iGaming Daily

Andrew McCarron (00:00.353)
Welcome to Our Gaming Daily, I'm Ted Orme Clay. I'm joined here by my insider sport colleagues, Callum Williams and Kieran O'Connor. We hope all the listeners are enjoying the festive period so far, enjoying the football, looking forward to Boxing Day racing and so on. Yeah, so we're here to take a look back over the year so far, look over some of our, what we think are the biggest sporting stories of the year, some of the biggest moments as well.

and some of the most interesting features and interviews that we've done because we've managed to get quite a few of them under our belts, I think. And before we get started with our main discussion of today, a quick word from our sponsor Optimove. Optimove is the number one CRM marketing solution from the iGaming market. So just to get the ball rolling, guys, bit of an icebreaker, bit more B to see this, I guess. Looking back over past 12 months, what do you reckon have been some of your sort of top sporting moments, anything that's happened on the pitch, in the rings?

Well, on the pitch, Ted, I know you're looking at me. Manchester City's form recently is not one of them. But no, Manchester City have, off the pitch, they have obviously been in broad in this 115 charges case lodged against them by the Premier League, stemming from numerous alleged charges relating to financial fair play and even to the extent of coming onto the field late for many, many games now. Obviously, I think we believe that.

The hearing has concluded and I think we will hear something, we will hear a verdict in early 2025. So it is also a big year next year for the Premier League in terms of its financial fair play rules and its profit and sustainability rules because last June there was a vote, there was a almost unanimous vote from Premier League clubs to... ATP was it, the associated... APT sorry. There's a whole reform of the financial fair play rules.

for profit and sustainability rules and the ATP rules, associated traded party rules. So, yeah. So, associated party transactions. Yeah. There's too many of these abbreviations in football these days. I know. Yeah. It's going to be really interesting to see how the Premier League implements some of those rules pertaining to financial fair play. I know they've proposed an anchoring system where it sees more of the lower place teams in the league get more.

Andrew McCarron (02:19.631)
percentage on revenue to spending transfers compared to the higher teams like United and Manchester City is like they'll get about a 10 % whereas upcoming teams, promoted teams would then would probably get a percentage of the from revenue on player transfers. So yeah, we're just going to be looking forward to seeing how that shapes up next season. Yeah, the debate around football finance is one that's not going anywhere, is it? Like you said, we've seen extensive, like very heated discussions over the past year.

Profit and sustainability rules. mean, from my perspective as a Forrest fan, that was obviously quite a big one because we got that points deduction towards the end of last season. Not as bad as Everton got it. I know that's just become a recurring joke now as an event to anytime something goes wrong, shave some points off Everton. But yeah, there's this whole big quagmire of like we said, of all these abbreviations of financial fair play, associated party transactions, PSR, it's making, it's an incredibly convoluted thing to follow.

You know, and we're saying that as people who just write about it. I can imagine for the football finance teams it's even worse. Kieran, I know that something you wrote about earlier on in the year, I think you wrote a quite good commentary article about it, was the FA Cup replays. That's obviously been quite a big one in English football, hasn't it? Could you elaborate on that one a bit? Yeah, so FA Cup replays have been scrapped. Pretty massive to be fair for lower league clubs especially.

I spoke to Sutton United actually quite recently I spoke to Matthew Dizley who's the commercial director of Sutton United who elaborated on what it means for them as a club and other lower league clubs in the position when these replays have been scrapped when it happened there was a lot of people quite vocal about the decision from the FA which has, let's be honest, been made

to benefit larger clubs like your Manchester United, your Liverpools are playing, well maybe not Manchester United anymore, who are playing in these big competitions like the UEFA Champions Leagues and the players are suffering from a busy schedule. So something had to be done and it seems that the lower league clubs are the ones who have come off worse from this as they're the ones who are being punished. So yeah, was quite interesting.

Andrew McCarron (04:39.439)
It's a double edged sword really for a story to watch, it? Because like you say, the higher level teams, these players, so they are getting put under a lot of pressure to perform on pitch and it's going to take a big physical demand on your body, isn't it? To be performing at that high level. And ultimately it will probably result in the quality of games going down as well because these teams aren't going be able to field their best players because they're all going be injured. So yeah, you've got these...

the higher level ones who are like, they're competing in the Premier League, they're competing in the FA Cup, they're competing in the League Cup, then they're going to be in the Champions League or maybe the Europa League. The real top ones are going to be in the FIFA Club World Cup, which is getting expanded, isn't it, from what, eight teams to 32 teams, I think. That's coming in this summer 2025 in America. year, isn't it, for the America one. So a lot of these players are understandably not very happy about this and want to see some changes. But yeah, like you say, Kieran,

The other side of it is that by getting rid of the replay, yeah, it's easing bit of pressure on these top level players, but it's also removing quite what has been a very good revenue generator for one thing for the lower league clubs, because it enables them to get a chunk more of like media exposure, get some more advertising premiums and also split the gate. That's quite a big thing, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. I think they get, think if I remember, if I remember right, think the away team travelling to

So I think the gate gets split 60-40, so the home team takes the 6%, whereas the away team gets 40. That is obviously massive for a team like, I'm not too sure who's... Sutton United. I was going to say who did United get, they put Arsenal in the first round. If you get like a lower league team going to a Premier League team, think, is it Tamworth going to Newcastle or is it the opposite? Yeah, well, mean, if we have one more closer term, we've got Salford making that...

little journey over to Manchester City haven't we? Yeah, Salford would end up getting a 40 % cut of the gate at the Manchester City game which is obviously huge for them so yeah it's quite unfortunate really to see that the lower league teams again have just kind of been a bit neglected. There's another story that I'm just going to touch on here that's kind of relating to that is this whole, these rumours, these reports of a potential dispute between the Premier League and the EFL over data rights because obviously the Premier League clubs feel that

Andrew McCarron (06:55.042)
as they're the bigger draw, particularly for betting, which is what this data is sold for, that they deserve a bigger cut of it. But then obviously for the lower league clubs, they're going to be arguing, we get a lot of betting attention as well and we're in need of the money. They don't get the same media rights premiums that these Premier League clubs do. But on this topic of media rights, to be fair, Callum, I know there was a story that you reported on earlier in the year to do with the French situation with broadcasting.

Could you just give us a few details on that one? Well, the LFP, which is the governing body of French football, they were signaling or aiming for a new broadcast rights deal that would be in the value of between 900 million euros and a billion euros, obviously to try and keep up with the Bundesliga and of course the Premier League, which recently signed last year a 6.7 billion deal, which was a record at the time. obviously the French Ligue, they are trying to

maximise revenue through this broadcast rights deal which broadcast rights have just significantly increased over the past several several years and this is a real key revenue driver for a lot of teams and leagues across the world. what did happen is that they did organise a broadcast rights deal with the zone and I believe it's B in sports but it wasn't nowhere near close to the valuation it was intended to the max.

one billion valuation and I think it came in around 500 million if I remember correctly. Yeah that seems about right. Around that ballpark which is an obvious huge loss for the league and it really underscores where the French league is at the minute. mean they've lost Kylian Mbappe, they've lost Neymar and they've lost Lionel Messi and that lack of I would say superstar in the league who drives fans to watch the league, I think broadcasters looked at that and thought

Well, if the big players aren't playing it, then why should we bother to bring forward the big money? it's obviously broadcast rights in itself is a major revenue driver, growth driver for these leagues and it's becoming more more dependable on these leagues, especially now that you see the Premier League last season, they even dropped a streaming partner. I know streaming companies are becoming more more influential in sports. see Netflix getting involved with the NFL with those Christmas day games. Obviously Netflix

Andrew McCarron (09:21.616)
they've got Raw, Raw, aren't they next year? And no doubt about it, they'll look to try and secure more rights as well. there's a lot to look forward to next season, next year, I should say, in terms of streaming companies looking to buy rights for a very, very different amount of sports, I'd say so. I think we should just take a quick break, a quick hand break, but we'll be right back after that to have a chat about some of our features and then...

look over to trends and developments in 2025 so we'll be back shortly. Welcome back to iGaming Daily with the Insider Sport team. We're getting back into our discussion now of looking back over the past year and of course looking to the year ahead, trends, developments and so on. right guys, as we said in the introduction to this episode, we've all had the opportunity to speak to quite a few interesting people on a lot of different topics to do with sport business over the past 12 months.

I think this is quite a good opportunity for us to shed a light on that and yeah, just have a look back over some of our best interviews from the year. So Callum, you really kicked off the year in quite a big fashion with quite a good interview back in January, February sort of time, I think. Could you just give us a bit of a glimpse into what that was about and who that was with? No, yeah, I got a real great opportunity to speak to Talia Moreno, who is the Chief Marketing Officer of AC Milan. I know AC Milan, they need know.

introduction right. know recently they've not been at the best although they did win a Serie A title in 2022 but yeah AC Milan one of the pioneering most known European football clubs in the world and being able just to speak to Tania just about their marketing strategy I know this year is their 125th anniversary so she gave us some insight into what the marketing campaign entailed and obviously we've seen that throughout the year.

the specialised 125th anniversary kit with Puma. There was also a lot of talk about their US focus in terms of collaborations with the New York Yankees for example and Off-White, the fashion label. They've really honed in on just being able to branch out to the US, garnering more of that US audience which as we know soccer in the US is growing and growing year upon year and that is coming from their majority owners Redberg.

Andrew McCarron (11:44.004)
Redbird Capital who obviously brought in Zlatan Ibrahimovic as well as one of their representatives. So it just kind of gave us a glimpse into what some of these massive institutions like AC Milan are trying to do in regards to growing into different markets, leveraging their core audience, their domestic audience in Italy and Europe, and then just using what they know from that market over to the US. And yeah, it was a great opportunity to speak to her. Obviously they've grown year on year. I think that

They've more of a focus on the youth on the pitch. know Christian Pulisic right now is, he's probably been their best player, right, this season. Yeah, you might have seen, yeah. If you've been able to watch Christian Pulisic this season, he's been fantastic for AC Milan. And obviously Pulisic being the US men's team's best player heading into that 2026 World Cup in America, obviously shared with Canada and Mexico. I think that will do wonders for AC Milan as well. Cause if he continues to perform the way he's performing heading into that tournament and if he stays at AC Milan, that bodes well for AC Milan because now you're looking at

best player for Milan and America thriving on that stage and then the I think US soccer fans will just gravitate towards AC Milan more. Yeah it's an interesting one to follow I think because we've seen a lot of talk over the past couple of years of the Premier League's American following haven't we with it obviously we've got NBC as a main broadcast partner and there's a lot of talks between them and NBC I believe it's NBC anyway who've been involved in these talks to

potentially hold a Premier League game in the US, it's very interesting to that other clubs and other major European leagues like Serie A are also quite keen to capitalise on that American opportunity. Yeah, and I remember speaking to Andy Mitchell, who's the CEO of Serie A's American division as well, few months back, and there's just a real, real focus from the Serie A on building that US core and that US fan base, because if you guys know anything about the US sports industry, they are so heavily commercialised and so heavily incentivised on making money.

It's almost the view there is obviously we call our football teams clubs because they're a part of a wider community, right? Whereas over there, the NBA teams, NFL teams are called franchises. It's very business orientating and it's very orientated on making as much money as possible within a very competitive sporting landscape. yeah, there's also check out the YouTube video interview we did with Andy Mitchell. It was a great insight. Yeah, you're right. That was a very interesting one. I'm glad you mentioned that one.

Andrew McCarron (14:07.835)
Now we're moving a bit closer to home. Kieran, obviously you spoke a bit more recently as well. You spoke with some people from a very historic English football club who were kind of back in the limelight, back in European competition, who also have a history in European competition as well. So could you just shed a bit of light on that one for us? Yeah, so this opportunity was sort of born from another interview that we did with Kaizen Gaming slash Batano. Batano being a company under Kaizen Gaming.

sort of entailed me talking to Thomas Majewski who's the head of sponsorships at Kaizen Gaming who explained what the strategy would be over the past summer which they sponsored the Euros and the Cup of America to the biggest sort of regional international tournaments which they called the Orange Summer. So from that opportunity we actually got invited down to Bodie Heathmore, the training ground of Aston Villa and I got to hear from

the likes of Chris Heck who is the president of business operations at Aston Villa as well as Julio Iglesias Hernando who is the CCO of Kaizen Gaming they brilliantly actually explained not only the sponsorship which is a front of shirt sponsorship but they sort of explained how two brands, two companies can come together and create a strategy

Which is something I feel like as a football fan you don't really hear about these things You hear your club announcing a front of shirt deal which might be a record deal and in your head you think that's great that'll let us get by maybe like a Neymar or a big player that you usually can't get But what they did was explain how they are working together So Botano have a lot of experience in Latin America Which is actually somewhere where Aston Villa have outlined as

a target market that they want to go and penetrate. So it was quite interesting to see how they're working together in this sort of relationship and what they both gained from it. Yeah, that was, it was a really good one. And you're right, it's interesting to see really because of, like you said, when that Villa deal was announced, the deal, deal, sorry, between Villa and Betano, I think there was a lot of mainstream media focus on how much money it was worth and what that'd be bringing to Villa, especially at quite a critical time for them of, like we said, getting back into European competition.

Andrew McCarron (16:32.85)
Like I say, I don't think we often focus enough, certainly in mainstream media, on what the brands are trying to achieve together and how they plan to work together. And it's not all just about the financial side of things. So that was quite an interesting one. I think I'll also just take a moment to highlight what was one of my sort favourite interviews I've conducted this year, which was with Ben Shalom, CEO of Boxer, the boxing promotion. I know all of us here are quite big fans of boxing. So I found that one very interesting to do.

We talked a lot about the partnerships they have with US broadcasters and Sky Sports as well in the UK and kind of his vision for UK boxing. And what was quite interesting was at the time we talked about the role that Saudi Arabia is increasingly playing in boxing. Obviously that's really visible with all these world heavyweight title fights and so on getting held in Riyadh. And now lately, quite a few months down the line after the interview, Boxer of course have partnered with the Riyadh season, haven't they?

got in on that alongside Matroom and Queensbury as some of the biggest promotions involved. So I think this kind of brings us onto the closing segment of our discussion here, which is to talk a little bit about some of the biggest trends you're expecting over the next year. I think on this topic of the Riyadh season and Saudi Arabia, I'm assuming we're all expecting that to continue and just grow at pace for Saudi Arabia to continue taking a bigger role in sports. Obviously it's been...

confirmed that they're the host of one of the World Cups next year, not next year sorry, but 2034. 2034 they're the host. So that's only going to continue isn't it and we're going to see, just in boxing alone we're going to see some, it's inevitable that we're going to get even more world title fights there next year or get the UFC. I know that the Women's Tennis Association finals are getting held there over the next few years aren't they?

There's obviously the merger between PGA Golf and Liv Golf. That's still up in the air. Yeah, yeah, know. We know where that is at the moment. Yeah, that's a bit more subject to speculation, isn't it? But I think that was kind of one of the first defining stories, wasn't it, years ago when Saudi Arabia's rolling sports really started to take off. Yeah. That was kind of the big one, wasn't it? There was a lot of focus on golf. And in the years since, we're just seeing...

Andrew McCarron (18:38.099)
more and more events go there obviously they're putting quite a heavy emphasis on sport for their Vision 2030. as well. Yeah, that's a big one as well isn't it Kieran? know this is a beat that you cover a bit, the eSports side of things and inside of sport. Yeah, eSports World Cup is something that Saudi Arabia have sort of, well eSports in general, they've really took it on and made it their own and they're going to be putting a lot of funding into the eSports World Cup so that'll be interesting to see what happens with all that.

And then outside of that as well, know another area, something you touched on earlier, Callum, and it's something you wrote quite a good commentary piece on not long ago, is the role of streaming platforms in sports. can imagine we, I think we can all agree that that's probably something that's going to continue quite a bit next year. Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's a lot of focus right now on from leagues, especially on where the consumer lies. I know with the NBA.

Their demographic is really young and what they've started to do now is tailor most of their content to social media. They absolutely lead light years ahead of every single sports league in terms of digital engagement on social media. Whether that's with highlights, packages, posts, all that type of stuff. So that 18 to 34 demographic, even younger I suggest, they have really led in terms of that. And I know there's a lot of focus from streaming companies now to...

engage with different types of social media, digital content strategies in terms of blending that into their broadcasts. I I spoke to WSC Sports not too long ago and then we focused a bit about integrating data in terms of the live feed. know Genius Sports have started to do that with betting companies and now we're going to start to see it. Whether that be on traditional TV channels or streaming channels, there's going to be a lot of focus now on data integrations.

and how you view some of these sports. In terms of the streaming platforms, I know that Netflix are broadcasting two Christmas Day games, which also will include Beyonce, which is pretty massive, right? I you're going to get a lot of international fans tuning in just to see Beyonce, kind of similar like the Super Bowl, right? So yeah, I that's massive for Netflix and I'm sure Netflix will be looking to drive forward their live sports content strategy in the future, as well as Amazon Prime's.

Andrew McCarron (20:52.051)
I know they've got to deal with the NFL and who knows maybe we start to see their involvement in football more prominently. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so many topics we could cover here, guys, like, yeah, the zone continues to rise as well, AI in sports, we've got the football governance bill passing through in the UK. But yeah, I think we're starting to run out of time. Thanks so much for talking with me today, guys. I'm glad we've had the chance to sort of shed a light on some of our features and some of the biggest trends of the year and what we can expect from next year.

So thanks very much to everyone who's tuned in and a very Merry Christmas from the Inside of Sport team.