Exclusive: Pete Lowy interview

Täs bibisi podcast, eivät se poti by ads outside the UK. Täällä on tullut tuntia kautta. Täällä on tullut tuntia. Täällä on tuntia. Täällä on tuntia. Täällä on tuntia. On ♪♪ ека, kerrunkan ja melko, silloin näk wellbeing, - hemme nähdä voidaan psyllenkäis despair tehdä, - kaikki reikta nämä Lisän reservediksi irtin thoosiaan - etseudestä실 intoan. ette on Tokyo siv Приlexi. S Bü satisfyötein. freezer SML- Peter. - Sivutu, joten on järjestelmä. Alitunut on polkia, - kun on kylmää. - Hi, Poppy. - Hey, Jenny. - How are we? - I'm feeling great. - This is a bit different, isn't it? - It is. - Oh, welcome. - Aside. - Yeah, the seat that's normally occupied - by Akai's Achief. - Is occupied by Pete. - Lowie, how are you, Pete? - Good thanks, guys. - Hey, you're doing. - Yeah, we'll go to a really appreciate you - coming in and speaking to us. We know it's a whistle stop trip for you, isn't it? This time to be over here and to come and see the game tonight. Because we're recording this Tuesday morning, ahead of the Sunderland game, just to time stamp that for everybody. So you all realize that we're not going to be talking about the Sunderland game. Because who knows what's going to happen in that right now. But we appreciate you coming in and chatting to us. Yeah, you're here for what? 24, 48 hours? - We came in yesterday morning, leaving tomorrow. And then I'll probably be away the rest of the month and then come back in April. - But you're here really regularly, aren't you? - Yeah, come quite a lot out of the 28 odd games. Probably been to about 17 or so this season. But I have to tell you, Johnny, I have never been introduced as the way you did on Friday as the mystery guest. I've been called lots of things in my life. I've missed you guest, it's not one of them. - Yeah, we've had to keep people guessing a little bit as to who it might be. That's the tea you use. The art of radio, I guess, is that, isn't it? - Well, I just let you know that, so that you know I listen to the podcast. If we just say, you know, I am actually listening. - We appreciate it. - Let's start, shall we, with just an introduction to who you are, Pete? Because a lot of our listeners might know you. Some of them might have met you at Ellen Road, we see you speaking to fans fairly regularly, or even at our way games. But for those who don't, why are you sat here in the "Don't Go To Ben Just Yet Studio?" How have you got involved with Legionite in over the years? - Well, I've been a fan since I was a kid. And it was hard to be a fan of English football and all leads, living in Australia in the 60s and 70s. We didn't have satellites, you couldn't watch the games. In fact, the match of the day used to be filmed, put on a conscious flight, sent to Australia, and you get to sit there next week. But I fell in love with the English football, and my father is Eastern European, he came to Australia. Even though football wasn't that big in Australia, it was big in our household. And somehow, and I can't actually remember how we used to do this, but my younger brother and I found an old shortwave radio that my father had. And every Saturday night about midnight or so, we'd hooked it up to his television, and we could get the match of the day on the radio. So the reason I really enjoyed talking to you guys is I actually learnt my football listening to it on the radio. - Which is how we learnt it in some ways, because well, I still learnt it. - Yeah, that's quite humbling to know that really. Yeah, I mean, so what was your first memory of Legionite? - Well, first memory of Legionite was the Revy teams, and then the White Kit with the Smiley Badge. I have a real, when we brought the Smiley Badge back, you can't see it, but it's right here. It just evokes a feeling of the team and the football that is just inside me as nothing, you know. And the way you look at it, I am in love with football, and in love with the team. And to be in the position I'm in now, it's almost hard to imagine that I could get here. - How did you get here then? How did you end up in the position you are as an investor, heavily involved in the football club? - Well, my family through Westfield had the ability to invest in lots of different places. And we'd been looking at investing in English football for almost 15 or 20 years. And well, this might not be something everybody loves so much, but when the Glazer's bought Manchester United, it started to, you could see that football was becoming global and global investors could look and invest in football teams. And we looked at quite a lot of clubs over the years, so much so that we nearly bought a piece of arsenal about 20 years ago when they moved from hybrid to the Emirates. We were looking at that, never really got there. And in fact, I can't remember the exact year, but somewhere in the mid-teens, I got a banker friend of mine to get in touch with Ken Bates, because we wanted to have a look at buying leads when they were in league one. And Ken was not exactly that friendly about it. There's a comment somewhere on one of the local newspapers that since Westfield couldn't build them all in Bradford, what the hell do we know about English football? And then about eight years ago, also I contacted Andreja when he was on half of it, when he bought the full part of the club from Cholino, and negotiated with him to buy 10 or 20% of the club. What I didn't realise is the 49ers got about six months ahead of me. And Andreja negotiated with me. We actually got to the point of making a deal where we were going to invest, but the 49ers had a right of first refusal, so they were ahead of me, so they got in front of me. And I couldn't invest, and I sort of went away. And then you ended up, did you have to go to the 49ers then? Well, no, I had a chat with the 49ers at the time, but they were quite happy where they were. They didn't want any other investors. And then when they bought their second piece from Andreja about a year later, they came to see me. We had a very good chat about it. And I ended up being their first investor with them, then into the club. And then after we did that, we rolled up Tell and Road. I can't remember the year, it might have been 21, maybe. Whatever it was, and I walked up the top of the stairs and I had a look at the stadium, and I was just in love with magic. And then I got in a bit of trouble, I went down, I walked on the pitch, and I chased off the pitch. And I was standing in the middle of Elin Road, and I was looking around, I couldn't believe I was here, or there, I suppose. Believe it now, I'll do it still for every time I walk into the stadium. The first thing, I'll go really early as everybody knows. And I love to sit in that empty stadium, it's just magic. But every time I go, I walk up the stairs, and when you get to the platform, you see the green of the pitch, and whether the sky is grey or blue or it's just fantastic. What it does, it reminds me when I used to go to football with my dad, you know, your 5 or 6 or 7 years old, your dad holds your hand, because everyone's there, you walk up the stairs, and you're there with your father, and the pitch just hits you. And it's like being on heaven on earth. And then you have the game, and then you've got all the problems, and then you're going to win, and then you're going to lose. And you know, you have all of the tension and all of the excitement, but that time before the game starts, to me, is one of the special times in football. Pete, you mentioned Paragot and Jed there. What's your relationship with them? How does it sort of organise itself in terms of. Well, the way the club's organised, the 49ers, are the operating partner of the club. They run the club. I'm on the board with Jean Andrew Parag and Robbie. And my relationship with them is one of more of a partnership than a limited partner. So I spent a lot of time with Parag. We talk a lot of time. He talks a lot with other board members. And I get to work with them on how we run the club, and where we go. And I would describe it this way. Most of the things I do with Paragot, or I do with the 49ers, are strategic issues. Where are we going to be in a year? Where are we going to be in five years? What are we trying to do? Where are we investing the capital? What sort of capital do we have? And the first thing we did when we invested, and then when we took over from Andréa, is we did a survey of most of the professionals in the club, and we discussed what sort of football do we want to play? Because before you invest, before you get a manager, before you go and buy players, you have to work out what sort of football club do you want. And I have this theory, and I'm sure everyone's going to disagree with me and tell me, I'm, you know, come from a world that doesn't really exist. But I believe football clubs have a DNA to them. And the DNA for Leeds was set by Don Revy in the 60s, and, you know, the teams, which Eddie was on, Billy Brennan was on, and Chalton was on. And I remember watching this. that team. And one of the things that we wanted to do was bring that DNA back to the club. Because I believe when a football club goes away from its DNA that was set long before we ever got around there, that's when they start to get in trouble. Do you feel you've done that? Do you feel that you're in the process of doing that? How far along that path do you feel you are? Well, I think we're moving along that path because we agreed on the style of football that we're going to play first. And that style of football is hard, tough, tough defense, some skillful wingers, really good center forwards. And in the championship have a team that could dominate the games. And then once we get promoted, have a team that can compete in the league. And we needed to agree on that as a board and as investors and as a club before you can get a manager. And we did, it was public, we interviewed three or four managers and Daniel fit the bill for the style of football that we wanted to play, the sort of club we wanted to be. And when you see Daniel in his press conferences and you see Praga in his press conferences and you see how we all work together, we are in essence one unit going down the same path because we all agree on what we're looking for. And I would argue that the team that we have today is a, in my opinion, is a leads DNA team. When you look at Rodin Ampedu, Stack, Bogel, Justin, Tanakara, Gurav, we have a team of extremely committed, skillful and tough footballers and they're really hard to push over. But how difficult or was it to sell that idea of a, this is a leads DNA to potential investors because obviously you're not the only investor. Investors who might not know, who's denied his story. I mean, for an honest might not know. So while the 49ers don't have a history in English football, they understand sport. And if you look at what they did at the 49ers, they did in essence that because the 49ers before Jettam Prague were there 10 or 12 years ago, it was one of the top teams in the league. The top quarterback, they won super balls and the team had in essence deteriorated over a number of years and Jett, Praga and the team they put together brought that club back to be one of the top clubs in the country. And they did exactly the same thing there as we were talking about doing here. They put the DNA of that club back in the club. So when I was speaking to them about football, it was not far into them. And they certainly understood what we were all trying to do. You've mentioned Praga there. And there's loads to get into, by the way, on this interview, people will be thinking, when are you going to ask them about this? When are you going to ask them about there's absolutely loads for us to shut up out of the next hour. We've only got you for an hour because you're a very busy man. But over the next hour loads get into, we'll go on to the football side of things. We'll talk about the stadium. We'll talk about the surrounding area to the stadium as well. But you've mentioned Praga a couple of times there. And one of the most noteworthy news stories, I guess, over the last seven days has been him stepping down from his role at Rangers. What can you tell us about that? Probably nothing. Sorry about that. I like that question. But I'm not involved in Rangers. I'm not a investor in Rangers. I don't have anything to do with that except I'm a Celtic man. When you see Eddie and I sitting there together, that's not why I didn't invest. I just was a little bit more for me. And one of the best nights I had actually, Eddie and I went up to Celtic Park last year during the European Cup when they played Leipzig, I think. And if you want to imagine what you can do at a stadium, if you want to imagine where you can take a club, that stadium is spectacular. The noise there, the people, the commitment. And if we can get some of that up to where we are at Elan Road, we will be doing really well. But on Praga, does it mean he's got more time now? Surely. He's not split over two clubs now. Is he? So it'll be a bit more hands-on with leads, won't he? Well, the way I look at it, Praga is an extremely good executive and he knows how to divide his time. And so for our fans to know, their investment in Rangers did not take one minute away from what Praga was doing at least. It did not affect the job he does for us. And he has a capacity to do all that. What about other investors? What about mention Leipzig? Red Bull Red Bull. Red Bull. Red Bull is a very interesting investor. I know it costs some consternation in the city. But the thing I'd like people to understand is that we all talk about the football. We go to the game every week and we watch the team play except it's a business. The only way we can put that team out on the pitch and/or compete is to have enough capital to be able to afford the business that we're in. And if you want to put a team out with a wage bill that's in the, you know, 10 to 20th in the Premier League or 15th or 20th, you need investors. You need capital. You need to invest in the stadium. And you need to create enough income so you can afford a team that can compete. And Red Bull is one of the largest sporting companies in the world. And to have them with us gives us opportunities to market the club and the team and increase our revenues so that we can compete better. Should funds fear further investment from Red Bull to the point of Red Bull wanting ownership of the club? Well, you have to look, I know Red Bull have a history of which I'm not going to comment on as it's not where I am. But there are clubs where they don't own 100% of the club. The other issue here for our fans to understand is that you have passionate investors like myself. You, you, you genus on the board is a large investor, Andrew's a large investor. Red Bulls an investor. We have a group of investors. And the club is controlled and run by the 49ers. And so you just have to look at it that you need as many investors as you can have it were committed. And that not one of them control it because the 49ers control the club. But if Red Bull increase the amount that they wanted to invest, would they get more say in the future of the club? That's what some people still might fear because they have had a history of not necessarily having the greatest record when investing in clubs and then still leaning on the history of that football club. That part's true, but Red Bull is one of four or five major investors. If they get the chance to invest more into the club, we get the chance to invest more into the right. Right. Right. So you need to look at it more as an investment club rather than just Red Bull is so big they're going to run over everybody. And there's no mention of that from them at all. They're a fantastic partner. They are very good sponsors. Although I'm not sure I could have beat that F1 car driving along on the pitch. Yeah. Actually, I think I can run the whole pitch. So we know Daniel can do it now. Well, I can't comment about that. Although I have seen Daniel jogging is not the nicest thing should we talk a bit about the stadium and the investment in that that is imminent to start the building work, isn't it? I suppose. And the surrounding areas as well. What's your involvement on that from that? That's your history, that's your business history, right? Sure. Well, let's step back a little bit. We have started. Okay. We spent somewhere between 10 and 20 million pounds already, probably close to 20 million pounds already. I would like to say that our work with the city has been fantastic. Historically, the relationship between the club and the city hasn't been that great, especially after when the club went in administration. And if you look at it, we came along two and a half seasons ago and we got approvals to do a whole renovation and an expansion of the stadium in two and a half years. That is a fantastic job between the city and ourselves. Usually it would in our business, it would take you a lot longer to do that. And within that, the city gave us approvals to start pre-works. So we've been doing a bunch of pre-works. So for instance, tonight I don't have my parking spot anymore because our construction guys took it over. I have to go back. I got to walk at least 300 yards. And so the job has been started. We are letting contracts. We are finishing up, construction, contracts, and full pricing. So the job's on its way. But again, one of the real reasons I invested in leads in the end is not because we were a fan. There was two main reasons. One was because of what happened when the club went into administration. It never had the investment that the club should have for a club in the city, the size of leads. And by the time we got there, it was, as I said, I looked at a lot of different clubs. It was the only big franchise left in England that had any value in it. We had no interest in buying Chelsea at two and a half billion pounds. No offense to the buyers, no offense to the seller. I just didn't see the value in it for us. But when you look at leads because of the difficulty the club had because of the Mercurial ownership for the last number of 20 years or so, you had a fantastic franchise. An incredible football club that was totally under invested in. So we could come and buy it at a reasonable price, but one of the keys to us was the expansion of the stadium. Because how do you take a club from A to B? You need more revenue. How do you get the club to compete with the top six? You need a bigger stadium. And all those ingredients were sitting there. The 49ers saw it. I saw it. We have seen it. And in quite short order since we bought the club from Andreia, we are on the precipice of doing all of this. And so the expansion of the stadium, first of 47,000 seats and then to the 53, would be the business underpinning of the growth of the club. And so that's why it's so important to us to get it done so that we can then go and compete with the arsenals and the spurs. I suppose we're ahead of spurs at the moment. I've got a lot of spurs fans. I have to be really careful. A lot of my friends are spurs fans. I've got to be very, very careful here. But that's how we get to compete. In sort of numbers, I'm going to be speaking to Angus, can I hear the previous at the club. And he was saying, this is a few years ago, he said, for example, spurs on match day, revenue, five million, match day alone, leads one million. This is going to all change. Are you able to sort of just give an idea of the sort of numbers or the projections? Well, I have to be a little careful with the numbers, but I can give you relative sorts of things. But before you do that, I just want everyone to know that I worked with Angus when we invested first with André for like three or four years. He did an incredible job at the club. And you can see what a good job he is because everything went and stole him. They paid him more than we could pay up. And I'm like, we hadn't gone up yet. But Angus did a fantastic job in keeping the club in place to allow people like us to come and actually take the club forward. And so when you look at the expansion of what we're going to do, the idea is to get the match day revenues up substantially, not all through ticket prices, by the way. I understand. And I was doing a conference here last year, the Reef Conference Real Estate Conference. And somebody got up and asked me about the ticket prices that Manchester United. I'm wondering, I couldn't help them about the ticket price that you're not. But you need to be able to have creative ways to increase revenue. And you're going to increase match day revenue, not just through ticket prices. It's through the services you can give to the fans by having the clubs that we can build in the stadium. It's by getting the fans to get to the stadium earlier. And all the surrounding businesses will still be OK, but get them to spend more and spend more time at the stadium as more than just a football game. And if we can do that and increase the revenues two or three times per match day, that helps go to bi-players. And then as you get more people to come and the stadium be bigger and the team performs better, you can attract sponsors like Red Bull. There was a really good article that I suggest everybody read in the athletic. Last week about Arsenal, firstly the revenues. And then when they moved from hybrid to the Emirates, which I think was 20 years ago or so. And the increase in revenues have allowed them to compete with teams like Chelsea when a Bromwich bought it and put quite a lot of money in. And when Manchester City got bought. And so you have to compete with these bigger clubs. You need to be much bigger. Also, and that article just showed you how Arsenal has been able to increase its revenues. While the television revenue and the Premier League is extremely important, the teams that are at the top have other revenue streams that we just can't match. And what we need to do is we have to get ourselves there so we can get those revenue streams in. And the beginning of that is the expansion of the stadium. The other thing that's very important, which I've been working on since I'm putting all these issues together, is the ability to get mass transit to the stadium. And from the mayor's point of view, the tram, from my point of view, light rail. But as fans know, once you get out of the train at lead station, if you don't, walk the 2.1 miles, no matter what, where the hell are you going to get there? The bus system is sort of okay, maybe you can get an Uber, maybe you get a cab, but you've got to walk. Yeah. And a stadium, and a stadium, the size of what we're going to build and a clubhouse size needs to be able to get people there quickly, easily, and have them spend time there. So people, this looked like, so in your mind, this is a small train, as opposed to a tram, sorry, or, well, are you open? It's not my choice. I'm not the mayor. I'm not the leader of the council. I'm not the head of the department for transport, and I'm not the chancellor of the executive either. But we need a system that we can move people in and out, simply, efficiently and quickly. Not only that, that kind of transportation will be able to open up the whole area of South Leeds. And one thing I do know a lot about is urban planning, because of the Westfield business that we're in, and whoever decided, I think in the late 60s or early 70s, to build the M621 the way they built it, all they did is cut South Leeds off from the rest of the city. And that part of Leeds is in the bottom 5% of the economic ladder of the UK. There's a reason it's there, and that is that motorway. And the connectivity to the major arteries into the city and the major shopping and the major ability to get into the city out to white rows and get to jobs and get around. So what's the status then on that mass transit system from your understanding? We know you met with Rachel Reeves, didn't you? You were down at 11 Downish Street. That's where we saw you on her Instagram page down there. So you've really been in the towers of power as such. How does it work? Are you willing and able to financially invest in a system of mass transit that would allow people to get out to Elmerud and beyond? Well, let's look at this one. My accent might not be the right accent, but I was representing the city at Whitehall. The real key that we're working with local government and national government is that their job is to invest in the infrastructure. If they invest in the infrastructure and put in the tram light rail, whatever you want to call it, then as developers, we can invest capital to develop that part of the city. So we're looking at doing and we've been working with the city on a master plan around the stadium. The stadium expansion comes first. The stadium, if you will, is the base of everything you can do off the back of having 50,000 people come 20 times a year, 19 times a year, hopefully. And then a few cupcakes. Then we can invest capital. We have the ability, if the transportation system is there, to build 2500 housing units, maybe 200,000 square feet of offices, local retail, fresh food markets. So if the government can actually allocate the capital and build the infrastructure to get to and from Elen Road out to White Rose and then into the center of the city, we could raise and invest somewhere between a billion and two billion pounds on that site. And then just imagine what happens once you start going up the hill to Beeson. And the best way to see this and compare it is what we're able to do at Stratford. Just to happen that we own the land at Stratford when London got the Olympics and we're watching the television and Mayor Livingston get's up and says, "We want the Olympics and we're putting the Olympic stadium on this land." We turned around and said, "Wait, we own this land all of us." And what we did is we worked with the National Government and with the Mayor and look at the change that's happening in Stratford since the Olympics. 24 million square foot wall there are, 7,000 apartments there in housing units. The whole of Stratford has been totally regenerated because the Olympics was there. And you see the same vision for South Leeds in a smaller respect. Yes, in a smaller respect. And developers like ourselves, when you get the ability to do that from the infrastructure of the government, we'll invest capital to do it because the demand is here. I think Leeds is short something like 35,000 housing units or homes or apartment or whatever you need. And the demand is there to build them. You just need the infrastructure to be able to build them and invest in them. So are you confident that the infrastructure will happen then? And if it doesn't happen, what impact does that have on the development of the stadium and the surrounding area, would that still happen without the government infrastructure? Well, let me start here from it. I think Adam and I were talking a bit earlier. I think the tram to Eleanor was one of the first things that Adam reported on when he was a cub reporter or something like that. It's been going on forever. 25 years ago, 30 years and something like that. It's been forever. And you can understand people's cynicism when they go, let's go. - Maybe late 20, 30s and a half. - Well, we were talking with her mayor yesterday and she did say from her political point of view that the push for the, she likes to call it the tram, you know, the push for the tram has failed twice. The thing for me is what I'm trying to do is help all parts of the government, a bit similar to the club go down the same path. They, and we're in quite a unique position here. Firstly, the stadium is going to be developed either way. - Right, so that does happen. - That happens. - Yeah, yeah. - Just like everybody understands this, we have started. Okay, so it's happening. There's a timeline, you gotta get the timelines right. You know, somebody creates a war somewhere and you know, we run and who knows what that makes. But we have started the job, the timeline's gonna happen. And now what we wanna do is get government behind everything else there to allow public capital to be invested. And this government, especially, and the mayor and the local city government are all committed to bringing this to fruition. It doesn't need to be done in a timely manner though because people like myself and the capital that we have won't sit around for 10 years 'cause we can invest wherever we choose to invest. But at the moment, if we can work with the government and they can move in a reasonable time period for government, we can invest the capital and build. - How confident are you of that then? - I'm confident we can get there, but I haven't started building yet. - Yeah, okay. - We are doing all of, put it this way. We are doing all the pre-work with the city, just like we did on the stadium, for a master plan for the area. And last week, Leeds Council approved a master plan that we've been working with them on. So now we're working to flesh out that master plan while we're working with all the agencies to get the tram developed and the master transit to come. The money has been appropriated. What we need is the political class to get its act together. You need to pick the route that you're gonna have. You need to figure out where the stations are gonna be. You need to work with the national government on what land you need to buy or not buy. So there's a lot of work to be done. It will take a number of years, but it's 2026 and our business, we're used to long timelines. But we are working with the mayor who really wants to start the construction work by 2028 or so. And we're pushing really hard to get there. We don't get any pushback from government at the moment, but they need to get aligned and get their job done. Part of the reason why I'm here talking to you guys, 'cause I'm here to push them. Yeah, sure. From the outside looking in, it looks like this is the furthest anybody's got. With the relations that have been built, and I can bear witness to the council, 'cause it was antagonistic previously. I'm not saying the council's antagonist, but I think the club was towards. Now it's the club, what's that? Yeah, I believe it there. So that's all changed. Massive, 180 degrees, turn. I've never seen Legionite in the city represented down and number 11. I've never seen a politician go, here we go. I'm right behind this. And it'll be a vote winner, surely fair. Well, she's a local MP as well. Well, you get a lot of things that have aligned. You know, I found it in my career, I've been, I worked at Westford 34 years or so, I found it building a business in my career. Luck is more important than anything else you can do. And if you look at it here, we are aligned, because the chancellor is from here. Yeah. The government is focused on housing. The prime minister is interested in it. The DFT and the government, the government, in the case I'm like 15 billion pounds to the north to build infrastructure. Then at the club, well, the city's ready for it, because the city did a really interesting thing. Somewhere around 2010 or 2012, they consolidated the whole site around Ellen Road. So someone in the city had the foresight to put it all together, so that one day when somebody was like, us could roll up, they didn't know when, they would actually have control of the whole site. And now the stars are aligned. The football club has managed properly. The football club has a capital to do the expansion. You have us as part of the football club. So you've got three major developers, Andrew, Gina, myself, on the board of the club. You have the club ready to have the capital to expand it. And we have the vision on how to take that to the next step to do a total, to do a regeneration of South leads, because that's what we do. And it just so happens that the political class comes from leads. And so we are like, if we don't get it done this time, guys, it will never happen. Okay, so we have an important-- Yeah, it's-- I think we'd also maybe look at this, Pete, and say, well, you're going to make a Bob Orton off this then. Is this a case of coming in, developing the area, using the football club as a mechanism to do that? And then taking your money is going, thank you very much. See you later. Well, investments for investments. The club is the club. I can't promise you I'm going to earn a club for the rest of my life until you take me away in a box. Although if we don't do that, good maybe some fans might want me to go. I did hear a story that whether you guys can tell you this is true or not. Somebody told me that when Chalena was the owner of the club, somebody sent him a coffin to the club. It was a coffin was down there. Yeah, you did work. So you've got to watch out when you say it leads. So I've got to be careful about this. But you need to look at it this way. We will-- when we develop, of course, we develop for profit because otherwise, why would you do it? But have a look what we did at Stratford. Have a look at the mall. Have a look what's there. What we will build and what we put together will be sustainable. Whether we're the owner or somebody else's the owner, it is the beginning of the regeneration of a whole area. And what usually happens when you invest that capital and people see you invest that capital, it tracks capital to other parts around the area that you are. And if you look at the history of development, you can look, especially in England or Australia, you look where major transportation hubs will put, rail lines will put, and rail stations will put in. And then you see development around them. You see shops, you see houses, you see office buildings. Because from an urban planning point of view, people need to get to work. They need to get home. And they need to get to the shop easily, cheaply, and efficiently. And that's what the infrastructure for transportation does. So I get Stratford. So the other examples that you would point to, the way this has been particularly successful in terms of regeneration, what would you say in your experience? I can point to you one down in downtown LA, where the city government built, I don't know what they call your arena. Now I think it's a stub hub arena. And they put all of the development down there and all of the retail down there. And then what happened after that, there was a whole regeneration of downtown LA with building apartments, making it livable, doing it. You see it in cities around the world. You can see it in New York City at Hudson Yards, where they did that, trying to think of where else. You need to have, though, an anchor. Something needs to anchor it. And here it is the stadium, please. A downtown San Francisco, perfect example, where they built giant, for the baseball team, where they built giant stadium. And so you see that, I've seen that around America. Australia's a little different because we didn't have those areas that were so deprived, probably the wrong word. But that was so isolated. That's a minute of what you do. So isolated. But our whole business in Australia that my dad developed, developed around where the train stations were. The first Westfield, the first wall that my dad built, was around a train station in Blacktown, because that's where the people came to go to work. That's where, and you have a look at West LA. There's a West LA subway being built, which has been built for probably as long as the tram that we've been talking about. It might actually open by the time. By the time I'm 67, I might actually open by the time I'm something. But you can already see where the stations are being built, the change in the nature of the neighborhoods, how four bedroom, small apartment buildings are becoming a apartment buildings. Where single houses are becoming multi-houses. And when you start to get the urban area changing and you get urban mass rather than urban sprawl. And when you look at the economy of the age, you see lots of apartments being built a lot over the month. And we're still short-housing. One of the most interesting things as well, because we did some of the roaches, isn't we? Yeah, we were at the Dragon Pool World. Dragon Pool World. It was really important to see what the local reaction would be to the state in development and what have you. And in our experience, I think it was like 90% if it was to put a number on it, we're really, really into the idea that this is going to be a good thing. Have you sensed that as well? Well, there's a reason for it. And the reason for it is a skill set of the 49ers and being able to understand the sporting side. And our skill set in helping them understand development. Because what we did is before we come out to take we're going to build this stadium. Firstly, we talked to all the people. We sent out, you know, we had the tour where we went out to ask people, what are they doing? - You had a real chance of loosening out. - Yeah, loosening out. And we got feedback from A.R. fans and B, the people who live in leads, in what do they want and how can we do it? I think a perfect example is when, you know, there was one, the document for the approvals was something like a hundred pages. There was one line in a hundred pages that said that you may have, may have away fans in the South Stand. One line out of a hundred, and so every man in his dog is jumping up and down. Nothing gets past lead tons. - Right, nothing. - The interesting thing is I've been to so, well, let me finish the thought first. And so with that, we actually, we weren't exactly planning to do this. There was a couple of different options. We took the options where that won't happen. So we've moved them to the sort of above where they are now and get them all in. - That's fully off the table now. - That's gone, that's gone. The interesting thing though is how many stadiums I go to that are built that way, where the fans are in that part of the stadium. But we listened to Westfield has this history of, I've been doing, you know, as I said, I've been doing it 30, something, here's my father's 95 now. So he's been doing it since 1960. And we have this understanding of how do you work in with the community, how do you become part of the community? Usually we're going to build a million square foot more in the middle of somebody's neighborhood. Here, it's a big open area. We're not really disturbing the people there. We need to take care of the traffic, which as you know, was a big issue. We need to take care of the people who live around the area. And I think we had no opposition because we did a lot of work with them before we got there. - I'm a bit conscious of time. We've still got loads to get into on a footballing front. So I think we'll move on to the footballing front once we come back in a few moments time. Don't forget, we will still be back with a regular episode on Friday for you as well, previewing the Norwich game. But this is a don't go to bed just yet. Special Pete Lowey here in the studio myself and Puppy, we're back in a moment. - Hi, it's Lucas Gatebe here. And we're listening to don't go to bed just yet. From the BBC. - It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself. - It's time to put my balls on the dashboard. - As he starts the engine. - In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance on conscious. In 15 years, he's a billionaire. - This is Total Wolf, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive. - This week on Good Bad Billionaire, how Total Wolf made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. - This is Eddie Gray and you're listening to don't go to bed just yet from the BBC. - Let's talk football element of your involvement in the football club then, Pete. And PSR at the minute, can you sort of flesh out a little bit for us where the club stands? And that's not necessarily your exact role at the club, but being part of that, that director's board and all those sorts of things, you must have an insight to it. So on a PSR front, how is the club looking? If all goes well and they stay in the Premier League, this season. - Oh, we should be fine. We should be fine. Part of our job, actually, that's, I'll take that back. Part of the job of the executives running the club, Amprug and Robbie and the finance guys, is to be able to project out where the PSR issues are. To project out how we can buy the players, how do we set the payments for the players over the period, how long the contract should be. And as Prugas said, we will maximize the position that we can to do the best on the pitch. But part of that is our ability to manage it. And I am highly confident that we can manage that properly. - So is there work that needs to be done to manage that with departures in the summer then? That's what people will start looking at. The sort of not rebuild of a squad, 'cause I think that would be absolutely unfair to label it as that, but the movement that might have to happen in the squad. - The way I'd add, I'd answer that is, you always have to be working and managing the PSR on both sides of the fence. That's both when you're buying and/or when you're selling. And if you look at whether club is, it's too early to talk about next year and whether we stay up or not. But there are changes in a squad every year. And we have been, I can assure you, we are in a position that we know how to manage it. - Yeah, I think one of the things that, I suppose the messaging that we tried to get over in the summer was that, why was something named to spend loads of money? They had the perfect storm as we understand. And Robbie explained this to us, probably it did Robbie's answer to spend. - Yeah, yeah, probably. - That the perfect storm stayed into Phil, Sotalodium players, massive, if you like, headway, leeway to be able to spend or compare to others. Leads 100 million maxed out. And we were told that and that was the, that was every penny that could go on the pitch. So now there's two things, isn't it? Will Leads have to sell in the summer, but also because players have played really well, the pressure from the vultures that will want some of those players. It's a different thing, isn't it? But there will be offers that may be too good to turn down. - I learnt this when I was in college, that when you don't really want to answer the question, or you don't know the answer to the question that you're asked during an exam, answer a different question. So I'm going to give you the answer with a different question, but it's going to answer your question. Okay. The thing about the squad is that we are building a team. We aren't going to make an assumption that we stay up, which is a pretty good assumption to make and one I should be making, by the way. - And hopefully people listen to this Wednesday now, these three points back. - Hopefully we've worked today. And I don't look like, you know, I'm really stupid, but our job, as I said in the beginning, is to build a club and sustain a club for a long period of time. Part of what we're doing that was deciding what sort of football we're going to play, what manager we're going to buy, what players are we going to buy? The way to create a football club that will sustain you and have you grow is to have a core of your squad. We have a core of our squad. Now we can debate who the core should be. We can debate what players should come in and out of that core. But from the position we sit in today, our position is to keep the core of our squad together so that we can build on that squad and move forward and not sit here next year hoping we come 17th. - Yeah, understand that. - And so while PSR is an issue, and PSR you have to manage around, there are many ways that you can maneuver and manage that squad and where you go. The way I'd look at it is you have to go back to after we lost it, Wembley, which I first of all might have been at Wembley as an owner, boy that was hard. I think I had the longest commute of anybody on earth. I flew right back to LA. I don't think I talked to anybody for four or five days. It actually turned out for us to be one of the best things that happened to us because it allowed us to understand what we did right or wrong and how can we set ourselves going forward. And when you look at the next year, we had no choice from a whole range of reasons that we had to sell our sheet. Last thing we ever wanted to do was do that. But we didn't go up, you know, he's an incredible talent. There was lots of offers for him. And in the end, we sold Archie, we sold Somerville and we sold Ruta. And I think at the end of the day, we ended up with a better team. Maybe not better players, but better team. And those sales allowed us to help rebuild the core of the club. And if you have a look at the players, we bought and put together then we went and won the league. And here we are. And so we are in a position at the moment where we will be building on that core. And I'm sure people are going to become knocking on the door for most of the players that we have sitting in the club right now, but we are committed to building a team. Dominic Calvert-Lewin is one of those players. He's done unbelievably well this season, hasn't he? Probably surprised most people, even Everton fans. He's surprised. He didn't surprise us. Did he not? He did not. Really with the goals that he's got so far at this stage. He did not. I mean, when you look at it, this is part of what I'm trying to get across and talk to people about. The way the club is run is there's a team there. There's a team of incredible executives starting with Prague going to Robbie, Murray on the commercial side, Adam on recruitment with Alex and with Daniel and his team. And when you look over the three years and the six windows that were being operating under, there is a theme that is coming here. Firstly, we did Sam Bairam came along. Nobody thought he could play more than 10 or 15 games. Look how he played. When Ethan got injured and was out for a whole bunch, how he came back. When struck got injured and came back. When Solomon came along to play for us. We have the club has this skill set and the ability to pick out players that are. other clubs don't see and help manage their loads and bring them back to the player that they were. Daniel has an incredible man management ability. Have a look what he did when Nonto was going to leave us and come back. How Aaronson has come back into the team. And when you get that skill set in and you look at players like Metzger and DCL, there's incredible talent sitting there. There has been hidden or sitting behind something else and you just need to be able to bring it out. I find it really interesting because it happens to players. I think it happens to managers as well. Somehow they get a personality trait attached to them. And no matter what they do, they can't get rid of that personality trait. And you see DCL in training. You see him on the pitch. He's incredibly fit. He's playing fantastic football. And as he got up to fitness, you could see it. It's just the platform that he had at Everton. He didn't have the platform. And either the club believed him or he didn't. And I'd not for me to talk about it. And you got to be a little careful because I'm a fan. I'm an investor. I am a board member. And I'm not a professional. Although I know a lot about the game. I'm most of it that really interesting thing. When you talk to our fans, they know more about the game than anyone gives them credit for them. Okay, they complain about us more than anybody else. But I used to have shareholders that used to do the same. So it's not a problem. But you could see the ability and the team that we have there saw DCL's ability. And when we talked about it, we thought the risk was minimal and the upside was huge. And look, the two boys have scored 16, got 16 premiership balls. Yeah, it is incredible. So it scored 10 goals so far this season. And you would have thought other clubs will be interested in him in the summer if he keeps scoring like this. He's got a couple of years left on his day of the course. But how much do you fear that and how much do you feel you have at the club to be able to entice him to stare? Well, I look at this way. Firstly, we got an incredible platform. So he could reinvent himself to be who he was or who he is as a better way to put that. He has a great relationship with Daniel's great relationship with the club. The fans love him. Our job is to put the club in a position where he wants to stay and be good enough to compete at the highest level. And yes, you're going to get offers or not get offers, you're going to play as come or not come. But you'll have to deal with that at the time. The thing that I think the fans and we need to understand the more successful we become, the more other teams are going to come for our guys. We just need to keep the environment and the fire and the ambition to keep them playing for us because we want leads to be the place people want to come and stay. And so yeah, this is the destination club if you like. I will tell you though, everyone says this but I have to tell you this to playing it on right under the lights when we're playing well and we're doing well in the Premier League. You know, players can play anywhere they want. There is nowhere better in this country to play than that stadium. And so we want to attract the people who want to do that and we have the ambition to do so. Yeah, look, there's no doubt it's unique. And obviously the manager has talked about it a lot. It's really been asked about it a lot. How far do you think Daniel has gone to proving if he needs it to you that he can actually move the club forward as opposed to just keeping it in the Premier League? Well, that's getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Okay, we haven't won yet tonight. Okay, we need a couple more points. We need to get a bit further going. The best way to do this is that Daniel is not just a football manager the way I see him. He's a consummate executive. And he runs his football team that way and he manages his players that way. And we've all been together now two and a half seasons. We lost it. Wembley, okay, but have a look at the mayhem that we purchased and that he took over. Have a look how he settled the team down. How he recruited in that first year. How he kept some players who were going to go. And then one of the things I think for that season was when we bought the club, I look at that we bought the club about six weeks too late. Andrei and Negotiated with Prague six or seven weeks too long. You know, we didn't have full preseason. We then had to get ourselves settled. We then had to hire Daniel. The preseason was all thrown on a park. And I think there was a game. Maybe it was the third game of the season. He had 15 guys on the bench. There was three goalkeepers. Three goalkeepers or something. I think we got a draw. I guess that can't be it was pretty obvious. Things were difficult. I never did this but I have my boots in the back of my car. That even somebody else on the bench. It's been a long time since I keep the football. But if you just look at that, we have been very consistent in building a club. And Daniel's been an integral part of that. And so, well, again, I mean, we talk about DCL and I talk about how people get a tag put on them somewhere along the line because of Daniel's history at Norwich. By the way, if he says Norwich one more time, I'm gonna pull him up. I've watched now 120 of Daniel's pre-game press conferences. I think he said Norwich 150 times. One day I think, oh, this week, you can tell. It's the only live there for three years. You think maybe somebody would tell him, "Dangler, it's Norwich." Anyway, Daniel, it's Norwich. I lost my train of thought. I'm sorry. So when you stuck in such a tag. So Daniel had this tag which we never believed that he couldn't manage inappropriately because of the history there he is. He's proved it. What does he have to prove? When you look at how the team sets up and where we are and the window, we set the window to build a team that would stay in game so we can compete. And that has got us to where we are. Except for Arsenal, nobody has pushed us around. Now, a whole negative goal difference is them. We've got to find out something. Except for those two games, we have competed with every team in the league. And that says something. And from our point of view, Daniel has done that on a limited budget compared to where Manchester City was or compared to where United is. Arsenal themselves. There's this other thing I find fascinating that fans and even the media believe that if you pay a lot of money for a player, they're going to be good. And how many times have we seen big transfer fees for players, whether they're within the Premier League or from outside. And then they don't just fit in or they don't exactly make it. And the amount of money that you pay for a player usually correlates how good they are. And the value of a squad usually correlates to where they're going to end up. But not always. And there's plenty of times where you need the skill of the manager and the recruitment guys to find the players that will become those players. And having said all that, then this may be jumping ahead a little bit. But if the season ends as everyone would like it to with the club in the Premier League again, what do you do about Daniel and his contracts? Because that's up at the end of next season, I believe. And you don't want to find yourself in a situation like Crystal Palace have this season. Do you? It can cause a whole load of disruption if the manager's contract is come into an end in six months time. So what do you do there? Well, you just want me to be 10 quid because I bet you're going to ask me that question. The answer to that question is a non-answer. We have not yet stayed in the Premier League. We are not yet secured. And so we're not talking about it. It's like the same thing last year that really bugged the crap out of me, honestly. We're on a run in to win the league or to win the championship. And everyone's talking about just what Daniel would be the manager next year or not. It is the biggest load of rubbish. So to talk about Daniel's contract now and where he is and where we're going is just not on the table. Not for him and not for us. We have one goal. That goal is to Daniel's goal said it was 38 points. I'd like to push him a bit. I want to get 40 plus. We need to get that. And then we'll talk about all that crap later. So you will, if you hit that goal, you will then address his contractual situation off the back. That's up to Daniel and us. We'll wait till we're ahead of yourself. It's a big summer ahead, obviously, for the World Cup as well. We can talk about Dominic Calvert, Louis and Weverryl. Go to the World Cup. Jayden Bogor. Jayden, Thomas Tuchel needs to pick up the phone this week. I like all that talk, but I'd like Dominic to keep his eyes on the prize at the moment. And Jayden and all our guys, you know, and Stack and everyone. I'd like everyone to stop talking about the World Cup. And wait till we are safe in the Premier League. Then they can talk about whatever they want. Right now we have eyes for one prize and that's staying in. But how much does a World Cup in the USA, when you've got American ownership, when you've got American players such as Brendan Aronson, how much does that put a spotlight on the club and how helpful is that if at all in terms of investment and all those sorts of things? Well, I was fortunate enough that I lived in LA during a 94 World Cup and that was spectacular. It changed the way the US viewed football. help set the MLS up. And I think if you go back, it also changed away investors looked at football in general. And it may have led to a bunch of US sports owners staying to look at Premier League clubs or Italian clubs or German clubs. The impact now will be how well does the US team do? You know, you have a bunch of Tinoers of coach. You know, you've got players who are playing in the England, England, Europe. They can put together a hell of a side. So I think part of how people will view it depends on how the US team does. And the most interesting thing for me is the US is playing Australia in Seattle. That is the guy who might go to the wash. Yeah, understandably. So I guess the final one, Pies, if the goal is achieved this season, you can be buying out Billy's bar again. Well, people get a free point from you. Should it happen at home game? Well, I have to say that I had the arrangements made to buy out Billy's once we beat Manchester United at home, but unfortunately, they scored a draw. I didn't think it was buying it for the draw without guaranteeing anything. Let's pick the game where we know we're staying up in the Premier League and the pub's on me. There you go. So you need to be looking out for a free pint. You need to pick which game. Yeah. I'm happy to run a book on which game. It's going to be anybody wants to do that. I'll try and get that 10 a back. Yeah, I'm going to get that 10 a back on it. People really appreciate your being in the studio. We know, like you see, you've got loads of things going on. You'll be at the game tonight as well. So people will see you down there as well. We really appreciate you taking the time out and coming to speaking to us. Come back again sometime. I'm really happy to do so when we've got something to say. All right, thanks a lot, guys. Don't go to bed just yet. A lead's United podcast from the BBC. It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. Amanda straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. It's time to put my balls on the dashboard. As he starts the engine. In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance on conscious. This is Total Wolf, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive. This week on Good Bad Billionaire, how Total Wolf made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.