Ed Warner: Sport leaders need open minds to grapple with entertainment age
Take a minute to defend the indefensible: The Hundred, VAR, Olympic breaking, cage-fighting, F1 sprints. You’ll have your own list of pet hates no doubt.
Do you struggle not to sound like a grudging old curmudgeon when taking the opposite side to your heart? Welcome to the world of sport leadership.
Can a revolution take 20 years and still be in train? That’s how long T20 cricket has been with us. And yet still the sport talks about it as a newcomer, unwelcome to many in spite of its undeniable commercial success.
The failure isn’t of T20, but of those charged with stewarding cricket who have yet to work out how to protect the traditional, longer forms of the game in the face of the parvenu’s relentless growth.
The Hundred is just three years old. I’d like to think it won’t enjoy similar explosive growth over the coming years, but perhaps I’m just a new age traditionalist – wedded to T20 as my bite-sized format while yearning for cricket’s leaders to find ways to protect five-day Test matches.
Over two decades have I gone from yuppie embracer of innovation to risk-averse lover of the scene in my rearview mirror?
Most governing bodies have boards of directors that comprise a combination of some who have worked their way up through service in the ranks and others chosen for their deemed independent perspective. The latter are often fans too, or at least have more than a passing interest in the sport they share responsibility for.
This is always an unstable mix, liable at worst to combust, but often simply to become inert – just as dangerous, although in a more insidious way.
Highly performing boards manage to balance the forces of innovation (typically embodied by the independent directors) and conservatism (the long standing participants in the sport) and still display dynamism and imagination. Such boards are rare.
Too often tradition becomes a drag anchor, watering down new ideas to the point of blandness. Focus shifts to governance box-ticking, directors reassuring themselves they are high-performing simply because they are busy.
This is not to decry the need to protect the traditional essence of sports, the linkages between their pasts, presents and futures. You only have to reflect on club loyalties, often passed down through the generations, to recognise the strong foundations and (yes, commercial) opportunities they provide.
Too often though, conservatism is taken to extremes, a reflection of the process to select board members from within a sport. Length of service, of politicking and lobbying don’t usually make great boardroom credentials.
The greatest creative minds have tended to be found outside sport’s formal structures – way back to Kerry Packer and his pyjama cricket of the 1970s – or operating at their margins, free of bureaucratic constraints.
Right now, the embattled Commonwealth Games Federation needs to open itself up to challenge to the ingrained thinking of leaders who have risen through its ranks via an election process.
Ditto many of the Olympic sports that cling onto a quadrennial stipend from the IOC which masks their declining relevance in a crowded sporting marketplace. Think too of the PGA Tour (is Rory McIlroy old before his time?) and rugby’s overt romanticism.
I now wear a flat cap to the football in winter, telling myself that the Peaky Blinders vibe doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve got an oldster’s mindset.
Many sports leaders need a reminder of where they were before they became who they are. They might then truly open themselves up to the challenges posed by the modern entertainment age.
Who is David?
Last week’s column about concussion in rugby prompted questions about the organisation of the legal action being brought by former players against the game’s ruling bodies.
This is a David v Goliath case. The player’s lead lawyer is Richard Boardman, sole director of Rylands Garth Limited, which Companies House records was formed in August last year. Its website shows that its team comprises Boardman himself and one consultant. He is also a director of two other legal firms, neither of which appears to have a website.
Rylands Garth has two charges over it held by Asertis, a firm founded in 2020 that provides litigation funding using borrowed money, which suggests it might well be funding this concussion case.
With the welfare of almost 300 individuals at stake, that funding will need to stretch to a considerable quantum of human resources to match those deployed by World Rugby, the RFU and the WRU*.
It must have been a difficult decision for some players to join the action given the delicate personal medical issues involved. When and if any settlement is reached, let’s hope that the vast majority of any money secured drops through into their bank accounts.
* Full disclosure: GB Wheelchair Rugby has relationships with both the RFU and WRU. I don’t believe this biases my views on the concussion issue, but best you decide that for yourself.
Deflating the ball
One reader responded to my comments about the Premier League’s latest TV rights deal to ask about the effect of inflation. He was right, the headline figures do not reflect the impact of rising prices eating into the real value of the deal.
I cited a previous domestic rights fee peak of £10m per match that will drop to £6m in the deal beginning in 2025. Throw in inflation since that peak deal began in 2016, plus expected price rises over the next couple of years, and the £10m becomes nearer £14m in equivalent 2025 terms.
So, the per match fee will have effectively more than halved. And 70 per cent of games will be live, with only the lower quality inventory of matches still to sell as the Premier League moves inexorably towards 100 per cent live domestic broadcasts.
Critical then that the rest of the world wants to keep watching, and keep paying up for the privilege.
28 for 28
If you’ve never watched wheelchair rugby, take a look at the GBWR video clip below launching our ‘28 for 28’ campaign and be thrilled.
We’re looking for 28 partners – businesses and individuals – to back the GB team on the road from Paris24 to LA28 and to grow this exciting sport that helps kids and adults with severe physical impairments enjoy all the benefits that being active can bring.
If you think you or your business might want to help, please email me at sportinc@substack.com
I can promise you it will be a fun and rewarding four years!
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com