UP556 'Serviette Maths': Sky Sports Boss On The Premflix Threat

Hello, it's Richard Gillis here and welcome to unofficial partner, the sports business conversation. Today's guest is one of the most influential people in the British sports industry. He is Jonathan Licht, chief sports officer at Sky Sports. So we've discussed their dominant position in the UK sports broadcasting market. The nature and the changing nature of their relationships and partnerships across the board and the future, not just of sky, but of the sector itself. It's a very broad and deep conversation with someone who has been at Skyat since the mid-90s and has been at Sky Sports since 2005. So we talk about portfolio, dominance, the home of football, 225 Premier League matches. What does that do? A thousand plus EFL games, 118 WSL matches, Formula One cricket, golf, NFL, tennis, darts, netball. Skyat has the lot. So what is a sports broadcaster today in a world of global streaming? What's the role in co-creation, for example, in the 100? And how does that play in terms of the relationship between broadcaster and governing body? He's also very good on Sky's relationship with its own talent. Gary Neville, a set up of business almost in competition with Sky whilst being one of its most highly paid-on-air stars. So what are the blurring lines between Sky's platforms and independent creator channels like the overlap? YouTube and highlights distribution, free-to-air content as a funnel or is it a risk of training audiences not to pay? And women's sports investment? What's the business rationale? The higher purpose? And I would hang around for that because it's a really interesting argument from the person who writes the checks. This episode of "Annafical Partner" is sponsored by our friends at the Institute of Sport Humanities, ISH. ISH educates sports current and future leaders around the world as the leading independent provider of leadership education and insight for the sector. Their strategic sport leadership master's, the MA is for industry executives to study alongside their careers, designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking and connect with a global network of peers working across sport. Applications are now open for the next intake on the 2026 strategic sport leadership MA starting in September. Visit sportshumanities.org for more information and there we link in the show notes. Starts to gear up now. This time of year obviously you get into the summer stuff when we're doing cricket which I want to talk to you about and the men's and women's you've got the world cup coming up? Absolutely. Three world cups this week obviously the men's football, the women's cricket and the world cup of darts which presumably will be covering in great lengths during this conversation. I can be honest the world cup of darts has passed me by. I was like that's that wasn't on my don't worry about it would be okay. I think England have a decent chance it's probably more light so in that of the three. Always with people with jobs like yours I'm always interested in what do you do all day do you know what I mean? I'm not doing podcasts or podcasts. When you're not recording. Good question. I spent a lot of time sitting on the North circular commuting to Osterly but I always think about I tend to think about my role in sort of three buckets. There's a sort of the internal Sky Sports piece. How are we thinking about whatever are priorities and we'll talk about some of those I'm sure over the conversation. Then there's a lot of interaction with the broader Sky Business so how is Sky Sports helping the marketing team, the advertising team are we aligned on whatever we need to be doing? What else is going on with the rest of business that we need to be across and in my position I spend quite a lot of time in that space around the sort of divisional leads across Sky. Then there's the interaction with industry are partners. So those are the leagues rights holders. Whoever we should be our team, whoever we have relationships with. I enjoy all aspects of the role in different ways but clearly I've had a lot of longevity in my, certainly at Sky and Sky Sports. So I've got to know lots of people around the industry and of course there's lots of people at Sky Sports so I've been working with for a long time. I started in 1998 so my first job at Sky was working in advertising research in Sky Media. So based up in in Victoria. So supporting the media arm but also because it was research I was doing a lot of like audience analysis and working with the people that ran the content team. So Vick Wattling in Sport and the various people that ran entertainment including people like Dawn Herry over the time. So I started in Sky in in 1998 and then I moved over to Sports 2005 and I moved over to Sport after I wrote a letter to Vick Wattling saying I was really interested in a role in Sky Sports so maybe one of the last people to get a job by virtue of writing a letter on him sending an email. So the job then was what audience analysis in the early days? Yeah exactly. Audience analysis type roles working with the ad sales team that were trying to engage clients in why they should be buying into Sky whether that was sport or whatever it is. So at that time you know it was a time where we were taking bigger positions in Sport. Clearly you know the Premier League was probably only four or five years old at that point and there was still you know a much bigger question I'd guess about sort of pay TV and the audiences around pay TV and how they were going to grow and what the sort of trade-offs were around reach and revenue and all those sorts of things. So we were doing helping with presentations that were being also being made to the so the different sports to think about what a partnership with with Sky could look like. And when you then joined in 2005 so I'm just trying to think so that yearnings of Bell because of cricket that was the year before the Champions of Porto Sky and the ashes that happened. What others and obviously the Premier League I'm just wondering if the portfolio looks considerably different now or you've still got the sort of pillars that were still in place. Yes Premier League would have been almost 15 years. We had a relationship with ECB but it's not as sort of exclusive as it is now with the FL would be in partnership with them. Clearly lots going on in the world of golf, tours, golf, netball, so lots super league, lots of sports there would be similar but the dynamic was slightly different. I think 2005 we wish we had some some rights with being broadcast by Satanta I think that year so they had had a position in FA Cup. I think they had a position in US Tour Golf for a period. I think that was a little bit later I remember because I remember when that happened when I was at Sky Sports boxing as well we had a position in boxing but they did as well. There was a lot that we partner with that we still do but there's obviously been an evolution of Sky Sports since then Formula One comes quite a bit later and our position within a lot of the sports, the deeper partnerships in terms of the amount of content that we're showing and the history of the relationship type thing. Yeah and then you then get I suppose there's a question about what that means. So the relationship between a long-term relationship with Sky and from there from the because I always think so I'm sorry it's a way into I wanted to talk about how I wish I'd remind him I'm on my histories my memories not what it used to be. Well we've got your bare memory you've got your my wonky AI assistant so between us we're going to have to cover together your back story. Make it up between us. Yeah but there's a I remember there was we had we're talking about cricket and obviously it's a big summer you got the women's workout we got you know just had a test match which you know that finished in two and a half days three days but cricket is an interesting one because if you go over the span of the time you've got the rise of 2020 cricket obviously that sort of appeared and then you've got the hundred and I'm always interested in the hundred because obviously people underestimate the role that Sky played in that in the development of that and I just wanted to sort of use that as a as a sort of a way in really just to say can you explain what Sky's role was in it because I remember Sky Labs being mentioned as part of it and your name was always associated with you know was in the sort of in that area because I remember you as the strategy guy at Sky so to talk to me about how that evolved okay so I'm not quite sure the question is the question is it's effectively because there's been a few pieces written recently about 20 years of a yes more exclusive relationship with Sky and saw a lot of history about sort of 2005 and the audience figures and the history of that deal and yeah I think you know English cricket have had a lot of successes in that period that we're talking about that you know the women's team won a home wildcard in 2017 50 overs the men's did 2019 I think I don't know quite how many home ashes series have been won across that period but I think at least three so so there's been a period of success for English cricket in not the last deal but the deal before there was a very specific ambition on the ECB's hard to look at effectively I guess more expansive audience or how do you sort of protect the long term health of cricket in the world. in this country. So how do you sort of broaden the appeal of cricket? And a big part of that was going to be a franchise competition. Obviously the IPL had probably been up and running, I don't know, maybe six, seven years, I don't quite know, exactly when, what year that would have started. So to bring a verse of that, they already, they already was county 2020 cricket, the blast competition, which is important for the counties and, you know, is a good way for them to be filling their grounds. But you know, almost how do you take that to the next stage? And it was the ECB that came up with the sort of the headline concept around the sort of change in the format. But then there was a whole load of work about, you know, what needs to go on around that. What are the important factors? What is going to make this work? What's the experience going to be like in the grounds? Well, how's that going to relate to the broadcast experience? And that was the sort of process that went into Sky Labs. And I absolutely can't take too much credit, although team were very, very, very closely involved. It was almost like a sort of two or three week immersive experience where you had a group of people for the ECB, a group of people from Sky, and there you're bringing lots of external expertise from sort of all different and surprising, sort of walks of life. It could be someone that was an expert in their experience, and it could be some, you know, professor that was an expert on time or something like that that would just help people think about, what is it that's going to be important? What's it going to catch people's attention? How are you going to get more families interest in coming to cricket or younger people? And a big sort of premise around that, one of the ideas is that people need to know who's winning, you know, a kind of almost any point of the game. And that was sort of why one of the ideas is sort of like the balls go down and then the balls go up, the sort of simplicity to it all. So there was very much a sort of co-creation work that went on with the 100. And I think, you know, there's been its fair to say quite a bit of noise about the competition in the sort of intervening years, but for me there's no doubt particularly for the experience of going to a 100 game and what it's done for the equity of the women's game, the fact that you have those sort of the double headers, the heads to heads, the experience in the ground, the noises that you hear in the ground from younger people that are going to cricket is undoubtedly being a success for the 100. I think for Sky on sort of audience-wise, yes, we've broadened our appeal, but I don't think it's been quite as sort of remarkably stark as you potentially see in the venues. And what you've had in the last year, you've had this moment where the English cricket has had, you know, investment levels from external, whether quite a few people associate with the IPL or people coming out of investment houses in the US, have committed amounts of money to English cricket that would have just seen unprecedented going back. So absolutely brought in to this sort of concept of growth and sort of owning a position in English cricket. And, you know, that hopefully is going to be something that puts English cricket in sort of great strength. You know, the game itself is not without its challenges, you know, clearly future of test cricket is something that's debated, but as you said, we've just seen the finish of the test match. Actually, we had a pretty strong audience, we had a peak of around a million people watching Sunday lunchtime when the game finished. There's still a sort of healthy audience of people that want to engage with test cricket, lots of people that want to go to the game, but through the hundred, what we're doing is effectively broadening that appeal and trying to sort of make sure the health of cricket overall is going to be strong long into the future. And I hope the English cricket men's and women's is going to be in a strong place as a result of that. Well, it's sort of, I mean, I wasn't seeing you up for a sort of 2005 conversation because I've had that on the podcast many times and so of you. And it wasn't about that, but it's sort of interesting about what a brawl, it gets to sort of what a brawlcaster is now, what sky, how it sort of world view, if you like, and how it sees itself in a market that is changing in many different ways. And it's sort of interesting that because we've got the renewal of the hundred coming up in 2008, we had a lot of it Modi on here talking about, you know, whether what's going to happen at that moment, and we've had the ECB on and various people. But it's sort of interesting to look at it and say, right, okay, that it doesn't feel like a normal broadcast rights holder relationship in that way. Because if I was sky, I would say, well, if you take the hundred somewhere else, I'm going to be pretty pissed off because I was, we were there at the beginning. Yeah, look, I think there's, as I said, look, we do feel like we were there at the beginning of the co-creation. We were answering a very specific challenge together with our partner about how you grow interest in the game. And that is a kind of extreme version, but it's kind of not dissimilar to any of the partnerships that we have in terms of, you know, the slight, I don't really call it an irony or whatever the right word would be, but you go back to wherever you go, start you talk about Premier League, you talk about Darts, you talk about anything, you know, we are working to make these sports successful so that, you know, people want to watch, people want to engage and we have had, you know, we have been successful that, but kind of like slightly our punishment is these rights then come back to market and there's a competitive process around that. So yes, it's great that we can, we can prove the growth of a sport and we can really get more people, you know, to the start line, but you know, then we come and get sort of that relationship gets tested. The kind of the good news is we think we're a very good partner to sport, particularly in this market. And, you know, we have more right certainty than we've probably ever had. So effectively, something is working for our partners as well. Yes, our money is good and that helps, you know, them and, you know, partnering with with Sky gives them a certain certainty, but for customers, we think that's good as well. Like the choices that we've made where to invest our money, we're kind of seeing the returns in good audience stories across the board. And, you know, actually the choice and the value that we're giving people is being well-recognised by customers. So yeah, I get the point around the hundreds and, you know, wouldn't it be, you know, we've done this and we've done that, but it's kind of not dissimilar to any of the relationships that we have where we've helped grow games. I mean, you wouldn't have thought four years ago, three years ago, you'd be getting four million audiences for the world darts, but that's what's happened through the phenomenon that's Luke Littler. You know, there's a lot of people that have been involved in the sort of that success and that sort of trajectory, but actually the platform that we give a sport is a really significant part of that. Same. Yeah. If you look at the audience growth for Formula One over the years ago, so any number of these stories, in theory, what we're doing is we're creating the conditions to make it harder for us to kind of renew these rights, but the good use is kind of it tends to be playing out okay for us and good for customers. And that, at the moment, that sort of marketing role of Sky and the, you know, the broadcast, the retail end of broadcast, if you like, use a cruder, but you've got, I think he's, again, a bit underestimated. We get a lot of people coming on the podcast who are sort of launching single sport or direct to consumer sort of ideas and you get it intellectually, but you haven't got the marketing sort of muscle and front and presentation that a major broadcaster in particular. A sky brings to that and I'm wondering how that now plays because I think sort of five years at least, but probably more, you'd have gone back and said, yeah, the future is streaming OTT, Direct D to C, all of these acronyms. And now we're thinking, you know what, I'm getting, you know, I'm not only rose tinted glasses for newspapers, I'm a bit rose tinted for, you know, just give me one ticket. Yeah, no, look, I think that's right that, you know, at various points, people have written the story, wanted to write the story, written the story that, you know, the demise of this, the demise of that, someone's come into eat your lunch. And I, you know, the evidence is actually today has not been that, if anything, you know, we feel more robust, we feel better shaped with our partnerships than ever before, you know, our position as the UK's leading sports broadcaster, we think, you know, it's not, we don't say that in a, hopefully not in an, in an arrogant way, but we say it in a, in a sort of, slight confidence because actually we've got a really positive story to tell, whether that's, you know, record audiences in, in, in 2025, first-guise sports over a weekend or over a day or over a month or over a year, they're kind of, they're kind of all there. So the, the, the, the offering is really robust and resilient in many places growing. I think from a sort of positioning perspective, and if you think maybe we'll come onto the streamers in a little bit, but sort of sky, I think where we've kind of increasingly see ourselves, it sort of positions ourselves as a kind of like a national champion, like if we are the best people to help you connect with the UK interested sort of sports audience, you know, we have that, whether it's what we're doing in Super Sunday or whether we're doing how we sort of complement that from a 360 perspective from Sky Sports News or our digital estate, which I think in many, the scale and the importance of that, I think is often underestimated. Yes, a streamer can let you sort of pop up in 100 markets overnight, and some of them will do that brilliantly well, but it's not going to be a specific experience for your market, you know, an example could be, you know, how you might watch the NFL, we, you know, we have a studio show from our big studio in Australia, we have great talent line-up with, well, that's Jason Bell, Phoebe or Ose, Neil or whoever it is that we have presenting, comes on after sort of around Super Sunday, so you've already had, you know, two or three million people watching a big Sunday after the game, you carry them through into Sunday night and they have a really sort of tailored experience around how a UK sport fan may want to engage with the NFL. You could also watch Red Zone on another channel. Actually, you can watch multiple live-agates events. If you watch that through a streamer, you're probably getting a version that's being seen in lots of countries that may not have any sort of thing tailored around that. I'm not criticizing it because that model works for them. But I think for us, what we're doing is we're really working with our partners to try and understand what's important to them, how we want to talk to audiences in our market in a way that's kind of relevant and authentic. So I think that players may become even more to the fore. Now that we do have a streaming capability through the launch of Sky Sports Plus, through the volume of the NFL games that we do. So we have the technical ability. We don't necessarily have the geography. We have the relationship with Comcast, so through NBC and through some deals that they've done, effectively, they're requiring rights in multiple territories or we're working with them on certain rights. But you're not getting a hundred markets, but you're getting what we think is the best experience of the UK market and the UK market remains a very important to rights, holders and leagues in the world. There's a few things that bounce off that, which are really interesting. I just want to follow up on. So you've got, you mentioned that our money is good, which is a really interesting-- Certain, I would say. Yeah. I think that's awesome. I hope I did. I hope it came across in the right way. That's an interesting phrase. Because in other markets, other times, things have gone wrong, not for sky, but for other broadcasters. And I think France being a good example of where something has happened, which has sort of been cataclysmic for a league, because of the broadcasters, that nature of that question, where's the money going to come from. And we're in a time of consolidation and people are putting things together. I think there's a question about the other broadcaster in the Premier League. And you mentioned Cetanta. And I can think, who's been in that slot, BT, ESPN going back? There's sort of-- Desonas Amazon been popping in and out. How do you view that slot? It's obviously illegal-- Yeah, there's a position where no single buyer for Premier League. And we could talk about the legacy of that. And what the unintended consequences of that sort of decision have been for the punter and the viewer and for the rights market. But where do you see that bit of the jigsaw? Because it's very hard to come at Sky from that position. So we've got the moment where you know that there's a Warner Brothers Paramount merger happening. And whether that is different than what's coming the past. I guess if we start with a sort of certainty point. And I think a really big-- another sort of big moment for Sky and our partners was actually coming out of COVID. And I've probably bought my colleagues talking about that. I've probably a lot of things. But that's particularly that topic. Because I do think that was such an unusual-- but no one-- you could never have imagined an experiment where sport didn't happen to try and help you understand sort of almost in a way how important sport was in people's lives. But it was such a sort of challenge to the sporting bodies, to the leagues, to Sky in many respects. That we worked through in such a partnership way that we came through them in a really sort of strong-- really feeling stronger. And part of that was-- because actually, I think that our partners understood that they were in good hands in dealing with Sky. Not only good hands, as we talk about sort of financial certainty and taking a long-term view that we'd had already to that point, but going forward. But also that when sport came back, and it came back in a volume that was sort of unprecedented-- all Premier League games were being covered. And they were being covered in a way that was quite operationally challenging. When you're partnering with Sky, you're going to get hopefully a professionalism and an expertise that means that that's all going to be very suitably and well handled. And it's all going to show up well for customers. So I do think that gave us a kind of a real strength and resilience around our partnerships. And we've sort of come through that. And I think that's been evidenced by deals that have happened subsequently, which have given us more longer-term certainty than we've ever had that we can then pass on to customers. So that's sort of a high level. Then you go specifically to the Premier League and you're absolutely right that there's been lots of different-- there've been lots of versions of broadcasters that have had packs of games. And there's been lots of-- in previous role, I've spent a lot of time around football fixtures and the selection of football fixtures. And people talk about that as like a game of battleships or whatever it was when you were trying to select the games and the picks processes. But it's now we're in a position that last year, Sky Sports so 225 games. That's I think that's 70% I think of all-- I may not have caught that quite right. But the 380 games in total, someone can do the math. It won't be too far off. So there's lots of games being shown that actually, I think our position, particularly for Premier League, that sort of leadership position is kind of clearer than it's ever been in a world where we came from where we might have been sort of 9840 or something like that. We might have got a bit more like all this weekend. We've got three games. Someone's got two games. What's the leadership? How we're all using thinking, where does I feel like it's now? Particularly for Premier League, and it is fundamentally a backbone to our sports business. And we're sort of comfortable to say that. That we're in a strong position now, clearly. There are other football competitions where other people have their own positions. But overall, our position in football has sort of never been broader or bigger. So 225 Premier League games this last season was the first year of our five-year deal for WSL or 118 games. I think that's sort of something like 90% of all matches, although the league is expanding in this coming season the year before. We extended our NFL deal where we've gone to over 1,000 games and we were making this commitment where we were going to show each of the teams at least 20 times in this last season, which was a fantastic SPFL season. We showed more games than ever before. So I think we sort of focus on what we're doing, focus on our leadership position. That's not to say that we're complacent, but we sort of judge ourselves on our duration we have with customers. Are we giving them value? We have to prove that every day, every week, every month. So whether that's football or whether that's the breadth of what we do, that's kind of what we're focused on. And how does that story evolve? So then you have a tender process at the back end of last year. We come out of that with some UEFA rights on Thursday night competition. So season 27, 28 will have a new story where we go from 1,500 matches in total to 1,850. And I'm not saying you have to watch every one of those games. That's not how we judge ourselves. But we want to say if you're a fan of a certain team that we're giving you more value and more choice than you ever before. If you support a NFL team now, Sky Sports is giving you a sort of a level of commitment that didn't exist before. Well, is there 70% numbers? Sometimes I ask, I asked Barney this question, about how much is enough to say that you're the home of something? Is 70% the number, is, feels like that's a reasonable-- Well, it's 70% of all games. But I don't know what percentage of the televised games. I don't think there's a-- You know, different-- in all the sports that, you know, if you think about almost like our genre channels, that will give you the clues to the sports that we sort of see ourselves where we sort of very much the leaders. So whether that be tennis and the tours, OK, we have one of the four grand slams. But in terms of volume of tennis that's covered, you know, leadership, golf, I think, every-- the US tour, the European tour, all the major's men's and women's cricket with ECB position. Football, we've talked about Formula One. So-- So Rubb and tennis are the obvious ones, for my point of view, that aren't there. And-- Well, tennis is there for the tours perspective, for the WTA and the ATP. You know, there's a huge volume. I think it's some like 4,000 games of tennis or something. But not three of the four grand slams. I accept that. Yeah, Rugby Union is-- we don't have a genre channel. We have shown at various times over my time, probably virtually even going back in in 1998. I think we had some six nations games. And then-- but whether that be Premiership or European Rugby or the international's, we've shown all the lines towards, we showed the last one. Yeah, I mean, there'll be lots of reasons why we are where we are in rugby. But that's not because we sit here and say it's a sport we're not interested in, or we don't think people are interested. Is it the sort of reverse of your COVID point? So in terms of not about COVID, but there is an idea that Rugby broke the relationship with Sky by going elsewhere. And then you've got-- not you personally, but Sky has got a long institutional memory. And it's going to be hard for Rugby to come back in. Is there anything in that framing? I think there was a point where someone saw more value in the rugby opportunity than we did. Whether that was the deal that BT would have done for the Premiership, I think, originally, at a level that we weren't prepared to go to, whether we even specifically had that opportunity. I can't quite recall. But I think-- I guess so. Well, that was sort of danger of oversharing type thing. It's like-- because of-- We talk about leadership within sport, but actually a big part of for Sky Sports is the breadth of the portfolio. People want to have the opportunity to watch Formula One as well as cricket, as well as football, as well as tennis, as well as NFL boxing, et cetera. And so one piece coming out, or whatever, making an analogy coming out of that, doesn't necessarily make a big difference to the overall value proposition and the ROV ability to generate revenue. So what then becomes problematic is. If a sport comes out, can we then go and show the business case to say that bringing it back in is going to be able to drive that level of value. So it's like incrementally it becomes harder for us, probably when a sport has moved on and there, this will be, you know, there be a number of examples of sports that we've shown over the last 20, 25 years, where we were praying a level of money that is well above the level that's being paid now, even for rights that may be out still in the market. But it's hard for us to create a business case for that because our business has moved on. There's no one sitting here saying we're not going to do business with that person or that legal that because, you know, we need to, we, we want to offer what's of value to customers. That's how we'll be successful. But the dynamics and, you know, as the investments get bigger in certain sports, some of the ability to make significant investments in other sports and retain pricing at a level that we think is suitable and retain the level of profitability that we want to that that's where that becomes a challenge for us. So you mentioned European and the European games and that's again a sort of interesting bit of the jigsaw and the last round of rights, the relevant sort of. Packaging of UEFA rights, the story running into that, it was going to be a streamer package. There was going to be a global thing paramount came in for that. So in terms of the packaging, you've now got your Netflix and you've got the sort of big global streamers. How do you see these rights holders evolving their offers in that world? Do you think that that is the that sort of relevant packages I'm calling it? Do you think that's going to be something others will look at and copy or do you think actually no, it didn't work? Well, they did come to market offering a global pack and they also came to market running a number of big European markets at the same time. Simultaneous, I think that was the first time that had been done to that level. I think it's a look again, you'd be much better off asking them, but my perspective is for these rights, these are quite unique rights in that, you know, they're not a totally dissimilar value in these markets. People's ability to want to trade across markets or think about multiple markets at the same time is probably higher. You know, if you're running a, let's say a Premier League process across five European markets at the same time, you know, everyone's going to be disproportionately focused on the UK that can't really make sense. To be thinking about how are those markets going to trade in France or Germany at that same time. So it was quite, it's quite a unique set of circumstances that's relevant to that specific to that specific right. So I think they were taking advantage of that that people may want to deal in multiple markets at the same time. I try and think, you know, when you talk about global streaming, you think about the sort of the big sports, you're always going to think about, well, what's the dynamic? Well, yes, okay. So there's lots of talking in the market about US domestic NFL rights and what's going to happen there. But the numbers that you're talking about are so big there that the international component might just be an add on as opposed to something that sort of run very, very separately. Or it might be that the entities that want to involve themselves in that process want to have an international position, you know, whether that be Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, or maybe some are like Paramount, Paramount Plus CDS or Disney or concast, but, but they're not going to disrupt, you know, their key market. They're not going to let that get in the way of what they're about and how many markets are they going to pick up. So I think there's, you know, there's there's almost so many sort of circumstances at play that there's very rarely a kind of one size fits all approach for these things. But you can see it emerging a little bit more because you've got these capabilities with the capability and the desire to take rights out across multiple territory. And I guess the there's a just the risk reward of that is get talks back to your previous point about the, I guess the audience relationship that yeah, where you like, do you want again you look at an example like the Premier League who have been sort of rightly lauded for a long time about how successful that they've been internationally. And they run I think virtually a bespoke process by market maybe they've sort of clumped together more territories recently but over the years they've been out trying to understand who is the best partner in this market who understands you know the go to market here and what we need to do and they've been. You know they've seen the value and that seems to be vindicated in you know kind of like territory by territory approach and no our view is if you have that view if you want to be in the UK then a really strong partner is going to be working with Skysport does it does it matter that the the Premier League productions going in house away from I am. Do that matter to Skys or is that or is it just looking from the side and well it doesn't matter to us for the moment we've you know three years left of of our deal said we. I was brought to 125 matches for our market you know including we had things like the last day ever all games were being broadcast at the same time that was a sort of a huge operational effort from our team and sort of credit editorally and everything operation that went on in delivering those sort of ten host broadcast matches so I'm a spurs fan so it's quite a stressful day for me so you know I can imagine it wasn't stressful enough for us as in it never quite you know we wanted the idea that the league table would flip at some point but it never quite happened but. Not that you were in the market for that but but still again you know a really good and big day for us but sort of going back to the original question you know we have an interaction with Premier League or PLP and now we'll we'll have an interaction with with the new entity but for the moment it remains or business is using on that for us and that story obviously people would land on that and say well that is a route to Premflex that's the you know always the push back on that is. You're joking aren't you are they going to go direct in the UK you know Singapore is a completely different question than the UK. I'm not surprised people will make you know people want to write the story because it's an exciting story whether it's a real story or not time will tell but you know we talked a little bit and you sort of pick me up on the use of my phrase like the money is good you don't have to go too far across the waters to see you know some of the impact from going direct to the UK. From going direct to consumer and the implications that has for the sort of the economics of the league so it's a it wasn't didn't seem like that was the first choice for that league. It may not have been the second third or fourth choice so there's reasons when people have sort of looked over the edge or sort of stared it down why it does or doesn't make sense so I think like before we sort of get carried away with the excitement of the story or doing the sort of like. You've got to sort of really sort of like say okay we quite like the certainty from the UK from the US from all of our partners all around the world and you know that that's pretty good and we quite like the idea that we've got 50 or I don't know how many different entities that are waking up every day thinking about how can we serve the growth of the Premier League rather than necessarily saying let's put it all in one basket and make it our own problem but you know famous last words and maybe someone will play this back to me one day. So talking of you know survey at math so I like your phrase I'm going to steal the rise of the sort of creator the Mark Goldbridge Gary Neville type. I'm sure he did well that our bedfellows so maybe we'll have to accept the connection of the two of us. I guess the question is is how you view that world is a putt there's a sort of again it's a there's a sort of inevitability about it but it's quite interesting in terms of the way in which so the Bundesliga being the obvious thing they come in they give you know the Mark Goldbridge picks up some Friday rights and people say oh it's the start of something it's you to you on the march so there's two questions one is what do you think about that it's as just the trend and where you think that's going the other bit to it is quite interesting about your relationship with your own talent so in terms of whether or not. They are I mean people to work disintermediation which is one of those words I can't really say properly but there's a sense that they're building businesses in opposition to you guys who are paying their salary so just talk to me about this because it's quite an interesting moment we're in. Yeah so I guess I start with the sort of the second part I guess you're alluding to people like Gary the business that he's got. Here and other talent are clearly a very important part of what we do and kind of of our of our brand how we show up and to customers comes through how you interact with sky sports F or cricket or football so they're a big part of that and the fact that they you know as we would encourage them to sort of be to be entertaining but to be welcoming and authentic and intelligent around how they're being you know the insights that they're offering we want them to do it in a you know in a modern way but they're doing it in a way that works for our audience on the platforms and for you know what we are asking people to pay for the content that we're offering and you know those personalities and those strands where that's Monday night football or Super Sunday or as again across the sports the relationships that we have with those talent are very important and I think they're important to them because I think they give them also a kind of a credibility and a sort of a center of the kind of agenda setting world you know when Gary Neville says something is saying something on Super Sunday that carries a weight if he's saying something somewhere else for an ex football saying something just sort of out in the ether You're slightly slightly less interest in that. Do you think we make a distinction between. So Gary Neville says something on the overlap versus he says something on a Sunday on Sky or a Monday night? Is that attribution blurred? In my mind, it's a sort of. Depends where we want it to be. Yeah, it's good, then we'll take it. He's even the cause of the problem, then he's Gary Neville the overlap. But you can't say there isn't an association, but clearly there is a line with these things. So we enjoy the relationship that we have with the talent. As I said, it's a really big part of how we kind of show up for people. We think about how we want to evolve the line up. And we think rightly so. We get recognised, or the teams get recognised for the quality of the production. And whether that's bringing in a new face like Stuart Brawn and Crickier or Bernie Collins in Formula Wild or Daniel Sturridge in the football, there will be lots of other examples. People that we're bringing on that we think can help evolve our storytelling and how we show up for people. We can't distance ourselves from the importance of these individuals because they are the mouthpiece for our coverage. No, people aren't listening to what the head of football is saying about football. They're listening to what Jamie Caragas saying or Neville or whoever it is. So it is a really important part for us. In terms of what they're doing in other spaces or what other people are doing in other spaces. Of course it's interesting for us and people talk about like the attention, engagement, particularly what's going on away from the live, what's happening Monday to Friday. And there is more contention in that space. And it's probably harder, let's say, to win in that space because the barriers to entry are much lower. If you want to look at the live pictures from the Premier League, you kind of only really got one place to go. If you want to hear someone say something about the Premier League, you've got lots of places where to go. And we have a presence in social, a long form social. As I said a bit early, I think people underestimate how strong, how strongly we show up in those plays like Gary Neville we're doing podcast on the gantry after Super Sunday and you get a million people listening to the 40 minutes because he's in the moment, he's seen the game, he's reacting, he's been at the biggest game of the weekend or one of the biggest games of the weekend. And he's giving very interesting and engaging reaction to that. But we can't be everywhere at all times to everything. We do observe the trends like you said you were a spurs fan, I'd be interested to hear, I presume you listen probably more, maybe you do, but to more fan podcasts than you've ever done, I certainly know that I do for my team because they're going really deep on my team. And I want to hear that Sky Sports is not necessarily going to have the resource to tell you more than anyone else about Tottenham 24/7. But we're going to cover the big things and we're going to tell you the transfer stories and if you want to watch the Arsenal game or the time of the playing Manchester City, you're coming back to Sky Sports. So we understand our place and I think we believe in live and we believe that live is really strong, really resilient where ultimately people want to go. But there's lots of people around live and that's more of a kind of a, I don't know what the right phrase would be, but it's not free-fraud, but there's lots more going on in that space. And some people are making sense of it. And some people are trying to build businesses off the back of it. Can you see that? Can you see it? There's a kind of thing. Can you see whether it's the next cycle or whatever, but there is a personality-led channel that is a serious contender for major rights in whatever sport. Well, it happens in some places already. We've got the Cazet TV thing. And their partners are super impressed with it. And I think it works well in the market. But I don't know so much about the Brazilian market that I understand the sort of the economics of some of their TV rights deals. But again, I think perhaps respectfully with reference to the Bundesliga, you mentioned them earlier, whether yes, I understand the approach that they've taken, was that the first choice? If someone were offered them multiple millions of pounds to be the more exclusive partner, where would they go? Maybe they'd have chosen to take the route that they've done. But I still think that that's, yes, you might get a level of reach. How strongly that will continue. People might tune in, watch the first game. What was that like? I quite liked it. I'll come back for week two. But I'd be interested if someone did have a look at the analysis across the season to see how well that engagement has stood up. I don't know the answer. Maybe the answer is stood up super well. But enough that they want to turn up the next time that there's a process and put millions of pounds down. I'm not quite sure. Let's see. I guess it's a part of the bigger question, which is our relationship with YouTube, just generally in terms of people who are watching, but also people, you know, the rights holders, Sky, and you mentioned cricket. I consume now, Sky's cricket coverage, mainly on YouTube. And it still feels wrong, someone my age. I'm sitting there, you know, how am I allowed to see this? Talk about highlights. So you talk about liable highlights. I'm not talking about piracy. I'm not talking about, I'm just talking about, talk about highlighted sport, which you've paid a lot of money for. And I know it's not as good experience, but sometimes I think, because you've got this idea that we're going to, you know, you're bringing people in the, it's mainly a sort of people much younger than me, through a funnel and they end up, you know, paying at some point for something. The other argument is that actually, we're training people to not pay anything, and they're going back up, they're going the wrong way up the funnel. And I just want to what your view on it, because I, I still feel strange, and it's, I still wonder how and why high quality sport is going for nothing on YouTube. And I know it's about audience and demographics, but, yeah, I mean, for us, it will be a balance in that, you know, we have to understand our business. You know, it's the investment that we make in cricket and the live rights that we put in on sky sports, cricket or sky sports main event, or when we're taking it more broadly. Does that continue to make sense for us in, you know, the people that are, let's say willing to pay to subscribe, what are those numbers look like? What are the audience looks like? And all those numbers are growing, but they're growing at the same time, as you say, more people are maybe watching highlights on YouTube or engaging with the sky sports app. So it's kind of, it's kind of working at the moment. Now, you might say, well, you've got a problem, because you won't be able to put the genie back in the bottle down the line, but at the moment, all the kind of indicators for us are that, you know, people that still want to engage with that live experience as I've touched on, we've seen record audiences, sort of kind of across the board for all of our, all of our live sports. And we don't get complacent on that. We don't say it will, you know, hopefully it will continue forever, but it may not do. We need to understand how people's consumer habits are changing and how they want to engage with different sports and when they want to do it. But we're offering so much live sport that actually we think we're giving more value than ever. I don't understand. Are you sure you're not a subscriber to sky sports? Is that right? Is that why you're watching the cricket? I dip in and out. I was a complete full fat subscriber and now I dip in for through bits of Premier League season but also right to cut the open blah blah blah. So I might as well get a full subscription frankly because I'm fanning around trying to find, you know, deal, but there is a, yeah, I just wasn't watching enough of it to justify the full membership and I'm not that big a football fan that I'm consumed every weekend with it. Okay. Well, this is a, is a growing part of our, of our offering and people have, I guess, there's a little bit more fluidity to that as you've kind of described sort of coming in and out for events, whereas, you know, the sky, traditional sky base remains quite stable. People sort of been with us for quite a long tenure and hopefully getting a lot of value up subscription. Now TV, we have a bit more movement of coming sort of in and out for events. Look, I, I guess as much as a question for us as a question for the right shoulders, if, if your cricket demand is being satiated through watching highlights, you know, we, we need to keep an eye on that. But the eye at the moment is telling us that still, you know, as I said, a million people want to watch the conclusion of the England, New Zealand test match. There's going to be lots of people that are going to want to watch the women's ICC, well, 20, 20. So it's kind of working for us if we saw a lot where that was dropping and all of the, the kind of, the viewing was, was moving across to YouTube, then that would be a problem because we can't monetize you as well over there. So then you're sort of slightly back rounds of the fundamentals of everything can know how it adds up and whether you're talking about Bundesliga or whether you're talking about creators for the moment, certainly from our experience, you just can't monetize the audience in that way. So it's, yes, it's important. It's good to get, you know, your content seen by as many people, but you have to retain kind of a sort of premium experience. It's like in a slightly different space. And meanwhile, YouTube are calling themselves TV and, you know, they're using premium content as part of their premiumization of their channel. So, you know, it's, there's a lot on YouTube, a great deal on YouTube, which isn't premium by any such as the adjunition. But the presence of high-end sports rights is doing a very good marketing job for YouTube, isn't it, in this period that we're in? In most instance, in this market, you're still talking about non-live. There are sports that are showing up live in a way. You know, the WSL is quite a bit of content that works and is shown on YouTube and they're driving an audience there. I think their rights in that instance are not geoblocked. But there's not many examples of people showing live sport just in the UK. I think where that's the sort of primary monetization. I want to talk about women's cricket and football and You mentioned there we've got a major cricket tournament happening over the next month. If you step back, just look at both of these things. What's the business model for Sky around both women's cricket and football? Give me a sense of it. What's the ROI on that? We are long-term investors and believers in women's sport with the biggest investors in the UK. We've talked a lot about long-term partnership. This summer is 30 years of our coverage of women's cricket. Our relationship with the WSL is sure to turn that. We're probably in about our fifth season. Fundamentally, for us, we want to show the best sport to customers. In this instance, as we're talking about it, that's global cricket events. Like the women's T20, that's the WSL. That would have been the women's US Open last night. They had a great finish. Charlie Hull came close to winning it. There'll be lots of examples of netball over the weekend. Fundamentally, it's good sport and we want to be showing the best sport to our customers. There's also a part of it where it's getting closer to our partners by being more aligned with them and their ambitions for growing their sports. The ECB, the ICC, would be a really good example there. For us, it's also about growing our audience appeal, thinking about how we can open our pockets of new demand, subscriptions, the evidence is there in the women's sport that we share. I know you had Joe Osborne who would have spoken a little bit more eloquently than I would about the different audiences that we see for women's sport. Yes, there are discrete audiences, but also fundamentally at high. It's people that enjoy good sport and for us, making that central to our portfolio is really important. We're seeing stronger and stronger audiences. Good growth for the WSL over this last season. I think total audiences were up around 20%. We're very confident around the T20 in terms of the audiences that we're going to deliver. That's partly been helped by the fact that we're taking the game to wider distribution. We've got games that are going out on Sky Mix. We've got games that are going out as aforementioned Sky Sports YouTube going out on the app as well as on Sky Sports. We know we're going to see strong audiences, we get good engagement with that. That's good for our customers, good for our brand, and it's good for our ability to hopefully drive growth into our business. It's interesting. I think sort of three years ago, perhaps, maybe we would have been having a conversation and there would have been part of it was a positioning for Sky, a changing, you know, there was a marketing role that women's sport played in brand Sky. I think that would have been part of the equation. I think people now, and I'm talking here about just more broadly, are quite emboldened to now start to go on the front foot and start attacking women's football, women's cricket, women's sport in a way that they wouldn't have been two or three years ago. They now feel it's okay, they're trying to make women's sport sound, it's a woke, it's all of that stuff. I want to ask you that question, you give your sense to respond to it. I think in the ether, you hear a lot of people going after that, it doesn't work, it's all an illusion, and it's all a marketing play, and there is no business rationale behind it. I just want to throw that in because you have heard all of this, it's day in, day out. Look, it depends how you want to, first, just to dismiss that view as you'd expect, but it really depends on how you want to measure this. Do we pay the same amount of money for the WSL as we pay for the Premier League? No, we don't, but there's not many things that we pay the same level as we pay for the Premier League. Do we see our audiences growing? Do we believe in the League? Do we think that there's a future where we can bring new people to Sky Sports as a result of the partnership that we have with the WSL? Do we think that the League is going to grow? Do we like the fact that it has an opportunity to be easily the best League in women's football attracting the best names, as you see, with teams that people have got connections and associations to? Do we think we can take that out across lots of platforms? Do we think that we can bring brands to it? Do we think that there's opportunities for commercialisation? We believe in all those things. Now, I don't tell anyone else whether they have to believe in it or not. That's, you know, that they make those decisions. And as I said, like, it depends by what metric you want to use or want to compare it. I enjoy watching women's sport on Sky Sports and on other channels. I think lots of people do. That's evidence by the audiences that we see. Are the economics sort of fully flushed out and making beautiful returns and investment? Perhaps not, but there's not too many sports where they can say, "Actually, it's all going wonderfully well. There's nothing to see here." So I think, you know, I know that there's people that's out there that feel involved and buy it, but I sort of, you know, what exactly, you know, to what ends slightly? So you're right in saying that Sky sees this as a bigger opportunity, because, you know, I think we, you know, I, sort of, there is a sort of a higher purpose, I would say, to the position in women's sport. And actually, part of that is because we want to see more people enjoying sport whether that's, you know, young women or girls, you know, we're, I don't want to sort of age you, but, you know, we're probably of a certain age. When we grew up, it was pretty male-dominated watching and playing. And I feel like, you know, personally, I feel, you know, I've really had a real sort of personal benefit from my enjoyment of sport during my lifetime, whether that's the connections that I've made or playing to a very low level, or, you know, just generally, I think sport has been a sort of a positive influence in my life. And I strongly believe that everyone should have that opportunity. And you see it, thankfully, more and more, the growth in girls football, the girls in participation in netball, playing cricket, you know, want people to have that equity of opportunity. And when they see it and when they play it and when they, you know, want to engage in and tend with it, that's only going to be positive. So I don't see any reason why anyone would want to stand in the way of that progress and have young girls having that opportunity to play and enjoy and to feel healthier about playing sport. So I just don't. Given you've articulated that really well and that's, you know, I'm. And it doesn't matter what I think, but that's the position I'm coming from as well. You know, I'm nodding along. What do you think is at the heart of the other view? I don't really care, as in where it's coming from, because I don't, you know, I just don't want to say and sound dismissive, but I don't think it's coming from a positive place. So I don't really particularly want to engage with it. And yes, I'm sure people could say a proof point of this or a proof point of that. They're still work to do. We need to get more people attending women's sports games. We do want to have more people watching, as we want to have more people watching. Everything we do, we want there to be more sustainability. We want more brands to be involved. But we have to work collectively on that in the way that we work collectively over the years to build up a lot of the. Whether it's the men's game, if you want to talk about that, have sort of have structural benefits of the longevity of the relationships of their history. And come from a time where there was less contention for what you're spending your money on or what you're going to do. So actually the circumstances now, probably more challenging for sports to grow into, establish themselves. But I just feel very strongly, as a lot of people do it at Sky about, we strongly believe in the quality of women's sport. We strongly believe in the future and the opportunity for it to be even stronger. And we believe that will be good for our business. And we also believe that there's a sort of slightly, let's say, higher purpose without sounding too grand to all this. And like, if you don't, if you sort of want to stand in the way of that, I would sort of slightly question your motivation. Okay, Jonathan, thanks a lot for your time. Really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you very much.