Unofficial Partner Podcast
Unofficial Partner Podcast
UP441 The Bundle: WSL and Sky; Premier League and IMG; Rugby and BBC
Welcome to The Bundle, our regular series on the sports media and streaming marketplace with co-hosts Yannick Ramcke, General Manager of OTT at the streaming service OneFootball and Murray Barnett, founder of 26West Consulting and formerly of F1, World Rugby and ESPN International.
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Hello, welcome to Unofficial Partner. This is another episode of the bundle, our regular series into the media rights and streaming market with my co-hosts Marie Barnett. Founder of 26 west consulting, and formally of formula one world rugby and ESPN international. And he's joined as ever by Yanik Aramco, general manager of OTT at the streaming service. One football.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:I keep seeing you blokes here, there and everywhere appearing on various platforms. I, myself and Yannick were at Sportel. saw Murray pop up, the bundles Murray Barnett appearing at SportsPro Madrid. was it like? get a sense. How was it?
Murray Barnett:Well, Yannick was there as well. I mean, yeah, it's always kind of interesting to, I think there, it's a little bit more there's a little bit more engagement around the content. It's less of a straight buying selling show like a Sportel is. And actually I found some of my some of the sessions that I was involved with really interesting. Probably the one that's interesting for the data point that's interesting for all of us is I think it was Enrique Rojas from. Movistar was saying that he reckons that La Liga piracy in Spain is between 30 and 40%, which I thought was just an astounding number. But probably not that surprising if you talk to other sort of premier rights owners in each market.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? when we looked at. Piracy in some detail. We found it quite an oddly under researched area, given how important it is. And it, it was quite difficult to get different numbers. There was a few numbers that everyone referenced. There's a piece of research and I can't remember the name of the research company that did it, but all roads moved, went back to there. And I think 30 percent is probably not a bad shout in terms of. An industry general. I think it's, it's incredibly high, but it's, that's the number that keeps coming back between 30 and 40.
Murray Barnett:I don't think we do ourselves any favors either because, with the sort of blanket ban in the 3pm kickoffs, it kind of encourages people. And not only that, a lot of these peddlers of pirate fire sticks have actually got great customer service, which doesn't exactly stop the problem from happening. Thanks you've got a combination of no access to the content, perceived or actual high cost to do it legitimately and incredibly good customer service from somebody that's offering it to you, incredibly cheap.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:Yes, and I would say that it's not a lack of research, because I think especially the rights owners make sure to have the numbers in their back pocket whenever they have certain forms and discussions, even though I would hesitate to fully embrace the numbers that they put out there, because it pretty much assumes 100% conversion into paying customers. I would say nothing is as powerful as free. So the. Pure non existence of of paywall is certainly a huge consumption driver. And ultimately, as Murray alluded to, the privacy industry has pretty much solved for the consumer's points. Discovery and
Murray Barnett:affordability,
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:and no, no wonder that quite an engaging proposition.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yeah. I did a thing in the newsletter last week, just about the difficulty or just the hassle of finding rugby. I'm not a rugby fan by any means, but we had people around and it was a bit of a palaver trying to sort of locate, The Autumn Internationals. It's just an old trope. I know just what's the, just before we move on to what we're going to talk about in terms of the episode, I want to get a sense of, I left Sportel. I don't know about you, about the sense of optimism, pessimism around the place. The, was it sort of bullish, bearish? What did you. Think just in terms of the general health of the thing.
Murray Barnett:It's an interesting one. I think there's a lot of optimism about the value of sports content, but there is a lot of concern. That the model is maybe not quite right, that we're going through a period of change, and I know it's easy to say that when you think about OTT and cord cutting and all of the other things that we talk about all the time, but I felt that there was a little bit of nervousness around, look, we've, nothing has changed about the value of the content. and the desire of people to watch sport, but we haven't quite cracked the right model for it.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:Yeah, and I think there's a difference between absolute and relative terms. I think in relative terms, the sports content industry is still quite resilient in the current content marketplace and all the options and choices that the end consumer, which ultimately I think goes together with the ultimate empowerment of the end consumer, which might be the most disruptive force that we have right now, that relatively speaking, it holds up. Or it holds up quite well in absolute terms. That doesn't necessarily mean that it will only go to the up and to the right. And I think this is like the bit the to the two sides that the industry tries to come to rest with how to move forward, knowing that relatively speaking and comparatively, it is actually a quite well positioned part of the industry.
Murray Barnett:Well, it's quite interesting because you look at the top rights holders and they don't want the model to change because they're raking, good money in. and then you look at smaller sports where the gap is widening in terms of their, the value that's attributed to them. And so they're having to be more innovative. But they, again, it's difficult for them to check or for anybody to change the model quickly, because I don't know that people are really interested in that. Very keen to, to test very much they need some sort of instant wins and sometimes, inertia, nobody got fired for inertia, so there's a little bit of maybe a feeling of that, because I think that when times are tough, and I mean, for, maybe let's call them second tier sports, it's. You almost have to go very aggressive and trying new and different things. And I'm not sure that many people are doing that. And, rugby is a real case to point about that at the moment is that they're really struggling to work out what's the right future for rugby broadcasting.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yeah. Right. I think we're gonna bounce into some of this stuff, so I don't want to sort of preempt it. Let me just set up so we know what's coming. So we've got a number of stories as ever on the bundle. We're talking about the stories of the last few weeks. What's happened and why it matters for the people who work in and around sport and the various bits of the jungle. So the stories this week, we've got, did the women's super league get a good deal that's based on their new Sky TV deal? DTC growth in the USA? Talk about Warner Brothers, Walt Disney, TNT Sports. Premier League Productions goes in house is our number three story. That's a big one that's caused a lot of industry chatter, which we'll come on to. TNT and NBA resolved their differences. Was Tyson versus Paul a success for Netflix? Will the Six Nations leave free to air in the UK? Again, a story over the last Rugby has been quite prominent on the news pages over the last couple of weeks with Rebel series being mooted. But this is about what's going to happen to Six Nations rights. And there's quite a lot of detail in that, which again, will be interesting to get into. And then if we've got time, PIF moves from majority stake in Saudi's NBC group. So we'll talk about PIF and what we think the strategy is there. Because obviously that's a key bit of their decision making process. Right. Let's get on with Women's Super League. Marie Barnett, I want you to just frame this for us. What's happened and yeah. How should we think about the women's super league and Sky?
Murray Barnett:Well, so to introduce that they've done a new five year agreement with Sky and the BBC which totals about 13 million a year. Which is a huge increase, according to the Guardian, and we know that's sort of at least previous deal was about 7 or 8 million a year, so around a 70 percent uplift and must say say congratulations to Mike Darcy, who did a brilliant piece on this and on LinkedIn, where he really went into the details of it. Of the other highlights perhaps are. YouTube will also take a bunch of games which are not selected for live television. And an interesting sort of detail on it is that the new deal gives players access to clips and highlights for their own social media.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yannick, what do we think?
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I mean, certainly good positive news again, in relative terms, significant uptick cycle over cycle and actually following through after, I think that like a stopgap deal in place, uh, to not kicking the can down the road, but now with a bit more midterm certainty, uh, when I see all the different growth metrics not only related to WSL or women's football overall, but the entire women's sports industry. The one thing that, I think has been a comparative advantage for women's over men's sports for the past, let's say two to five years has been its lower cost base. So both when it comes to operating the competition, so in terms of salaries, but also for the media rights partners, right? They didn't pay much for actually broadcasting rights until until recently. And this, I think, has fostered a lot of innovation and flexibility. And I think that is something that Women's sports, especially top of the pyramid women's sports properties have to be aware that as they grow across all metrics, imaginable valuations, revenues, but also not only participation, but as a spectator sports, that they start to establish a cost base, which may be. Resulting less flexibility going forward because all of a sudden a guy has a bigger investment to refinance, right? It's not a walk in the park anymore that there's a positive return on that investment because the investment was just so low now There will be more pressure to also when it comes to commercialization of this. Same on the league side. I mean players will justifiably will be better compensated, but this also means that there is less wiggle room and room for experimentation because whatever happens, whatever works or doesn't work, at the end of the year or on a monthly basis or bi weekly basis, salaries must be paid. So I think this is something to keep in mind also for other tremendous deals that have been done recently like in the WNBA, And the NWSL that I considered it the comparative advantage, the low cost base, which is slowly but surely changing. And ultimately no one is here in for charity. It is for commercial impact.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:I think it's one of the interesting bits about it is the comparison set. and just borrowing again, Mike Darcy's piece on, in, on LinkedIn, and we'll link to it in the in the bulletin. It's a question of, well, the Premier League everyone looks at that as a benchmark. It's a really daft benchmark in many ways, because it's so out of kilter with the rest of most of the sports market, regardless of whether it's men's or women's sport. So then you then land on, as you say, the NWSL and. There appears to be so a couple of interesting questions below the bonnet there, which is about marketing spend relative to in terms of where the game is now and where the league is now, and how much money is going to be spent by the competing broadcasters to get to those. Get the exposure that they require from Sky, obviously, which is a pay TV platform. And then you've also got that in running in parallel. You've got the BBC in there as well, who are taking, I think, one less game in the inventory, but still a, a significant chunk, I think it's 20 to 21 games over the season. And then you've also got YouTube, which again is a, is a significant, platform. Murray, what do you think about that? I'm never quite sure how that plays out in the negotiation in terms of just the, is it a sort of promise to, to market and promote? Or is there a, is it written into the contracts?
Murray Barnett:You generally have some sort of marketing commitment in there, but it tends to be fairly wishy washy in terms of, how cast iron a commitment it is. I think the thing that's worth remembering with. WSL is that they've got pretty chunky deal with Barclays as title sponsor, which, unlike say Premier League, where TV completely dwarfs the all other revenue streams, the. The commitment from Barclays, about 10 million a year, means that there is a need to keep a fairly chunky number of games on free to air. And not only that, it's important for the visibility of the sport, which is still in a growth phase.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Can I just ask a quick question on that? Just to, because it's a really good point. Do Barclays care about whether it's the BBC or YouTube? Do they, would you say that they are equivalent platforms? They do care.
Murray Barnett:Yes, and it's, some of it is prominence, so the fact that BBC has got a fairly significant chunk of games means that it will also be appearing very prominently across all of their digital platforms, and BBC Sports is still probably one of the most used websites in the UK for getting your sports content, so it'll be quite high profile there Also, as we've talked about before, the audience that is going to watch it on Linear and that's going to watch it on YouTube is at least theoretically very different. So, it's kind of capturing a different base. So it's not a question of either or, it's a question of both.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:So in a negotiation, the BBC has got a strong hand because it's not just a free, it's offering a free to air outlet, which again is important for Barclays, but they know that Barclays want a certain Type of demographic. I don't know. Are they delivering it? Does that feel like a broadcast partner that is more suited to Barclays?
Murray Barnett:I'm not sure that It's, you don't necessarily look at it that way. I think it's more talked about in more general terms about free to air coverage and the BBC being an existing partner, I'm sure there was an expectation from Barclays that it was going to be a similar level of coverage, whether it was on another service or not, but from what I heard, I don't think that many of the other free to air terrestrials took much of a run at it. So. I think it was always kind of understood that it was likely to be BBC and that is certainly leverage that BBC has in the discussion. We've also covered in past bundles the sort of EPG inertia that once you, BBC1 and BBC2 being number one and number two on the dial also gives you some some advantages. Cheers. over and above the fact that they're also general entertainment. So you're hoping to cross pollinate with a wider group of of people than perhaps on YouTube or on a sports specific channel, where by definition you're actually looking for that content.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:Yes. And even though I would love to get into the a discussion around how. the substance of value and kind commitments as part of contracts, whether it's marketing, whether it's equipment or whatever, I think we are all on the same page that this can pretty much be gamed. So I would not rely as a league on what value and kind marketing commitments are made, but. I think this goes back to it being almost a zero sum game. If I am Sky and I am now, as part of the budget that I may have earmarked for the WSL, need to allocate a bigger portion on the rights fee in the first place, it will inevitably impact how much the They will be willing to spend on on marketing. So I think this goes back to my initial point with the cost base as a comparative advantage. And beyond this, I don't think that the WSL or any other women's sport has yet reached like. Escape velocity. So I think it's still like a difference between reach and revenue or like a trade off between reach and revenue and especially with visibility for sponsorship funded for the sponsorship funded revenue stream and accessibility to drive consumer interest uptake Developing a fandom. I think that the women's board is not there yet where everything should be geared towards maximizing revenues. It's still like an equation to balance.
Murray Barnett:I think also There are two other packages out in the marketplace for sponsorship. So even if they knew that they pretty much had Barclays tied up, and as I said, I'm sure Barclays had some some understanding that there was going to be some free to air commitments. They're also keeping an eye open on the fact that they have other packages of sponsorship that they want to sell, and it gives them a nice shop window. I mean, it's still only, on an exclusive basis, it's what, probably a quarter, but maybe it's a bit more. A bit more than a quarter of the games that will be on Sky. So it doesn't really hurt Sky from a non exclusive perspective. It also is probably a good barker for them. I'm sure that Sky will, well, I think Sky have 75 percent of the first picks. So, it seems like a pretty good balance for a league that's still in the growth phase.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of reasons I'm really interested in this story. One is generally, but also we've got a, we're hosting an evening on BAFTA in Piccadilly this, in London this Thursday. It's a closed event and we're doing it with host broadcast services who are opening their London office. But one of the sessions I'm going to run. And I, is under the provocation of whether television is failing women's football, which is a bit punchy. There is a question there in terms of whether or not the product, which again, we keep saying is there's a different audience. We keep saying it's, it's a sandbox for innovation. And we've got Zara Al Qudsi on the, on the panel. So it'd be interesting just to, to look at some of the. Questions there in terms of where innovation and movement played in this deal. And I think Five years is quite, is a long time with Sky. I like the idea that, they're building a home for the product and it takes time. And there's a lot of, the marketing of the game more generally. I think Sky obviously will be, will do a brilliant job at that bit of it, but I'm interested in, you've got noises off about, well, what about a completely different approach? What about, we see in this deal, I think, sort of suggestions of rights to the players, there is a bit of, a hat tipping towards the sort of creator era and how that's going to evolve in terms of the way in which Women's sports television is going to evolve because my general point, which I'll make on Thursday is that essentially it's the product of football on television, whether it's men's or women's hasn't evolved since, my dad was a boy. So I think there's a Challenge there. And I think women's sport is asking some really interesting questions of television. Murray.
Murray Barnett:don't forget that, David Kogan advised them and David Kogan for many years was the advisor of the to the Premier League. So. He has a certain history in knowing the marketplace very well and being able to make sure that it delivers what he thinks is the best results for the league. And, as I said, this feels like a nice balance between getting a major sports broadcaster and, has got a pretty decent amount of reach or Sky Sports has got a pretty decent amount of reach with the right balance with, a major terrestrial partner. I think, as you said, the fact that they did five years is much better than three. They certainly wanted to avoid four with the next Premier League rights auction. There's always going to be the question of could they have taken more money if they'd gone for three and then seen what the market looked like then. But actually, I think this is showing a bit more of a pragmatic view, uh, at about the product, the biggest competitive element for. For WSL is really, does it become the Premier League vis-a-vis the other international football club leagues for men? Or does it become, Syria? Meaning does w does the NWSL with higher rights fees and higher salaries, does that become a league which surpasses the, the WSL and in sort of being the premier sports league, if it hasn't done already. How does WSL make sure that gap doesn't widen for say the longer term, it does become the number one women's sports league in the world.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:So the NWSL, their deal is 60 million a year, which is around two to two and a half times the WSL deal. So what you're saying is essentially the strategic worry for the WSL is that the end of the American League de facto becomes a sort of IPL ish. Presence in the marketplace where it hoovers all the talent for women's football and you get, the stars of WSL start to migrate in the way that we see in other sports. So, the LPGA and LET relationship, that's what it's trying to avoid. And I think that's quite an interesting question and it comes back to, I know, and a huge respect for David Cogan, but the question I've got is it a Premier League template which is being put on the WSL and is it the right one? In terms of where we are, in terms of the way in which we watch sport and this audience. Again, there's people out there questioning, and I know that there's research coming in terms of the types of audience. Do we really believe that it's a different audience? Or is the other concentric circles much narrower in terms of, are they sort of, um, it's a minor difference, or is it a. Really big difference in terms of the people who are watching, because obviously anecdotally a ground, it's a different, you get a different lens because it does look and feel very different, but is that the same as a television product?
Murray Barnett:I hope I'm proven wrong, but I don't think the market for the rights is as competitive as many people would have you believe. And so I think that they've ended up with the best situation that the marketplace could deliver.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Good. I'm all I'm usually in favor of that. I just, there is, I think there's some interesting questions. I, and one of the irritations I know that people in the, on the, who are working on the women's. Sports properties is people like me saying, come on, why don't you reinvent the sports marketing industry? Essentially is what I'm saying, which, that's easy from the, from this chair, but I just think this is quite an interesting test case. I think let's move on. To story two, direct to consumer growth in the U. S. TNT sports parent company, Warner Brothers Discovery, saw its stock price rise after reporting its best quarter of streaming growth since the launch of Max in May 2023. So is this a sign of something or is it a blip? Yannick.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I would say it's big, if true. Ultimately we discussed for a long time or like, The overall fear of the industry has been that OTT streaming will never be as profitable as the traditional pay tv bundle because it can't compete in scale in lifetime values and in scale. stickiness or shown we at least seem to have hit a milestone assuming that this is sustainable, that especially the streaming services and divisions of the legacy media entertainment companies in the US, which ultimately If sports wants to retain the upward trajectory, the continue to be big spenders on sports wise have hit profitability. And the question I think is how sustainable this is or how much of a one off in order to cater to the financial investment and analyst community. And this has been.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Interesting quote, I think from Zaslav in the notes, consumers put on a TV set and they see 16 apps and each of those are doing different pricing and you're seeing it with your phone and googling where a show is or where a sport is and you're going from one to another and there's so many that you have, it's not sustainable and there probably should have been more meaningful consolidation and you're starting to see that now.
Murray Barnett:Absolutely. I think that, venue is a venue, whatever it's called, is a, is an example of where they're trying to do that. Disney's offering Disney plus ESPN all as a bundle. And I think the re bundling is inevitable. And, that's what platforms like DAZN are effectively trying to do by carrying the services of various different OTT providers, be that Rally TV, be that NFL, is to try and make one destination for sports a thing again.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I mean, whatever the ultimate outcome is, I think we can all agree that in the short to medium term that there will be more partnerships, consolidation, optimization, streamlining, whatever you want to call it will be ahead. Because speaking of earning a return on investment, I think, but also everybody is aware of that just one break even quarter sustainable or not Obviously it doesn't make up for like multi billion dollar losses that they have accumulated ever since venturing into OTT slash direct to consumer. And the question remains like this business shift from linear to streaming how. Can it keep up with the pace of like, change consumption habits and willingness to pay for content and are the economics sustainable? So I think it's not the end of the journey now that you can report like a break even or like a positive Single digit profit margin on the streaming division. I think there's much more way to go, but it's like, it was a necessary milestone or a step along the way that you can show profitability. Yes, we can discuss like how much financial engineering has been going on in order to show a profitable line on the streaming divisions, because I think there's a lot of, um, gray area, how and where to allocate cost and revenues, given that the legacy business, like the traditional pay TV is still subsidizing both in terms of absorbing costs, but also subsidizing in terms of cash flows, the new business operations. I think it's progress, but obviously not the end of the journey.
Murray Barnett:Also, it's worth pointing out that consolidation is certainly not in the interests of rights holders, so they're very keen to keep any disaggregation going for as long as possible, because that creates a much more competitive marketplace for them.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yeah.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:we said before that like competition is the single most important determinant for market price, because if I'm a bidder, I don't face competition. Why should I surrender on any profit margin? So Oftentimes the market price can be quite disconnected from the commercial, uh, value. So I fully agree with like, and this is then where antitrust and all of those authorities come in to maintain a marketplace that is competitive how far they can push the consolidation.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:I mean, I think there's, there's a couple of questions. We started off talking about piracy and, it might not be great for rights holders, but it probably is better for fans. So, because you're going to get presumably one ticket. And that's what people aspire to. So the complexity in the marketplace and the disaggregation is one leading to higher costs. It's also leading to greater piracy, in terms of that's what the feedback would be.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:thing would be, because if you look at like how small those profit margins are, I mean, it's really like a couple of millions on the one or the other side. It might be able to tie this back to, this is why an ESPN looks at the SEC low for 2 million per year, but this makes a difference, even though in the grand scheme of things, you pay multi billion for sports rights, the bottom line is like a game of a couple of millions on one or the other side.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Okay. Story three is Premier League Productions goes in house. Now, this is a big industry story this week. The Premier League is to establish an in house media operations business, moving away from its current arrangement with IMG to produce Premier League matches online. Under its Premier League Productions wing at a Premier League shareholders meeting clubs unanimously agreed the Premier League will bring all international media content production and distribution in house from the start of the 26 27 season. currently produces Premier League content for more than 180 countries with the Premier League and IMG working together on the productions. PLP produces full coverage of 380 Premier League matches each season, as well as wide ranging support programming. Okay. So it's a bad week for IMG. That's a big knock. What, Murray what was your reading when you first sort of heard the story? And got a couple of questions about it, which are to do with how it's going to work going forward and what it means. And we can overread this a bit. We're not careful, but just take me through what was your initial response,
Murray Barnett:So I'm very disappointed for IMG who have done a very good job with it. My first thing that I thought of when I saw it was actually just that this is also quite profitable for them, but I think it's as much about things changing at IMG Endeavor as it is about Premier League. But that being said, Premier League is looking across the Atlantic and seeing what other major rights holders like NBA does with NBA entertainment and taking more control over its its product. And that It's interesting. So you asked me about what we talked about in Sports Pro Madrid. And one of subjects or areas of quite intense discussion on the stage was about how sports organizations need to act like media companies. And I was on one of the panels I did was very specifically around basketball. And obviously FIBA have FIBA media, which runs and controls, not just the sales of their content, but their content creation, there was Euroleague On the stage as well. And they were all sort of violently agreeing that you do have to take control of your own media. And so, it seems kind of natural that's what Premier League should do. There was one interesting data point earlier on at in Madrid, which was Damien Menechet, who's the head of social media at PSG, was saying that they create a thousand pieces of content, sorry, they distribute a thousand pieces of content a week. And that's not necessarily unique content, because if you count the same sort of, Bit of footage sliced and diced in a different way going across six different platforms that count six times. But the point being was that there's this insatiable appetite or need for rights owners to produce an awful lot of content. And so I think there's certainly an element of that coming into play with Premier League in terms of being a bit more streamlined in being in controlling what they can put out. But I, going back to your original question, I felt that this was very much a natural step. I think the danger when you take it in house is that you do need to have a very different mindset than you do as a sort of quote unquote governing body, and They, I'm presuming that they will take a bunch of the of the current staff and 2P them over to work for for Premier League because the last thing they want is a brain drain. And this is, I guess, one of the reasons why they're announcing this two years in advance, as it were.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yannick.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I mean, following the discussion, I think there have been two perspectives to look at it. One was the international market perspective. How does it impact the international Premier League product and the distribution and commercialization of it? And I think this has been where the focus of the discussion has been, because IMG was primarily mandated for The international content production portfolio, but on the other side, there's also a domestic market dimension to it. Where as far as I understand, the domestic broadcasters are still the host broadcaster for those matches. So I think Internationally it has been just a further evolution of more recent actions that have been taken. Speaking of insourcing or in housing, I think especially also how they sold media rights. I think Primeric has been at the forefront of not relying on intermediaries, but trying to establish direct relationships with international takers and broadcasters. And I think this is an extension of that, just having more. Editorial and operational ownership over the league's media product, because ultimately it's also a question for sports leagues. What's your core competence? And storytelling should or may is that core competence. It might not be the commercialization of the product, but building a product that then third parties can commercialize. So. Internationally, I don't see it as a foregone conclusion that this means the next cycle, which are always staggered, so they don't run out all at the same time, but that there is a Premier League in house channel coming. Domestically, I'm pretty I'm pretty curious how this will impact relationships with broadcasters.
Murray Barnett:The Premier League channel is already available to some broadcasters internationally because they're providing a significant amount of content which comes in a sort of 24 7 packaging, which I understand is licensed to some broadcasters as an actual channel and to others to sort of pick and choose content out of it. It did make me laugh a little bit though that to see Simon Jordan's Netflix of football quote resurface again because I don't think that's You know, I think it's conflating two different things, but, there's certainly. taking more control. I think, his point when he met when he said that was as much about the Premier League being more in control of its media assets as anything else. Um, and I think that's absolutely what they're trying to do. And it gives them a much wider flexibility when they're in the next cycle of negotiations, because there may be an opportunity in certain markets for, Premier League to launch their own channel. And they have done that in the past.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:But I think this is more related to when it comes to flexibility and how broadly you can define the universe of potential bidders. It's more relevant for the domestic market because international market you already and always had a full international product portfolio that you offered to your international takers. None of them was involved like in the production of the base signal of matches. So I think internationally. It doesn't change much, including the fact that, as you said, like, in house Premier League channel, it was already there from a product perspective, but, in terms of the commercial model, was the licensing model, and I don't think that this insourcing of the match production will change much of the vast the vast majority of deals will be licensing deals going forward instead of going anything direct to consumer. And if they do, then it's not because they want to, but they probably are required by the market environment to, to do so. I think there's more flexibility on the domestic side heading into the next ride cycle that You forget about match production. This is something provided by the league which opens and lowers the entry barriers for maybe new media companies that don't have those production capacities and knowledge and skills fully up and running and may never have, or will. So, yes, a Sky, a BT, this was always a competitive advantage of the incumbents that they had all of those operations up and running in Apple and Amazon, they may never want to get or want to build up all of those operations. And if I, as a league, are self sufficient, which others like the WWE or the UFC are, and I'm not saying that it's a direct reason why, WWE is moving to Netflix, but one of the one part of the equation is that they have readily produced a product that only seeks distribution and commercialization, but I think it might be even a bigger factor in the next domestic right cycle than any impact on how they run their international business.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:So just to clarify, then, does that mean that it's making them and the Premier League, does it make them easier to buy? Is that what you're saying? And they will make, and they will make more money. They will be more profitable on each deal because they're doing it in house. Is that essentially what we're talking about?
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I mean, first you build up a cost position, right? You build up both capacity and knowledge to run this, but back to the fact that what I said before that, I mean, the ultimate determinant of market price is competition. If I can widen the net of potential bidders host broadcasting obligations is, are not part of the equation anymore. It's nothing that, a licensee has to worry about. I think it expands the list of potential bidders with all things equal should improve and increase media rights income.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:So what does that cost go then? Because I'm just trying to think, someone's got to pay for it. And at the moment, obviously there's a link because Premier League are paying IMG. Presumably it's still going to have to, they're going to have to foot the bill for the production and Stockley park and all of that stuff.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:but if that is a zero sum game, left pocket, right pocket, Considering all the benefits that come with it, editorial, operation, ownership over how your media product is presented and everything, I don't think there is, there are much cost savings in there. Maybe a little bit because IMG, but at the same time IMG is probably more scaled in its operations than it permanently will ever be. So I don't think this is about the bottom line. The move in sourcing this, I think it's more strategic move for the longterm. But it's not like that they are sparing or saving millions of pounds here. It is really about, it's more or less cost neutral, but it provides strategic editorial and operational benefits.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Okay. The more you talk about it, the more the less I understand it, that there is a, we'll move on, but there's a question I've got in terms of if it's a bit like the sort of, I don't know if it's analogous with the media sales market in terms of the right sales market, which tends the cycles of in house out house. that go on. Is it just, this is what the big ones will do, but you then you're, you made a, raised a good point about, is this what a sports governing body should be doing? Is this what a league does now? And that in 2024, people are saying yes, we're a sports media company. But then the other argument is, Oh no, let's devolve and let's just be about the sport. I don't want to go through all this, but it's quite, yeah. It doesn't feel like it's the argument is cut and dried.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:And it's not a go to strategy for the vast majority of rights owners. And also the reason why, it's also the reason why IMG will not run out of clients. They still have MLS, Saudi Pro League, EFL, because they are not big enough. It is like pretty much, if at all, the big five European football leagues. If you look at European or globally at at football, but that's it.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Okay. Where should we go next? TNT and NBA resolve their differences. Let's touch on this. Cause we've done quite a bit on this in the past. Murray set us up. What's this about?
Murray Barnett:Well, as you mentioned, we talked about this on the bubble before, but this relates to the NBA's raft of blockbuster TV deals with ESPN, NBC and Amazon, which was contested in the courts by the NBA. Long term rights holder, TNT. I think they'd had the rights for more than 20 years and have sort of beloved a beloved show inside the NBA with Charles Barkley and others. And again, and I'm, I say this as somebody that worked at the NBA, that they have found what seems to me to be the absolute perfect way of solving it, which is. Inside the NBA, we'll move to ESPN. Warner Brothers, the owners of TNT, will get a fourth package of games primarily for Northern Europe and for LATAM, and a bunch of access to highlights for Bleacher Report and and their social media platform House of Highlights. Prolongs a longstanding relationship with TNT Sports. It gives ESPN a much prized asset that they've always wanted, which is Charles Barkley and a well known brand. It saves face for everybody. It's difficult to see exactly what the financial terms of it were, but it seems to have worked out pretty well for just about everybody.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I don't know if I would agree with a win, but I agree that it's probably the best they could have done in this situation they were in. I mean, which all started with, I mean, we did our deep dive on matching rights and everything. And we also said, okay, might, Might be more worse than the paper they are written on, but it's also not the holy grail and a foregone conclusion that Warner Brothers Discovery will be saved by it. So, I think, all things considered, I mean, it's a talent slash employee retention play for TNT Sports, I think. Because they keep Kenny Shake, Ernie and Barkley. Happy, and I think also their realm will be much broader, much more broad going forward. They will do a bunch of other things beyond NBA when you look at the sports programming lineup of TNT. um, sports. For ESPN, I mean, ESPN has been notorious for having problems with pre post game shows or with like, the in game commentators. And I think they have made some good experience with their investment in the NFL with paying top of the market rate for Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. And they saw, okay, look, if we pay up, the problem is solved. You don't have to further worry, experiment or whatever. It is solved. And I think this is like the main intention here for ESPN. I think they have NBA Today and NBA Countdown, which are like pre postgame shows for their NBA games. Now they have, uh, inside the NBA and pretty much everything is is solved. So I think they will rest easily on that. And my main thought regarding NBA was It goes back a little bit how they treated their highlights distribution. Because they have been quite laissez faire and everybody was able to use highlights. It was marketing and promotion for the product and everything. But it felt also a little bit that they were stuck in the middle because they neither do it like the NFL that has a hard hand on highlights distribution and make sure that they capture the value and get compensated for whoever wants to use highlights, nor was it like ubiquitously like available. So I think instead of being stuck in the middle, neither really commercializing it directly, but also not having it everywhere. I think there are now going toward the other end of the spectrum compared to the NFL. The day where they make sure highlights are everywhere and that puts a little bit into question, like how much are those NBA highlights actually rose? But it's ultimately a follow through of Warner brother discovery with their strategy, Post NBA picking up NBA baseball Right and content left and right, not as variable as the NBA on the standard own basis, but I think the hope is that the sum of the parts will come somewhere close to what the NNBA did for them while ideally reducing the cost base massively.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:And just before we move on, this is a stupid question, but inside the NBA, what is that? It's like a sort of match of the day equivalent. Is it,
Murray Barnett:Yes, it's kind of, it's pre and post. So it's not, yes. So if you take the mashed up football focus and match of the day.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:that's that clear? Okay. Now we're on to big Netflix fight. Tyson Paul.
Murray Barnett:Did you watch it?
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:I didn't.
Murray Barnett:Did you? Yannick?
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I did, and I have a point to make on that, on the backend
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Well, make it the fight. Why did you not rate it?
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:now. I mean, my point is fact that I watched it, I think speaks for how powerful. Distribution is. We always talk about content and distribution. If the content is like the most premier and exclusive content ever, people will make sure to find it, to pay for it, to jump all through all the hoops imaginable to get access. If the content is not that premium, it might be a mid to long tail. I think distribution can really make a difference. And this is why content is put on YouTube instead of the FA player, for example tying back to the discussion around the WSL. And I can tell you, I haven't been into WWE for like a decade. WWE Raw and all the premium live events are moving over to Netflix starting January. I think I will be back into it, at least checking it out. And this goes back to how the ease of access and the unprecedented scale and reach that Netflix, only challenged by YouTube, has nowadays and what it can do for content.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:You're basically lazy. That's the, essentially. You just want to be fed. Spoon fed. Yannick,
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I'm representative for the consumer marketplace.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yannick
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:what it is
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Did you watch it Murray?
Murray Barnett:I did not. It's not my cup of tea. The, I was just as an aside, I was listening to the rest is history with with Marina Hind this morning. Sorry, the rest is entertainment. She actually made a really good point. She said that this, that Jake Paul has probably done more for women's boxing than anybody else. This is the bit that's missed here is that on the undercard, Katie Taylor and Serrano, that was watched by about 50 million people. And that's makes it the biggest boxing, female boxing match ever and likely the most watched professional women's sports event in US history. And I guess that was a lens I hadn't seen it through that, you could say it was a terrible fight, but Jake Paul has done more for women's sport than most other people in the industry.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yeah, I think that is an interesting point because I think it is a sort of slightly, I think that's a different product. I can see, I'm very skeptical of the the funnel metaphor in these things. And I can see that I'm just wondering whether this is building an audience for boxing or this is just a
Murray Barnett:an entertainment event. It's just an entertainment event.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:I mean, I suppose with 60 million people watching
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I mean, we have no discussed five minutes about this and we have not addressed the one or two elephants in the room, which I think have been, uh, the technical stability and the. The metrics, communicated afterwards, but what do we think about this so, Murray, are you, I, I
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:fail as a streaming product, is that what we're saying?
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:if I'm the NFL, am I confident that like, with the Christmas games ahead, that it will be technically flawless, or do I, sorry.
Murray Barnett:that they've got a lot to worry about. I think there's a number of ways in which they set this up in advance for NFL. So firstly, was this will be a massive test. I read somewhere in one of the articles that they substantially underestimated the number of people that were going to tune in. They expected around 30 million and they'd set the streaming capability up for that. And I'm not super technical, so I don't know exactly what that means, but the point being is that they got a lot more and therefore the system couldn't hold up. Now, when you think about what an average NFL game gets on US broadcast, it's about 20 million. The Christmas games are a little bit higher. They're around 30 million. So they're going to have to deal with half as many concurrent streams as this potentially, maybe closer to 40 because they have got decent level of distribution and everybody will be tuning in for Beyonce as well, who's doing the halftime show, I think on one of them. So I'm not sure I'd be super worried about it because. At the same time, the NFL owners have made 150 million for the rights to two games, so I think that they're confident that they have protections in their contract, which requires a Netflix to do a better job, and Netflix had teed this up as being Well, it's probably their fifth or sixth live sports experiment and sorry, live event experiment. And this is by far and away the largest one they've done. So I've got no doubt that they're going to be fine by the time those two games come around.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:And can we project onto it our favorite game of is, does this signal Netflix's entry into sport? Does this tell us anything about that or is this just a, an outlier?
Murray Barnett:Well, I think in the rest of this entertainment, Marina Heineken very eloquently said That, they'd said that they weren't going to do live events. Now they're doing live events. They said they weren't going to do advertising. Now they're doing advertising. I mean, they're just being pragmatic. And so I don't think you could ever say they're not going to, but I think that this all points to that they prefer the stunty nature of a boxing match or a, the roast of Tom Brady or Pro Am golf tournament rather than something where they're having to deliver live week in week out, at least that's for now, but I think that they're, dipping their toe in the water and seeing how hot it is. And, I wouldn't completely rule it out, but. It's probably not imminent. I think the one thing that is clear is if I was NFL, I'd be looking at it saying, God, if they get their January, if they get, sorry, if they get their Christmas games right, let's think about opening our TV deals in 2028, which was something we discussed in the last bundle.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:Yes, and I mean, let's not get too deep into repertoire around audience metrics, even though there has been quite a lot of discussion around it. I just want to make sure that. I don't think it's as easy as to say that, okay there are 65 million concurrence at maybe any given second or like one second during the broadcast. It was really the peak and an NFA Christmas game does 30 million. There's more to it. And the difference is far or significantly smaller between those 30, which are not the equivalent in 65. But with that being said, I think my main takeaway was that. There's simply no testing environment for when it ultimately matters. And I think we have now observed across really market leading broadcasters across the board over the past two to three or four years where IP based or internet streaming became much more relevant as part of the distribution mix that there are problems in the first go around. But I think another common denominator has been that it won't happen again. So I don't think same mistakes will be made twice, but whether it's the zone, whether it's Amazon, I think everybody like needed to make some learnings. And this would actually make me more confident if I'm the, I would be the NFL heading into the Christmas games that I'm not saying that Netflix ticked the box on having the issues, but I also think to some extent. It is just something it's part of the process to go through.
Murray Barnett:Well, they've also mitigated some of the risk because they still have local TV deals for those two NFL games. So, if you like, the rabid hardcore fans of, uh, whoever it is the Texans or the Steelers, are still going to be able to get it on traditional linear TV in their local areas. So, hopefully that's a mitigating factor for them as well.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Okay.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:the same time, my narratives can be quite noisy, right, and loud. So I think there's always also something to consider that if everything works well for someone, They have little incentive to talk and to post about it. If it doesn't, or didn't go well for you, probably there's a lot minority in in these cases, but there are so many other factors in there. And I think one final point is that. It has been another reminder that transitioning from linear to streaming also means from like a one to many to a one to one delivery of the content. I mean, if you pull it down from the satellite or via the cable infrastructure, you delivered one to many as a broadcaster. Streaming is all a one to one relationship and the end consumer experience is reliant on so many different factors including Whether the cable is plugged in correctly in the end consumer device. So it's much more complex.
Murray Barnett:Yeah, I think just one final point on this. I thought there was some interesting stuff about. How Netflix stock jumped after the, or rose, I should say, two to three percent afterwards. But buried in that is something around how the P to E ratio for Netflix is almost 50, which is much higher than Disney and Warner Brothers, which suggests that there's also a need for Netflix to put on these big stunts, which reinforces their status in the marketplace so that the stock isn't seen as being overvalued.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:That's interesting. Yeah. So it's a tent pole strategy, isn't it? You need a Barnum and Bailey every now and then. Okay. Right. The last two stories. I need will the six nations leave free to air television in the UK? There's a tender for the next cycle is expected quarter one, 2024 amid increased competition. The future of the Six Nations on the BBC looks increasingly uncertain after a record breaking 100 million per year was slapped on the tournament's broadcast rights in the UK. In total, across the 2023 edition of the competition, an estimated 121 million people watched the championship. Noise is off here, there's some interesting, you've got The unions, and I'll come to Murray in a minute on this because they're losing a lot of money. RFU is losing 40 million over the last year, the Welsh union, 14 million, Scottish union, around 10 million, small loss for the Irish, the French are in profit of 17 million. So there is a quite an odd thing going on sort of backstage of the six nations. There's a lot riding on this tender. What do we think Murray?
Murray Barnett:Well, I think that to cut to the chase, I would be surprised if it all goes off free to air. I think there'll be a smaller package on free to air. I think that, it's been talked a lot about about how the BBC is suffering. So, downward pressure in terms of their ability to pay for rights, but it does pretty well for ITV. and TNT seem to have done pretty well with Autumn Internationals. I don't think Sky have any interest whatsoever in rugby. I think that ship has sailed and Six Nations will be Would no doubt be trying very hard to try and get them back at the table, but as was shared on the WhatsApp group, Six Nations and PRL in particular, thoroughly pissed Sky off and Sky have long elephantine memories for those people that feel that they didn't get didn't feel that Sky was properly respected in the process. and they've now realized that they can do without it and actually arguably the same with champions league. And so not necessarily the disrespect disrespecting part, but the part about being able to do without it. So, it's the job of six nations and their advisors to stir the market up. But I don't think it's going to be a very competitive marketplace for them.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:So you've got in the background you've got CVC and you've got Tom Harrison in charge of Six Nations these days that's just moved from obviously his background was at cricket and the ECB made a lot of money around the hundred in terms of rights deals etc. So there is a great deal of pressure on him personally but also CVC in terms of their broader investment in rugby this is a key moment Yannick.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I think it ties back to what we discussed earlier today regarding this bifurcation of the marketplace that we have, like must have properties and everything else is like best case, nice to have probably something that you should spare and optimize for bottom line. And there will be a half and a half not. And that might be one on the chopping block because if back to surrendering on margin, if I can deliver the same top line and can pretty much eliminate a whole cost line, this goes all straight to the bottom line in terms of in terms of profits. So, I think it's a sign of time that. The leading broadcasters have observed that they don't need all the content to make pretty much 90 plus percent of the revenues that they make today. And they can spare a significant part of the cost. And that might be one of the properties that will see the downside of that development while other properties like. Premier League, NFL, NBA see the upside of the development because it's more and more concentrated and consolidated where the market spends its programming budget.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:I always find the Six Nations quite interesting Tournament because it's a sort of unusual shape. It's in a, it's got its own little world in that time of the year. And I've got a lot of sort of residual affection for it. And it's always been in, something that I've taken a vague interest in as a sort of, non rugby fan. You've got the nation's championship, which starts in 2026. I don't know what that is. Is that the autumn internationals repackaged? Is that the thing that Qatar? I want to buy for a billion quid.
Murray Barnett:It's it'll replace the autumn internationals here
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:So that's everyone playing in the autumn.
Murray Barnett:at the top nations.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yeah. It's really confusing. I mean, not for the first time I've said that, but so you'll go from the six nations and then you probably have a British Lions tour every now and then. And you've got summer tours, various places, and then they're going to start playing international rugby in the autumn. So it's, I don't know what happens to the club game in that respect then.
Murray Barnett:Yeah, I need to remind myself. I don't think it happens in the years where there's a Lions Tour or a World Cup. I think it's every other year.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Right. Okay.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I mean on a related note, now that you mentioned that CVC is also involved and invested here, I think at some point it also might make sense to Do a review on the private equity investments that have been done over the past two, three, four years and how they at least like halfway through given like the investment horizon normally. Coming with a private equity investment, how they have turned out. I mean, CVC's investment in Ligue 1 in France, certainly not like, that positive or as positive as they hoped for. Now it's another property that is at least challenged, even though I always remain a bit dubious because. Private equity companies, how to secure and get their return on their investment. So just because maybe top line has not worked out as they hoped for. And normally they have like, and conditions in there that they will be made whole, but a discussion for another day, but interesting in hindsight.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:I won't lose too much sleep about CVC's take on, in terms of whether they make enough money generally, but I think it's an interesting point about, whether this was a good decision or not. And I think, there'll be That's broader than rugby, but I think that'd be interesting to see how that evolves. I was going to say your, the CVC and France thing. It reminded me of sort of echoes of what Murray said about corporate memory and Canal Plu and the French league. And how that, again, it's almost like you mentioned, it's like talking about the mafias and that, sort of dis, you disrespect me. There's a, you don't do that to the, to these guys. And then, expect them to then come back and play the game. It's quite interesting whether that's sort of bravado, but also there's substance there.
Murray Barnett:You've got to remember that we often talk about this monolithic thing of the sports media industry, but there are a lot of people that have been working in it for 20, 30 years who have built things up. And so the emotion, the individual emotion that you have doesn't go away just because you've got corporate imperatives. And so, sometimes that. The touchy feely aspect of looking after your partners and doing the right thing by your partners is missed in the sort of cut and thrust of the economics.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yeah, no, I completely agree. Absolutely fascinating. Right, last story before we break. Piff moves to the majority stake in Saudi's NBC group. Quite a few rumors about Piff buying Dazon recently, but what's happening here?
Murray Barnett:So this is just a short story, but it was interesting to see that they've now taken a majority stake in what's arguably the leading sort of Pan Middle Eastern Broadcast Partner, who also has a pretty robust direct to consumer service, Shaheed, which reaches a fair number of people, but it's also against the backdrop of sort of PIF regressing a little bit from its international sports acquisitions, and I thought this was kind of an interesting one about they're now doubling down on, rather than going out and buying international sports or clubs, they're now doubling down on sports for their own region or being the purveyor of sports to their own region. And then of course, there's the sort of 2034 World Cup that's looming in the distance as well. And maybe this is one kind of step in that direction as well, in terms of jockeying for position around those rights or positioning themselves as being the ones that will ultimately take those rights. And on top of that, of course, with their investments in various different sports they've got an in for some great content and the ability to consolidate that on a broadcast partner. But I just thought it's kind of an interesting sort of juxtaposition with being as traditionally being the buyer of premium rights in the Middle East. And now, does this signal a little bit more? Aggressiveness from aggressiveness is probably the wrong word, but from a little bit more of a shifting of the plates towards Saudi and away from Qatar when it comes to buying sports rights. Because I don't think what's clear is that they're not really competing against each other. Well, they're not massively competing against each other at the moment. There seems to be a You understanding that rights shift between the two of them, Formula One had previously been with NBC and then went to be in, and there's been some signals which are very mixed as to how much they're actually colluding is probably too strong a word, but, whether they're colluding or competing,
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:So there's a couple of questions I've got. One is the B out. Q stuff, and the, is this a legacy of that? Is there, what's that relationship to that? Cause obviously that was a major story a few years ago. And the other bit is it feels like they're doing, or they're copying the be in model where the bloke, he's the most powerful man in European football and be in is this biggest commercial partner. So presumably if. Biff own bits of golf, tennis, MMA. Don't be surprised if they get the broadcast contract.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:I think there has been a bit of a misconception around the investment strategy of of PIV because yes, we saw the investments that they did abroad and everybody thought, okay, look, this is greenwashing. This is trying to impact any policy or decision making is in this, that, and the other country. I think they have been quite transparent from the beginning that everything they do is, uh, geared and driven by the domestic market. I think ultimately it's making the domestic economy less reliant on oil and gas and driving domestic growth to ultimately. Make the population happy and to increase favorability rating of the government and whoever is the rule maker over there. So I think this also ties back to this particular investment because, and I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think that being sports is still blacked out in Saudi Arabia. If they can spin up a serious. local, not regional player that can buy out the rights for the, for Saudi Arabia, it goes back to making their people happy. And I think it's not the first step of building up a regional competitor to be in sports, but I think in the grand scheme of things on why and what they're doing, it's supposed to cater to the local population. And if access is limited due to blackout of Be in sports and you can, yeah, quote unquote, unblack the access or create access. I think job done of that kind of investment. So I think it never has been about taking over the world. It's much more inwardly focused than we think it is actually.
Murray Barnett:I think being is available now in Saudi, is it not? I mean, because, I, Oh, Why else would they be pursuing an investment in BN Sports? I mean, I think obviously this is perhaps shifting, suggesting that they might be shifting away from that, but I'm pretty sure that BN is now available in Saudi, or at least some of it. A Christmas
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:Yeah, I mean, then it's about, lessening dependence on like an external external party. But I really think it's about making the locals happy rather than exerting any influence across the region or abroad.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Okay. Right. Listen, we're going to draw a halt there and as ever, thank you so much for your time. I think we're going to get one more of these in before Christmas. Do you reckon we could get a Christmas edition, a review of the year? I think it's probably Not a bad shout.
Murray Barnett:think Yannick's CVC school card should be an interesting, festive idea.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:I think our winners and losers of 2024, the bundle awards, all of that is to be done. We'll think about, we'll think of a format, but before, between now and then, Murray Barnett, thank you very much for your time.
Murray Barnett:Thank you.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Aramka, thank you very much for your time.
Yannick Ramcke, OneFootball:Thanks guys. Pleasure as as always.