Unofficial Partner Podcast
Unofficial Partner Podcast
UP452 Gamechangers and Rainmakers: Who Created The Sports Business?
Gamechangers and Rainmakers: How Sport Became Big Business is a new book by British sports industry veteran David Stubley.
The growing relationship between sport, television and the advertising industry has been key to this development, as have the boundless ambitions of influencers such as Bernie Ecclestone, Billie Jean King, Pete Rozelle, Mark McCormack, Rupert Murdoch and Horst Dassler.
David Stubley spent the first decade of his career working in television at ITV and Channel 4. The last 25 years have been spent advising some of the world’s top brands and leading sports properties on how to unlock commercial value from sports marketing. He has helped negotiate more than $1bn of commercial deals with the likes of FIFA, UEFA, F1 and the Olympics. He serves on the board of multiple sport and media companies.
You can vote for your favourite Gamechanger or Rainmaker here.
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Hello, welcome to Unofficial Partner, the sports business podcast. I'm Richard Gillis. This week. Something a bit different today. David stably. Veteran or the British sports business has written a book game changes, and rainmakers how sport became big business. I went to very nice do, which was the book launch At the Soho hotel this week saw David and many other faces people in the book and people just coming along to wish it well, a very nice occasion. Hosted by Lewis Johnson for fuse the Omnicom agency that David also works alongside. So we thought we'd get David into, have a chat about the book. And. that's what we did.,
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:so I had a conversation with Patrick Nally 10, 15 years ago, maybe about him writing a book. I've had a series of other people Wanting to write a book that does essentially what you've done and well done. Congratulations for doing it. And I know it's hard labor, but it's good fun, but it takes commitment. And you know, the rest of it. And it's interesting, the sort of the stories that you've landed on. So let's just start with the initial impulse, and then we'll pick out some of the stories
David Stubley:the why Well, it was originally a lockdown thing where I ended up reading more and listening more. Thank you, Richard, because there's quite a bit of you in that book, actually. There is, and your guests. And I thought to myself, you know, when I joined this business, like you, I mean, you could pick up a copy of the sport business magazine and you could go to the ESA awards but it wasn't an awful lot more if you were, if you were new, which I was, I came in new media and I thought, wouldn't it be great to hand people a book that says, if you read that, It will give you an idea of how we got a lot of people take sort of billion pound Tottenham Hotspur stadiums and, 50 million pound sponsorships for granted. It, it wasn't like that, was it? Back in the day, we were scrabbling around and I sponsored a company, an agency I ran, we sponsored Crystal Palace against Queen's Park Rangers.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Wow.
David Stubley:Because they were in need of cash. And you know, you look back at that and, and, and you tell stories like that to people starting out in the career, in their careers, and they laugh. That's nuts. It was nuts. So I thought to myself, well, wouldn't it be good to do that? And then I thought the more I got into it. What can history teach us? Because we're all thinking that we're soothsayers, but actually, uh, if you go back in anything, it doesn't have to be sport, it can be business, it can be entertainment, it can be anything, and learn from the past, you probably get pretty good visibility on the future. So I thought, wouldn't it be good to then land on, not my opinion, because I, this isn't an opinion book, it's more, what can history teach us? So it, that's what the final chapter's all about.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:So for people who don't know you, let's just position you back at the beginning then., how did you enter sport?
David Stubley:So how did I enter media and television would probably be the first question. So I responded to an ad in the Guardian, uh, to flop TV advertising for ITV, uh, out of uni. And then after 10 years, I really wanted to work in agencies because I've been selling to agencies for 10 years. And the first sort of sporty stuff was at Channel 4, where I was head of business development there. And we had, in my era, the 90s, we'd just taken on Syria, Gazzer out there.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Oh
David Stubley:We did the NBA, the NFL, Kabaddi, if you remember Kabaddi, trans world sport. So we did a lot of sort of fiddling around the margins with sport, worked a lot with Mike Wisden, the head of sport. And so that was, and then broadcast sponsorships sort of became a thing. So we started to get into that and funded content and doing deals with, you know, people like Pepsi to bring the NBA over. Uh, so that was the first sort of sojourn. And then I went to a media agency, got this random brief from a planner, and we ended up doing a CGU British Athletics deal. Myself and Andy Westlake, who you all know.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Oh yeah.
David Stubley:We'd never done any sport, we were media people, but it became obvious that there was a gap in the market for proper strategy and proper rigour. It was obviously very deal driven in those days, and so we discovered a bit of a secret sauce, really, and that was how it all started, and from there on, uh, here I am.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:How much Backstory did you, did you want to get into? Because obviously there is quite often when you're telling a story and writing a book that there's a question of how much foregrounding do you need? How much, how much information does the reader need to have to actually bring up to speak? Because there's, there's, there's sort of almost two books, isn't it? There's, there's the sort of industry book that you get like gossip amongst It's like this conversation. It's heard by mainly by people who are working in sport. So I can sort of make assumptions that they know what we're talking about. And if they don't, we always say, you know catch up or fuck off is the phrase, but
David Stubley:Yeah.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:that. When you're then saying, right, okay, now I need to cover, there's so many different moments and my head goes to, you know, it's McCormack and Palmer or it's Dassler or it's, you know, those founding stories that we all swap around. Just talk to me about the sort of process by which you decided which stories to go in, I guess. And cause there is a sort of, Linear aspect to it. It's a ti you know, it goes over a period of time and you're sort of telling a bit of history as you go through. And then there's a whole lot, you know, there's many more stories in here than I was anticipating'cause I, my head go, you know, there's normally about a dozen, but there's quite a lot in here. So just take me through that process. How did you, who was your list? Who was the reader, I guess is the question? Who in your mind's eye?
David Stubley:Yeah. So it's a great question. So I started by thinking, what question do I want to answer? Which was, when did TV rights become a thing in terms of serious money? And so, and then, when did sponsorship become a thing? So therefore, I got myself to Nally in 1978 on the Official Partner. On the TV rights, I had to do a lot of buying of archived books from U. S. libraries and quickly got to Roselle and the NFL and the whole kind of growth of cable. And then drilling into all the various sources from there, I landed on those game changers. Then there was women's sport, obvious lionesses. Then there was streaming, obvious Netflix. So it, I started by trying to answer a question that I thought was really critical to how this jigsaw puzzle of sports marketing sort of come together and then try to find what I thought was the, was the best. And I'd be intrigued to know what listeners think. I'm sure they'll disagree. Uh, that's half the idea. I don't. I don't want to be, I just wanted to get some debate going. So that was the thought process. It ends, it starts in 1850. I had no intention of starting in 1850. I expected to start in 1984, which is the year. And we can come on and talk about that in a second. But I found that kind of I needed to wind back to how did football become a thing? And when did it split with rugby? And what is American football? And why isn't it rugby? I felt it was important. If we're saying, read that, that'll tell you how we got here, to be able to say, well how did these sports even become a thing, and how did they form, and what was the Jockey Club's role, and what was the MCC all about? But it's very light touch at that point, because it's quite boring, let's be honest. Needed to get into 1980s quite quickly, but I felt it was important to have those building blocks,
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:I think Pete Rozelle is a really interesting figure and he's actually one that is sometimes quite often forgotten as we now look at the NFL as this, you know, it's this monster in the middle of the industry, both, you know, obviously in the States, but elsewhere. and that's, A story, I guess, of quite often, and you mentioned Nally, a lot of it is the corralling of the rights on one side to make them saleable on the other. And there's a sort of role, there's a parallel there, I think, with what Rozelle was trying to do. Because he saw value, you know, we all sort of see value in sport, but that's a different thing from saying, making it easy for television or sponsorship to buy. What's, what did you learn about him? And as you went through?
David Stubley:a lot. So, the first thing is, Roselle shouldn't have got that job. Right? I mean, it was just that the NFL founders couldn't agree who they wanted to have that commissioner's job. He was a 32 year old general manager of the Rams and they went, He's a good bloke. We can boss him about and they all went, Yeah, stick him in because it's just a sort of, you know, figurehead job. They completely underestimated this man. So that was the first thing. Second thing was, Uh, when the rival league set up, Lamar Hunt was the first one to get there, so he got a deal with ABC, the first one to do a league wide deal, and Rizzo was absolutely furious, because what happened at that time was was that CBS had nine of the teams, NBC had a pick of two, and then the Browns had gone rogue and set up their own channel. So he was saying, look, this is nuts because CBS is saying they're going to pull out because you lot are all ambushing them. So give me the mandate that this bandit league And I'll get you a big deal. And they went, all right. And he said you also need to let this lot into our league as well because they're going to eat our lunch. So he was very, very significant. And then the final thing he did was he went to Senate and he fought. An antitrust law, which basically said you can't do that anyway. Even if you all have all agreed, you want to sell these rights collectively. It's illegal. And he managed to win that battle too. So his role in the whole creation of the U. S. sports marketing scene, you're spot on, was critical. And you're right. He doesn't get much PR. Ubroth gets a lot of PR for the Olympics and Stern, obviously too. I agree. I think he's the unsung hero.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:There's a, there's a, one of the themes, I think, what the story's about is. Better together and the convincing, you know, still going on. Now we see it in the Premier League. We see, you know, you've, you've always got an imbalance of power. You've got big ones and small ones, whether it's teams or athletes or whatever. But there is something about the people that a lot of people in your list of. You know, the game changers or and rainmakers are the ones that and whether it's a sort of bit of personality in there that you need someone just to get that message across because otherwise it does, you know, you get the to boxing and it just splinters and. You know, it needs a UFC to come back in with a, a more coherent sort of offer, but that, that job beyond all of the technical stuff about knowledge and whatever, there is something, I don't know whether there's a personality, I can see a sort of link between Rozelle and say Scudamore to be obvious, but you know, in terms of that political ability, just to get rich people to agree that actually the direction of travel is one that it's better for all of you rather than just infighting.
David Stubley:You know, that's exactly one of the things that, When I started to group these individuals, so you'd have someone like Richard Scudamore, you'd have someone like Samaraj, you'd have someone like Sue Campbell, who were just brilliant, very smart, sorry, were, are, brilliant, uh, very smart choralists. And then you'd have the ones that would just shoot from the hip, like Bernie, you know, so, uh, Others like Rune Arledge at ABC. I mean, they literally would just stomp about the place. A lot of people that you and I grew up working with, right, in the media. And so you have these two very different styles, but ultimately, you know, one of the things at the end of the book was sort of land on what can history teach us, and one of them is. Rainmakers get stuff done, and that doesn't mean you need to like these people, or even agree with what they do, but they, they're very decisive, decisive people. And you're, you're spot on. You need that, because at some point in anything, in any walk of life, you have to say, are we going left or are we going right? And all of these rainmakers, in their own way, were very good at doing that.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:So the, the relationship between television then, because again, the NFL is quite often sort of held up as just the perfect television sport, you know, goes from right to left. ad breaks are fitted in, they can make, commercialize it much more easily. what does television want? Did it, has it always just been the same? Has that question changed at all?
David Stubley:Yeah, it certainly has. So television's role originally was to sell televisions. And if you go back to the forties, what they figured was if you put live sport on television, people will go down to the shop and buy a television set, bearing in mind, you know, penetration of TVs was still only sort of a million of them in America in the, in the, in the, in the early fifties, sorry, late forties. So that was its first job. What then happened was advertisers jumped on this and said this is brilliant, look at the size of the audience and look at the quality of the audience. So what then became apparent was this whole idea of upfronts came in whereby Ford were willing to give CBS and NBC money to go and buy rights, providing they got their share of the inventory. So it became a very symbiotic relationship then between television and advertisers. Then of course it got completely disrupted in the nineties around pay television and, and advertising became far less important. Disruptors still important. 15 percent of their revenue say, but, but, but less so. And now, well, lots of people come on your pod with views of where we're at. It's kind of a bit of a hybrid, isn't it? But I would say it's probably swinging more back now towards. Brands, you know, where you new business models are saying, well, actually, if people aren't willing to pay, if we can't get the linear sized audience that allows us to sell big premium Super Bowl style ad slots, we're going to have to work with brands in a smarter way. So, you know, branded content and all the other things that you talk about a lot day to day.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:again, the eternal question is where we are in that story and in terms of the, the money and the business model when it's not television, you know, and, and that we were just talking the other day, we did a episode of The Bundle which is coming out and Rupert Murdoch has sold Foxtel in Australia. Now, that, he would never have done that. 10 years ago, you know, it's just unthinkable and you can overread something, but actually what that says about the model. And, you know, if you go back to Pete Rizal, there's a television is absolutely the first thing they think about when they get up in the morning and, and, you know, the packaging of the product to television and whether, you know, whoever's paying television and what the, whatever the model is, that's always been the case now. And the next 10 years, you wonder. You know, it's always going to be there, but any thoughts on that in terms of how that, whether it's sort of changed fundamentally, or it's just the thing will shift, but actually it's still basically the same game that is being played.
David Stubley:Well, here at Omnicom, we, we don't use the word television anymore. We use the word audio visual. Okay, AV. So moving pictures live for sports are always going to be premium content. There are always going to be buyers of them. I suppose the question is, and one of the things the book asks at the end is, is the model moving towards audio visual content being clickbait for e commerce? thinking about Prime and some of the moves that they're making. And, and also Apple. And therefore from a Netflix point of view, if they can't actually sell anything because they don't have a marketplace yet to connect to, what's their play in sports? So that's a really big question. And you look at Sky and you say, well, will Sky eventually just be disintermediated? You know? And what's, what's their role? In all of this, but ultimately it's all going to be who's got that AV content, isn't it? That's really what it's all about. So I wouldn't be worried if I was Richard Masters. I wouldn't be worried if I was Adam Silver sitting on gold. It's still the last remaining appointment to view. mass media content. The question though is, do you go in house, you know, uh, both on production? Look at the Premier League now, but NBA and NFL did, NFL did it years ago. Do you go in house on production so you control the narrative? And then do you go in house on the platform? So you earn the data and you earn customer. Or do you just change the deal you've got with Sky? So you don't just write a big check. There's more of a revenue share. Or if you're with Prime, are you revenue sharing on the sale of stuff? So I think there's some really big questions, but ultimately, you know, it all boils down to this is killer content and it's going to continue to be in my view. The other interesting question is how important is 90 minutes over 90 seconds? You know, you've discussed it on the bundle quite a bit, really brilliant, I think some of the contributors you get on that. And, for me, I think highlights probably are undervalued. If you look at, you know, your kids, my kids, you know, that's what they're watching, that's what they really value. So, we'll probably see a lot more forensic analysis of the value of short form content, in my view. But this book is not designed to provide that. solutions. This book is designed to say, where have we come from? There are plenty of other people who are better qualified than I am to answer the, where are we going?
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Let's talk about Mark McCormack then, because you can't have a book about the history of the sports business without talking about Mark McCormack. There's something romantic about the idea of him and the Palmer handshake and just the influence. What was your, did you ever meet him?
David Stubley:I didn't actually know, regrettably. Did you?
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:I did, but it was, it was a very long time ago and towards the end of his, career, but yeah, it was like a, force of, there was something, whether it was me projecting onto it, but there was a sort of, you know, a definite halo there, just a magnetism, you don't often. You know, you don't, you know, it's interesting. People were talking about Bill Clinton actually recently, I was listening to an interview with him. And then the talk afterwards is that watching him in a room is quite a thing to behold. You know, it's just astonishing how good some people are. Again, it gets back to the sort of personality question, but this personality that McCormack is such is interesting just because of, where does it start? Where does the, you know, the, there's an argument to start the book with him. That was always, you know, that's a question. When people frame what the sports business is, quite often they start with McCormack and then move forward. But what's your, what's your take on McCormack?
David Stubley:Well, I think McCormack was looking at what was going on in, you know, NFL and MLB and, uh, probably thinking, okay, uh, there's a, there's a, there's an opportunity here in, in a sport that I understand that I'm well connected in, AKA golf. So I'm not sure he did start it. I think there was a lot of other people who had done a lot of great work. And we talked about, you know, Rizal, for example, and others. But what he did do was he was the first to be on the side of the athlete. And there's a big theme in this book, which is how athletes have been treated over the years, and how their struggles to try and, you know, earn a living. from from playing sports and McCormack was one of the first who spotted the opportunity here. And you're right, the Palmer story is folklore, uh, whether it's true or not about the handshake is, is, is an interesting question. But, and then when tennis opened up, he again jumped straight on Labour and Court, who were the two Wimbledon champions, signed them up and quickly said, look, if you're in my gang, I could turn you into something. Really, really valuable for brands and I'll fight your corner. And that's what made him genius. And he was relentless in the way he fought for his clients. There was nothing, you know, pretty about it. He was quite straightforward, which is, you know, I want them to be paid what they're worth, both in terms of appearance, money, endorsement deals, prize money, et cetera. And, and I, and I think that's what makes him, Brilliant. And then obviously to then create an integrated business around TV production and distribution and the academy and the licensing business, he kept moving, he kept on adding new pillars to this business and quite quickly got it sewn up, hadn't he? it was, it was IMG. That, that was it until the Dentsus and the, uh, the Interpublics joined, joined the party in the, uh, in the late 80s and 90s.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:that model So the McCormack model, you know, obviously we, we always talk about Palmer and Nicholas and player and the list of superstar athletes, tennis players. Actually that model, we're now in this position where people say, we, you know, television back to that, or, uh, fans just want best versus the best. So you've got this 1 percent of athletes who are earning fortunes. I always think UFC is an interesting model where you've got this sort of huge wealth at the top, but actually the pyramid is made up of people who are sort of on gig day. economy type wages. It's very insecure. They've got all of the costs, all of the problems and, but they are the field. And so something like Live Golf comes along and, and has tried to, you know, create a sort of best fee, best product, which you sort of think, okay, echoes McCormack created the world match play in whatever it was in the sixties, same idea, get them, get the best players playing against each other. I'd keep on coming back whether or not actually that is what people want.
David Stubley:Yeah, well, I mean, Tottenham Hotspur against Tamworth, you know a net that needs tape, you know, before the game can start, live broadcast, you know, come on, that's all good stuff. You lose that, you lose something for sure. And then we look at, you know, You know, the, the Tiger and Rory competition and you think, okay, I see what you're trying to do there. So do we want best versus best? We definitely want best on the, best on the pitch, best in the league. We want it to be all about jeopardy and we want it to be good competition. So that's another thing that, you know, if you look at Roselle in his 25 years, there were 13 separate winners. The championship aka the Superbowl. So the sharing of revenue, the making decisions together means that you get something interesting, you get fair play, you get good jeopardy. So but do we just want to see, you know, Man City playing Man United week in, week out? I don't think we do, do we? There aren't,
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:No, I certainly don't. But there's a, there's a question of is that how the model will evolve? Because that's the assumption when you, when you're, you know, you see more than I do, the, the, the decks that come through about this is a sport is a re imagining of, and you can list it, whatever the sport is, rugby tennis, whatever. It's always predicated on that sort of formula one model. And I'm looking around for huge success stories in that sense, but I don't see many.
David Stubley:there aren't that many. I mean the book talks obviously about the creation of T20 and how that migrated into IPL and that becomes as you say, that's I want one of those please. But there aren't many examples of I want one of those please. You know, there's three on three basketball and sport I'm on the board of netball. You know, fast netball, you know, there's all sorts of different variations, which is great. I mean, why not? But it's, it's not netball and it's not basketball, you know, and it's not cricket in terms of, you know, the, the kind of vanilla flavor that we all know and love. So I think there's definitely a role for these things, but it, but thinking that private money can come in and from a standing start You know, try and invent something that is going to eat the lunch of the Manila mothership, I think is a little bit of wishful thinking.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:So what's your, what are your, who are your favourite? People Who did you most enjoy writing about?
David Stubley:Oh, what a great question. I mean, you have to sort of bucket them in, in sort of different, different flavors really. I definitely, and I thought to myself, if I was going to have a dinner party, who, who would I invite to it? I'd definitely have Ted Turner there. Ted Turner, you know. I think is a brilliant raconteur and you know, again, highly charismatic and what an achievement all the things he did with TNT and CNN before that. I would certainly invite Billie Jean, I think. I think she'd be pretty lively. Bernie's got to be there. I'm not expecting him to say very much, but I think it'd be quite fun having him round the table. Some of the Americans, obviously. I think Arledge would be good fun. Blasim is obviously no longer with us, but if they, if this was a sort of looking backwards scene probably Phil Knight. He'd be good fun to have round the table. And obviously, Horst Dazler. But he'd probably sit there quietly just smoking and, uh, sort of scowling a bit. But yeah, those would be a few of the people that, that, that, that jumped out at me as being, uh, the, the, you know, the top Rainmakers in terms of their charisma.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:What did you learn about Horse Dassler?
David Stubley:Well, I mean, I describe him as the Don Corleone of sports marketing. Because my goodness me, did he have a grip on this business? An extraordinary grip. I think in, in, in terms of looking back in history, we wouldn't be where we are. I don't believe having done a lot of research into this without him. Complicated man, obviously wearing an Adidas hat, a Lecoq hat and then an ISL hat. But he came up with the idea of a rights agency. He came up with the idea of making bold bets. putting money on the table. He incredibly managed to crawl lots of people behind him. And then by bringing Dentsu in, however that happened, whichever version you believe on that, you know, that brought the first big marketing services group in, which then brought brands. So, I mean, absolutely huge, huge contribution to where we are today.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:that relationship, you know, at the, the very top, again, we've had Patrick on Patrick n on, you know, a few times and go away with a feeling that Dassler was a sort of, there's a sort of John Le aspect to him. You know, he kept files on people he would have constantly, he was. I remember Patrick saying that he was sort of, he never wanted to be surprised. So if you're working for him, you better cover all the bases and you better, you know, be briefing fully from that point of view. But that relationship with, you know, Samaranch and then, you know, putting Blatter in and all of those at the very top of those sort of organizations, it's hard to think of someone who, who sort of footprint, is still obvious because these things come and go and things change. But actually when you look at the culture of something like FIFA. It feels like that's it's year zero, that's when it, the way in which it behaves and the way in which it all, the, the organization and the people at the top of the organization sort of view the world and view their job, got to be coming back to Dassler at some point, presumably.
David Stubley:One of the things about the book is it's, you know, what became so obvious to me is there was no plan with most of these people we're talking about. They were making it up as they went along. They had a direction of travel and a lot of the game changes, the absolute flip of a coins that it could have gone another way. Absolutely. In many cases. And with Dassler, you know, he was absolutely supporting Stanley Rouse. Even until the eve of the vote, and then his advisors were saying, he ain't gonna win it. This is going to have a lunch. And so on the night, you know, allegedly he asks for a meeting in his hotel room and says, what about if I swing all my people over your way tomorrow? And he said, well, what's in it for me? Uh, he said, I'll bring in the money. And he said, fine. And that's allegedly quite good sourcing what happened. And so that relationship between those two was set back at that time. And, and you're, and you're right, we're living positively or negatively with those consequences. Still today, really, because, you know, what Havalanche did was he brought the African vote. Uh, and that was really what won him the presidency back in the day, but he had to fulfill his election promises, which, you know, which meant raising money, and that's where Blatter came in, and that's where Dowsler came in, uh, and, and, and Nally too, so you're right, if we track back in history, you know, those were significant moments, and the other thing which the book calls out is, you know, it's, it's time to definitely, no disrespect, I'm trying to rebrand your podcast, It's definitely time to reset the official partner, you know, cause those folks came up with it, what again, 1978. And people are still selling pretty much the same thing, really. So extraordinary really in terms of the, how long that's continued.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:So you've listed 40, well 40 people, there's a, there's a sort of, certain doubling up. Ollie Slipper's on there.
David Stubley:Holly Slipper is on there along with Simon Dwyer.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:is on there as well. My colleague from other people's money and Gareth Balch. These, these are, these are new names.
David Stubley:are. Well, I mean, obviously I thought, We can't just have lots of old farts from the 1950s. We've got to have some sort of, you know, I'm sure Matt and Ollie would love, love the fact that I'm not, I'm not calling them old farts as much. But some newer modern rainmakers. And again, if you look at, Look at both of them. Again, you need to read the book to understand why Perform made such a massive impact on sports, but it was all around being in the right place at the right time with a great business model for, for free play betting, particularly in data. And then look at the success of Two Circles. And Gareth and Matt had an idea and they executed on it brilliantly. So again, the first people you could argue, modern McCormack who, who understood the value of data, saw a gap in the market and went for it.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:There's a good paragraph about again, we're sort of pushing it, pushing it forward and he's saying, I'll just read this out. Andrew Wilson, And his colleagues at EA Sports who, free of FIFA red tape, can now offer gamers the chance to play live virtual football with real time stats. Um, and maybe Nick Clary of CVC, one of the largest private equity investors in sport, will emerge as the new Horst Dassler, wielding great power over the sports he invests in and, like Sepp Blatter, deciding rules of the game and who gets to play. That's quite elevated comparison for Nick Clary at this stage.
David Stubley:Well, this is a story, Richard. It's meant to be fun. It, uh, so don't take it too seriously, read it. But yeah, I mean, if you look at that. CBC are absolutely positioning themselves in a very powerful position potentially within the sports they're in. And fascinated to see how EA Sports do do, because again, one of the statistics here is, which I think is a fantastic stat, is that, uh, FIFA, you know, were getting 158 million in royalties from EA Sports, which in one year was more than they made from anything else. Which is astonishing really to think that the virtual product can be worth more than the real thing. So if that kind of money was going out the door on royalties, imagine what they can do when they put that back into product or other rights.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Do you think, I sometimes think that the that from FIFA's perspective, what the implications of that are? Because I think it's just on brand. We used to talk about, you know, kids know FIFA as a game and not a governing body. Now they don't talk about FIFA at all. What the implication of that deal? Yes, it's a, you know, the money that they were paying, you know, if it wasn't worth it, then why pay it is one question for EA. Fine. But to let that relationship go on the, over that deal from the FIFA perspective, I sometimes think that might be one of the worst decisions we've seen in the last 10 years.
David Stubley:I agree. And it, there was either someone thinking, you know, there's going to be a queue out the door of people who want to pick this up. Or they have got something genius in the bottom drawer that we don't know about yet. But I do agree with you. That was, that was one heck of a deal to walk away from.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Yeah. Just to finish off, Rupert Murdoch is the other name I always love a power list and because they're so they're so silly, but also in terms of trying to sort of, you know, because they're sort of proxies for wealth in some ways and you, it's, it's difficult to, you know, power such an elusive thing, but he has, he's always at the top of these lists. I wonder what you think the impact of his involvement has been on the sports sector.
David Stubley:Huge. I mean, I think what I write in the book is that the Premier League wouldn't be the Premier League without Sky, and Sky wouldn't be Sky without the Premier League. I mean, they created each other. And, you know, everyone knows the story about how they won that contract and all the sort of shenanigans it went with. But what it then led to, and at a time when John Burt was running the BBC and he was happy to give up pretty much everything he gave up. You know, Formula One, the golf, you know, we won the cricket when I was at Channel 4, and Cheltenham, Derby. You know, BBC was exiting sport at rapid rate of knots, and Murdoch was more than happy to hoover it all up. Obviously Channel 4 took the cricket, ITV took Formula 1, but he was quite happy to hoover the rest of it up. And that led to, you know, massive disruption, which he then replicated in the States with Fox, and in Asia with Star, and then with, obviously in Italy and Germany. Using sport as a battering ram. That's those are his exact words. He said that to his investors. We're going to use it as a battering ram. And that's what he did. And I don't think sports, certainly in the UK would look anything like it does today, if it hadn't have been for News Corp and Rupert Murdoch's big bets.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:What do you, in terms of the longer term implication of that, do you think, do you have any qualms about it? I mean obviously people go to, cricket is a good example, you know, the obvious story is, you know, it goes from free to air to pay TV. And what happens to a sport when it goes behind a paywall?
David Stubley:Yeah, I mean, there are two questions. This is a book about the marketing of sports. And so you've got to argue it was a good thing and, and cricket is better. It's a better experience. Football is a wholly better experience, you know, in terms of the stadiums and, you know, the food we get to eat, the pictures we get to watch, all of that good stuff. There's the other argument, of course, which is, Yeah, you're losing young viewers and engagement against young people and I agree that's a whole different debate and you've got to argue. I mean, the list of events in the UK is partly helping with that. So you've got to show highlights on a terrestrial channel, but I do agree. The numbers do suggest that pay TV has led to definitely, I would say, a drop in engagement amongst younger people because you just, you know, you and I grew up watching, you know, both them on TV. BBC and all of that good stuff. And then, and yeah, we were out in the garden, you know, trying to hit the stump. So definitely, I think there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a debate there, but that's not what this book is all about. This book is all about have these people impacted positively the economics of sports? And you've got to argue that News Corp and Sky have done that in spades.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Okay, well listen, it's called Game Changers and Rainmakers, How Sport Became Big Business by David Stubbly. recommend it to our listeners and good luck with it. And, uh, yeah,
David Stubley:Thank you.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:thanks for coming
David Stubley:One final thing though, if I may, if you go on the website, I want to know what your listeners think. Who's their Rainmaker? Who's what's their game
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:the, the dreaded listener engagement.
David Stubley:engagement. And I'm hoping that you will then publish the top 10 on your newsletter. So there we go. That's my call to action, Richard.
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Right. Okay. Every podcast needs a call to action.
David Stubley:Nice. Thanks for
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:Thanks, David.
David Stubley:it. All the best. Cheers.