Unofficial Partner Podcast
Unofficial Partner Podcast
UP469 Inside Edge: Overthinking the Business of Cricket
This is the first episode in a new series in which we take the Unofficial Partner sports business conversation and point it at cricket.
Richard is joined by co-host Mike Jakeman, who writes about sport for The Economist and worked within The Economist Intelligence Unit, and has written for titles such as The New York Times, Wired magazine and the Times Literary Supplement, and wrote a very good book on the future of cricket, called Saving the Test.
You can keep in touch with Inside Edge via the Unofficial Partner Substack newsletter that goes out to tens of thousands of subscribers from across the global sports industry every Thursday.
This episode of the Unofficial Partner podcast is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport.
Sid Lee Sport is a new breed of agency that combines world class creativity with deep sponsorship expertise, flawless operational delivery, and a culture of marketing effectiveness.
We’ve really enjoyed getting to know their team over the last couple of months. They’re an impressive bunch, who believe that sports marketing can and should be done better.
They have a creative philosophy of producing famous campaigns and activations that build buzz and conversation in a category that too often looks and sounds the same.
And they're pioneering a new standard of effectiveness in sports marketing, using econometrics and attribution models to go beyond traditional media ROI.
So if you're looking for an agency to take your brand to the top, get in touch with the team at Sid Lee Sport, where brands become champions.
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Hello, and welcome to Unofficial partner of the Sports Business Podcast. I'm Richard Gillis. this is the first episode of a new series called Inside Edge, in which we take the unofficial partner sports business conversation and we point it at the business of Cricket. My co-host is Mike Jakeman, someone who's journalism I've long admired in The Economist, where he writes about sport and worked within the intelligence unit of the newspaper, but also for titles, including the New York Times Wired magazine and the Times Literary supplement And in 2013, he wrote a very good book on cricket called Saving the Test. together, we're gonna be looking into every aspect of the cricket business, from the product on the field to the ownership issues around franchises. And the future direction of every format of the game. You can keep in touch with Inside Edge via the unofficial Partner Substack newsletter that goes out to tens of thousands of subscribers from across the global sports industry every Thursday. This episode of Unofficial Partner is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport. Sid Lee Sport is a new breed of agency that combines world class creativity with deep sponsorship expertise, flawless operational delivery. And a culture of marketing effectiveness. We've got to know the team over the last few months. They're an impressive bunch who believe that sports marketing can and should be done better. They've got a creative philosophy of producing famous campaigns and activations that build buzz and conversation in a category that too often looks and sounds the same. And they're pioneering a new standard of effectiveness in sports marketing using econometrics and attribution models to go beyond traditional media, ROI. So if you're looking for an agency to take your brand to the top, get in touch with the team at Sid Lee Sport where brands become champions.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:So I've got a good, strong reason for being here. I can go through why I want to do a business of Cricket vertical podcast. I can do that. And then our audience needs to know who you
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:So I thought there's a question of who should go first. Let's go with you. there's two things. One, your personal and also your professional relationship
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Hmm.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:to cricket. you know, Unofficial Partner is about all sports. It's about lots of different bits of the sports business.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Mm-hmm.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:we are now looking at cricket specifically in this in Inside Edge, which is our series around game. I'll give my two Penit in a minute, but just give us a bit of a bio or a bit of background on Mike Jakeman. Is this a Pinteresque pause or
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:no, no, no. It's just me getting my, my thoughts in order. I had the sort of typical getting into cricket as a teenager because it was what was on tv. And loved it. But the thing that sort of crossed over for me was this sense that test Cricket was in trouble round about the time that 2020 came out. And I then started thinking about a sort of manifesto, if you like, for what test cricket can offer in an age when it felt like it was being put on the, uh, a risk of being deprioritized. And then I realized the more that I kind of read and researched about it, first of all, I discovered that people have always thought test cricket was dying. That's almost part of its appeal. But also the idea that 2020, so there is this enormous disruption and that itself is quite new and that there was very much, uh, a strong business angle to this. Like how do you fit these two formats together, which are both ostensibly cricket, but also extremely different, which is something I think we'll go on to talk about in a few minutes. And I just found that fascinating. I find it fascinating in terms of the, the politics from how different boards respond to this threat or opportunity, depending on how they want to. To characterize it. And that led to me writing a book this, which is sort of this manifesto on, uh, what's good about test cricket and how it can thrive in, in, in 2020, uh, the era of 2020. And then I've sort of followed it ever since. That was 10 years ago. And I feel like now we're at a really interesting point because whereas previously we were talking about, or the 2020 advocates were pushing for, we need to create a window of exclusivity for the IPL, to avoid these kind of awkward conversations for players between do we want to play for our, in the IPL or do we want to represent our country? Now we're talking about a window for international cricket, uh, against franchise cricket and making sure there is some opportunity for international cricket to be played. So there's been a, over that 10 years, there's been a real shift from, we need to ringfence some time for franchise cricket to now we need to ringfence some time for international cricket. So it's a really long term story. And I, I love 2020 Cricket. I was a little bit apprehensive around the time I wrote the book. I think if I wrote it again now, I'd be a bit more a bit more balanced perhaps because then no one can deny the innovation that's come from it. But
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:the, I still don't feel like we've got a great answer to how to manage the two.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah. No, that's really interesting because I agree. your, I mean, your background is,'cause you've got, you are working for the Intelligence unit, the economist. Is that right? And you've, so you, you are coming from a business of insight analysis and journalism background. Would that be, would that be right?
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah, I worked for the EIU for, uh, 10 years before I went freelance. So, uh, yeah, there's a strong, I look at lots of this as kind of economic problems and, and how they can be solved and. Well, I think this is a, this is a, a really good example of why there's a lot to be said about why the IPL works really, really well. And it's for a product that was created in a bit of a hurry. It's incredibly well designed in terms of how the league works, the structure where the money comes from. I mean, the fact that it's profitable as an English person watching lots of English football is just astonishing that they can create this from scratch and have made money almost immediately. Uh, whereas we see series of football clubs struggle,
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:I think it probably is more incredible that football loses, you know, the number of Premier League clubs that lose money every year more incredible when you step back. Because actually as we know, Lali, Modi, Andrew Wild blah, you know, the, whoever we credit with the design and the, the sort of formation of it. It was obviously based on the NFL and based on, American sport mainly for that reason it was to make money. These are franchises and you're right that there is something, the economist le, I am not talking about The Economist as a magazine, but the sort of the, that lens into this question of cricket I think is just a useful one because I think it gets to, one of the things I think, and I'm a, I'm a cricket. Fan. I grew up playing cricket like you, I'm older than you. So it was much more of a sort of, you know, these are the three stations and crickets or four stations, crickets on them. So you are force fed it. And that's, that's where it came from. I was, I, you know, played club cricket, loved it, and grew up in that culture. And so I've always had, you know, deep affection for it. probably told you, told this story before, but the, I used, I got the first pitch for 2020 from the ECB they came to the magazine that I was editing at the time and they, you know, I. And was, I couldn't be more condescending. I almost sort of tapping them on the head and you know, 2020 overs, you know, and so I that snobbery and have done, you know, I've got rid of it pretty much, but probably not entirely in terms of that, divide between the short and the long form and proper cricket fans and you know, new ones and all of these things that we talked about 20 years ago. I went to the first, I remember my dad at the time and he was, it was his 80th birthday he, he wasn't disabled, but he had a disabled bad. We won't go into that, that's not something we need to go, but he's, he had a car bad, so it allowed us to park outside, Lord. So it was Middlesex Surrey 2003 I think, and we parked at almost opposite the grace, Grace Gates and, you know, unheard of. And we lived in West London, so we always used to get the training. But this was a, you know, a moment. So I thought a tree, we'll go buy tickets on the door and in we go. Obviously it was sold out the first ever county game since 1953 to be sold out since the days of Compton and Ridge. So I then had to chase a, a, know, a a ticket tout. So it was a ticket towel at a cricket game, a county cricket game. And I then had to go to a NatWest bank on the Corners St. Johnsburg, and get out. It was Fiverr in, he wanted 20 quid a ticket. And he said to me, neither of us were thinking this was gonna happen today. You know, and this, I really remember this, this ticket out saying this, and it was obvious something, you know, something's happening here. And then the game was pretty ordinary but was a packed sunny night at Lords for a county game on a, you know, a Tuesday night or Wednesday night. So the ECB then. Commissioned a market research company to then find out whether or not was popular and you sort of think they took two years finding the answer that everyone knew on that night. And obviously the story of Lali Modi and, and all of that. We don't need to get into that, but I, from that moment, the sports business, the broader sports business has looked at 2020 as a proof of concept for all sorts of things. And there's a nagging thing, 20 years on odd. There's a nagging thought that actually it's a bit of a wonky proof of concept for lots of other sports.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:And I, you know, it's, it's, it's easy to project onto it and say, and we've had this great shortening the great 20 ification. Of sport All, they've all tried it, you know, and I've been to a lot of them. I've been to golf's early iteration. It was rubbish. TGL we're seeing
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Mm-hmm.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:you know, we're seeing various people coming at tennis. Turbo tennis is still crud in the, you know, history books. So loads of people had a go at it. But is there something specific about 2020? Is it about, what do you think? Is it just a, it, it feels like it's not a great proof of concept for lots of, for the, for the amount of, it can't carry the weight of analysis and strategy that's then been based on top of
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah, I think that's, that's absolutely right. The, there are two reasons to my mind why 2020 has worked in cricket, but the 2020 ation of other sports. Hasn't. And I think the first reason is, uh, tests slash first class cricket itself. That format's unique. There's no other contemporary sport where a single match lasts multiple days and that matters because it allows for much bigger differentiation than you get in other sports. So 2020 is right on the edge of being a different sport rather than just a different format. And you can see that because there are relatively few players that are truly elite, uh, at both. So for example, when you get a game of tennis in, uh, I dunno, one of the women's competitions in a grand slam that match can last 90 minutes. There isn't the same scope to make it shorter or more dynamic. So you get the, when you try and change things like tennis to make it sort of quicker and sharper and funkier, the changes there feel a bit more gimmicky, whereas the kind of the expansiveness of test cricket allows for something else. So you can have test cricket at one end, T 20 at the other, and they feel sufficiently different that both can be credible.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Hmm.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:one part of it. And then,
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Just, uh, let's just pursue that.'cause that's a really interesting point. It's one that made enough. Because actually the assumption is, my assumption again at the beginning was that this is just quicker dumber. It's, it's sort of a, uh, shorter, but it's just a lesser
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:yeah.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:And you see that within, it's interesting. Sit when you talk to sitcom writers, they talk, they talk about when you get to sort of later series, you establish this, the characters and the temptation is, you're gonna, you, you're running out of ideas. And when they run out of ideas, they go, and stupid.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Right.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:are two directions that they take because it's, they're just
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:and you can make jokes, but it beca, it run starts to run out a road and you start to say, right, okay. The, the dumber you get, the less, you know, yes, you can go for a quick laugh, but it ain't going to sustain. There's a, there's something in what you said there, which I think doesn't get focused on enough in terms of that just the, the integrity of the sport.'cause I, we, we've talked to, you know, say three, I'm not picking on basketball, but three
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Mm-hmm.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:as a product. One of the questions is, it any good as a game? And I'm never close enough to any of these sports to have that judgment, but I know cricket and I know actually something else is happening in 2020.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah, it you're absolutely right. It didn't happen straight away, which is why partly enabled it to be this snobbery, but also I don't think early 2020 cricket was just that good. Because the differentiation wasn't there. It was just a similar kind of game, just played more quickly, taken less seriously. But when teams and including the IPL franchises, you know, there's real money at stake here, then there is the incentive to become good at it. And people start to think, well, okay, what do we need to do to become, to win these games? And therefore that's when you started to get these great innovations that 2020s bought to cricket. In terms of, I mean, the really simple stuff, like the fact that batsman can now score 360 degrees around the wicket,
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:you know, the fielding is so much better. It's brought greater variation to bowling. You know, it's, it's, it's nudged all three disciplines in, in creative ways.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:that wouldn't have happened that IPL as a sort of innovation lab for all of Cricket, which is the story that's happened over the last sort of five to 10 years. You know, the latter period of IPL. That's about money, isn't it? It's about money. that hasn't happened elsewhere.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:a way that's, that's kind of, yeah. I mean, it's, it's done. Yeah. The IPL is the crucible now of innovation in cricket because it is the only place where the world's best players are all guaranteed to be playing. And that's partly deliberate on the BCIS part because it still does not let Indian cricketers play these tournaments abroad. We should also point out, when we say cricketers all around the world, that's not including Pakistani players who are still sort of unofficially banned,
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:yep.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:but this, you get, you get a, a greater concentration of the best players in the world in the IPL than anywhere else. Because there is a lot of money in the IPL that is incentivized players, coaches, strategies, strategists, owners to get creative with how they can win these games. And that's when some real thought went into this. And we start to see 2020 skills become separate from test cricket skills and it become more of its own separate discipline, which is to, its, which to me is a good thing. The second part of why this hasn't worked in other sports, so one is I think the differentiation between test cricket being so expansive creates the room for shorter form. I think the other one is, it's, it's India. You know, there is,
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Hmm.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:there is no single sport in the US or Canada or the UK or Australia that dominates the sporting landscape like cricket does in India. Combined with obviously the, the sheer size of the Indian market themselves means that there is just a much bigger market for 2020 Cricket in India than there is for short form tennis in the uk or short form golf in, in America.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Well, I mean the, the other, the conversations that you'd have had these,
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Mm-hmm.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:well as I have is seven's rugby. So seven's rugby, they, there isn't an
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:you know, so it's, and again, I don't know in terms of the, to the first point, whether or not there's enough about the sport to keep anyone interested long enough, you know, beyond a party in the Hong Kong Sevens, and it's coming from a festival type style thing. It's a party with some rugby attached rather than a proper sport, which, and has never evolved, I don't think, in my mind. Beyond that, despite world rugby throwing millions at it, the Olympics was seen. One of the, the arguments for the Olympics was that it's going to turn sevens into something closer to 2020. It's gonna give it point. If you like, and I don't think it has worked, and we can, I'm not here to talk about rugby and sevens, but I, there is something again, missing in that you can see the, the aspiration and you can see the sort of strategy deck there, but something isn't working still.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:I'm, I'm not a rugby specialist either, but obviously the IPL is every year, like the Olympics is useful for sevens because it draws players in because they want to become Olympic medalists and they want to participate in that event, which is still very attractive. But if it's only gonna be once every four years, there's never gonna be enough momentum behind it to change it. Whereas obviously the IPL, uh, once a year is, it's in.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Well it's actually interesting because one of the, one of the arguments you hear, and we, I'm about to go to Bratislava not Bratislava, I'm about to go to Lizanne to do something with the, you know, Olympic. Uh, the Olympic Museum. It's a, you know, a podcast. And of the questions has always been about the Olympics and the Olympic money is the disincentive it has on the Olympic sport. So athletics is the classic example. It's looked the same for, you know, it, it ha it's no point in innovating because you're just being hosed with this Olympic money. It's, it's removed the incentive to evolve. And of course, you're seeing now lots of, sort of bits of innovation, but the argument, the broad sort of philosophical argument about the Olympics is why every, you know, it's every four years. The Olympics is almost like a massive bundle. It's, again, it's a huge, it's just other,
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Hmm.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:rugby going into the Olympics actually might be the worst thing it did because it meant that there wasn't where, where, you know, where, as you say, where is the IPL for rugby? And that is a. PhD waiting to, you know, I'm sure that CVC and all these various other private equity fund, you know, clever people have looked at this and thought that they could got sort rugby out first before they get to seven, before they get to
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:But there is a whole thing there, which again makes, this is why I think a business of Cricket podcast is really interesting'cause I think we're getting to some detail that actually gets brushed apart.'cause people rush to, need a 2024 swimming or hockey or
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah. Is there's, there's a point around scarcity to be made here, I think, because when you're trying to establish the thing, you want it to be played a lot, so
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:you know, it's. When 2020 was able to kind of snowball and become its own thing because it was played regularly. If 2020 was only ever played in the Olympics there was no IPL or or uh, and there was no big Bash, it wouldn't have gone anywhere. It needs to be played regularly, but then as soon as it is established, then you want, they actually do want some scarcity'cause you want the events to mean something. And actually in a way, the, going back to slight to what we were talking about before about the long history of the, uh, the relationship between first class test cricket and 2020, we had the IPL got, its got its window and then since then there's been a, IP have had a little bit of a problem because the tournament's a, a fantastic success, but it still only takes place for two months in the year. And if you are trying to think of, uh, the Chennai, super Kings as. The next New York Yankees, you've got an issue if for 10 months of the year, there's no reason for any of your fans to wear their merch, to put their shirts on. So then what we've seen in the last three or four years is IPL owners investing in teams in other leagues around the world. So, and that's, and again, this is why we need to have both Cricket and India together to make 2020 work, because none of the other franchise leagues set up around the world in the Caribbean, in Bangladesh, in South Africa were big enough on their own to sustain themselves. We had years of financial mismanagement and shallow talent pools, all this kind of thing, until the IPL owners basically got involved and said, right, well we are gonna buy four of these six teams and we are gonna drag some of our guys over. We know how to run this. We're gonna just do this properly. And suddenly these things now matter. So what, we've got a, a global calendar now where. We have, uh, the South African SA 20 in January, February. We have the Caribbean Premier League. We have Major League Cricket, NM sorry. Then we have the IPL, then we have the Caribbean Premier League. We've got, uh, major League Cricket in America, which is leapfrogged. Anything that, uh, ECBs managed to put together in terms of its, uh, now it's it's secure place in the calendar, but this is all underpinned by India. This is all underpinned by IPL owners, their money, the players that they already have under contract and selling rights back to India. So those two things, it needs, it needs cricket and it needs the devotion of a country, the size of India. So establishing the 20 ification of any sport, I, I think it's so, so hard. And cricket's been extraordinarily lucky, or you could just, cricket's got unusual characteristics that have meant that this has worked. But I would be very skeptical about other sports' ability to do the same thing. With anything like the same amount of success that we've seen through the IP.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah, I agree. And I'm a big believer in institutional memory and I think I look at, so we get to the hundred. I think the hundred as a, as an idea. And we've had, you know, various people on here for and against and, but we are where we are and it's this incredible moment. And again, one of the reasons Cricket is worthy of a vertical podcast series, the business of is just this moment we're in. So you this the extraordinary franchise moment of the last few months and that's a story that we are gonna sort of pursue and
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Mm-hmm.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:to and carry on. And we're gonna, you know, we've also got the response of the official game, let's call it that, the governing body game. I know the hundred is an official game, we're on wonky territory there, defining it in that way. But you've got this. Stew of stuff going on. You've got the private money, you've got investment money, you've got the India question, you've got format. also got the, the question of, again, I mentioned institutional memory'cause I was a, I think the hundred and is a response to previous failings of the ECB of a previous generation. So I went,'cause they mucked up the 2020 moment. They got outwitted by Lali Modi. This is, this is the ECB regime of, you know, the two thousands. Charles Clark and David Collier. I went to the Stanford Press conference at Lords. Again, it's always at lords, these things. and you're standing there and I saw the helicopter land. You see Stanford come out, you see the glass perspec box of money, and there's a great photo of Gilles Clark and David Collier staring into the money. Clark is looking over the shoulders of Ian Boham and Viv Richardson and Stanford. He can't, it's almost like he's locked. He trying to get his eye, get, get his hands on this, this money. of that I think was just a response to we mucked up 2020. We, we are late. You know, we, we, we should have owned this. This was in our hands and we didn't, obviously then the Stanford story then unravels and you get all of that. And I think this is my own pet theory, which is that I. The hundred is just a response to previous failings. And I think they've tried to do that and you could then turn around and say, well, actually you look at the money and it's been a successful response. We'll see. Well, you know, we'll, we'll we're gonna sit on the sidelines and see how the hundred evolves. Both as a product, but also, you know, the, the franchise valuations. But there's an element I think of what a career now is. So you've got the a hundred and you mentioned the Indian players. And I think the scarcity question is really interesting because is it scarcity for cricket in 2020 cricket or is it scarcity for the IPL and is IPL the real thing to the others?'cause I think we're at an interesting moment because I don't the expansion of the IPL across the year and the calendar. We're certainly not at a of concept stage. We're not saying that's, that's a success yet, or are we.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:No, we're not there. We're definitely not there yet. But it's quite clear the strategy that's there because there four or five years ago there was talk about, could there be a second IPL over?
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:In the second half of the year basically to solve this problem. I mentioned before about the fact that there aren't enough games to sustain the franchises as, as huge sports teams around the world. And they've decided that that's not the answer. The answer is to try and do these mini ipls around the world. And I think the depth of talent at the IPL, the quality of the cricket is significantly higher still in the IPL. I mean, that's, that's my view. There's no, it's not, you know, we test that in any way. But they're coming, like they're in the calendar. They're happening. More and more players are heading to more and more of these competitions every year, partly because international cricket is, is struggling in comparison, and because it's the IPL owners that own the teams, the wages are better, et cetera. The hundred is a really, I I, I agree with you exactly in that. They, the ECB cocked up 2020 cricket pretty spectacularly, and then realized that they were almost too late to do, uh, a sort of imitation of the IPL. So they had to think, well, what can we do? We want to have an IPL style tournament, but we can't just do a mini version of that. What can we do that will differentiate it, we'll do the a hundred? Which I mean, it didn't make any sense at the time. And it still doesn't really, and I think one of the really interesting questions, uh, about the sales is how long the new owners are willing to persist with this gimmicky idea of a hundred before they just rip it up and, and do a 2020 tournament. I look at those valuations, and again, this is just pure speculation. Everybody has their own view. We don't know quite what it, how much leverage the new owners are having over the tournament. Size of the valuations makes me think they've got quite a lot, because otherwise the numbers just simply don't stack up. If they've just bought a stake in more of the same, then it's horrendously overpriced, so they must only be assuming that they all have guarantees that they're gonna be able to change this in, in such a way to make it the IPL. But with the English heritage backgrounds of Lords in the open.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah. Yeah. It's also interesting, you know, again, this is through the sort of almost the Unofficial Partner lens of these things. I, I, what we've done over the years is create bits of sort of IP, if you like, around areas in the sports business. So. Whether it's money or whether it's sponsorship and marketing, or whether it's creative and the media question, which is the bundle series that we write, we do on a regular basis. That, question I think is really interesting when it comes to the hundred because actually, so what have, what have they bought and in there, given that the rights are up in 28, I think if I am, the investor just spent a lot of money on the Lord's franchise. I see the names B, B, C and Sky in there. And that is big part of the valuation because I think there's something odd about, and odd, I mean, in a good way in terms of the, the way in which, uh, Skye and the BBC have worked together in the uk. Again, to your point about you need people to see it quickly. If you are a new thing, you can't hide when you're a new thing. You need to blow the whole thing up. And the BBC's reach has done that both for men and women's franchises in a way that is a bit unusual because, you know, it's sharing the property if the big check comes down from TNT for example, next time around, and it's on there. I think that's a big problem. And I don't see that happening. Just, I don't, I've got no insider knowledge of this, but it would be a peculiar decision. But you've also got, so at the, the heart of it, you've got these nuggets of stuff that's in the sales deck, and obviously we have Modi on here dissecting the sales decks,
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Holding back.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:and yeah, holding back as usual, but. In there is actually the broad, so you've got the format, you've got the media question about where's the money gonna come from, where's the return gonna come from, and their expectation of media rights. it's quite hard to, you know, if not impossible to make that judgment yet. But even when you're in there, you see, right. Okay. Well it does need to be seen more broadly than will be on a very niche pay television channel. So you've got all sorts of quite interesting questions about the next stage of the hundreds facilitation. that's one of the things that I'm really keen to sort of keep close to is, well what now? A lovely juicy story about, you know, Vera Coley has just bought a house in Notting Hill, you know.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Well, if you were, uh, an IPL owner moving into the second biggest cricket market in the world and you wanted to give that tournament a boost, uh, like a really significant one, yeah. Maybe you consider this is the time to let your Indian players go overseas, or a few of them at least. I mean, you can control this, you know, this tap, you can turn it on and off as much as you like. But what that would do is that if for the first time your top Indian players were allowed to go and play for franchises overseas, that would create a lot of interest in India itself. Nevermind. The nevermind in England, if this was what was to happen it would be a huge sort of one-off story. I'm, that's an, that's also an interesting one because, you know, you think it's a kind of, and it was, I think at the beginning, a classic protectionist move. We want to make sure that IPL is by far and away the best. And to do that, we're gonna keep this really precious thing to ourselves. I am, in a way, slightly surprised that they haven't changed that already, because to me the IP L'S position is, is complete dominant and there's no credible challenger to it. So in a way, if the, you could make more money by letting some of the players go elsewhere. And I don't feel like that would necessarily hit the ipls revenue in the same way. And there's no, no, no threat from whatever the hundred's gonna be. Or the Big Bash or, or any of them.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Well, I guess a threat. I mean, again, the other bit to throw into that, we talked a lot about the IPL is the, you know, the, the governing bodies. So, and whether or not. The scarcity. You got a couple of questions. One is the sort of that balance between, and it's personified, you know, you quite often go what is a career now? And you see people like, is it Ed Smad who's sort of just signs a white ball franchise before he is even hit a
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Will Smith. Yeah.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:You know, that wheel smad, sorry. And there's a question of, of a career is now. And the, the other bit is back to your saving the test question is, is test cricket's response? What is the future of that? Again, that's a whole thread that we'll, we'll pull on. One of the, one of the issues is there's always been why isn't test cricket marketed in the same way as you know, is it a marketing or a product question? Is it just that the, the format is a 1930s, pre-war and as if it's incredible that it's lasted this long or has it just not. Been the, the sort of recipient of, of the best marketing brains in, you know, sport trying to, to make it work better.'cause you were talking there about scarcity, but actually when you look across the calendar, there's IPL scarcity, but there ain't much scarcity in cricket. Full stop. It's just most people's response or the governing body's response to opportunities to just create more stuff, more games. astonishes me sometimes England are playing and I, I haven't got cl I don't, for someone who's with my background in, interested in cricket, I very rarely now. Follow, you know, their wonder. I know where they're playing in test tours and stuff, again, my bias towards the longer game and my therefore intellectual and cultural credentials. But that's, it's sort of just a wash calendar with stuff, both private and ICC fund, you know, backed and studied national games versus franchises, and it is a, it's a real mess. Other than these little pockets of, well, no big pockets of success on the franchise side.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah, I mean, if you were trying to devise a calendar that made sense from scratch, you would end up, you wouldn't end up with anything like what we, what we have now. And you know, that's because there are so many different pressures on on it. There's physical pressures in terms of which countries will visit, which other ones they're all on a completely different cycle. One day Cricket is something we can probably talk about in a future episode because that's become the unfortunate middle child where, and, and I actually find the one day calendar the most incoherent of all of them. And that's the one that takes me by surprise, where I literally have no idea until, you know, a week beforehand. And I see the preview pieces come out that team A are off randomly in Team B country for a five match y. And actually the number of Odis has fallen a lot in the last three or four years, which has kind of gone slightly under reported. Teams only really commit to it in the six months before a World Cup. And then because you are either trying to find the room to do a test tour or you are preferring the money from a series of 2020 matches. So there aren't really the incentives to do the odis unless the World Cup is around the corner. And the ODI I World Cup is still. A bigger revenue raiser than the 2020 games. 2020 tournaments. I wouldn't be surprised. That changes quite quickly. So that's another problem to solve, and I feel like they add a particular kind of incoherence to it. But yeah, you're right. It's, it's an absolute mess. I.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:What do you think about again, one that I like because it's makes me sound clever, but I'm not sure is true, which is the, test cricket you should market its complexity and length, duration, because that's from the gaming market, for example, or the signal from we are, we're watching box sets that go on for months. And idea that kids reject complexity and need everything simple is nonsense, is undermined by, everything else they do. why not take test cricket and reinvent it for that audience? In that way. That's an, that's an argument I sort of have sometimes heard. So it's the sort of, know, the Sopranos argument. it longer, make it more complex, make it more game like, I'm wondering what you think where Cricket is, and again, it's a thread that we'll get into in the series, but what's your sort of starting point? Do you, are you of the mind of go, you are managing decline here, or are you more optimistic than that?
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Gosh, I've had so many different answers to this question over the years. I don't think there's anything wrong. There's nothing wrong with the sport itself. The, the worry for Tess Cricket, I think is that young, like young Cricket is learning how to play the game. Don't learn the skills that you need to play it. Well, that's the biggest problem. I, I think, and we won't see the outcome of that for another 15 years or so, I would say until we get the current, uh, crop of kids playing regularly, there's, at the moment, I, I find, and I, when I talk to relatives and my friends' kids and stuff, they have no problem getting into it. It doesn't matter if they don't watch every ball or every session of a game or every game of a series. They find it captivating and that, because I think the, the quality of it is still high enough because the players are still good. It has a visibility problem. You know, no one would be surprised to hear me say that. I sometimes get stuck on the idea that what's happened in the last 15 years is that I. When people think of cricket, they now think of 2020 Cricket, whereas previously they thought of test cricket
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Hmm.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:and that which is purely a function of, of visibility. I dunno how much that matters. This is a very, there's, as you can see, there are sort of lots of different threads in this, I don't think, right. I'm not a marketing person, but to me it would feel like a mistake to try and market t uh, test cricket as if it was 2020. Cricket as in this is really fast and exciting and you can't look away. No. Like it's, that's what 2020 is for, but there's gotta be something else left there. So yes, I think, yeah, I suppose I probably do broadly like align with the, the idea that it's complex and that's a strength and that you can sell that. But far more than that. It's visibility is the, is the thing. Like if you can't see it, if it's not in the press, if it's not put on terrestrial TV to a certain extent, then you're gonna have to spend a huge amount of money in other kinds of marketing to compensate for that.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:It is funny'cause because so Alex Balfour is someone who comes on the podcast every now and then who's, you know, digital
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Mm-hmm.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:who started, or one of the founders of Crook Info. And one, I really remember the conversations early on is that test cricket is gonna be the perfect sport for the internet because you can just dip in and out of it and you can follow it and it'll be a long tail type thing. it's very data rich. there's loads of bits about it, which would suggest it works quite well, you know, for a TikTok type. Experience. problem is economics again, and it's the business argument, which is where's the money gonna come from if it's not television?'cause TikTok don't buy rights and, you know, pe the, the platforms of have sort of steadfast is not gonna jump in. Well, there was a moment where Facebook looked like they were gonna pay money for cricket at some point, but that is product versus the economy. So there's a sort of, I think you could construct, I'm sure people have done turning the product into something that talks to a digital audience, a different experience. The problem is filling stadiums because without that, it looks a bit odd. So if you can fill stadiums and make it work on digital, you've then gotta solve the the money problem, which is the TV rights question. And. Sky has always bundled television, you know, cricket together, or used to anyway. And it's, now, it'd be interesting once that gets sort of unbundled or, or sold separately sorry to jump about, but you've got county cricket also. I'm a, my consumption of counter cricket has gone up through the roof because of TikTok. don't pay anything, but I'm paying my attention, blah, blah, blah. Now, can that be monetized? Who knows? And so all of these things give me optimism because when I then look across, you know, the, the, the moment we're in on the, the broader sports market, where you are seeing, again, back to the 2020 ation question, is that the money, you know, on LinkedIn every other day someone will say, look, there's a hundred billion pounds waiting to be invested in sport digital first sport. It's the scroll, it's League, it's King's League. It's, it's short, not very good sport, but it works as a, on the phone and, you know, kids won't tolerate anything longer than 90 seconds, blah, blah, blah. So you've heard all the arguments and the money we are being told likes that and that they're building sports for tomorrow. Based on that as a, you know, we, we educated our, I'm calling them children, but they're probably, you know, people of younger, of 30, younger to, that's how we consume stuff. And seemed to solve that problem. It had a long television product and a short product, but actually how that gets paid for. And whether television will sustain that. reasons for sky buying cricket are, you know, test cricket and county cricket are different. It's nice stuff in the summer, it's long, it feels schedules, it's like golf. There are, there are sort of other reasons other than just pure advertising return. You know, what else are they gonna show during those periods of time? So that, that, again, that's enough. It's not, not much of a calling card for cricket, you know, what else are you gonna do?
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Not dead yet.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:But there's, you know, there's sort of stuff around there, it frustrates me sometimes because I know if it was some other sport, I couldn't give a toss, you know, let it die. But. Because I like cricket. I don't want it to, so there's a, and and I think trying to get beyond the sort of managing decline framing of test cricket is one that interested in seeing. Who counter that with, with some substance.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Lemme give you an optimistic case then. So. the evidence for test cricket in decline is not all that strong. It's a worry rather than an actual demonstrable case. So you watch test cricket in Australia in the summer, and then you watch test cricket in England in the summer, and the, the, the grounds are full.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:yeah. Yep.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:And then you watch test cricket in some very sensibly run places like New Zealand, and they realize that they're going to sell 5,000 tickets a day for the the match. So they put it in a 5,000 capacity ground and it looks great. You know, a really big mistake is to, is to put it in stuff that you're gonna have so many empty seats and you just feel the atmosphere draining away. You can, you can present test cricket and have it look attractive on the TV quite easily, and it generally does
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:That's a, I mean, that's a version of, there's an interesting comparison with the women's football at the moment. I made a, I did a thing last week about this new research about who's watching women's sport, you know, from Sky. And we got, you know, the, one of the questions is Stadia is the story and TV data, you know, data. So the crowd both size wise, but also the type of person watching looks different. In a women's football
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:And that's got, that's exciting because lots of people are projecting onto that saying, oh, well I want to reach that audience and therefore there is an advertising argument and therefore is a TV rights argument. So you start to build that. What you are saying is the smallest stadium bit as long as there's crowds cheering, then we're okay.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Uh, well, I, what I, yeah, I will tell you that I would prefer. If I'm watching on TV and I see New Zealand against the West Indies in Mount Managi and there are 5,000 people there, and the it look, the stands are full, there are people having picnics on the, you know, outside the boundary rope,
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah,
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:and it looks lovely. It looks like an event. Put those same 5,000 people in Eden Park and it looks like a disaster. So there's a, you know, there's relatively simple, you know, marketing stuff you can do to make it look like it matters.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:One of one interesting questions is what was the best innings in an empty stadium? I, my, I'll go first, I will go 1984. Gordon, Greenwich Lord's last day, 220 to beat England. there was about, at the beginning there was about 30 people in the stadium. And it, I, I know, and it was, it was, it filled up as a time'cause it looked like they were gonna win. But actually it was a, it was just an extraordinary innings, but also, so 200 and a day and Gordon Greenwich. And it was watched by just a small handful of people and it was really quite interesting. How, and you still, I look at it, okay. It pops up on, you know, inevitably on YouTube and I, you know, and I watch it all again, but it's just sort of interesting, you know, it's, it's such a truism of sport that you need a crowd
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah,
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:absolutely true,
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:you.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:you know.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:And then my other kind of optimistic point about it is that test cricket is actually growing in the sense that more and more. Teams are now playing it. I mean, the history is of England and to a less extent, Australia vetoing more and more countries from playing the game, and then eventually they kind of realize that they probably need to open it up a little bit and having these very recidivist attitudes. But we now have an Irish team that is, and we have an Afghan team and these teams, I mean, it's such a slow moving development to be competitive over this kind of game. It, you know, it, it's no exaggeration to say it takes 25 years. I mean, New Zealand won one of their first 40 I think tests. You know, this thing takes a long time, but this, it's opening up more teams are playing it. The game is growing slowly. The opposition to being new to, to new teams coming in is gradually the, the fences are being taken down. So
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Well, as as a former cricket correspondent at the Irish Times, I, you know, I know this
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:yeah.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:you know, in my heart it's like a, and that was, you know, getting over 20 years ago. So I remember asking, Owen Morgan, and he was 16 at the time and he was obviously a fantastic cricketer playing in the Irish sort of club game. But he was on the, he was playing in the, uh, in the national one day team. And I remember talking to him and saying, what's your, you know, about a career? What's your career gonna be like? And he identified it almost. It was almost like that Michael Hesseltine on a napkin type answer where just gave a perfect rendition of what his career was going to be. And it was 2020 cricket. And at the time, that was and that was before the IPLI think. So it was pretty, I. Astute of him to know what you know, or it was obvious to him,
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:I mean, yeah, he had a, I wonder if he, did he talk about playing test cricket and then finding spin in, uh, the UAE. Impossible to read and then.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:He didn't, funny enough, but he was, he was sort of, he, I think it was, uh, it always struck me at the time because I always thought, yeah, okay. I guess that's where it's going. And again, there was a sort of sense of disappointment that he'd assumed that that was the case. That I thought, well, he, you know, where's your ambition to be a great test cricketer? You know, and you think, well, you know, he, he was probably right and well, he was right. But it was a, it was a sort of one of those moments where you think. I wonder if you had the same conversation Now, whether you know what the framing would be, it's almost like, I've often heard that, you know, the generation of, you know, uh, Vera Coley, Joe Root,
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Williamson.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Williamson the last multi-format and the fact that they play in support test cricket is in incre, has been incredibly important because they bring a crowd and they bring the, the audience. And whether or not the next generation will feel the need to do that, have proper career. And people talk about, you know, red ball, growing, red ball game, proper cricket in white's, all that. And whether those stories are just fade away. I, I, I'm sounding quite gloomy about it and you are sounding quite optimistic, which I quite like that dynamic. I quite, you know, but.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:I mean, there's so many different ways to answer that question. You talked about earlier on about what a career could be. And I suppose the exciting thing to be, uh, to blokes doing a cricket podcast, it's to say that that career was pretty obvious for 150 years, and now it's not. And, you know, there are genuinely interesting characters doing quite unusual things. So I wouldn't have put very much money on Ben Duckett being a test opener 10 years ago.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:And certainly not playing the way that he is. And yet he's managed to find a role that's almost without precedent and is, is being extremely successful whilst also not pulling up any trees in 2020. Yeah, there's really hard questions to answer and then occasionally you get a player who is, I mentioned before, how difficult it is now because Tess Rickett and T and 2020 are so different. But you get a player like Harry Brook and, uh, Rian RA in New Zealand would be another one who look pretty at home in all three, and they have some really hard choices to make. As to where they're gonna put different, the emphasis in different parts of their careers. Because I think it's pretty difficult to play every top series in both codes and to be ready to perform at an elite level in that and do it, it's partly, it's a volume question. And of course then you throw in the IPL as well. Partly it's a volume question, partly it's a, a skills question. And so today, on the day we're recording this, Harry Brook was named as the New England White Bull captain. And I'm really, I'd love to know how much discussion there was on a very kind of strategic level where we say, right, well what are, what are your career goals here, Harry? Are you gonna do these three years, you gonna do this, win these tournaments, captain this team, and then you're gonna do this? Or is this just, you know, we need a new captain and you're the next cab off the rank. I mean, I'd love it if there was a bit more strategy to it in making those kind of decisions and, but those questions just weren't around 20 years ago.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:we had Mo Bobat on the podcast and what he, he obviously was, uh, the ECB many years in terms of the, you know, performance high perform director of performance. And I remember asking him about the difference, you know, the classic opening batsman question again, if you are a 16-year-old. And his answer is really interesting'cause he, he said the difference is less technical, more attitudinal. I. In his view and you know, so more psychological, more about your appetite with, you know, your relationship with risk, for example, and than learning the new shots or being willing to play them, you know, at certain times. it felt like a quite nice, interesting or an angle in, in terms of, well what are you now and how can you know how you can play? Because obviously the choice to be a traditional opening bat is, you know, it's like being a sort of shit builder in about 1970, you know, it's not like gonna be a future, you know, good luck and, you know, I'm pleased about
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah, I mean, you're leaving a lot of money on the table, aren't you? In theory.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:type of conversation.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:you are. You are leaving a lot of money on the table. In theory if you, if you do that, however, I quite like that answer too. Because it implies a bit more flexibility in the thinking of a governing body where we're not looking at a 16-year-old and funneling him into one career pathway and then looking at a different one who plays a slightly different way and funneling him that direction. And I think that through gritted teeth B Ball has shown that there are multiple different ways to play different formats of cricket.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Why through GR teeth?
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:it's just a horrible phrase, isn't it? I'm not, I'm not a pro. I'm not,
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:Oh, not the, not the
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:not that
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:but
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:I'm not pro or pro or anti it, it's worked brilliantly in certain situations and in a calamity in others, I would say. But it has at least shown that there are many different ways to win test matches. What I, I mean, it's shown how you can win a test series in Pakistan. Which is a pretty, that's, that's, that's the, the absolute pinnacle of BS Paul.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:And how to lose the ashes at home. So that's, that, that was the other thing,
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yeah, well, precisely. Exactly. There's, so it's, it's, it's not a one size fits all approach.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:I don't know if you are going, I'm going to the launch of the Women's 2020 World Cup at again, at Lord's. Lord, everything happens at Lord's. My life is dominated by my moments at law's. A book here,
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:it's, it's easier for you to get than it is Dubai, where the real decisions are made.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:women's game, one of the questions that. Quite often is put forward is the hundred disproportionately was benefited women's, the women's game, you know, and whether or not, again, it was, whether it was structural, whether it was planned or accidental. The, you know, the double headers, the presentation of the game, the, the, certainly the ECBs focus and they should take great credit in terms of the way in which they've framed the
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Yep.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:and the women's franchises and the whole tedious sort of culture war thing of, you know, batters and batsman language that they have to, you know, wade through in terms of trying to get But I'm really interested in where that is and where that plays. And again, it's, it's, you come back to one of the threads of cross artificial partner is the same or different and the, you know, the sort of aspiration of when you are looking at women's crooked in the same way as when you're looking at women's football or rugby. are you framing it in the same way? And that goes all the way through the value chain from what we see on the television product format you through, through to the sort of economics of it, what people want when they're buying rights, whether it's a different audience and therefore different sponsors. All of these questions run through and I think women's cricket is a really interesting case study for this and where it works together and where it doesn't. And having the agility to be able to sort of say yes, okay, that's, that's working. That isn't even the framing of an ashes or a, you know, in rugby, the, the Women's Lions Tour is I think quite controversial'cause it just, you wouldn't create a Lions tour, but it's just a historical anomaly, whether or not women's game needs. Alliance Tour is it, you know, a, a, a separate question, but you can start to see that actually it's the questions that the women's game is posing again, it's a business podcast, so there's a sort of, there's always a value question in whatever, however that's defined.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:I've done more reporting on women's football recently, and which you've sort of alluded to, and Talking to stakeholders in that sport, uh, they're all falling over themselves to tell the press how different the audience is for women's football compared to men's football. Which is a really fundamental, you know, you can hold that at the very start of your planning because that then affects what you're aiming for. You know, are you aiming to create a smaller version of a product that looks like men's football
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:And that, and that isn't interesting. That's not what Sky is
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:or are you aiming something that looks, that can look and sound completely different because your audience is completely different? I would love to see I'll have to find out what we can find out equivalent data for women's cricket, because I think the a hundred has showed quite clearly that the demand is there for it. I mean, it's got a huge, again, we go back to visibility that's. The hundred has, has given a huge amount of visibility to women's cricket. And from numbers I've looked at before, it seems quite clear to me that people will want to watch it. What I don't know is how many of the same people are watching both women's and men's cricket, and to what extent you want. I mean, crossover is good, but equally, if you can grow the pie, make the pie bigger, then let's do it. But I, I feel like I need to see some, some actual data on this to have like a strategy for how to do it better.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:So we had, Joe Osborne as head of, uh, women's sport at Sky Sports on a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about who's what, who watches women's sport and cricket was very much part of that conversation and it wasn't what I thought it was. So the the same or different, it was much more the same than it was different. And the different is, is a sort of, again, back to the sort of stadia as story. The assumption being that it's more family, it's younger hipa,, actually on Sky. lot of people watching both. They do most of the, you know, the viewership. And this might be just a sky lens on who by, you know, blokes probably spend much more on, you know, I think it's 70 odd percent. I'm right in terms of the number of men to women in terms of subscribers. So it might just be just a, a function of that. And so to extrapolate that across the whole question might be dangerous. But again, you know, it's, it is sort of interesting that the assumptions that of which are based on the, it's different and therefore let's go that route actually might not be true. And there are arguments both ways, but we'll, we'll, you know, we'll pursue it, but I'm looking forward. There's a, there's again, there's a moment on I think it's the 1st of May when they're launching it at Lord. So I can, we can work out what's happening there. Okay. we have asked lots of questions and I'm excited'cause I think that's a good sign of. Where we can go and what we're gonna be, you know, we're gonna get people on to talk about the various of the answer and see what happens.
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:We've got a long summer to come.
richard_1_04-07-2025_130856:We have got long summer to come, and we'll be looking at doing events as well as podcasts. So in the meantime, Mike Jakeman, thank you very much for your time. I really enjoyed that conversation and I'm looking, looking forward to the future of Inside Edge, the business of
mike_1_04-07-2025_130856:Thank you, Richard. Absolute pleasure. And uh, yeah.