 This episode of the podcast is supported by Audible. You can download and listen to the world's best storytelling. I use it all the time to and from work. You can listen to audiobooks, original series and more on their free app. To get your free 30 day subscription, which includes a free book, click on the link in our show notes and enjoy. Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. Today I had a great conversation with an old friend of mine called Daniel G who has become one of the UK's and most highly respected sports lawyers. And he focus on football and his clients are great. They're like Premier League footballers, agents, clubs and he's the guy involved in all of the contracts with the players and clubs. Really, really interesting. He's got some crazy stories. And we had a really good conversation about how the games changed, broadcasters and what effect they've had on football and social media, all of those things. And of course, how you become a football lawyer, which if you wanna be a lawyer, football law's pretty cool. So we speak about that. And he's just done a book called Dundeeal, which is really cool. I'm listening to it on Audible and you can click the link in the show notes later. Enjoy. Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Cool, we're live. Daniel, thank you very much for coming in. Pleasure, thanks for having me. Pleasure. We were just saying it's been maybe 10, 12 years since we saw each other last. It's making me feel old. I definitely had more hair. I had spare time. I didn't have as many kids or a wife, but actually we were talking about kids' schools and stuff. And that's how we've progressed in life. I know, it's sad. It's sad. I don't know what happened. I'm just about holding onto my hair. I also have kids. I also got married. Crazy, crazy. Look, I've been tracking your progress remotely for a while and you seem to be doing some really great stuff. Thank you. It's like anything really. I remember when I was even at uni and then when we all moved down to London together, the aim was to try and get into the sports industry, to work in football more generally, to do the things that you like doing and are quite passionate and you enjoy learning about and lucky enough, the long-term project as a subcontractor. So you never made it as a professional footballer? Unfortunately, I don't think that was ever going to be on the books. My best claim to thin on football was getting a trial with Ford FC Motors. Ford FC? Literally, that was about it. It's better than me. I always wanted to be a professional footballer but I broke my leg when I was about 10. Yeah, that was the end of it. Is that an excuse? That was the end of a very promising career. So I had to focus on study, which wasn't very good either. How did you end up getting into the football industry? Beginning of my book, actually, the foreword's all about how a lot of us are big football sports fans. And this is Dundeele. This is Dundeele, the book. So, and a lot of the foreword is just literally about how I gained an interest or a passion or just, I guess, a little bit of session into football and wanting to know about how things will work on the pitch, off the pitch. And, you know, we all consume content in lots of different ways. Back in the day, as you well know, it was a couple of pages in the newspaper about the particular team that you supported. And up in Liverpool, it was the Liverpool Echo. It was a little bit of transfer news or something. And after that, that sort of sparked my interest. After that, it was teletext and CFAQs. We had a few pages to be able to read after literally running home from school every day to see what the latest news is. And then, I'm not sure if you remember as well, my dad was completely obsessed with these club call phone lines where you phoned up a number of like two pounds a minute and then you've got the latest snippet of what was going on or otherwise. So, yeah, dad spent fortunes on that and then actually became the early adopter of the internet and team talk and the rest because he realized that actually it was a lot cheaper to go on the internet than it was to phone these lines. So, this long and short story of it is, you know, that sparked my interest, the need for information, the need for content, the need just to know what was going on, really. And then from university, from doing a law degree, I was able in my third year to do a dissertation on the Bosman ruling, free transfer side of things, EU, free movement issues, and then a master's degree in football broadcasting rights. And this was what you needed to get in? In Manchester. So, did that and then came down to London in 2005 and the idea then was to try. You trained up in Manchester? No, trained in down and I did my LPC, which is lower school in Chester and then moved down to do my two years training contract in London and literally told everyone I knew and bored everyone to pieces about the football and sports stuff that I knew and wanted to do and any time there was any football or sports related stuff, you know, the partners knew that I was the one at least to get involved because I half knew I was talking about. Nice, so you really put yourself out there? Exactly, and that was the way really and that's what happened after my two years at Jones Day. I went to Field Fish in my previous firm that I was there for about eight years and the idea was that whenever it wasn't really a strategic plan at the time because I didn't really have the network that a lot of more established lawyers had but it was anytime there was a piece of football work or anytime there was some sports stuff going on, I would literally whenever the conflict checks came in which was to say, can we act for this person against this person or this company against this company? I would just email the lawyer and say, I'd love to get involved in this and that led to some really cool takeover work with quite a few different clubs, led some really nice interesting advisory work and then that built towards what I do more of now which is talent work, which is helping agents and players with all of their legal needs, I guess. Crazy, you must have heard some brilliant stories. Lots, I can't tell. Are you doing all this over WhatsApp now? You must have done like, what, facts back in the day? Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, everyone still thinks faxes take place and things that happen on that which just isn't really the case anymore. I mean, I listened to, I phoned someone up the other day and their answer machine message was if you want to send a fax, send it to this number, I was like, what, people still send faxes these days? So, yeah, I mean, ultimately a lot of the stuff like in your business and like in everyone's business, is 24 seven, 365 days a year and it is three in the morning if you've got a US client, it is demanding stuff on occasion at particular times of the year, deadline day being one, even though that depends on the business of particular things, but also people needing instant responses to quite difficult conversations or quite difficult topics sometimes and sometimes the instant answer isn't usually the right answer, sometimes it needs to be considered a bit more. And what's it been like? Is it what you expected when you entered the sports world? It's pretty demanding is the truth. Holly, my wife and my kids have to be pretty understanding on occasion just because we had a few summers ago when the transfer window kept on going till the end of the month. It was a bit silly for me to go away during August, but that was the time that we had. So it used to be the whole of August? It used to be the whole of August, at least for the Premier League and the championship and now it's sort of the window closed but then the Thursday before the first game of the season. And so I would constantly, for those couple of years, two or three years, have deals to do where you get a call from the agents, you're literally on the beach, maybe you've had a beer or two already at lunchtime and then you're like, right, the deal's gonna be done in the next 24 hours. So it can be quite reactionary, a little bit pressurised, but that's the nature of the game and there's a lot of the time I'll still pinch myself to say, you're like, I'm doing something that a lot of people would be really jealous, is wrong with really like, love to do and to get involved in more. And so your clients are the agents or the players or the clubs? Exactly, they tend to be more agents and players because if I work with too many clubs, then I'll be conflicted when I do transfers particularly. Yes, there's many more players than clubs. Exactly, and usually because the volume of them, the work that comes in from players and agents is usually, maybe not as high value, but is usually high volume. So there's a lot more players and a lot more agents doing transactions if it's a transfer, but also if something's gone wrong, they've tweeted something they shouldn't have done, maybe they've had a red card, maybe they've been disciplined by the club, maybe there's a story going up in the press, maybe they need some social media training, maybe they actually just even need to buy a house or golf a bit again, divorced or something. So they're about to like tweet that they hate their manager, but they run it by you first. Well, actually the truth about this, we work with quite a lot of digital agencies that work with sports, men and women and talent who will mainly do that social media communication on behalf of the player or will draft particular statements or phrases or things and then give the player the option of which one they want to go with with the associated pictures and the rest and even more broadly, a lot of these very good agencies are mapping out a creative brand picture for these players one to five years out really in order to be able to for those players to engage the brands that they want to for whatever reason that might be, maybe they love their fashion, maybe they actually loved the environment, maybe it is because they have particular causes that they feel very strongly about. Interesting. So how sounds like it's changed a lot but how's the game changed since you started? And this has been what, 15 years? Yeah, I mean, the truth and more actually, I mean, I came down to yeah, 15, 16, yeah, 15 years. In the beginning, I guess, well, there's a few things. Ultimately, initially I was, I wasn't doing as much player and agency work so I was doing takeover work. So we worked on a number of pretty high profile deals back in the day. So in a way, for me, I wasn't really the main client partners. I wasn't the one dealing, sometimes on the sharp end of particular things. And as I've become more senior, then you sort of have to understand how to manage clients, their expectations, responsiveness and their ability to be able to tell people sometimes what they don't want to hear as well as the truth. And so if things have changed, I think ultimately with technology and the communication phenomenon, if the way I describe it, it's all changed in terms of expectation management. Everybody expects everything now or yesterday. And a lot of the time, some of my important principles are not necessarily that you can't give instantaneous answers to things, but sometimes the best answer isn't the quickest. There's an idea about being responsive and dedicated and being available when it's necessary, especially for emergencies, et cetera. But everybody becomes very demanding because they think there are easy answers. But the truth is when it's probably got to a lawyer, that the answer probably isn't that easy anymore as the truth. And also, I mean, the other bit just very briefly is, I'm in an industry where as much as people know that they need to use lawyers, sometimes they don't actually understand what lawyers are doing for the benefit of them, the agents or the players. So just to give one brief example, we were helping negotiate a deal a couple of summers ago and the deal, I actually held up the deal for four hours, not intentionally because that's what I wanted to do, but because the selling club hadn't given us comfort on a particular thing. And then the email hadn't come through, so I had said to the agent, it was like, right, we're gonna announce the deal, the press release is ready to go, et cetera, et cetera. So I was like, no, we're not doing anything and the players definitely not signing the contract until I get that email from the club saying, this bit is taken care of and all right. And he was like, okay, that's fine. And the hours go on, the hours go on and the buying club is going absolutely ballistic with me for saying why can't we announce? And so anyway, it gets sorted in the end, but ultimately a lot of the stuff that is most important for me is to try and explain to players and agents why a particular clause or why a particular phrase of wording actually is very important. And that can sometimes be a difficult job because they actually just want the deal over the line and want things done. Why I find really interesting is that it seems to be unique to football, but if you wanna leave a job, you can resign and you give your notice period, done. Whereas in football, I mean, they're beholden to their contract. If you don't wanna play, go sit in the reserves and on the bench, how did that come about? It's a really good point. So there have been quite a few cases actually about this specific area, which is what happens if a player decides he no longer wants to play for the club anymore. Can that player terminate his contract and can he just leave on a free transfer and then decide to sign with another club with no transfer free and then take all effectively, then take a higher wage because there's no transfer fee involved. There's been cases and I can provide the links to it if necessary, there's some really interesting CAS cases. Yeah, we'll stick it in the show next to me. Yeah, which is the court of arbitration for sport and there've been cases called Webster, Matusalem, DeSantis, Diara and all of those cases are to do with players deciding to breach their contract and leave for a variety of different reasons. And then the club that had the registration and had the employment contract suing the player and the new club for lots of things, but mainly the remaining value of his transfer fee. And that's what happened if you remember with Adrian Mutu back in the day. Yeah, yeah, I remember, yeah. So he was sacked for snorting cocaine, moved to eventually Uve and went to Italy as well, went to Italy and then moved between Uve and another Lonie club. And Chelsea came after Uve and I think it was Livorno I think for the remaining value of his transfer fee because they said that Chelsea's loss because they were able to sack him because he'd repeatedly breached his contract was the remaining transfer fee. Also the agent's commission that wasn't paid and other associated costs now, that's always then the risk. And I'm not saying- And they won? Well, they never, so to date they haven't actually been able to get their money either from Uve, Livorno I think or Mutu is the truth, but- So they won in court, but- They won in court, but well, they know actually the latest case was actually that the two Italian clubs were not liable for the transfer fee. Now I'm not sure where they can go now with that, but the overall point is, yeah, we're not living in the normal employment world of just being able to give a few months notice. Because we're looking at, I mean, looking at Gareth Bale at the moment, you know, and the guys obviously falling out with sedan or not being played for whatever reason clearly wants to move, but unable to because he's so expensive. So his options are limited, right? You sit there and- Well, there's probably about three or four different options. The first is yes to stay put, to try and get his chance when potentially there are more injuries. Like I remember chatting on CNN a while back, which was I remember when Beckham was around Madrid, frozen out by Capello, but then decides to knuckle down and they had a great second half of the season when there were a few injuries. And then he had a great end of his year before he then went to the galaxy, I think. So, you know, things change very quickly in football. Injuries, a change of manager even, you know, the political situation at Madrid is not straightforward. The other option always is, you know, effectively to take a pay cut and play, but ultimately, you know, we're in that phase now where there are a number, it's actually quite an interesting outlier situation where we're in a phase where there are a number of very high profile players that ideally may, would like to move club. We're talking about Bale, Neymar, Hogba came out even this week after the game saying, you know, the situation isn't particularly easy. Even Sahar wanted to move? Yeah, and, you know, there were rumors about in Bapé as well. So, you know, it's an interesting position where there are a lot of very highly paid, high profile players that have been unsettled this summer, but the truth is there are only a number of very, well, elite clubs that can want to afford those players. And two, you know, sometimes those type of players are a little bit mercurial and maybe actually that upsets the dressing room dynamic in different ways. So is this, it's interesting so the power really lies with the club here? Well, in that particular case, it looks like it was to a degree because Bale was rumoured to be close to signing with for a Chinese club. And then Perez, quite close to when the deal was about to happen, then pulled back and said, no, unless you pay us a transfer fee as well, then we're not going anywhere. Is that because I've heard, I'd correct my room, but in China, the club has about 100% in taxes. That's what I read, transfer tax, which is obviously a huge number. So they then can't afford to then pay the fee on top? Well, yeah, ultimately it goes to a slightly wider point, which is on any type of club transaction that the buying club has a finite pot of money is the truth. And that's usually for transfer fee, for agents commission, for wages, for bonuses and the like relocation costs, et cetera. So ultimately the pot is what the pot is if the Chinese club have budgeted X amount of money for the transfer of Gareth Bale. And suddenly someone puts an extra 40 million pounds on top. It's basically the equivalent of chipping is the truth. You know, just before you're about to exchange in a house and the buyer, the seller just saying, actually we want X number, or depending on the negotiation position, the buyer saying, actually I'm not willing to accept that for the following reasons. So, you know, in the end, football is a bit of an outlive, but it's still, you know, commercial bargaining power in different ways. And are you doing a lot of international work or have you been focusing on like Premier League, UK, so what? Well, it depends actually. So usually if a player is signing a foreign employment contract, so in Holland, Germany, Belgium, whatever it may be, then because each national jurisdiction has its own employment laws, I will advise that there should be local employers, local employment lawyers that should get involved in those type of deals. Now I can obviously help based on my experience of what I've seen in lots of different contracts to be able to say what to put in, what to maybe avoid, what to clarify, et cetera. Usually my experience is when players are renegotiating their contracts in the UK, usually Premier League and EFL, and then also when foreign players and their agents are coming in, are transferring in to the UK simply because I'm at UK Qualcomm, English and Wales Qualified Lawyer, and that's sort of where my expertise probably lies the best. What effect have you seen with the financial fair play? That's been interesting. I went camping on the weekend, had a good chat with a friend of mine called Mark, he's a Leicester City fan, and he feels it's actually, they'd probably do better without it, and so it's quite interesting. Well, there's a number of interesting levers generally. So prior to the regs coming in 2012, I think it was now at least the UEFA regulations because there are Premier League and EFL iterations as well as similar rules in slightly different ways. You know, the UEFA Benchmarking Report, which is the financial report that gets circulated every year, which I'd recommend this and listen to if they're interested in what read rather, if people are interested in the financial aspects of football. The trajectory of losses was quite astronomical, so cumulative club losses in that particular season were 1.7 billion euros. Wow, wow. Now fast forward seven years on, and actually you're having potentially cumulative profit for the first time across European club competitions. And that's very much one of the stats that I was researching for Dundeele was to have a look pre and post financial fair play rule implementation, and actually then the domestic regulations as well. And you know, it's actually now the outlier for Premier League clubs to make losses is the truth. So a couple of seasons ago now, 18 out of the 20 clubs, Premier League clubs made profit. Now there were a few other levers for that. One is obviously increased cost control, i.e. on the financial fair play rules side. The Premier League rules on the, what's called the short-term cost control rules, which have actually just been removed now, which basically said that you couldn't spend seven million pounds more on wages than you did in the previous season. That was one of the regulations that was previously in place. But the other obviously on the revenue generation side is the huge broadcasting deals. And you've had two, three big cycles now, flat growth for domestic revenues recently. But still, you know, the modeling from, there's a great guy on Twitter and a great blogger called SwissRamble, and he wrote some great pieces on what he expects the new broadcasting deal to reach for each particular club for next season. And he was of the view that he thought that probably the winners of the Premier League next year will earn upwards of 170 million pounds. And the bottom place team will be near enough 100 million pounds. Whereas this year, it was around 150 to 95 or so. What about the gap between, I mean, you've actually probably got top six, let's say. But without some of the clubs below being able to spend and invest on players, do you see that gap remaining? Well, how are they gonna? It's an interesting one. I read, I watched, sorry, I watched, I listened to a really interesting podcast which said that the rules of the game have changed a bit in terms of transfers, which is, you know, 20, is actually Gary Neville was talking on the podcast, he wasn't just random guy. And he was saying, you know, in years gone by, you know, Crystal Palace wouldn't be able to afford to reject 70 million pounds for Wilford Zaha, for example. You know, the top players in the league in any one season would tend to move to the top clubs. The difference now is, is that anyone outside of the top six can afford to keep their player if they can keep, if they psychologically, you know, I guess from a retention point of view can actually keep them happy by paying them more money. The thing is though, if Zaha goes and you have no one to replace him, you're gonna have to spend 70 million, maybe you've got someone coming up. And, you know, the sheer, you know, if you go down to the championship, I mean, the amount of money you lose, it's super hard to get back. It's true, and this is the other thing that I mentioned in the book as well, which is, you know, it's totally crackers to me. I mean, I can understand the economics to some degree, but you take one basaka and Zaha potentially and value them at, let's just say, 130 million pounds. Crystal Palace, I mean, I don't know, but let's just say maybe their, its value as a club would maybe be 200 million or 250 million, let's just say, if we're talking bullish numbers. You know, in what industry anywhere in the world would you have potentially money flow from two employees almost equaling half of the actual value of a particular company? It's crazy. It just doesn't happen. I know, but then to replace them, I mean, you're gonna have to spend near enough the same. Well, I mean, that's the other thing that's changed, actually, if we go back to one of the bits that you mentioned a while back, which is there are a lot of very interesting data analytics consultancy companies that have been involved in the football industry for a number of years. One of the takeovers that we did a few years ago, I'll mention to the guys at 21st Club that are brilliant. They did a fantastic on-field piece to do on-field due diligence piece. And that was basically looking at the value of the squad, looking at the combinations of particular players, looking how, from a legacy perspective, whether the squad was aging, whether actually a lot of investment would be needed inside a particular period of time, who were the best player combinations within a squad, who were the most valuable guys that maybe were overvalued and might be susceptible to move on, et cetera. So the interesting thing on the takeover side, as much as the player and agency side is, firstly, there's a lot more interesting DD going on, especially when players are being bought and sold, for example, and... So all the analytics, on-field, passing, running. Exactly, there's a great book I just finished reading called Data Hackers, which is all about that, all about the data-driven side of the football business now. And actually, the psychological and physiological side of things, there was a brilliant chapter about the psychoanalysis of footballers. So there's a few clubs in particular territories now that require their players to fill in questionnaires and have psychometric tests done in order to understand what type of character traits they exhibit in order then to be able to work out to the particular mix of characters within a squad that's necessary for an optimal outcome. It's great, and we do that for all leadership roles. Most companies, when hiring, do that. And when you're looking at spending however many million a year on salaries, I mean, it's vital. I'd be worried to see which one I fall within. God knows what I'm... But yeah, I was looking at the modeling, I was like, I'd probably fall in between about two or three categories in some ways, but that's my own self-awareness. They're interesting, but the psychometric tests are really, really accurate. I mean, I've done quite a few, and although I don't want to sometimes, I really identify myself within these. And they're used as part of the decision-making process and stuff, and also I guess the managers can use them for development and get in the mindset right. Yeah, and also, interestingly, in this case, it was everybody was told about each other's category. So then people would understand the makeup of someone else, so then they would be able to go, so they were broken up into different color categories, more or less, so they would say, if you're red, you know that if you're arguing with the blue, it's not gonna benefit them. What you actually need to do is be more conciliatory in a particular way. And then in some ways, then the discussion was about whether you had too many blue categories in a team lineup in a particular day because that might lead to a particular type of outcome. It's brilliant, I've done a company session on that, and there's quite a few. It's like you get blue, green, yellow, red. The interesting thing is you learn about yourself, but then you learn how to communicate more effectively with your team members. And for football, I mean, that's awesome. I love that. Are they addressing you when they go through that? Yeah, I don't know how many actually do it at the top level, but in the end, the other point is that managers now, as much as we either vilify or congratulate them on their tactical acumen or awareness and particular substitutions or whatever, ultimately more than ever, they are having to become fantastic man managers at particular times. And I think as much as there are very hard jobs in life, that is a very hard job in being able to juggle 25, 26, very successful sportsmen in order to move them towards a one collective goal, because in some ways, football can be a very selfish industry. I don't mean that from a controversial perspective, but ultimately, you know, footballers are giving up most of their lives for the pursuit of glory, for the pursuit of something more, for the pursuit of doing something which will obviously have an impact on them, their family and sort of the legacy, I guess. Yeah, yeah. How have you seen broadcasters change football? Well, because that must be... Yeah, fundamentally, here's the truth. I mean, we can go backwards and then we can go forwards. I mean, you know, it's back to 92 with the actual, I guess, first incarnation of the Premier League as it was, money not being shared in as much of an egalitarian way, the top leagues taking more of the lion's share, being able then to be able to invest more significantly in player transfer wages, you know, stadium and infrastructure upgrades, et cetera, to the situation we're in now where we have, globally, a £9.2 billion revenue model. Is this the Premier League? For just live Premier League rights, which is extraordinary. So this is global rights? Correct. And so when we've seen quite an uplift in the non-UK rights, we've actually seen quite a... Well, I think it was a 7% decrease in the amount that BT, Sky and now Amazon are paid for those rights for this season and the next two seasons coming. So, you know, are the amounts still absolutely huge? Yes. Has there been sort of flat line growth for domestic rights? Yes. Are they sort of at their peak quite possibly within the subscription model that we're seeing now? The question mark is, and I've said this on a few podcasts, to be fair, and to a lot of people is, you know, there's a few interesting things happening at the moment. The first is, you know, someone was telling me yesterday one of the partners at Sheridan's was actually telling me that Netflix and Amazon Prime have over... I think it's Amazon Prime. It's definitely Netflix, I think it's Amazon Prime. Have overtaken BBC2 and Channel 4 as the third and fourth most watched platforms in the UK. Wow. By hours streamed or hours watched. Now, it's maybe more difficult to be... I can believe that. Yeah, it makes sense with binge viewing and everything else that I do, I know, on particular programs as well. So, there is... And viewing habits for younger generations are changing exponentially now, which leads to a number of interesting questions, which is the subscription model, the Sky subscription model, the BT subscription model becoming more outmoded and outdated. Now, the outlier is everybody still wants to watch live Premier League football, which keeps everyone on those platforms. But there's lots of cord cutting generations now that don't subscribe to a monthly package that will happily pay, I can't remember, £8 or £9 for Netflix a month now. I have Amazon Prime as well to be able to get my... For me and my Mrs to be able to get our packages the next day, et cetera, et cetera. Do you have a Sky subscription as well? I do have a Sky subscription as well. BT Sports here? I don't have that on my phone, at least because it's cheaper with EE, so I just watch it on my phone sometimes. But yeah, and I think we're getting to that saturation point in a way, and I think a lot of the younger generations, if not us, maybe we're the lost generation of feeling more comfortable about watching Sky and Sky Sports, for example, on a big TV where my younger cousins and everyone else, no one's watching football on a television anymore is the truth, and that's only, I think, gonna grow. And the reason why I give all of that background is because I think sooner or other than later, there will be a push from the Premier League, you wait for already doing it, to provide a OTT and over the top, internet-enabled live football product. Oh, really? I think that is the inevitability. Well, even what I mean is that there's no coincidence that the type of chief executive that the Premier League were looking at over a particular period of time to replace Mr. Scudamore was a broadcasting OTT executive. Now that obviously hasn't necessarily ended up being the case, but I think what will certainly happen or there's definite moves towards actually the Premier League taking back its product and deciding to broadcast it on its own channel for a subscription-based, basically the Netflix of the football industry. Interesting, maybe, yeah. Well, you see, like, I watch a lot of UFC. They've now partnered with ESPN. They work with Fox. So, I mean, the other argument is, focus on what you're good at. Develop the product and let other people distribute it. Because you have Disney coming into the market now. You've got Netflix, Amazon. I actually use Virgin. And I have, I do pay for Sky Sports. I pay for BT Sports. I also, I have an Amazon Prime too. And up until last week, we have Netflix, but I thought, you know, I've got too many things. So, I cancel the Netflix. But I don't often watch TV in my living room in front of my TV because I've got kids and I rarely get, like, the 90 minutes to sit. So, I'm watching on my phone a lot, mobile devices. And most younger people I speak to, they don't even have a Sky or Virgin subscription. It's quite expensive. And it's also, I think there's a bigger thing which is sort of the disaggregation of television, which is, you know, everyone wants things on demand. And for the things that you can't have on demand, then, you know, you want that, you want to be able to then have easy access to be able to watch that particular program. And, you know, the truth is that I don't really, I don't watch any of the Sky programs. No, I don't watch anything. I don't really watch the movies that often. So, going back to the first point about what's changed and what will change, you know, back in 1992, the Sky executive said that Premier League football would be the battering round for their satellite TV services. It's still the case. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This amount of time on because, you know, I think there would be a, and Sky, I am sure, realized this, which is there would be a huge audience switch off if suddenly either the Premier League decided to take back its rights to do it themselves or they didn't get the lion's share of those rights full stop. Yeah, the problem at the moment, I was speaking to a few friends the other day about it, is if I want to watch Premier League football, I have to, all of the games, as many as you can, you have to do Sky Sports and BT. Yep, and Amazon now, for this year. And Amazon, so it's crazy. So it's like three platforms in the UK, all pretty expensive. It's crazy. You don't know what to, you've got now TV, but that's just a Sky Sports pass, I think. Yeah, so you buy that on a daily basis, basically. Day pass or, yeah. So at the moment, it seems to be a little just fragmenting. Yeah, and you know, I wrote about this actually in my broadcasting master's dissertation back in the day in 2003, which was, you know, the competition authorities at the time believed that that competition between broadcasters was actually beneficial for the consumer. But the ultimate fallacy of that is that actually when you don't have one product that, sorry, when you have one product that is then split rather than a number of whole products that then others can compete on, in the end you get a fragmented product rather than a complete product in order to compete on. So I'd always argued for some time that the best way to satisfy consumer demand is to have one full Premier League product which has all of the games available and then sell that to the top three broadcasters and let them compete on price rather than the exclusivity model which they went with which was exclusive package, exclusive package, exclusive package and then we'll sell exclusive packages which are the differentiator to different broadcasters. The ultimate problem from a consumer welfare perspective is your triplicating, that word, the costs where otherwise you could otherwise compete on price for a whole product just in separate ways. Yeah, interesting. And you'd have three in the UK. So you're Amazon, you're BT and you're Sky. And so might just be a basic level that you don't get all of the associated bells and whistles with and Gary Neville and Carragher whether you like them or not. Or yeah, no Jose or the opposite where you have 3D, brilliant angles, fantastic commentary and great content, et cetera. I think it'll be hard for the Premier League to take that all of that back. I mean, you're student 9.7 billion. I mean, generating that on their own, tough. I agree and I think what will likely happen, you wait for doing it on particular territories, from particular territories. You'll see the move by the women's football league, the WSL, which is just women's football league who have just entered the FA, just entered an agreement with the provider to have all of the games streamed live over the internet apart from some games that BT sports have. So that would be available for anyone to be able to access on the internet. I think it will be an incremental approach from the Premier League, which is for particular territories maybe for the next cycle. They may actually say we're going to partner with a technology provider or a back-end provider for a particular jurisdiction, Singapore or Thailand or whatever else. Yeah, and then just say we are going to have a Premier League channel that is available for subscription for anyone in that particular territory to be able to buy those games rather than through the broadcaster. And let's see what happens. Yeah, and I love that. I love that. How's social, probably the last big thing we speak about. Social media. You mentioned it a little bit at the beginning. Obviously that's really accelerated the last five, 10 years. Have you seen that have an effect with player scrutiny, content, et cetera? Risk reward is always there. It's always there. I mean, from my perspective, there's always one word which always springs to mind, which is, and it's not a sexy word, but it's compliance is the truth. From a social media perspective, there are always going to be people generally in every different industry that are going to mess up and say something on social media they shouldn't do. Andre Gray, for example, when a couple of years ago when he transferred into Burnley, scored a goal against Liverpool, Clever Journalist decided to do a search back for his whole Twitter timeline, found some pretty horrific tweets that he'd said a few year homophobic tweets. He said, FA retrospectively ban him as a result. So yes, in a way, technology can always be used as we very much well know in the wider that never before can you get as close to a player. There are lots of players. We work with some great ones that have a very definitive view alongside their marketing and comms and branding teams, et cetera. And sometimes that might be all the same company to say, I'm not in this for the short term. I'm not in this just to find some short term brand deals. What I'm here to do is to actually put across an authentic point of view about whatever it might be, conservationism or about fashion or about design or about veganism or whatever else it may be. And then I'm gonna work backwards from there, which is I'm gonna put out content that I want to do that should sign posts to particular brands and particular good causes that I want to be associated with that that is my down to earth authentic perspective that I want on things. And that's the good joined up approach to social and brand alignment and everything else that comes with it. But most people are interested in that. They're interested in this guy slagging off this guy and all the venom you get on. Well, and this is the other bit that I, again, I mentioned in Dundee a little bit, which is this whole shard and Freud. I think everybody wants authenticity. Everyone wants to know what someone is really like. But as soon as anybody says something that isn't the bland worn out platitudes that every footballer or every celebrity more or less says because they're scared to death of saying something that actually might cause a fence or maybe a little bit out of the ordinary. Everybody goes crackers. You know, talk about Linn Guard, Miami, wherever it was when it was in the US hotel video that went a bit viral. I'm like, just a normal guy that's been on holiday that's got a messy hotel room that's just messing around with his pals. Now I'm always at the view that I would prefer football as celebrities, whoever it is in the public eye to be a little bit more pragmatic about what they want to say. But everybody's scared to death of saying something because they know as soon as anything happens they'll be jumped on. And, you know, in the end, ultimately we'll retreat back to their safe zone because they know that actually that process of saying something they might feel or mean isn't worth it. Same as Ronaldo briefly, like he's obviously in a position to be able to do it. I remember when Portugal played Iceland, I think it must have been, I think it was in the Euros a while back. He came out pretty critically and said I used him a rubbish to over physical, don't know how they ever got there and was pretty disparaging. And everybody, a lot of people came out and said so disrespectful and all the usual stuff. The truth is, I was quite impressed and refreshed that a footballer said actually what he felt. And that- The thing with football, their people are so emotional. Of course. You know, everyone's very tribal and you say something against, you know, the club, a player at the club. And then just the thing with social media is that people use it to just vent venom and you can be anonymous on social media. You know, you can just have some anonymous account, attack whoever. And these footballers, I mean, they get thrust into the limelight. Often, you know, their rise is quick and you know, you're not prepared for this kind of thing. No, and that's why the other thing we're seeing more of is a growth towards at least the more savvy agents of having a good team around the team. So it's not just really a footballer in isolation anymore. It's a footballer with his agent obviously and his agent hopefully is not territorial enough to know that he needs the marketing and comms person there. He needs a tax advisor. He needs an IFA. He needs a lawyer and within that team comes a 360 protection view, not protection view, but a team around them that's looking out for him or her for lots of different angles to make sure you can be proactive with lots of different. No, I love that. Why do the agents have such a bad rep? Because it's the easy message to give is the truth. This message comes from the clubs. Well, it can come from lots of different places is the truth, you know, they're easy to scapegoat. The agent wants the move because he's gonna earn more commission on a particular deal. It might be that the agent's trying to unsettle a particular player that's not got a good relationship with a club. The truth a lot of the time is is that clubs for a long time never had it so good. You know, back in the 80s, 90s and 2000s even where there was lots of players without the benefit or access to agents. I remember reading Salix Ferguson's book on leadership and he was talking about how Brian Robson would just bring one of the younger players into the boardroom and say, Fergie said sign on the dotted line, you knew contract and you signed on the dotted line. And ultimately the clubs are very much going to be looking out for their own interests and the golden age of where a player wouldn't doubt the financial terms that he was signing up to for a long-term deal along gone because it's now much harder to negotiate those deals because agents are there looking after the player's interests. Now, does that mean that all agents are fantastic? Does that mean all agents are absolutely horrendous? No, most are very much in between and a lot are doing a very, very good job for their clients. And the truth is is that fans will usually always align their interests to the club's interest. But a lot of the time as soon as a club does not want to keep a player, just as we see with Gareth Bale, that reverse loyalty comes into play. If a player wants to leave, he's deemed disloyal. If a club wants a player to leave, he's deemed disloyal for not accepting that the club wants him to leave. So it's a double-edged sword, it's the same edge sword really where a player sometimes can't win. And I'm not saying all players are angels and that some players don't want to leave for lots of different varied reasons. But ultimately, it's a lot more nuanced than what usually comes across. But it used to be like the players, I mean, you're Liverpool, right? Yeah. Gerard Henderson, you've got a few players that have been at the club their whole career. But nowadays, you're seeing that less. And it's okay, they need to earn money if they're not being played. And so, but I think it's taken fans quite a while just to appreciate that that these guys can come in, they can play for a few years and then they can move somewhere else. Yeah. And they're not being disloyal, they're just having short careers and wanting to maximize it. And that's the other thing that's worthwhile mentioning as well, which I do mention in the book as well, which is, you know, everybody thinks that there's very much a glamorous life of being a footballer. And it's true at the elite level, getting paid very good money for doing something that everybody loves. The truth is that most of those players are probably dedicated almost all of their lives to that one singular outcome, whereas most have fallen away already before that stage. And the other thing that's almost as important to say is, you know, if you are lucky as an elite footballer and even a non-elite footballer, but in league one or league two, you're probably likely to have two or three long-term contracts throughout your career. Maybe four if you're very lucky that you started an elite club and you can go to your 33, 34 and then you're on downward spiral from there. That money has to last them and their families until probably into their 80s is the truth with age longevity as it is now. Which means as soon as they retire either because their skill set is so incredibly narrow, that is what they do. And unless they actually have the personality or flexible skill sets or are willing to learn and train up in a particular other industry, you know, that money has got to last in their entire career. So they are disproportionately earning during a narrow window for a very elongated period of time. And that's something that I think a lot of people don't quite get. Am I expecting lots of sympathy for high paid, high profile players? But at the same time, there's a lot of players that won't say very well. There's all the ones underneath, yeah. And also there's a huge number of players that after they finished have to transition into lots of other jobs because they've done something and sacrificed a lot for a decent period of time and they've now got to do something different. True. On that note, thank you very much for coming in. Pleasure. So Dundeeal, you can buy the book, you can also listen to it on Audible which is what I'm gonna do. Yes, please. Click the link in the bottom of the show notes. If anyone wants to download it, listen, you can click the link. And yeah, good luck with everything. Thank you very much. And speak soon. Hey, folks, thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places.