Paddy Power doing their thing
Carlsberg's contribution was so good that I assumed it was AI. The wait for verification felt like a bit like the VAR pause.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbWfCb0J_9p/?igsh=MWtodWxjbXZyM2tkeQ==
A much used phrase in our house, nicked from Finding Nemo.
Anyhow, the PR I praised in last week's newsletter hasn't replied to my email response. A week on from the original podcast pitch, she sent a follow up, asking if I'd seen the original, which felt a lot like an AI-generated follow up, and made me question the original email's provenance. I'll pursue this a stage further as the story is now less about the pitched idea and more about the process of comms and pitching.
Lots of names in this new FIFA project:
The FIFA FFE story poses a question. How or where to jump in? Martyn Ziegler broke the story in The Times, I think, at least that was the version of the story shared on WhatsApp.
The next 24-48 hours has been a fire hose of opinions, explainers and what ifs. The second bounce will be an attempt to build the pro-Infantino argument. A sort of 'what's really going on here?' type piece, which dismisses 'Linkedin chatter' and takes the high ground of the obvious expert.
Then what? Cushnan went with the questions arising.
Ricardo Fort with a similar vibe aimed at the FIFA sponsors
George Pyne on CNBC made the comparison that this generation of new sports entertainment properties are the market's equivalent of VC funding. High risk moonshots and most will fail. 'Not all of them can be the UFC'.
Prep notes for the podcast. Co-hosts Murray Barnett and Yannick Ramcke.
The setup
Player welfare measure or advertising product? Fox paid ~US$485m for English-language rights. 104 matches × 2 breaks = 832 additional 30-second spots. At ~US$300k a spot, that's a theoretical US$249.6m — before knockout-round premiums push upper projections past US$300m, with some reports reaching US$450–500m.
Why I care
This is a rights-financing mechanism wearing a medical badge. The tell is that it was a broadcaster choice, not a technical inevitability — Telemundo declined full-screen ads inside the breaks. Fox ran them, and on at least one occasion came back after play had restarted. ITV couldn't commercialise at all, blocked by Ofcom limits and the very late confirmation.
The narrative it challenges
That commercial innovations introduced under welfare cover can be withdrawn later. Once an asset refinances a rights fee, it gets priced into the next cycle. Precedent: split-screen during scrum sets in the Six Nations (Samsung/Virgin), the IPL's entire architecture.
Questions for the table
The setup
The US exit didn't destroy the economics. Defeat to Belgium drew ~30m on Fox, peaking at 36.8m — the largest US audience for a soccer telecast. Bosnia-Herzegovina had already averaged 26.4m. Portugal–Croatia, a neutral fixture, drew 11.1m.
Why I care
Portugal–Croatia is the interesting number. Anyone can rate a home team. 11.1m for a match with no American interest is either a genuine signal or an artefact of a fallow summer.
The narrative it challenges
"The World Cup created American soccer fans." The confounders stack up fast — timezone-friendly scheduling, America's appetite for anything badged a World Championship, diaspora audiences, and MLB as the only competition.
Questions for the table
The setup
Up to £1.6bn. ITV's linear channels and ITVX in; ITV Studios out. Combined, roughly 20% of UK in-home viewing. ITV reaches ~40m weekly; Sky Sports subs sit around 5m. Projected annual savings ~£200m. Regulatory approval outstanding.
Why I care
The cleanest attack yet on the reach/revenue split we keep insisting is a category error. Sky Sports averages ~1.5m per Premier League match; a selected ITV fixture pulls 3–4m+. One funnel, mass awareness to paid conversion. The 2019 men's Cricket World Cup final on Channel 4 — ~4.5m peak, via a Sky agreement — is the proof-of-concept.
The narrative it challenges
That subs growth was ever the plan. Sky's subscriber base is topping out; the prize here is ITVX and reach. That's an admission, not a strategy.
Questions for the table
The setup
Puck says yes. Projects that sold for US$7–8m now get offers near US$2m. Ampere data via C21Media: Netflix sports-documentary viewing fell from 642m hours (H2 2023) to 349m hours in the corresponding period two years later — down ~46%.
Why I care
The industry mistook a distinctive execution for a repeatable formula. Drive to Survive was never a sports doc — it was a character-led reality series that happened to contain F1. Everyone bought the access and skipped the storytelling engine.
The narrative it challenges
That access is the asset. Access isn't scarce any more. What still sells: globally recognised legends, nostalgia, completed stories with clear endings, scandal or inherent conflict, culturally significant moments, lower-cost specialist films, and anything directly supporting a live-rights investment. The middle has been squeezed out.
Questions for the table
The setup
A$5.3bn over seven years (2028–34) — the biggest sports broadcast deal in Australian history and the biggest single content investment full stop. 90% higher in annual cash than the current agreement. Foxtel to ~A$520–550m annually (from A$270m), Nine at A$160m (incl. A$15m contra), Sky NZ A$50m. 95% cash. DAZN takes international rights, with revenue-share and marketing tied to Foxtel. NRL is growing — Nine's coverage up 15% YoY, NZ audience nearly tripled in five years.
Why I care
The sell is that A$5.3bn is a rounding error against a distribution footprint 250× the Australian population. That only holds if the international subs materialise. This is DAZN's first big negotiation post-Foxtel, complicated by anti-siphoning rules that handed Nine leverage.
The narrative it challenges
That anyone here is buying growth. Nine and Foxtel are paying more to break even. The NRL extracted maximum value from buyers with no alternative.
Questions for the table
>>'Today I Feel Rich'...FIFA's brand in the US
@demonflyingfox Gianni Infantino - Today I Feel Rich feat. Messi, Trump (Official Music Video) #worldcup2026 #messi #redcard #worldcupsong #aifilm
♬ Originalton - demonflyingfox
>>LIV for Horseracing
Alex Cottee sent me this. It's basically what we talked about for our business of horse racing (horse racing, horseracing, horse-racing?) night at the Big Belly Club last month.
Danny Epstien
It slavishly follows the McKinsey for Sport playbook. Makes sense in abstract, it's just real life seems to get in the way of many of these projects. Sports in general, and horse racing in particular are odd shaped things, the resistance to the new is profound and baked in. Getting the constituencies to align is the problem. As mentioned to Brant Dunshea on the night:
>>Where are all the cricket people?
Chris Smith
NotebookLM has added the capacity to create AI generated short videos.
I gave it a try using a part of a podcast transcript from last Friday's episode with Carla Bilche and Joey D'Urso on FIFA.
The gist of this phase of the conversation was the premiumisation of the World Cup experience in the US, facilitated by the high quality stadia and wealth of the American market.
The transcript is here:
Joey D'Urso: [00:00:00] Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco in four years' time because you know, there are some... I went to the Bernabéu a few months ago and it's an incredibly premium stadium, but most of them won't be. And, and obviously the Camp Nou of Barcelona is being revamped, but most of them won't be on anything like the UK the US levels.
Joey D'Urso: And well, fundamentally the local- the consumers can't afford it. I mean, a lot of these US stadiums will be packed with not necessarily kind of the 1%, but just in a city like Dallas or, or Houston or Atlanta, there are a lot of people who are very, very rich by European standards. Um, income's way higher, and the, you know, European and US incomes have diverged massively over the last 20 years.
Joey D'Urso: So there's just a lot more rich people in the US who nothing of spending several thousand dollars for a, a trip for their family, which I think is a much, much smaller market in Europe. And yes, people will fly in and whatever else, but I don't think the prices can be as high in four years' time
Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner : Yeah, no, it's a good shout actually. What's the view of, in Buenos Aires, Carla, of FIFA
Carla Bilche: it's pretty much the same. It's very similar in [00:01:00] Argentina. We have two different layers on this conversation. The first one is very related to what we have talked about, how FIFA is changing this this ICP, this ideal customer profile, to a more sophisticated one due to the, the World Cup happening at the States.
Carla Bilche: But there's an als- it's an additional layer which is related to what is happening in Argentina and in the local league, , the Premier League of Argentina, the thing is that we don't have a different ownership. So both the national team and the Prem- Argentinian Premier League are all the, all, all the tiers are owned by AFA, AFA.
Carla Bilche: and there are some teams, and I think Joey already experienced this, like Boca and River, who are charging tickets , in a very pricey way for, for locals. I don't... For example, if if Boca Juniors could, can charge a ticket in $300, and this is like the [00:02:00] minimum wage in Argentina.
Carla Bilche: So it's something really curious that it's happening locally because the AFA is also looking for this revenues maxxing, but at the cost of how local fans and how Argentinian culture is linked to football. So I think these two forces are colliding right now in the conversation here in Argentina.
I ran this text in to NotebookLM and prompted it to create a short form clip. If you haven't used this tool before I recommend it. Like all of the models, it's good at some things and less so at others. What I like about this one is that because it's Google, it makes integrating (stealing) YouTube much easier. It takes the transcript of the film or podcast and runs it straight in to your model in text form so allowing you to interrogate it in more depth.
The end result is here.
My conclusion is that it does a good job of adding value to the podcast transcript version of the conversation, particularly in building out Carla's description of FIFA's new Ideal Customer Profile and Joey's question about what happens to revenue-maxxing when it's a non-American market being targeted. The AI lands on Argentina, because Carla is from there and references Boca's pricing policy.
I don't like the look and sound of it. But that can be handled on a second draft of the clip. The temptation is to push this type of content out under the Unofficial Partner banner as marketing for the podcast. But do too much of it and you end up looking and sounding like everyone else.
The creator of W1A has a new thing coming out.
Hugh Bonneville moves to Miami as Fifa’s director of integrity, chairing a strategic operations group, “or Sog”.
At what point does satire become redundant?
Pull this thread and very quickly you get to Philip Roth country:
“You can’t write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent.”
He said this in the Nixon era.
Alan Lelchuk
Roth defined satire as "moral outrage transformed into comic art" and "a verbal ritualization of frustration and anger".
Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History is really good on the paradox of satire, which includes a version of confirmation bias, when viewers interpret satire in a way that aligns with their pre-existing beliefs.
A famous example is The Colbert Report, a right wing parody beloved by conservatives.
