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

Jonathan Licht, Chief Sports Officer at Sky Sports, discusses Sky's dominant position in UK sports broadcasting, strategic partnerships, and the future of sports media.

Key topics:

• Sky's portfolio dominance: 225 Premier League matches, 1,000+ EFL games, 118 WSL matches, Formula 1, cricket, golf, NFL, tennis, darts, netball
• The growth paradox: How building sports audiences creates competitive tension at rights renewal time
• Sky Labs & The Hundred: Co-creation process that helped develop franchise cricket format and broaden appeal
• Money & certainty: Why "our money is good" matters to rights holders vs. global streamers
• National champion positioning: Local expertise, bespoke market strategies, and talent relationships as competitive advantages
• On-air talent strategy: Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, and the blurring lines between Sky platforms and independent creator channels like The Overlap
• YouTube & highlights distribution: Free-to-view content as funnel vs. risk of training audiences not to pay; cricket highlights on YouTube
• Women's sport investment: Business rationale + "higher purpose"; WSL growth (20% audience increase), ICC T20 World Cup, position as UK's biggest investor in women's sports
• Streaming vs. linear: Resilience of traditional broadcasters; Sky Sports+ adoption; why global scale doesn't equal market-specific value
• Competitive landscape: Paramount (Champions League), Netflix, Amazon, DAZN; lessons from Ligue 1 direct-to-consumer failure
• Premier League production transition: In-housing away from IMG; operational implications for Sky's hosting role

This podcast is sponsored by The Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH) 

ISH educates sport’s current and future leaders around the world, as the leading independent provider of sports leadership education and insight.

Their Strategic Sport Leadership Masters (MA) is for sports industry executives to study alongside their careers – designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport.

Applications for the next intake on the 2026 Strategic Sport Leadership MA, starting September, are open.

Visit sportshumanities.org for more information

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Hello, it's Richard Gillis here and welcome to Unofficial Partner, the Sports Business Conversation. Today's guest is one of the most influential people in the British sports industry. He's Jonathan Licht, chief Sports Officer at Sky Sports. So we discussed their dominant position in the UK sports broadcasting market, the nature and the changing nature of their relationships and partnerships across the board and the future, not just of Sky, but of the sector itself. It's a very broad and deep conversation with someone who has been at Sky since the mid nineties and he's been at Skyport since 2005. So we talk about portfolio dominance, the home of football, 225 Premier League matches. What does that do? A thousand plus EFL Games, 118 WSL matches Formula One, cricket Golf, NFL, tennis Darts, netball Sky has the lot. So what is a sports broadcaster today? In a world of global streaming, what's the role in co-creation, for example, in the hundred, and how does that play in terms of the relationship between broadcaster and governing body? He's also very good on Skye's relationship with its own talent. Gary Neville set up a business almost in competition with Skye whilst being one of its most highly paid on air stars. So what are the blurring lines between sky's platforms and independent creator channels like the overlap YouTube and highlights distribution free to air content as a funnel, or is it a risk of training audiences not to pay and women's sports investment? What's the business rationale and the higher purpose? And I would hang around for that 'cause it's a really interesting argument from the person who writes the checks

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 1:45

This episode of Unofficial Partner is sponsored by our friends at the Institute of Sport Humanities. I-S-H-I-S-H ISH educates sports current and future leaders around the world as the leading independent provider of leadership, education, and insight for the sector. Their strategic sport leadership masters. The MA is for industry executives to study alongside their careers, designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport applications are now open for the next intake on the 2026 strategic sport leadership MA starting in September. Visit sports humanities.org for more information and there'll be a link in the show notes. Starts to gear up now this time of year. Obviously it, you get into the sort of summer stuff, Wimbledon and, and, uh, which I wanna talk to you about, and,

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 2:49

Okay

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 2:50

The men's and women's. You got the World Cup coming up

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 2:52

Absolutely. Three World Cups this week. Obviously the men's football, the women's cricket, and the World Cup of darts, which presumably we'll be covering in great length during this conversation

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 3:01

I can be honest, the World Cup of Darts has passed me by. I was like, that's,

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 3:05

Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 3:05

wasn't on my,

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 3:07

Don't worry about it. We'll be okay. I think the, England have a decent chance. It's probably more likely to win that of the three

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 3:13

Always with people with jobs like yours, I'm always interested in what do you do all day? Do you know what I mean?

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 3:20

That I'm not doing podcasts or vodcasts.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 3:22

you're not, when you're not recording

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 3:23

good question. Uh, sit- spend a lot of time sitting on the North Circular commuting to Osterley. But I, I always think about, um... I tend to think about my role in sort of three buckets. there's the sort of the internal Sky Sports piece, how, how are we thinking about whatever our priorities are, and we'll, we'll talk about some of those, I'm sure, over the, over the conversation. Then there's a lot of interaction with the broader Sky business, so, you know, how is Sky Sports helping the marketing team, the advertising st- team? Are we aligned on, on whatever we need to be doing? What else is going on with the rest of the business that we need to, to be across? And, you know, in m- in my... with my position, I spend quite a lot of time in that space and around the sort of divisional leads across Sky. And then there's the interaction with the industry, our, our partners, so those at the leagues, rights holders, who- whoever we should be, or teams, whoever we have relationships with. And I enjoy all aspects of the role in, in different ways, but clearly I've had a lot of longevity in my... certainly at Sky and Sky Sports, so got to know lots of people around the industry, and of course there's lots of people at Sky Sports that I've been working with for a long time. I started in 1998, so my first job at Sky, uh, was working in, uh, advertising research in Sky Media. Uh, so based up in, in Victoria, so supporting the, the media arm, but also because it was research, I was doing a lot of, like, audience analysis and, and working with, um, the people that ran the content team, so Vic Wakeling in sport and the various people that ran entertainment, including people like Dawn Airey, uh, over the time. So I started in Sky in, in, in 1998, and then I moved over to sports in 2005. And, uh, I moved over to sport after I wrote a letter to Vic Wakeling saying I was really interested in a role in, uh, in Sky Sports. I may have been one of the last people to get a job by virtue of writing a letter rather than sending an email. Yeah

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 5:18

So, I mean, so the job then was what? Audience analysis, uh, uh, in the early days

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 5:22

yeah, exactly, audience analysis type roles, working with the ad sales team that were trying to engage clients in why they should be buying into Sky, whether that was sport or, or whatever it is. Um, so at that time you're, you know, it, it was a time where we were taking bigger positions in sport. Clearly, you know, the Premier League was, I don't know, probably only four or five years old at that point, and there was still, you know, a much bigger question, I'd guess, about sort of pay TV and the audiences around pay TV and how they were gonna grow and what the sort of trade-offs were around reach and revenue and all those sorts of things. So we were doing, helping with presentations that were being, also being made to the, to the different sports to think about what a partnership with, with Sky could look like

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 6:05

And when you then joined in 2005, so I'm just trying to think, so that year rings a bell because of cricket. That was the year be-

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 6:12

That's right.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 6:13

Channel

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 6:14

asses, yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 6:15

and the Ashes,

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 6:16

Yeah

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 6:16

that happened. What other s- and obviously the Premier League. I'm just wondering if the portfolio looks considerably different now, or you've still got the sort of

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 6:25

Sky has a long-standing Yes, Premier League would have been I don't know, 15 years. We, we had a relationship with the ECB, but it's not as sort of exclusive as it is now. would be in partnership with them. Clearly lots going on in the world of golf, tours golf, um, netball. So lots... Super League, lots of sports there, they would be similar, but the, the dynamic was slightly different. I think 2005, um, we was- we had some, some rights were being broadcast by Setanta, I think, that year. So they'd have had a position in FA Cup. I think they had a position in, um, US tour golf for a period. Um, I think that was a little bit later. I remember, 'cause I remember when that happened when I was at Sky Sports. Um, boxing as well. We had a position in boxing, but they, they did as well. Um, so yeah, there, there was a lot that we, lot that we partner with that we still, we still do, but there's obviously been, you know, an evolution of Sky Sports since then. Formula 1 comes quite a bit later. Um, and our position within a lot of the sports, you know, we- we sort of deeper partnerships in terms of the amount of content that we're showing and the sort of the history of the relationship type thing

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 7:37

Yeah. and then you then get, I suppose there's a about what that means. So the relationship between a s- uh, you know, a, a long-term relationship with Sky, and from there, from the... 'Cause I always think, so, uh, I'm sorry, as a way into, I want to talk about

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 7:54

I wish I'd reminded... My, my, all my history's, all my own history's, uh, my memory's not what it used to be, but it's good that we're talking about

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 8:00

You've

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 8:00

2005.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 8:01

and my wonky

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 8:01

All

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 8:02

assistant. So between

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 8:03

right.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 8:04

gonna have

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 8:04

Okay, good.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 8:05

your,

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 8:05

Yeah, well, we can make it up between us then, yeah

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 8:07

But there's a... I, I remember there was, we had, um, were talking about cricket, and obviously it's a big summer. You've got the Women's World Cup. We got, you know, just had a test match which,

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 8:18

Yeah

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 8:19

finished in two and a half days, three days. But is an interesting one because if you go over the span of the time, you've got the rise of 2020 cricket, obviously, that sort of appeared, then got The Hundred. And

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 8:32

Mm-hmm.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 8:33

I'm always interested in The Hundred 'cause obviously s- people underestimate the role that Sky played in that, in the development of that. And I just wanted to sort of use that as a, as a sort of a way in really just to say, can you explain what Sky's role was in it? 'Cause I remember Sky Labs being mentioned

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 8:50

Yes. Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 8:51

and your

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 8:52

Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 8:52

was always associated w- you know, was in the sort of, in that area. 'Cause I remember you as the strategy guy at Sky. So talk to me about how that evolved.

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 9:01

Okay. So I'm not quite sure where the question started, but, but you're right. It's, and it's, it's effectively, I think, 'cause there's been a few pieces written recently about 20 years of a,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 9:10

Yes

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 9:11

more exclusive relationship, uh, with Sky, and sort of a lot of history about sort of 2005, and the audience figures, and the history of that deal. Um, and yeah, I think, y- you know, English cricket have had a lot of successes in that period that we're talking about, that, you know, the women's team won a home World Cup in 2017, the 50 overs, the men's, uh, did 2019. Uh, I think, I don't know quite how many home Ashes series have been won across that period, but I think at least three. Um, so, so there's been a period of success for English cricket. In not the last deal, but the deal before, um, there was a very specific ambition on the ECB's har- behalf to look at effectively, I guess, more expansive audience or how do you sort of protect the long-term health of cricket in this country. So how do you sort of broaden the appeal of cricket? And a big part of that was gonna be a, um, a franchise competition. Obviously, the IPL had probably been up and running, I don't know, maybe

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 10:11

Six

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 10:12

seven years. I don't quite know exactly when, what year that would've, would've started. Um, so to bring a version of that. There'd already, there already was County Twenty20 cricket, the Blast competition, which is, is, uh, important for the counties and, you know, is a, is a good way for them to be filling their grounds. But, you know, almost how do you take that to the next stage? And It was the ECB that came up with the sort of the headline concept around the, the sort of change in the format. But then there was a whole load of work about, you know, what needs to go on around that? What are the important factors? What is gonna make this work? What's the experience gonna be like in the grounds? How is that gonna relate to the broadcast experience? And that was the sort of process that, that went into Sky Labs. And I, and I absolutely can't take too much credit, although the team were very, very, very closely involved. It was almost like a sort of two or three-week immersive experience where you had a group of people from the ECB, a group of people from, from Sky, and then you bring in lots of external expertise from sort of all different and surprising, uh, sort of walks of life. It could be someone that was an expert in experiential. It could be some, I don't know, professor that was an expert on time or something like that, that would just help people think about what is it that's gonna be important? What's it gonna catch people's attention? How are you gonna get more families interested in coming to cricket or younger people? And a big sort of premise around that, one of the ideas is that people need to know who's winning, you know, at kind of, uh, almost any point of the game. And that was sort of why one of the ideas is sort of like the balls go down and then the balls go up. There's sort of a simplicity

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 11:48

Yeah

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 11:48

it all. So there, there was very much a sort of co-creation, uh, work that went on with The Hundred, and I think You know, there's a- there's been, it's fair to say, quite a bit of noise about the competition in the sort of intervening years. But for me, there's no doubt, particularly for the experience of going to a Hundred game and what it's done for the equity of the women's game, the fact that you have those sort of the double headers, the head-to-heads, the experience in the ground, the noises that you hear in the ground from younger people that are going to cricket has undoubtedly been a success for The Hundred. I think for Sky on sort of audience-wise, yes, we've broadened our appeal, but I don't think it's been quite as sort of remarkably stark as you potentially see in the venues. And what you've had in the last year, you've had this, um, this moment where the, the c- the English cricketers had, you know, in- investment levels from external, whether quite a few, you know, people associated with the IPL or people coming out of investment houses in the US have committed amounts of money to English cricket that would have just seemed unprecedented going back a few years ago.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 12:53

numbers. Yeah

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 12:55

bought in to this sort of concept of growth and sort of owning, owning, uh, a position in, in English cricket and, you know, that hopefully is gonna be something that puts English cricket in sort of great strength. You know, the game itself is, is not without its, its, its challenges. You know, clearly future of test cricket is, is something that's debated but as you said, we've just seen the finish of, of a, of a test match. Actually, we had a, you know, pretty strong audience. We had a peak of around a million people watching Sunday lunchtime when the game finished. There's still a sort of healthy audience of people that want to engage with test cricket, lots of people that wanna go to the game. But through The Hundred, what we're doing is, is effectively broadening that appeal and, and trying to sort of make sure the health of cricket overall is gonna be strong long into the future. And I hope that English cricket, men's and women's, is gonna be in a strong place as a result of that

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 13:47

Well, it's

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 13:47

for a long time

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 13:48

it, I mean, I, I wasn't teeing you up for a sort of 2005 conversation 'cause I've had that on the podcast many times and so have you, and it wasn't about that. But it's sort of interesting about, what a broad- it gets to sort of what a broadcaster is now, you know, and what Sky, how, its sort of worldview, if you like, and what it, how it sees itself in the, a market that is changing, in many different ways. And it's sort of interesting that cause we've got the renewal of The 100 coming up in 2008. We had Lalit Modi on here talking about, you know, where the mon- what's gonna happen at that moment, and we've had the ECB on and various people. But it's sort of interesting, uh, to look at it and say, right, okay, that it doesn't feel like a normal, broadcast rights holder relationship in that

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 14:30

Yeah

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 14:30

Because if I was Sky, I would say, if you take The 100 somewhere else, I'm gonna be pretty pissed off 'cause I was, we were there at the beginning."

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 14:39

Yeah, look, I think there's, um... As I said, look, w- we do feel like we were there at the beginning of the co-creation. We were answering a very specific challenge together with our partner about how you grow interest in the game, and that is a kind of extreme version, but it's, it's kinda not dissimilar to any of the partnerships that we have in terms of, you know, the slight, I don't know what you call it, an irony or whatever the right word would be. But you go back to wherever you go, start, you talk about Premier League, you talk about darts, you talk about anything is... You know, we are working to make these sports successful so that, you know, people want to watch and people want to engage, and we have had, you know, we have been successful at that, but, but kind of like slightly our punishment is these rights then come back to market, and there's a competitive process around that. So yes, it's great that we can, we can prove the growth of a sport, and we can really get more people, you know, to the start line, but, you know, then we come and get sort of that, that relationship gets tested. The kind of the good news is we think we're a very good partner f- to sport, particularly in this market, and, you know, we have more right certainty than we've probably ever had. So effectively something is working for our partners as well. Yes, our money is good and that helps, you know, them and, you know, partnering with, with Sky gives them a certain certainty. But for customers, we think that's good as well. Like the, the choices that we've made, where to invest our money, we're kind of seeing the returns in good audience stories across the board and, you know, actually the choice and the value that we're giving people i- is, is being well-recognized by, by customers. So yeah, I get the point around the hundreds and, you know, wouldn't it be, you know, we've done this and we've done that, but it- it's kinda not dissimilar to any of the relationships that we have where we've helped grow games. I mean,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 16:27

Yeah

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 16:27

have thought Four years ago, three years ago, you'd be getting 4 million audiences for, for the World Darts but that's what's happened through the phenomenon that's Luke Littler. You know, there's a lot of people that have been involved in, in the sort of that success and that sort of trajectory but actually the platform that we give a sport is, is a really significant part of that. Same if you look at the audience growth for Formula 1 over the years, you know. So any number of these stories, in theory what we're doing is we're creating the conditions to make it harder for us to, to kind of to renew these rights. But the good news is kind of it, tends to be playing out okay for us and good for customers

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 17:04

And

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 17:04

at the moment

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 17:05

that sort of marketing role of Sky and the, you know, the broadcast, the retail end of broadcast, if you like, to use a crude term. But you've got... I think it's, again, a bit underestimated. We get a lot of people coming on the podcast who are sort of launching single sport or direct-to-consumer sort of ideas, and you get it intellectually, but you haven't got the marketing sort of muscle and front and pr- pres- presentation that a major broadcaster, and particularly, you know, a Sky brings to that. And I'm

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 17:36

Yeah

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 17:36

that now plays 'cause I think sort of five years at least, but probably more, you'd have gone back and said, "Yeah, the future is streaming, OTT, direct, D2C," all of these acronyms. And now we're thinking, do you know what? I, I, I'm getting... You know, I'm not only rose-tinted glasses for newspapers, I'm a bit rose-tinted for, you know, just give me one ticket

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 17:58

Yeah, no, I th-- look, I think that's right that, you know, at various points people have written the story or wanted to write the story, written the story that, you know, the demise of this, the demise of that, someone's coming to eat your lunch. Um, and I th- you know, the evidence is actually to date has, has not been that. If anything, you know, we feel more robust, we feel in better shape with, with our partnerships than ever before. You know, our position as the UK's leading sports broadcaster, we think, you know, it's not-- we don't say that in a, hopefully not in a, in an arrogant way, but we say it in a, in a sort of slight confidence because actually we've got a really positive story to tell, whether that's, you know, record audiences in, in, in 2025 for Sky Sports over a weekend or over a day, or over a month, or over a year. They're kind of, they're kind of all there. So the, the, the, the offering is really robust and resilient and in many places growing. I think from a sort of positioning perspective, and if you think maybe we'll come onto the streamers in a little bit, but sort of Sky, I think where we've kind of increasingly see ourselves and sort of positioned ourselves as a, kind of like a national champion. Like, if we are the best people to help you connect with the UK interested sort of sports audience, you know, we have that, whether it's what we're doing in Super Sunday or whether we're doing how we sort of complement that from a 360 perspective from Sky Sports News or our digital estate, which I think in many, the scale and the importance of that I think is often underestimated. Yes, a streamer can let you sort of pop up in 100 markets overnight, and some of them will do that brilliantly well, But it's not gonna be a specific experience for your market, you know? An example could be, you know, how you might watch the NFL. We, you know, we have a studio show from our big studio in Osterley. We have great talent lineup w- um, whether that's Jason Bell or Phoebe or Ossie or Neil or whoever that is that we have presenting, comes on after, so around Super Sunday, so you've already had, you know, two or three million people watching a big Sunday afternoon game. You carry them through int- into Sunday night, and they have a really sort of tailored experience around how a UK sport fan may want to engage with the NFL. You could also watch Red Zone on another channel. Actually, you can watch multiple live against events. If you watch that through a streamer, you're probably getting a version that's being seen in lots of countries that may not have any sort of thing tailored around that, you know? I'm not criticizing it because that model works for them. But I think for us, what we're doing is we're really working with our partners to try and understand what's important to them, how we want to talk to audiences in our market, um, in a way that's kind of relevant and authentic. So I think that play has maybe come even more to the fore. Now that, you know, we do have streaming capability through the launch of Sky Sports Plus, through the volume of the EFL games that we do. So we have the technical ability. We don't necessarily have the, the geography. We have the relationship with Comcast, so through NBC and through some deals that they've done, you know, effectively they're acquiring rights in multiple territories or we're working with them on certain rights. But you're not getting 100 markets, but you're getting what we think is the best experience in the UK market, and the UK market remains a very important to rights holders and leagues in the world

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 21:08

That, there's a, there's a few things that bounce off that which i- are really interesting and, and I just wanna follow up on. So you've got, um, you mentioned there our money is good, which is a really interesting and

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 21:19

Certain, I would say.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 21:21

yeah. And

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 21:22

think I, I hope, I hope I d- hope it came across in the right way.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 21:25

That's an interesting phrase because in other markets at other times, things have gone wrong. Not for Sky, but for other broadcasters and I'm thi- I'm thinking, you know, France being a good example of where something has happened which has sort of been cataclysmic for a league because of the broadcast. That nature of that question, where's the money gonna come from? And we're, we're, we're in a time of consolidation and people are putting things together. I think there's a question about that the other broadcaster in the Premier League and you mentioned Setanta, and I can think, you know, who's been in that slot, BT, ESPN going back. I- there's sort of DAZN, there's Amazon been popping in and out. How do you view that slot? It's obviously a legal sort of, uh,

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 22:08

there's a position where no single buyer for, for Premier League, yeah, as it stands.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 22:12

the

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 22:13

Yeah

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 22:13

of that and what the, what the, you know, the unintended consequences of that sort of decision have been for the punter and the viewer and for the, for the rights market. But where do, where do you see that, that bit of the jigsaw? 'Cause it's, g- it's very hard to come at Sky from that So we've got, a moment where you know that there's a Warner Brothers Paramount merger happening, and whether that is different than what's come in the past,

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 22:39

guess if we start with the sort of certainty point, and I think a really big, another sort of big moment for Sky and our partners was actually coming out of COVID. And I probably bore my colleagues talking about that. Or probably a lot of things, but that particularly that topic because I do think that was such an unusual, like n- no one in, you know, you, you could never have imagined an experiment where sport didn't happen to try and help you understand sort of almost in a way how, how important sport was in people's lives. But it was such a sort of challenge to the sporting bodies, to the leagues, to Sky in, in many respects, that we worked through in such a partnership way that we came through them in a really sort of strong, sort of really feeling stronger. And part of that was because actually I think that the, our partners understood that they were in good hands in dealing with Sky. Not only good hands as we talk about sort of financial certainty and taking a long-term view that we'd had already to that point, but going forward. But also that when sport came back, and it came back in a volume that had, was sort of unprecedented, all Premier League games were being covered, and they were being covered in a way that was quite operationally challenging. When you're partnering with Sky, you're gonna get hopefully a professionalism and an expertise that means that that's all gonna be very suitably and well handled, and it's all gonna show up well for customers. So I, I do think that gave us a kind of a real sort of strength and resilience around our partnerships, and we've sort of come through that, and I think that's been evidenced by deals that have happened subsequently, which have given us sort of more longer term certainty than we've ever had, and that we can then pass on to, to customers. So that's sort of a, sort of a high level. Then you go sort of specifically to the, to the Premier League and yeah, you, you, you know, you're absolutely right that there's been lots of different ver- there've been lots of versions of, of broadcasters that have had packs of games and, um, you know, there's been lots of, you know, in previous role I've spent a lot of time around football fixtures and the selection of football fixtures, and people sort of talk about that as like a game of battleships or whatever it was when you were trying to select the games and the picks processes. But it's, you know, now we're in a position that last year Sky showed, Sky Sports showed 225 games. You know, that's a, I think that's 70% I think, of all, of all, I may not have got that quite right, but it, there's 380 games in total. Someone can do the math. It won't be too far off. So there's lots of games being shown that actually I think our position, it's particularly for Premier League, that sort of leadership position is kind of clearer than it's ever been. In a world where we used, came from where we might have been sort of 98/40 or something like that,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 25:12

Yeah

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 25:12

we might have got a bit more like, "Oh, this weekend we've got three games, someone's got two games." You know, what's the leadership? How are pe- how are our audience thinking? Whereas I feel like it's now, you know, particularly for, for Premier League, the sort of- And it is, you know, fundamentally a backbone to our sports business. Um, and we're sort of comfortable to say that, um, that we're in a, we're in a strong position. Now, clearly there are other football competitions where other people have their own positions, but overall, our position in, in football has sort of never been broader or bigger. So 225 Premier League games. This last season was the first year of our five-year deal for WSL. We're at 118 games. I think it's sort of something like 90% of all matches, although the league is expanding in this coming season. The year before we extended our, um, EFL deal, where we've gone to over 1,000 games and we were making this commitment where we were gonna show each of the teams at least 20 times in this last season, which was a fantastic SPFL season. We showed more games than ever before. So I think we sort of focus on what we're doing, focus on our leadership position. That's not to say that we are complacent, but we, we sort of judge ourselves on our, the relationship we have with customers. Are we giving them value? We have to prove that every day, every week, every month. So whether that's football or whether that's the breadth of what we do, that's kind of what we are focused on. And that's, you know, how does that story evolve? So then you have a tender process at the back end of last year. We come out of that with some UEFA rights on Thursday night competition. So season 27/28, we'll have a new story where we go from 1500 matches in total to 1,850. And I'm not saying you have to watch every one of those games. That's not how we judge ourselves. What we wanna say, if you are a fan of a certain team, that we are giving you more value and more choice than you ever before. You know, if you support a EFL team, now Sky Sports is giving you a sort of a level of commitment that, that didn't exist before.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 27:04

Was there, uh, the 70% number is interesting. I, I sometimes ask, and I ask Barney this question about what, how many-- much is enough to say that you're the home of something? Is 70% the number-ish? Feels like that's a reasonable

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 27:17

Well, it's 70% of all games, but I, I don't know what percentage of the televised games. I think-- I, I don't, I don't think there's a, you know, different... In all the sports that, you know, if you think about almost like our, our, um, genre channels, that would give you the, the clues to the sports that we sort of see ourselves where we're sort of very much the leader. So whether that be tennis and the tours, okay, we have one of the four Grand Slams. But in terms of volume of tennis that's covered, you know, leadership. Golf, I think, you know, every, you know, uh, the US tour, the European tour, all the majors, men's and women's. Cricket with ECB position. Football, we've talked about. Formula 1. Um, so

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 27:54

So rugby and tennis are the, are the one, the obvious ones from my point of view that, that aren't there and, and

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 27:59

Well, tennis is there for the tour's perspective, for the WTA and the ATP. You know, there's a huge volume. I think it's something like 4,000 games of tennis or something, but, but not three of the four Grand Slams, I accept that. Um, yeah, rugby union is, is, um... We don't have a, a genre channel. Um, we have shown at various times over my time, probably virt- even going back in, in 1998, I think we had some Six Nations games and then, uh, but, you know, whether that be Premiership or European Rugby or the internationals, we sh- we've shown all the Lions tours we showed the last one. Um, yeah, I mean, there'll be lots of reasons why we are where we are in rugby, but that's not because we sit here and say it's a sport we're not interested in or we don't think people are interested in

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 28:46

the, is it the sort of reverse of your COVID point? So, you know, in terms of not about COVID, but is a an idea that rugby broke the relationship with Sky by, by going, um, elsewhere. And then got, not you personally, but Sky has got a long institutional memory, and it's gonna be hard for rugby to come back in. Is there anything in that framing?

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 29:05

I think there was a point where someone saw more value in the rugby opportunity than, than we did, Whether that was the deal that BT would've done for the Premiership, I think originally, you know, at a level that we weren't prepared to go to, whether we even specifically had that opportunity, I can't quite recall. Um, but I think, I guess without the sort of danger of oversharing type thing is like,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 29:28

Feel free to

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 29:28

of... We talk about leadership within sport, but actually a big part of, for Sky Sports is, is the breadth of the portfolio. People want to have the opportunity to watch Formula 1 as well as cricket, as well as football, as well as tennis, as well as NFL, boxing, et cetera. And sort of one piece coming out or whatever, make an analogy, coming out of that doesn't necessarily make a big difference to the overall value proposition and the, our overall ability to generate revenue. So what then becomes problematic is if a sport comes out, can we then go and show the business case to say that bringing it back in is gonna be able to drive that level of value? So it's like incrementally it becomes harder for us probably when a sport has moved on and there, this will be, you know, there'll be, there'll be a number of examples of sports that we've shown over the last 20, 25 years where we were paying a level of money that is well above the level that's being paid now, even for rights that may be out still in the market. But it's hard for us to create a business case for that because our business has moved on. There's no one sitting here saying, "We're not gonna do business with that person or that league or that..." 'Cause, you know, we, we need to, we, we, we want to offer what's of value to customers. That's how we'll be successful. And, um, but the dynamics and, you know, as the investments get bigger in certain sports, some of the ability to make significant investments in other sports and retain pricing at a level that we think is suitable and retain the level of profitability that we want to, that, that's where that becomes a challenge for us.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 31:02

So, you mentioned European and, European Games, and that's again a sort of interesting bit of the jigsaw and the last round of rights, the relevant sort of packaging of UEFA rights. The story running into that, it was gonna be a streamer package, there was gonna be a global thing. Paramount came in for that. So in terms of the packaging, you've now got your Netflixed and you've got the sort of big global streamers. How do you see these rights holders evolving their offers in that world? Do you think that that is the, the, that sort of relevant package, as I'm calling it,

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 31:41

Yeah

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 31:41

that's gonna be something others will look at and copy? Or do you think actually no, it didn't work

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 31:46

Um, well, they, they did come to market offering a global pack, and they also came to market running, uh, a number of big European, um, markets at the same time, simultaneous. I think that was the first time that had been done to that level. I think it's... And look, again, you'd be much better off asking them, but my perspective is for these rights, these are quite unique rights in that, you know, they're not at a totally dissimilar value in these markets. People's ability to want to trade across markets or think about multiple markets at the same time is probably higher. You know, if you're running a, let's say, a Premier League process across five European markets at the same time, you know, everyone's gonna be disproportionately focused on the UK, that it kind of doesn't really make sense to be thinking about how are those markets gonna trade in France or Germany at that same time. So it was quite, it's quite a unique set of circumstances that's relevant to that spec... excuse the term, to that specific, uh, right. So I think they were taking advantage of that, that people may want to deal, um, in multiple markets at the same time. I try and think, you know, when you talk about global streaming, you think about the sort of the, the big sports, you're always gonna think about, well, what's the dynamic? Well, yes. Okay, so there, there's lots of talk in the market about, uh, US domestic NFL rights and, um, what's gonna happen there. But the numbers that you're talking about are so big there that the international component might just be an add-on as opposed to something that's sort of run very, very separately. Or it might be that the entities w- that want to involve themselves in that process want to have an international position, you know, whether that be Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, or maybe someone like Paramount, Paramount Plus, CBS, um, or Disney or Comcast, but, but they're not going to disrupt, you know, their key market. They're not gonna let that get in the way of, of what they're, what, what they're about and how many markets that they're gonna pick up. So I think there's, you know, there's, there's almost so many sort of circumstances at play that there's very rarely a kinda one size fits all approach for these things. Um, but you can see it emerging a little bit more because you've got these capab- companies with the capability and the desire to take rights out across multiple territories

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 34:08

And I guess the, there, there's a, just the, risk reward of that is g- talks back to your previous point about the, the, I guess the audience relationship that

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 34:18

Yeah, the, yeah, where you like, do you want... Again, you look at an example like the, the Premier League who, who've been sort of rightly lauded for a long time about how successful that they've been internationally. You know, that they... But, and they run, I think, virtually a bespoke process by market. Maybe they've sort of clumped together more territories recently, but over the years they've been out trying to understand who is the best partner in this market, who understands you, you know, the go-to-market here and what we need to do. And they've been, you know, they've seen the value and that seems to have been vindicated in, in a kind of like territory by territory approach. And, you know, our view is if you have that view, if you wanna be in the UK, then a, you know, a really strong partner is gonna be working with Sky Sports

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 35:00

Does it, does it matter that the, the, uh, Premier League productions going in-house away from IMG, does that matter to Sky at all? Is that, or you, is it just something you're

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 35:12

pretty.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 35:12

from the side and

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 35:14

Well, it doesn't matter to us for the moment. We've, you know, Three years left of, of, of our deal. I said, we host broadcasted 225 matches, uh, for our market, you know, including we had things like the last day ever, all games were being broadcast at the same time. That was a sort of a huge operational effort from our team and sort of credit editorially and everything operation that went on in delivering those sort of 10 host broadcasting matches. So

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 35:37

I'm a Spurs fan, so it's quite a stressful day for me. So I'll,

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 35:39

Yeah, I can imagine. It wasn't stressful enough for us, as in it never quite... You know, we wanted the idea that the league table would flip at some point, but it never quite happened. But not that you were in the market for that. But, um, but still again, you know, a really good and big day for us. But sort of going back to the original question, you know, we have an interaction with Premier League or PLP, and now we'll, we'll, we'll have an interaction with, with the new entity, but for the moment it's, it remains sort of business as usual on that for us

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 36:07

And that story, obviously people would land on that and say, "Oh, well, that is a route to Primflix. That's the..." You know. always the, the pushback on that is, You're joking, aren't you? Are they gonna go direct in the UK?" You know, Singapore is a completely different question than the UK

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 36:25

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'm not surprised people will make... You know, people want to write the story 'cause it's an exciting story. Whether it's a real story or, or not, time will tell. But, you know, we talked a little bit and you sort of picked me up on the use of my phrase like the money's good. You don't have to go too far across the waters to see, you know, some of the impact from going direct to consumer and the implications that has for the sort of the economics of the league. So it's, uh, it wasn't, didn't seem like that was the first choice for that league. Um, it may not have been the second, third, or fourth choice. So there's reasons when people have sort of looked over the edge or sort of stared it down why it does or doesn't make sense. So I, I think, like before we sort of get carried away with the excitement of the story or doing the sort of like serviette maths, you've got to sort of really sort of like say, "Okay, we quite like the certainty from the UK, from the US, from all of our partners all around the world," and you know that, that's pretty good and we quite like the idea that we've got 50 or I don't know how many different entities that are waking up every day thinking about how can we serve the growth of the Premier League rather than necessarily saying, Let's put it all in one basket and, and make it our own problem." But, you know, famous last words and I'm... Maybe someone will play this back to me one day.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 37:39

So talking of, um, you know, serviette maths, which I like the phrase, I'm gonna steal. Um, the, the rise of the sort of creator, the Mark Goldbridge, Gary Neville type, uh

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 37:51

he'd be d- Well, they're, they're now bedfellows, so maybe we'll have to accept the connection of the two of them. Yeah

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 37:56

Um, I guess the question is, is how you view that world. It's, there's a p- there's a sort of, again, it's a, there's a sort of inevitability about it, but it's quite interesting in terms of the way in which... So the Bundesliga being the obvious thing. They come in, they give, you know, the Mark Goldbridge picks up some Friday rights and people say, "Oh, it's the start of something. It's YouTube on the march. So there's two questions. One is, what do you think about that in terms of just the trend and where you think that's going? The other bit to it is it's quite interesting about your relationship with your own talent. So in terms of whether or not are... I mean, people talk about disintermediation, which is one of those words I can't really say properly. But there's a sense that they're building businesses in opposition to you guys who are paying their salaries. So could you just talk to me about this? 'Cause it's quite an interesting moment we're in.

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 38:42

Yeah. Um, so I guess I'll start with the sort of the second part. I, I guess you're alluding to people like Gary, the business that he's got. Um, he and other talent are clearly a very important part of what we do and kind of, of our, of our brand. How we show up to customers comes through how you interact with Sky Sports F1 or cricket or, or football. So they're a big part of that, and the fact that they, you know, as we would encourage them to sort of be, to be entertaining, but to be welcoming and authentic and intelligent around how they're being... You know, the insights that they're offering. We want them to do it in a, you know, in a modern way, but they're doing it in a way that, you know, works for our audience on the platforms and for, um, you know, what we are asking people to pay for the content that we're offering and, you know, those personalities and those strands, whether that's Monday Night Football, um, or Super Sunday or as, again, across the sports. The relationships that we have with those talent are very important. And I think they're important to them because I think they give them also a kind of a credibility and a sort of a center of the kind of agenda-setting world. You know, when Gary Neville says something, he's saying something on Super Sunday, that carries a weight. If he's saying something somewhere else or an ex-footballer's saying something just sort of out in the ether, you're kind of slightly, you know, sort of maybe slightly less interested in that.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 40:03

Do you think we make a distinction between, so if Gary Neville says something on the overlap versus he says something on a Sunday on Sky or a Monday night, is that attribution blurred? I, in my mind, I don't, I... It's a sort of, I

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 40:18

Depends whether we want it to be. Depends whether we want the attribution

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 40:21

he says.

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 40:22

or not. Yeah. Is it, is it good? Then we'll take it. Um, is it gonna cause us a problem? Then it's Gary Neville, the overlap. But no, but, uh, you can't say there isn't an association, but clearly there is, there is a line with these things. So we enjoy the relationship that we have with, with, with the talent. As I say, it's a really big part of how we kind of show up for people. We think about how we want to evolve the lineup and, you know, and we think, you know, rightly so, we get recognized or the teams get recognized for the quality of the, of the production and whether that's bringing in a new face like Stuart Broad in cricket or Bernie Collins in Formula 1 or Daniel Sturridge in, in the football. There'll be lots of other examples. People that we're bringing on that we think can help evolve our storytelling and how we show up for people, we can't, distance ourselves from the importance of, of, of these individuals because they are the mouthpiece for our, for our coverage of... No, you know, people aren't listening to what the head of football is saying about football. They're listening to what Jamie Carragher's saying or, um, or Neville or whoever it is. So it is a really important part for us. In terms of, you know, what they're doing in other spaces or what other people are doing in other spaces, of course, it's interesting for us and, you know, people talk about like sort of the Attention, engagement, you know, particularly what's going on away from the live, what's happening Monday to Friday, and there is more contention in that space, and it's probably harder, let's say, to win in that space because the barriers to entry are much lower. If you, if you wanna look at the live pictures from the Premier League, you kind of only really got one place to go. If you wanna hear someone say something about the Premier League, you've got lots of places where to go. And we have a presence in social and long-form social. And as I said a bit earlier, you know, I think people underestimate, you know, how strong, how strongly we show up in those places. Like Gary Neville will be doing a podcast on the gantry after Super Sunday, and you get a million people listening to the 40 minutes because he's in the moment, he's seen the game, he's reacting, he's been at the biggest game of the weekend or one of the biggest games of the weekend, and he's giving, you know, very interesting and engaging reaction to that. But we can't be everywhere at all times to everything. We do sort of observe the trends like, you know, you said you're a Spurs fan, I'd be interested to hear... You know, I presume you listen probably more, maybe you do, but to more sort of fan podcasts than you've ever done. I certainly know that I do for my team because they're going really deep on my team, and I want to hear that. Sky Sports is not necessarily gonna have the resource to tell you more than anyone else about Tottenham 24/7, but we're gonna, you know, we're gonna cover the big things, and we're gonna tell you, you know, the transfer stories, and if you wanna watch the Arsenal game or the time when they're playing Manchester City, you're coming back to Sky Sports. So we understand our place, and I think we s- you know, we believe in live, and we believe that live is, you know, really strong, really resilient, and where ultimately people want to go. But there's lots of people around live and it, you know, and that's, that's more of a kind of a, you know, a b- I don't know what the right phrase would be, but it's not, not free-for-all, but there's lots more going on in that space. And some people are making sense of it, and some people are trying to, you know, build businesses off the back of it,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 43:25

Can, can

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 43:26

and some people

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 43:27

a, there's, there's a couple of things. One is can you see a, whether it's the next cycle or whatever, but they, there is a personality-led channel that is a serious contender for major rights in whatever sport, you know? And it might

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 43:41

it, it happens in some places already. I think in Brazil particularly, I think there was... Yeah. And their partners are, you know, super impressed with it, and I think it works well in the market. but I don't, don't know so much about the Brazilian market that I understand the sort of the economics of some of their TV rights deals. But again, I think, you know, perhaps respectfully with reference to the Bundesliga, you, mentioned them earlier, whether, yes, I understand the approach that they've taken. Was that the first choice? If someone would offered them multiple millions of pounds to be the more exclusive partner, where would they go? Maybe they'd have chosen to take the route that they've, that they've done, but I still think that that's, you know, yes, you might get a level of reach. Um, how strongly that will continue, you know, people might tune in, watch the first game. What was that like? I quite liked it. I'll come back for week two. But I, I, I'd be interested if someone wanted to have a look at the analysis across the season to see, you know, sort of like how well that engagement has stood up. I don't know the answer. Maybe the answer is stood up super well, but enough that they want to turn up the next time that there's a process and put millions of pounds down. I'm, I'm not quite sure. Let's see

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 44:46

The, um, I guess it's a part of the bigger question, which is our relationship with YouTube, just generally in terms of people who are watching, but also people, you know, the rights holders, Sky. And you mentioned cricket. I, I consume now cricket coverage mainly on YouTube and I,, it still feels wrong, someone my age, I'm, I'm sitting there, how, you know, how am I allowed to

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 45:07

You see some about highlights or you talk about live or

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 45:10

Uh, highlight. I'm not talking about piracy. I'm not talking about... I'm just talking

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 45:13

I just took...

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 45:14

talking about highlighted, uh, sport, which you've paid a lot of money for and I know it's not as good experience, but sometimes I think 'cause you've got this idea that we're gonna, you know, you're bringing people in, and it's mania sort of people much younger than me, through a funnel and they end

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 45:29

Yep

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 45:29

you know, paying at some point for something. The other argument is that actually y- we're training people to not pay anything, and they're going back up. They're going the wrong way up the funnel. And I just wonder what your view on it, 'cause I, I, I s- it still feels strange and it's... I still wonder how and why high quality sport is going for nothing on YouTube. And I know it's about audience and demographics, but it still feels

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 45:55

it, it'll, it, it, it'll, it will be a, a balance in that, you know, we, we have to understand our business. You know, is the investment that we're making in cricket and the live rights that we're putting on Sky Sports cricket or Sky Sports main event, or when we're taking it more broadly, does that continue to make sense for us in, you know, the people that are, let's say, willing to pay to subscribe? What do those numbers look like? What do the audience looks like? And all those numbers are growing, but they're growing at the same time, as you say, more people are maybe watching highlights on YouTube or engaging with the Sky Sports app. So it's kind of, it's kind of working at the moment. Now, you might say, "Well, you've got a problem 'cause you won't be able to put the genie back in a bottle down the line." But at the moment, all the kind of indicators for us are that, you know, people that still want to engage with that live experience, as I've sort of touched on, we've seen record audiences sort of kind of across the board for all, for, for all of our, all of our live sports. And we don't get complacent on that. We don't say it will, you know, hopefully it will continue forever, but it, it may not do, and we need to understand how people's consumer habits are changing and, you know, how they want to engage with different sports and when they wanna do it. But we are offering so much live sport that actually we think we're giving more value than ever. I don't understand. Are, are you... So you're not a subscriber to Sky Sports, is that right? Is that why you're watching the cricket or are you...

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 47:12

in and out. I was a complete full-fat subscriber, and now I, um, dip in for through bits of Premier League season, but also Ryder Cup, The Open, blah, blah, blah. So I might as well get a full subscription frankly, 'cause I'm fannying around trying to find, you know, deal. But there is a... Yeah, I d- I just wasn't watching enough of it to justify the full membership, and I'm not that big a football fan that I'm consumed every weekend with it.

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 47:39

Okay. Well, this is a, is a growing part of our, of our offering, and people have... I guess there's a little bit more fluidity to that as you've kind of described, sort of coming in and out for events, whereas, you know, the Sky, traditional Sky base remains quite stable. Um, people sort of been with us for, for quite a long tenure and hopefully getting a lot of value out of subscription. Now TV, we have a bit more movement of coming sort of in and out for events. Um, look, I- I guess as much as a question for us as it's a question for the rights holders. If, if your cricket demand is being satiated through watching highlights, you know, we, we need to keep an eye on that. But the eye at the moment is telling us that still, you know, as I said, a million people wanna watch the conclusion of the England-New Zealand test match. There's gonna be lots of people that are gonna wanna watch the women's ICC World 20, T20 so it's kind of working for us. If we saw a world where that was dropping and all of the, the kind of the, the viewing was, was moving across to YouTube, then that would be a problem 'cause we can't monetize you as well over there. So then you're, you're sort of slightly back round to the fundamentals of everything and you know how it adds up and whether you're talking about Bundesliga or whether you're talking about creators. For the moment, certainly from our experience, you just can't monetize the audience in that way. So it, it's, yes, it's important, it's good to get, you know, your content seen by as many people, but you have to retain kind of a, the sort of premium experience. It's like in a slightly different space where people are paying

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 49:04

YouTube are calling themselves TV and, you know, they're using premium content to, as part of their premiumization of their channel. So you, you know, it's, there's, there's a lot on YouTube, a great deal on YouTube which isn't premium by any stretch of the imagination. But the presence of high-end sports rights is doing a very good marketing job for YouTube, isn't it, in this period that we're in?

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 49:29

In most instance in this market, you're still talking about non-live. There are sports that are showing up live in a way. You know, the WSL is, is quite a bit of content that, that works and is shown on, on, on YouTube and they're, and they're driving an audience there. I think their rights in that instances are not geo-blocked, but there's not many examples of people showing live sport just in the UK, I think where that's a sort of primary monetization model. Um-

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 49:56

Okay I wanna talk about women's, uh, cricket and football. And you mentioned there we've got, you know, a major cricket tournament, happening over the next month. If you step back and just look at both of these things, what, the business model for Sky around both women's cricket and football? What-- G- give me a, a, a sense of it. How does it-- What's the ROI on that?

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 50:17

But we're, we are, you know, long-term investors and believers in, in women's sport. We're the, we're sort of biggest investors in the UK, and I've talked a lot about sort of long-term partnerships. You're right, so ICC World T20, I think this summer is 30 years of our coverage of, of, of women's cricket. Our relationship with the WSL is, is, is shorter term than that. I think we're probably in about our fifth season. Fundamentally for us, we want to show the best sport to customers, and this in- you know, in this instances that we're talking about it, that's global cricket events like the Women's T20, that's the WSL. That would've been the Women's US Open last night that had a great finish. Charlie Hull came close to winning it. There'd be lots of examples, the netball over the weekend. So fundamentally, it's good sport, and we wanna be showing the best sport to our customers. There's also a part of it where it's, you know, we're getting closer to our, to our partners by being more aligned with them and their ambitions for growing their sports. The ECB, the ICC would be a really good example there. For us, it's also about growing our audience appeal, thinking about how we can open up, pockets of new demand subscriptions. You know, the evidence is, is there in, in, in the women's sport that we show, and I know you had Joe Osborne who would've spoke a lot more eloquently than I would about the different audiences that we see for women's sport. And, you know, yes, there are discrete audiences, but also fundamentally at heart, it's people that enjoy good sport. And for us, you know, making that central to our portfolio is really important. So we're seeing strong and stronger audiences, good growth for the WSL over this last season. I think total audiences were up around 20%. We're very confident around the T20 in terms of the audiences that we're gonna deliver. That's partly been helped by the fact that we're taking the game to sort of wider distribution. So we've got games that are going out on Sky Mix. We've got games that are going out, as aforementioned, Sky Sports, uh, YouTube, going out on the app, as well as on Sky Sport. So we know we're gonna see strong audiences. We'll get good engagement with that. That's good for, that's good for our customers, good for our brand, and it's good for our ability to hopefully drive growth into our business

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 52:26

It's interesting. I think sort of three years ago perhaps, maybe we would've been having a conversation and there would've been, um, part of it was a positioning for Sky, a changing, you know, there, there was a marketing role that women's sport played in Sky. And I think that, that, you know, that would've been part of the equation. think people now, and I'm talking here about just the, you know, more broadly, are quite emboldened to now start to go on the front foot and start attacking women's football, women's cricket, women's sport in a way that they wouldn't have been two or three years ago. They now feel it's okay. They, they're trying to make women's sport woke, you know, sound it's woke. It's all of that stuff. And I just, I want to ask you that question and give you a sense to, you know, a chance to respond to it 'cause I think in the ether you hear a lot of people going after the, it doesn't work, it's all an illusion, and it's all a marketing play, and there is no business rationale behind it. And I just wanna sort of throw that in because you'll have heard all of this. It's, it's day in, day

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 53:29

Look, it depends how you want to... Uh, first I sort of dismiss that view as you'd expect, but it really sort of depends on how you want to measure this. Do we pay the same amount of money for the WSL as we pay for the Premier League? No, we don't. But there's not many things that we pay the same level as we pay for the Premier League. Do we see our audiences growing? Do we believe in the league? Do we think that there's a future where we can bring new people to Sky Sports as a result of the partnership that we have with the WSL? Do we think that the league is gonna sort of grow? Do we like the fact that it has an opportunity to be easily, you know, the best league in women's football, attracting the best names as you see with teams that people have got connections and associations to? Do we think we can take that out across lots of platforms? Do we think that we can bring brands to it? Do we think that there's opportunities for commercialization? You know, we believe in all those things. Now, I don't tell anyone else whether they have to believe in it or not. That's, you know, that, that... Let them make those decisions. And as I said, like it depends by what metric you want to use and want to compare it. I enjoy watching women's sport on Sky Sports and on other channels. I think lots of people do. That's evidenced by the audiences that we see. Are the economics sort of fully flushed out and making beautiful returns on investment? Perhaps not, but there's not too many sports where they can say, "Actually, it's all going wonderfully well. There's nothing to see here." So I think, you know, I know that there's people that sort of out there that feel emboldened by it, but I sort of, you know, what exact- you know, to, to what end slightly? So you're right in saying that sort of Sky sees this, um, as a bigger opportunity because- You know, I think we, you know, I sort of, we just sort of... There is a sort of a higher purpose, I would say to our, to, to the position in, in, in women's sport. And actually part of that is because we want to see more people enjoying sport, whether that's, you know, young women or girls. You know, we're, I don't wanna sort of age you, but you know, we're probably of a certain age when, when we grew up it was pretty male-dominated watching and playing. And I feel like, you know, personally, I feel, you know, I've really had a real sort of personal benefit from my enjoyment of sport during my lifetime. Whether that's the connections that I've made or playing to a very low level or, you know, just generally I think sport has been a sort of a positive influence in my life, and I strongly believe that everyone should have that opportunity. And you see it thankfully more and more, the growth in girls' football, the growth in participation in netball, playing cricket, you know, want people to have that equity of opportunity. And when they see it and when they play it and when they, you know, want to engage and attend with it, that's only gonna be positive. So I don't see any reason why anyone would want to stand in the way of that progress and have young girls having that opportunity to play and enjoy and to feel healthier about playing sport. So I just, I just don't, you know-

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 56:25

articulated that really well, and that's, you know, I, I'm-- and it doesn't matter what I think, but I'm, that, that's the position that I'm coming from as well. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm nodding along. What do you think is at the heart of the other view?

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 56:38

I, I, I don't really care, um, as in like where it's coming from because I don't, you know, as I said, I don't wanna sound, sound dismissive, but I don't think it's coming from a positive place, so I don't really particularly want to engage with it. Um, and look, yes, I'm sure people could point a, say a proof point of this or a proof point of that. There's still work to do. We need to get more people attending women's sports games. We do want to have more people watching as we wanna have more people watching everything we do. We want there to be more sustainability. We want more brands to be involved. But we have to, you know, we have to sort of work collectively on that in the way that we've worked collectively over the years to build up, you know, a lot of the, you know, whether it's the men's game, if you wanna talk about that, have, have sort of have structural benefits of the longevity of the relationships or the history, you know, and come from a time where there was less contention for, you know, what you're spending your money on or what you're going to do. So actually the circumstances now, you know, probably more challenging for sports to sort of grow and to establish themselves. But I just, I, I just feel very strongly, as a lot of people do at Sky, about we, we strongly believe in the quality of women's sport. We strongly believe in the future and the opportunity for it to be even stronger, and we believe, you know, that will be good for our business, and we also believe that there's a sort of slightly, let's say, higher purpose without sounding too grand to all this. And like, if you don't, if you sort of wanna stand in the way of that, I would sort of slightly question your motivation

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 58:09

Okay. Jonathan, thanks a lot for your time. Really enjoyed the conversation,

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports 58:14

Thank you very much