and the widest base pyramid are probably the best exponents of their craft than any other, field. So it was undoubtedly going to be a phenomenally high quality competition, but there was a lack of jeopardy at one end of the competition in particular.

[00:54:31] And that really undermined it's interested in sporting credibility with fans. Then there was the connection piece. I think people. Viewed connection in the narrow sort of way of just clubs. So people love brown Madrid. People love Barcelona. People love Manchester United. Therefore we put them all together and we'll have lots of people loving that competition.

[00:54:51] But I think people have a connection with the competitions as well. So people like the premier league and we'll watch games in the premier league that don't involve teams that they support. They like the champions that they will watch champions. The games that don't involve their team is a bit like we, I think we wrote a race piece that we refer to Glastonbury, if you have Coldplay playing at Glastonbury and you're a big Coldplay fan.

[00:55:12] Great. But you might still go to Glastonbury if Coldplay aren't playing because Glastonbury is a significant event. And I think that was probably a slight misunderstanding of what connected existing fan bases to to the sports today. 

[00:55:25] Unofficial Partner: [00:55:25] Yeah. That's a really good point. And it's a good place to pause because I think your work is really raising some central questions. I've really enjoyed this conversation, so thanks very much for coming on, but I really think, yeah, the, some of the things that we've talked about today, there are so many applications to it. And there are so many routes into this conversation. We bump into this quite a lot, from every angle.

[00:55:47] So we've had private equity people on, obviously we've had Lee and, the politicians, sports politicians are, but also people like I'm thinking of you Jonas Baer Hoffman of FIFPro again, it's got a really interesting way into what's in it for the players, they are the player athlete group, we had Sam Renouf the professional triathlete and organization. There's a market there and we can all see  the way in which the sport is presented. But then there's also a strong connection issue, outside of the core people who are doing the sports. So there's loads there. I'd love to continue the conversation, but until then, Ben, Omar, thanks for your time.

[00:56:25] Omar Chauduri: [00:56:25] Thanks, Richard.