Unofficial Partner Podcast
Unofficial Partner Podcast
UP484 Inside Edge: Cricket's Digital History
The story of Cricinfo is the history of sport's relationship with the internet and digital culture.
It remains central to the experience of millions of cricket fans.
But what does it tell us about how the internet changed what we define as sporting fandom?
Alex Balfour co-founded the site and sold it to ESPN in the noughties and he is a global expert on sports relationship with the internet and digital channels.
He was head of digital for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, his company Generate Digital advises clients on the value of digital assets, and his CV is includes The Guardian Newspaper's first websites, the UK's first general election website, the first UK government online consultation, and the first International 2020 cricket tournament
He co-founded Cricinfo and sold it to ESPN. It remains the world's leading cricket publisher and India's favourite sports website.
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Hello, welcome to Unofficial Partner and to Inside Edge. I'm Richard Gillis and I've got Mike Jakeman with me as ever, my co-host for the, uh, journey into the business of Cricket. Hi Mike.
mike inside edge intro balfour:Hi Richard. How are you?
Richard inside edge intro:I'm okay, actually. I'm very much looking forward to, our conversation with Alex Balfour we'll get onto that later. what's caught your eye recently? There's where we're in the middle of the, the, what do I call it? The ICC World Test Championship. Is it? Is
mike inside edge intro balfour:The World Test Championship final, it's become. Quite fashionable to trash the World Test Championship, which a bit like the conversation we'll we'll come into with cricket and date's got a very, very long history. the idea being that those people will know it's very hard to say at any one time, which is the best team test team. In cricket. So let's have a, a tournament to figure that out. And this is essentially the kind of World Cup final of, of test cricket.
Richard inside edge intro:Lawrence Booth was a sort of a, a vocal Critic of it, wasn't he on the last podcast? I don't like it either, but, and I, I'm trying to think why not. I should be in favor of it. I like test cricket and I am, I get it. everything is a compromise, isn't it? You know, in sport you're looking at, uh, at these events, I look around at like the club, world Cup, FIFA Club, world Cup. I look at just stuff that's appearing live golf the compromises are sometimes just. Too heavy. They skew everything. And this feels like the same with the World Test Championship. It feels like it's a simple answer to a really complicated problem. But you, but you, I'm sensing that you are more in favor of it.
mike inside edge intro balfour:I'm in favor in the.
Richard inside edge intro:Okay.
mike inside edge intro balfour:Whereas I'd probably rather have nothing than the Club World Cup. so the, the reason that people bash the World Test Championship is because it's hard to figure out who's going to be in the final, because the test calendar, the cricket calendar is such that you don't have time for every nation to play every nation. So you end up with some teams that have a a marginally easier set of fixtures coming up. It's a two year cycle. Uh, than others. And it's very difficult to work out just from seeing scores in the matches, what that means for points in the world test championship table. Those are totally fair criticisms by the way. And you then get a one-off game, a one-off test match to decided the, the between the two finalists, which we're on day two as we record this and just, uh, subsiding to Australia. My reason why they quite like it is that all three of the, uh, world test championship games we've had, final games we've had thus far. This being the third have been good. New Zealand won the first one and beat India which was a, an incredible kind of good news story for cricket and for people who like the kind of efficient distribution of, uh, of economic resources like me. Uh, and it's basically. Great publicity for test matches because these games will be happening anyway. So the idea that we add some points on and, and put together a game that picks, puts two teams together to have a, an additional game of test cricket, and then there's more press coverage. You know, I don't really see the harm in that. It could be better, but I'm inclined to say it's better than not having it at all. What looks
Richard inside edge intro:there's a, yeah, there's a, so I'm just reading off the b BBC site about what, what actually it is. So, e each cycle runs for two years. Teams play six series in that time, three at home, and three away with 12 points awarded for a winning match, six for a tie, and four for a draw. Obviously then. Australia and South Africa have emerged from that process. I'm always a bit wary of teams turning up, playing a test match. It, it felt like I was, I was watching the highlights of the first day and it just, they all look a bit undercooked. It all feels, you know, because the whole culture of test cricket is the touring bilateral tours, and I know that it's a sort of, that it's becoming a, an anachronism and so you're not gonna get that run in. You know, to the, to the test cricket, but it feels like it's almost like a sort of a series of one day innings put into a test match format, if you see what I mean. I'm so, I'm, I'm like, I, I sort of prefer, I think my, my enjoyment of test cricket or used to be just that sense of a series and the stories that unravel over a summer. And you are sort of looking, you get used to the cast of characters and there's a sort of minor, you know, things going on sort of battles between certain players and someone that has a great series and someone, all of those things are what I grew up. That's what you are sort of part I, I see Tess Cricket as, and I know that. This is a one-off, and as you say, it's, I'm being curmudgeonly probably just for the, you know, for effect. But I do think there's a sort of sense that it, it, I get it, it's about narrative and people want straight lines. They, you know, they want a sort of final of something best for you, the best, et cetera, et cetera. But it just feels like it doesn't, it doesn't quite work.
mike inside edge intro balfour:Um, I think all of those. Makes it worth having for me. I mean, it's just not gonna happen that we'll even get a three test series across the summer between the two best, the two best teams because there's just, there isn't room in the calendar. So I'm willing to kind of put that aside and say, I. That that won't happen. Is this better than nothing? And what makes it work, I think, is that all three matches so far have been good. They've been interesting. They've been, and they've been competitive.'cause I think the players really want this. I think it's quite evident that, uh, they care. That's what ultimately means. It's, it's a worthwhile endeavor. These, both of these sides want to win it. New Zealand winning it four years ago was a bit of a fairy tale and you could see how much those New Zealand players were happy to win it, at least after falling short in the 2019 World Cup final in England too. So if they want it and it's a chance to celebrate Tess Cricket. Then I'm in favor. I would love to have the kind of overhaul of the calendar. That means that we get what you want and what you've, you've talked about. But, you know, I think the chances of that are slim to none. So I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be pragmatic and
Richard inside edge intro:could, we could start a campaign. We could, we could campaign Jay
mike inside edge intro balfour:it's, it's
Richard inside edge intro:I'm sure he'll be, you know, yeah, let's get him on. One little stat, which, which talks to this, which I, again, I'm nicking off the BBC site. There has not been a single three match test series, not involving at least one of England, Australia, and India since 2019. Which is pretty astonishing. So talks to the, that sort of dominance of the big three As is now, but also just how the, the ebbing of, of what I view as a test, you know, summer
mike inside edge intro balfour:the difference over the past generation has actually concerns South Africa because certainly a generation ago you would probably have talked about a big four. You know, South Africa coming to England in the, the nineties and the first half of the two thousands was always four or five tests. And yeah. South Africa have been the team that's seen the biggest decline in playing long series of matches. And the South African Board made a strategic decision two years ago to put launch their own. 2020 franchise tournament, which is at absolutely in the heart this African summer, the northern hemisphere winter which just stops home series lengthening to that extent. That's where the money is, unfortunately. And it, it's the fact that South Africa have made this final, whilst playing a series of, of two test series over the past two years is kind of a credit to the players. Because when you're not playing this format for any concerted length of time, it's presumably extremely difficult to reach the kind of levels that you are capable of achieving whilst also losing players to franchise tournaments, which is obviously the, the same thing that every, every test playing country has seen. But South Africa have been more diminished than Australia or England or India.
Richard inside edge intro:Right? We should, we should get on and talk to Alex Balfour, which I think people are gonna really enjoy.'cause we get really into the weeds of one of the great sort of, uh, cultural artifacts, your phrase of cricket history.
Alex is quite a regular on Unofficial Partner. I like talking to him just generally about digital stuff'cause he's just, he got this great brain on this subject about sports relationship with the internet and digital channels and. A lot of people will know him as the head of digital for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. His company is generate digital. and his CV is includes, I mean, some great snippets. He's developed. The Guardian's Newspaper first websites, the UK's first general election website, the first UK government online consultation, and the first International 2020 Cricket. Tournament he co-founded Quick Info and sold that to ESPN. So that's now ESPN. Quick Info. Still the world's leading cricket publisher and India's favorite sports website. We get into that in a lot of detail. I think you're gonna really enjoy this. This is for the nerds.
Richard Gillis, UP:Yeah. So it's, so if you go out, it's like, it is, this has been moaning, but yeah, getting back at, if it's after 10 o'clock, it's becomes a bit of a pain in the ass.
Alex Balfour:I know
Mike Jakeman:Where are
Richard Gillis, UP:um.
Alex Balfour:I'm in East Sussex as well, but the far end of it, so I mean, Roberts Bridge.
Mike Jakeman:Okay.
Alex Balfour:is actually the home of Gray Nichols. I could walk about five minutes out
Richard Gillis, UP:Ah,
Alex Balfour:and go to the Gray Nichols back factory.
Richard Gillis, UP:I used to have the double scoop, the David Gower double scoop.
Alex Balfour:I think I had, yeah, I think I, uh, yeah, I think I had this, I think I've still got it somewhere, actually a single scoop somewhere.
Richard Gillis, UP:Don't get Tim Crow started on Gray Nichols. He'll be there all day. So. Alex, we should introduce you
Alex Balfour:Sussex. hello.
Richard Gillis, UP:the reason I wanted to get Alex on is, first of all, he's very interesting on digital stuff generally, but the other thing is, is that he was there at the beginning of Crick info and. I want to get into that and, and the big idea behind this podcast and I should explain to our listeners is that I'm really interested in, I really remember Quick Info as a thing initially, and it was obviously Alex, when did it start? What was the, what year would you put it at?
Alex Balfour:93.
Richard Gillis, UP:Oh, that's earlier than I thought.
Alex Balfour:no quick info. The, the first iteration of Quick Info was a, a Jamaican academic, relaying, England, the West Indies. Hmm. Would that have been around that time across a. A university fax, I think was the computer system. So there was a stream between Oxford and the West Indies in about 93. That was an early iteration when they were playing around. But Quick Info in its earliest sort of public space was a chat bot. it was basically a messenger bot on something called Internet Relay Chat, which I believe still exists. But basically text chat, and quick info was the, was the hub when everyone stopped annoying each other with. They realized everyone was swapping scores on that chat network and someone thought, well, let's create a bot that can, you can ask and it can give you whoever provided the latest score and feed it back. So that was quick info. It became a bot, it became a go for server, and then eventually after much argument, a website.
Richard Gillis, UP:I like, I like that after much argument. There's a, so Mike, when you hear the word crick info, where do you go? I've got a particular, I remember, and it must have been the nineties, and you suddenly thought. Actually I, I'm following sport in a different way here, and we'd had, you know, various iterations of CFAs or whatever, but it felt very new. Looking back, it was obviously very rudimentary initially, but what was your memory of it?
Mike Jakeman:This is, this is slightly where the, uh, the, the tiny generation gap between you and
Richard Gillis, UP:Oh, here we go again. Look, he can't, he can't help himself.
Mike Jakeman:because, uh, because quick info has existed for as long as I've been interested in cricket. So this mentioned 1993. this takes me back to quite a kind of. An age where my dad was quite technologically savvy, so I used IRC at quite a young age to talk about music, but it's always existed with cricket. So this takes me back to the ages of dial up internet and me being charged by my parents for every minute that I was connected through the modem and the fact that nobody could use our, uh, landline phone at the time, but it's always been there. So my experience with cricket has always run alongside, quick info. When did you first with it, Alex?
Alex Balfour:So on Internet Relay Chat, I was just thinking
Mike Jakeman:Yeah.
Alex Balfour:being charged. We did the first interview. With one of the other. So most of the cricket for old stages were Indian expats doing PhDs in the US and, and spending time or wasting time finding out about cricket. The original convener was a guy called Simon King, who was also doing, who was a postdoctoral researcher in Minnesota, who, who was a, a nuclear physicist who was born and cold and then, and became the grand convener of everything. CFO for his now longtime ex German wife was known as Crick in something else, beginning with F for a long time because of his title, an utter commitment to it. But, um, the, the, I remember the first internet Relay Chat. We did a interview, we went down to Southampton and I think actually Kevin James was the very first interview. Then we got Mohamed Zain on, and then not that long after I took my, uh. My desktop up to Skipton or that environs where Fred Truman lived and stuck it on his polished dining room table and did an IRC incident relay chat interview with him and didn't tell him the fact that he was gonna be charged, whatever. It was a minute for the dialup modem, which probably, probably burned pretty hard after I left, but I don't think he had my address. But, um, yeah, so I came across it. I actually came across it as a journalist, so I was, I was, I, I was a, um, budding financial journalist. Trainee on a Euro money magazine, which was a pathway for many people in those days. Um, I actually had a bad sports injury. I had to quit the job and go and lie on the floor of my flat share and Clapham and I had a laptop and found dial up internet. And once I'd gone through chat channels and the, the, the protocol, which was a SL age, sex, and location for sort of. Vaguely, vaguely, let's call them romantic conversations, and got bored of doing that and I'm being charged per minute for it. I found, oh, these people looking at cricket, this is a passion point for me. And then found them swapping cricket stores scores and was, I was blown away by the fact that what you are, you are in New Zealand now. You are in Pakistan right now, you're in Pakistan, you know, which is like a long distance call that I'd never made in my life. And so what are you seeing and what information have you got? And then that's great. And then just chatting cricket. So that was me. And then as a journalist, I thought, oh. I might write about these guys went to go and see Simon King in his house in Greenford, and then he said, well, you seem to know what you're doing. Do you wanna help us communicate things? And then I became part of the management team.
Richard Gillis, UP:Was there a moment where it became bigger, more recognizable? So from that early, I mean, that feels like it's very nerdy. Sort of inside baseball type, you know,
Alex Balfour:Yeah. Yeah.
Richard Gillis, UP:was there a moment where it would've reached someone like me who wasn't, didn't have that mindset, but was a Cricket fan and then I became aware of it. And it must have been it. It was, it became a website and.
Alex Balfour:Pure. Pure, I think pure demand driven. So it, it became a, it was an IRC bot. They had a telnet interface, which means you could log in and query the bot. then had a goer server, and a goer was basically a text web server. It was pre-web, I. Different protocols, similar process, and it became one of the very top go for servers. And then the scramble was to try and find some equipment or a server that they could literally stick it on because it kept on sucking up bandwidth and CPU power. And then the move was to web. And actually it was a huge, you know, was totally demand driven. So we ended up forming alliances with. people to try and, you know, going, uh, my, my main job in business development was to go around internet service providers and say, can you give us some Rackspace? Can we borrow some service space? We ha haven't got any money, but we'll prove to you the power of the internet. And that was compelling enough for demon internet. One of the early UK suppliers, we had this idea of federated, you know, these days you use things like. Uh, without getting too geeky, but things like Akamai to distribute load and, and find traffic from different places. In those days, everything had to be physically located in the country where the traffic was going to be originated. So we ended up having to find a server in the us, in uk, in Australia, wherever it might be. I remember getting, we were fielding emails from. Systems administrators at all the major banks in London saying, look, you're sucking up a whole ton of our bandwidth in going and outgoing.'cause there wasn't much bandwidth in those days. Can we create a mirror server? You know, I, I had the Goldman Sachs admin saying, I want a mirror server'cause all our traders are looking at quick info. So it's totally demand driven, but huge, hugely by expats. I remember interviewing in the early days, a lady for a role. When we were all still kind of remote, um, we, it was a remote business from the off, obviously.'cause we weren't really a business. But I remember interviewing a, a lady and she said, oh yeah, my, my husband literally sits up every night by, by the bed with a laptop to watch the scores when India are playing. And they just sit there watching the numbers ticking over. So, so I think it was just a, it was just an aggregation. And then we did a deal at various points. We did, um, a deal with CBS SportsLine who were the, at the time, the biggest kind of online sports aggregator, uh, based out of, um, Baca Ratan, I think. Um, and, you know, we were using more of their server power than almost any other sport, including NFL, just because the demand for cricket was so huge and the visibility in markets like the US where there was so many South Asian expats were so massive. So, yeah, I'm not quite sure when it would've come across. I, I think it's one of those things that once you've got online, I remember looking at the early I, I, I. I'm, maybe I'm kidding myself that I actually saw it, but I'm pretty sure I saw Jerry Yang's homepage. Jerry Yang was the, was the Yahoo founder and he started putting up links. This is good stuff to look at on the internet. So I think when you've got on the internet, that's what you did. You find like one of the things I'm interested in, where do I find, you know, and, and I think just on a pure volume basis, cricket. So people found it and, and I think it's one of those sport, like any passion sport. I mean, my dad who was he would've been in his seventies in the nineties. never got online, but he knew how to use CFAs and that's the only reason he knew how to use CFAs.'cause he wanted to find the cricket scores so he wasn't technical. So I think people just found their way.
Mike Jakeman:I'd argue that the, the site is now, given how long it's been running, is sort of as integral to the kind of cultural history of. as like wisdom or TMS or some of the legendary players and then subsequently the IPL. Why do you think that is? What perhaps what I'm asking is why hasn't it been sort of superseded by anything else? Is that because of like first mover advantage? Like you, guys were there before anybody else or like.
Alex Balfour:I I ask myself the same question and it, and it's interesting. I mean, I think one, one obvious kind of fun observation about the, the legacy is it very much wasn't part of the institution when it first came to, um, know, came to visibility, especially with the powers that be. I mean, I, I think the strap line we had originally was quick info, the home of cricket on the internet, Aing Lords as the home of. Cricket period. um, you know, I remember distinctly, um, in the sort of late nineties thinking I'll build a bridgehead with Tes Mack special. And somehow I got Peter Baxter's phone number who was the longtime producer of same. And if effectively he shut down the conversation with five minutes saying, I don't see how Tes Testament first could possibly be, be any better. And there was nothing I could bring of value. And so fer had no value as far as he's concerned. And it was definitely seen as an, as an intruder. In fact, I remember seeing. I don't mean to be unkind to him, but remember we, we were championed by Dave Richards Richardson, Dave Richardson,
Richard Gillis, UP:Yeah.
Alex Balfour:boss for some time. And, and he, well actually, because we had an early investor in a guy called Mike Watt who was an interesting character, who was a behind CSI, which then became sort of CSI Octagon, who was a New Zealand oil guy, was some interesting, different off piece interests. But one of them became quick info and he was the first sort of mini investor. He was a friend of, um, Dave Richardson. Then, um. Uh, and then, then it got us to a high table, um, uh, access to all the ICC leaders in a meeting in Dubai in about 98, and we went round. It was hilarious to kinda meet all the different CEOs who were all, you know, playing to tight. We managed to get a meeting with Jag Mahan Almir, which in itself was interesting, but we got a meeting with Tim Lamb. In his, uh, who was then ECB boss who in his hotel suite. And the first thing he did is he rolled across the drinks and sort of said to me, so tell me, what did your father do? And it was like, you know, that was, it was, yeah, it was. But you know, there, there's, there's different ways and means to make yourself amenable to the establishment. But, but very much in those early days, I remember sort of Jonathan Agnew being quite. Prickly on Test Mac special about introducing our quick info stat. What is this? Intrusive quick info. But now they're all over quick info and quick vis and everything else all the time. And it's part of the, the dialogue as you say. I find it interesting that the basics of what was set up from the very basic scoring software, a thing called Dougie or Dougie, however you pronounce it, um.'cause it was partly set up by South Africans in the group who built the scoring software and then the commentary software and the core of Quick Info has always been the live text commentary and then the, and then the availability of data, which a lot of the time people just felt, I always felt that people thought Quick Info was credible because it had the data. They didn't necessarily consult it, just that it was there and then. It, it, it's really just picked up the same conventions from what's been written in Wisdom and other record books over the years. And, you know, the, the scorecard formats haven't really changed. Um, even if the game has, you know, the way you read it numerically, I don't think has changed. So quick info was first and foremost, and. Crick Buzz, I think is, is technically bigger in India these days, but you look at crick buzz and it doesn't look any better. In fact, it looks worse to, to a, to a non-Indian eye. But, um, it's surprising that no one has usurped it. It just, it's just a formula that works and it's a kind of good enough. I can't say more than that. It's extraordinary 30 years later that it's still really the market leader with, and it's not fundamentally much different. Yeah.
Mike Jakeman:been with the, the ICC to the extent that for as long as you were involved in it, because you know, the ICC has its reputation of being very slow moving except. In the area of copyright infringements, um, you know, they're legendary for how quickly they shut down fans who were posting coverage from test matches from years ago since a slight different case, but
Alex Balfour:Hmm.
Mike Jakeman:for such a kind of cultural property to exist outside of the ICC. Um, you mentioned Dave Richardson was supportive. Is that, was that sort of relationship always been good or,
Alex Balfour:And
Mike Jakeman:were disinterested at the start or.
Alex Balfour:Richards the Australian rather than Richardson, the South
Mike Jakeman:Apologies.
Alex Balfour:uh, yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it's Dave Richard. But, um, I mean, Simon King's early on mission was that he literally wanted to bequeath it to the ICC, you know, he didn't actually want it to be necessarily money making, he wanted cricket to have that facility, which obviously, you know, we all pushed back on that and said, I think we can do better. But, um, but, but, but, but yeah, it was something the ICC wasn't. Able to understand. I mean, perhaps we, perhaps he could have, we could have sold it to them better, but they didn't really understand. Interesting that the same, not, not, not that long after, um, play Cricket, which has started externally got bought
Richard Gillis, UP:Mm.
Alex Balfour:ECB, the actually, you know, that still play Cricket still exists or kind of play cricket or Env live those sort of systems for. Recording, you know, amateur scores. And by the way, I've noticed recently, which I really like about NV Live, is that at, because of this season, all the matches are listed as men's something or women's like. The men's is spelled out, which I think is
Mike Jakeman:Okay. Yeah.
Alex Balfour:but, um, not something that's done on quick info, but the, yeah, the, the, that opportunity was there, but it was too difficult for them to cope with'cause, and I don't think it was, they weren't even being asked for compensation. It was just take it on and support it. Because in the early days, I think we, I, I think we did a um, Tournament, which one would just, maybe just a smaller nations tournament in Malaysia. And the main problem we had was rats chewing through the cable. So the scoring system broke down. But, but, but they were just excited about those scores, being able to relay the tool.'cause normally they'd just be paper based and then somehow disseminated. um, yeah, so, but I think it, we, we ended up doing some deals with it. We did something with Lib backer and had an official South African site. We had an official Australian site in combination with Channel nine. We had an official New Zealand site. We even sponsored the Women's World Cup in 2000. I remember doing that almost as a favor. Did some stuff with Zimbabwe, but there didn't really seem. And we felt that by being official, I think at the time it was our way to get leverage, but increasingly it didn't really matter. And yes, we were always very, the only area that we were ever contested about was video rights. So we were never allowed access. And that was very fraught and had a, you know, an interest in Dalliance. And one of our, one of our staff members, bizarrely in Pakistan, was contacted by a guy who said, I'm Mick Jagger's agent and he wants to do something with you. And then it was Mick Jagger. We all said, that's rubbish. And then it was Mick Jagger's
Richard Gillis, UP:Mm-hmm.
Alex Balfour:he did fund, ultimately he funded a. Uh, stream out of the West Indies of, um, in I think 97 of, um, England playing in the West Indies, but. But IMG insisted that we could only have still images from the video every 10 seconds. So we had live audio commentary and still images, which are just kind of total nonsense, but that they felt, they felt gratified that they had shut down any chance of it being competitive to the value of their TV broadcasts. And, you know, and even to this day, I mean, cricket food does in some jurisdictions now, has had. Links and, and streaming and clips, but it doesn't really feel that important that it should, to be honest. It's not really the function of what you need from it, you know? I mean, obviously now in this country, the BBC has got, has had deals on and off with ECB to put in clips and it's quite good and fun to follow those. But, but you know, we thought that would be our, our risk factor that if we didn't have that, but actually the numbers speak for themselves.'cause it's, it's a game that, it's one of the few games, especially the, the long form that you can read. Very intimately through numbers what's happening, and you can feel the tension through the numbers. So, and they obviously work on a small device and a, you know, and, and with partial attention span, I mean, if you can, if you've got time to watch all the video, well you, you know, you don't really need to be online. So, so I think the, the numbers speak, I.
Richard Gillis, UP:There's a, I've got a question about. What the, the sort of aspira or what the assumptions were that you had at that time or even, you know, running into sort of 90 nine.com sort of boom period,
Alex Balfour:Mm.
Richard Gillis, UP:because it obviously got bought by ES PN at some point. I can't remember. Can't date that. That was, that would've been mid nineties. Was it?
Alex Balfour:Yeah, mid noughties. It was initially so, so there was a lot of froth around everything online. I mean, we didn't have a, it was an interesting story because as a UK based entity, um, although mainly serving, uh, a South Asian expat audience as a UK based entity. You know, the, the cell itself was tricky because you'd have to, you know, you'd have the problem of going to people saying, well, explain to people what the internet was when you were saying what you had. And then you had to explain to people what cricket was. So, you know, if it had been football, I mean, there was parallel at the same time. There was the, actually from Brighton, um, Greg and, uh, his son who started Soccernet. Which they sold to ESPN quite early, um, and did very well, which is very similar for IMDB was around the same time. I think that was out of Cardiff, IMDB initially before it got sold to Amazon. But they sold quite smart and quite early, although, so Net was sold for a song for nothing. But, um, we ended up going through a few. Bumps and lumps around different investors. And in fact, uh, you know, not without too long a story around it, but the deal we did with Mike Watt, or that Simon did with Mike Watt was a shocker. So he basically took all the upside after a certain number. So then when we tried to resell with him, everyone was really interested until they saw the, the deal set up and were not interested. But we eventually sold to an Indian ISP called Satin Infoway, which was, so Satch was one of the four or five. Big business process outsources, which later fell horribly from grace to an accounting scandal. But they had the biggest ISP in India and they bought into us just on the cusp of the boom. But we just missed the timing and we ended up taking the deal in an instrument called an American depository receipt that was basically tied to the US stock market. And, uh, and, and, and we held onto the, held onto those. We sold those shares down so slowly that they'd are quartered in value. By the time we'd actually realized all their value anyway, it was ultimately sold, um, through to John Paul Getty because he'd bought wisdom.com and bought wisdom and been the big backer of all things ar archiving, cricket. And um, and then, and then as soon as. He died, um, his son Mark picked it up and was, you know, priming it immediately to pass on. And then a couple years later went to ESPN where it's been ever since, although now it's been bought by Reliance, I believe. so fairly recently or at least the Indian part of it, or maybe all of it. Yeah, I think all of it.
Richard Gillis, UP:Because I'm, I remember, I mean, you mentioned IMG. It's quite interesting. I remember talking to Bill Sin Rich, who was obviously running TWI and we're going back now, 2000 ish. And he, and they were, a TV production company in cricket. but we talked about all the, I really remember the conversation because it was the first time I'd really. Talked about the long tail as an idea, you know, and, and in terms of audience, but also about what the, what sport is going to do and how it's gonna evolve on the internet and all the sorts of assumptions that were then becoming. coming in place and I, I sort of just thought it'd be fun just to say, I wonder what those were, what, you know, what the conversations were about, what this could be.'cause people were selling stuff, you know, I was at Sport business and they sold something, you know, an online marketplace. Or they built it, it never made any money, but someone, you know, Warburg, piners paid God knows how much for it. So people were selling ideas. It's a bit like the sort of NFT mania and I wonder what the, what the assumptions were and how those have played out and whether or, you know, which ones were were right and or, and where it's gone astray.
Alex Balfour:I think the, the excitement or the fear, it's very much like the AI boom now that
Richard Gillis, UP:Yeah.
Alex Balfour:gets replaced and enhanced and if you're not on that boat, you, you're sunk. And I think that there was definitely a sort of convention in around 2000. I remember sort of Andrew Wild Blood, who was also, you know, was
Richard Gillis, UP:Yeah.
Alex Balfour:and then became number one and Mr. IPL. In IMG sort of saying around 2000, they had a convention with their various clients around the internet and he was very pleased that the conclusion was, no, don't worry, it's not a risk to tv. That's all they really wanted to know. You know, is it gonna, everyone's excited because it's gonna replace all the revenue streams. And then when we decided that it wa that either couldn't, wasn't, or could sit alongside them, everyone was comfortable again. So that was the, that was the fear. It was really about the revenue model rather than worrying about what the opportunity was and how it might reshape the game. But I think all the people involved in quick info. I mean, there's some, you know, geeks like geek stuff. So they're, they, they're happy to, um, the, um, the qualities of doing something online. You know, and certainly I think everything I've done online, you'd never go back. Why would you? But I, but their interest was actually more, I. in tune with just, just like archivists, they, you know, the, all the people involved in Early Creek Info, lots of computer geeks and mass geeks who wanted to just make sure everything was fully there and fully available and fully be accessible online. I mean, in fact, that the, the operating system that CFO was based on by happenstance was Linux, which was the kind of first, you know, substantial scale free server software. Which of necessity that guys at Quick Info. Adopted because they didn't have any money to buy, uh, the Microsoft equivalent, which barely existed or worked. and, and very much the, that whole free software collaborative approach was what was the, what was the driver behind how quick info was put together, you know? Um, have you got these scores? No, but can you find them for us? And then you can feel good about contributing. And everyone was contributing to the common scoring software, was contributing to the common archive. And actually the stuff that you kind of had to stop people doing was going down the rabbit hole. Like I remember consistently that our constant fight to be able to serve the page views and you know, no, we can't have ads in this'cause that's gonna slow everything down. No way are we having that we're not having, we didn't wanna be on the web'cause it included images and images load slow. Why do we wanna have stupid images? So. All of it was about efficiency and and delivery. And I remember some of the guys who ran the servers, they were, they just wanted to currently experiment. They wanted to keep on, you know, deploying new bits of Linux kernel that no one had tested. Like, why are you doing this? This is live. And they're like, no, but you know, they were bored by the regular stuff. And I think the, all the archivist guys just wanted to grab every bit of cricket history and upload it. And I do remember that, you know, in or transposing bill, though. Data out of wisdom that they were, you know, I suppose ripping without, due concern for copyright. But, but the, but the issue, cricket never, never had that issue that's had, that they had in say, basketball about, you know, I don't think it's ever really been tested about who owns the scores. But I think a lot of the numbers that they pulled out of wisdom and then put into a computer suddenly didn't add up anymore. So, but, and, and then there's a whole nother ghetto of, you know, so ultimately that. A lot of those early people form what's now Cricket Archive, which I think actually has a better and fuller, more accurate archive than, than Quick Info. But it was all very much about their deep passion for the game, their deep passion for, for engaging with the numbers and stats of the game and just sharing that with themselves. I. Massive self-interest, but also with with others who they would come into contact, but no sense of the game to the nonbelievers at all. I don't think it's just about massively indulging the existing passion and really reveling in it, and wallowing in it.
Mike Jakeman:That's actually really fascinating because I was just wanted to kind of drag the conversation forwards a little bit to the second half of the 2000 where we get these simultaneous events of the, the popularization of social media and the creation of the IPL happening 2006 seven 2008. Which puts info in a very different position where no longer, I mean, it can continue to serve as this evolving archive, but equally is being pushed in a direction of being much faster and more immediate, and a center for kind of as entertainment. How do you, how do you think the site responded to that, and perhaps more broadly, kind of how have cricket's relationship with digital culture changed those two, those two events?
Alex Balfour:it's interesting. I, I, I don't think cricket, um, you know, and perhaps I'm not as, as sort of, um, familiar with everything in IPL day to day. It actually, first thing that came to mind is there was always a hierarchy in cricket Live scores where internationals were first. And I've noticed recently that actually IP L's been getting primacy. There was probably a big internal debate about that as to whether you can put an IPL score link. Above an international game because it shouldn't in the, in the consistent hierarchy of these things. And that matters a lot to guys who gather and relay scores. But, um, I don't feel that cricket is adopted. I mean, it, it has in India because the culture is, it's obviously a celebrity culture unlike any other country or, well, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka notwithstanding. But, um. I, I didn't feel like it needed to adopt the same, um, embrace of everything, social media and social media culture and memes and everything else. So there was still just a role for, and there's still just a role for the core of it, which is, you know, what is the score? How is the game shaping? And, and as I've kind of mentioned before, the unique quality, maybe not totally unique, but largely unique quality of cricket scores to be able to. To relay a sense of how a game is playing and there's, there's drama in the numbers, which there obviously isn't in a football score or probably a rugby score or many others. They just, they, they tell you nothing. So then you want to see the action or you want to see the personality. But I don't think quick info needed, I don't think quick info was gonna have a diminished role because it couldn't deliver all that personality. Um, but to me, and then maybe this just reflects that I've worked in, and I haven't really, when I was involved in the. Early days of the register Royals and haven't really worked in cricket since. I'm probably less close to the, to the social media culture of cricket in general. But I just feel like it's less, it's less necessary as part of the online experience than it might be for other sports where it, where it defines some of the culture because I think it's still such a technical and kind of rich game that you can, you can gather a lot from that. So, yeah, I, I, it's again, it, you'd think that that would would've been the. Naturally the inflection point for quick info where that's, you know, the old would go and then some new service would come in, which would relay, and I think, you know, I think it took the ICCA long time to get to a point where their products were actually kind of acceptable to use, and I think that they, they got better and better at that. Um, I think that probably the other reason is that, you know, the, the glorious chaos that is cricket in India, that there's no, there was no compelling IPL product because it's fallen into the same sort of. You know, political mess is everything else. So if, if they, if they'd really gripped that and produced a product that was, um, that was BCCI run, God forbid, you know, it could have been, um, um, uh, you know, something that usurped everything. But it's interesting that sites like Crick Buzz that were in entirely created as a rip off Arick info. Uh. Kind of ape everything that Cricket Info does without really much thinking.'cause you could do a lot of things a lot better, but they just, they've just, they've just done same and pushed harder and, and, and they're at where they're at. So, I think it's, it's interesting how much of, um, cricket, and again, I might be speaking above myself, know, especially Mike, you know, more than me. But, but, but, um, even though the, the power has, has been rested. Probably rightfully just because of the and and cultural might by India and in particular in South South Asia broadly, they're still on the same, on the same history and, and, um, legacy that's been provided by. All the other competing countries. And it's sort of interesting that Quick Info is part of that now too. It's something that's kind of, know, something that, that they, that they haven't usurped or modified, um, because it's good enough and, and they can have their arguments elsewhere.
Richard Gillis, UP:that period that Mike's identified there, that sort of, I, it, it lend, it makes me think about looking back at the relationship between sport and the platforms, you know, and we quite often think about, well, what. What mistakes have been made almost giving over everything just to be on the platform. The chasing of, of impressions as a, as a, you know, the numbers and the building of fan bases. What do you think, what do you think about that when, when you are, I know it's a, it is a very broad question, but just that. What do you think has something gone wrong in that relationship do you think has, have the platforms changed the culture of the game or the fans relate what we think of as fans? How, how do you sort of view that subject?
Alex Balfour:I mean, 1, 1, 1 thought is around, you know, because I, I think the IC do have an exclusive or a fairly, a reasonably exclusive deal with meta, so they have some limitations on what social they use, and meta was quite early
Richard Gillis, UP:I.
Alex Balfour:of the Indian rights org or auctions of the BCCI to come in with. Pretty, you know, they, one, when you think of, um, which streamers have popped up when they popped up pretty early with a pretty sizable bid for streaming rights, but didn't manage to secure them. But I don't think that is, don't think that those, that that has actually changed anything. I mean, they, they, they've probably done the numbers outta that they want to do, but I don't think that's changed things in the game, think. Um, but I think it, I think Cultural splits between how the game is appreciated between its different constituent, you know, professional playing nations still persists and it's not really been made any different by, by the platforms. You know, I was thinking, I actually looked it up this morning before the call so I could find the quote, but I just remember distinctly Chris Wokes. Being interviewed at Lord straight after the end of the 2019 final and one of the first things said, well, this will be great for cricket. I'm thinking that's insane. You know what, what would Vera Coley stand up for? The, you know, his first thing about India winning the World Cup ever be, oh, this is gonna be great for cricket. Would Harry Kae go, well, I really hope this means people will take football more seriously when England, you know, win the World Cup next year. As if, but you know, it's just, it's just mad that England has had that. There's this persistent feeling that. You know, and I think you've discussed it in your previous pods, but you know, the test cricket has been dying since 1900 and people have been complaining about the, the way it's been played and the integrity of it for all that time. And that just continues. But I think it that these parallel spheres where enthusiasm for one day and the now 2020 cricket, it, the appreciation of, it's just completely different in different countries. And I think that the, I don't necessarily think the digital platforms have either, Contributed to that or, or taken away from it. And I think quick info with, with its, with its base in, and, and it, and similar peers with their basing in relaying the, the core data and the scores. They're real, they, they're still relevant, whatever your cultural context, because they're still the base point. So, yeah. I, I, um, not sure if that's answering your question fully, but I don't think, um, know, I, I, I think they've, I don't think they've either accelerated or. Yeah, possibly you could say they might have somewhat derated helped decelerate the demise of test cricket because they're persistent. But, but even then, I still think they're preaching to the converted, and Cricket is so much about, um, that cultural language of what you believe in and what you believe is interesting in cricket. and, and it's, and it's just highly divergent to my mind between the different nations where, you know, I think in particularly in, um. you know, in the UK in England, you know, people appreciate cricket for cricket and it's not necessarily about the win or loss. Whereas I think for a lot of people on the, in South Asia, the win or loss is everything. And, and they don't, you know, they don't care too much for the finesse elements, but there, but there's variation within that community too. And I don't necessarily think that digital has any, positive or negative role. It's an amplifier, but it's an amplifier of both negative and positive I suppose.
Richard Gillis, UP:I guess there's a question about the sort of walled garden argument isn't there? About whether or not, and you know, whether it's crick info is a proxy to that, but actually an alternative would be to, to have built their own. Platforms. Now whether that was, that's just pie in the sky or that's feasible, but there, there is, sometimes I hear that conversation about, okay, we've got to get our fans back from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or X or whatever, and, and bring them into our world and stop giving the content to those platforms for nothing because all you are doing is just giving your fans to. Silicon Valley, or you know, Chinese social media firms and they're monetizing them. they've got all the data and they know cricket fans now better than, the governing body. So you, you know, you, you're familiar with that argument. I was just wondering'cause cricket info felt, feels like something when I look back at it now and you don't, you know, don't often get the opportunity to do so. You sort of think, I wonder if an alternative history, it would, it would've gone in a different direction. I dunno. It's just a, just a sort of a thought.
Alex Balfour:I think, I think there's a, I think there was a cricket. Yeah. And we certainly had seen that thing about what if we shut everyone out? In fact, there was that, wasn't that that, um, weekend a few years back where all the clubs sort of stopped posting. I think I was
Richard Gillis, UP:Yeah.
Alex Balfour:on Uafa is still a client, but I was working directly on club competitions at the time, and I went and pulled all the data from the, Meta APIs, which gives you, you can access if you, if you know how the daily active user numbers. Um, and none of them changed, not even slightly on anything against any sport fan or anything else. So the fact that the clubs declined to post it made zero impact. And we had, we definitely had those discussions about Uafa. No, they should be, they should be. Paying us. I mean, and as we've discussed on previous pods, you know, the IOC actually done quite a good job where they, they have got the platforms to pay for access and give them special favors, but the amount of payment is kind of, it, it's a nominal figure as in terms of the wider rights values and sponsorship values for the Olympics as it would be for anyone else. And it as obviously it is for the platforms themselves, but I think there, there is an environment where, of course your example is, um. So, you know, they built,
Richard Gillis, UP:Hmm.
Alex Balfour:um, the online infrastructure. They had all the, um, MLB franchises part of that, and they sold it. They sold it. Um, they, they, it was Bob. Um, you'll have to remind me his name, but we'll, we, we can do that in the edit. But, um, who built the whole MLB piece? Do you remember Mike? Um, who then who he. Bowman, that's the man. And, and then they sold it to, um, to kind of, uh, Disney ultimately. And I
Richard Gillis, UP:Yeah.
Alex Balfour:to see some of their, um, streaming crew in, um, Amsterdam. And then that business just kind of got, it was Ben to the go and I think they did service a couple of other different leagues for a while and then it sort of slowly got contained. but they actually made quite a lot of money in that sale for the. For all the parties. And so it was a pretty awesome thing. So that was the internal MEChA mechanic. And, and that also gave birth to at bat, which I think is probably, um, which I haven't visited recently, but when I last looked, was probably the best sports app I've ever seen in terms of just the quality and clarity and cleverness of, of relaying sports. Definitely better than conceptually ui, better than anything quick info produced. But, um, but it's, you know, it's not for cricket. So. that that opportunity definitely was there, but then I think that's the pathway it would've taken. You need a Bob Bowman in charge. And then what happens is, is everyone, all the time is always going, there's always that conversation is kind of, um, buy or sell. And then it would always be, yeah, but shouldn't we? Yeah. You know, WWE went through it, didn't they? They went in house and then they sold again. So I think what would've happened is that, that. Someone could have made some good money for a number of sports, but they always would've ended up selling it into a cycle, into someone else with the leverage that they've created. So to do that and then hold onto that as an asset, and I think that reflects in an interesting way. Certainly when I've looked into lots of sports that I've worked in the Olympics with football, with ufa, with various clubs, um, with cricket. Uh, with boxing, which I worked in. find, when you ask the sport or the people who should know, where's the archive for this stuff? You know, actually I want the data, but if you don't have the data, just tell me where the paper archive is or the books are. They never own them, you know, they might be aware of some of them, but often, often the people who did the data, like quick info, there's. Box wreck in boxing, which is a husband and wife in Doncaster, there was, there'll be the same, there was someone in F1 who was similar. There was actually a lot of fights with F1 and some people who'd done stuff of their auspices. with all the football clubs. None of them keep a proper archive. There's just always some enthusiast who does that, and that kind of reflects what they think about this stuff collectively, unless it's commercial. Just don't really spend any time on it. So the idea that they would build a network and then resist commercial offers to have that network taken externally and build it for the love and the, and the heritage, I think is probably unrealistic. I think they all missed a trick in not doing what Bob Bowman did, which was kind of brilliant to build an asset within the family and sell it and make an awful lot of extra money, which of course has all probably been spent on player salaries like everything else, and disappeared into the ether.
Richard Gillis, UP:It's a bit sort of analogous with, with, I was reading about Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund and comparing it to, you know, Britain's use of North Sea oil and how it splurged the money and lost the money. And it's just sort of the occasionally you thought or sort of think, actually I. Yeah, there would've be, there was an alternative. But as you say, it, it's, it creates a whole sort of thread of its own. But it's quite interesting to, just to,'cause we're now, as you say, hanging over us is the AI question, and here we go again. You know, so that's, it's a, you know, the, the, what they do and what this decisions this generation of sort of sports executives make are gonna have. 20, 30 year implications, you know, in the same way. So it's quite, you know,
Alex Balfour:and, well, I suppose just even before that, in this recent cycle, you've had all the private equities, injections, a lot of which have gone west already, or, and then now we've got a private equity injection into the. Um, you know, into the hundred and other things, and I don't quite understand what that's for or where it's going to go. But then it's interesting how you spend the money. You know, rugby's had his its injections and the, the money's gone already, so,
Richard Gillis, UP:yeah.
Alex Balfour:they're back where they were. They just spent more money on the stuff they're already spending it on. So, you know, so, so, so they, can't be always be trusted with the money, let alone with the opportunity to make it. But, but that's how it is. Yeah. And, and then, yeah, and AI provides. You know, I don't see radical change from, know, makes things, makes simple things faster or makes things at scale easier. So again, for me it's an accelerant and there's lots of stuff about how that works in production and relay and stuff like that. It can happen in data and we're certainly playing with, with data to, to answer questions quicker, but I'm not sure it's yet at the stage where it's making. Radical change, but, you know, and then, and I suppose NFTs, that was one that happened that, you know, I, I think there's, there would be, you know, the Bob Bowman opportunity in NFTs for me would be, particularly in a sport like cricket, to lock down every statistical performance and make that a tradable asset, which you could either. Readily trade out of, you know, because, because like a sports memorabilia or I was thinking that you could, you could assign that asset to everyone who broke those records and give them the choice as a governing body, whether they wanted the official NFT of their first century or the first century for dha or the millions of different archaic stats about the particular performance and what was unique about it. And then you could invest that in the person and they could just. Keep it in their NFT wallet or, or they could maybe trade it like Fred Truman trading his 300th wicked ball that he showed me when I went to see him. And, you know, in a sad, in a sad kind of last minute auction. But, but the problem with all that NFT stuff is it all just blew up with, you know, just endless, uh, fraud all over the place. And, you know, so, so maybe that will stabilize and then, you know, likewise, ai, you feel that if there is something that becomes money making. Same old cycle happen where it gets sold off before it actually gets nurtured to, to its full potential value.
Mike Jakeman:I'm really glad that you brought up the kind of gamification aspect of cricket, which is something that I, I wanted to talk about briefly because one of the companies that is investing a lot in cricket is Dream 11. And you've told me some things about Dream 11 that I didn't really appreciate either the, the size of this the extent to which, which you can explain what Dream 11 is for, uh, particularly UK listeners who aren't familiar with it, the extent to which they are now subsidizing, sponsoring, enabling more cricket to be played in order to have more fantasy players.
Alex Balfour:I, I mean, I, I'm, I'm not a hundred percent okay with, with the detailed facts, so I'll be careful that I don't want to, um. I, I, I don't want to allege anything inappropriate. Not that any of this is bad, but, uh, so, you know, you think of Fantasy Premier League, which has 15 million players and is as big as I think, I think there's a, there's a few games of the NFL, but, but none of them, I think, individually have many more players than that. and obviously the NFL fantasy is a proxy. A cricket fantasy is also effectively a betting proxy, but it's also serving a massive constituency. So Dream 11 has over a hundred million players, which is just mind blowing. Um. What's also extraordinary about it is that it's a, so I think, I suppose if you think about digitization of cricket, entertainment, you know, it to me is the biggest shift and people who pay Dream 11 play it on a daily, it's the daily game that they play. So it's not like fancy Premier league where you sit on your team and know, and, and for me, get bored after a few weeks because you are number 300 and you know, you're number 14 million or whatever you are, or you're playing your own league. And that's different. And, but the. But the, but the uh, dream 11, I mean, I know people, I first of all have seen Dream 11 because they sponsor everything because they came big so quick. They've been around 10 years. They have so many different games now, but the core game is the daily play. So you literally put your team together in the last, you know, when the teams are. Properly announce, you know, pre toss, which isn't very long even in IPL. And then you've only got a limited player base to play with, and that's the basis on which you play and you play in your, your leagues and with your friends. And, and there's just incredible enthusiasm for it, which again, I think, I think taps into the, the sheer passion for cricket. I don't think it's sheer passion for fantasy. I could be wrong, but I think the two then become interlocked and one becomes part of the other. And then it becomes part of your watching culture and your intimacy with the teams and the players. And the, the extraordinary part of it, as I understand it, is that. The Dream 11. You know, they played a number of roles. They, they sit as the convener of the Indian Regulator of Fantasy Games, which is interesting. But there are lots of rival fantasy games, private equity back that are chucking up all over the place that are then also sponsoring games. And they're all basically on a massive land grab to try and steal some part of each other's users. And you could see a million, million business plans with that. You know, pie chart of here's the, here's the size of the fantasy market, and if we only got 1%, so they're all trying to grab someone else's 1%, but Dream 11 themselves. And some of these other fantasy leagues are also sponsoring because the IIPL only has its short, relatively short window. They're sponsoring cricket leagues, including the European Cricket Association, cricket leads in Canada. Uh, probably have some involvement with Major League Cricket. You know, obviously very focused on things like Big Bash and, and Vitality Blast and South African League. So all these things have actually had, uh, if they haven't had direct money, they've had sponsored money.'cause they know that Dream 11 or its rivals will come in and be a reliable commercial partner. So it's actually a good underpinning and, and, uh, it's just extraordinary how it's actually fueled. The visibility and availability of these leagues. Um, and I think is an important part of, um, you know, if there is a driver around this notion of 24 7, 20 20 cricket or a 24 7, 20 20 cricket player, probably Dream 11 is, is going to be a, you know, a, a big part of that reason.'cause it's provided that funding because the players, maybe there is a transference there because obviously. Indian players are not allowed to play in the overseas franchises. So if Indian fantasy players are taking an interest in cricket played by non-Indians, that's definitely a cultural shift. It's the, it's the game that they know, but they're actually taking an interest in players who are, I mean, there could be lots of Indian or South Asian origin players playing in those leagues, but they're expressly not Indian board players. So that's kind of interesting.
Richard Gillis, UP:I sometimes think that the, that the private equity lens, it's quite a useful one because it gives, if you pursue it, I think betting, this is not just about cricket, but it is much higher on their agenda than is, than is usually. Thought about quite often the conversation goes to media rights, you know, future media rights, valuations and, you know, the, commercialization of fans on a, you know, personalization at scale. All of those questions, but actually betting is more central than people think, I think. And, and fantasy is obviously, as you say, a proxy.
Alex Balfour:And it, and it fits with the model. So, I tend to talk where sometimes I shouldn't. But, uh, I again, uh, you know, all in the spirit of sharing. So let's just say with the current client, maybe I won't mention the client, um, who have a private equity backer the driver behind the private equity compensation. Um, so in my, my day to day, we have a business called Generate Digital. And we, um. Really specialize in, in valuing digital assets and then reporting that and understanding that. And, and one of our current clients is private equity backed. It's a major sports franchise. Um, and the, the, the drive of the direction from the top, from the board of people who are generally software guys has been. Can you identify the LTV to CAC and can you apply that so long-term value to customer acquisition costs, which is a kind of classic software play, so apply that to sport and clearly in fantasy. That's a really easy straight line discussion because, you know, I'm actually on the board of a, a company called, uh, fantasy Football Hub, who are the number one AI provider for. Fantasy Premier League, and they're very interested in getting into cricket. Um, and they have a lovely model where people subscribe to be given AI tips, how to have great fantasy teams. And it's a, it's a software subscription model so you can, you can pay for the product and they know how many pay and how many don't pay, and how long they'll pay for. And that's what the private equity guys would love to have in sport. Tell me a sports fan. Um, how do I acquire that sports fan and based on the acquisition cost? This fan profile, how much money I gonna make out of them. Info was definitely not founded in that spirit. It was not. This is an exclusive club you can join, um, for a premium price to learn about the sport you love. This is a place that we can all share, um, and we can all commune and we can all revel in our love for the game, and there's no judgment about. What you contribute. Well, if you don't contribute data, we don't like you much, but otherwise we don't care what you bring to the table. So, but, so fantasy provides a great, uh, uh, a great prism on LTB to cac, but the rest of the, so many of the other things that sports fans do are amorphous in that way. You just can't see, you know, and sponsorship is that fun, mystical area where you just, it's, it's hard to know. And we're trying, but it's hard to know whether, uh, the a sponsor's involvement in a sport makes you more amenable to buy their product. Um, you know, they don't know. Um, and it, and it is hard to know. There's sometimes an argument. I always think that for the most hardcore fans, they're sometimes the worst consumers.'cause other people are like, get sponsorship outta my way. I wanna watch my sport. I don't want anyone to tell me what to buy. You know, I might, I might be, well, well, I might be, well, well-meaning to them, you know, you might be, if you're a club fan, just out of kind of maniacal fandom saying, well, I'm only gonna drink this beer or whatever. But for, for a more generic fan, it's just like, well, I, you know, I thank you for helping fund it, but really I just wanna see the sport now and, and if I could spend every day not drinking beer and, consuming my sport, I'll do that in preference.
Richard Gillis, UP:Had a conversation with, Gareth Bch of two circles I just mentioned it because there was a bit of a conversation they had met, you know, they've put a number on the total IP value of sport globally and, you know, it's a massive, I can't remember what it is, 170 billion or something like that. And that's every pound dollar cents that comes into. Sport via, you know, the various places. And that's tv, media rights, sponsorship ticket, merch day, you know, all of that.
Alex Balfour:Yeah.
Richard Gillis, UP:The interesting bit, or one of the interesting bits is the money that is made from sport that doesn't actually ever come into the sports economy and,
Alex Balfour:Hmm.
Richard Gillis, UP:betting is, is a big one. Piracy is an obvious one. Fantasy again, it's sort of interesting. So the Premier League wraps its arms around certain things
Alex Balfour:Yep.
Richard Gillis, UP:the IPL the same, but there's a whole load of stuff like hospitality that is sometimes, you know, done by third parties.
Alex Balfour:Yep.
Richard Gillis, UP:then, so in the great story of when the money tap gets turned off from the TV companies,
Alex Balfour:Hmm.
Richard Gillis, UP:what happens and one of one model or scenario sees a sort of purposeful mission creep. From the rights holder into these areas that they're now not, you know, so capturing more piracy money to, you know, making sure that the, that betting market. And I saw the other day, you know, genius had just renewed by the NFL and their deal, the sort of plumbing of the betting market. And I was wondering how many cycles that's gonna go and whether or not. A decision gets made by the NFL, you have to be a big sports rise holder to start. Say, well, how much of this stuff can we now do?
Alex Balfour:Yeah.
Richard Gillis, UP:a, you know, a conversation with Sam Sadie about AI and, you know, live score and the betting market, and he's saying, well, it's happening and it's coming quickly in terms of what, what was hard is now. Much, much easier. So a sort of a version of, so the Premier League part, you know, productions being taken in-house.
Alex Balfour:Yeah.
Richard Gillis, UP:That feels like a sort of, well, yeah. Okay. That's a smart move. But there are lots of other areas that they can start to then bring in house. I don't, you know.
Alex Balfour:I think that's really interesting and I think that yes, again, where there's accelerants, whether you can do things cheaper and faster, um, and you can bring those in-house definitely around production or processes, maybe, you know, like Twitter or X is I. You know, charges for data where they, where others don't yet. So there's different ways that you can kind of clog up the pipes or find a way to indirectly charge consumers. The question for me is when you actually have to embrace a customer service opportunity, how can they do that? So, you know, streaming is. tough if you go end to end, because then you've gotta become a consumer business. So, so servicing the betting infrastructure, doing the productions, you know, squeezing pricing on data, just getting in the way of all these revenue streams and demanding a higher share. That kind of makes sense. And you might want to, it exactly just depends how, how tough you wanna be with your long-term partners. But when your long-term partner is. Experts at dealing with audiences, you know, which, which arguably, you know, it definitely includes the TV networks, arguably could include a quick info, you know, arguably could be a a, a Dream 11 saying, well, we really know how to deal with our customers, so
Richard Gillis, UP:Fanatics.
Alex Balfour:yeah, if you wanna take on that burden of all that end to end and can make those margins work for you, go for it. But, but for so many they was, would be very, you know, it requires a big cultural shift to do that, let alone. The, the confidence that they can do that with sufficient scale to make the margins. You know, I remember, I remember even 15 years ago working in the London Olympics that, you know, we had all these special deals of licensees and Amazon's undercutting the deals everywhere. So, so anything you try and sell through an official shop is, is hopeless because Amazon have got the scale and the efficiency you can't possibly replicate. So, so unless it's on exclusive stuff. You, you've got no, you've got no, you've got no play there. So where, where, where can they push in? But I think I agree with, I think it's super interesting how that will evolve.
Richard Gillis, UP:Okay, so Mike, any other. Points
Mike Jakeman:No, I'm enjoyed this. I think we've amount,
Richard Gillis, UP:we have, we've drained Alex Drive is, is, you know, we've gone back to the history and then we just, you know, get, we've now asked every big question of facing the sports industry.
Alex Balfour:I mean I think, I think the one evolution I have with Cricket is that, you know, I remember, especially when I was doing, working on a pre-tournament for the IPL, which then led me to be involved in kind of very early budget on Royals. Then I went to the Olympics before that kicked off. But, you know, I always thinking, and we were helping out at Leicester at one point. We ran a tournament there and, and as a younger man sort of thinking, oh. You know, why is, why is no one attending these county games? It's all a bit dead and dry. And now as an older man, I'm thinking, well, if I wasn't working so much, I'd love to go to a county game and I hope there's no one there at all. So I can read my look online or read my newspaper and just, and just, and just enjoy the joy of that. So for, you know, for me, the digital is about of a. Facilitator and, and being able to, and, and for me, cricket is just my happy place. Sport. It's where I can switch off. Like it's to my selling sunset, you know? I have to do nothing and don't have to think and, and long may that continue. And I think a lot of the people in the early cricket for days always had that attitude. It is like we just wanna revel in this sport. We don't care whether it's popular or not.
Richard Gillis, UP:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So say all of us, you can just, you might be able to see ho the floodlights of hove out my window, but I agree. I agree completely. Although I sort of, I sometimes think I, I, I'd be a strange color. You go to Hove and you've got that. The members sit in the sun all day and they go like this sort of walnut color, which I, uh, I'm quite looking forward to, um, if it does it, if it ain't die of skin cancer beforehand. Right. That's a, that's a lovely upbeat, uh, way of ending the conversation. Right. Alex, thanks a lot as ever. Fantastic stuff, and cheers, Mike, for your time as well.
Alex Balfour:Thanks guys.
Mike Jakeman:Thank you.