UP457 India's Decade of Sport: The Teneo Roundtable

This is a special live recording of the podcast created in collaboration with the Strategic Sports Advisory Team at Teneo, at the company's London headquarters. Together we convened a roundtable forum on the topic of India and its relationship with the sports marketplace. 

Around the table was group of specially invited guests all of whom have a connection to the country and its sports business. 

We were thrilled to be joined by His Excellency the High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Vikram Doraiswami. 

The other guests you’ll hear are as follows:

Will Brass | Premier League
Archie Kalyana | BBC Cricket
Arpit Chaturverdi | Teneo - Geopolitical Risk Analyst

Andrew Umbers | Oakwell Sports
Ishveen Jolly | Open Sponsorship
Sanjay Bhandari | Kick it Out
Simon Hughes | Cricket Author
Navjeet Sira | Change Foundation UK
Mike Herbert | Northridge Law
Kent Christian | Authentic Brands Group

Representing Teneo were Senior Managing Director Neil Daugherty and Nick Greenslade, Co-Lead of the Strategic Sports Advisory team at Teneo Sport.

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to a special live recording of Unofficial Partner, the sports business podcast. I'm Richard Gillis. What you're about to hear was recorded last week at Teneo's London headquarters overlooking St Paul's. We convened a roundtable forum on the topic of India and its relationship. With the sports marketplace and around the table, we invited a group of special guests, all of whom have a connection either to the country and or it's sports business. and we were thrilled to be joined by His Excellency, the High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Vikram Duraswamy. So there is an, there is an opening for stuff to be marketed again in India today, the sweet spot to the UK enjoys in cultural product terms in India is to my mind. An underutilized assets. This includes sport, obviously, most, most influentially, but in range of other cultural products, literature history popular culture. There are generations who grew up watching stuff like Blackadder, for instance. I mean, how many other countries in the world can you say that? Which is, you know, you've got 120 million people who speak who speak English. So I think really there is a case for you to, to double down on that relationship. The other guests you'll hear are Will Brass from the Premier League. Archie Kalyana from the BBC. Arpit Chaturvedi, who is Teneo's geopolitical risk analyst. Andrew Umbers from Oakwell Sports. Ishveen Jolly, open sponsorship. Sanjay Bhandari, kick it out. Simon Hughes, cricket author and commentator. Nick Coward from Portus, Sirah, Change Foundation UK. Mike Herbert from Northridge Law and Kent Christian from Authentic Brands Group. Representing Teneo were Nick Greenslade and Neil Doherty, who is the first person you'll hear. As we get going, Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us this evening. For those of you who don't know us, Teneo is the leading global CEO advisory firm, in our own words. In sports, we advise sports organizations, their investors, and their partners on existential issues, helping unlock commercial value through reputation. My name is Neil Doherty. I lead our strategic sports advisory practice. Thank you very much to Richard and to Sean from Unofficial Partner who are going to be guiding us through the discussion this evening. I want to extend our thanks as hosts to the assembled guests from across a wide range of sports, investors and advisors all with links to India's growing sports market to my colleague Arpit Chattervedi from our political risk team, who has flown in especially for this event from India, then to India, Ithaca in upstate New York and back again to us Before I hand over to Richard, I just wanted to give you some facts in relation to India and sport, which I thought were thought provoking, and as we've talked about in the introductory meeting here. While Saudi Arabia's investment in an interest in, hosting sports has been discussed and analyzed ad infinitum, the, the sleeping tiger of Indian sports has been largely overlooked. You're going to tell a story about a sleeping tiger, but India has a population of just fewer than 1. 5 billion people, 40 percent of whom are under 25. That's one in five people of every person under the age of 25 in the world lives in India. India is home to approximately 655 million sports fans, which is almost as many people as claim to support Manchester United. Whether you believe that or not. and while cricket is still king, 90 percent of Indian sports fans claim to follow more than one sport. Sports like kabaddi, which I'm sure Nick is very a a affa affa with claim 120 million fans, 50 million more fans than there are football fans in India at the moment, although we have Will Brass here from the Premier League, and he'll tell you shortly about football's plans to change that. By 2036, when India is host is hoping to host South Asia's First Olympics, 43 percent of all consumer spending power in the world will sit, will sit with Gen Z and in India the same, and there are over 200 million TV households in India and 695 million smartphone users, which is why the IPL cricket tournament has been such a round resounding global success on each IPL. Cricket match attracts approximately 17 million of broadcast rights investment. Second only to the NFL American football matches in price per game, which I think is also topical in terms of what's happening with investment in the hundred here, but also as we go into Superbowl weekend. So yeah, IPL cricket is actually per minute, the most valuable sports property by broadcast minutes. Possibly because American football is very long and very boring. I would say that Which is why we asked unofficial partner to broach the question of is this India's decade of sport? Fantastic What an intro that is. Thank you very much. Good night. Yeah Just scrubbing out all the numbers that he's used that I was going to use. Brilliant now what I want to do is it's a fairly loose arrangement this but I do want to get everyone to just say hello and who you are and go around now. You'll notice that there are more people than microphones and that was sort of, that's a budgetary issue rather than it's not a Hunger Games aspect, but Sean, let's start at that end of the table. Just say who you are and then where you're from and we'll go around the table that way. Nick Coward, partner, Porters Consulting, half time during the rest of my life, includes having been an advisor to the Pro Kabaddi League owned by Star India since 2016, hi, I'm Ishfeen Jhali, founder and CEO of Open Sponsorship. I suppose Quick Connect to India used to work there for the Mumbai Indians and Hero and various other entities. Simon Hughes, I'm known as the analyst in cricket for my analysis of the game. I've been to India many times as a player and commentator and I love the place actually and I've written a book about why the IPL has been so successful. Will Brass, Chief Commercial Officer at the Premier League have, have travelled to India a fair few times these days, but, but twice with other people round the table, so I'll leave that out there for people to guess who those two were by the end of the evening. Arpit Chaturvedi, I'm the advisor for South Asia for Taneo, and I work in the public policy and political risk space in India specifically, and have been earlier No involved with advising parliamentarians and managing elections, et cetera, et cetera. Navjeet Sira, CEO of the Change Foundation, which is a sport for development charity. So looking at the lens of sport from the more development perspective we're based in London, but do a lot of advisory work for national governing bodies. and have done a lot of international development particularly in India, actually working on a new cricket project called OnDrive, which is using cricket as a tool for sustainability. I'm Kent Christian Vice President for Authentic Brands Group, which is probably one of the biggest companies you've never heard of but for the purpose of this conversation, I work on David Beckham's brand team and I'll facilitate his trip in November 23 and looking to do more, so, Thank you for the invite tonight. Good evening. Nick Greenslade, our managing director in Teneo's strategic sports advisory team joined in 2024. And before that, for the best part of 20 years, I was a journalist on national newspapers, latterly at the Sunday Times, where I edited their sports section. And I also wrote a book on the 2010 spot fixing cricket affair. Hi, Andrew Umbers one of the founders of Oakwell Sports which is one of the leading sports and sports tech corporate finance consultancy companies based in London. Lots of interest in cricket that's relevant here as well as other sports. We are also advisors to Mr. Moran, the Sun Group and the Sunrisers, which is probably quite relevant today. Hi, I'm Archie Kalyana. I'm the diversity producer and director at BBC Sport Cricket. This role never ever existed until about five years ago. Maybe somebody realized that, hey, there's a lot of British Asian people who love cricket in this country. So I was brought in to look after film content, specifically for when India, Pakistan, West Indies play. So any of those lovely films that you may have seen on BBC One, BBC Two, iPlayer, I probably made those. So I hope you like the work we've done. I'm Sanjay Band, or I'm the chair of Kick It Out. I'm a board member of the Lawn Tennis Association and recently taken position as Chair of Athletic Ventures, which is a joint venture between UK Athletics, London Marathon, and Great Run company. Also just back from a two week. Tiger Safari in India, where the final score was three leopards and six tigers. LAUGHTER I'm Mike Herbert. I'm a partner at Northridge, and we're a specialist sports law practice. And in particular, my area is kind of corporate M& A, acting for investors in the sports industry. I've done quite a few deals in football as well as a couple in cricket. Right. Okay. So this is conversation that is going to go in lots of different directions, hopefully, and we're going to talk about cricket. We're going to talk about flows of money in and out of the country and We'll obviously talk about the 100, fantastic timing. and we're talking about football and Premier League, and potential Olympic bid in 2036. So, all of that to come, but I want to first of all, Arpit, I'm very pleased you're here, because I've for someone who's never been to India, I've got a great deal of warmth and affection for the company, but I do have a risk of sort of romanticizing the country and the conversation around it. And I've got all sorts of probable misconceptions. I carry cliches around in my head. So let's just talk, what's the day job? First of all, thanks. Thanks. First of all, in terms of my work, I advise Teneo's clients all over the world about how Political risk is shaping in India. Obviously, it is a country, where a lot of things change in politics. And increasingly our clients feel that it is it does make a significant difference to their business. And we've got it's a federal country. So we've got a lot of roles played by the state governments. And most of the action that happens on the ground is with the states and the businesses have to deal with it on daily basis. So, that's so advising them on how the changes are shaped shaping. That's my job in terms of the broader context. I think there's a Couple of things to know about sports in India. Number one is that a lot of times people think that this push for sporting in India is coming from a top down you know, level. But actually it's really a bottom up phenomena because you know, as you mentioned there. More than you know, 6 55 million sporting fans in India, which is roughly about 40 percent of the country. And if you're growing up in India, you see that not just cricket. Cricket is obviously you know, at par with religion in the country. And but but all sorts of sports are looked at as you know, A very meaningful endeavor for the youth and having you know, in one of the states having served in a committee in a government committee that looks after how you promote sports amongst the youth. I feel that this is one place where The civil society, the state government, and the central government are all aligned, irrespective of which party comes to power and goes. This is a country where you know, sports is taken almost as a matter of national pride. So, of course, knowing India's history, a lot of things that happen in the country are and sports is a very big instrument for that in the country, of course if you look at the government side of it as well, there's a big push as you know, Neil just mentioned that a lot of it has there's been a lot of conversation around Saudi Arabia or the other Gulf countries pushing to become, you know, a sports capital in the world, but If you look at the feats that have you know, That India has achieved. I was talking to you know, a former sports secretary in India, and he told me about the South Asian Games that were hosted in India in 2016 in the northeastern states of Assam and Meghalaya. which are states where you cannot reach easily by road or by flights, et cetera. But they were able to set up a stadium. They were able to execute those games with eight South Asian nations in a record period of a hundred days doing all of the procurements, et cetera. So that's the kind of government commitment and the bureaucracies commitment, which is extremely important for any sort of success in India that sports generally has. So, yeah, that question of the, you've got the center and the Federation or the, the states, it feels like sometimes people compare it to America and say, right, that the, you know, when people say, we're going to go and take a sport and we're going to break America, we're going to break India. You always sort of wince a bit and say, actually, it's not like that. If we put sports of one side for a minute. So when major corporations come and look at the marketplace and come to you to say, look. What are the risks here? Is that a risk in terms of just the difference or the unevenness between the states? A big one. A big one. Because a lot of times what happens is that you the culture of the bureaucracy at the center and in the states could be extremely different and their priorities could be very different. And A lot of times, it could happen that the state is ruled by a different political party than the center. And if it is a party which is in opposition of the central party, then a lot of things could be different. I mean, I've had a lot of you know, corporate leaders you know, come up to me and say that, okay, we meet. The top bureaucrat in the center and they promise us all sorts of clearances and you know, they are super committed to it, but the moment we step into the state you know, things are not as moving as quickly and then besides the political you know, differences, there's also a general difference. There are certain states which are more business friendly. And there are certain states which are over regulated. So, that's irrespective of the political party that's ruling the state. So you gotta understand those dynamics very well. And I think the third one is that, again, in some of the states, so for example, there are states in India which are, which have more of a sporting culture. Yeah. And then there are other states which have more of an entrepreneurial culture. So you also gotta have a feel of that state as well before entering. And is there a, in terms of the size of the sports sort of budget Yeah. That's being increasing. So the, you know, the, the idea of sport within, or the, the, the lens at which the government looks at sport is, that's changed over a period of time. Absolutely. So, actually if you look at the budgets from 2004 to 2024. 20 years, the sports allocation has grown by 11 percent per annum, and that's higher than our GDP growth in the country. And from 2004 to 24, it's grown by seven times, and it always makes sense for the government because The sports budget is broadly around 0. 07 percent of the total budget. And if you look at the government revenues, the government in indirect taxes gets about 6 to 7 percent of their budget funded through sports. So, it simply makes sense for the government, financially speaking, to promote sports in more and more states in the country. And corporate India, presumably, I mean, again, looking at it from a sort of London basis, you get the enormous IPL media rights deals, you know, headline amounts of money. how typical is the IPL in terms, I guess there's a question here, because it feels like, is that just a bubble and then outside of which everything else is taking place? Is that, does that dominate the landscape, do you think? So IPL definitely dominates the landscape right now because it's cricket. Yeah. But you know, we were talking about Gen Zs a while back, which is about 25 percent of the sports fans in the country right now and growing. And there was a data point that I came across recently that 90 percent of the Gen Zs follow more than one sports not just digitally, but also they would attend physical events. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If they're happening in other sports such as kabaddi or football or even tennis in India now, so. So they are juggling sports. Cricket is obviously dominant, but there is, there is also room for other Yes, yes, yes. activities. Okay. Yeah. Right. Will Brass, I'm going to bring you into the conversation. Premier League let's just talk about India, the plan and how the league views the country. So, I recognise a lot of what Arpit was saying about the country, so that's pleasing. At least if it resonates, it means we might be somewhere near the right track. I think from a Premier League perspective, our time in India has already been over a number of years. We've, we've been there in one form or other, really, and, and before, since, since 2007 with the British Council and the Premier Skills Programme we rolled out Primary Stars more latterly, 2021 and that's been about coaching the coaches, coaching the educators, really, at grassroots level, because, because we, we understand. But it's at the grassroots that we can we can start to make a positive impact and ultimately, you know, help help people find the game of football or soccer, which is which is good for us. We've created the next gen cup with with youth teams from India, playing alongside Premier League academies since 2019. So over the last five or six years. So there's there's been steady work both at the grassroots, so to speak, but but also with our broadcast partners and star sports for a number of years now. And, and we see that playing out in the expression of, of what really you were both just describing. I, India is clearly a, a cricket country, a, a cricket dominated sporting environment. But there is room for others. And, and over time we're seeing many of it, those others find their way into soccer, football, and, and particularly, fortunately for us, into Premier League football. And is that the league doing that work? Or is that, or is the clubs, do you do that and the clubs follow? Or is it a sort of joint? It's always joint to one extent or other. Some of the initiatives I was describing there are, if you like, Premier League led. But clearly our clubs themselves have applied, to one extent or other, their own Indian focused or regional policies or approaches. They've engaged with their own fans at large scale and built out those fanbases, including in India. And so when you, when you take it all together, we're fortunate enough to have this cocktail of, of, of points of entry whereby people are able to find their way into the, into the Premier League ecosystem and hopefully come to, come to enjoy it. Where does it sit India in the scheme of things just give us a when it's a picture in terms of you know The the I don't know how what measure you would use maybe a sort of is it a media rights? Do you look at it from that perspective or do you look at it from a audience perspective? Increasingly, I think we look at it through a through a fan lens Where Where are there opportunities for growth? Where are there opportunities for us to engage better with new or emerging or or longstanding fans? And that's where I think the patterns in India become especially compelling from our point of view. So over the last four years, I think more than 50 percent of the fan base has emerged, particularly in that emerging youth, 16 to 29 year olds in particular. I was reading a A data point entirely coincidentally, earlier in the week that I think I'll get this right, the, the third highest traveling fandom to the Qatar 2022 World Cup Group stage was from India. And so again, whilst, whilst it is a cricket country, as everybody knows, you are seeing. Clear points of evidence now that suggest that the country as a whole is developing an affinity and association with football and enjoyment of football again driven by the grassroots which we can help with and that that is is is leading we think to to greater support for The competition the Premier League clubs Premier League players and of course other competitions as well Sanjay there is a sort of question about? And I guess this is a question about whether it's sport as entertainment or sport as participation and those things, you know, whether they're linked and how they're linked. What's your view on football and how football looks if you're targeting a market like India, what needs to happen, do you think, for that to work effectively? For football, one of the, it's a huge opportunity. There's also. Potential downside there, which is you kind of got to see it to be it. And I think one of the biggest challenges in English football is the The under representation of South Asians in elite football. I've, I've talked in the past and said that this is the single largest statistical anomaly in English football. When you look at the data points and the FA launched some more data, you know, last week, I think. You know, we, South Asians are the single largest ethnic minority in the UK. For the, you know, we're a huge part of the Indian diaspora. And we were You know, my father came over after the war as part of that generation that was invited from the Commonwealth to come and rebuild the country after the war. I'll come back to why that's important because it comes to the numbers. So, if we look at participation in grassroots football, boys and girls, Men and women. Our participation levels at its lowest are 7. 5 percent up to 15%, depending on which of those categories you're in. So we actually participate at above our representation in the broader population. But when you look at elite football I think it's something like 0. 9 percent at under 16s, 1. 45 percent at scholar level, over 16s, 0. 45 percent of elite men's professional players. So you're going from over, you know, 7, 8, 10 percent on the pitch, so in grassroots level, in the traditional place from which you recruit elite players. 0. 457 percent 0. 45 percent in the elite game There's lots of reasons for that and this is not the podcast probably to go into that I think the focus is that's an opportunity because I think if you really want to take advantage of that south asian market They will want to see people like them on the pitch in the biggest league You know, the Premier League is the biggest football product in the world. South Asians want to see themselves represented in there, I think. So I think there's a huge opportunity there. And actually having a bit of focus on how you create that. I mean, we've all seen the son effects at Tottenham. You can have, just imagine that. With 600 million people in India. Is there any one reason? Is there a, I know it's very complex, but is there something that you're, that you think, okay, well, that is definitely part of it? There are quite a lot of reasons. I mean, I think, look, I think one of the challenges is this myth of meritocracy, right? That we live in a meritocracy, and I don't accept that. I accept that we live in a society that pursues meritocracy. And I think sometimes Football, like all sports, which is not to point the finger and blame the football, every sport thinks that it's a pure meritocracy. And so my response to that is, well, if you think that, don't ever complain about who's in the England first team. Because it's a pure meritocracy. You're not, you're gonna, you're challenging the judgment of the manager. Actually, as soon as you challenge the judgment of the manager, what you're accepting is a subjective decision that's been made by someone assessing against a set of criteria. Well, how many, many hundreds of thousands of subjective decisions have been made to lead to that event? And how are you unpicking? All those subjective decisions that have been made at a recruitment level at seven, eight, nine years old, when you're going into those academies, who's making those decisions? How are they making those decisions? What's their model of good looks like that they're comparing to? It's the same in every organization in every institution. That's why I think it is complex. There are lots and lots of those things that need to be unpicked. But actually what we need is people to think about particularly, really, if you don't have enough people coming in at the start of the talent pipeline, you're never going to have enough coming out at the end. And I think one of the solutions will be you maybe need to rethink what the academy people proposition is. Because it's inaccurate to describe it as an elite environment. You know, I think there's a certain point at which one in two people People in the academy environment will make it through into the elite game. That's an elite environment. That is, that's fly fishing. At the entry level It's 1 in 200. That is trawling the ocean, but you're ignoring 8 percent of the ocean. So, at that level, I think the people proposition has to be the vast majority of you are not going to be professional players, but we think that the education and the learning you get in this Environment of the Academy will give you life skills that will set you up for whatever you do. So wherever you go, this experience will last you a lifetime. So why deny that to 8 percent of the population? I think that's what needs to be reframed. Can I ask Arpit a question, which is, what's changed for India now to be outward investing in sports franchises like The 100? Why did that not happen 10, 15, 20 years ago? I think that's changed. That's a change in India, not just in sports. That's a change across sectors in India, the way that it looks at the nation's role in the world, where the commitment now is not to just be a country where, okay, India is constantly seeking, you know, Investments from outside within the country, but to be a central player or a central you know, Agent in how globally all of the industries are shaping up because I feel that If you look at the Indian subconscience right now, I don't want to generalize, but the idea is to become a superpower and to become a superpower fast. I think that's driving it and with each successive governments, I think that commitment becomes stronger. And Richard, can we just welcome His Excellency as well Vikram Doriswamy, the High Commissioner of the Government of India to London as well. So thank you for joining us, High Commissioner. Thank you and apologies for being a bit late, but if I could just chip in a couple of context points here. First, I think, you know, yes, India is today a cricket country, but for those of us from India who are a bit older we did grow up in an India in which cricket was just one of these sports. In the seventies hockey was very much An equally competitive sport, and there has long been a tradition in various parts of India, as to your point, sir, of strong footballing tradition that's in the east and Bengal in particular, but also in the south on in Goa. We've got a long standing practice of investment in those sports. It never amounted to much and really, in some senses, cricket had a first mover advantage as the 1983 World Cup. When sort of against all the sort of awards, India won that one and the shift towards limited overs cricket had a huge impact in driving money into that sport, but that's changing. Look at hockey, for instance, now, as India has been able to put more money into hockey, the state of Odisha put in a lot of money in particular, the hockey league has become much more influential in India and better performances are contributing money back into the sport. Obviously Sanjay's experience on football and and the South Asian community here is really very revealing. And I think there's interesting points to pick up from that. But I think there is an opportunity to also look at how other sport has invested in India, look at NBA, look at baseball, you've probably seen the movie Million Dollar Arm, right? In which which is a true story in investment in bringing people in. Didn't really work in terms of changing the number of Indians getting involved in Major League Baseball. But it did open up the idea of expanding new product into the Indian market and specifically to the last point about investment. I think there is a case to be made to look at other products also. I mean, after all, Queens Park Rangers if I'm not wrong, Blackburn Rovers. way back. In fact, Blackburn Rovers was an early thing. And if all people this is not to disparage in any way, but Venky's Venky's chicken was the guys who sort of got on on that one. So there is an, there is an opening for, for stuff to be sort of, marketed again in India today, the sweet spot to the UK enjoys in cultural product terms in India is to my mind. An underutilized assets. This includes sport, obviously, most, most influentially, but in range of other cultural products, literature history popular culture. There are generations who grew up watching stuff like Blackadder, for instance. I mean, how many other countries in the world can you say that? Which is, you know, you've got 120 million people who speak who speak English. So I think really there is a case for you to, to double down on that relationship. And I'm sure my colleague in Delhi, my counterpart in Delhi says exactly the same thing. Archie Cagliani from the BBC. My experience in India, obviously I work in cricket, but my background is football. And recently I met twin sisters in a slum in Bombay, one of the most densely populated slums in Bombay. They are gifted footballers who have nothing. So an NGO goes in and introduces sport so they can draw them into education opportunities and breaking that cycle of poverty. Those girls are about to finish college and are currently coaching their own football team within that particular slum. That's how powerful. sport is. We talk about cricket, but I think football sometimes when we talk about India, we just don't get that connection. So seeing it at that particular level to see these two sisters and I remember sitting in their little hut and I said, who's your favorite footballer? And I was convinced they'd say like a Manchester United player was obviously they said Ronaldo and they said, we never miss a game. We watch every single match. We copy everything he does. And for me, it was a real defining moment thinking. These girls have nothing but football and sport in general, when I meet particularly young people like this, it gives them hope. It gives them courage. It gives them ambition and drive and you speak to their parents and regardless of which sport it is, but particularly for football and cricket, the parents are now saying we want our girls to play sports and that's a massive shift and I think that's such an underrated. angle that people never really speak about. Those parents would, maybe 10, 15 years ago, be marrying their daughters off at the age of 12, 13, because they can't afford to feed them. Yet now, through sports, through that lens of sport, it's changed their lives. And I think that's so powerful. And it's something I'm particularly passionate about. So it is all about cricket, but my goodness, football gets a certain look in. It doesn't matter what sport it is. Kabaddi. I'm looking at you, Nick. Now, sorry to go off topic a little bit, but there was a Kabaddi team in my school. saw deep dark decks, deaths of South India. I've never been to the place and we found this fantastic girls team. They created their own ground with their bare hands. They cleared the ground so they could play Kabadi and the backgrounds they were from. I mean, it was pretty shocking. Again, their dream is to wear the India jersey. And it's not, you know, again, cricket will always take the limelight, but Kabaddi is absolutely massive in a region nobody really knows about, to be honest. So we should bring Nick in then. Good intro for you there. I've been involved, I was lucky enough to take a phone call in 2016, and that's how long I've been involved. I I, it was an, you know, unknown caller. And unusually for me, at the Olympic Games, I took a call. Hello, hello, you don't know us. We are Star India. We own a majority stake in a thing called the Pro Kabaddi League. We've been told that you might be able to help us. And here I am, eight years later. It is a phenomenal story. It's a really interesting observation. It's a phenomenal story that the world of sports doesn't really know much about, doesn't talk about, and maybe we can come back to that because I, I think a theme of this conversation is India's, perhaps, reticence or, or maybe it's a timing issue, not going out into the world in the way that maybe Kabaddi could have done, and I think interested. in people's views around the table about what the Olympic Games bid might do to that kind of dynamic. Maybe that'll, that'll change, because a frustration is for, for me with the pro cupbody league, and I'll come to what that is for those who don't know, is that here's a sport which makes people smile instantly whenever they see it. It's fantastically easy to play. That's the whole point of it, is the, this is the workers sport. There's no equipment, no nothing. You play. And yet the world doesn't really know about it, even though we sometimes see The All Blacks, or the England team football team, playing a game as part of their prep. So, this league was created Twenty six twenty fourteen it was created, same year as the ISL, interestingly. A massively culturally relevant sport. I mean, India's indigenous sport, people would say. And this incredible idea from Star India, I remember my, my global one to watch for this year is the fact that GeoStar. with Uday Shankar, and now back, and now back in play, I think, as the major player in Indian sport. But they, they saw this opportunity, together with some really well meaning big corporates, and created a league out of nothing, where forever people had played, there'd been people making a living in the civil service, or the railways, or whatever, from playing this sport, but no professional league. And here we are, 12 seasons on, season one, I think. Bringing it to that people basis, season one, highest salary paid, twenty thousand US dollars ish, and this is for about a four month kind of time period. So who owns it? Oh, it's now two hundred thousand dollars. So a tenfold and you know in terms of and this this this is a playing population who people would say are humble You know, that's the word that is that is banded about basically a a rural population being given opportunity for a staggering staggering life changing Experience and salary who owns it now? Well, it's in my eight years It's gone from the Murdoch's 21 CF 21 Century Fox then to Disney And now it's, ultimately, it's the Ambarnis, it's Geostar, it's the Ambarnis who have just taken on Star. So, they are 70 plus owners together with a minority interest, and there are 12 franchises, very similar names to the IPL. So you look at, you look at the franchise owners, particularly the latter wave, we've gone through an expansion program, an expansion program, names, all the names familiar to IPL franchise owners, so a very similar dynamic going on, and so many lenses we could, we could see this from, I mean the numbers get banded about, I think, 120 million followers, or sometimes you can get up to 400 million viewers of a season, massive numbers, but let's just pull back from that, and I bring it back to what What this I think what this league has done and proved in the Indian sports economy is how, how fast And at a bewildering pace sometimes, almost breakneck pace, you can go from nothing to something, something extraordinary. It's hard yards. It does need massive, massive ownership and investment. So back to that earlier theme, difference between corporate, corporately driven success, or maybe state driven success, as opposed to national government success. This isn't a free association culture. This is a Pull something together, create a business, and drive it. Culture? I mean, love your views on that, but that's certainly my perception. This could not have happened in a traditional federation y type, clubs coming together type way. It had to be driven, and it's sport as entertainment. This is an entertainment. We are, you know, that's why I'm there. Star don't need any help in broadcast, you know, production and presentation of a sport. But there was no, there was no, there's no seasons. There was no competition. There was no pathway. There was no development. There was no refereeing structures. So the product itself. The product itself is effectively my side of the house working with the team to create that. Particularly, you know, how do you create teams? So there's a question, I guess, which is about protecting. Domestic sports from a globalized sports marketplace, of which the Premier League is part, the NFL, the NBA, there is a danger that local sports will be crowded out, those fans, there's a, there's a fight for fans, global fans, corporate sponsorship, media rights, there's only so much, it's a sort of opportunity cost question. Arpit Chaturvedi Teneo. I, I would probably look at it another way. That. There was always this concern and I think His Excellency could add to it perhaps that this is always this concern that the indigenous sports, if not given enough media exposure would die out. And I remember, you know, looking at historical records from my great grandfather's times as to how a lot of people would get together and sponsor Wrestling, that's Kushti competitions in India and would hope that this sport picks up eventually. And now you know, it's a big sport in India and no fun fact, the highest grossing Indian movie ever has been made on the four guard sisters who won no medals in wrestling. And Transcribed by https: otter. ai I think that there is more enthusiasm. So it's not as if people are looking at it as a zero sum game over there. Yeah. But it's about seeking more international partnerships and media exposure to get these sports you know, in the popular mainstream. So, yeah. I guess it's a, there's a, when government looks at sport, is there a role to protect local? His Excellency, the High Commissioner, Vikram Doroswamy. So that part, of course, government should and must exercise, and that is part of what I believe has been the tradition of going out and sustaining local sports through investment in the in these hinterland. Of course. Logically, if that were the only intervention of government, we would have done really well into an international sport, which manifestly we haven't. So in fact, I think it's a great idea that we've gone ahead and allowed the, the sort of creation of leagues. And I think the Kabaddi league is a fantastic example of it. And by the way, It has got its international elements. There was a Korean player called Lee Jang Kun who played, if I'm not wrong, for the Patna team and then a number of other teams. He's now retired, but it got so popular that you actually had a Korean national team, which came for one of the Kabaddi World Cups, which beat India in one of the qualifying rounds. So, so, you know, the, the internationalization can happen the other way. Also badminton is another case in point. I mean, it's always been a game that was largely seen as being played by. Well, people of my class, the civil service class, and on an evening, some Uncle G is sort of going around playing badminton and the kind of thing, but that has got to have been Now, with the creation of a league, you've now got a lot of people coming in and that built off the success of one of our successful badminton players who put in a lot of money into creating facilities, international standard facilities in Hyderabad that drove, you know, the, P V Sindhu's and others of this world into into competitive capabilities, globally competitive capabilities to the point, however, about investment in sustaining traditional product, sport, product, etcetera. I'd say look. If you broaden the lens to look at other forms of entertainment, you know, initially when India opened up the market for more movies to come in from outside Hollywood movies, there was a lot of pushback in the 90s. And I'm sure you remember that the idea that, you know, dubbed Hollywood movies and Hindi and regional languages would finish off Bollywood 25, 26 years later. Have a look. Bollywood is doing just fine. I mean, you know, if nothing else, the number of movies coming out has increased. Take food. You know, there was pushback even in a cosmopolitan city like Bangalore when KFC opened up and Pizza Hut opened up. Who's got Indianized? It's McDonald's that serves you know, McPaneer and chicken you know, with chutney and stuff like that on it. So. Look, when your market is that large, you will find where, in a sense, gravity bends around you. So, it is, it is exactly the reason why Kabaddi has sort of picked up beyond South Asia. It's exactly the reason why I believe we needn't worry too much about, about these things. Sport coming in is a good thing. It gives young people a chance. I think you're absolutely right Archie, if I might about the subject of women's empowerment through it. You just have to look at the Indian women's hockey team. It's the most inspirational stories you will hear where these girls came from, what hardships they went through to get to be able to play and how much in particular women in South Asian sport contribute back to their families, whether it's in Bangladesh, Pakistan or India. It's an amazing, amazing story. And once you get that showbiz. dust, whether it's a, a Bollywood superstar owning a team, whatever sport it is, or if you have a biopic made again, that would have been frowned upon maybe 10 or 15 years ago. But the wrestling film, the girl that you mentioned, those girls, I almost got the rights for those film for their, for their life story, by the way. And then I see the sisters turning up on Amir Khan's chat show. And that's it. My heart just sank. The Bollywood superstars now got them. And then before you know it, they're making this film. That film made three hundred and 40 million dollars worldwide. They made it on a budget of 8 million only, and 220 million of that was actually from China. I mean, that's so unexpected, isn't it? Shabash Mithu, the film about Mithali Raj again, you know, I've got quite a sad story about that, actually. It's one of my favorite films. It didn't do very well in terms of cinema viewings, et cetera, because there's no Shah Rukh Khan. There's no Bollywood film star. attached to this. But then the minute it gets a streaming platform, it did really well. But I, I was going to interview Mitali Raj for a BBC cricket series that that was making. So the night before I thought I'm going to go and watch the film. I got to the cinema, super excited. It's three o'clock in the afternoon. I was the only person in the cinema. So I, my heart sank, you know, I'm in the middle of Bombay, this, this fantastic city that loves cricket. It's a women's cricket biopic story with one of the most successful captains coming out of the country. Why am I the only person in NRI sitting here with my ticket and my popcorn, but I enjoyed the film. You know, it's a, it's a fantastic film. And You know, I asked her lots of questions the next day when I interviewed her. But, you know, that was a, again, it was a real defining moment for me that actually we've made a lot of progress. We still need that showbiz celebrity element to then go further. Julien Kaswamy, again, a really massive name in the Indian women's cricket team. She has a biopic coming up too. So, you know, we want to see more of this. And again, it influences the parents, it influences mums and dads to let their girls play sport. Chak De India the hockey story. Shah Rukh Khan being in that film. on a, you know, again, parents are willing to let their girls play sport. It's so, so essential. And, you know, I hope to see more of that a football version, maybe at some point, a Kabaddi version, maybe the Mysore girls. There we go. I'll pitch that. There we go. So yeah, you caught Nick's attention at 300 million. That's certainly not my BBC salary. I'll tell you that for sure. Certainly not our budgets. Okay. Right. We are going to, so the globalized sport market, but we can't now we're in. The perfect time to come to Andrew Umbers and talk about The cricket story of the moment you've been let's talk about the hundred. It's all about indian corporate money and Individuals coming in to cricket tape just give us a bit of a flavor what's been happening over the last week or so I'll give you a flavor of what's been happening over the last 20 years in sport generally is from the business perspective of sport. You've got to remember in the ISL that these clubs lose sort of four to five million dollars a season. It's not an infrastructure that is because of the structural ownership of the broadcasting rights and the ownership of the clubs. It's not as easy as you think. And then the stadium and The pitches there, there's a, there's a, there's a long sort of long list of issues as well as the physicality of the players and pathways that needs to be developed before you have the international players. The, the second is and, and the perspective is more, again, it's the, when you take the IPL, I mean you forget the first seven years that these IPL franchises were losing 15, 20 million dollars a a year. And, of course, broadcast income, which is now sort of 7 billion, 8 billion, you know, really second only in value per game, as we were talking about, to the NFL, et cetera, it's sort of 20 20 million a game. NFL, just in perspective, is 36 million. Prem is sort of 9. 6. If you want the perspective, the point is that they're now making sort of, 25 to sort of 45, 50 million a season or something like that. So the Indian ownership, which is both corporate and high nets and have been looking to expand. The franchises, but also establish themselves internationally through the diasporas in the countries that they've acquired stakes in, et cetera. And remember as well, the other structural issue, because it is relevant, is that there are foreign exchange control issues on buying assets out of India. Overseas, you cannot use debt without permission of the central bank, ostensibly, I mean. And so it's if you like, just think about it, it's, it's sort of, sport in India is nascent when you try and export what they've got, without even sorting out internally what they've got. And you need to look at academies, JSW, what they're trying to do with some of their sports academies, they own, for those who don't know, half of Delhi Capital's with GMR. As well as, you've got to look at the ownership, or the roles of state versus city, versus franchises and things like that. It's a very complex ecosystem. So, going back to something like the hundred, and looking at the platform of the, that you've now found. India in just think about it from the macro perspective that if you take the ICC income from Indian revenue it's 90 percent and 90 percent of ICC revenue comes out of India and they only take back 30%. So that's a pretty unselfish perspective. Firstly, secondly, and a responsible perspective. The second thing is that if you look at The investment that they're making now outside of India, which is actually international expansion across all the countries, and I'll mention them of course in the 100 to date, they are, the Diaspora of Indians and the Indian investments are responsible for about 90 percent of the equity, the real money, cash on cash money coming into the 100 right now, 9 0%. I know some people might be a bit frightened about that, and I'll, and I'll come back to why. South African cricket, obviously, is owned by, the franchises are owned by, they've invested 150 million. MLC, roughly 150 million, that's Major League Cricket in the States. CPL franchise investments are, by the Indians, around about 25 to 30 million. And then the ILT20 is about 150 million. So, wrap it all into one, it's about 1. 2 billion. They've actually exported off their own capital. So they're putting money at risk, which is, which is, Which is fantastic, but it's also most of it's not duration capital. I know that might come as a surprise, it's quite aligned to actually growing cricket. Duration capital is, so you don't find, a lot of the private equity businesses are sort of four or six years funds. So duration, they have to then roll over that investment to to, to service the stakeholders in those funds, et cetera. And specifically, for example, you know, it's very well known, we represent Mr. Moran and his family who own Sun Group and Sunrisers Sunrisers Hyderabad as well as the Port Elizabeth franchises and this afternoon we've successfully acquired, subject to due diligence 100 percent of the Northern Superchargers, which is based at in Leeds, in Headingley. And um, Can I just ask how it works? Because is it, is it an auction? I worry about twitching and you've suddenly bought the northern superchargers, but well, well, how does it work? Just give it is it a digital just give me a give me a sense of it. I tell you if you're a caviar Cavium ran and mr. Moran and Xiaomi SL the whole of that team and ourselves at oakwell. I mean, it's sweaty palm time Because it's a bid every, basically you have 15 minutes to put a bid in and at the point the bid comes in, the bid for that 15 minutes closes, you've then got to put another bid in and it goes up in sections of 3, 000, 000. And you have a reference or reserve price to start with. So it's So how many bids did you put in? I can't disclose the I can't disclose the real detail, but The point I'll, the point I'll advertise for, and this is more than an advert for anybody in Yorkshire, but it's also an advertisement, I think, for any Indian investment, I mean proper Indian investment into English cricket. One, you know, it's the ability to partner with the English and Wales Cricket Board, which, which is really, really exciting for everybody. Secondly of course, it's a unique or a scarce moment. There is some EBITDA. I'm not going to get into the multiples here, but It's about aligning a strategy with first class county cricket, these hundred franchises, and realigning, for many clubs and its members, the diaspora, and obviously high performance as well, because we all know the shape of cricket, or, most people respect the fact that the shape of cricket is going For the players, who are looking at multi year contracts with with, with multi club franchises. And, it's also an industry that's embracing through India entertainment and broadcasting. For instance, Sun Group is the largest broadcaster and publisher in in India. And, all I can say is that, look They share the values. I mean, values of family, the value, the American values of dynasty, and ownership of some of these franchises, passion for cricket, but it's also cricket as a business, fandom, engagement, and high performance. So, You can't look at Indian sport without saying, look, 20 years ago it's just been built on sound foundations and our view in hockey is exactly the same, you know, there isn't a lot of places where you can play hockey if you're an Indian team or an Indian club team, you know, the EuroLeague is a bit of a disaster, so is the FIH in terms of its stakeholder and all of those sorts of stuff and It's great to hear Nick and what he's saying about Kibadi because we share the same sort of views on that as well and some of the other sports and, you know, that's including in tennis and look, they're going to get paddle. They're going to get all the others as well and badminton. Absolutely. And I love the reference to Baldrick. I love the reference to Baldrick and Blackadder. That is made by Jack. Simon, I want to bring you into this because obviously it's a story you followed very closely. What have you been making of the last week? I've been slightly surprised by the figures, the amount of money. So it's getting on for 500 million now, being invested in the county game effectively. Although they bought the franchises, most of this money is going to the counties at this point anyway. So, you know, it's a fantastic transformative moment for the game. I mean, I thought it would happen. Because I could see the, the desire from the Indian Premier League franchise owners and other investors around the world to get involved in English cricket. We've still got a great infrastructure. You know, we've got the largest professional cricketing network in the world. We've got great grounds. We've, we've got great networks. You know, even though the game is now behind a paywall, there is still this massive appetite. Look at the support for Test Cricket, you know. It's, it's still, we've got a good cricketing kind of infrastructure in England. I think it's brilliant for the game personally, but obviously it's about how they spend the money now. And there'll be different attitudes to that. I think, you know, cricket is, in England, is a bit of a dinosaur. It's, it's, you know, it's very slow to grasp these kind of concepts and that's why the IPL, you know, became about really because we invented T20 in England, effectively, but we didn't really do anything with it. And suddenly Lalit Modi comes along and creates this brilliant vehicle with a closed league, with eight teams, no relegation, and an auction for players and, you know, franchise owners and stuff, which has never The first time it had ever been done and, you know, they, we, we were left sleepwalking to the grave pretty much as English cricket people because the Indians just totally took it on board and hijacked it in a way, in a totally legitimate way and it's, it's totally rejuvenated the game and created these opportunities for what I like about what happened in India really was well voiced by Raoul Dravid, the great Indian batsman who said that When the IPL came about, it banished the idea of what he called victims of cricket, which were people who devoted their life to the game, played for their Ranji Trophy team, their stateside till they were 31, never got a chance to play for India, and then were on the scrap heap and couldn't get a job, and you know, they ended up being a taxi driver or something. And he felt there were many players like that, but suddenly the IPL had created this opportunity, not just for players, but coaches, analysts, like me, you know, commentators, massers, trainers, etc. So it created this whole new world, this marketplace for cricketers, and this is the latest extension of that, really. The money that is going into the county game via these Investments in the hundred is will transform English cricket for me. And I find it really irritating because so many rather tend to be older. Fans go, they're ruining the game. I hate the hundred. It's not even cricket. They call it the 16. 4. They refuse to call it the hundreds. And I've just said that 16. 4 balls, in other words, 16 overs and four balls. And I mean. I just think it's so narrow minded and myopic, it's cricket, you know, in 1820 there was a man and his dog against another man and his dog playing cricket, a sort of single wicket competition. Cricket has always evolved, you know, it's one of the great survivors as a sport because it's been able to adapt so often and it's done it again. With this, with this hundred. And I don't particularly like the hundred, but I like what it, what it's, the opportunities it's created. And, you know, fantastic that Sunrisers have bought Yorkshire effectively. I mean, they've put a lot of money into Yorkshire via the, the Northern Superchargers purchase today. I mean, Yorkshire is, is a fantastic place to, to own a cricket team. I went and did a dinner there. A couple of months ago, and the passion and enthusiasm for the game, the diversity of the game in Yorkshire is fantastic. They just need a bit of a lift after the troubles they've had. And this is, this is that lift. So, you know, my overall reaction is delighted. I wonder what the implications of it are. It's such a moment and people, it's just what other people will learn. Because obviously the sports market evolves. They see something like this happening. You know. We are bombarded with disruptor leagues in every sport. What's going to happen? How is this going to evolve, do we think? What's the broader impact on, not just cricket, but the way in which sport is organised? I think, obviously, I mean, football has struggled, hasn't it? You know, basically, sport is expensive. You know, you, you have to look after stadiums, you have to pay players, and you know, it, it's becoming uns. Look at rug, look at the state of rugby. You know, the, well, the players are being paid too much. The, the, the games are not being played often enough. The crowd, the gr the grounds aren't full enough. Therefore, the, the game is losing money and. That's going to happen to all sport unless you get private investment, I think. Or unless, like the Australians have done, which is using a stadium for two sports, or more. And obviously Tottenham have done that as well. By making, creating multi purpose stadiums is, I think, is the only way to sustain sport, actually. And maybe that will happen in cricket. It hasn't really happened much in football. But I think people are getting wise to the idea that private investment is important. To sustain sport, sustain the entertainment levels, sustain performance levels, and, you know, I think sport will continue to be something that investors seek. Because it's the one thing you definitely, you know, it's the un, it's the unpredictability of sport, which is the one thing that attracts these investors. So I think it will continue. And I think media rights will continue to sort of maybe not climb as much as they have over the last 10 years. But I think, I think they will still edge upwards because there are so many broadcasters who want a piece of the pie. Ishfeen Jolly from Open Sponsorship. Yeah, I think, What's interesting when you're talking about the investment coming into England and, you know, it's time and whatever else, having lived and worked in America, India and England I think what will be interesting about this is rather controversially, will England get out of its own way to let this happen? When you work in India, the reason IPL was so successful, I was there 2009 second year, we needed to move the tournament. Within a month, we went to South Africa. It just wouldn't happen here. And then America also has an amazing can do opportu attitude, very capitalist, and as you said, like, England is often a little bit more, like, regulation, and like, let's not do things for money, and all of these things, and these guys coming in and doing it. For profit reliance is not buying a team to grow sport in India, the goodness of its heart, and I think England has to allow this to happen, or I don't think you'll see it again, basically, so it'll be interesting. Can I try and draw a line between the IPL, the Pro Kabaddi League, and the 100 to answer your question? Is it a straight line, or is it? It is, and it is a straight line to answer your question. I think what these three properties and there are other examples are proving is a converse is, is something that you and I've talked about over the years, which is where you have cultural relevancy. Something is, something is deeply loved and you have people then who focus on creating an, a focused entertainment product. I think I would say that the premier league story, obviously something that rich will and I share in our, in our. Working life. I think the Premier League story is exactly the same thing. If you just focus on creating content entertainment in the sport, you don't get involved in all the other stuff, which is probably what holds back many of the perhaps more traditional, you know, cricket and other sporting organizations who can't manage this because you've got big governance problems. You've got lots of other responsibilities. No, actually focus, focus in on the entertainment, build the property. You know, create a franchise system, if that's what you want to do, close system. I think all of these are success, show the success of that model, rather than trying to do everything in the old vertical, you know, the joined up vertical idea of sports, which still persist in many, and I think is failing those sports. Mike Herbert from Northridge Law. I think the Maybe one lesson coming out of the 100 process and obviously it's been, I think, from the UCB's perspective at the moment, given the values, you know, it's successful. It is maybe an example of, of that kind of, you know, ultimately the UCB is the governing body of the sports, it's made up of, you know, it's the traditional structure made up of member counties who are then made up of members themselves. It is an example of one of those. I suppose governing bodies effectively creating a structure to facilitate private investments from within, as opposed to a challenger league springing up from outside the traditional structure. So, and obviously, you know, we've seen examples of that live golf and other, other examples of doing it kind of completely out of the existing structures of the sports. The fact that hundreds You know, the UCB have managed to run this process within that structure and okay, it's, it's effectively kind of circumvented it by creating a franchise model, but it's done it from within. The assumption is that it's going to be a disruptor, it's going to be a live golf type scenario attack from the outside, but actually live golf is a good example of actually that's really difficult to do. I mean, from Ishii's perspective there about getting out of the way, what do you have to do to be able to do that? Is there a way of, did the ECB make any decisions at the beginning that they said, right, we're gonna need to, almost like acting as a, their own They took a view that they needed to, this is the ECB when Tom Harrison and Colin Graves were, and Sanjay Patel were on the board, took a view that they needed to create a tournament that brought and engaged with a different fan audience of family, women, young children as well as the traditional marketplace of sport, which is traditionally over 50 white male. And if you like, they hit a jackpot. And but they did it because the governance allowed them to do it. The governance of sport. We know the issues that Bill Sweeney has with amateur versus professional or the council members. We know how difficult it is for the FA and the Premier League to make a decision on WSL that may hold its growth back. And indeed, you see this in so many sports in the Western world. The Americans are Less encumbered with this type of governance and they're more looking at the business and how you change the business within. And they're quite prepared to kick franchises out if they don't play the And we've seen this in in various sports in America if the franchisees don't actually perform best practice. There's the high American Model that, you know, people say, well, yes, European football is a basket case. I think stakeholder incentivization for change can be done with challenger leagues. You know, I think you have to work with The governing bodies to change. I think it can do that because the governing bodies ultimately are responsible for the grassroots and the participation and the investment. And that, that's ultimately what you know, may cost, if you like, a chief executive of a big governing body his job. You know, because he can't articulate that in a difficult time when revenues are under fire or whatever, because broadcast income might not be as good as it was. The point being that Yes, you can, and yes, private public initiatives are actually probably the way going forward for change, but of course if you ask you know, change, change has got to be gradual, and sometimes the actual governance can't change in time. I think public private initiatives are the way forward for most primary sports and most secondary sports. And the way that, sort of, India takes its lead in cricket which is just to work with. The if you like, the regulator, which is the ECB, a self regulated entity is a good foundation stone for that as well, because it's endorsing what's actually ECB have done. And I think the same will happen in many other sports as well. I know that it's happening because we advise one or two big federations on the same, same changes and they will work with sovereign funds for those changes. I think the lessons of live and not working with stakeholders have been learnt. And I, I'm very, very positive for the way that it can accelerate participation health, well being, all of the above, and, you know, the product of what we're seeing in India. As I've said, you know, look, we've only been here for 20 years with all of what's going, been going on within India and we all know the burgeoning wealthy middle classes are going to determine that a lot of what they're going to do is going to be exported in other sports, whether that's Kibaddi, albeit WWE might have a different version of that competitively, albeit that's in the spirit of entertainment as well and brilliant entertainment WWE is, and also fan engagement. An augmented virtual reality and things like that, that are changing the space, you know, they're the sort of softer lines around the broad issues. I think you're gonna see real change within federations and the way they work. Nick Doherty, Teneo. Can I ask a provocative question? And as much as we get paid to do anything, it is to point out upside, opportunity, but also downside risk. And, and I think if we'd been hosting this event in 2016 and if we'd thought of it, we might have been asking around Is it China's decade of sport? If you cast your mind back to 2016, there was a decision taken within the Chinese Communist Party that they were going to bid to host the 2030 World Cup. There was a raft of outward investment into clubs in Italy, Inter Milan, AC Milan Fosun, Wolves, a club close to Sanjay's heart. There was The Chinese Super League was doing what effectively the Saudi Pro League is doing now and all of that investment has been reversed and left some of those properties in financial distress in Italy most notably, Guangzhou Evergrande was They were writing the biggest transfer checks of anywhere any club in the world back in 2016 2017 They've just gone into administration. So I guess my question is to what extent is this Outward investment in this new confidence that India has to be a sporting superpower Sustainable, it's a great question. He wants to answer anyone got a view Kent Christian Authentic Brands Group. Prior to this role, I worked for the NBA for a long, long, long time, and to bring it back to this conversation, the nights of the first NBA games in, in Mumbai, you guys may remember there was a general manager from one of the NBA teams that, that tweeted about Hong Kong and effectively shut down the NBA business in, in China for five years just recently, in the last 12 months as that sort of reopened. What is that? Is there a similar threat that needs to be sort of eyes wide open as well? What exactly happened? The general manager of the rockets, who are pretty senior and this is when the NBA was flying in China, right? Literally and figuratively, there's a private entity and everything. He made a sort of innocuous tweet. It's actually a somewhat funny documentary, to be fair. He tweeted Put down his phone and got on a 12 hour flight going to Tokyo before games in Shanghai and woke up to just a flurry of he was pro Hong Kong and in sort of a midst of I forget exactly what the linchpin event was but I guess that's what I, again, as we look at it, whether it be David or other brands that we work with, what are those threats? What are the U. S. companies or other Western companies done wrong as they try to engage with the Indian market and try to learn from those? So I just built the question of like, what, what are those other threats that could be sort of not around the corner that aren't considered? The ones that I can think about, there could be several and you know, some directly related, some loosely related. I think one of them. Has been in India, for example, with the Commonwealth Games earlier there was this slew of political corruption in procurements in the in the Commonwealth Games. And after that with other games, the government officials sort of became a bit cautious that you know, if there's you know, an opposition party. And if the procurement, et cetera, is not done in transparent manner, that could you know, really be a big problem. So, that's one. The other is, yes, geopolitically, in some of those things, India can be a bit sensitive when it comes to things related to neighboring countries China, Pakistan, or things related to you know, Kashmir, or any other disputed territory. If, you know, a similar tweet was to go related to any of these territories there, there would be a lot of you know, sensitivity around that in India for sure. And the third one, I mean, I don't see that right now but two, two things because right now all of this is being perceived as a matter of national pride and that's the main agenda. But if At some point in time the cities which are hosting some of these big events are making losses or you know, there's significant environmental damage, et cetera. You could find certain groups you know, trying to give a push back to this culture. So those are the kind of risks that I can see right now. I was just going to pick up on Neil's question. Yeah. So. And this might be a question for Arpit so it, one of the differences might be that it has been suggested that the investments, the external investment from those Chinese companies was a matter of Chinese foreign policy, and the repatriation was a matter of Chinese foreign policy, and I don't get the sense that the private capital in India is being directed in the same way from government, which that feels like it's more akin to Saudi than India. Then, more akin to Saudi than China, yeah, India is more akin to Saudi than China. Yeah, I mean, China being more akin to Saudi than India, yeah. I think back to that earlier point, I think one of the big things is the personalities, so like, working in India it's very lax, we're going to show up to the stadium. With 20 people from our family, we don't have tickets and like even in this process, I believe that each team sold things differently and had like Lorde was quite different in what they were offering to the oval to northern team. So I think it's already it's going to be interesting to see will it work? Because 100 percent ownership of one team, Lorde is only 50 percent owned by me. Their owners and therefore you're dealing with two different parties, you know, working the IPL is very much like someone will call someone to make things happen and that's not really the English way. So I think that would be my biggest risk is if people buttheads culturally because you essentially do have an Indian ownership of a British league and and I'm presuming that's what happened in Italy or that was Venki's when, you know, back in the day. So I think it will be interesting to see. Is the money enough to talk, or can they reconcile? I think that's absolutely right, and I can't speak for the ECP, but they've tried to run a very broad process to get a huge diaspora of sports investors into English cricket through this process of the sale of each of the hundred franchises. Ultimately, it's gone to the highest bidder. You know, so, it may not have achieved what they wanted to. But that was In terms of control, you mean? But in terms of the in terms of the amount so 90 percent of the equity coming in is Indian or Indian Diaspora into the hundreds. So far, we've got Nottinghamshire and Hampshire to go, but, um Well, Hampshire I'm sure. Well, but it's still an open bid process, albeit, you're right. Perhaps nobody will bid against GMR, but I, I, I don't know that. The the issues of control versus minority interests it's a T, B, D, to be determined. I think you're really, really right. And of course there may be an issue of if broadcasting income distributions into the hundred have a little hiccup in the next broadcasting cycle. It'll be you know, well, is that the right strategy? I don't know, but I hope not. We're all, I think everybody is signed up to the governance and these are the so governance is the participation agreement and also the reference points within how the hundred committees are formed and things like that, so everyone's had to agree to those. They've been very careful in what they're being signed up to for the exactly what you're worried about, the unintended consequences of a great deal of franchises being owned by Indian or Indian diaspora. So, there are some, if you like trap doors that have been set or protections that have been set by the ECB. So, it should not happen, but I, I keep going back, none of it's leverage money, you know, it's not debt money that's financed these acquisitions, whereas you've got to, you've got to remember in football Most acquisitions are leveraged or contingent on something, which is normally leveraged as well, firstly, and it was so with China well, so with Russia and with America it's more structured in terms of structured finance so, so this, in cricket, it's not so one hopes that there'll be more stability in the ownership structure Or bit obviously when you look at football and two thirds of the American of the football clubs are owned by Americans Ironically as they're trying to export back Into the u. s Which is obviously one of the biggest growth areas and broadcast income on the just on the commercial side of sustainability I mean just a couple of things I think because of the smartphone Penetration around the world and notably in India where there's what 600 million smartphones that will sustain sport. I mean, that's how people consume sport now. Certainly, you know, Gen Z consume sport on their smartphones in highlight sort of mode and also linked to that the fantasy gaming. That has been absolutely massive. I mean, Dream 11 I think has 200 million subscribers, maybe more. And cricket and other sports obviously lend itself to that sort of fantasy world. It keeps people engaged. They are, you know, massive sponsors of sport. So even though perhaps broadcast rights might plateau. You know, there are other sources of revenue to keep this going through the, the versatility of the smartphone and the, the growing nature of fantasy gaming and sort of AR and AI coverage. I've got the, I'm very conscious that I want to have dinner. So, we're going to draw a hawk. There is a question that I didn't get to ask, which is about Dream 11 and it's about fantasy and the role of betting. in the future business model and how that plays and whether that's part of private equities game plan for sport generally, but what, whether or not the analogy with India is the next America, if the opening up of, if, if dream 11 is draft Kings discuss, but That's another podcast. That is a whole different podcast. And that will get us through to the zone. It was our convergence podcast. It was our convergence podcast. Well, listen, I'll go very quickly. Just say thank you so much for joining in and for contributing. Thanks also to Neil and to Nick and to Abigail who have been stars in terms of setting this up and to Leon, our hugely overqualified sound man. You wouldn't believe the list of accreditations he has, but this is one of his jobs. But in the meantime, thanks a lot.