Cesc Fabregas, data, and Disney: Inside Como

Welcome to the Athletic FC Podcast with me, Ayo Akinwalere. Como 1907 have gone from Seri De to Seri A in just six years, so what's behind their rapid rise and can they sustain this push to the top? Okay, here with us today we've got Matt Slater and also a very special guest, Como CEO Mirwan Sawarso as well. Mirwan, so good to have you with us, I know we were going to say is the weather better in Como or London right now? What's going on? London's better right now. It's cold over there. Lovely stuff. Look, we have to get into the rise of Como, I guess many people from afar would look at this as a rags to riches kind of story, but I remember speaking to you a while ago that there was an idea that actually you bought this club, but there was a TV idea behind it as well. You tell us a bit more about that. Yeah, so I bought the club, we bought the club when I was running a TV station and at the time we just lost the Italian League rights so we didn't have any live football and we had this under 17 Indonesian team that we were placing in Birmingham and we were broadcasting the games live to Indonesia and the ratings were higher than that of the Premier League because it's a novelty, an Indonesian team playing against the UK academies. So I thought I had the idea like why not buy a team somewhere, an amateur division team and place these boys or some of them into this team and it now becomes a proper competition and people would love to watch that. And then when we bought the club, I found out that you're not allowed to have non-EU players in below the top division so we have a football team, but not for what we wanted to do. Not for what you wanted to do. Let's bring it forward then. When did you decide that this was a football team that actually had a real structure in your head for and also were thinking how far can we take this journey? Well to be fair, so we tried to keep it as a content play. We tried to make documentaries out of it and we did okay. When we were in the fourth and third division, the budget was still low enough they can become a content play. But when we came to the second division, the budget became significantly higher that there's no content, distribution could manage it. So that's when the owner says, "Well then the only way for us to recoup our money back is to turn this into a business and see how far we can take this." And we got into it. Apparently getting promotion wasn't as easy in the second division as it was in the years before, and as significant investment were put into it, then our only way to recoup our money was to get to this area, to the top league. And that's why we pushed and then that's where we're here. Well yeah, let's talk about the ownership. I mean, the whole heap of other business ventures they have, football really wasn't the one. How do you go about convincing people like that? The football is actually a viable space to jump into. Well, initially it was a content play, like I said, you know, so it was supporting our TV business. But when it became a business on its own, we had to figure out a way for it to become a business that the owners understand. They're not exactly passionate about football as a business or passionate about football at all for that matter. So we had to work in a way to make them realize that this can be a business that could be successful. I think I'm here to quiz you on the business side of it. I think that's my role here today. I don't want to do it all in one go though. Sure. That'd be a bit rude. I mean, look, this isn't going to work for our podcast listeners, but you are wearing Como branded trainers and we can talk about some of that. And it's not a Como branded top, though, is it? It's a watch. A Como watch. Okay, so you've come with merch. I came with merch. No, it's actually become my light on lifestyle then. There you go. Lifestyle I think is quite an interesting idea to explore. So clearly fashion, merch, what else is going to turn, I'm going to be slightly rude here and then I'll try and be polite later. A business that has failed twice in the last 20 years, there's been two bankruptcies at Kolo. Three? Three is it? Oh my God, I missed one. Okay. Has a current average attendance of about 10 and a half thousand. Maybe I left. Is it? Is it okay this season? All right. But maybe I'm looking at last year's numbers. All right. So League One lower end of the championship in England in terms of, League One probably actually in terms of your attendance. I know it has a very beautiful ground and I'm definitely going to talk about the ground because I think that is central to the business plan. Sure. But at the moment, currently loss making. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I've been talking to a few people in the industry who are all very fascinated by your story. Everyone's watching, everyone loves the concept. They are telling me the losses are pretty big. So how are you going to get around this? Because you also told these people and I believe you. I certainly believe the intention that this is going to be self-sustaining. This is going to wash its face in two years. It has to be. It's unfair to look into how much we put into the last two years. I mean, this two seasons as a basis of how we're going to run the business, right? You have to consider this is a startup. And unfortunately in football, as you move up the division, every year is like a new startup, right? Because suddenly the cost to run the business goes higher and higher and higher. It's not exactly a flat runway. So I would say we're in the second year of our startup because this is a Syria. We were a startup once and we spent a lot of other people's money. Yeah. Okay? So this is the same for us. I mean, for me, we spent a lot of other people's money because my boss's money and they will never forget that, right? We have to make sure it's a business that's actually working. What were the money spent on? Players investment, right? We could have done what other teams have done and just try to keep our Seri B players and change one or two players. But what will that lead us? Maybe into that relegation battle, then we have to rebuild again the next season. So what we've done is that we invested in a squad that can become stable. And at the same time, generating financial gains immediately should we choose to do so. Today, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven players who are under 20 years old or in the early 20s or eight in the early 20s, which we believe we could double the investment right away. For Jesus Rodriguez, our 19 year old left winger, we bought him for 22, pretty sure we can sell him for higher already. Nico, as you know, for 6 million, we had an offer for 75. Asan Diao, we bought him for 12, I think. We had approaches for nearing 60 million. We have Jaden Adai on the right, 19 years old. We know his value is a lot higher than how much we bought him for. In the back, we have Jacobo Ramon, bought him for 2.5 million and people are already talking about him as well. Alex Baye on the left is only 23. Martin Baturina, one of the highest. One of the most attractive attacking midfielder in Europe when we bought him from Dinamo Zagreb for 18 million. Again, it will commence much higher returns. These are just some of the players that we put into the club, hopefully grow at some point when we need to. But the priority is to actually identify where we can create sustainable businesses that is not impacted by performance on the field. That's why we identify, I mean, okay, people say, "Oh, you're lucky. You're based in Lake Como." But it was not the consideration when we bought the club. It was that just like any other business, we are there. Then we did a research and evaluated what can we do here to make at the time a second division team to generate a sustainable business. We identified it was tourism, travel and tourism. What's really unique, we can actually make it about sports travel and tourism. Then we said, "Hey, it's Lake Como." The people that come here are different than people who are coming to other places. Then we say, "Maybe it's premium soccer to travel and tourism business." That's what we try to build the ecosystem around it. It's not as if we're doing something new. This is our established businesses, established industries that we can just then anchor our key business into and try to grow from the ecosystem we build around it. As custodians of a club like this, how responsible do you feel then that firstly the heritage of the club? Because there have been some fans coming to watch you guys from day one in the doldrums of professional football to actually feel like you're there for the right reason. Because we often talk about football clubs here on this podcast. People say one thing, but they don't necessarily do those things. Well, we're lucky because the ownership group have a particular way of working. They're always giving back to the community. What I'm doing in Como is only mirroring what the group has done in Indonesia. When we had COVID, we were the first to offer immunization to help the community before anyone else did it. I think we contributed a bit of money. The other project that we did, we realized that tourism is one of the ... When people say Lake Como, they think about George Clooney, everybody buying the Irish villas. I think one of our former CEOs said it best, it was like, "There's a Dakotomy in Como. There's people who live in the villas and people who are serving the people that live in the villas. These are our fans. It's a mixture of both." A lot of them were making souvenirs or selling souvenirs to the tourists. Then we said, "Okay, why don't we remove that burden from them?" We create the merchandise that they can sell for the tourists. We only produce products made in Como. Again, this is different. We call it Como for Como. 25% of the top-line revenue goes back to the business owners. 25% goes to the community, to any community projects that they choose to want to have. The other 50% goes back reinvested into the products again. We started maybe with about 10, 18 businesses that trusted us to join it. Today, we have 585 shops all around the Como province doing this. Slowly doing these initiatives, they realize we're here for them, with them. We are very mindful not to disrespect them. When we look into changing logos and stuff like that, we go back to the heritage rather than creating something new. Our new club logo is actually almost like the old logo. The slogan that we can use now at SEMCUMASK, which is a dialect of meanings we are people from Como, is something that they used a long, long time ago and they haven't been using in the last 10 years while the club wasn't there. We adopted it, we embraced it, and the city is very, very proud of it, and they've been supportive of us. We're very close to the tradition. We also respect those who have supported us before we were a decent team or before we were a team. Anyone who's had season tickets when we were in the third division still have the same price. Today, they still pay for the same price when they were buying it in the third division. We tried to stay close to the community in their sense. This is the Athletic FC podcast with Ayo Akimolere. Let's go with recruitment. You've clearly gone young. I'm told you've gone very data. I think it's known that you have a relationship with Jamestown. They've obviously got a great story to tell. We're all aware of Brighton. They're an official attorney blooms company working with Hearts and Grimsby. Are they the only people you work with? Are you a Jamestown run club? Do they give you a list of players? How much input are people in Como? We learn from Jamestown. We learn also from Billy Bean. This is the first one who actually helped us to actually get set up into the data approaches. Ludonautics with Ian Graham is also one that we work with, but at the same time, we try to create our own version of it. We have guys from Statsbom, from Royal Navy, from Brentford. We've taken a number of people from Azat-Arkmar to then join us and create. We have a 60 people strong data team that's developing our own system, so to speak. We always work with other providers as well to benchmark what it is that we come up with. Clearly you're more than one source of data. More than one expert. You're not beholden or tight Jamestown. You're developing your own know-how. For sure. For sure. You have to. I've probably read that how we don't just, it's a process. Data is only the top of the funnel. From there, then you go into whether it fits the playing style or not. Then you go into the behavior analysis, and then you go into the wheels of the social media history, which is five wheels between from the player, the girlfriend, the wife, the father, the mother, all that. Once you've done all that, then you go to the coaching teams, and then we have the board of recruitment, which is the head of recruitment, the head of development, head of first team, which is Fabregas, of course, the sports director, head of football strategy and football growth, and then myself, and the ownership in Indonesia, all working together deciding who it is that we choose. There's a lot of voices. There's a lot of input. One of the things that come up, I think, in things that have been written about the club and the club's success is Fabregas. Certainly the Italians are referring to him as an English style manager, in that he has an awful lot of power at the club, and you've basically given him the keys. Is that fair? Yes, and no. Because, of course, he is a shareholder as well, which I think he is. Yeah. But it's also, so is theory, and so is Varan, right? But with Cesc, obviously, he's a very intelligent guy, first and foremost. But we do hold that system, where we have that board of directors in terms of football, so no decision is made unless majority agrees. So Cesc is instrumental to all the decisions, especially the coaching team has to agree if we bring in that he would have to say, "Yes, I will play him." If he says, "I will never play him," well, what's the point, right? But it's a joint decision. I can remember there was a discussion in which we came across this guy, Jayden Adai, and Cesc was saying, "Well, I'm not sure about him yet for today, but if you all believe in him, yeah, let's see." So Cesc was part of the decision process, and he is humble enough to actually listen to everybody else. But at the same time, all of us also humble enough to listen to his opinion, because he knows what he's doing. Sometimes we had a data player, to our data, the guy's not good enough. But Cesc says, "No, no, no, because he's playing differently. With us, he would play this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and I can prove that the data will be wrong, will not be what the data says." And he has proven that with two players, if not more. One I remember is Lucas da Cunha. He was a player that initially was a winger. He moved him into defensive midfielders, and we bought him for $250,000, and we are now having offers for $15 million, stuff like that, and that's, I would say, that's all down to Cesc. So that sounds incredibly important. Is there a bit of a key man risk here, what happens if someone came knocking for him? Well, we always talk about successions, all of us, not just for Cesc, but also for myself and everyone that works for us. We are always in discussion, saying, "Cesc, if you were to go, I mean, like, we're not stupid. We know there are bigger clubs that will come to him at some point, someday. If he decides to, he wants to go. He will have to help us, and who will be succeeding him." So we have a succession plan that we always actively discuss together, not just one guy, "Hey, hey, if he lives with this guy." I don't know. Like, "Do you think this guy is right? Would he be your assistant coach? Can we bring him in early? Or what do you think in the future? Who would be the right guy to nurture all these guys that you've nurtured before?" It's a discussion that we have to continually have, yeah. Something I'm interested in, and it's more to the success of the club in general, and I'm respecting about how potentially Cesc is pivotal to that is the other side of things. I think I read somewhere that you saw the Coma model as like Disneyland, for instance. So when it comes to football success, where does that sit in that tree? Well, yeah, the way I say it's like Disneyland, because the brand for us is Coma. So that's what the Disney company is. And then the football club is the theme park division, it's the Disneyland. So Disneyland has to be fun. So the football team has to be fun to watch. So it has to be exciting. Winning helps, but you have to play attractive, but winning is important too, so yeah. So then if that Disneyland needs to be attractive, which brings me onto your question about the stadium, talk to us about the redevelopment of this space, because it's old, it's iconic, and it's quite integral to the city, especially in its positioning in the city. What are those conversations like with local authorities? Because we've often spoken to journalists who said it's quite tricky trying to build in Italy, for instance. Because you've got so many laws slash some of these spaces are really old, and you'd have to pump a lot of money in to get it up to standard, so where you might see maybe a stadium like Brentford, for instance, in the Premier League. I would say yeah, but no, but yeah, but no, because the municipality has been extremely helpful with us. When we took over the club, the stadium's capacity was only 5,000, not that we rebuilt anything, but it was a lot of the area of the stadium was condemned, you're not allowed to use it. So over the years, we have made reinforcement to the structures, renovations, to now that the capacity is 12,000. So that's why you said last year with 10,000, that was correct, because last year, we were only allowed to have 10,000. This year, we've added 2,000 extra seats, we're now 12,000. Now, where do we need to be if we move to continue? I don't think in Como can be more than 17,000, 15,000 maybe, because it's a town of 85,000. Yes, we're close to Milan, and we also mindful that 40% of our revenue comes from overseas, from tourists for one night, you know what I mean? So is it enough? I think so. Do we need to change a lot? We can adjust with whatever the requirements is given to us. I haven't had any issues with what the municipality has informed us, what we can and cannot do. And I think we're moving on quite well with them. So on one side, like I said, for the curva, where the fans are sitting, the hardcore fans, their tickets have stayed since they were in the third division. I think it's like between 12 to 25 euro, depending where you are. But on the main tribune, the highest ticket is $2,000. So it varies quite a bit, right? And also, yes, we cannot have match day hospitality, maybe like what you imagine what you like. But I think ours is better, because we rented four villas just behind the stadium. So our pregame hospitality is on the villas, in the villas. So you can hang out by the lake, have your coffee on a lakeside villa, and then come to the game and go back up to the game. And go back to those places, yeah. On the flip side of that, then, if you're not able to generate that much on match days, does that stadium then become a year-long space for activity, a year-long space for continuous revenue-designed initiatives? Our plan is to actually convert it into a multi-purpose venue for tourism, right? So it would have to have about 10 restaurants over there. But all of them overlooking the lake, because our stadium is right on the lake, as you know. And there are no other restaurants on the lake in that area of the city. So to us, it makes sense to actually convert it into a hub of tourism. I think it's a fascinating idea. I have spoken to many overseas owners in Italy, and they all tell me how hard it is to build things. Try and paint a picture, you know, for people that, I mean, but everyone's going to rush off and Google straight away, here's Nadia. It is famous, you know, it's right there on the water, a bit like the Hill Dick in Cunner, Everton. That's a nice backdrop. Wait. That's a backdrop to the docks. There are other grounds, there are loads of grounds near the water. Just paint a picture. What is it like seeing a game? Because it is very, I think it is very, if it's not the USP, it's got to be one of them. I don't think you can have more than one USP. But anyway, Como Football is very much about the stadium, isn't it? It feels to me that the stadium is incredibly important to your business. No. No? No, I don't think so. Yes, because of the limitation of the capacity is the experience of going there, right? So that's kind of what I meant, the experience of going. Yeah. So the experience means like on the outside as well, coming in, there's the only place you can actually like have a drink by the lake three minutes before coming into the game, right? And it's a beautiful lake. Let's just say that. And for us, we go with the premium experience. This is why the matchday experience that we sell our boxes for about $375,000 each, right? And we try to make it very rustic Italian rather than making it modern. Because if you, as a Brit coming over to Italy, you want authentic Italian experience. You don't want to be, Las Vegas want to be experienced. So we want to make it very, very rustic. Every game day you come in, the food will be from the areas of our opposition. So it's almost like a mini tour of Italy. This is kind of things that we try to do. But having said that, my goal is trying to make sure that the revenue away from football matches if not exceeds that from the football operations. That's why in our retail division is one of the fastest growing division that we've got. We've got the, how do you call it, the digital, the ticketing side. And also the data analysis is also a fast growing business for us as well. And then we have other commercials like the transportation and everything like that. We're pushing on all fronts to make sure we're not relying on one business revenue stream. And looking at the website, looking at your own personal links in page, which I would recommend. It is, it is one of the best. I need to change that. Make it even more fun. Please, please go, go lean into that. Okay. What is it? Is it chief? Delusional officer. And anyway, it's all, it's all good stuff. I can see how active you are. I mean, I've already mentioned the, you know, the clothes and the watch and there's a big deal. If it's announced this week, isn't there? Is it with Brioni? Is that right? Brioni was at the beginning of the season. Yeah. In the season. That was very nice. You're all the players in the villas. It was like a Bond film. It was great. My concern, I guess, is lots of clubs are having these ideas and the British clubs have tried it as well. I mean Arsenal do it quite well. Of course. Arsenal is probably one of the best, isn't it? Of course. Yeah. But Arsenal are a factor of many, many, big number, bigger than Como. My point is that it's a bit like the stadium. You know, yes, you can get to 15, 16, 17,000 and yes, you can definitely boost your hospitality section and yes, you probably can charge more than even maybe the mind clubs because of the, because of the type of people that are coming to Como anyway. Absolutely. But it's still quite small. Is there only so many people that are going to want to buy Como trainers? You'd be surprised because when we started the revenue and annual revenue of our merchandising was 53,000 euro. Last year, our target has moved to 10 million in this year, 34 million. So just to showing the growth, right? Now, what we will announce very, very shortly is that through Alfa, you have to understand like in Como, we have the Como merchandise, which is linked to the football team. We don't expect much from that. That's maybe 10 million. That's it. But Como, the city, Como, Lake Como, like the shoes I'm wearing has nothing to do, no club attributes whatsoever, right? This is the fastest going one. You can sell an Adidas hoodie for maybe $60, $70, $80. But the one that we've done, which is the LaGuardi Como sailing collection designed by our chief brand officer, Ruiji, retail for 200 euro. The same hoodie. I mean, nicely designed obviously by Ruiji. And soon you will see, through our Rude brands, we will be announcing Rude for Fans, a Rude apparel, retail, the t-shirts about 350 euros. Yeah, it's quite premium. They sell it in Harrods. 350 US dollars. Yeah, yeah. It's distributed in Harrods. And that's why when we collaborated with Rude, even our clothes or our jerseys were marketed as… That's why I've never heard of them. Sold at Harrods. But soon you will see, through our Rude, Rude for Fans, we will be working with seven NBA clubs, two Saudi clubs, two Premier League clubs. And if I'm not mistaken, six or eight Italian clubs. We will be managing the operation. We will be managing all the retail revenue, right? So the revenue is part of our retail business. We are very familiar to our limitations. You should sell the football machine and concentrate on that. Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no, because without one, there is not the other. It's so bad, man. Football is an endless money-sucking pit. Yeah, it is. If we can grow the way we grow it, it's, I think, one of the most lucrative businesses you can be. Look, when we started, how much with the club? I bought the club for 800,000 years. Yeah, yeah, I saw that. Right? The last offer the owners refused when we were in Surrey B was 60 million. And today, the offers are already in the hundreds. So you were saying like, we spent X, will we recoup that? For sure. For sure. So today, if the owner says, let's go, let's close up shop, let's sell it, they'll recoup all their money. Okay. For sure. You're listening to the Athletic FC podcast with Iowaki Mulare. We've gone this far and we've not even spoken about the football on the field as well. We've touched on Fabry Gas a little bit. But yeah, I mean, let's just put it in contest at the time of recording this. Komo, I currently seventh in Serie A. I have to take you back to the Juventus match because I saw your face blaze it across social media at the joy of that. Here goes their starlet, Nico Paz, drawing in Cambias on Nico Paz, a win 73 years in the making. Komo defeat Juve and Serie A for the first time since 1952. Some might say at this moment in time, Komo are punching above their weight. How does it feel like as someone who is in charge of a club like this to actually beat the establishment? It feels the same. I mean, one thing I've learned from working in MMA and football is that no match is more important than the other and no result is more important than the other. I mean, I cannot be too happy for victory so that I don't be too sad for a loss. Trying to be like, just look at the data. How did we perform? If I look at the data on the metrics, we were predicted to achieve a certain amount, yes, against Juventus, we exceeded expectation. But there were games in which we performed below expectation. But Cesc in that game executed every single one of his game plan to perfection because he gives us a game plan maybe 48 hours before every game and he is not judged by whether we win or lose. He is judged whether his game plan is correct and whether he is able to execute his game plans. And there was the one if there was a grade, it was, you know, 10 out of 10. Yes, it was a good win. But it's no better win than we beating Verona or keeping Napoli to draw a 0-0 or Atlanta 0-0 without the key players that we had. We tried to see it based on whether we can execute the game plan as we planned it. So generally, so many foreign owners now in Italian football, and it's gone very much the same way as here, right here in England. I'm not sure if there's quite a majority yet, but it's close now, isn't it, in Syria? I think then. Yes, I think that's what I thought. What do you make of it? What do they make of you? Would you do anything to Italian football? Is Italian football the whole point? Can it learn from guys like you? Or is that...? I don't think that far. I mean, I'm just doing my job, what I'm told to do, and I mean, my job is to try to make money for the club and help the club grow. I don't work for the league, so I cannot think for the league, right? And do I enjoy the experience working with the people in the league in Italy? Yeah, it's beautiful. Everybody is so passionate, right? And you still have the traditionalists, and you have the modernists, and you have people in between. But at the end of the day, everybody works together. I have been told the president of Napoli is the most unreasonable man in the planet. But in all my experience with him, he's one of the most pleasant guy I've ever met. Well, you get both consent guys, right? You're both insane guys. In a way, we talk about football, we talk about growth, we talk about development. And to me, he's a genius. It's the same as the Percassi at Atalanta. What gentlemen, and they're very, very thorough in everything that they do. I don't think I've met a bad person, I mean, bad owner in Serie A yet. You will. Don't worry. Give it time. How is it selling football viewed in Indonesia? Because that's kind of... I suppose how you came to it? No. I mean, it's very popular. Right? How does it stack up against the Premier League, for example? The Premier League is a behemoth, Premier League is number one. But to the older demographics who experience Italy in the 90s, Italy is still quite strong. This brings me on to sort of, I guess, sort of what you're relating to really is really eyeballs on the league. The first domestic European match to be played abroad is Como versus Milan in Perth. And that's going to be in February. That comes after you wafer reluctantly approved the fixture. Why do you feel, from your perspective, it's necessary to make this move? Not for us. It's for the league, right? The league asks us whether we're willing to do it. When the league asks us, I say, "Yeah, sure." The NFL plays in Europe all the time, there's no issue. And we, as a league, we do need more exposure, right? The Premier League is too strong, too big. Australia has a lot of Italian descendants living there, especially for Milan. They have a lot of Milan fans over there. I think it's a good market for us to go to, because when I look into our e-commerce data, if I'm not mistaken, like 5% of our e-commerce is coming from Australia. So why not grow it? So I don't mind. I mean, I thought it was a good initiative, and I'd love to support it. But we've seen in La Liga that there was a bit of a pushback from the Spanish fans. Any pushback from your fans? Because some of those fans won't get to see Como that weekend. Yeah. Of course we have pushbacks, but we have pushbacks on a lot of decisions as well, right? And I cannot make a decision based on every single person's opinion. We just have to look at the bigger interest of the club and also the bigger interest of the league, which in the end serves the biggest interest of the fans, too. If we all grow in terms of eyeballs and, as you say, it would benefit everybody. Will Como make money on that trip? Yeah, for sure. For sure, for sure, yeah. And is that money from the organisers in Australia? It's from the league. The league pays us, yeah. But I think Como, the money that the league receives, it'll be distributed to all the other clubs as well. Yeah. There's a conversation about fair competition argument, you know, as in Milan's home match played in a neutral ground. What do you make of that argument? I'm pretty sure, how many attendants at the capacity of the stadium in Paris, maybe 60,000? Yeah, it's pretty big. I don't think there's going to be many comment lines. I think it'll be like, yeah, 59,500 Milan fans and Como fans for sure, which is what we will get in San Siro anyway. So it's the same. Are you hoping to take any Como fans with you at all? Well, we'll bring what we can afford to bring 100, 150 fans if we're allowed to do it. Oh, really? Yeah. Is that something that you're thinking about? Yeah, yeah, we already offered it. If the game goes in place, we will definitely pay for about 150 fans to come along or whatever it is, the number that we got. Yeah. You're going to put charter a plane? Yeah, we've done it before when we played in North America in a tournament over there. We flew in, we flew with a few fans with us and two years in a row. So we participated in a tournament called TSD and every year we bring our fans with us. We've done a whole podcast about this game and you've already made the point about the NFL. So clearly you haven't got a problem with the principle of taking games abroad. No. Well, for me, it's like growth is growth. Everybody needs to grow. A lot of the things you're talking about are really fascinating and I think we've spoken about it before on a different panel where I'm interested in the idea of disruption. We mentioned it in Atlanta, for instance, and they've been quite disruptive actually in their approach. And you see the journey to Europe, for instance, do you take pride from disruption in terms of can we do this slightly different? Can we reshape, reimagine? No, no, I don't see that way. You have to see where we are because as Como, we have to play catch up a lot, right? So if we try to copy someone else's playbook, we won't work. So we have to find something new and innovative. It's different than nobody has tried before. I'm not taking pride in it, but we have to find success, you know? That's why when we looked into the merchandising, we saw forget the Como football take too long, but la body Como, you can grow very, very fast, very, very quickly. That's why we created our own tournament over the summer, the Como Cup. We had Ajax playing there, Celtic playing there with us, Al-Ahli. And now we have like over 20 teams applying for next year's tournament. Why? Because we have so many tourists coming to Como, but they come over the summer, and the season starts in August. What do we do in June, July? So we started this, we called football on the lake, and then now we're creating music on the lake, festival on the lake. We have to build a brand around it and grow it. And yeah, football is the catalyst though. And does that brand look like European football, a bit like Atlanta, for instance, at some point in your journey? It's inevitably the goal, right? I put that as a sporting side goal, but on the non-sporting side. That's why I divided the companies into seven, all operating independent of each other, so that the retail side must not just be relying on football success. They have their own targets, and that's why we say like, "Okay, Como football is not enough. We have to go Como." Like, "Oh, this is not enough. We have to go to other clubs as well, and see how fast we can grow and cover the revenue needs that we need to achieve." It all sounds very, very exciting. I've seen lovely clips from football on the lake. It looked great. I like the beer as well. You make the beer? Yeah. Our beer, La Comasca. Yeah. It's good stuff. I mean, did it make money? The beer, yeah, because we consume it at the stadium and at the local, yeah, of course. Did the tournament make money? No, not this year. But it will be. Okay. Because you have to see what we're going to do. Everybody goes like, it's very quick to say like, "Oh, you're not making money. You're losing." Guys, we're two years. Okay. We're two years in the league, right? Back home, when we start our e-commerce business, it's 12 years before things happen. I mean, we're not magicians. We're not flipping a hand and suddenly making money coming out from growing my hands, right? If you ask me what's my runway, I need five years, minimum, to actually grow Como to become successful. Five years from two years. I'll take the next three. I don't need five more years. Okay. I'm happy with the three. It's not bad, is it? We have to be, right? And this insurance is player trading. That's the one I'm interested in because how do you keep hold of these players or do you want to keep hold of them? Or do you fund them? I mean, do you want to sell? I was going to ask a sort of as a follow-up to that question, given how data-led you are and how you're at the cutting edge and some great ideas, you've got all these wonderful players. When I talk to investors, they're often thinking multi-club, they're thinking, "Well, okay, we need a pathway. We need, I need multiple shop windows." If I'm going to create this player trading model, one club's not enough. You certainly got the financial firepower if you want to. It looks like you're starting to have proof of concepts as well. Yeah. Another club? Another market? Never. Enough headache to manage one club, I can't do another. But we partner with other clubs. We partner with IAACS, as you know, and we partner with other clubs. Now we just sign a partnership with a club in Saudi as well. We have a friend in Japan, Mexico, Spain. I think partnership is the right model, and the partnership is to be comprehensive. We work on the commercial side, supporting them on the commercial side. Make for IAACS, they send us players, two of our youth players came from IAACS in a model that's the same thing as we did with Niko in Real Madrid, but the compensation was not money, the compensation was services. These are the kind of thing that we could look into, and I think it's more beneficial a change of expertise, sharing expertise and knowledge between clubs without having the headache of that financial responsibility is all yours. Let's leave it there, because it's been a really falling and interesting conversation. Rarely do you get someone like yourself to come in and really just break down the model with many respects. You've even got Matt Smiley, which is also really fascinating as well. You've been listening to the Athletic FC podcast. The producers are Guy Clark, Mike Stabru and Jay Beale, executive producers are Abby Patterson and Eddie Moorehead. 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