Market Watch Ep.13: European Super League - Good or Bad?

Welcome to the Market Watch podcast by Amplify Live, where you can access the latest market insights with me, Anthony Cheung, the Head of Market Analysis, and joined by our Head of Trading, Piers Curran, getting you up to speed on what mattered in markets this week. Okay, hello and welcome to the latest Market Watch podcast from Amplify Live. It's Friday, 23rd of April. And there's only one topic to talk about today. And that, of course, is the one that's really dominated mainstream media. And it's the European Super League. Now, to front run this, I've got the head of trading, Piers, as ever, with me, who is a bona fide genuine football fan. But I guess I come at it as— I definitely follow football. I wouldn't classify myself as a fan. I'm more of a sports fan and my interests fan-wise lie elsewhere. So I think it could be an interesting discussion. It feels like, Piers, when I mentioned midweek that we were going to have this conversation, it felt like a little bit of the build-up between like an Arsenal-Tottenham game coming up at the weekend or something. And you were giving me a bit of backchat and I was sending over a few nuggets of information just to sort of whet the appetite. I mean, you were biting.

I've been warming up all week. I've been doing my stretch. I've been for a run this morning, just pumped. Um, I am— I'm angry about this, I have to say. And, uh, I'm looking forward— this is, this is the, this is the— I can't— maybe the, the podcast I've been looking forward to the most in terms of topics being discussed.

So, uh, were you one of these—

gloves are on, let's go.

Were you one of these people I saw out there out in the streets in London and really getting involved.

Well, I like to do it from the comfort of my own home.

So you support Arsenal then?

What? Okay, that's the largest—

I thought that was the typical Arsenal fan.

Well, those, those are our most loyal listeners to the podcast will of course know who I support because I revealed that in Podcast number 1.

And, and that was when we heard about your man crush as well as a teenager coming up, who was, of course—

so if you want to know who my man crush is, guys, you've got to go back and listen to episode 1.

Okay, on that cliffhanger. All right, well, look, let's, let's kick it off. So I mean, the— I think the news came out, I even, I even tweeted it because, um, it was breaking at the weekend, and obviously then it really kicked off and By midweek, almost the whole deal was off and it's completely fallen flat. And so the breakaway European Super League founder and Juventus chairman said that the league on Wednesday can no longer go ahead because the 6 English clubs withdrew. And without the English clubs, there's no league for sure. But I guess context a little bit, and again, I'm sure there's football pundits that will give us more granular level detail, but top level overview, there's been a pandemic. So a lot of these clubs, matchday ticket receipts is what fuels a lot of their revenue. And obviously, no games, no season, so on. European clubs, my understanding is, financially felt the pain, let's say, more severely than Premier League firms or football clubs. And so therefore, what's been interesting here is that, for one, there's a US investment bank involved. JP Morgan is underwriting this and has been involved in the architecture the deal from a financial point of view. And one of the things that was originally that came out was that founding members were going to get a welcome. So this isn't even— we're talking the numbers that would follow. This is the welcome bonus, which is €200 to €300 million. But my understanding is what Champions League, you're talking about €70 million or so. So these are quite large numbers. Yeah. You said before though, this isn't a new thing. This has been around for a while, this idea around European football and so on. What's your initial take when the news broke and where we are now at this point?

I was pretty annoyed would be probably an understatement. The way I see this as a football fan and a fan of one of these top 6 as well, by the way, and you could say, well, if you're in the top 6, well, happy days, you're fine then. Shouldn't all the fans be loving it if you're in the top 6 and you're going to be in this league? Well, actually, no, quite the opposite. And in fact, the stat is 79% of English fans have opposed this. And actually, interestingly, the proportion of fans from the big 6 clubs, it's a higher percentage that actually don't like this. But look, it's all motivated by money. And so fine, and we're going to talk about the business aspect of a football club. These big boys, these are publicly listed companies these days. We'll talk about that. But this is all about money. Do fans care about money? No. What do fans care about? They want to see their team win. They want to see their team win silverware. Okay, you could say, well, to do that, you're going to need to sign the Ronaldos of this world. To be able to do that, you're going to need to pay a load of money. Therefore, the club needs to generate huge revenues to be able to afford these players, and only then are you going to be able to win. And all right, I see that argument. But look, in the end, this is foreign owners mostly. So certainly in the English clubs at the top 6, most of them, they're all foreign-owned. In fact, all of them. 4 of them are owned by Americans. And perhaps we'll touch on the American way of doing sports leagues in a minute. But there are foreign owners here who never come to the games. They're not really fans in the truest sense like us. You know, they're not from these communities and they've come and they've bought and they're saying, right, we've lost a load of money here because of this pandemic, we're going to need to make some of this back, let's just rip up the way that this sport has been run for 150 years and then let's just try and make some cash.

I mean, you said rip up the sport, but I assume you're old enough to remember the founding of the Premier League in 1992, right? And that was a breakaway at the time from the Football League, founded in 1888.

Yes.

So that's, that's a big change. And then the rationale there, taking advantage of lucrative television rights deals. So money's on the table at that point. So how did you feel back in '92 when that was happening? Was there excitement, or was there— was it like a reaction like this, and people were like You're damaging the game. You're going after money.

On the one hand, it was annoying because it was moving on to a pay-per-view platform. And that was like, well, that's annoying. I used to be watching this on BBC.

Right.

So that was annoying. But then on the flip side, all right, it was really actually that— from that point onwards, that's what's made the Premier League what it is today, which is comfortably the biggest football league on the planet. So from a commercial aspect, it was a beautiful strategy. Now, but the really, really important key difference here is that the European Super League, the proposal's definitely not the same as what happened with the Premier League back in '92. Ultimately, it gets down— for me, the most annoying thing about this league is that for the top, whatever, 12 clubs, they can't get relegated. Actually, for me, that's the critical thing here. If you can't get relegated, and actually, so all that can happen is you can either win and get the trophy, great, or nothing else. Look, if you start in this league, and let's say you lose— so I'm a Tottenham fan, right? Look, there's been plenty of memes going around about Tottenham. Why the hell are Tottenham in this alongside Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Man United? I think one of the best memes I saw, it was like Tottenham being invited to the ESL was like Banana Man being called up to the Avengers. From my point of view, this is what would have happened. Tottenham would have been in this league, you'd have lost the first couple of games, let's say, of the league, you're bottom of the league from the start. Basically, it's over before it begins. You cannot win now. And what's the point? Now, the Premier League, right, just as one example, right now, there are 6 teams fighting tooth and nail every week desperately to finish 3rd or 4th. Why? Because top 4 get into the Champions League, right? There are teams fighting— these are teams going down to like 8th position, We're coming towards the end of the league, and it is life and death, these games, for fans and for players. There's something to fight for. And like down the bottom of the end of the league, if you can't get relegated, well, I just think it destroys the competitive edge that makes football and sport what it is.

Sir, I completely agree with that. But from a financial forecasting point of view, if I was running a business, if then the uncertainty of an outcome of a match— because we know it's happened, happens. This is what we love about football in like the FA Cup or whatever it might be. You get a minnow knock out a major team, which is amazing from a spectator's point of view. The FA Cup is something separate, but let's just say What does next year look like and how do I build this business going forward when with someone like Tottenham, let's say, which, no offense, fluctuate over time.

Yeah.

And so tell me that. So is that not— isn't that then a compelling— you said that these guys now that own these clubs, they're all businessmen. And so when they see this emotive reaction like of this week, I mean, these are hard-nosed businessmen who are used to this type of confrontation and these types of things. I mean, do they even care like that? And how important is having that more stability about the forward-looking financial outlook for these clubs, which are publicly listed as well, some of them? Yeah.

Well, I get that from a business point of view. Look at Man United's share price, Juventus's share— like, Man United's share price spiked 10% off the news that they were joining the ESL. Juventus share price was up 19%. Now, a lot of that is exactly for this reason, right, whereby you can't get relegated. So the stability and the forecastability of future revenues becomes much more stable. And so therefore, if future revenues are more stable, there's less volatility in those future revenues, then that actually makes your business more valuable. And so the share price spikes, and fine. And I get that. But these football clubs, why do they need to be run as just businesses with the sole aim of generating profit? That's not what they were ever for. These football clubs are born and birthed out of communities. This is a community social network. You've got families with 4 generations of people in the family that support this team. And they all go down— the grandson and the granddad go down to the games. And you'd basically be destroying this. Some of the crazy ideas was, well, yeah, look, these owners can pick up this club like Arsenal, just pluck it out of London, and let's go and take it and drop it into China. And we'll have the club in China because the commercial potential in China is way bigger than it is in the UK. So let's just— you know, they can't just use these clubs like pawns on a chessboard and move them around. There's communities that are built around these things.

But, uh, isn't that the point? Can't— can you not just pick up Arsenal and drop it in Beijing? Because ultimately the locality of a fan, and look, I'm not belittling, I think there's a deep-rooted rich history in English culture that we identify ourselves, particularly those working-class roots in areas like Liverpool, Manchester. I get it, definitely get it. But if you're talking about a locality fan base of million, and let's say Manchester United's global reach is 1 billion, of which the by far biggest percentage growing market is going through a phase of, let's say, accelerated growth long-term through China, through infrastructure, better individual wealth, new emerging middle class, people with ability to spend on things like streaming services and purchasing merchandise. I mean, are we not— I saw this, the guys who are protesting, football is for the fans. And I thoroughly agree. Football is for the fans. You're just focusing on the wrong fans. Remove yourself out of the emotional tie to exactly what you described, which cuts deep. It's kind of like a Brexit issue. What are we? We're English. We're British. That defines a lot of your decision-making process from an emotive point of view. But if you look at it on the numbers, I don't think that this— I'm not saying the Super League is without its faults. I think you're right, the, the area that's caused the most friction, I think, is this relegation aspect. So I don't think it could go through in its current form. It needs some, some sort of amendment. But I do think that in actuality, it's— I think you're a bit naive if you think that these, these, these corporations are going to give weightedness to the emotional tie that these clubs have from their history because we're moving into a new paradigm now of a different way that these companies will operate.

Well, look, don't forget about the government's position in all of this, by the way, because if the government said, "Yeah, yeah, go on." Arsenal, you American owner of Arsenal, yeah, go on, take it to Shanghai. We don't care. Then that's a vote loser, big time. So for government, what my point is, governments will not allow, will never allow that kind of quite extreme scenario of moving the club to a different country. That's definitely off the table. I don't care what your business argument, your commercial argument is. As an American owner. It's not happening. That's definitely for number one. You saw the Boris Johnson was on this bandwagon. I mean, bang, he's loving this. Of course. And you had Tory MPs threatening windfall taxes on the breakaway clubs, or they're going to be allowed fewer work permits, or unleashing competition legal action, and withdrawing police support from match days. These are all the threats that were coming out of the government. But let's focus on the— commercial. Because for me, I think they're going about this in exactly the wrong way. I totally understand there's financial crisis in football, as there are across all sectors, by the way. Well, not quite all, but most sectors because of the pandemic. But there's a much better way to make these clubs more economically viable, and in time, make them profitable. And fine, then the owners get what they want. From an investment exercise, and there's a way to do it where the fans continue to get what they want as well. I think the money, the profit, should really be coming from capping and sorting out the wage bills of the players. And actually, in American sport, where they have made a success of some of these systems where you have leagues where you can't get relegated, well, in these leagues, there's wage caps as well. But you need a wage cap in this system. Let me give you a couple of stats. Not on the wages yet. I'm going to leave that for a second. But actually, from a club's point of view, actually, to give you an idea of their revenue breakdown. So looking over the last 5 years on average, roughly speaking, a club generates 44% of its annual revenue from broadcasting rights. OK. And we'll come on and talk about Netflix in a minute, actually talking about broadcasting broadcasting. 40% is on commercial revenue, so merchandise and all the rest of it. And then only 16% of revenue these days is actually from matchday ticket sales. So the pandemic has hurt the matchday sales. But that's only 16% of their revenue these days. So actually, the financial impact on clubs, yes, it's large, but it's only impacted, in theory, 16% of their revenue. Secondly, these 12 clubs— this is a stat that made me quite angry. So in the year prior to the pandemic, the 12 clubs, the founding clubs that signed these contracts and let's get this European League up and running, the 12 clubs generated in total between themselves €6.5 billion worth of revenue. Those 12 clubs. The next 700 clubs in Europe generated a total of 15 billion. So actually, the 12 clubs, they've already got 30% market share in terms of all revenues generated by all football clubs. They've already got the lion's share. Now, here's the point. The other thing about the impact this would have on lower levels of football, because this revenue comes in and then it filters down the pyramid, and this is how you get children playing football on a Saturday, these clubs cost money for getting kids out there. But if the European Super League happened— and by the way, what would happen is this would replace the Champions League. So the Champions League, they earn $2.4 billion from the Champions League. And here, they'd go to earning $4 billion. So they're talking about an extra $1.6 billion. OK? But this would mean those clubs at the top, their percentage of the revenue share would go up. —go from 30%. It's already massive. It might go up to 40%. And actually, that just means less money would filter down to the bottom. So that's just on a top level. Can I just talk—

So just jumping in on that point, because there's a crossover here to a basketball analogy I can give you. So I think it was '85 when Scottie Pippen and the Chicago Bulls came into the league. It was a year after Jordan, I believe. Anthony Cheung: And he was an okay player coming out of college. He wasn't like a top, top prospect like Jordan was at the time, the year or two before. And Pippen was a guy, like a lot of basketball players, who came from a very deprived background. And they offered him a contract at X figure, but to sign up for, I think it was 7 years, which was a bit unprecedented at the time. But this is a young guy coming out of college, never played a pro game in his life, has potential unfulfilled. So you're getting good value, lock him in if you're the Bulls' general manager, cheap price. Pippen then flourishes, becomes one of the great players in the history of the game. Now, his actual wage salary was something, in basketball world terms, insanely cheap. So he's now one of the top players in the world and he was getting paid— he was something like the, the bottom quartile worst paid players in the league because he chose to take the lump sum up front. Yeah. Now these football clubs, isn't there an argument? I get it, you're going to kill the competitive element and the distribution of wealth, if you like, from the league, which is going to be unhealthy because then you— it almost creates its own Super League with in itself organically in a way. But what I'm saying is, if I'm Liverpool or I'm Manchester United and I'm generating all of this wealth for UEFA because— or for whomever league— aren't I in my rights to turn around and say, okay, I earn a lot, but if it wasn't for me and these 6, these 5 other guys, yeah, teams, well then there is no league. So I'm going to collude with the other 5 and the 6 of us. You either pay us or we leave. Is this not a negotiating—

Well, yeah, it is a negotiation. Yeah, for sure, it's a negotiating strategy to try and leverage more money. They've already got the top 12 earn 30% of the revenue. The next 700 earn the other 70%. They're already all dominant. But on that Pippin example. I mean, what happens here in English football is, fine, you sign a youngster, they're on a low wage, they start doing well, but they might be on a 5-year contract. But then they're getting kind of courted by Real Madrid, right? And so even though they're on a 5-year contract, they can leave after 2 years because they can say, look, I want to leave, I'm not playing anymore. And so you're right, they get sold. But on these player wage bills, can I just say, to kind of maybe just kind of bring this argument to a close, this is where the problem lies in my view. They're earning too much. And all right, there's arguments around, well, hang on, these individuals are generating huge revenues for these clubs. They should be earning money. So you've got the Ronaldos of this world, right, that are the giants. And okay, fine, he generates a huge amount of revenue for Juventus. But he's earning €900,000 a week. That's €47 million a year. Pay him €1 million less. If you want to run a profitable business, pay him less money. Actually, that £1 million less, that could go to run 5 grassroots children's clubs supporting 2,000 kids playing football for a whole year. There's other— but that's Ronaldo. He's maybe in a different stratosphere. But there's others like Arsenal pay Özil, the German footballer, they pay him £350,000 a week. He hasn't played for 15, 18 months. Just doesn't play. Gets 350 grand a week. Here's the best. Real Madrid are paying Gareth Bale £380,000 a week to play for someone else. He plays for Tottenham, but Real Madrid are paying him 380 grand a week to play for Tottenham. Now, if you think something's broken in football, that's it right there. They need to sort out the wage bill system. And then they can maybe get that house in order and start generating a bit of profit.

Yeah. Well, look, I know we're running on with time. But I think there's some other good points I want to discuss. I think we should just roll with it. Because the other thing here is about— there's two areas I want to talk about, which is online streaming. And to lead us into that, I want to talk about demographics. So going through behavioral patterns of different demographics. So how there's a— perhaps is there a generational difference between how you and I would interact with sport or any product or service to what someone who's 17, 18 would do. And we've seen the emergence of apps that you and I do not use, like Snap or TikTok. Speak for yourself. Well, yeah, well, yeah, you and Gordon Ramsay all over TikTok. Um, but, um, the point I'm leading to is, you know, some stats are that I thought were quite interesting that I've got here. So from that point of view is the amount of young people now that own a smartphone, as you would imagine, in the last couple of years has gone from kind of 70%, 75% to basically 100%. Yeah. Also as well, there's lots of different studies talking about, and I think the Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez, even said this, that basically 40% of 16 to 24-year-olds just aren't interested in football. They don't have the attention span to watch a 90-minute game, particularly if it's like, I don't know, let's say Watford are playing Luton. It's like, how much interest is there in a game like that? And so there's a shift there. And the kind of, I guess, digestion— smartphones, computers, social media, YouTube— short-form aggregator subscription-based models is what's generally emerged here. So shifting that then to how football is consumed at the moment. So if I look at my Sky package, Right, we actually— the business model of Sky is, right, okay, let's break it all up so that actually if you want the all-singing dancing package, it becomes quite expensive because you need cinema, you need sports separate. But for a lot of people, I'm the same, I buy Sky for sport. Yeah, you know, if I want to watch a movie, if I want to watch a documentary, I've got Netflix. Netflix is far better in my humble opinion. But I want the sport. So that's £25 on top of your very basic Sky package, which is basically nothing. Sky Atlantic, I think, of £25. It's £50. Then if you— obviously what we've had, this, this split of the battle of the kind of who runs the Premier League games, BT Sport and Sky. So okay, how much is BT Sport? It's £25. So now it's £75. And then I start looking at someone like Netflix. And I don't know about you, but everyone's got Netflix. It seems almost that way. And it's like, oh, have you seen that thing on Netflix? Or are you watching that thing? The consumption, it's almost like I don't need to wait till every Monday till my favorite episode comes out anymore. And it's that anticipation. It's like, boom, I just blitz a whole series in one weekend. Mentality. So the point here is, is it a problem of accessibility for young people who are basically consuming content in a very different way? And with such available free content of high quality, paying £75 a month for these kind of archaic platforms seems just absolutely redundant. Then you layer in, okay, go to the pub, But then there's stats to say that young people don't really like drinking anymore. Not the way that you and I might have done many years ago when we were coming up. There's actually stats to prove that. It's at the lowest level pretty much it's ever been. And that's part of that culture that we were very comfortable and we enjoyed that kind of matchday environment. But has that gone? So I guess what I'm moving to here is Netflix. Let's talk about investment opportunities in Netflix and Amazon. With Netflix, I did some reading. I was like, why aren't they in sports? Anyway, surely that's just a go-to place for growth, particularly with a company. We've had Netflix earnings this week. Shares dropped like a stone. That doesn't scare me at all because I think if you look at their share price, it's gone up phenomenally. It's had a phenomenal story through the pandemic, obviously on the initial lockdown. So some normalizing I think is of the order there to a certain degree. But the thing that's worrying for Netflix is growth. Everything's weighted on subscriber growth. Now investors, markets expect, how do you keep that moving north? From a Netflix point of view, from what I read, what they said was two points here. One is, as we know, they spend billions of dollars on new original content. That's almost a draw for them. That's what's really changing the landscape for all production studios and everything. So that's one thing. They commit already a roadmap of expenditure, which means it's very difficult for them to then enter and change direction. And the second thing is that their head of content said, what can we offer with sport? It's a match, right? You can film it from a different angle, but it's the same thing, right, that you're trying to broadcast. So it's not uniquely different there. However, If they did go into that realm, let's say, because we know they like to spend money, Netflix, isn't there an opportunity there for them to tap into a market that would be global in a sense? And particularly if for them, they're not the football club, they're a company looking for aggressive expansion and they want to then tap into these foreign shore markets where there is growth potential. How do you feel about the potential for a Netflix in this type of scenario to get involved?

I think it's definitely inevitable. I think that when you talk about Sky and paying 50, 75 quid a month, I was talking to you earlier, it feels a bit like Sky— to watch sport through your Sky subscription, it feels a little bit like owning a Nokia phone. I think it's like, what? Really? Why are we still doing that? And I think Amazon Prime have really come into the picture. And now you can watch some Premier League games. But I guess the problem for a football fan is the games are now divided up across a whole bunch of platforms. So you need Sky, or you need BT Sport, or you need Amazon Prime, or whatever. But when it comes to cost, I mean, 75 quid for Sky per month, or £7.99 for Netflix or £7.99 for Amazon, the price differential is just dramatic. And that's why Sky, in the end, they're kind of dying a slow death, I would suggest, when it comes to sport. And this Amazon coming into this arena is just the very beginning. And I'm very sure Netflix will sort it out. The problem is, especially with football, there's a huge barrier to entry with regards to the cost of these television rights. And as you're saying, as a business like Netflix, you're mapping out revenue spend— I'm sorry, spend over the next X number of years, and you've got all this content you want to produce. And then if you want to slap in football, that's going to— that's another huge kind of cost that at the moment I don't think they can afford. But I think it's in— it's got to be in their long-term plans. And right then you get it into a format that is more consumable for our, you know, the new younger generations. But in terms of like some sports have We've seen it. Some sports have changed up the way it's packaged and actually changed up the sport in many ways to try and generate more interest in it. So you've had things like the IPL, that's the Indian Premier League cricket. You've had things like— Superset tennis. The Superset, that's what you were talking to me about. Superset tennis, where you get all the big guns together and they play one set in one afternoon. They all play off and you get 250 grand, was it, for the winner or something? Anyway, so you've had sports, and you've had darts change things up. You've had snooker change things up, and many others. But these are all sports that have been dying a bit of a death, whereby the— cricket's a good example, where young people don't want to go and sit and watch a cricket match for 5 days. And then it's a draw. They want bang, bang, bang, bang. 4 hours, winner, someone wins a trophy, there's an MVP, and all this kind of stuff. It needs to be jazzed up to recapture interest. Football doesn't have that problem, or certainly not— I know the Real Madrid president's saying that younger people are watching it less. And I get that. But it's nowhere near the same problem. The size of the problem is nowhere near what these other small— let's call them smaller sports have had. But I'm not saying there isn't room to change things up. But I don't think you can say to football, the footballing world, instead of 90-minute and it's 5-a-side, and it's 10 minutes each half, and then the winner gets $250 million. Look, it's 90 minutes. It's 45 minutes each way. I don't think you should change that. So I think Netflix coming in— and look, I get what they're saying. How can we make this— how can we freshen it up and make it different? Sky did that. In 1992, by the way. And that was from the analysis side of the game. Many different camera angles and many more ways to analyze what's happening. So I don't know whether we can go to a whole new level on that front. Sky did try 3D. They had some 3D matches. This was like 3 or 4 years ago now. And it kind of just seemed like an interesting concept. But then it kind of died away. So I don't know whether any Netflix or Amazon can come through with innovation in terms of how it's brought to the living room and how it gets analyzed. But there's got to be some room there.

Yeah, the other thing I was— as this conversation's progressed, the thing about Amazon is that, you know, at the core they're an e-commerce platform. And then if you were talking about a global game and you've got this direct, smooth ecosystem from point of match through to sponsorship, through to then the rights, to then the purchasing of goods. That seems like quite a tasty proposition if you could position yourself accordingly.

Now we're talking, you see. That's the kind of deal Netflix should be looking for. They should be looking to partner with clubs like Man United. And it's a sponsorship partnership where not only are they televising games, but then there's right there, click and— or Amazon's a better example, I guess, in terms of the e-commerce. Right there, there's like, you've got all your fans in Asia, and they're watching the match. Action alongside the screen is, do you want to buy your Pogba shirt?

Right, he scores a goal. Yeah, right.

Yeah. That'll be $80, thanks. Perfect. So I think that's where it should go. And I'm sure these executives at Amazon and Netflix, I'm sure this is on their radar. If it's not and they end up using our idea, we do want to cut out the action. But that's probably where football is going next.

Yeah, no, the, the final point, um, I'll add is that what was interesting is when I was looking at some of the research over a typical, um, Chinese consumer, a football fan, what was interesting is that because they do not have that, as you described, that community cultural tie to a club, it's not uncommon, like with probably any non-fan, more sports fan, is that let's say if I was to say to you Or let's take myself. What basketball shirts do I own now? Now that I'm not so into the sport as I was when I was young. So, okay, I've got a Steph Curry Warriors shirt. I got a LeBron Miami Heat shirt. And I've got a Larry Bird Boston Celtics shirt. Showing my age a little bit. But the point being is that this is quite common in a globalized non-locality marketplace where people support characters, individuals, and they're willing to go cross-party. Imagine if you just walked into one of the local pubs outside the Tottenham Stadium with your Arsenal shirt on. You wouldn't come out of there alive. You wouldn't even be intact, probably. But that doesn't matter, obviously, when you're talking about, let's say, Chinese market. So one of the things that was quite interesting I was looking at was how many times multiple could you then start hitting new markets when we were looking at the commercial aspect? And it was quite compelling.

But do you need a European Super League to achieve that? Why can't you achieve that?

I guess this feeds into then that whole, does Anthony Cheung, living in Beijing, Chinese Anthony, want to watch, right, Reading versus Man United.

Okay, yeah, well, if it matters and Man United need the 3 points to win the title or need the 3 points to finish 4th and get in the Champions League next season, then it doesn't matter who they're playing.

But then Paris Saint-Germain have got XYZ and I want to see them because they're superstars and because I use Instagram And I really like the way he is, and he hangs out, and the tattoos he's got, and what he wears, and he hangs out with Drake.

Yeah. Well, talking of Drake, very quick— I mean, we're way over time here. But look, talking about Drake, he's just invested in Overtime. Oh, yeah. Along with Bezos and others. This is a US company that's done a deal to broadcast children's— or, well, 16 to 18-year-old basketball. Like for Netflix, I think that's quite interesting. If I was Netflix, I'd be going to the Premier League clubs, and I'd be saying, I'm going to cut you a deal. I'll televise your under-18s league. OK? I'll televise that. I'll pay you some money. Maybe you can pay those kids a bit more money as well. But that's their way in. That's their route into football. It's actually bringing a new product that currently isn't really readily available. So can I finish on the very— I talked about my banana man meme. There's one other really good one, because this was hilarious, right? This European Super League, all these big guys, yeah, we're ready, it's going to go, this is going to be amazing. And then it's like, oh, sorry, we're pulling out. And the best analogy I saw was it was like the guys organizing a lads' night out before they then ask permission from their wife.

Yeah. And then, as inevitable always is the case— sorry, show's over. And on that note, the show is over. So yeah, a little bit longer, but obviously a really interesting and quite emotive topic, so we thought we'd thrash it out. We'll be back on Point, obviously, to talk a little bit more. Trading market related. Obviously, there's been a Biden tax proposal that's been particularly interesting. We can really get into that next week. But thanks for listening, Piers. Good stuff. Enjoy your weekend. See you next week. All right, take care. Thanks, everyone.