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Martyn (00:02.552)
So just before we get into the discussion today, it's obviously time to remind you that iGaming Daily is brought to you in partnership with OptiMove, the number one CRM system for the iGaming industry. Now, Ted, in your role as editor of Insider Sport,

Martyn (00:29.527)
It's what, sorry.

CRM marketing solution.

Martyn (00:45.986)
So before we get into the discussion today, it's obviously the right time to remind you that iGaming Daily is, as always, brought to you in partnership with OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming industry. Now, Ted, in your role as editor of Insider Sport, you've obviously been covering these stories in depth.

Can you just tell us a little bit about the background to this emerging dispute between Premier League clubs and their counterparts in the Football League?

Ted OC (01:25.549)
Sure thing Martin. So I think obviously it's important for us to say, just to say right off the bat that this is just the subject of media reports at the moment. Specifically, I think the one we've seen was a Guardian media report. So there's nothing concrete yet. But from what we understand from this media speculation, some Premier League clubs who we don't actually know which ones they are.

have been lobbying for the Premier League to take a bigger share of the revenue split between itself and the English Football League regarding data. So all data from the Premier League and English Football League, the rights to this are held by Football Data Co and is sort of collected and distributed by Genius Sports, which is the sports tech company that is the Premier League and EFL's primary data partner.

From what I remember, the revenue is split directly down the middle, 50-50 between the Premier League and the EFL, which of course makes up the other three divisions of the English Football League system. Some of these Premier League clubs seem to be arguing that as they are, I guess, bigger names, bigger draws, and will command a lot more betting interest in particular, they should get a bigger share of the revenue from this deal.

Martyn (02:40.364)
Okay. mean, makes sense in some ways, I guess, that they are saying that, you know, perhaps not just domestically, but internationally, Premier League is a much bigger draw than the football league, which we should remember though, that the championship is the best attended football league in Europe and not the Premier League. So there is definitely an argument for the football league clubs to say we should retain a...

a bigger share or an equal share of this money as well. But it's just to get away from the dispute a little bit. You know, this probably underlines a big change we've seen in the past 10 years or so in the sport and data is really perhaps the most important and valuable commodity in sports business now. What's driven that sort of change?

Ted OC (03:37.379)
Well, as you said, it's a very recent change, probably coming in over the past, certainly over past 10 years, maybe as its roots in the past 20 years. think I found this quite interesting when the story broke, because I thought 20 years ago, 30 years ago, the idea that the leagues would be having a dispute over data would be kind of unheard of, it? The main selling point of these leagues was predominantly media rights.

The reason data has come to the forefront is because of two main reasons, one of which we already touched on earlier, which is obviously betting. The Premier League and football in general really has become the most bet on sport. say probably say, I'm going to say with confidence it's probably the most bet on sport globally, right? Surely. I mean, we know that in the UK, according to BGC data, it's been the most bet on sport since I believe 2019 taking over from horse racing.

Ted (04:19.926)
Yeah.

Ted OC (04:30.189)
which was quite a significant moment there because of obviously the intrinsic links between racing and betting. It's just become such a huge revenue generator for these clubs through that betting data rights, which are sold, as you mentioned, Martin, not just domestically, which is a pretty significant sector in its own right, but also internationally. The other side of it, aside from betting,

relates to what I mentioned of media rights. Media companies are increasingly big consumers of data as well because they use it to inform storytelling, inform punditry and analysis and things like that. You'll see a lot, you watch just things like Match of the Day or any other football, soccer-orientated show, they'll be showing you data breakdowns, statistical, excuse me, I struggled with that word a little.

statistical breakdowns of a game and of player performances, of team performances. So it's become a very big commodity for both of these stakeholders, both betting companies and media companies. And as a result of that has become an increasingly valuable commodity for the football clubs and leagues themselves.

Martyn (05:42.414)
Yeah, mean, 20 years ago, I used to work for a news agency and we sport specialist sports news agency. And on a Saturday, we would be turning around reports and all that kind of thing. But all our reporters had to send in a data pack and they were just doing it manually at the game shots on target shots off target, all that kind of thing. So it's, it's come on a bit now, I believe. And Ted, what have you noticed about this development?

Ted (06:02.082)
Cheers.

Ted (06:12.32)
Okay, so for me, and you know, we, let kind of inside the sports lead with this story, but I think one of the things that I highlights is kind of the sensitivities, the commercial sensitivities of the premiership and its relationship with other stakeholders and also its relationship with within the kind of the, what they call the pyramid of English football. And certainly come from kind of an editorial perspective, you kind of

get an oversight here that the Premier League really wants to control every commercial dynamic of English football. And it's not just enough with how many billions they get paid in the media. They really want control of that data because again, as Martin, as he said, Martin is now going to be distributed across a global commercial pipeline. It has no boundaries.

It also kind of impacts kind of the add-on components, right? As in terms of kind of data visualization, what's being sold to media, right? And I think it's an important battlefield for the premiership to kind of dominate. And it also wants to kind of be the most kind of commercially agile league on data above its US sports league. So I think that's another kind of important dynamic. But I think that this is another story that's gonna like grow.

in 2025.

Martyn (07:43.458)
Yeah, I think so now. I the way I can see things is this is coming about in part because of that, the overall commercial plan of the Premier League and some of its more ambitious clubs who are very keen to ring fence as much money as possible. But they're also, I think, preparing for the introduction of the football regulator in the UK. There's the bill is going through parliament at the moment, the football governance bill, and they sort of...

The showpiece or the centerpiece of that bill is the introduction of a football regulator. And one of the things that is going to do almost certainly is order the Premier League to share more of its money with clubs down the pyramid. So do you think just coming back to you, Ted, do think they're just now preparing for that, trying to up their revenue in order to pay it back to those clubs further down the pyramid?

Ted OC (08:42.595)
I'd certainly say that's an element of it. Yeah, as you said, the football governance bill is making progress through parliament. It's got a quite broad backing from across the spectrum as well. it's pretty, I'd say it's a pretty foregone conclusion is going to come into effect and we'll get this football regulator coming in, which as you said, the let me just rephrase this, sorry. The main remit of the regulator really seems to be

governing finances, the finances of football and the finances of clubs. Interesting, the bill didn't actually cover parachute payments as much, I don't think. But like you said, Martin, there is still an element of they want to the top flight clubs make sure that, yeah, they want to make sure the top flight clubs are still supporting the rest of the football pyramid, the rest of the ecosystem. And I think you've made quite a good argument there that,

the, as a result of that clubs are probably going to become a bit more protective of some of the assets that they have like data. because, like the, the argument you think they'll be making, like we said earlier is that because they're the bigger names are the bigger draws, particularly internationally, there'll be the ones who are commanding more value over this data. I think another thing as well, they've got to consider is the fact that this, this finance regulator is also getting set up to make sure that club individual clubs finances are also sound.

and that they're keeping an eye on this and keeping a lid on this. I think it's often been referenced throughout the process. The cases like Berry and Macclesfield, which both faced quite widely publicized and quite controversial in some cases, difficulty. So that's the other part of it as well. think the clubs are to get more protective over data and other assets to make sure that they're in line with this regulator's financial.

requirements

Martyn (10:36.942)
Sure, Ted, I can see you itching to come back with something here.

Ted (10:44.19)
Yeah, we have a government that's trying to kind of make football a fair game, you know, both in terms of its fans and the kind of its commercial output. But I think that there's just so many kind of regulatory blindsides coming in. And one of the things here is that, you know, we argue about the commercial makeup of the Premier League and the EFL, but you have so many kind of greater assets and greater parties in the Premier League. Now, I don't think that

your man United, your man cities, your hostels. I think, you know, these are very commercially astute parties and that they know that in every deal, commercial deal that they're engaged with, just the power of that data, not only for betting rights, but for sponsorship duties, the media rights, the actual activation of fans and targeting.

You know, football clubs now and the upper tier, they run like just technology businesses and the commercial partners go, well, we want to target this sector. We want to kind of amplify our brand towards this segment of the audience. Can you provide that? Now, the Premier League clubs, I reckon, can do it. But those resources aren't allowed in the EFL. So I think they've got such a good hand, the premiership to go, no, we're going to control this aspect of the commercial commercial activation. And that's in our hands.

and you know good luck here, good luck you know good luck to the Labour government but you've really got some tough bargaining to do with us.

Martyn (12:22.776)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a, that's a fair point. And just to play devil's advocate, and I should stress, am playing devil's advocate. I don't necessarily believe this. It's a strange concept that the successful companies in an industry have to support the ones lower down so they can compete with them better. You don't hear corner shops complaining that Tesco aren't giving them enough of a handout to help them grow and thrive and so on.

but of course football does work in a unique, a unique way and has a unique role in our society. That's slightly bigger than just the commercial aspects of it. Ted, do you think, as, the representative of the club that's been in the football league most recently on this podcast, what, how are they going to defend this? What, what's their strong argument?

We are worth our share of the money.

Ted OC (13:24.803)
I think if I was the EFL, I'd probably... I think they've got three things to focus on really. Firstly is the fact that... I think a lot of this argument, by the way, will be mainly on the domestic side of things. As we said earlier, the Premier League is a huge international draw. The EFL, no disrespect to it. It's obviously got a lot of very historic clubs and big fan bases, but it's not the same international draw as the Premier League is. Firstly, you've got domestic betting in the UK.

which is a pretty substantial market in itself, as we already said. I mean, I'm going to hark back to personal experience here, but back when I worked in betting shops, the idea that people would only bet on the Premier League is a bit ridiculous. Like people would come in and they'd have an accumulator on covering all sorts of stuff going from, you know, you'd see Man United in the same accumulator as like Knox County or something to show you this sort of league disparity there. People will, they'll bet on what they think is a good market with football.

And people do keep a lot closer eye on who's doing well in lower leagues more than you'd think, I reckon. On top of that, you've obviously also got quite strong local fan bases. I mentioned earlier, the historic clubs that you've got in the lower leagues. If we just look at the championship, example, Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield United, that's just a couple of the big sort of Yorkshire clubs that are in there. There's far more from across the country who all have a huge fan base of people who like to bet on them.

And to follow up with that, that's also a huge fan base of people who like to watch them and like to have more in-depth analysis of them in their media, which will be informed via betting. And even on the international side of things, guess, some of these big historic clubs do have a little bit of a global presence. Sure, not as much as, you know, United City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham and so on. But there is still that niche there. So I think that's two things the league can focus on.

And thirdly is also kind of the social responsibility aspect of it, if you want to have a better term, the fact that the financial situation for these clubs is more difficult than the Premier League and with data, particularly betting data and so on being a very valuable commodity for them, that their situation will get worse as a result of this, which in turn you could argue will affect the overall competitive, competitivity of the sport itself, which is that's the whole inherent nature of sport.

Ted OC (15:43.104)
Anyway, isn't it?

Martyn (15:45.398)
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the, think they might also point out that if you want to keep on raiding our talent factories for players who you're, you know, the crystal palace and wolves and so on are going to then sell on hopefully to Manchester United or Bayern Munich or whoever that might be. you need to help us survive. there's a bit in there and I am also a little bit surprised that there are, there are probably

six clubs in the Premier League who need to worry every season about being relegated back down to the football league. seem to be very keen to, those particular clubs seem to be very keen to ring fence Premier League money, which appears to be quite a short term sort of strategy for them when they might be on the other side of that divide in six months time. But still, what...

What do think this particular row then tells us about the relationships in English football at the minute and the, the state of the game overall, because we're just going to come on and talk about another hotly disputed issue in the game now, but which is only really going to affect the very biggest clubs. But before we do that, what's the relationship do you think between those?

Smaller clubs on the big beasts of the premier league. we, if we must use that terminology.

Ted OC (17:18.595)
I'd probably just sum it up by saying I think there's a lot of tension around finances and what people perceive to be, to use the term that is the name of one of the league's rules, financial fair play, guess, what is financially fair. And the advantage that some clubs have because of them being, as we've already talked about, huge commercial entities and very commercially astute entities, know, just major corporations in their own right, I guess.

the advantage that some of these will have over the smaller players and the impact this can have on the competitivity of the sport. I don't know, what's your take Ted? Is this just me being a of a bleeding heart liberal?

Ted (17:57.048)
Look, it's coming up to Christmas. I just say that I would love to see kind of a big Christmas luncheon of EFL heads and Premier League heads over the table and just to witness what criticisms would be brought to light. But the other thing is that this we...

Martyn (17:57.142)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ted (18:27.384)
On paper, you get kind of get sold is that the pyramid gets sold as, you know, moms and pops teams in the lower leagues versus like these nice big companies up top, right? And that everyone's trying to make their way to the Premier League, right? And that the best, you know, best, most organized teams will do it. No, but I don't. That's just redundant now. I think it's all about.

how you can kind of commercialize your assets and how you commercialize every component of your football club, regardless of what division you're in. And we've seen this as kind of the makeup of the teams coming up. Also, they kind of approach the common commercialization, who's buying these clubs to, right? And what is the kind of grand view of what they want to do with these football clubs? And the more kind of commercial strings you attached, the higher the value of your assets.

It really is a cold-hearted business now, football.

Martyn (19:28.334)
Okay, that brings us nicely onto the next issue, which is one that's very close to my heart, because like all football fans, I am perpetually aggrieved and think that everybody is out to get my club in a way that they're, and the rules are definitely fixed against my club. So, associated party transactions, Ted, definitely just brought into screw Newcastle following the Saudi takeover, right? That's the only thing that's going on with it.

Ted OC (19:57.283)
I mean, without 100 % agreeing with you, the timing of it, you can see why people would come to that conclusion, can't you? Because as you said, the rule did come into effect shortly after the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of that country bought Newcastle United. Yeah, so the rules, as I'm sure we're all aware, are to...

Martyn (19:57.678)
Yeah.

Ted OC (20:25.771)
effectively govern and kind of clamp down on potential deals between commercial deals, sponsorship deals between clubs and companies that are closely associated with them, i.e. like having the same owner. There was some pushback against this, as you'd expect. Manchester City were the big ones to do so earlier in the year. It was their legal challenge against it that led to this vote that we had last week, which was on some changes to the rules.

which have now been approved by 16 of the Premier League's 20 clubs. We know that Manchester City and interestingly Aston Villa have voted against it. Aston Villa announced, I think it was sometime within the past two weeks, would be siding with Manchester City on this one. I believe that the reports indicate, Martin, that our two clubs are actually Newcastle United and very interestingly Nottingham Forest are the other two clubs opposed to the

this new evolution of the rules, which I think the main thing they've done is there's three stipulations is brought in. think the one that they explained the most was there's some changes to how shareholder loans are going to be governed. Any loan now made to a club by one of its shareholders needs to be submitted for approval as an associated party transaction. But yeah, it's just sort of an interesting trend building on what Ted said earlier. It just shows you how

I guess how cutthroat intense a lot of the financial elements of the game have become over recent years.

Martyn (21:59.37)
Yeah, that's right. Manchester City actually took the Premier League to a tribunal earlier in the year and the tribunal actually found in favour of Manchester City in three areas that said those associated party transaction rules were actually unlawful under English law. And one of those was that the owners of clubs could essentially loan

interest free if they wanted to as much money as they like to the clubs and that would be fine. Whereas if it comes in a sponsorship or something like that from an organization that's also owned by the owners of the club, then that is subject to another set of rules. So that's kind of what the changes introduced on Friday addressed. Manchester City and Aston Villa both

Ted (22:36.193)
Mm-hmm.

Martyn (22:57.122)
both couch their opposition in. We haven't seen the full ruling from the earlier tribunal yet. So how can we possibly vote on this and the timing? Well, it will be pretty clear that both those clubs and Newcastle, and I'm not entirely sure about the route of forests objections to them. They would really benefit from a change or kicking out entirely the associated party transaction rules.

Cause know, Newcastle could go away and get a sponsorship with Aramco, which would put them as one of the biggest clubs in the world financially. but they can't do that at the moment. And while feeling sort of slightly aggrieved at the excitement of the takeover and having the richest owners in the world has not resulted in a spine killing and BAPE and so on. I, I half think the rules are along the right lines here that you can't just, you know, be okay, be a

ordinary Premier League team one day and then be champions of Europe within 18 months solely because you're you happen to have been bought by somebody with who can dig out a billion pounds a day from their back garden. But still, this I expect this is going to run and run this, isn't

Ted OC (24:17.183)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, can't see this ending anytime soon. There's various arguments and favour arguments against the clubs. The clubs who are opposed to it will continue fighting it and also have some pretty solid financial backing to keep paying for lawyers and so on, think, and to have that time distracted from on-pitch activities. The fact as well, you've got also other rules that...

are quite relevant here as well. think things like the profit and sustainability rules, which we've seen clubs getting faced with points deductions for not making the right amount of money. think maybe, I think I have a theory that that might be potentially why Forrest are a bit more concerned about this because they might be looking at this thinking, we just want to find any route to maximize revenue so we don't get hit by a PSR ruling again.

Martyn (25:08.268)
Yeah. And, yeah, Ted, Ted, as a, as a supporter of one of the clubs that is wholly in favor of all these financial regulations in the premier league, how do you see things?

Ted (25:10.451)
Boop.

Ted OC (25:10.487)
Dead.

Ted (25:23.736)
I think, look, before we get kind of bowled down on kind of the finances of each football team, I think in this review and this kind of dissect of the structures of English football, mean, what's not clear is what outcome does the government want and what makes a better game? And I just think you've to kind of return this back to, yes, you we don't want

English football will actually know English football has become a billionaire's game, but so has every professional sport in the US. In the majority of European clubs, you'd argue that they are to some extent commercial, you know, commercial entities that are, you can say that about Real Madrid, can say that about Barcelona and Bayern Munich, right? But what, you know, what directives are actually going to help fans go to a football club?

and to actually like support their their club better. And I always think that should be much more about the ticketing prices to make the availability of football and the access much easier. then just there's nothing, everything just seems to be, well, you know, yes, if we make the clubs compete, right, we're just going to punish them. Or it's just all this kind of technical jargon to make it fair. But it's still

nothing changes.

Martyn (26:54.636)
Yeah, well, I'm wholly with you on that. It's too expensive to go to football now, even lower down the leagues and even non league is becoming prohibitively expensive. So on the route around that, if you want to go and watch some football and it's affordable is go and watch women's football, of course. Anyway, I think that's we're just coming to an end now. So

Thank you both for joining me today on iGaming Daily. And having already solved all the problems in English football between the three of us, the iGaming Daily team will be back tomorrow to solve another one of society's great issues. Thank you.

Ted OC (27:32.483)
You

Ted (27:37.794)
Thank you.