A ship called Dignity
It was inevitable. Because if you insist to call sport an asset class, it will eventually behave exactly like one, to its fullest potential.
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It was always coming, wasn’t it? The day when everything we loved about football would be sold for 30 pieces of silver.
The last 8 years of a podcast and Columns were all pretty much leading up to this news. A perfect storm of greed, unprincipled leadership, non-existent transparency, governing body civil war, and the forces of soulless money.
It was inevitable.
Because if you insist to call sport an asset class, it will eventually behave exactly like one, to its fullest potential.
Market forces are never half-pregnant.
It has been depressing to see almost the entirety of our industry gleefully celebrate “the commercial success” of this World Cup. And then this week observe the same people all be “shocked” at what is just the natural next progression of the direction of travel. They still don’t understand markets and finance. Why can’t they ever join any dots?
Have they not watched the X-rated courtship of the American pro leagues and PE? The disruption wrecked on the NCAA? Why did they think football would be immune? Did they learn nothing from the Superleague?
Our industry has made growing revenues without conscience its North Star for over a decade, and if you live by the sword, you will eventually also die by the sword. Untethered capitalism doesn’t stop when you want it to, the animal spirits never relent, and they can only be managed as best as possible by leaders of dignity and sensitivity. Without certain core foundations and pure objectives, sport will not be able to represent what its fans want and, frankly, its history demands. If the only measure of its success is revenues, audience and up-front cheques, it is undoubtedly doomed.
This week was inevitable, the reaction of UEFA predictable and very needed, and we are now late in the 9th innings on all of this. Our industry is faced with two very different distinct futures.
Tradition and glory, or money and power.
If sport is indeed an asset class, Gianni might be right.
No this is not a joke. Just note the conditional conjunction: IF.
In the eyes of an elite corporate financier, the pro, the deal that Infantino is proposing could be argued to make a lot of sense if the deal valuation is correct, and not sandbagged to let his new buddies in on the cheap.
The case for the defendant would go like this.
Short version: Great traders always sell at the top.
Longer version: The CEO has the wisdom to realise that we are near the top of the Everything Bubble, and we are well overdue a very nasty crash. Old media broadcasters today are still obliged to bid big for sports rights (see Foxtel and rugby league), and for now in the main still have a Balance Sheet that can allow it. They will be considerably weaker in 5 years. The new platforms of Amazon, Netflix, YouTube and Paramount at the same time are looking to build out their sports strategies with aggressive bidding. So there is a florid demand for top sport IP, but no one knows how long this will last. All of these companies are dependent on the macro health of a stock market and economy that frankly is utterly dominated by lunatic valuations of AI businesses (none of which make money). If the capex behind datacentre expansion ends, the whole circular Ponzi scheme implodes with alacrity, and everything comes down very dramatically. Look at Korea. Netflix is already starting to stagnate, Paramount depends wholly on Oracle’s AI gamble, the SpaceX IPO has been a flop, and all these jam-tomorrow high-multiple businesses are all starting to whiff more than just a little. One can make a very cogent argument that this will be seen as the very zenith of the “bid” into sports rights. At the same time, the industry of private equity/debt is creaking under the weight of its own leverage, there are no exits to be seen, and the whole narrative depends on the fugazi of continuation funds. For all of these reasons, Gianni Infantino is taking some money off the table at the “top”.
No one will put forward such an argument, because they are utterly blind to the Everything Bubble, but this is the sharp analysis. If we are indeed on the brink of the dotcom-bust redux, FIFA would be seen as genuinely visionary if it forward-sells its rights this year.
But we are not just elite corporate financiers, and Infantino is not a leader of dignity and sensitivity who thinks like this. He’s a scallywag. But most of all, sport is not an asset class, and the debate is entirely moot. You don’t ever “trade” your most precious and unique belongings, you pass them down to the next generation. Football passion is the ultimate family heirloom.
Sport is also royal and ancient.
LIV won’t see 2027, and golf has been the major “sport asset class” in play in the last 5 years. The status of its main star is telling.
Bryson De Chambeau, great golfer that he is, does not have the respect of his sport, and after his myriad shenanigans over the last 5 years, was already in danger of missing the “dignity” cut. What he did with rules officials in Birkdale for sure hasn’t improved that situation.
One of the core tenets of the governance of sport has always been to reject all forms of government interference. We, for good or bad, self-govern. This summer has now killed all that stone-dead. A box belonging to Pandora has been wrenched open, and chilling precedents have been set, even before these new investors now really get their teeth into it.
Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcomes.
Bryson is being very badly advised, or isn’t listening, because golf still likes its heroes cut from a certain cloth, and it is very unclear why he chooses to walk in the exact opposite direction. What becomes of Master De Chambeau post-LIV will be very illuminating because golf this July honourably stood firm, having none of it, in what was one of the most important and optimistic moments of the summer.
The Royal and Ancient held the line, and were rewarded with a great Sunday denouement and an outstanding new champion. 👏
Football less so.
Every World Cup is really a cultural time-stamp.
That’s the real value of the event that happens only every 4 years. It’s a natural pit-stop for a State of the Nation reflection on our football, yes, but also on the basic humanity and global culture of that exact moment in time. Never more-so than this year.
Each of us will take different things from this American Mondiale, and today’s Column is about mine.
The dramatic news this week should not cloud some of the other deeper messages of this year’s edition.
I was dreamin’ when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray
When I woke up this mornin’
Could’ve sworn it was judgment day
Prince
We are not dreaming, sadly, and a civil war in football does feel like judgement day. The metaphor is stark for a world that seems to have lost all of its values and decency, and gone completely astray.
The Straight of Hormuz is still closed, Ukraine and Russia burn, Marine LePen looks on the brink of creating a political earthquake in Europe, and our stock market valuations are still partying recklessly like it was 1999, (when the dotcom bust and 9/11 were only months away). As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Twins Towers, who would have bet money, back then, that in 2026 the city would be run by a Muslim Communist?
Very dark thoughts bounce around the head like panicked protons in CERN. Nothing makes sense.
Oh to have one of those simple minds of the comfortably numb. It would be so much easier to get through the day.
With great power always comes great responsibility.
None of us should be surprised. All the signs were there. The peace prize, the arse-licking, it all tracks. Money and power are now all that matters. And power without soul and dignity has no limits.
Nothing articulates that better than the bullying attempt to get a red card overturned. Worse than the gesture itself, grotesque in the extreme, was the real sadness in seeing so many of our American friends (many of high profile and intellect) unable to understand the full import of making that call. Bryson understood it all too well.
Rules don’t matter, Donald can pardon anyone he wants, bullying is rewarded, the good guys don’t win. In this summer of sport, a new set of stones was brought down from Mount Sinai.
Our metaphor holds. Values generally have changed for the worst, and daddy has become mean.
The hegemon has definitely gone rogue, and that alone has to be the real State of the Nation signal from this World Cup. The kindly Policeman of the World, that we have all taken for granted, has morphed into the playground heavy, leaning on a compromised and weak leader of a global institution (FIFA), for selfish benefit.
It didn’t need to be like this Uncle Sam. We always knew you weren’t a saint, but we thought you had our back, wore some kind of white hat, and would always show us the way. Post-war, many working-class kids all over the world viewed America and its free market capitalism as a lighthouse, a land of opportunity and social mobility.
Now? Who knows the long-term damage of all this?
Trump should remember the immortal words of one of his own cultural icons, the legendary Stan Lee
And a lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last that in this world, with great power there must also come great responsibility!
The first ever Spider-Man comic.
There is eventually a price for selling your soul.
Even before this week’s earthquake news, the World Cup in America under Trump had left ugly scars, that require reflection. And not just on football.
On modern heroes and leaders, on the tyranny of the majority, on the inelegance of the bully, on the imperious rise of imperfect tech, on 60-year-long failure. But above all that, on the cardinal risks of selling your soul for money and power.
”Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil.”
Million-dollar seats, refreshment ad breaks that disfigure the game format, unwatchable SuperBowl halftime shows designed for God-knows-what audience, winners’ rings. This FIFA jamboree has been a significant step-change in the avarice of our industry. The event that is our premium brand flagship reduced to a classless treasure-hunt for a fistful of dollars, always ready to drop all decorum to count up a few more.
All that was bad enough, but we now see that those micro examples of greed were always just the canaries in the coal mine of what is now in plain sight. After all the medals have been handed out, cups lifted, what we have really witnessed this summer is an American cultural takeover of the game invented in England’s green and pleasant public schools.
These people will now set its course.
Who would manage the sell-off? Thrive Eternal, owned and led by billionaire investor Joshua Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, will lead the “proposed investor group for FFE”.
The Times
In one paragraph enough bile in the mouth to turn your stomach.
It’s not just capitalism, it’s crony capitalism. The barbarians at the gate have reached a majority stake in our ship called Dignity.
That’s dramatic.
But what practically does this mean for our future? After the hostile take-over, delivered bloodlessly by the compliant CEO, what will they now do with this full control?
A 64-team edition next time, a biennial Club World Cup, the European closed Superleague? Sell forward much of the tomorrow’s revenues to give the CEO enough money to buy all the votes he needs to retain power forever and a day? All of the above?
Sadly I’m not sure I even care at this point. I’ve done my bit warning about the dangers of this direction of travel. My conscience is clear. So I will likely be on the west coast of a lake, perhaps even in a dinghy, definitely sipping down Raki, always following the money reading Maynard Keynes. Remembering all too well what ultimately happened to Jonny Favourite’s egg.
One always hopes for a Captain Kirk to beam us all up. But those are very thin on the ground in 2026.
A bear market in leadership.
……
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