Unofficial Partner Podcast
Unofficial Partner Podcast
UP444 Unofficial Partner x HBS Live at BAFTA
A special live episode of the podcast recorded at BAFTA in Piccadilly in London, in collaboration with HBS, or Host Broadcast Services, the leaders in sports broadcast production, which was celebrating 25 years in the industry and the opening of it’s London office. The company has produced every FIFA World Cup and many other events since established to be host broadcaster of the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Japan and Korea. Next year, the company will host broadcast the Women’s Rugby World Cup that takes place across England.
One hundred invited guests were treated to two separate conversations.
The first panel were invited to respond the provocation - TV is failing women’s football.
Guests:
Zarah Al-Kudcy, Chief Revenue Officer, Barclays Women’s Super League and Barclays Women’s Championship
Maggie Murphy, formerly CEO of Lewes FC, WSL and WCL board member and host of Expected Goals podcast on the business of women’s football.
Jamie Aitchison, General Manager of HBS in the UK.
The second group were invited to respond to Richard’s premise.
Knife to a gunfight: Sport’s audience is addicted to the scroll.
Guests:
Jo Redfern, Independent Media Consultant, self described YouTube and Roblox nerd.
Steve Nuttall, sports & media advisor working for rights holders and for Searchlight Capital Partners, a private equity fund. Formerly Sky, Google and the America's Cup.
Tim Stott, executive producer digital at HBS and its new digital content unit, Skroller
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Hello, Richard Gillis here. Welcome to a special live episode of the unofficial partner podcast. Recorded at BAFTA in Piccadilly, in London, in collaboration with HBS or host broadcast services. The leaders in sports broadcast production, which was celebrating 25 years in the industry. And the opening of its London office, the company has produced every FIFA world cup and many other events since being established, the host broadcast the 2002 FIFA world cup in Japan and Korea. So next year, the company will. Provide the same services for the women's rugby world cup that takes place across England. A a hundred specially invited guests were treated to two separate conversations. The first panel you're here, we're invited to respond to the provocation. TV is failing women's football. The guests you're here. Was Zara. chief revenue officer of Barclay's women's super league and the Barclays women's championship. Maggie Murphy, formerly CEO of Lewis' football club. At a WSL WCL board member and host of expected goals podcast on the business of women's football and Jamie Aitchison. Who's now general manager of HBS in the UK. The second group. Responded to my premise. No to a gunfight sports audience is addicted to the scroll and the guests. There were Joe Redfern, independent media consultants, self-described YouTube and roadblocks nerd, Steve Nuttall sport, a media advisor working for. Rights holders and for search Knight, capital partners who private equity fund. And Steve was formally at sky Google, and most recently the America's cup and Tim Stott, executive producer. Uh, digital at HBS and its new digital content unit scroller. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the sports business. And there's a newsletter that is read by tens of thousands of people across the business of sport. If you want to, receive that every Thursday morning in your inbox. Go to Unofficial Partner dot com and sign up there. We're going to start with a gentle provocation, which is that sports media or sports television is failing women's sport. It doesn't fit, it doesn't feel right, we're in a strange moment. It was built for something else, it was built at another time, and the commercial model doesn't work quite as well as it should. And there are things going on. The audience behavior is different. We can argue about whether it's a different audience. And we're going to talk about women's football now. but obviously you can then project onto it all sorts of other, questions in relation to your own sport. Zara, welcome. So Zara, chief revenue officer of the women's, Super League and Women's Championship. Also known as the WPLL. I knew that. You are at the forefront of this question about commercialising women's football. And you've just done a fantastic new deal with Sky. Does my premise hold, do you have any sympathy for my starting point? that things seem to fit the women's game. So I'm not going to lie, on my way here I did think, am I mad coming to do this with a podcast that's called Is TV Killing Women's Sport when we've just announced our new domestic media rights deal? So, I'm gonna, I'm going to take a step back on the question because I think actually I get the premise of the question, but I do also think it's a fairly unfair finger to point at TV when there is a whole ecosystem of challenges and that can be main stadium, secondary stadium, broadcast slots, ticket prices, priorities, resources in clubs. Resources at league levels. So there's a lot of factors that lead you to it then looking like it's TV's fault, possibly, which I don't actually agree with. And I think Sky and BBC's new deal with us, demonstrates that they believe in women's football and actually there is a market to invest in women's football. so I think there's a broader piece and scheduling is tough. And I think that is, if I was to land anywhere, it would be, Primacy of women's football, and how do we make sure that actually we are thought about first sometimes and not second, if not sometimes third, behind academy teams at some clubs, so that you actually can do the strongest job possible for TV. You can put it in the best windows. You know, a couple weekends ago on the men's international break, we had all of our clubs across the Super League and the championship play in their main stadiums for the first time ever. Yeah. And if you look at the average attendance for the same round year on year that went from 790 last year to 2800 this year, and that is despite there not being a Lionesses summer tournament, so it shows there still is growth. It also shows we also had BBC had a peak view record of 1. 3 million for the North London Derby, so it does demonstrate in that example that when you make it a priority, actually, you can increase attendance and you can increase TV viewership. Okay. Right. Excellent. Maggie, same sort of question. Obviously, you'll know Maggie Murphy from her tenure as CEO of Lewis Football Club. She is now like myself and like all of you, we have a podcast and it's called Expected Goals. If you don't listen to Expected Goals, by the way, you are really missing out because it is fantastic. And, and the the feedback has been pretty extraordinary. But Maggie, Jumping from what Zara's saying there in terms of that prioritization. I don't know if that's where you want to start. Yeah, I think so. I was nodding along a lot of what Zara said, but Whoopi Goldberg thinks that women's sports TV broadcasting is broken. And I think when Whoopi Goldberg speaks in this space, she carries a lot of gravitas. So Whoopi Goldberg just announced a couple of weeks ago, I think that she's setting up AWSN. So the all women's Sports Network, which is now, I think, in 64 countries around the world. The idea being that there's a central space where all of women's sport will be. I think they have some UEFA rights, I think they've got basketball, they've got hockey, they've got loads of different types of women's sport, and I guess what she, or what they are trying to do is unlock some of those challenges, so that dedicated time slot, well, we now have an entire network that runs 24 7, apparently with women's sport on all of the time, I guess they're trying to figure out, there's no central place, it is still very difficult, I love the fact that. In fact, on the podcast, Matt and I talked about it the other day was like, there's actually loads of women's football on TV right now. You've got the right, so actually you've got ITV and you've got the BBC who, I both think have the FA cup. There's rumors still. I think rumors about channel 4, maybe taking, sorry, the FA cup from now on. And then you've got, you know, A story broken on unexpected goals, we should say. Well, I think it hasn't been totally confirmed yet, but anyway. Was it not? Okay, sorry. Breaking it twice. But the point being, there's actually loads and loads of platforms now that are showing football. I mean, these guys now have an incredible YouTube deal, which I think is going to revolutionize the market, but it's not traditional TV, is it? I think that's probably something that is worth investigating. But it's still really difficult to know who's playing when, at what time. So that dedicated time slot is a real challenge. So I think Whoopi's trying to like, well, I just like saying the name, is trying to solve some of those issues and challenges. What I don't know whether she's going to solve is like challenges around whether it's the right product or are we still trying to shoehorn women's sport into men's, a men, a product that was designed for men. And I think all of us probably in the game, including people that work in women's sport, still have to unlock our inner. Inner kind of bias towards men's football being on a pedestal and being aspirational. I think that sometimes you'll see commentary out there, which is like, well, we don't have a match of the day for women. This is terrible. Like men's football habits. So why don't we have that? And I think sometimes that's not. That's not the right question, because that's automatically implying that you think that men's football is where we're all trying to go. And actually, I think in our day to day decision making, we might need to unleash ourselves from, from men and just try to think, Okay, what do we want to do for our audience in this particular time? And I think women's sport, women's football, have a real opportunity to dive into the new fandoms, these new ways of watching, the fact that people want shorter content, are interested in individual, like the person behind the content. There's loads of dangers in that, but I do think that women's football can capitalise on this new space, not infantilise or trivialise it. But I think there's lots and lots of little issues, as Zahra said. It's just trying to figure out, can we be brave enough to unlock ourselves and think about how How we serve the communities we're trying to serve, or want to serve better. You know, that's one of the reasons that we carved out player rights. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, yeah. Historically, you know, the broadcasters understandably pay a lot of money, so they want to protect their rights in the men's game. But, you know, Sky and BBC understood when we said to them, we'd like to give our players the rights to post either during game, now obviously they're not posting during the game, but some of them have huge platforms that actually, if we can work with their agents to give them clips of footage, it does a job of providing people to know what's going on. What's on live at the time, but then also being able to give those players access to their footage after matches as well, because they're ultimately our biggest marketing channel. And I think as to Maggie's point, it's what our fans want. They actually really care about the player stories. So being able to arm our players with that content was really important and to Sky and BBC's credit, they understood that as well. And that became part of the new deal. Okay. I think the aggregation problem is a general problem for all sport. You know, if you want to watch rugby in the UK, 90 or something a month, and you have to have about 17 different platforms to watch it. So I think that is an ongoing problem for everybody. I concur with what Maggie says. I mean, I'm going to give you an example. So I used to work at Channel 4, and in 2012, we had the problem of How are we going to make people watch the Paralympics when they've just watched the Olympics? Because there's a perception there that the Paralympics is inferior. It is played out in the same venues, so the visual experience to the television viewer, or even the paying fan, is an athletic stadium, or a velodrome, or a swimming pool, where you've just seen the most elite people in the world. Participate for four weeks and then channel for us to follow that and go, okay, how, how are we going to do this? Because there is a perception that what you're broadcasting is inferior to what's followed. So I'm sure a lot of you are aware of what channel four did, but they did a complete pivot and went the other way. And what they did was decide this is not inferior. This is different. And you celebrate the difference. And I look at a lot of women's sport and women's football and the way it's broadcast. Sport has been created under the male gaze, okay? So for the last 50 years we've all worked in sports broadcasting. All the major positions generally have been held by men. So the way you direct a football match, was set by men. The way you set up the production, one presenter, two guests, all that, all those sort of things. And I think this is a massive opportunity to rewrite how this is done. Because I think you have to change what it looks like visually. Because if you're just plonking the same scenarios onto women's sport, you're not celebrating the differences, you're not making a difference and To me, you have to be aggressive and disruptive, I think. This is a good point to do that. Look, there's a lot of people in this room and Sky and BBC. The most important thing is to get it visible, yes. But I think the other issue, finally, we've had is that those people in those positions. And now we're going to see more and more women. Who can direct sport. And the way a women's rugby match is directed should be different from a men's. And we, our partners at World Rugby, are working a lot on this. The pace of the game is different. Tries are scored in different ways. You know, it's not the same. So the more women who come through in production positions have that confidence to tell their male above them, we're not doing it like this. That's going to really make a change. And I think you'll start seeing that. But this is almost like the first generation of women in TV sports production who are really kind of beginning to cut through. I understand that from a sort of conceptual perspective, and I get it, and I, it's something I've, you know, you bounce into the same or different, and the assumption being it's a different audience, different people, so don't serve them the same product. I don't know what it looks like, though, what the implications of that are. So in terms of shifting and changing, and it could be at the presentation end, could be what television does or what the media does. I'm interested in the player rights idea. And at some point, I mean, someone will mention Kings League or Baller League or, you know, and is that this year's drive to survive? It's just something people talk about because it's of the moment. Or is it a trend? Is it, is that a direction of travel for sports that aren't going to get the massive broadcast rights that, you know, and we always talk about Premier League or, or the big ticket items, but what are the implications of that idea that it's going to change? I mean, did, can I just answer the first point you made on it being a different audience? I think that's the challenge.'cause there are, there is a segment that's not totally different. You know, in the WST visibility report last year it showed that of the 15 million that watch women's football in this country, there's three segments. There's BWSL and Premier League. They watch both. They just watch BWSL or they watch the Lionesses and BWSL. So there is a group of people that watch Premier League. And I think that can sometimes be a bit of a red herring that we all become obsessed with it just being a totally new fan group and it's not all the time that we have to be mindful of actually servicing the different fan segments that we have. Just to come in on, on that, that is, I reckon at Lewis is about a third were men's side and women's side. And I think that comes back to my point around who has the dominance of opinion. So I think that some fans would actually really like things to be quite different, but the fans that have been coming to this ground for a very long time, the proper fans, they were here before you were here. What do you mean? You don't know what to order at the bar. Like those people are the ones that are I want it to look the same. They're the ones that are saying, well, if you've got a match a day for men, why don't you have a match? And I'm saying, you know, fans of women's sport are the ones that are coming from this feeling that this is what professional sport looks like. And you do need to feed them, but also kind of not be overdominated by them. I think the second piece is like around what, what are we going to do differently, especially around the players, player rights. I, I'm, I'm a little bit hesitant about this, but I think it's because I'm probably just hesitant about change that, you know, people are wanting this short form content. So maybe you're not broadcasting the whole 90 minutes. Maybe you're doing it into smaller segments. I'm nervous about some of those things, but I'll take that side away. I think the thing I'm more nervous about is the overdue. Over dominance of focusing on players because I think these players are under so much pressure already. And I think, you know, they serve like we all want authentic content, you know, genuine content. We want real stories. Women's sport is full of that. But you can also cross a line maybe sometimes and maybe demand more of your player. So you're saying that now you have to perform on the pitch and you have to perform off the pitch. Of course, some players will love to do that and will be very happy to have a camera follow them around. But if you're not like that, does that mean you're not going to get a deal? I think that is happening, you know, you two, two, two players. One is a bigger social media audience that a club takes that player instead of the other player. So I think these are a bit challenging cause it is anything sacred. Are we pushing players too far? I'm not suggesting that's what happens with the individual clips. Cause I think that that that's actually a really exciting new way. And it'd be cool to see how that actually plays out. But I think the, I think we need a little bit of caution around over emphasizing players who might not always get a cut of the deal on the other side. If there's a documentary, do they get their right? You know, how much are they going to get out of it? If that becomes a player that's really focused in, you know, like, where do you split the rights, I guess, as well? I think it would be good to get a view from our friend Oscar from FIFA on women's football. Go for it. Because he's done a tremendous amount of work in North America, etc. He's over here. Where is Oscar? Jumping in a second. This is this is Sean by the way. It's not BAFTA award winning Tony Robinson from Baldrick fame We try, we try to sort of, we're desperate to get in as a member here. They weren't not going to, you know, obviously a sport B2B vertical podcast team, it's not, it's not going to play, but it was a bit of a weak effort, but people thought at the door, they thought he was Baldrick, but anyway, we'll just let that go. We'll get, yeah, yeah. No, no, we won't. Oscar. Thank you. I think development in a sport like ours should happen. Not only on the pitch. We constantly. Speak about, let's develop the game. Let's develop the game. But the game is, gets developed on and off the pitch. And that should happen also on the women's side because sometimes we focus a lot on the players and the clubs and everything. And that's super important because we, we see how. They are growing and we see games that are amazing, but what about the people that are working around the game? The people in our industry that many times they don't get the same opportunities. And we talk about Oh, it's great to see a woman directing or one crew, only women doing that. But that should not be news. We, we need to get to a point that having a woman directing A World Cup is not news anymore, we need to have, if there's a crew with only women, we need to have them directing, not just because of the genre, it's just because they are the best in the industry, we need to give them the opportunity. So I think, I'm excited about how the game has grown, I work 10 days a week. It's been 10 years in the US, and I saw the league growing, and I saw the team lifting the World Cup a couple of times, and I saw the excitement, but that excitement was only during the time of the tournament. What about the rest? The players were alone. I come from a country that's Costa Rica, it's small, and the players were by themselves, and the day that they filled the stadium was news. We all need to do, to make a better for Canada. To develop the game around it as well. Have better people managing, have people like you that have created this amazing deal. That's historic deal. In years they're going to talk about it. But that should not be news in years. I think the player rights thing is interesting and you will just get a natural fall away from people who don't want to do it. And that's just always going to be the way with media. That's always been the case with footballers who are shy or whatever, but opening up the ability for those who want to be able to do that. And, you know, these anachronistic TV deals where players couldn't post a clip of themselves scoring a goal and all that just seems like absolute insanity these days. Sorry if anyone's got one of those deals. So it's a really positive step forward for sure. And again, like, This athletes as creators thing is going to explode and already is and we're Planning for that at HBS for sure so we're looking at a sort of bifurcated world where you've got This is the big get bigger again. This is a version of that. There's going to be a few superstar athletes who will have teams of people who will be generating content and making lots of money from commercial deals. And then there is a, the rest that won't be doing that. Yeah. But is it, is it all about commercial deals? I mean, isn't it about growing the sport and championing and getting to know the players better. I mean It is, but you and I know and everyone here knows that that's what agents do. That's what, that's what the market will do. Yeah, but the harsh reality is that is not going to happen. So, you know, not everybody's going to get an amazing commercial deal off the back of their social media platform. There's just too many players in the league and what have you. It would be lovely. To Oscar's point, I think every federation sport I've ever worked with wants more exposure. And if you don't start engaging with these things, your commercial gets affected in the end, you know. Measuring social success is such a important metric these days. I think a lot of it comes down to choice. So, you know, that's why we did the player clip so that players have the choice if they want to post. And when I was at Chelsea, it's why we started the We Are Chelsea podcast because it was a really good format, and I'm sure you're very biased here for the players to feel really natural in telling their own stories. And it's phenomenal how, you know, A lot of players prefer to do that storytelling in a podcast environment versus actually a TV environment because they just, you know, they just are naturally more comfortable. So the premise of that podcast was to tell stories and to bring the personalities that Yes, that's correct. So, I'd gotten to know and had seen behind the scenes, it ended up being a commercial success because the club partner, Skoda, took it on board. Then it became a fan success because they now use it as a live activation event ahead of matches at Stamford Bridge. So, I hear where Jamie's coming from, that it's It's not always driven by the commercial decision, but that can be an output. And I think if you look at all the choice we have, you know, TikTok live, actually, some of the creators can now make money through gifting and some of the players will do that. Or it might be actually as they build their YouTube channels, they'll bring partners in through there. So I think actually we've almost got so many platforms from the players to choose from. More will have more choice to be able to monetize and build their own brands. But, you know, I always use my. My counter to the whole, what happens if there's a player that doesn't have loads of followers? Well, Kwai Leonard, for those who follow the NBA got a huge deal with New Balance and he doesn't have a single social media follower because he's a great athlete and a great player and he won a ring. So I know that's probably an anomaly, but there are some examples where you do have some athletes making money when, and it's not based on social followers. Yeah, I mean there's a temptation always isn't there to go to for a binary either or and it's going to be and yeah Previously Barclays FA and then ladies European tour golf now CEO of World Netball Really interested in the carve out of the player rights and clips Richard, we talked about this with golf up in Troon on that cold windy day. And actually golf was quite unique in that we could post live clips during the hours of rounds of, of playing golf. And Sky were incredibly supportive to Lazy European Tour and valued the Solheim Cup independently to the Ryder Cup and so on. I'm interested to understand how you so I'm really excited to see how you approach that conversation with them. Were they very open to that carve out? Because I think it's brilliant. And whilst we're trying to all navigate this crazy landscape, and I have a very traditional old school dad. I have three children who are guinea pigs and I'm in the middle. All my kids follow the players and that's what they want. Whereas then there's the traditional older person who just wants to sit and watch linear TV. So just interested to know how that conversation went and well done on the deal as well. Thank you. We literally just asked, can we include player carve out in the reserve rights? And they said yes. So it was, it was quite a simple conversation. I mean, we gave the context as to why, so we did explain it's, it's, you know, we see it as supporting. You and the live coverage, and that's the premise behind it. Actually, one of the bigger challenges is supporting the clubs now in delivering that because not not all the clubs are resourced in the same way to be able to actually maximize their holdbacks and also the players rights as well. But it's You know, it's a five year deal, so actually we approached it more of, what do we need to be mindful of maybe in three or four years time, that if we haven't carved it out now, we're going to regret that. And actually, I don't think you'll see a huge delivery next season on the player side of it, because everyone's still getting to grips, but it's just future proofing ourselves over the next five years. What do you think the practical implications are for a club, Maggie? What do you think in terms of, I can, again, I can see it in abstract, but it'd be interesting to know what the details would be. Yeah, I can completely see that some clubs will find it a real struggle and will want to do it, but they won't really have the capacity or knowledge. Also players, players would, there'll be some that will really want to do it. Dive right in. They do have an army of people behind them that, that can figure it out and understand. I love the concepts. I actually wondered whether, not, not that it was a typo, but I was kind of like, wow, this is so interesting that there's a carve out for live clips. I mean, the player is literally over there, so it's definitely not her on her social media. So I, I was curious about it because it kind of breaks that authenticity. It, it's like, it's a challenge in a way. It's like. Actually, do you know what? I am playing right now, but and I do have a team behind me, and I thought that was an interesting angle to take because I even said just a moment ago, I think women's sport does have that big authenticity piece that that is a real asset to it. But yeah, I think honestly, it's the kind of thing that You set a bar and then clubs are going to have to work towards it and you know, they're all Let's be clear like the clubs the whole ecosystem is developing Everyone's trying to figure this out the whole of the system needs professionalization whether it's the comms team the commercial team The medical side, you know, everything is developing. So yeah, we're only just at the start of seeing Where it's going to go and how it's where the investments need to go internally. Yeah. It's interesting. Fiona mentioned the Open Championship. We were both there at Troodon this year and it was obviously the men's Open Championship. And, it was a practice day and I was I took a photo or I had a clip of Justin Thomas or some golfer and a very nice, you know, quite elderly Scottish gentleman tapped me on the shoulder and said, sorry, you can't do that. And and I said, why? And he said, I'm protecting Sky's rights. And it was, well, you know, that's, that's only a few months ago. So it's really, I mean, it is, it sounds easy, you know, when we all saw it, people thought, Oh, that's interesting. And these things tend, you know, they get followed and they think it'd be interesting to see the next six months or the next deal tranches go through and whether it becomes copied or becomes, you know, we want what they've got as part of it. Do you, can you see that as the next phase? Yeah. I mean, I've got a lot of experience of all this because again, you know, when I worked in British horse racing, we did exactly the same thing. There was this huge transition of us trying to bully people and protect our rights because we owned the event at the Grand National. But there was 500 people with cameras putting clips on the mail online. And it was like whack a mole. You found one over there and there was one over there. So I think it's probably something you can do. I don't think now in the age of phones you can stop this stuff. It's a bit ridiculous. So, I think you have to embrace it and develop it and move on with it. I think that one of the most interesting bits of player content live in a match is actually going to be things that you probably won't want players to be sharing. So there'll be things like a really bad tackle or foul, or it'll be the eye roll, or it'll be some, some cheeky moment. And I guess you have to kind of almost control what, what clips will go out to the players, but actually some of the things that would probably end up on TikTok doing really, really well are not actually in play stuff itself. I think actually in CONCACAF, in one of their tournaments, they were, the players embraced this new posting to a social platform. People were doing it at half time in the dressing room. But we want that, don't we? We want to get into those areas, don't we? And maybe that's where we're going to end up. You know, people are literally going to start posting their tweets. And that would be a point of difference to someone else, so why don't you do that? It's also, and we'll talk about this in the next panel, we're going to talk about the scroll and, and, and, you know, the role of sport in the phone. But just to round us off, because it's interesting, because once you've let that out, once you've set that as an expectation, I think controlling what, what is put out is problematic, to say the least. But maybe there's Maybe there's other things that we can, like women's sport can also test and pilot things and do things because it is more flexible to do so. And I actually think that women's like TV broadcasts and women's football, women's sport could actually influence men's football, men's sport by being quite bold in some areas. One thing that I would love to have in football, men's or women's is the referees mic'd up. Cause I just think, I feel like that's a space where the, Good. I don't know if it's because of the toxicity or the tension or the pressure would be eased now, maybe PGMOL would say that it would actually increase, but I don't know, but I think that's something we could take from rugby for example, and maybe men's football can't do it, but I think women's football could, so micing up the referees feels like something which is innovative and new, it's not super new and innovative, but, and then that could influence men's football as well, so women's football doesn't always have to be completely different, I think men's football will start to learn from it as well. Noted. Good idea, Maggie. And I think on that front, you know, WNBA finals, anyone that watched them you know, it was phenomenal to see in the last game, ESPN doing a halftime walk down the corridor to the changing room interview with Sabrina Ionescu live in an NBA, a WNBA finals. And it's just, I think everyone watched that and went, Oh, maybe we'll, we'll try a little bit of that too. So there are definitely learnings from other, other sports, but I do like that idea. Right, Maggie on commission. Any questions before we switch panels? We're going to move to another one. Yes, Mike down here. Hi, I'm Katie Traxton, Good Vibes Only Talent. So I represent a lot of elite athletes. And obviously, therefore, they come from sports that have all different profiles. And I totally get why all of us want everyone to see sports that we think are incredible. But, this summer when I was in Paris, I started off my summer outraged at the fact that people were charging so much more for tickets to the Olympics than the Paralympics. I then went to both tournaments and I realized that at the Paralympics there were so many families and people who couldn't afford to go to the Olympics who were having the most phenomenal sporting experience and becoming fans of the Paralympics because they could afford to go. And it was accessible and it was welcoming and they felt safe. Safe, and the atmosphere was completely different. That's a similar thing that I've seen a lot in women's sport, and particularly women's sport where there's historically a larger male counterpart. How do we make sure that we achieve all the things you guys are talking about, and get as many people watching, and the best deals possible, and money in to create a virtuous circle, but also we maintain that ability for it to be accessible and welcoming to new fans? One of the things that I love about the audiences at WSL or a championship game is that for me, people talk about it being like family friendly or I actually just think it's like representative of our nation. Like if you go to a men's football game, it's not representative of our nation. If you go to a women's football game, it is representative of your nation, which also means that you just check your language because there might be kids around, there might be people there that you don't want to hear your accent. So for me, I think holding that representativeness and that like diversity in the audience, I think is going to be really, really crucial. I think there's, I guess, an element of this is, is also the price rise and you thinking that maybe you might change the demographics or the audiences if the prices go up. And I think that the moment when. We're probably not in that, in that danger period, Zara, you might be able to correct me on the, on the stats, but I remember there was when the Euros were, tickets were going live, some of the tickets that were sold quickest were actually the highest priced, so you had, like, people coming to women's sport events and seeing it as this, you know, once, once in a lifetime event to go to, so willing to pay a lot of money. Higher premium. And so some of the cheaper tickets were actually on sale longer, and I thought that was an interesting dynamic. I think certainly when I was running Lewis, we were definitely encouraged by the FA to have multiple price points at our game, which at a club like Lewis was a little bit challenging and I, but I do think that probably still maintains a bit of a diverse audience if you've got different types of categories that you can go in it. I mean, I think that's a question for a whole other podcast to be able to properly answer it. But just to give you an example of it's, it's sort of a little bit of both. So I went to a women's champions league game in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago to watch Celtic versus Chelsea. And I made the decision that I don't know why, but I made the decision to sit in the Celtic Ultras end and for those that haven't been to Celtic Park, like the, the Ultras, I mean, I jumped up and down for 90 minutes, didn't know there was a red card, barely knew the score, didn't see anything and there were big flags going everywhere, but it was fascinating to see probably about 400 people rammed into this space, the atmosphere was great, but they were predominantly teenage boys, if not maybe 20 year old men. And I asked the question of like, my assumption is that at the men's games, the ultras would be a lot older and they are. And therefore the younger men come to the women's games because they can actually get access to that area. Cause it's normally seasoned ticket holders and feel like they're part of the ultras. It is, it is genuinely one of the best club atmospheres I've been to. But it was predominantly a men's fan group that had come in. However, it wasn't hostile to everyone else or the families that were sat in the West Stand. In fact, they started a chant with them at one point. So, I haven't really answered your question other than to say, I think it's It's, it's, I think we're all trying and actually I think we're, we're, everyone's been very open to that. We're in this test and learn phase, but everyone is very, being very mindful of doing and growing in the right way. And making sure that we respect those that have been with the game to begin with and then also embrace anyone that's new. And I think accessibility is the biggest piece of women's sport, not just women's football. Okay. And luckily we have a podcast if you want to come and, you know, if it needs another podcast, we do have podcast inventory available. Yeah. Yeah. And the last one, and then we'll switch groups. Hi, I'm Emma Atkins. It's not made up, I do actually work for a sports consultancy called Altair. I've not made that one up. So, I've worked in sport for over 30 years. I'm really worried about cause I've seen money come into the system before and it's all great. And everyone goes kind of bonkers and it makes a massive change everything. And then the athletes get hurt. And so I used to lead an agency that actually looked after athletes when they were broken. And so I'm really concerned about now we're seeing kind of marketing ruling the roost, you know, when we're kind of going down this, and we've spoken about it a little bit. What is our responsibility collectively to actually look after players? I, I do think that is another podcast. I don't, I don't want to, you can answer it if you like, but I think that is, it's a really important, but I don't think we're going to do it justice. I can give it a go in a nutshell. Please do. I agree. And I think, you know, we feel and Nikki in particular feels very strongly about this. So it's from the top down within our organization. Collaboration is the one word to that. So whether that's us working with FIFA and UEFA and the FA on looking at a schedule that puts player welfare, and it's not just women's sports, you know, we've seen it on the men's side that the players are calling for a more collaborative schedule that puts their needs first. And, you know, the players. We demonstrated it this year when we had the challenge of three, good challenge, three teams qualifying for the Champions League. But the way the qualification process works is they all qualified on a Thursday, the draw was made Friday, the fixtures were announced Saturday, and the first game was 10 days later. And then it transpired that Chelsea were due to play Man U on the Sunday and they'd been drawn in the Champions League for the Tuesday. And we took a lot of stick publicly for deciding to change that game and move it somewhere else. But we stood by the fact that it was a player welfare decision and we couldn't expect Chelsea players to play on a Sunday and then 48 hours later play their opening Champions League game against Real Madrid. So I think it's, you know, we all have to find whether it's us and the other federations and the clubs and the agents, but we do have to find a way to collaborate. So I do agree with you, but it's front of mind within our organization. Thank you. Right, round of applause and we're going to swap groups. Thank you guys. Okay, we're gonna finish off with a, it's a conversation, a different type of conversation or a slight different angle to conversation and again, the sort of premise around this is that sports fans and its audience are addicted to the scroll. So, What is it? How do we deal with that? Do we care? Does sport just jump onto the scroll and compete for eyeballs? It's just another sport. It's just another entertainment. It's another piece of content. Or is there anything else that we should be thinking about? You sound bullish on this. Let's start with you. Have you noticed that scrolling on always attracts negative language, right? I mean, doom scrolling, doom scroll, dopamine addiction. It's scary stuff, right? You think 70 years ago, nuclear war, now unlimited data plan. That's the threat we face. I'm being a bit facetious because I mean, look, people are making money out of this. This is absolutely true for just six pounds a month. Cancel any time. You can cure your screen's scrolling addiction. It's absolutely true with an app. So the cure to too much screen time is more screen time. As you can tell, I don't see this as a huge issue. In the job I do, quick plug, HPS and YesScroller, the new agency, this is what I call a good problem to have, right? I mean, if you're, if you have an audience that's scrolling, We can make them stop, because that's our job. Imagine something much worse Can we? Can we make them stop? Yep, I'll get on to that. Imagine something much worse, imagine if they were reading a book. Yeah. You don't have a hope. If they're scrolling, you can make them stop. How can you do that? Well, if someone likes, let's take a hypothetical sport, say football. We know that they like seeing the ball hit the back of the net. They need to be seeing that goal from us. They need to be seeing it very quickly before they have the chance to see it from anywhere else. We know that's the, pretty much a fundamental scroll stopper. Here's another thought what about how we give generation TikTok an experience that they don't get anywhere else? watching a TV. So we know that generation TikTok wants to see camera angles, for example, that their father's not watching on the TV set. So that's the challenge for us. What about voices? What about people who look like them? And the creator economy is fascinating for us because it could be someone given incredible access to a football ground who's swanning around, rubbing shoulders with the stars. It could be a kid in his bedroom in Penang, Malaysia, who's just very loud and very funny. But these are all the techniques that we can use to, to stop the scroll, right? This is, and this is what we're paid to do. So, I'd say to a, say, a sporting federation or a brand, let's talk about if it is really a problem. Firstly, given we know that we can stop them, how do we migrate them back to the linear feed where we spend all the money? Do we want to do that? Do we want to monetize them where we find them right now? Do we just want to serve the needs of our fans on whatever platforms they choose, right? Because actually, maybe that's where they're happiest. So when we're constructing strategies for, for sporting events, we're thinking the audience is far and wide. Event like the FIFA world cup, we're talking about a piece of content that has to work in Australia, Korea, and Brazil. The audience is a broader age digitally than everyone. It's not just, it's not just 16 year old boys with attitude. You know, it's a very broad church. How, what are we going to do to make them stop? And, you know, certainly take more time to consume our product. And that's the fun bit, right? This is what we're paid to do. This is, there are lots of strategies. How we slice and dice the resource we've got of football is incredibly important. People say, oh, you're only allowed to use two minutes per match on football. Wow, two minutes, you know, 10 years ago, two minutes was not enough. The first World Cup we did in Russia, we were putting out videos, 52 seconds. Now we're at 20 seconds. So for two minutes, I can get a lot of mileage. So all these, all these things come up. Apart from being slightly contemptuous of the premise at the start, which I apologise for. Not at all, that's why it's there. I mean, we're not going to solve the moral panic issue. I didn't really, I'm, I'm, it's a really interesting point of view, Joe. I'm really, I loved what the stuff that you do around just younger generations and their relationship to it. What, what's your, just general, just your general first sort of thoughts? In a way, they are addicted to the scroll. But again, it's just a small part of their media diet. So young people spend, I mean, if you've got any young people in your life, you'll know that they live their life across any number of platforms. They want a frictionless experience. They want to be able to dive in to the content, the fandoms that they love at any time. So really, For me, the importance is knowing the need state of the audiences when they're on those particular platforms. So back to TikTok, it is scrolling, it's 15 20 seconds of a piece of drama, a joke, a cliffhanger. But then when they're on YouTube, YouTube is the place they go to swim around, to deep dive. You know, we're old, we Google things, they go to YouTube. That's their search engine. So they go there to swim around in content. They're, they're watching two, two hour deep dives, breakdowns of games or plays or their favorite movie or their favorite video game. They're swimming around. So YouTube is where they go for that deep dive. TikTok is where they go for the kind of discovery. The quick fix broadcast is still a part of that, but increasingly it's a less important part. But again, I come from the world of, of kids media and kids entertainment, where we think in terms of trans media strategy, how do you articulate your world, your content, your characters, your narrative across all of those platforms delivering to the need state of the audience when they're there. But in a way that is complimentary, that can move them around that flywheel, and that's the interesting thing I think with, with sport, which for me is one of the greatest crucibles for storytelling, but actually it isn't just a question of cut and paste a clip and you pop it on another platform and tick, that's it, done. You have to think slightly more sophisticated than that now. Young people are the most sophisticated consumers Of content and media than in at, at any, any time. So really it's beholden on us really to go and figure out what they want, where they want it, when, why, and deliver, deliver to that need state. And that is, I mean, I. I don't necessarily think we have to stop the scroll. We've just got to figure out what the onward journey is from that. And that's the interesting thing, because we tend to think in our silos, we're a broadcaster or we're a social media person. Actually, there's an opportunity to create a whole ecosystem and get that flywheel spinning, because to your point, in an attention economy where attention is scarce, if you are not there, Something else will just take your place. And this, this issue that came up before about scarcity. If scarcity equals anonymity, you're screwed. It's really about ubiquity, but it's ubiquity in all the places where they are delivering to the need state, something that they really want there. Steve, let's bring you in there. Former Google, YouTube and Sky Sports. I'm not planting you that. I'm not putting that badge on you. Obviously that was there, but it is there. Give us your starting point. Well, my starting point, I suppose your original provocation to this was that sport brought a knife to a gunfight. And as we're sitting at BAFTA, the sort of the knife, if I ever think about a gunfight and a knife, it's that classic scene from an Indiana Jones movie where Harrison Ford is attacked by a, by a guy with a very big sword and just pulls out a gun and that's the end of that. So, so I'm not sure that sports sort of, relationship with the media industry should be end up with one killing the other. I'm not sure that's perhaps the outcome that we're aiming for. I think you probably need to have a balance between sport and the media industry. So it's more like a duel, but not necessarily a duel to the death, but you've got. Two competitors against each other. So it's something like The King or The Last Jewel, the Ridley Scott film that came out. And that's, that's more the world in which you, you, you're thinking. I think it's. Another Ridley Scott film is um, Gladiator, which is out at the moment. You really are running with the BAFTA thing. I am. Well, I'm, I'm a BAFTA member, and as we're here, I thought, well You're a BAFTA member? I am. Yeah. And and, and I can help you later about that Okay. vocation process. You should have said. Maybe. Depends how the questions go. And so the, so if you think about Gladiator, to succeed as a Gladiator, well, firstly, you have to have worked with your teammates. And also you have to be really good with all different types of weapons. So, and otherwise you aren't, you're gonna be one of the people that doesn't make it out of the arena. And the amphitheater was of course the original sort of pay per view venue. If you think about it, very good, very good, so I think the point I want to make though is that if you go back to the duel and two people competing with each other, you know, people sort of think fondly about the old days when there was just a television set and they were just sports rights holders. I'm not sure that really worked very well for sports because in my recollection When people used to talk about the telly, as Dan said before, like, there wasn't enough sport on the telly at the time. And the telly broadcasters didn't pay enough money for the sports rights. And actually, the broadcasters would create the content for you, you didn't own the content afterwards, you didn't own your archive either. So I don't think that the, There wasn't some sort of glorious past where everything was perfect. If you look now, actually, I think also people worry too much about the inevitable decline of sports viewing on television. Actually, the number of hours watched on UK television of sport is broadly flat over the last 10 years. by people who are under 35. So there's about a billion hours watched of sports content by people under 35 in this country, and that number has changed very little. The decline of viewing of linear television is undoubtedly true, but it's genres like drama and lifestyle programming that have fallen off a cliff, and sport has been remarkably flat. In fact, you'll be surprised to know, if you are under 35, you're watching, Sport is now 17 percent of your broadcast TV diet, which is double what it was 10 years ago. So, younger people are actually watching more sport than they were. At the same time, when you do the maths, and you think about YouTube, which is to the primary video platform for anyone, there's roughly 2. 5 billion hours of content watched on YouTube every day. When you work it all back, you get to the fact that probably sports content on YouTube, there's about 2 billion. Hours a year watched of sports content by UK viewers, which is roughly double the number of hours that have watched of sport on TV sets from broadcasters. So YouTube has trebled the market in total at that point, which I think is a good news for sports organizations. And 40 percent of YouTube's viewing is on tellies. So actually it means there are more hours of sports watched on a TV set on YouTube. Of sports content in this country in a year than there are of people watching sports content on telly. Yeah, you, you finish my start. I was just sorry about that. But, but see that's, I'd say I think it's a, it's a good situation to be in. The market's grown enormously. Yes. It's more complicated. Yes, there are lots of platforms to work with, but it's way better than it used to be. The, the, the YouTube back to the YouTube stat. So 40% of YouTube viewing is through connected TVs in the home. In the UK it's actually 60% in the us. and we're heading that way quickly. Back to TikTok, 12 percent share of viewing in the home with 16 to 34. So that's bigger than ITV and Channel 4 and Sky. So they, this kind of huge shift, this paradigm shift in content consumption, again, just adds credence to the argument that you've really got to think, and it's a difficult transition, right? Because rights are carved up in a certain way and very often they don't fit that consumption pattern, but you've got to think about the older. older audience for whom it does fit, and then the younger audience coming through. So it has to be constructed in a way that actually, don't wait for the cliff edge before you then start thinking about these, these social platforms. There's got to be dual strategies really that need to come that need to be built now. So that when that, those two lines cross over, it's not the blind panic as to how do we reach young people and these younger consumers. Look at the full circle. Decades ago, we used to watch TV for the younger people in the audience. People used to sit together in the living room and watch television together. And then they all went to their bedroom to look at their own devices. And now, as you're saying, through, through connected devices, they're coming back and doing it together. Yeah. Yeah. Or, just as likely for sports, through a watch party. And that watch party could be someone staring at the screen and reacting at what you're watching on the second screen. Or increasingly, it could also be someone who's a rights holder, turning that into a watch party as well. So, we're getting back to shared experiences, maybe just not with the family, but certainly with your friends and other like minded fans. I mean, it is, the numbers around YouTube are astonishing, aren't they? You know, they're just getting bigger and bigger, and it's How many people here are YouTube Premium subscribers? So about five, 10%. Your 10 percent of 2 billion people is daily is okay as a business, I'd have thought. Yeah, I don't worry for them. There was a, so Peter Hutton, I was talking to him about this and he obviously, he sort of, he's from that sort of broadcast world, but also went to be head sport at Metta. His line is that once they realized it was the scroll, what was on it didn't really matter. to Facebook and to Meta. So once the habit is ingrained, it doesn't matter what you put on. It could be cat videos, could be dancing, it could be sport, but I find, and I've got a bit of, and by the way, my media consumption, you've almost described it exactly. It's, you know, I'm obsessed with TikTok. I watch on YouTube and it's not necessarily only about kids. but obviously there's this, the moral question about kids and the wiring of their brains, but let's just get it back to consumption and what this means for this room and beyond. So that idea about what happens, people's relationship with sport, I mean, I might try and answer that in two ways. I think the first is if you are spending lots of time putting your content onto platforms where people are not really engaged with your content and are just scrolling past it, you know, there are a lot of platforms out there and maybe you should just deprioritize that one. So you don't have to be on every platform. You've got to make some choices. I think the other one is that if you think about as we got an audience, which is mainly from the sports rights world here or sports rights holders you need to think about now you're going to be creating your own content for all these platforms, because back in the day, as I said before, Broadcasters used to come up, film the content for you, they would actually own the footage and own the archive and, you know, that sounds archaic now, but that was how it used to be. So now you're probably in a world where rights holders are going to create content for themselves and they're going to package that content for all the different screens and devices that people use and they might also use that content in commercial deals or in a whole variety of new ways. Would never have happened if the broadcaster was in control. And that probably means either you need to have more resources in house and be a lot smarter about what structures and people you have inside the business, or you need to partner with someone on the production side who can actually Do all of that for you and they're undoubtedly scale economies to doing that. There is a question about what is an advert for HBS, but I did get the impression from Dan before that maybe that was the direction they're going. I was just going to make a point about value because what there's different types of content, but they're each going to have their own different value now. So what used to be classed as filler or the low value content now is exactly the stuff that young people value most. So again, as well as looking at content and platform strategy, you've got to look at the value of each type of piece of content, because actually used in the wrong way, it could be perceived as low value. So really looking at where you can extract that value. So potentially the wrong kind of content or strategy. on a scrollable feed that isn't stopping the scroll, that's low value. You think about, could that be better leveraged elsewhere? Or do we just stop making that kind of stuff? So there's all of these different, I kind of think about them as sliders, all of these different sliders that all need moving in different directions to get that optimum content and platform strategy that's going to service the need state of your fans. And again, particularly for younger ones, it's a whole different way of of consumption and valuing content than previous generations. The question there about, so I just wanted you to, to, there's a question there, Tim, about rights holders, and for a while now, and you know, Steve just articulated that, that the self image is becoming, we are a media company, we are an entertainment company. Is that a cyclical thing? Do you think that when they find out they're not very good at that, or they have their, the generator, they're spending a lot of money on it, so we will cut the studio, and we'll cut the media item, we go back to being a football club, a Tournament organiser, that's where we got paid a lot of money to do that, and that's our core competency. Because sometimes these things go in cycles, and federations, there's a mission creep, it gets fat, then they have to get down again. Is that, is that part of it? I think so, yeah, I mean, look, look at this way. They're asking themselves the question, do I want to be the storyteller here? I might have the sport, but do people want me as an official body? You know, I say when I do some of these projects, look, we're not sexy, we're the cops, right? We work for the institution, we're the ones that people complain about when they think there's a bad decision on the pitch. So, so who, who is going to be the storyteller who people connect with? That's a really important question. If you are the official body. What can you actually serve people because you can't wade into the interesting controversies that people actually want to talk about, right? And it's difficult too when you're a broadcaster when you've got a contract that says you've got to mind your P's and Q's. So in some ways you're better off devolving to that to my aforementioned, What was I saying? Penang, Malaysia. Influencer who can rant and rave about that stuff without any, any blowback. I mean, you're on a podcast called Unofficial Partner, aren't you? But there's a, something, there is something there about where the line is, the editorial line. I always, as a journalist, worry when rights holders start to say that we are behaving like a brand, we're a media. It's, it doesn't feel, doesn't sit well because of those, exactly those decisions. When it comes down to it, there is a line. I mean, there obviously will be a line, but I mean, I think we're all quite comfortable with a world in which the Olympics produces the coverage of the Olympics. I mean, we, I've just come back from Barcelona, and we've produced the coverage of the America's Cup in house ourselves, with a, working with a consortium of partners. So, I think obviously you can't create content which is hopelessly anodyne. And unwatchable. But you, yeah, I think you can go, you have to also create content that's going to be watched, because otherwise why are you doing it in the first place? So I, I think also the other thing is, go back to YouTube. YouTube's very good at allowing people to upload content and tell their own version of the stories. You know, back in the day when I was there, you were, you, the Spanish football clubs were owned. The were able to claim the content that fans uploaded clips. There be thousands of clips uploaded of every. El Clasico game of the goals, and someone would therefore tell their perspective on it. All the thousands of people that did it would tell their individual stories, and that magnified the audience enormously. And the clubs through the So did you shut them down? No, no, no, no, the clubs, no, no, the clubs are able to claim and monetize that content. So the claim, the clubs actually did way better out of the fan created content than they did from the official highlights. And why, I mean, why would you not want a marketing army going around doing your job for you. So I think that came up in the previous panel, you know, that you, you would encourage rather than shut down. And again, you know, we've given kids these things, the average age that a kid in the UK gets their first phone is 10. So it's a natural extension of them. So they're inherent creators, it's their waste product. So actually you, you know, let them go and do it and it helps, it helps your cause. Absolutely. I'm going to throw out some questions in a any minute now, but just, yeah, sorry, Tim. Probably a decade ago, there'd be a lot of international federations whose digital strategy didn't go beyond clipping the match feed. That, that was the sum and total of it. Nowadays, when we're rolling out a project, it's actually clipping a feed as a starting point of what you do, not the end point. So. Going back to, who do you want to hear your story from? Authentic voices? How, how are we going to bring those people into the ecosystem of? Whoever the rights holder is or the broadcaster so that we're getting original perspectives like you're talking about people feeding uploading the clips with their own perspective But that's still part of our our media strategy And that's a good thing and I can I just say one thing on that so the when I do think highlights Just generally speaking should be non exclusive There's no, you know, you should allow fans to upload their version of the, of the goals and their version of the stories. I think There's a money question, isn't there? Hanging over this whole conversation, things of where the money is going to come from, if it's not exclusive rights. Well, we can come So, but let's just stick to the customer proposition for a minute. So, because if you get, I mean, there's a, another Google truism, but, you know, the argument of Google always was if you get, if you get the, the usage right, The monetization will follow. Mm-hmm So I, and I think there is a lot of truth in that approach. So, so if you stick to a world in which highlights are non-exclusive, you know, at the moment, you know, we've also, we wanna protect the fact that broadcast delivers huge audience for the, you know, that we haven't, as I said before, we haven't reached the end of broadcast by any means. You know, there's a lot of discussion now when it comes to listed events. Broadcasters who've got. PSB status in the UK should have a premium position or a priority position with highlights. So they should get digital highlights clips alongside the live rights that they don't have to bid for in a competitive market. And I think it's very, we have to be very careful when that review takes place that Highlights and clips stay non exclusive because if you get to a world where actually broadcasters are able to sit on those rights and then not exploit them, then I think you stop fans from engaging and you also stop the rights holders from doing creative things with that content and who knows whether broadcasters will actively exploit them. Hello, Leo from Fanzo. If I can actually extrapolate forwards a lot of the discussion that's happened today. Sport has largely always been kind of live sports consumption and then all of these extra incremental touch points have been growth drivers, have been ways of engaging fans further. If you extrapolate this forward, it kind of almost feels like that's switching over. Is it going to move to a Rexon model where, frankly, no one's watching the live content, but they're so engaged? And commercializable? Are those real fans? It's not a loaded question, but is that really going to be the A format that's that commercializable in the long run. Can everyone be Rexham? Can everyone be Ryan Reynolds? Is that the question? Well, I guess the question is By the way, I've seen Sean stand next to Ryan Reynolds. No, and the answer is no, everyone can't be Ryan Reynolds. It was like a stages of man diagram. You know, it was like, it was extraordinary. They're both technically men. They're under the same, they're under the same banner. Sean, you're getting a really tough ride tonight. It's alright, it's history. No, I guess the question is, is live sports consumption going to become the additional bit at the end after all this? And is the model switching over? Because it used to be live sports consumption was the basis where you became a real fan. I've got a slight build on that actually, Leo, which is the same sort of question, which is I think I'm going the wrong way up the funnel. LAUGHS Is that a carry on film? Do you know what I mean? I used to be avid, I used to like, there were certain sports that I would consume, pay for, and now I'm not doing that as much. I think, I mean, that could happen. I think it will be more of a balancing because actually a lot of the, the data and the reports and the insights that I see regarding the youngest cohort, the kind of the under 16s, is that they're beginning to value. Live more than the, the older cohort. So the 16 to 34 year olds got these when they were teenagers. They went in hard, you know, they got the keys to the sweet shop and they got hooked. Actually, a lot of the, the data and the insights that I see that young people, the pen, the pendulum swinging back, they value. Live experience. They like in person things. They're discovering analog hobbies again. There's a big resurgence in crochet and knitting. Of course, then they take a photo of it and share it because that's, again, that kind of creation is their waste product. There's a resurgence in photography on film where you've got to learn about exposure and you only get one shot. So, actually, I think there is a future where, yes, all of that other content that was secondary to live will become more important, but I think live will still have a place. To your point about, you know, broadcast is still important. I've worked in companies where we've been creating content that is YouTube and Roblox and gaming first, but you still need your broadcaster at some point. It's just that you backed into them now. They weren't the primary method of delivery of your content. So I just think it will be balanced again, when you think about it in terms of this flywheel, it will be one of the parts of the flywheel, but there'll be all of these other parts. So it's how you move your audience round. Yeah, and I think, so I'll have a go at responding to your question as well. So, so I think I said, I said the stat before, I apologize for repeating it. Sport makes up 17 percent of the viewing by under 35 audiences and that's up from 8 percent in 2015, so doubled. So more, so more people, more young people are watching more sport on the telly. That's a fact. I think part of that is because there's a greater diversity of sport out there. People used to say no one will ever watch a sports documentary. But Netflix has got an entire, built an entire genre in there. People used to watch sports documentaries on HBO back in the day. So, I think it's all part of the, the rich mix. And, I'm not sure you need, I'm not sure sports bodies need to obsess about, well, only live matters. I think all the windows matter much more now than they used to. And maybe that's because in the old day, the supply of distribution was so constrained that live was the only thing that got to air. But that didn't mean that live was the only thing that people cared about. Okay, right. I like a hopeful ending. Like a sort of you know, we walk out with our heads high. Right, I'm gonna, we're gonna call a halt there. I want to thank you all for your contribution. If you aren't already, please listen to Unofficial Partner. It's very good. I want to thank our panel and our first panel. We'll collectively, round of applause for both panels. But here you go.