Mirwan Suwarso: From Bankruptcy to Champions League in 9 Years | The Como Story (Ep128)

So Champions League for you, it's gonna open you up. Primetime audience, two, 500 million, let's say people who watch Champions League global. - Yeah, it's almost like you go one shot, one opportunity, right? As Eminem once said. (laughing) - I wasn't expecting the conversations to take that turn. (laughing) - How do we sustain ourselves? How do we try to survive? Maybe we shouldn't be a football club. Maybe we should be a sport tourism destination. This is Cormor. The population's only 85,000. Our capacity, if we can make it 15,000, we're already ecstatic. This is a place where when I came in, there was 1.9 million tourists a year, it asked me it was 5.6 million. We were in the media, that we were in competition with another Italian team for a British player. They're like, "Well, you know what? "Why don't I just call the president of the other club?" And says, "Do you want him? "If you want him, you go for it, we'll back out." But if you buy him, give me one of yours. And he was like, "Thanks for calling. "I appreciate this. "We'll let you know." I met with UEFA, we talk about it. There's no precedent of where we are, but I told him, you know, don't hesitate to find us. If we are in Europe, we want to become good members of the association. We want to become a model for it. If you have to find us, find us. We're going to be together. Hello and welcome to the Business of Sport, the show that takes you behind the scenes with the industry's leading owners, operators and athletes. Komo have gone from bankruptcy to the Champions League in nine years. There aren't many better headlines than that. Of course, the next question is, how have they done it? From Cess Fabregas' managerial excellence to building a club that is about more than football in one of the world's most sought after locations, President Mewan Suaso gives us an insight unlike any we have had from a football executive. There are a few eye-opening takes on transfer strategies and you wait for dealings that will keep you guessing as well. Komo is a proper business years ahead of the competition. We're delighted to welcome Mewan to the Business of Sport. The Business of Sport is supported by Airwalex. The intelligent financial platform used by more than 200,000 modern businesses, from SaaS and Marketplaces to some of the most ambitious organisations in sport, including McLaren Racing, Arsenal and the San Francisco Giants. The off-pitch problem is simple. Your supporters, sponsors and partners are everywhere, but the money that connects them is still stuck in slow, expensive systems, why transfers that take days, fees that quietly eat into revenue and clunky processes that make simple things feel hard. Airwalex gives you one clean way through it, a single platform to open local accounts in key markets, collect payments from supporters in their own currency, CFX in real time, and pay out fast. 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It's the mobile first command centre that brings everything together, scout reports, intel, performance information, and now contract intelligence with full budget impact analysis. Drag and drop any contract PDF. The AI automatically extracts salaries, bonuses, sell-on clauses, and projects live financial impact as you evaluate players. See the complete picture make better decisions faster from anywhere. Learn more at GeminiSports.ai and why major clubs across three continents are getting everything they need to win the transfer market all in one place. - Merwan, it is so great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us in this video. - Thank you for having me. - It's great to have you in the studio. If anyone that doesn't know, I mean, I think it will resonate pretty strongly if they follow this show because we're banging on all the time about football clubs being more than just a product on the pitch. What you guys have done in a rather short space is actually build not just now a high performing entity on the pitch, but a business around it. - Yep. - Well, it was kind of like when we were in the second division, Siri B, when we realised the revenue coming from the league was so small, it was like, I don't say so small, it was five million. That's how much you get from the TV rights in the second division in the league. And the average team we're spending 11 to 15. So it's kind of like, there's a significant gap. If you are Palermo where you have a stadium of 50,000 and you can fill it up with 35,000 people, maybe you can bridge that gap, our stadium was 5,000 in the second division, you know? So there were a lot of gaps that we had to figure out what we had to do, become. So when we tried to start exploring how to move forward and then there was the year when Seth Fabricaz came as a player, all that kind of stuff, we thought, okay, I think the goal is to get out of Siri B, second division, go to the first division because I think the opportunity would be bigger and easier there. But having said that, we never took that for granted, we tried to set up, how do we sustain ourselves, how do we try to survive in this limited environment? That's when we came about, maybe we shouldn't be a football club. Maybe we should be a sport tourism destination because we saw how many Englishmen were always coming to Como and they were always drinking and everything like that, well, why don't we push it? Why don't we promote it? And it was by chance we met a bunch of guys I have from I Love White. They were the Como chapter, Como fans chapter and I was like, what are you guys doing here? Oh, we've been coming here for like 10 years. We came to a game to Milan to watch an AC Milan game, but AC Milan played away and we found out the closest team to Milan that was playing with Como. So they came, they drank on the lake and two minutes later they were in the stadium and they were like 500 fans at the time. We were in the fourth division, I don't know what it was, it was before my time and they enjoyed coming and ever since then we have the I Love White chapter until today. And now as we pivoted and start promoting more about the tourism, about the community in Como rather than about the football, because we're in the second division, there was no point talking about any of your players and nobody who would know unless you're in this 85,000 people community, which is our city, they was it. So we said, okay, let's talk about how beautiful the place is. Let's talk about how beautiful the people are. I was inspired by Instagram account. I think it was Humans of New York, which is talk about everyday guys, about their stories, about their lives. So we said, for the social media team, I want journalist type, not journalist, I just journalist type, wanna be, so who wants to meet people, talk to people, interview people and tell their stories and I swear to God, we found so many good stories in Como. People who's been coming to the stadium, three generations coming together, how proud they are when they're actually bringing their grandchildren for the first time. How they, I met a guy who sold his car to help the team rent a team bus for the season because the team was bankrupt and the team couldn't travel away and all these fans kind of like chipped in together to do all these stuff. So those have become the heart of our content. And slowly we got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. As the team became more popular, it remains the same. It's never about football, it's always about a sports tourism destination. - But there was probably a bit of work at the beginning, right? Because the club has been bankrupt, am I correct in saying three times in the last 20 years? - Yeah, more or less. - So there's an element to being able to do this, but then there's also an element of just stabilizing obviously what needed to be done from a sports entity perspective. To even build yourself into the position to start creating that value that is around the football product. You can never have one or the other, right? It still has to be a combination. - We, yeah, at the end of the day, your biggest cost center is the football. So the football has to become a asset at some point. So when we realized that we wanted to be a sports tourism destination, then we realized the product, which is the football, has to be worthy of a tourism destination. So that's when we changed the mindset. At the time, we were playing very low, block, very defensive, very Italian in a way, Katana Cio can away. And we said, "We want to be something different." And that's when we heard SESC ideas of how to play football, how to become more entertaining. And we called it, we created this playbook called the Lake Como DNA kind of thing, playing football, the Lake Como way. SESC kind of like pretty much was fundamental to it. And that's who we are today. We try to play attractive football. Win or lose, you can't control, but you can try to be entertaining. It's almost like we want to be the LA Lakers of Italian football. That's the goal, I guess, so to speak. And as we do that, we identify opportunities that we didn't know that. Well, why don't we get into that? And we're kind of like, "Oh, we didn't know that. Why don't we get into that?" - Katana Cio and I listened to you. It's really interesting, 'cause it does differ to a lot of other leaders, execs in sport, who very much orient around performance. It's about performance on the pitch. And yours is like, I think you said it, was it a tourism, that was your role in this? - Yeah. - Sports tourism destination, start of play, win or lose. It's attractive and it's exciting. But it's not like we are here to win and performance about that. - It's not my job. - The sports team's job to win, right? If they can win, but at the same time, they have to do so at a certain budget. - They can only win if you win. - Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no. - If you manage to budget as well, you allow for larger transfer budgets, you put a good team on the pitch. You orient performance more than I think you're giving yourself credit for. - Yes. I think that's a good thing. Both goes hand in hand, but for me, the way we see it was like, okay, we were in Syria. When we got promoted, the first thing we need to do, we realized was that from a data perspective, the team wasn't good enough. So we know we need to invest. It's almost like a startup. You come in, you have to change your entire team. We can't change everybody at once. So we think we tried to do 11 players in the first window and another 11 in the second window. We kind of managed the cash flow, but we knew we had to change everybody. There was clear. And then midway into the season, we realized we could find certainty a lot faster and not to be relegated. If we invest a little bit more, there was a second half of the season in different kind of quality players, younger players who can become investments. At the end of the day, the player trading models is still one of the key revenue source for any football teams. So when we saw that, we pushed and we jumped from a thing number 14 or 15 in the league to become number 10, which is the highest the teams ever finished in nothing like 20 years or so and all that. And then in our second season, we saw again, if we change a few things, we could go even further. So we made eight more changes, I think, 708. I can't remember knowing where the metrics were, we had to change. We knew the positions we had to change. And this time we finished higher than we, our target was sixth, seventh or sixth, and we finished fourth. So the overperformance is great. It's something we always be thankful for, but it's not something that we were expecting, because that's unpredictable. And just to be clear to people, that means you're in the Champions League next year. So with many events in European football, it will change it. From you and a business perspective and how you operate, you have to operate even to different cost controls, it changes everything. And so interestingly, we were having a conversation with someone. Probably about two years ago, he was talking about getting promoted and he said, unfortunately, we got promoted too early. We weren't actually quite ready as a business to do that. Nottingham Forest, for example, in England, they made it into Europe and over for massively last year and we're in a massive relegation fight this year, maybe because they found it hard to balance the two things on ambition. How do you look at that from a performance site when it could impact the business more broadly? I remember in January last season, in that last season, somehow we had to play 13 or 14 games in a space of like a month or so. It was very tight. We had to play like three games in a week, which was uncommon for a team that was not in Europe. And I think we had the lowest or the least rest day in the entire league for a team that's not competing in European competition, I think 2.67 days because we were playing in the cup and we were playing in the league. And our fixtures got congested because the other teams were playing in the European competition. And that's when SESC says to me, this is a good test. When if we go to Europe, we need to prepare for this last training time, last recovery time. So with that in mind, we know we're in for a very tough time this season. We'll be playing in the Champions League. If we can maintain being continuous in three competitions, the squad has to be stronger. The staff has to be smarter. And at the same time, we have to follow European regulations. In Serie A, it doesn't matter whether you have homegrown players or not homegrown players. You can play our teams only had one Italian in the team last season. That means we can only register 17 non-Italian in the Champions League. That means we have to balance the teams somewhat. And it comes with challenges. Do you have too many calendar games? I'm not educated enough to answer that question because I don't have a sports science background, but at the same time, one would say, I can hear arguments people saying there's too much, but then at the same time, you have teams performing very, very well at the very top who has to compete at the same schedule. So. When Fabregas came in, and he became in, as he mentioned, as a player, did you guys always have a plan with it? Was there a look at it that would evolve into being a coach in Madrid? No. Not a relationship that built. Yeah, I mean, we were just talking a lot, and then I realized this is one smart guy. And he decided to retire because he was tired playing the kind of football that the team was playing. And at the time, I wasn't running the team. I was mostly just doing the business. And I started asking questions more and more and more about what's wrong with the team, not what's wrong with the team. But how can we become better? How can we become more competitive? One thing that really annoyed me was that there was never a measurement of, why should this person be paid a certain amount of money? Why the other one isn't? What is the control? What is the guarantee of the. what are the metrics? That's when I met Billy Bean. I was very, very intrigued with what he has done. And we tried to apply the same kind of like analytics model into football. Based on his, based on Billy's software and program, and then we met obviously Tony Bloom and everybody else, then we realized, "Oh, there is a way to measure. Will it be accurate? Maybe not 1,000%, maybe not 80%, maybe not 60%, but it gives you guidelines. It gives you ways to think. I mean, it's the same as you're doing investments. You read all the metrics at the end of the day. The execution still has to be perfect. We tried to be as educated in our guesses as much as possible. And then we tried to create, for the lack of a better word, a council, a senate in terms of decision-making. It's not dependent on one guy who kind of like knows everything about football who makes all the decisions, but it's very diverse backgrounds. Just like our parent company back home, I mean, the group that I work for is a family-owned business. And they work, everything is always in consensus, everything is discussed together. We always say every decision is best made together so that if it's wrong, is everybody's mistake, if it's good, is everybody's decision. So you don't have this, we call it finger pointing mentality within the group. And it's helped us a lot. Has that worked in football? In those decisions, when it's, do we don't we spend money on that player? So far so good. So far so good. I mean, I'm not saying-- Is that every player transfer, it's like votes on by a committee? Yes, as first we start with the data. The data is kind of like the filter of everything. Even when Sess or everybody else, he always have players that he likes or would recommend it to him. The first thing he does is like check the data. There's always that. From the data, then we will also have what we call the behavior analyst, which these are like, now it's been, there's certain automation to it, just to see what they are as a person. How do they behave? Psychologically, we try to assess it from how they behave on the field. And we can watch maybe like, you know, 50 games using biometrics nowadays, a lot faster. Once that passes those tests, then we go to the financial test. Then we go into the fit test, whether they fit into our playing style, fit into what the roles are needed by the coach. Once it fits all that, then it goes to the coaching team before it gets to Fabregas. I'm not being rude. Are you able to move with the speed and agility that you need to with that decision-making structure? So fast, so good. I mean, December 23, when we tried to push to Serie A, we bought eight players using that structure, I think, maybe more. What was the most contentious buying decision? There was one player that we thought we had to move because the data was just not very good for him. But he turned out today to be one of our best players, because SESC says, like, no chance. This guy, I see something in him. We just have to work with him more. Tensass push a deal through. Within reasons, yes. If he says, like, I really believe in this guy, and we say, like, what's the commitment? If it's like, 30 million, like SESC is too much. We can't gamble on 30 million. But if it's like, three, five million, yeah, why not? There's also an element to it, isn't there? Where you give the autonomy to the coach if he's going, yeah, but that data shows him being a left-back. And actually, I'm going to play on his left wingback. Absolutely. We're going to use the X amount of that. But you have to trust me in my ability to develop him in that. Absolutely. He always says, like, do one of the things, like, the team that he plays for is, let's say, I don't know. It's a less dominant team. If we move him to here, he could be a different player. Even though our data can translate that somewhat, but you have to give people like him with all that experience, benefit of the doubt as well. So the data is never blind. For us, I think the data is like 60, 70% guidance. And then after that, it's up to the human how to interpret it. And that's why we have a Senate. To form the Senate, you have to create, not just S-Men. Everybody has to have a strong opinion. But then you also have to have people who are wise enough to listen. You said this. You said that. What if we come up with this? So that's Ocean Roberts for us. He's older than everybody else. He was Patrick Vera's assistant coach at Crystal Palace. He was the technical director of Morocco, the director of Wales, wealth of experience. He is a UFR coach instructor. He was the guy who gave the coaching license to Artheta to theory on reason. So he's got the wealth of experience behind him. So when he speaks, we all have so value has been in. You mentioned that you've benefited from the great work of James Downhalla's six Tony Blum in centuries, done on a data site. One thing to brighten and Brentford as well, the two examples everyone uses. One thing they've done so well is that the people involved in those projects, they'll keep it tagging us are always important. But they're not the most important. I.e. if you lose one of them, the whole thing doesn't fall apart. The system and the structure is the strength. And you've got someone like a sad kid. who's been excellent and allowed you to do so much. How difficult is it for you to balance? I guess some of that control and the influence to give Seth everything he needs, but also at the same time, recognize that you've got one of the best young coaches in Europe and there's a high chance it's football, he'll leave. - It's the same as any like, I came from a creative industry when you have a good strong creative directors in an agency, usually these two guys will be the one that you bring to all the clients, to do all the pitches and stuff like that. At some point, sometimes a bigger agency will pick him up or he'll become a movie director. It's always the kind of like the evolution of life. So we always talk with Seth, it's kind of like, at some point you will leave and who will come to replace you. He's also a shareholder. So he has interest to actually how to sustain the club beyond him and actually beyond any of us. Even myself as I work there, I'm always consistently talking to my bosses, anything happens to me, talk to this guy. He could be a candidate to replace me or talk to this guy, he could be a candidate to replace me. - Do you have an equity stake in? - No. - No, I'm an employee. I work, I've been working with a family since 2018, internally inside the company, but we're working with them since 2004, 2003. - Wow. - Yeah. - I spent most of my youth sadly, I look back now and slightly were at playing football manager. And the first thing you get in football manager is a transfer budget. And I always wonder, who sets the transfer budget? Does that have, is there a meeting for the council where you go right, 20 million is gonna go to new players and that's our kitty? - It's usually started with like what our goals are. What's the goal for the year? How much revenue can we generate? With this kind of a general revenue, how much are you comfortable to put into the team? - When you look at the revenues, you said five million from TV for Series B. - In Series B. - What is it in Series A? - In Series A for the television can go up to maybe like 60, 40, 50, 60 depending on where you finish. - Okay, big job. - And then with European competition obviously another. - Is that your single biggest contribution to the panel? - For now yes, for now yes, but we see amazing rate of growth from our merchandising side, for a fashion side. - How big's the merch today? - Today we just slowly, I was hoping to reach 15 million, but we were short by two, three million I think. Last year it was like four million, three million, something like that, two point seven. I think last year was two point seven. Today we're almost, we were targeting 15. Next season's 30 and this season after 70. Our goal is that the non-football revenue exceeds the football revenue within the next three years. - Wow. - That's huge. - And tickets you five thousand in the stadium? - Now we have 12,000. - 12,000 in the stadium. - So last year I ticket revenue is Fajal. It's like five million, six million. This year was I think 14, 15. Not adding many seats, but we just added experiences. We, our stadium is so small, we only have I think it's like 100 people, hospitality initially, two years ago. So we said, dude, you know, like the stadium is only like, you see like that the lake is on the stadium, right? We're on the lake. We said like, you see all those villas behind the stadium? How we rent those and turn that into hospitality before the game, people can just go have drinks and eat there and then walk to the stadium within like three minutes. So we rented about four villas, we rented a boat before the game, before drinks and stuff like that. So today we have I think about thousand hospitality facilities and the ticket has gone up from 80 euro to 2500. For the bigger, the nicer areas I guess I suppose, while maintaining that the tickets for the community staying at 20 euro. That's what I was going to ask you. So that's like 86 million in revenue across the world. Yeah, more or less, but this year we'll should hit about 100 something. Wow. I mean last season last season was 100 something and this season nothing we're targeting 150 190. Something like that. So it is a good business because I'm sorry, going back to we said earlier about Pack of Future and the earlier shows we've done. It was always a question of like, is sport ownership and our sports teams good businesses? And it's been TBD honestly, I think we'd say so far. But I'll say, you know, you've lost making, right? So you're still enough as for numbers. Yeah. God, he's a car. Yeah, he's a fucking misery guts in the corner. We've gone, but you've got to also see that we're all good business. We're actually worse in a startup. I mean, how long before Uber turned a profit? The beauty of our business is that we don't have the revenue stream. Yeah. So we have to identify and create new revenue streams, right? For example, our sponsorship year last year was Uber. What? Well, Uber didn't pay us a lot of money, but we're allowed to operate and manage Uber in Northern Italy. So technically, I think in August, we will be through a partnership. We will be launching Uber and my Zoradis for a comma. We'll be launching the Uber boats that operates around the lake. And that revenue will be bigger than most any sponsorship deals. Yeah. I love who's going to love here. Yeah, but that's the development of the modern sponsorship package that I think a lot of organizations don't understand because we're traditional sports entities understand. And probably why you haven't bought in a load of sports people to run the business is I understand that you've got inventory here. So I'm going to put Uber here. And I may give you a few of our 100-hospitalities. Isn't that great Uber? Isn't that great? That's the best one you guys want, right? But really what they want is no, they want better access and distribution across the region. They want an operating partner. I mean, our sponsorship with Uber was like, no, it was less than a million last year in terms of how much cash upfront. Today, we're signing a deal for over 10 million for the same space. But what are we going to become? We're going to be acquisition partners, customer acquisition partners. One of the things that we've done, there's only two ticketing platform in Italy operating the football space. We'll be the third. We created our own with that said all I see is blockchain based. And it will be how do you call it? Is a ticketing merchandising and FNB ecosystem. Anything you buy on this platform, you'll get a 5% cash back. What did we have? We didn't have a finance permit to operate in Italy to store the cash back. But what we wanted to do was that have this e-wallet concept so that the money can go then and the user can then go to their next cafe to buy a cigarette if they want to. But then the money rotates in there. So we need a partner who can allow us to do that, which is what we just did in which we will be rewarded for each time. Someone converts becoming a user of the platform, does an acquisition customer for their product. Because it's a ticketing platform, it doesn't sit just with us. We have offered this to other clubs. Our goal within the next year, we should have six other clubs in Italy using a platform. And within two or three years, we will have 30 clubs in Italy using a platform. And the bank or the partner will have enjoyed new acquisitions. And we would have benefited from the new EDCs. We helped them install. And one of the unique things that we have was when we first came to Komato, they was like, we didn't know what we were doing. When we realized a lot of the businesses over there was serving to the tourist. And one of the biggest problem was managing inventory. Mums and pop shop, they have to sell to the tourist. That means they have to buy and take risks. So why don't we make those souvenirs for you? Why don't we make them merge for you? We'll take it away. We'll take your problem. We'll give it to you on a consignment basis. You can take it off the top. Whatever we make, we reinvest into the business. And we make more products. What have we got now? We have over 900 touchpoints, we call them. Mums and pop shop pharmacies hotels that distribute these products. Do we make a lot of money from that? No, but we have the relationship. Now when we work with this finance partners, these are touchpoints. We've created for them to put the EDCs, to put new things with them. So for us, this model we want to replicate that in as many towns in Italy as possible. Can I ask you, when we think about the 150, 160 that you said that, it's incredible scaling in two years, when you think about then what that pays for, what is the single biggest cost line as a business? Players, percent of the business, what is that? I don't know. I don't know. I never counted that. I know it's a lot. Is it like 50% of the people? Probably. Maybe more. Really more here. But then, you know, this is the benefit, right? But there's a big difference between having wealthier ownership who can spend money and being able now to spend money within the regulations that you have to live with. Absolutely. Most domestically in a European way. So really, your model is super valuable because ultimately as a fan, you may think, oh, there's a lot of distraction there out of the pitch. No, no, but the more money you make in these ventures, that feeds back into the club that can be recognized as direct revenue, the more you will be able to spend on the footballing side of it. But the big challenge of that also is that you need to spend to grow in the meantime to maintain your position. Correct. So we, you're right. You know, we've identified our biggest costs are the players. So can you monetize the players, of course, because the players that we buy are of high value. Just to give you an illustration, we bought a 20 year old left-winger, a Sandial over the winter last season for 12 million. And we had an offer for 60 in the summer. Wow. We have a party. So you as a committee then sit down and say, hey, we can make 48 million in profit here. And you chose not to. The bookkeeping standards or the accounting standards, the longer you keep the player, you could be the longer the profit is, the higher the profit, right? Because the book, you count off the book value as the amortization comes. is reduced taking away the book value, you can make more money. We have another one this year that we bought for 18 or 20, I can't remember. I think 18 plus bonuses. And we had an offer for him for 55, but we understand his value is about 75, so we can hold on for another while. And at the same time, we bought a player for 2 million in the winter last season. We put him to Ipswich, the last season he didn't play with us. We bought him for two. We have loan fees and bonuses from the club that loan him for 2.6 million, and we have an offer for 10 million already for him. So that's pretty good upside from that side of the investment. So from the player standpoint, we can see the player trading is one way of monetizing them. But as we spoke earlier at the same time, for a player like Niko Pass, for example, though somebody we have, while we have him, what businesses can we create with him? Not just merchandising, putting his D-shirt, you know, stuff with him. But what are the businesses that are relevant to him that we can create and build? That's what we're trying to explore now. As San Dia was a player from Senegal that we was in the World Cup, I didn't play much, but we recognize maybe we can create a product with him to target a certain market, a certain demographics, a certain geography. So it's a new area that we want to do. We recognize very early where too small, Cuomo is too small for a market. We're not Arsenal that's known all over the world. Lake Cuomo is more famous than our Cuomo football team. So that's when we knew when we started creating merchandise, we were creating more Lake Cuomo merchandise than we were making Cuomo football merchandise. When I look into our revenue, the 13.7 million revenue of merchandising last year, only 38% were jerseys. The rest, if you open our shop.comofootball.com, forgive me to say that. But you will see that we sell Cuomo hiking collection, Cuomo sailing collection, Cuomo running club, Cuomo racing team. We don't have any of those, those just lifestyle products. That sell extremely well. We've created that. And this when we said like, our chief brand officer, his name is Regi Villasignor, he owns a brand called Root. He was also the creative director of Bali at some point. But Root itself is a very well-positioned premium urban lifestyle of products. His teacher retails about $200-300. His hat is $285 for a hat. His clothing is worn by celebrities and athletes, like Jay-Z or Paul Pogba. They all wear Root Di Bala. And I said to him, Root, in the last game of our first season in Serbia, fourth jersey, can we put instead of a sponsor, put Root on it? Let's see how much we can sell. We sold it for 275 euro. Usually it's 95. We sold it for 275. We sold 2,000 units. We sold it. Everything was gone in less than seven days. Four or five days. It was gone. Sold to the US. Sold here at Harrods. So it was all these different distributors, suddenly one thing it. So this year we did more. We did another one. Again, at 275, more units. But we said all the money goes to charity. Not the profit. Top line revenue. Because we want to support this Childhood Leukemia Foundation. Top line. Screw it. It's not about taking 10% to the channel. Everything. Because I wanted to see how much we can push with this brand. So knowing that we have the Root brand. I'm not how many did you sell? I think like 3000 or something like that. It's quite a lot. Yeah. But also, sorry guys. The really important point there is that there's a big difference between you being able to do that. And the elasticity of your pricing on a product like that. Versus you changing and dramatically shifting the product of the match shirt. I didn't like the first choice match shirt. Because that's where you have the balance between fans going over exploitation of the core audience. First, you then being a lifestyle brand on the side, which is creating pre- We were trying when we were in CERI-B. We made sure that when we created the new jersey, it lasted for two seasons. So fans don't have to buy a new one every year. Because also in the fact that we knew we couldn't so much anyway. We were just a CERI-B club, right? But we wanted to learn how to do the supply chain. We wanted to learn to do everything. So even though we had a D-Des as a partner, we told the D-Des. Don't give us money at the time. We want you to give us your products and allow us to customize them. And then do all the designs and everything and put it out there. And that's why we created our own shoes. We created everything. But we had the D-Descredibility on it. Now with Rude, we started approaching other clubs. You've seen how successful the Komor Rude collaboration is. What if we take it into a lifestyle product? Would you like to have Rude and your club hoodies and t-shirts and leather jackets and whatever? And we've managed to get 14 clubs sign up. And the first one will be launched this 27th of July. I can't announce it yet because I think the club should announce it. But we will. And it's a big Premier League team. It will be followed by, I don't know, we have four teams in the Premier League, five teams in Italy, four teams in France, two in the Middle East, three in the MLS, that's already working on this collaboration. We've just added another one where we will actually manage all the e-commerce and manage their physical stores as well. So we will become what we said. We're not interested in the multi-club ownership model, but we want to become the multi-club servicing model. Because we've gone through it. We've gone through this process. We've learned it. We know how to do it. We've made many, many, many mistakes. So all the small clubs, smaller clubs, they don't have the resources to fuck up like we did. Take our learnings. And at no cost, we'll cover all the production costs. We'll cover everything. We'll just do revenue share with you. And that's how we've been hoping to grow that. When I hear you, I don't know. If you agree with me, Charlie, you speak more about external business than any other CEO you've had on the show. And about it, it really feels like a true business in the kind of expansion and we're here to add channels way, which is great. But I always think about the opportunity cost of time. Do you ever worry that there's so much time being spent on merch, building a premium brand, which takes away from the ability to invest in an academy? Playing that too. Playing when we started, we had no academy three years ago. Today, we have 11 players in the Italian Youth National Team Product Program from zero within three years. And this is just Italians. We have also Dutch internationals, Portuguese internationals, Latvian internationals. We worked on all prongs. Why do I talk about the non-football more than the football? Because the football is a playbook that everybody can do. Everybody's been doing, right? We're also doing them. We're working very, very fast. That's why part of the Senate, we have a head of recruitment. That's the first thing I did when I met with Tony Bloom and Billy Bean. I need a data scientist and a data analyst. I need someone to actually run this process well. So I hired a data recruitment team. And then I did someone beyond today, someone who can actually create and make sure that our football strategy stays within, we have a five-year plan, ten-year plan. Similar to the Japanese hundred-year plan, I would love to have a hundred-year plan. So none of us can tell me whether we. I was wrong or not. But we have a ten-year plan. I need someone to be in charge of making sure that we carry out this ten-year plan. So we have a Dutch guy doing that. And then I need a head of development. What was he for? His job is to coach the coaches. And also to coach the players, to create individual program, not just the training with the team. How do every player can become better? So when a player comes to us, even before they come, we already develop a business plan for them. He is coming here for growth. He's coming here the way we see him. He would develop in seven years. We can contract in five. If we cannot renew his contract by year four, what do we do? We have to let go at what value? What does. how many minutes does he need to play every year for us to think that he can get maximum value? So we have that's the head of development program. He had a performance doing his own thing in jury recovery, all that kind of stuff. Then you have the first team, the coaches. And a similar setup on the women's side. So we create these two operations as two separate, almost like two separate companies. With very clear KPIs. It's not wins and losses because wins and losses, there's so many variable factors to it. But development and growth, how do we play? Did we create more chances than we if we didn't? Do we. whatever the parameters that we set earlier is what's measured. So, Seth actually writes a game plan. They submit. he submits to the board 24 hours before every game. So the owners would actually be able to watch the match and understand what they were to look for. Rather than the owner saying, "God, that strike it doesn't score." His job wasn't to score. His job was to create this decoy, whatever. How we building up? Are we playing a two plus three on the buildup? Are we doing a two plus four? Who's coming to drop to open the space? Who is going to work? The owners have all that information. After the game, Seth. also writes a post-game report, how the game evolved based on the prediction that we started beginning. And at the same time, our data team is creating a prediction of how the match would be separately independently of what the coaching teams are doing. And at the end of the day, we share all the data with each other. So the owners always know, ah, against this team, let's say for example, we put against UVA, we have a 20% chance of winning, 40% chance of drawing, and how much to lose. And then they would already know to expect how it would seismotigate this probabilities. And then, ah, we perform better. Our XG in the match was way higher than what we predicted we would have been. So it wasn't about winning or losing, is but how we, um, perform. For example, when we play against a team that we know will be low block. And it will be very difficult because they would have eight defenders. Usually the XG maybe like 0.8, 0.9. If we were able to get to 1.3, but we tied 0-0, we did better than we were supposed to do. And we'd be happy with that. So that part of the business, you say the performance business, we're very thorough, but it's not something we need to talk about because I think it's a must that everybody operates our way. I'm assuming at the land that is the same. I'm assuming, um, I'm sure everybody in the Premier League is like. Yeah. But I mean, look, especially for you from an academy, but you know, building, building the foundations of that level and investing there, it's really important because there's a key business line. But also, buying, if you're in a situation where you're going out to market and are trying to buy Italian players, that is a far more expensive endeavor for you than going into international players. Naturally now, just with these regulations, domestic players, we always have a premium look at what English players are going for here, competitive or an example. And also that you cannot pay in installment. Yeah. Because in Italian regulations, for some reason, you're obliged to either put bank guarantee for how much you want to pay someone. Oh, you have to pay in full. So if you're buying a $40 million player, a $40 million euro player, fork up your cash flow for that $40 million. Whereas you're buying it from Belgium or buying it from Premier League, you can pay in six installments, five installments, whatever you can negotiate. So it's a cash flow management business as well. What a bad rule. He taught about the luxury of the positioning and location you have versus the challenges as you get bigger and scale as a company. What a huge part of value appreciation in sport now, particularly football is the infrastructure that they have and that's where that's helped. And you sit on that beautiful lakeside front, but you also have, I'd imagine, a cap on how big you could make a piece of infrastructure there. So as you're going up and you've got different demands now in European stands as well, how do you address the stadium? We renovate. Right now, we're already in a process of renovating to allow us to play in the Champions League by September. This is the same thing when we got promoted to Serie A. Our stadium, we had to meet the Serie A standard of having 12,000 people from 7,000. So we had to do that over the summer. And we did it. And now we're doing it the same way that we're doing it again to meet the UFR regulations. We should be okay. The long-term goal is to have a nicer stadium obviously because the stadium is very old, 1927. It hasn't really been renovated much beyond the extent that we have done. But we try to be as creative as we can. We have filed our permission to create, to build a new stadium. So far so good. Fingers crossed. Everything will be fine. We can start building 2027. How much does it cost to build a new stadium? Hours will not be a lot. Hours will be focused more on hospitality. So it'll be about 64 million. That's all in. That's the goal that we're trying to build it on. This is Como. The population is only 85,000. What my want is in that stadium. This is a place where when I came in, there was 1.9 million tourists a year to today. Last year was 5.6 million. So it's grown tremendously in terms of tourism. I just want to have on that Lakefront view, six restaurants, one roof top bar. We're good. That's the only generator about 25 million per year. Just that side alone before the food court, before all the other hospitality that we create on game day. So I'm quite happy with a small stadium, but a boutique feel. It can be quite difficult for clubs generally where they are dealing with these planning situations in their communities generally because they weren't necessarily contribute a huge amount back to those communities in the ways that some people would want if they didn't like sport. But the world that you're doing across the whole area and the relationships you're probably having to build to do that. Does that make this process as you look to build the club in accordance with the success that you have? From a planning perspective, from the relationship, maintenance that you need to have with the locals, whether they like football or not, does it make it easier? Because of the contribution that you're making to KOMO as a whole, not just to I'm a diehard KOMO fan. I think it's a benefit of not speaking Italian. I don't really know what we're talking about. Having said that, we have not come across many obstacles, to be honest. And when we were trying to build the stadium or come up with the idea of building a stadium, the first thing we asked is, "Does the city want this?" Do the people want it? That's the first question we had. And then we asked, "What can we put in there that is of benefit to you?" So one of the things was like a community health center. That's a high-performance sports organization can provide excellent healthcare would be beneficial to the community. So that's one of the priority. Two, cheap rent. KOMO because of the tourist has become very, very expensive for people to open businesses in the city center. So we said, "Okay, on some of these areas here, why don't we take the whole east stand, a whole east building for local businesses that have to be from KOMO?" And they will be very competitive low rate, just to host people to actually be able to operate their offices building, also low rent. So we want to become a place where people feel that our presence is useful for them. We want to be a part of the community. So that's what the key thing, that's why I said, "All I want is the lake facing side to become the commercial side of it. The rest of it has to be something that is beneficial for the community." Tell us about the value, the profiles that you have attached to it. And I mean, now from a sporting and non-perspective, we live in a world where stars and individuals are very much exactly those rather than quite often clubs and brands. People follow people a lot now. You have CESC, you have Tierra and Rhea, Raffa, for example, from a footballing perspective involved in the club from an ownership level, but you've also done really front facing cool work with people like Chris Pine and I think you've had a few, yeah, fast bender, you've got to come in. You've built that kind of celebrity status around the club. They've been seen in the stadium. How important is combining all of those worlds and the people from them in what you're trying to do? I think Rhea, which is also a shareholder, our chief brand officer, has been quite instrumental in bringing in a lot of people there because these are his, a lot of them are his colleagues or his fans because he is that kind of designer that dress up all those people. Also, it's the location. It's not just so much about the football team, if you've been to Como, after four days, most of the chance you're going to ask what else is there to do, aside from sitting around and laying, right? These guys usually go there when they're promoting a film or seeing something, I don't know, I don't know what they do and usually it's the concierge, would recommend them if you have nothing to do, you can go watch a game and we would always get a call from the hotel saying like, so and so is here, we'd like to come to a game, would you like to host them and we'd be happy to. Let's become more and more the case now that we have a what do you call it, a private members club. Also, not too far away from the stadium, it's a house on the lake, we call it the club on the lake and we always have requests like NFL players coming, they want to hang out but they want to throw a party but they want to be private. Fine, become members of the private club, so we just gave them free membership and they become members and hopefully they come back. So that's become very beneficial to have that area as a destination for the starts to begin with. What would you like to do today but the budget state is not allowed? I don't know, I don't think that way. I always work with what I have and then trying to see how I can get there. So I mean, ideally right now on the digital side, the ticketing platform, I think we're doing quite well to start distributing it. We have a SAS system that we create for managed football teams that we now start sharing with other clubs as well. I think the cost of innovation and creation has come down quite a lot. You can do a lot without spending too much now. So yeah, I would like to focus on those things more. It's more like the human power, human capital is more important than the money capital. Looking at the macro is the micro. The big challenge you often have when investing in these types of assets is understanding what you can control, to build value and what you can't. And the problem with football can be sometimes there's a great opportunity in an individual asset but they sit in a broader system which may not be open to the same flush with the same opportunities as you Italian football, like what you're achieving is incredible in the way that you are but Italian football has its challenges at the moment. From a financial perspective, from a historical perspective, from an ownership perspective with infrastructure. So there's a There's a question really, I guess, around how much of what you're doing in KOMO is capped by the broader environment that you sit in. In a kind of serious environment. I think we can look instantly as well in Italy. If we can help every club to grow, every other club in Italy grow, my market is bigger. So we own a website called or a media platform called Destination Culture. It's about football lifestyle, about football travel lifestyle, but traveling to Italy, discover which football teams to visit, where to eat when you're there, where to go. And that's in English. It's all ax daily male people that we hired actually to run it, now pray to that. I think it's about 10 people strong writing it right now. The next evolution of it is to marry it with our travel division. And then start right now, our tourism and travel destination, division is only met creating packages and managing it for sales in KOMO. Once this is running with Destination Culture and everything like that, my goal is to then start offering the services to all the Italian clubs, which are also tourism destination like Verona, what a beautiful city, right? Romeo and Juliet and everything like that. What if you can go to an experience, the authentic Italian football culture, with easy jets, only 25 pounds to fly in sometimes. It's very, very affordable, lookative business. And then on top of it, I can sell Verona jerseys and souvenirs, which people will be producing as well. Of course. Of course. So we own a shop called Kurova, which means the North, Stan or South, and they were the T-40s or the hardcore fans are. And that is basically a fashion brand inspired by football culture. What do we sell that the most? AC Milan stuff. We sell Bologna. We sell I.S. Roma items. And we're trying to get more and more football clubs. We buy it from them. Like guys, you can't sell it. Give it to us. We'll sell it for you. We'll do this. We end. That's creating a whole kind of like I always go like I'm boring the Disneyland analogy because I want to be like Disney. You know, it's you have the core like, but you were saying earlier, the product has to be strong. Yeah, of course. But what if I can mitigate the risk of being our own football team by servicing 20 other football clubs? So now I'm servicing all 20. So any other football clubs have an issue working with you because you are maybe a competitor? No. No, no, no. It's my even today. We were subject in the media that we were in competition with another Italian team for a British player. They were saying that we might want to buy him. They might want to buy him. I said, like, well, you know what? Why don't I just call the president of the other club and say, like, do you want him? If you want him, you go for it. We'll back out. Thank you. But if you buy him, give me one of yours. And he was like, thanks for calling. I appreciate this. We'll let you know. By end of day. And if you're, if we're not moving to these are the other targets we were going after. We're happy to share that with you. So to me, this kind of like win-win relationship within clubs being open is, it's, it's a, it helps all of us growing. So I saw that. That was true. Because that's an extraordinary way to offer it. People just didn't do, but we do not do that. Yeah, why not? And people actually welcome. So I have a lunch next week with another chairman of another club to start managing their clothing brand together. So we will be, you know, like if you read the stories like Adidas is one of our partners right now, an amazing, amazing brand. But they will not pay us the same amount as they pay Real Madrid or Liverpool, right? But why not? Of course, they bigger. I understand. So for the smaller ones like us, why don't we all make one out of our own? And we just split the revenue together. We grow together. So that's why we have a few clubs that's actually interested. Like, you know, maybe not the kid, but maybe all. All the lifestyle products all around it, we can work together. Some actually says, why don't we make the kid? So these are all conversations, which we would not have had if we don't sit down together with the other clubs and say, what's your problem? Time out. Can we help you? How can we help each other? I'm sorry. Maybe I'm incredibly naive. But if you cool up your, your competitor, League and say, if you want them to take them and then like, maybe we'll take one of yours. If the person that you sacrificed is the best one and will perform better on the pitch, are you not letting your team have suboptimal product on the pitch? I mean, this is a target, right? We're looking at a target for us. Every target has percentage. He's a 10% is guys at the top 10% top 10%. You want this top 10%? I'm not fucking auctioning with you. I'm not going into an auction with you. You can take that one. I'll take the other 10%. I know you have two 20% I can turn into 10%. So we're working based on numbers already anyway. So I know if I can get a cheaper price into my squad, but still same quality, we have a player named Mark Oliver Kempf, right? We bought him from Hurtabilin for 1.5 million. If a low price is a sign of quality or lack of quality, this guy will not be the best defender in terms of winning the highest aerial duels in the league in Italy, but he was. So we know sometimes it's not about the money, it's about the quality of the players. I'm not saying price to know its quality. I'm saying price to know its conviction level and what you should ask yourself when you're buying him is fine. It we paid one and a half, but would we have been willing to pay six? Because if you'd been willing to pay six, it would actually meant that depends on other options that you have. If there are no other options and he is the one solution you need, he's the key. He's the missing piece of the puzzle. I would say, let's move this, move this, let's rejigger everything. How much can we put into that? But I don't think you're the supplies every that scars. Okay. 25 players in the team, right? How many football teams in the top division in the top five leagues? Germany, England, I mean, sorry, Germany, England, Spain, France and Italy, if I'm looking for a center back, each team has four, 20 teams in a league. There's quite a lot of options. And then you go to the youth teams, then you go to their less known team. There's got to be quality is up to then for us to discover them and and turn them around. A lot of this to me, I don't know what you think. A lot of this and the way you talk and what you guys have done. It plays to the US playbook that is often justified for some of the mad prices that are being paid based on the turnover of some clubs, particularly in England, where they go, oh, but they see so much on tap potential in some of these clubs, and they don't optimize their revenues, and then they come in and they own them for a few years. And I don't ever think they really get off the ground. I don't begin to exploit half of the things that you guys are doing. So like there's a there's a fascinating element to this, I think, which is rather than just talking about it as well, you guys have actually put this into practice. And I'm really interested to see as these develop, right? As that as these business lines develop as your partnership strategy develops. Does this become the classic shepherd and the sheep thing, which is football's generally pre-bad at being the shepherd, but clubs are very good at being the sheep. It just needs that one club to really show people the way before it brings some of the ideas in. Could be. I mean, I saw like what we're talking about, but the overpronanship. And we do that with Brioanie as well, and that we own a certain color palette that if they sell that color palette, we actually make the revenue from it. But I saw that the new castle doing that with the energy drink in which they become collaborators in the sale so that it would actually enjoy revenue from the sales of the drink as well. And I think more, more clubs will do that. The and the bigger clubs, but we have bigger, bigger, better clouds. I was I was talking to a club in in in Holland at the time. And they were saying, oh, you can do all this because you're Como, you have all these destinations, you have and ask them what you guys do. And it's like in our place, we all make cheese. The people are cheese makers. I'm like, dude, I'll be making cheese. That's what I would do right away. And how can you actually use the football club is that it's almost like a shop window to what you can create. That's how I see it. I mean, right now a lot of football clubs are just renting out that shop window to I see like energy during like prime, for example, sponsoring clubs to promote their products. Why don't have your products itself and then create and use use the club as a shop window. So champion's leave for you if we're being honest, right? This is going to this is amazing for you, not just from a footballing perspective, but it's going to open you up. Primetime audience to 500 million, let's say people who watch Champions League globally. Yeah, there's a massive chance to really nail down and drill down on some of those things because the bigger that brand is the more people you can speak to on that side, the more people are probably going to be walking around with Como, a parallel of some form. It's almost like you got one shot, one opportunity rate as Eminem once said. Yeah, I wasn't expecting the conversations to take that term. Can we please have the do? I don't know if you can add that without copyright. But we know, we know we realize and we don't take this for granted. We don't think that we belong in the Champions League. I mean, forever, this could be a one year off. So we have to act like we don't belong. If we can sustain this presence, amazing, but we as a club need to act that we don't belong here, don't overspend. Fight like hell, try to fight to prepare, prepare as much as we can. But trying to take this opportunity is best as we can. So you don't change span to accommodate the eight? No, no, okay. Because that's where you got in trouble. How much is front of shirt today? I can't say it. Last year was 750. 750. Because we were just promoted in Cerebi, the contract ran from our second division. Today's north of 10. So north of 10. Yeah. And plus all the revenue share, plus all the acquisition. revenue that we're going to be getting. And just to understand, that's just front of shirt. You don't get sleeves or shorts. We do. We have sleeves. We have bags of shirt. And we have training shirt. We have third shirt. We have training ground sponsorship. We're opening up quite a lot. We're talking to a technology brand right now, which I'm really excited, really, really excited because with them, it'll open up a lot of windows for us, a lot of opportunities because we're just big fans of this brand. I can say it. I can't say it. No, what? That's the-- What do they get around that, if you don't mind me asking, but you get front of shirt? Is that it? Do they also want hospitality? Do they want-- No. It's quite a few. Quite a few. Depending on the brands, the ones that I was talking about, we become their partner for growth in terms of customer acquisition. And we are compensated for each acquisition that they gain, both on the EDC side, the business to business side, as well from the consumer side. We create collections together with them on a fashion standpoint. They also own a partnership with another sport, which involves automotive, which is very, very popular. We will do a lot of collaborations with that team. So that's a win-win proposition as well, between us and them. You know the sport. I'm assuming. Right. This is all part of that revenue generation and self-standability piece. But right now, if it's owner financing now, how long does it take, do you think? And what's the realistic plan then, to make that self-sufficiency model the reality? So owner financing is less important to this as a business. How much did you lose last year? I don't remember. I try not to remember how much I lose. I don't know how much I've spent of my owner's money. That they remind me every day. And we were joking about financial fair play regulations. I'm like, I don't need you if I have to tell me financial fair play. I got my owner's telling me financial fair play tomorrow. The night even like next year. Yeah, we spend quite significant amount. But we do believe we will break even and start actually no longer requiring injections from the owners within next season. OK, wow. I mean, end of next season. Not like tomorrow, not enough next season. So basically this season and next season. Correct. Get to the end of that. Are you guys compliant at the moment with financial regulations? No. We're understanding that we-- I met with UEFA and we talk about it. There's no president of where we are. Because you cannot say in UEFA, you look at the last three years, right? Our last two years, we were-- Not applicable. It's almost-- And then you put us in comparison to Juventus. Comparison with Ashton Villa. If you're looking in-- we-- you guys are business people. You understand the startup level. And then the growth level, comparing us in the investment level, seed investment to those who actually at the growth level. So even they say they would have to be-- how do you call it? They would have to evaluate how they look into financial flat play with us. But I told them, don't hesitate to not to find us. If we are in Europe, if we want to become good members of the association, we want to become a model club like everybody else. It becomes part of our obstacles that we have to overcome. It's a regular part of business, no? We can negotiate. We can just you do re-structure finances and stuff like that. But no, we don't want to be any different. We don't want to be treated differently. But I was surprised at that. I don't think I've ever been able to do that. I was surprised at the chairman of the other club was when he said, you can take him. How is-- what? Life is life, right? You just have to roll with it. Lover. How much did the family buy the team for? 800,000. 800,000. Or 850,000 plus 150,000 in debt. Why can't you buy a team for 800 grand? Because you've got a lot of investment that needs to be made on top of that to make that. What it is today, right? Yeah. How much have you guys put in now? Quite a lot. Quite a lot. At 10,000, 100's of an inch. Yeah. Let's just say to recoup it, maybe it takes another five years to recoup all the investments. But I think we can do it. That's the same thing as the businesses, isn't it? If you're looking into trying to become and make a global business, how much do you put into it? Yeah. I think that's the big challenge, right? And you've identified here in football, again, a combats that American piece of oil, we can maximize this a little bit better. Everyone looks at it thinking, these are very big brands. They're very small revenue generating businesses in comparison. Ivan Gasey just said that when you compare Manchester United to Coca-Cola. And you said, look at them as brands globally and then look at them at turnover globally. You're man-earned, and co-knots too far off in brand recognition. The revenues-- well, 101%. I think his man-ears of Coca-Cola-- We're looking into real Madrid's merchandising revenue at the top clubs in the world. I think it's like 200 million, 220 million in terms of merchandising revenue. And you compare that to a fashion plan, which is up in the billions. Yeah. Is the room which is only 200-- I don't mean that bad, but you see, think about the prominence of a real Madrid shirt all over the world. I'm surprised. So this is why I'm saying, if you put your target setting, you bench market against other clubs, I think you will hit that ceiling. So for us, immediately, we cannot benchmark ourselves against second division club. We cannot benchmark ourselves against first division club. Who do you want to become? So we say, I want to be Disney. Billions and billions and billions of revenue. How do we get there? Then the question-- when you ask that question, the answer's changed, right? Because when you say, like, I want to become like a Disney, then the answer's become like, we need a hotel division. We need a cruise division. We need this. We need to be able to do that. And then that helps us answer a lot of questions. But you know what you're like? You open a hotel? No, but we can manage one. We can find facilities and actually give it to one. The group owns hotels. The group that I work for currently-- now I think they have about 7, 8 hotels and investing in more-- but all in our home country. We have no interest in actually pursuing it outside of the country. But I see it, like, when you're saying, like, Disney, we could be a media arm. We could be-- we're in talks for three entertainment production right now, TV shows that we're working globally. We'll be paying a lot of stuff. Let's just say that. But this is the thing about you owning. If you're going to do this, ultimately, football clubs need to own more. And your point up here, then, which is distributing to others, your owning, that's what's now-- if you were at the reason your football club revenue merchandise may not be huge, is because let's say your deal is real Madrid with Nike or Adidas, or let's say you've got various relationships in there. You're taking maybe 10% to 15% of the shows being sold. So most of that goes back to Adidas for real Madrid. That's amazing. It's kind of like fun, because every football team is actually a distributor for this big product brand, the big product. I mean, if I look into ourself when we're dealing with Italian brands or with big global brands, they tell you, we'll give you all your training kit and all your football match kit. That's worth what? 300 grand, 400 grand. And then they say, you will have to buy from us for your shop. In this 300 grand, it's like retail value, even wholesale value. But the production cost probably the 100 grand. Then you have to buy 300,000, 500,000, a million, five million worth of inventory to put in your shop. They already made their money. All right. I'm amazed is that Adidas, what was it, Real Madrid? Sorry, I'm not aware of the leverage that they have. Obviously they are. I'm struggling. Real Madrid must be aware of the leverage that they have. They get it. Adidas is like, hey, I want the best deal. Otherwise, I'm going to Nike. They do that. I think they have the best deal in the small-- I think they still get-- They should have some. Yeah, because if you really-- They make about a million from the minimum guarantee. And then on top of that, they have royalties and they have whatever they sell in the shop. They make a lot of money. I think it's a very good deal. And Adidas, I would have to say, is one of the best partners a club could have. And I'm saying that not because-- They are partners. They're my partners. But that was what I was about to say is why Real Madrid wouldn't because actually the difference is, if you turn down a Nike or an Adidas, you do that. You have to produce, then yourself. You have to distribute globally. If you're a Real Madrid, your position is to be your supply chain. Like, it's crazy. So these guys take a huge amount of that-- Well, they take all of the legwork out of it. So you're 15%. It's a licensing deal. You're using the brand. That's the business. For you, though, as you've said, if you're not sitting right at that top with that global global brand, they'd create something here and then build value across all of those clubs. You're owning that. But for you guys as a business, then, that's actually really clever because you can become a multi-billion football club if this brand is tied into it, because you're getting points of revenue from all of these different clubs. And all the other clubs benefit. So the way I want to do it is that we work together with all the clubs to grow together-- not one club benefit, but all clubs benefit. That's the most important part. When we talk to them to the other clubs, I don't say, oh, I'll give you a 90% split, 70%, 30%. No. Whatever we make with split. That's how I see it. And yes, we take the risk. When we take the risk, it's a 50/50 split. That's why I say. Once we can convince you that this works, maybe the deal will change. But until then, and as long as we benefit, why don't we all benefit? How much is-- - How much was today? - Well, we've rejected bits over the high hundreds for interest there. How much is it worth? Which valuations would you like to do? Based on squad value, times 2x, based on revenue. And then when you say revenue, is it the conventional valuation calculations where you're just a football club, which is between 3x, 4x, 6x, to 15x or something? Or if you-- - No, I would love to do-- - But what is our business? - What is the full-time market value in your mind? - View business. - I would say right now, we are going closer towards a billion. Because we are not just a football club. We are a multi-club servicing model. We are the boutique version of a fanatic. So how much is a fanatic's worth? Yes, their revenue is established, a lot more established. We jump from two to 14, one year, one brand, one club. How much are we going to go next? Hospitality, we jump from seven to 14. I mean, whatever is double, one club. And I do believe we can bring value to so many other clubs. From football, it's just a build on that. That's amazing here. After everything you've described, you can justify that. But from a football perspective, you just put that into context. Probably seven clubs in the Premier League are worth a billion. No one else is at that height. You know the thing is, it's just delivery. I think this is very much. How much is a bit Disney worth? How many? A hundred. There we go, this is a goal. Yeah, this is a goal. Do you think you are not coming from football? Materially helped you build a better business? I don't know. Because I only know what I know, right? And I am who I am from my background, what I have. And this is what I'm working on. Our owners, the company that I work for, have started with one company to then today. I don't know how many companies is a lot, right? I've set in meetings across industries where they have grown businesses. And in the same style that we are operating today is always believing where we can be. And then trying to just maximize opportunities by putting collective decisions and a lot of things. We have now the biggest private bank in the things of this Asia, but definitely in Indonesia. We have a tower of business. We have e-commerce. We have the equivalent of Expedia as well. So many consumer products, so many printer products. It's, I can't even tell you the brands. I would say probably close to a hundred brands operating under the group. So we are all brand people to begin with, to start with. So when we see something like this, the first thing we see is a brand. How do we grow it? And then we set a target. And people say, like, what's your target base? How much have we spent? How much money do we need to have to make? And how much money do we want to make? And then we just say, like, whether realistic or not, how can I get to that revenue target? And this by throwing as many ideas as possible, a lot of them has failed. A lot of them has worked and we just keep going. You ready for a quick part? Okay, sure. We've heard of the many successes you mentioned, failed that. What's been a failed investment? Yeah, I'm really good at this. I forget all my failures. I have to think now. You really should be a venture capitalist. [LAUGHTER] You will need that skill. A bad idea. But I don't think it was a failure, but I don't think it was a failure in the end. But we were trying to grow our social media following by trying to emulate the Oprah Winfrey giving away stuff for Christmas thing. So we did that on our social media. I think we spent a couple of hundred grand. We paid for a lady who had cancer, so she couldn't travel up to her bedroom upstairs. So we rebuilt her bedroom downstairs in Newcastle. We helped a family in Ghana, a non-family, a community in Ghana with the transport creating new transportations, motorcycles and helmets. We provided all that. So we did a lot. We had a helper teacher finance her. First ever travel, she's a grandmother. She's never traveled anywhere. And her children nominated her for this trip. So we took her for a two week strip in La Coma. So we did a lot of that. And we still do it. I would say we didn't gain the followers, but we gain a lot of friends. One of them now, I'm very proud of this, is a guy named Brandon. I think he's in Glasgow. And he is the founder of the Scottish, the Coma Tartan Army, which is now 3000 strong. So it's quite exciting, right? These kind of things have helped us. That's brilliant. Who has not come to a coma game that you would most like to come to? You're not being Mr. Coma. Well, I think he's mostly there in the summer. And in the summer, there's no games. But you started, haven't you? So you're recognising that a lot of tourists come in the summer. You started as a coma couple. Correct. There's no tournament that we start in the July 28 to August 1. This is our second edition this year. It'll be very cool. Nice. So the last year we had Ajax Celtic and Alahli from Saudi Arabia. This year we have Lance, Villarreal, Crystal Palace, Family Cau and Alula from Saudi-Isour, which would be very, very cool. Which fashion brand would you most like to align with for a collab that you haven't aligned with yet? No, we will not. We will just make our own and just continue. Our collaboration with Coma is to use you a little bit through it because we are part of the brand that we manage. So we'd like to grow our brand. And you don't think collaborating can grow brands. You look at APN Swatch is a really interesting collab. I think if it's not overlapping in terms of the space, yes, maybe. But we're still not that faze yet. We just need to keep growing. When Rude is a brand that is very strong in this area, an amazing niche in my opinion. And Rude has collaborated with Maclaren, currently collaborating with Pirelli, has collaborated with the Lakers and all these big names. So that's how they have built their success and for us is just going to, yeah, we'll probably be doing similar ways. Okay, Chamois Lee draw comes out who do you want to play the most? Which Triton? Triton. Triton. Triton. And a place then you would go to away. Barcelona away. Which we played them in the last five zero. You don't want to go up to Manchester or, you know, in November. Yeah, November day. On Newcastle. Not in it. Not in it. Not in it. On Liverpool. Yeah. No. Any trips would be fascinating, right? But Real Madrid at home, it would be me starting in, when we were in the fourth division with an audience of 200 suddenly having Real Madrid in our stadium, they would be pretty cool. Yeah, they would be epic. Which other club in Syria has the best hospitality? Depends how you define hospitality is very tricky question. I can answer with best food. I can answer with best hospitality. I think the Southern clubs obviously have the best food. Like Napoli, Leche, great, great for love them. Oh, interesting. But that's the last bit of all. It's really unique. If you come to our stadiums, it's also different. As you know, the infrastructure, I mean, you can read, in Italy, there's infrastructure problems in terms of the stadiums. It's been old. It's a bit dated. So when they renovate, they choose to become modern. And which to me, you're losing the essence of being Italian, right? You want to be cool, you're competing against this first stadium, you're competing against Sofie in America or the Las Vegas Stadium, night stadium, you have to spend billions to compete with that. When you spend hundreds or 60 or 70 million, you look like a wannabe. Which is, if you're coming from the UK, you go there, you'd be like, yeah, okay, one pizza is good. All right, whatever. You come to ours. This looks like a palace. As all this possible. And if you go to our suite, all the furniture are from the 1700 and the 1800s. We go to flea markets and identify them and found them. So when you go there, it becomes an experience. And we make sure the food is an experience too. When you come in a game, come over us, it's not believed. The food is from Naples. If you come, come over us, it's Genoa. The food is from Genoa. So we always make sure the food is from the territory of our opposition because Italy has that storytelling element of culture and cuisine. So we double down on that. This way the villa, the villa that we have, the club on the lake, it doubles down on there too. You go there, you can sit down and chill outside with your aperitivo. But we have the two Michelin star chef cooking in the restaurant there. Final one for me. When you came in, I'd come at this from a marketing guy. I'm a, that's my trade, right? Now after the years that you've spent operating this, what have you built into the experiences that you've got, the skillset that you've got that was maybe most surprising to you? I would like to say I'm just an employee, man. I can do whatever my boss tells me to do. That's the best definition of it, right? If I don't know how to do it, I'll learn it. And it seems that I can learn quite a lot of things quite fast. So yeah, whatever. I taught my boss. I started with him. We just bought a noodle branch in Indonesia. It's like the largest, it's like McDonald's of Indonesia. It's all fast food noodles. And I said, like, boss, when do you want me to come over and take over that? I'm happy to do it. I think noodles is a lot easier than dealing with the ego. So I'm okay with that. Selling cigarettes, I'm fine with that too. Selling motorcycles, we own EV business in Indonesia. I have to sell motorcycles, I guess fine. Whatever. I'll do it. Moan, listen, thank you so much for joining us. It's been such a broad, wide-ranging discussion. I'm a NAM Clips. Thank you so much. You've been amazing. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thanks so much to me, one, for joining and for approaching this with the candor you hope for from an executive striving to create a top-class asset. There are some incredible takes in there that we're not used to hearing in football. And there's no doubt a huge amount of the business that is built on the opportunity provided by an incredible location. But that is playing the hand you're dealt. It may not be directly replicable, but there will be things to build on for many clubs that are unique to them. some work to identify and develop that. A huge thank you again to Moan and we hope you enjoyed the show. Now if you want to see more from today's show, you can do so by going to YouTube or any of our other social channels across Instagram, TikTok and of course now Substack. There are more snippets to share and bite-sized chunks to consume and whilst you're there, please do like, subscribe and follow the show. As you'll hear from your other favourite pods, it makes a huge difference when bringing you the best guests and conversations from around the world of sport, which is of course our endless aim. Thank you again for tuning in and we'll see you next week. 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