May 28, 2025 • 45 mins
In Episode 76 of Scoreboard, Chris Titley chats with Jonathon Flegg Director from Freshwater Strategy—sports entrepreneur, expansion strategist, and driving force behind some of the biggest bid moments in Australian sport.
From rallying support for the Dolphins' successful NRL bid to leading the Perth Bears charge, Jono shares the behind-the-scenes of turning fan bases into business cases—and how a strong vision can turn ‘maybe’ into ‘launching soon’.
He unpacks the early work behind Professional Fighters League (PFL Pacific), the lessons from his time with the London Broncos, and how building a sport from scratch needs the same mindset as stepping into the ring: belief, patience, and a killer plan.
Jono also opens up about walking away from the game he loved, and how that Scoreboard Moment helped him find fresh perspective—and new impact.
🐬 Expansion, endurance, and the game behind the games.
📌 Subscribe for more stories from every corner of the game.
Follow us at:
w: www.scoreboardpodcast.com
insta: @scoreboardpod
y: https://www.youtube.com/@Scoreboardpodcast
p: Partnership opportunities – chris@scoreboardpodcast.com
#sport #business #life #ScoreboardPodcast
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hi, it's Chris Titley here. And on today's episode of School
Board the Podcast, I'm joined byJonathan Flegg, a founder and
director at Freshwater Strategy.I think we're going to call you
Jono for the podcast. Jono, welcome to School Board.
Hey Chris, thanks for having me on your podcast and, and, and
you're doing great work, mate. It's been awesome to watch you
(00:21):
build this thing and I'm just pleased to be here with you.
Fantastic. Thanks mate.
We're sitting here on Wednesday the 28th of May and Wednesday of
course is Origin Day here in Queensland.
We're hosting the the Blues tonight.
You've got your scarf on, I've got my maroon jumper on.
How you feeling about it all mate?
Mate, it's always a bit of optimism with game one for for
(00:44):
Queensland and despite being deep here within Sydney and NSW,
I'm flying the flag, which I always do.
So we'll see. That enthusiasm will just carry
us through, I suspect. But.
Well. Yeah, and, and obviously game
one, that's that's huge. And you know, you can't replace
that that that environment that you've got up there in in Lane
(01:05):
Park for Game 1. So I'm super excited about it.
Mate, it is, it's the weather's beautiful, it's a cracking day.
It'll be hopefully a cracking game.
This podcast will age well if Queensland wins.
If it Queensland doesn't win, itwon't age very well when we edit
it and it comes out live. But anyway, mate, I'm going to
throw things around a little bitin order for our podcast today.
I normally ask our guests about our favourite all time sporting
moment and the school board moment later on in the podcast,
(01:28):
but I'm going to go first. I'm hoping that there's a
favourite all time sporting moment that's Origin related.
Yeah, absolutely. Yes.
Keeping on the origin theme, if I go right back into the
recesses of my experience, the first sporting event that I ever
cried at, and there's been a few, but game 292, Alfie Lang is
(01:50):
slotting the the field goal to win.
I was there with my old man as ayoung boy in the in the the
bleachers of the old Lane Park and I'd never seen anything like
it, you know, being a boy from Redcliff.
We came into the city to watch the game and yeah, mate, that
moment, it stuck with me ever. So I guess just sticking on that
(02:13):
State of Origin theme thematic, that's got to be the one for me
today. You touched on a few things
there. The old, the old Lang Park, I
remember going to some games. They actually went to some games
there with I think it was 95 with the Southeast QLD crushes.
I think they played the Bronx there and it was the Choo Choo
Choo themes. I was about 13 at the time I
reckon and it was a bit of an experiment, the old crushes back
(02:36):
then, but they were an expansionteam and freshwater strategies
involved in sport and business. I'd love the listeners out there
to for you to give a bit of an understanding about what
Freshwater strategy does and andyour intertwinement with sport
and business. Yeah.
No, it's, it's a great business.Obviously very pleased that we
set it up almost three years agonow.
We've done a lot in that short period as a organisation.
(03:02):
I guess you may have heard aboutus in the media.
We tend to to make a few waves around the ridges with the work
that we do at Freshwater. We've got three offices, our
main offices in Sydney, we've got an office in Brisbane and in
London as well. Ultimately it's we've got some
various pillars to the business,but the advisory part of the
business which I look after focuses on corporate advisory.
(03:25):
We do a lot of sport in that. So we also have a big research
business. You might see that with the
polling work that we do publiclyas well.
We seem to be fairly well known for for the polling work that we
do. And then we have a big straight
comms and media division as partof Freshwater as well.
So whilst we do a lot of sports work that we love, it's not all
(03:49):
that we do, but we've carved outa real speciality in the sports
area over many years. We kind of fell into it, Chris.
We myself and the founders of Freshwater all worked previously
for another firm. And we're always the black sheep
in the business because rather than having Sky News or ABC
playing in our part of the office, we had ESPN playing
(04:11):
constantly. And we had a few opportunities
there to start to dabble in sport only because a, we loved
it and we believed actually whatwe, we did, you know, in some of
those other areas that I mentioned translated really well
into the sports arena. You know, we do work in politics
as well, political advisory workand always say there's more
politics in sport and than actual politics in Australia.
(04:36):
So look, we, we thought, you know, we had the, the
wherewithal to, to have a crack at the sporting area.
And we sort of found that when we got in there, we were really
good at it. So the first, the first foray
that we took into sport a few years ago in 2018 now was we got
asked to do a bid for the MacArthur Bulls, a league
(04:58):
franchise expansion in the a league.
And it was an interesting one because I remember it was a
Saturday night and our chairman called me up and said what are
we doing for the next two weeks with our team?
And I said, well, we're pretty busy.
He said. We've got 10 days to pull
together a compelling bid for the MacArthur Bulls franchise to
(05:20):
get in before the deadline was due with the A league, which if
any one of your listeners has done bid work before, that's a
pretty tight turn around. So we pulled together everybody
that we needed to. We had a 24 hour bid room,
graphic designers, we had financial modellers, we had
everybody in the room and we pulled it all together.
(05:42):
And once it was lodged and we were successful.
The feedback from David Gallup, who many of your listeners would
know, who was the head of the A league at the time.
So that was the best sports beerhad ever seen in his career.
And we were left thinking, hang on a second, we put that
together in 10 days. How could that be the best that
David Gallup's ever seen, havingbeen the head of two major
(06:04):
sporting codes in Australia. So at that point we it dawned on
us that we we probably had some special source and we've
obviously done a lot of work particularly in the sports bid
space since. Yeah, the 24 hour bid room.
There you go. What was the what was the
thinking? How how did the structure go?
What did you get? Did you get some Chinese take
(06:24):
away? What did what did you did?
You did not sleep. What happened there?
Yeah. Look, look, bids are not for
everybody. I always say that it's real
shoulder to the wheel stuff. That said, once it's in and
you've won, it's the most amazing feeling when you've
actually achieved something likethat.
But yeah, look, the reason why we had limited time on that one
(06:44):
was that if you're some of your listeners who are into a league
or soccer, can recall, there wasa whole range of kind of bids
from all around the country. And there were two actual
competing bids from Southwest Sydney.
One of them was set up by Lane Walker, who provided incredible
balance sheet and obviously had a massive interest in that part
(07:05):
of Sydney, that growth area of Sydney in the southwest
corridor. And then there was another
competing bid that had come froma range of property developers
in that part of the world who may not have been as successful
as Elaine Walker, who's a rich Lister in Australia, but were
utterly fascinated and passionate about their football.
(07:28):
So there were two competing bidsfor the same territory in the A
league. So our point of view, our
argument to these two competing bids, the Elaine Walker backed
bid and and the other one who Gina Mara, who's now the
chairman of the club, was involved in was that if you, if
you bid against each other and work against each other for the
(07:48):
same terrain, you're more than likely going to lose.
But if you join forces and come up with it essentially A
megabit, you're going to get thebest of both worlds and you're
more than likely going to win. Because the A League was very
interested in that, that, that fast growing SW corridor of
Sydney. So by the time that Lane
(08:08):
Walker's lawyers and all the lawyers have picked apart AJV
agreement managed to get it all inked up.
That's why we only had the 10 days to pull together the actual
bid because it took that long for the lawyers to put together
the JV on that on, on that exercise.
So look, lots of fun. You know, again, not for
(08:30):
everybody, but the camaraderie that you build sort of
relationships you have for a lifetime when you've done a
sports bid with with people and you've been put under that kind
of pressure. John, I'm, I'm curious as to
know who's who your client is there or is it a consortium
that's paying you to do it? Is the league paying you to do
it like where that sort of customers come from before we
(08:51):
get into some of the other stories about some of the other
bids of the sporting teams? Yeah, Typically, yeah.
As a business, we'll we'll work for a consortia or consortium
who who are putting forward a bid for expansion.
One area that we've had a lot ofsuccess in the Daily Telegraph
is called Freshwater. The club makers, you know, we,
(09:12):
we, we tend to specialised. I mean, we do a lot of work in
sport now, but if we have a realsweet spot, it's around
expansion bids. So it's typically the consortium
who who will engage us in that situation.
We've also been very lucky, Chris, I think because the
timing of us building that specialty in the business also
(09:33):
coincided with a massive period of expansion in most of our big
leagues in Australia. And a lot of that has been
driven by streaming services. You know, you'd listeners will
recall the Adventist Super League in Australia and then the
rationalisation that occurred, reducing the number of clubs
that occurred after that period.But with the expansion of
(09:55):
streaming services, most of the broadcasters now are feverishly
looking for more and more content and are willing to pay
for it. So the, the major leagues are
now, you know, most of them are are to varying degrees looking
at expansion opportunities. So the fact we started dipping
our toe into that type of work and specialising unit around
(10:16):
about the time that streaming services were becoming a big, a
big part of the the broadcast world was very opportune I
think. And John, I, Speaking of Super
League and looking back in Australian sporting history,
there's been a number of teams that have sort of come and gone
over the time. How's your knowledge of that in
different aspects? Can I, can I tribute you on some
(10:36):
old Super League teams? Are you pretty good in an O5
with the history of Australian sport?
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, oh, I guess not to to
premeditate a conversation around the Bears expansion for
WA, but one one area we've done a real deep dive in on recently
is certainly the experience of the Western Reds at the time of
(11:00):
the Super League. You know, you remember Julian
O'Neill and all the players thatthey had out there.
It was actually really successful.
Like it was actually one of the franchises that probably should
have continued in any normal, normal world.
Had incredible fanbase, incredible, you know, kind of
involvement from the community in WA.
It was financially sustainable as a as a, as a franchise.
(11:24):
So it was unfortunate that the Western Reds went by the
wayside. But there is still a cohort of
folks out there who are die hardWestern Reds fans.
You seem at Magic Round and elsewhere.
They're still out there. But I think what's happening
with Perth Bears is awesome because it's tapping into that
old, that old Western Reds. Yeah, and and also also the
North Sydney, there's a couple of teams that come to mind, the
(11:46):
Adelaide Rams, a couple in the NBL back when I was growing up,
there was the Geelong Super Caps, also the Southeast
Melbourne Spectres, I believe, before they became the Magic,
which was kind of like, I didn'treally know what a spectre was
growing up, but he sort of said it.
And I've been a tribute for you.Gold Coast, The Titans, what
names have they had in the past?Like I was thinking seagulls.
(12:10):
Wally Lewis. The Seagulls Wally Lewis
Seagulls Yep, Yep, the. Twin towns and have a great time
down there mate. And I think they're the giants
as well. Well, they're the Giants as
well. I can't remember.
Giants, yeah, I think you're going back away with that one.
But I definitely remember the the Seagulls maybe.
I mean, you don't see too many Seagulls jerseys rocking around
anymore. That's right.
(12:33):
Unfortunate reality. Still, there's someone's got one
somewhere. It's probably worth a lot of
money. Yeah, that's right.
And Speaking of the crushes as well, back in the day, the
southeast QLD crushes. Speaking of closer to home and
and one of the things that freshwater and yourself probably
more more so yourself in terms of the involvement in the
Dolphins bid into the NRL. We had Rupert McCall on recently
(12:53):
on the podcast, a staunch Radcliffe Dolphins fan, been
there through and through, probably even written poems
about I'm sure you want to talk about the history of the
Dolphins, your involvement. You mentioned earlier on you're
a Redcliffe, Redcliffe boy and and how that early discussion
fly on the wall, you know where that came from.
Yeah, it's a great question. This one was a labour of love
for me, only because I'm from Redcliffe and I spent a lot of
(13:18):
time at the club as a kid. I distinctly remember one time
leaving the club and my old man sort of speaking, speaking in
riddles a little bit. But he said one day, one day
we're going to make the top league as a kid and that stuck
with me. That really did stick with me.
Unfortunately, the Super League rise and collapse cost cost the
(13:40):
Dolphins probably decades of lost opportunity playing at the
top national level. But when the NRL started to get
into a position of expansion andhad signalled pretty clearly
that their interest was in another Brisbane team, that set
off a train of thinking in me and my team around how we should
(14:02):
be working with the Dolphins to get them in.
As I said, it was a labour of love.
But we we approached the the Fins.
I think it really got a lot of traction when Terry Rader was
appointed by the club. He was the CCO of the of the
Broncos at the time. Terry remains a very good friend
of mine and colleague. The minute he was brought across
(14:23):
from the the Broncos and, and the guys put him on, he
ostensibly was given the responsibility of pulling this
all together. And once we started talking with
Terry, it all started moving pretty quick.
And my pitch to Terry was prettysimple.
I said, Terry, I said, we're only going to get one shot at
this. And if we we mess it up and we
(14:45):
don't do it as best as we possibly can, the the Dolphins
will be waiting another 30 years.
And I said growing up in Redcliffe, I don't think we can
afford to wait for 30 years. So yeah, we we had those
conversations early on. We met the chairman Jonesy and
and, and Spud, who was the CEO of the Dolphins.
(15:05):
And I think the fact I was from Redcliffe certainly helped with
the pitch and obviously the workthat we've done with the A
league and some of the other sports previously previously as
well. But yeah, that's what it was
kind of one of those ones you just want to be able to tell
your grandkids about. You know, you go through your
career and there's only going tobe so many things you're going
to remember once it's all finished, and that's one that's
(15:26):
going to stick with me forever. Just going behind the scenes a
little bit in terms of putting abid together.
Yeah, obviously multiple stakeholders and, and in sort of
obviously there's some more weighty than others when it
comes to stakeholders. How do you consider them all?
And also there's some stakeholders every now and then
(15:47):
you're like, oh, we need to makesure that they're on par as well
and the buy insurance there. There's a lot of stakeholders in
an expansion bid and you know, you need to be consulting with
them all, you need to be drawingthem in to the extent that
they're able to give real tangible support and get behind
the bid. I guess if we just use the
(16:08):
example of the dolphins, I thinkwe got letters of support from
26 MPs. We crossed across 3 local
government areas, many of which,including Moreton Bay and
Sunshine Coast, are some of the fastest growing areas in the
country. It was really important for the
NRL, as you'd appreciate, to seethe government stood firmly
behind the bid, not only in terms of the words it used, but
(16:32):
with hard dollars towards infrastructure to advance the
game. That was certainly something
that the NRL was looking at. So beyond that, you've got
community stakeholders, you've got potential sponsors.
We were lucky enough we were able to sign up, I think about
$6.3 million of potential sponsors even prior to the
licence being issued, which was a major signal to the NRL to say
(16:56):
that this thing was highly commercial, that there was a
pool of potential sponsors that were willing to stand, stand up
and be counted and and get behind the club.
So that was very attractive I think to the NRL.
And then more broadly, you've got media, media partners of
course as well. You know, getting a niche,
(17:16):
getting a little angle in on theBrisbane media market was really
important. Having Triple M come in early
on, that was really important. So there's, and then obviously,
you know, usually there's the financial backers with the
Dolphins, they're blessed, they're sitting on multiple
hectares site out there. They're sitting on over $100
(17:36):
million of assets, so unlike a normal consortium, the Dolphins
were kind of sitting quite well in a financial setting.
We're able to prove to the NRL that they could sustain those
finances to grow the game, but that's not always the case.
Some consortiums are put together by high net words or
other private equity interests, so you need to pull them
(17:56):
together and be able to substantiate the case of
sustaining a club through the leaner years until we start
actually making money. The last thing a league wants to
do is to have to step in and andsave a franchise from itself in
the early days because it couldn't get itself up and
running. So that's a really important
part, particularly from those consortia bid arrangements.
(18:18):
And the and the plan, is it a five year plan, 10 year plan
that you you push to them. And I suppose once they've been
accepted into the into the main league and they're going on
nicely. There's some variations and
things change and macro conditions change.
There's things like COVID and there's other things.
How do you continually to kind of does the league monitor it
and do you play a part in that sort of like, well, actually
(18:39):
we're three years way through the five year plan and we're
beating expectations or the opposite three years through and
going. Actually, we're financially in a
little bit of a hole. Yeah.
The typical time frame, Chris, is around 5 years.
So finding five year financial models, the meeting full time
frame, you obviously have a range of assumptions that you
need to build in there around ticketing revenue, merchandise
sales, memberships, all the restof it.
(18:59):
So it's pretty hard to see out past five years for the average
club, but it's a really good exercise to go through.
You know, it's, it's what I always say about a bid for a new
Sports Club is it's, it's not only a bid, it's really actually
a, a case of forced planning to prove to the league that we've
(19:20):
actually gone through and built a plan.
So that when Terry Arena became the CEO of the Dolphins, it was
a really easy exercise. He actually started putting on
his senior executives, bringing them all in, bringing on the
staff. Well, the plan was already
written. The plan was already written.
And it was fun to watch when that first game happened with
the Dolphins against the Roosters at Suncorp Stadium.
(19:42):
And a lot of fans were utterly blown away by this new, this new
entity that had ended the NRL ecosystem.
And you know, they couldn't believe the level of fandom, the
level of organisation, the even the branding, which we, we spent
a lot of time agonising over thedolphin over exactly how to get
that dolphin exactly right. So it appealed to not only men,
(20:04):
but women and kids as well. So, but that was all, all
planned for, you know, so it just goes, if you plan, you can
deliver. But you know, and I, I would
actually almost go so far to sayis the planning that you go
through to put forward a compelling bid.
I should have brought it for you.
Actually. It's quite a, it's quite a large
document. It's actually probably better
(20:27):
and stronger planning than a lotof incumbent clubs go through
for their own growth. So, you know, it's really,
really important thing to make apoint about that while we're
sticking. On the, the rugby league topic,
you, you did mention the Perth Bears before.
Do you want to talk about that? And the, the, the name, the the
history and I suppose the, you know, again, the rigorous
(20:49):
planning involved in submitting a bid to the NRL for a new
expansion team geographically a bit further away probably than
than the Red Cliff Dolphins. Yeah, absolutely.
The WA market's a fantastic rugby league market.
We have a little saying that it puts the end into the National
Rugby League. You can't really be national
without WA in the ecosystem. Whilst it is generally
(21:12):
considered an IFL state by many,there is a huge diaspora of of
of folks who are living in Pertheither from the East Coast, New
Zealanders, S Africans, English people who are living in in that
part of the world. And and also there's a great
actual quite a strong rugby league community in WA outside
(21:36):
of the diaspora community that are based in there.
Probably shouldn't call it diaspora.
A lot of people are from Australia, but you know what I'm
saying? You know, WA folks, they think
differently. They're very parochial out
there. But there is a lot of people
from other parts of the country in the world who prefer either
rugby league or rugby union. So we we've seen that as a an
obvious entree into building support for a club.
(22:01):
But in the first instance, the process that was run was a
little bit different by the NRL.This time around it was they
didn't geographically ring fenceSE Queensland.
This time they really threw it open and they said they will
open to bids from pretty much anywhere.
As your listeners will be aware,PNG have been successful as
well. There was a range of bidders
that came forth from New Zealandas well.
(22:24):
So there were other folks putting their hands up.
But I think the great strength of WA is it's a market that has
huge commercial potential, huge fan potential and it's an
underserviced market in terms ofsporting content.
WA folks love sport, but they'requite limited at the moment in
terms of how much sport content they have available to them.
(22:45):
So playing at AHTF Park, we think it's going to be we're
going to get some good crowds out there.
The NRLS process that they entered into was looking for
consortia interest, the consortia that we work with led
by Peter Cummins. So you may be aware of the the
founder of of Cash Converters, avery, very prominent W
(23:07):
Australian businessman. We worked with him and his
consortia on on the bid. We had very strong backing from
the WA government, in particularPremier Cook.
I need to say, you know, despitebeing the Premier of WA, Premier
Cook is a league, he loves his rugby league and from the
Premier down, this was a premier's level priority to get
(23:29):
this franchise up and running in.
In the end, the NRL has taken a slightly different approach to
not award the the actual licenceto a consortium itself.
But as you will have seen, the NRL will initially sort of
incubate the the club and it will move forward like that with
(23:51):
with full WA government backing.So we're we're just proud to see
a great result with the WA franchise coming into the league
in 2027. Fantastic.
On recent podcasts I've been chatting to the CEO and coach of
the Jack Jumpers out of the NBL and and more recently the Jack
(24:11):
Jumpers got acquired the whole business by a private equity
group based out of based out of Brisbane.
The PE interest, venture capital, high net worths and
sport very prominent in the US, very a lot of different team
ownerships by high net worth individuals in, in Premier
League etcetera, not as much andprevalent in Australia.
(24:35):
Do you want to talk about some of the experience that you're
seeing overseas and, and I suppose what you think Australia
may look like in the future withpotential investment from
external parties? As an example, Cricket
Australia, we had Alastair Dobson on talking about the Big
Bash and it's owned by Cricket Australia.
I'm sure there'll be interest financially there, but some of
your experience and I suppose a bit of comment on Australia.
(24:57):
Yeah. No, the great point, Chris, this
is a trend that we're really long on at freshwater is the
increasing level of private equity involved in, in sport.
That's obviously much more normal I would say overseas and
it's a newer thing for Australia, particularly for our
tier one sports which are probably the least likely to
(25:19):
have private equity ownership inthe current environment.
But we we think this trend is coming to Australia and will
come to Australia and increase increasing frequency probably
the two trends that we we have identified certainly the more
sophisticated elements of private equity, right.
So I think if we talked about private investment in sport
(25:42):
previously, it was always the high net worth model, the the
wealthy businessman or woman whohad made a lot of money in
another industry who wanted a, you know, a trophy asset or a
plaything who could afford to invest in a club.
We're now seeing, you know, probably the more sophisticated
(26:02):
private equity where you know, sports clubs and sports leagues
are now seen as an asset in their own right, are expected to
provide a a traditional propertyequity return.
So that's probably the first trend.
The other one is multi sport ownership and multi club
ownership. So, you know, in terms of like
(26:23):
managing risk and also spreadingexpertise, this is again a trend
we're seeing overseas where owners of clubs are picking up
various assets across different codes, right?
So, and you know, they, they're developing a level of IP that
they can deploy to help professionalise and, and
(26:44):
actually get better returns at aclub.
So they're taking learnings from1 sport, bringing them across to
another and then also just managing risk, right?
Because you know, not every, youknow, whenever you're investing
in the league, your fortunes aresomewhat tied to how that league
is going to turn out over the medium to longer term.
So you can spread your risk across multiple clubs and
(27:07):
multiple leagues as well. So and then obviously, you know,
the kind of the Saudi backed kind of initiatives rebel
leagues, if you like, like live golf, like professional fighters
league who were taking on the UFC globally.
So certainly a lot of that Middle Eastern money is
something to watch as well as itarrives in Australia.
(27:28):
And I've also recently had Victoria Denholm from wall of my
Capital Group about their acquisition or majority
acquisition of the WNBL. So we're talking leagues here,
not just teams and and the family interest is also in hoops
capital that owns some of the teams.
I'm curious to know about new leagues and leagues popping up.
And you just mentioned then the Professional Fighters League,
(27:48):
the, the PFL and your involvement in that and what the
the benefits are of starting a league and starting from scratch
and all the things that come with it over time.
Yeah. So we're quite involved in in
the development of PFL Oceania. So for your listeners who aren't
as acquainted with MMAUFC, obviously looms large.
(28:11):
It has incredible market share, particularly in the 18 to 35
year old category. It's, it's one of the, it's the
fastest growing new sport in terms of spectator interest
globally. The competitor to the USC with
Dana White is, is Pete Murray's,who is the CEO of PFL also run
out of New York over there in the States.
(28:33):
This the, the, the money that's come behind getting PFL out of
the ground is, is, is Saudi backed piff money in relation to
the PFL. So they've got tremendous
balance sheet to be able to invest and take on the likes of
the UFC. But where it's different,
there's probably quite a few different ways they're actually
(28:54):
tackling USC. First of all, they've got a
Federated model so that each of the regions, continents, if you
like, have their own independentleagues that have their own
ownership structure. And we can actually develop
talent in local areas, right? So in Oceania, you know, we can,
we can actually develop talent who currently have limited
(29:16):
options in Australia, we can develop them and proper
ecosystem for fighters and and talent and development within,
within Australia itself. That also goes for Africa,
Mainer with the Middle East, Europe where it's PFL is really
doing amazing things, North and South America and Asia.
So the various different regionsof PFL will operate allows us to
(29:39):
provide more content locally, provide a better ecosystem for
the development of talent locally.
And and then we we move forward like that.
But critically, the the other kind of point of difference is
that the UFC, many of your listeners may not be aware, but
do not pay the fighters terriblywell.
Only about 16% of the league's total proceeds go back to the
(30:04):
athletes. And there's, you know, I can
think of very few other sports where you, you get that level of
lack of investment in, in the athletes themselves.
It means that unless you're an utter, utter superstar in UFC,
you are going to be struggling financially on every account.
You know, So the only other comparable competition around
(30:25):
the world where I think it is genuinely hard for the athletes
to make any form of a living is,is the only comparable, I would
say is tennis. When you're outside the top 100
in, in global tennis, your your existence, your financial
existence becomes very tenuous, becomes very difficult.
So the UFC only provides a smallamount of its overall revenue
(30:48):
back to investing in fighter contracts, whereas the the PFL
has put aside serious money to attract the content across a
little bit like Lyft golf. So they're able to sign up
quality fighters and build that ecosystem out whilst
maintaining, you know, contractsthat will be enticing for the
(31:08):
fighters to join the new competition.
Jono, you talk about Australia being obviously a very strong
sporting nation and you're talking about broadcast.
And then you're seeing Netflix enter and you're seeing all
these other large streaming services into the play with
different, I suppose different packages and different types of
streaming services. And locally you've got things
(31:29):
like KO and KO mini, you've got the US sports that are coming
over here. You've got the NFL coming at the
NBA exhibition game. You've got, yeah, even my sons
would agree is very like strong and and understanding what's
going on in the IPL, which is something which I probably am
not a fait with only because of the timing, et cetera.
But he gets up and watches the minis and follows the teams.
(31:50):
Who are you competing with, I suppose, or, or what?
Where is Australia landing in the future of sport when you've
got these big global sports in the Premier League, et cetera,
where the access is much closer with the content generation?
Not when you and I are growing up and we probably had three
hours in the wide world of sports on a Saturday afternoon
to kind of watch our stars or get a brief glimpse of Michael
(32:11):
Jordan, for instance. But now with social media and
content, this is a pretty competitive market.
Where do you think Australia's sport is heading in terms of
that? Yeah, yeah.
It's a great question. I mean, the I guess the example
I would use is probably when youand I were at school, you know,
back in the day we were collecting NBA cards must must
have never seen an NBA game. It just wasn't available.
(32:34):
Whereas now with streaming global content, it is truly a
global marketplace for this typeof thing.
I, I think it is a little bit like the world before free
trade, we had protectionism and now we're moving into a world of
free trade where people can justgravitate to the content that
they like to, to see. Which means that certain leagues
(32:56):
like particularly NFL out of theStates or the NBA or as you
mentioned IPL, all these leaguesfrom around the world, obviously
European based soccer leagues, you know, that is very readily
accessible and the fans for all those leagues are going through
the roof. The opportunity is for
Australian sport to to go globalas well.
(33:17):
And I think the NRL is a great example of that where we're
taking what we're doing with NRLinternationally as well.
So we just need to be prepared to compete in that global
marketplace. We are known as a great sporting
nation. The other thing to say is that
there is ample opportunity for fans to be fans of multiple
sports. We talk about it regularly at
(33:37):
Freshwater, which is the rise ofthe the multi sport fan.
Back in the day, you know, fans probably were more probably had
a greater level of fandom for less sports, maybe even just one
sport. Now you're finding, you know,
perhaps more casualisation of fan support across a range of
(33:58):
different sporting content. But people, they're just
spreading their interest across a wider range of sports.
So what we're seeing is that oneleg, being a supporter of one
leg is not necessarily going to cannibalise interests in another
leg. And you're seeing some brand
affiliation almost. You look at what the NRL has
(34:18):
done with the Vegas round and actually watching the
partnership with UFC over there has been quite interesting
because the Venn diagram of the average UFC fan and the average
NRL fan is pretty, pretty close,or at least potentially could be
very close. So you're actually seeing the
leagues, you know, come togetherand start partnerships on that
basis because they're not actually going to cannibalise
(34:40):
each other at all. So I think we are living in a
new world order when it comes tothat marketplace, but it's an
exciting one for Australian sport.
Absolutely. And then you've got core
products like we talked about the Origin tonight.
It's a Wednesday night. It's always been a Wednesday
night. They've got their slight.
You've always got the Boxing DayTest match on Boxing Day.
It's pretty hard to compete witha alternative product.
(35:01):
You've got the, as you mentioned, Vegas round, which is
a new thing the NBA has done thein season cup.
You've got magic round in NRL, you've got gather round in the
AFL. These ideas have come from
somewhere. What are your what's what's your
thinking? Do you guys come up with some of
these ideas as well and suggest things and and rivalries,
etcetera, The Collingwood Brisbane Lions on Easter
Thursday, etcetera, these thingsare now getting better than they
(35:23):
were before. What's Freshwater's thinking
around some of these types of events per SE within the sport?
Yeah. Look, we, we, we kick around all
sorts of ideas here, you know, about how we can do things
better. You know, of, of the many that
you mentioned, I mean, they, they certainly didn't emanate
from, from our business necessarily.
(35:43):
But you know, I think the the goal is to continue to import
particularly the best of the ideas of how things are done
overseas. There are elements of Australian
sport that do need to be shaken up.
There's no question about that. And I think a lot of those ideas
are going to come from overseas.So yeah, that's probably how I
(36:05):
would answer that that question.I mean, you know, I just think
about some of the really creative ways that we we
launched the Dolphins in particular, and I think he might
have said it on a previous podcast, Chris, but like drawing
the sponsors in to a greater degree rather than just sort of
putting together a pro forma kind of standard sponsorship
agreement and they sign it and they send a big cheque multiple
(36:28):
times a year, actually getting really creative about the Co
branding opportunities. You know, I mean, I always
marvel at what Budget Direct have done with with with the
Dolphins around the fins that have been given out at the
sports. Dwayne Dwayne Bennett, the long
lost cousin of Wayne Bennett, who has his own social media
(36:50):
page. That's all Budget Direct.
That's all part of the Budget Direct sponsorship.
But it actually required them tobe really creative.
Now what I've heard in the Grapevine is that in terms of
ROI for Budget Direct, that's been one of the one of the
strongest ever campaigns they'veever had in the history of the
business. But it actually required some
creative thinking between the sponsor and the club to go, OK,
(37:11):
what can we do here? That's that's not BAU.
Yeah, that's, that's brilliant. And and I think your reference
to the, I think it was Wing Stopin the US had this play with the
Detroit Pistons. And I think there's also like it
was a particular chicken restaurant where if you missed 2
free throws, you got a free chicken burger.
And one of the blokes at the endof the season in a non important
game sort of missed the first one.
(37:31):
And he was a terrible free throwshooter and he sort of went to
the crowd like this and then kind of missed the second one
and got a big cheer and sort of did the thumbs up.
So the activation of brands and as you, you know, the the the
importance of a good long term sponsor was talking to Mel.
What's the bullets about it and Christine at at the Jack
jumpers. When brands look at sport now,
do they come to you? Do they think about like where
(37:53):
they can play? And do you think there's the
the, the growing rise of pools of brands that go actually
there's some activations we can do here.
What are you thinking about thatin terms of the the money in
sport and the sponsorship in sport?
Yeah. Look, in terms of a service to
the market, we do that work at Freshwater.
And you know, for most corporates, even for larger
(38:14):
corporates, sports sponsorship is is firmly outside of BAU for
even some of the larger corporations around the place.
So working with people who can think creatively and also
understand the value of sponsorship in maybe a more
detailed nuanced way. I mean when you see you're
seeing enough of this come through your organisation, you
(38:35):
do get a pretty good understanding of what value
looks like from a sponsorship point of view.
So helping, helping corporationsgo through that process and
think creatively about the Co branding activation
opportunities that could be possible between the brand
alignment is definitely top of work we do and you're very proud
of it. I've got 1.
(38:56):
Final question on sport before we delve into you a little bit,
Jono. It's about the scheduling, the
calendar. It's talked a lot about how you
fill all these things in and theFriday night slot.
That's the Thursday night and we've tried Monday night and
we've done the AFL has this and NRL has this and Premier like
how do you go think about the calendar as well?
And and on to your point about the multi sport viewer that that
(39:17):
can sit down and watch a Friday night footy NRL game that's been
around for for many, many years,but maybe flick over and watch
the AFL at the MCG which is alsopacked out at the same time.
Yeah. Well, I think the the the answer
to that question, Chris, is justaround how you actually find new
time slots that aren't already crowded.
So, and to bring it back to the WA opportunity with rugby
(39:39):
league, that actually opens up multiple new time slots on the
East Coast for for content, which is really exciting.
And so, yeah, I think, you know,looking at some of the stuff
that happens over in America, I think there probably is a bit of
a second look around even looking at Monday Night Football
potentially, which is done in the NFL.
So I think from a rugby league point of view, there's a lot of
(40:02):
learnings from the way the NFL do things in in the States.
But yeah, it's finding those newtime slots.
It's it's tough. Yeah, I remember.
Watching that documentary the Vince McMahon on Monday Night
Raw as well, like they introduced that Monday night
wrestling slot which was obviously very successful.
They tried, who was it? Was it?
NRL tried the Monday night thingfor a while didn't they?
They did. They did.
(40:23):
But I suspect there might be an opportunity to start to look at
that again. Yeah, and.
And Thursday is AAFL and and NRLnow, broadly speaking, but
mainly, mainly. But yeah, new time spots, sport
24/7. As a fan, we would love it.
As a player, maybe not so in terms of the injury prevention
and and management, et cetera. But Jonathan, we've talked about
(40:44):
your all time favourite sportingmoment, but I also asked guests
about their school board moment,which is a moment in life, which
is pretty vivid. It's like a Kodak moment or an
Instagram shop where you go. I remember that.
I remember that moment in my life.
And from there things changed for the better or for the worse.
But it's something that's prettygiven in your memory.
Jono, what's your school board moment?
If I'm obviously overlooked for a moment, you know, married with
(41:08):
three kids, which has to take preeminent spot on that list, of
course, absolutely. You know, you know, my wife
would kill me if I said anythingdifferent.
The probably the one. I just think just just keeping
in the in the vein of the conversation, it was an amazing
turning point for me when when the Dolphins got up.
(41:29):
Yeah. So for me, Chris, I mean, the
bit that I probably underestimated was the feeling I
was going to have when that announcement was finally made.
As I said, it was, it was beyondanything I've ever done in my
career in terms of what it felt like.
The importance of it was not only to me, but to a whole
community of people. And, you know, the thing about
(41:50):
putting, you know, a, a club in,in, in an area like Redcliffe,
like many parts of the country, is it's the ultimate way in my
mind to support the, the building of community spirit.
And, you know, you can, you can build hospitals and schools and
all those sorts of things. And they, they certainly
happened as you build communities.
(42:13):
But you know, to give it a community, a sense of pride, a
rallying point around a nationalsporting franchise is the
ultimate in my mind. And so the the bit that really
got to me was knowing how important it was to me to see
the Dolphins go back into top flight football after many
decades in the wilderness. But then knowing what that meant
to everyone, all the folks up inRedcliff, that whole corridor
(42:37):
north of Brisbane, to to providethem with a magnificent team to
rally around. For me, that was irreplaceable
and I think I underestimated thefeeling for when that
announcement was finally made. And it's sort of spurred me on
to do more, quite frankly. I mean, it's been a great
turning point in our business where we've just continued to
(42:58):
double down and do so much sport, sport work because quite
frankly, it's a great feeling. It gives you a lot more joy and
pride than in a lot of things you do in your professional
career when you can be part of that, that moment when a birth
of a new club, I mean, what a what a privilege.
What a what a great moment too. And and this year it's all very
(43:18):
even. Let's hope the the Dolphins tick
themselves up a great win last week, I think it was 44 eight
against the Canterbury team that's sitting up up there.
So you it's wide open. So hopefully one day you get
that finals and one day you get the the flag as well.
But congratulations on that moment, Jono.
Our previous guest Christy Jenkins talked about her
scoreboard moment and his all time favourite sporting moment
(43:40):
and she one of the three sports that she played before she went
into now running a startup accelerator was beach
volleyball. So it's part of the scoreboard
scramble, which is a new segmentthat I've introduced to our
guests is to put them on the spot on a Wednesday, Wednesday
morning to get that brain thinking and you're gonna have
to spell a word backwards. Two out of three I think have
got it so far. So there's no pressure at all,
(44:02):
by the way. So I'll give you 20 seconds, but
you're going to have to spell the words or words beach
volleyball backwards because that's one of Christy Jenkins
sport. And you've got 20 seconds to do
so, Jono. So I'm going to give you 20
seconds to spell the words beachvolleyball starting now.
OK, so ball LLAB volley YELLOV beach HCAEB.
(44:32):
How's that LLA? BYELLOVHCE A/B, you know that,
you know that? Fantastic finished on a high
mate. Sodo flag.
Thank you so much for taking thetime out of your day to day to
talk about what you're up to in the the world of business and
sport. What Freshwater Strategy has
(44:53):
done in the past is doing currently as well as behind the
scenes looks into some of the most important expansion teams
and also important moments of ofparticular code's history and
changing the, the, the sport andchanging the way the sport is
played forever. And you can be very proud of
some of the the work that you'vedone thus far.
With obviously a lot of more work to come.
(45:13):
I look forward to continuing to follow the progress of yourself
as well as Freshwater Strategy and look forward to catching up.
Thanks, Chris. And obviously I'm going to
follow your podcast with interest as well, mate.
So continue doing what you're doing and thanks.
Thanks for having me on.
Hi, it's Chris Titley here. And on today's episode of School
Board the Podcast, I'm joined byJonathan Flegg, a founder and
director at Freshwater Strategy.I think we're going to call you
Jono for the podcast. Jono, welcome to School Board.
Hey Chris, thanks for having me on your podcast and, and, and
you're doing great work, mate. It's been awesome to watch you
(00:21):
build this thing and I'm just pleased to be here with you.
Fantastic. Thanks mate.
We're sitting here on Wednesday the 28th of May and Wednesday of
course is Origin Day here in Queensland.
We're hosting the the Blues tonight.
You've got your scarf on, I've got my maroon jumper on.
How you feeling about it all mate?
Mate, it's always a bit of optimism with game one for for
(00:44):
Queensland and despite being deep here within Sydney and NSW,
I'm flying the flag, which I always do.
So we'll see. That enthusiasm will just carry
us through, I suspect. But.
Well. Yeah, and, and obviously game
one, that's that's huge. And you know, you can't replace
that that that environment that you've got up there in in Lane
(01:05):
Park for Game 1. So I'm super excited about it.
Mate, it is, it's the weather's beautiful, it's a cracking day.
It'll be hopefully a cracking game.
This podcast will age well if Queensland wins.
If it Queensland doesn't win, itwon't age very well when we edit
it and it comes out live. But anyway, mate, I'm going to
throw things around a little bitin order for our podcast today.
I normally ask our guests about our favourite all time sporting
moment and the school board moment later on in the podcast,
(01:28):
but I'm going to go first. I'm hoping that there's a
favourite all time sporting moment that's Origin related.
Yeah, absolutely. Yes.
Keeping on the origin theme, if I go right back into the
recesses of my experience, the first sporting event that I ever
cried at, and there's been a few, but game 292, Alfie Lang is
(01:50):
slotting the the field goal to win.
I was there with my old man as ayoung boy in the in the the
bleachers of the old Lane Park and I'd never seen anything like
it, you know, being a boy from Redcliff.
We came into the city to watch the game and yeah, mate, that
moment, it stuck with me ever. So I guess just sticking on that
(02:13):
State of Origin theme thematic, that's got to be the one for me
today. You touched on a few things
there. The old, the old Lang Park, I
remember going to some games. They actually went to some games
there with I think it was 95 with the Southeast QLD crushes.
I think they played the Bronx there and it was the Choo Choo
Choo themes. I was about 13 at the time I
reckon and it was a bit of an experiment, the old crushes back
(02:36):
then, but they were an expansionteam and freshwater strategies
involved in sport and business. I'd love the listeners out there
to for you to give a bit of an understanding about what
Freshwater strategy does and andyour intertwinement with sport
and business. Yeah.
No, it's, it's a great business.Obviously very pleased that we
set it up almost three years agonow.
We've done a lot in that short period as a organisation.
(03:02):
I guess you may have heard aboutus in the media.
We tend to to make a few waves around the ridges with the work
that we do at Freshwater. We've got three offices, our
main offices in Sydney, we've got an office in Brisbane and in
London as well. Ultimately it's we've got some
various pillars to the business,but the advisory part of the
business which I look after focuses on corporate advisory.
(03:25):
We do a lot of sport in that. So we also have a big research
business. You might see that with the
polling work that we do publiclyas well.
We seem to be fairly well known for for the polling work that we
do. And then we have a big straight
comms and media division as partof Freshwater as well.
So whilst we do a lot of sports work that we love, it's not all
(03:49):
that we do, but we've carved outa real speciality in the sports
area over many years. We kind of fell into it, Chris.
We myself and the founders of Freshwater all worked previously
for another firm. And we're always the black sheep
in the business because rather than having Sky News or ABC
playing in our part of the office, we had ESPN playing
(04:11):
constantly. And we had a few opportunities
there to start to dabble in sport only because a, we loved
it and we believed actually whatwe, we did, you know, in some of
those other areas that I mentioned translated really well
into the sports arena. You know, we do work in politics
as well, political advisory workand always say there's more
politics in sport and than actual politics in Australia.
(04:36):
So look, we, we thought, you know, we had the, the
wherewithal to, to have a crack at the sporting area.
And we sort of found that when we got in there, we were really
good at it. So the first, the first foray
that we took into sport a few years ago in 2018 now was we got
asked to do a bid for the MacArthur Bulls, a league
(04:58):
franchise expansion in the a league.
And it was an interesting one because I remember it was a
Saturday night and our chairman called me up and said what are
we doing for the next two weeks with our team?
And I said, well, we're pretty busy.
He said. We've got 10 days to pull
together a compelling bid for the MacArthur Bulls franchise to
(05:20):
get in before the deadline was due with the A league, which if
any one of your listeners has done bid work before, that's a
pretty tight turn around. So we pulled together everybody
that we needed to. We had a 24 hour bid room,
graphic designers, we had financial modellers, we had
everybody in the room and we pulled it all together.
(05:42):
And once it was lodged and we were successful.
The feedback from David Gallup, who many of your listeners would
know, who was the head of the A league at the time.
So that was the best sports beerhad ever seen in his career.
And we were left thinking, hang on a second, we put that
together in 10 days. How could that be the best that
David Gallup's ever seen, havingbeen the head of two major
(06:04):
sporting codes in Australia. So at that point we it dawned on
us that we we probably had some special source and we've
obviously done a lot of work particularly in the sports bid
space since. Yeah, the 24 hour bid room.
There you go. What was the what was the
thinking? How how did the structure go?
What did you get? Did you get some Chinese take
(06:24):
away? What did what did you did?
You did not sleep. What happened there?
Yeah. Look, look, bids are not for
everybody. I always say that it's real
shoulder to the wheel stuff. That said, once it's in and
you've won, it's the most amazing feeling when you've
actually achieved something likethat.
But yeah, look, the reason why we had limited time on that one
(06:44):
was that if you're some of your listeners who are into a league
or soccer, can recall, there wasa whole range of kind of bids
from all around the country. And there were two actual
competing bids from Southwest Sydney.
One of them was set up by Lane Walker, who provided incredible
balance sheet and obviously had a massive interest in that part
(07:05):
of Sydney, that growth area of Sydney in the southwest
corridor. And then there was another
competing bid that had come froma range of property developers
in that part of the world who may not have been as successful
as Elaine Walker, who's a rich Lister in Australia, but were
utterly fascinated and passionate about their football.
(07:28):
So there were two competing bidsfor the same territory in the A
league. So our point of view, our
argument to these two competing bids, the Elaine Walker backed
bid and and the other one who Gina Mara, who's now the
chairman of the club, was involved in was that if you, if
you bid against each other and work against each other for the
(07:48):
same terrain, you're more than likely going to lose.
But if you join forces and come up with it essentially A
megabit, you're going to get thebest of both worlds and you're
more than likely going to win. Because the A League was very
interested in that, that, that fast growing SW corridor of
Sydney. So by the time that Lane
(08:08):
Walker's lawyers and all the lawyers have picked apart AJV
agreement managed to get it all inked up.
That's why we only had the 10 days to pull together the actual
bid because it took that long for the lawyers to put together
the JV on that on, on that exercise.
So look, lots of fun. You know, again, not for
(08:30):
everybody, but the camaraderie that you build sort of
relationships you have for a lifetime when you've done a
sports bid with with people and you've been put under that kind
of pressure. John, I'm, I'm curious as to
know who's who your client is there or is it a consortium
that's paying you to do it? Is the league paying you to do
it like where that sort of customers come from before we
(08:51):
get into some of the other stories about some of the other
bids of the sporting teams? Yeah, Typically, yeah.
As a business, we'll we'll work for a consortia or consortium
who who are putting forward a bid for expansion.
One area that we've had a lot ofsuccess in the Daily Telegraph
is called Freshwater. The club makers, you know, we,
(09:12):
we, we tend to specialised. I mean, we do a lot of work in
sport now, but if we have a realsweet spot, it's around
expansion bids. So it's typically the consortium
who who will engage us in that situation.
We've also been very lucky, Chris, I think because the
timing of us building that specialty in the business also
(09:33):
coincided with a massive period of expansion in most of our big
leagues in Australia. And a lot of that has been
driven by streaming services. You know, you'd listeners will
recall the Adventist Super League in Australia and then the
rationalisation that occurred, reducing the number of clubs
that occurred after that period.But with the expansion of
(09:55):
streaming services, most of the broadcasters now are feverishly
looking for more and more content and are willing to pay
for it. So the, the major leagues are
now, you know, most of them are are to varying degrees looking
at expansion opportunities. So the fact we started dipping
our toe into that type of work and specialising unit around
(10:16):
about the time that streaming services were becoming a big, a
big part of the the broadcast world was very opportune I
think. And John, I, Speaking of Super
League and looking back in Australian sporting history,
there's been a number of teams that have sort of come and gone
over the time. How's your knowledge of that in
different aspects? Can I, can I tribute you on some
(10:36):
old Super League teams? Are you pretty good in an O5
with the history of Australian sport?
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, oh, I guess not to to
premeditate a conversation around the Bears expansion for
WA, but one one area we've done a real deep dive in on recently
is certainly the experience of the Western Reds at the time of
(11:00):
the Super League. You know, you remember Julian
O'Neill and all the players thatthey had out there.
It was actually really successful.
Like it was actually one of the franchises that probably should
have continued in any normal, normal world.
Had incredible fanbase, incredible, you know, kind of
involvement from the community in WA.
It was financially sustainable as a as a, as a franchise.
(11:24):
So it was unfortunate that the Western Reds went by the
wayside. But there is still a cohort of
folks out there who are die hardWestern Reds fans.
You seem at Magic Round and elsewhere.
They're still out there. But I think what's happening
with Perth Bears is awesome because it's tapping into that
old, that old Western Reds. Yeah, and and also also the
North Sydney, there's a couple of teams that come to mind, the
(11:46):
Adelaide Rams, a couple in the NBL back when I was growing up,
there was the Geelong Super Caps, also the Southeast
Melbourne Spectres, I believe, before they became the Magic,
which was kind of like, I didn'treally know what a spectre was
growing up, but he sort of said it.
And I've been a tribute for you.Gold Coast, The Titans, what
names have they had in the past?Like I was thinking seagulls.
(12:10):
Wally Lewis. The Seagulls Wally Lewis
Seagulls Yep, Yep, the. Twin towns and have a great time
down there mate. And I think they're the giants
as well. Well, they're the Giants as
well. I can't remember.
Giants, yeah, I think you're going back away with that one.
But I definitely remember the the Seagulls maybe.
I mean, you don't see too many Seagulls jerseys rocking around
anymore. That's right.
(12:33):
Unfortunate reality. Still, there's someone's got one
somewhere. It's probably worth a lot of
money. Yeah, that's right.
And Speaking of the crushes as well, back in the day, the
southeast QLD crushes. Speaking of closer to home and
and one of the things that freshwater and yourself probably
more more so yourself in terms of the involvement in the
Dolphins bid into the NRL. We had Rupert McCall on recently
(12:53):
on the podcast, a staunch Radcliffe Dolphins fan, been
there through and through, probably even written poems
about I'm sure you want to talk about the history of the
Dolphins, your involvement. You mentioned earlier on you're
a Redcliffe, Redcliffe boy and and how that early discussion
fly on the wall, you know where that came from.
Yeah, it's a great question. This one was a labour of love
for me, only because I'm from Redcliffe and I spent a lot of
(13:18):
time at the club as a kid. I distinctly remember one time
leaving the club and my old man sort of speaking, speaking in
riddles a little bit. But he said one day, one day
we're going to make the top league as a kid and that stuck
with me. That really did stick with me.
Unfortunately, the Super League rise and collapse cost cost the
(13:40):
Dolphins probably decades of lost opportunity playing at the
top national level. But when the NRL started to get
into a position of expansion andhad signalled pretty clearly
that their interest was in another Brisbane team, that set
off a train of thinking in me and my team around how we should
(14:02):
be working with the Dolphins to get them in.
As I said, it was a labour of love.
But we we approached the the Fins.
I think it really got a lot of traction when Terry Rader was
appointed by the club. He was the CCO of the of the
Broncos at the time. Terry remains a very good friend
of mine and colleague. The minute he was brought across
(14:23):
from the the Broncos and, and the guys put him on, he
ostensibly was given the responsibility of pulling this
all together. And once we started talking with
Terry, it all started moving pretty quick.
And my pitch to Terry was prettysimple.
I said, Terry, I said, we're only going to get one shot at
this. And if we we mess it up and we
(14:45):
don't do it as best as we possibly can, the the Dolphins
will be waiting another 30 years.
And I said growing up in Redcliffe, I don't think we can
afford to wait for 30 years. So yeah, we we had those
conversations early on. We met the chairman Jonesy and
and, and Spud, who was the CEO of the Dolphins.
(15:05):
And I think the fact I was from Redcliffe certainly helped with
the pitch and obviously the workthat we've done with the A
league and some of the other sports previously previously as
well. But yeah, that's what it was
kind of one of those ones you just want to be able to tell
your grandkids about. You know, you go through your
career and there's only going tobe so many things you're going
to remember once it's all finished, and that's one that's
(15:26):
going to stick with me forever. Just going behind the scenes a
little bit in terms of putting abid together.
Yeah, obviously multiple stakeholders and, and in sort of
obviously there's some more weighty than others when it
comes to stakeholders. How do you consider them all?
And also there's some stakeholders every now and then
(15:47):
you're like, oh, we need to makesure that they're on par as well
and the buy insurance there. There's a lot of stakeholders in
an expansion bid and you know, you need to be consulting with
them all, you need to be drawingthem in to the extent that
they're able to give real tangible support and get behind
the bid. I guess if we just use the
(16:08):
example of the dolphins, I thinkwe got letters of support from
26 MPs. We crossed across 3 local
government areas, many of which,including Moreton Bay and
Sunshine Coast, are some of the fastest growing areas in the
country. It was really important for the
NRL, as you'd appreciate, to seethe government stood firmly
behind the bid, not only in terms of the words it used, but
(16:32):
with hard dollars towards infrastructure to advance the
game. That was certainly something
that the NRL was looking at. So beyond that, you've got
community stakeholders, you've got potential sponsors.
We were lucky enough we were able to sign up, I think about
$6.3 million of potential sponsors even prior to the
licence being issued, which was a major signal to the NRL to say
(16:56):
that this thing was highly commercial, that there was a
pool of potential sponsors that were willing to stand, stand up
and be counted and and get behind the club.
So that was very attractive I think to the NRL.
And then more broadly, you've got media, media partners of
course as well. You know, getting a niche,
(17:16):
getting a little angle in on theBrisbane media market was really
important. Having Triple M come in early
on, that was really important. So there's, and then obviously,
you know, usually there's the financial backers with the
Dolphins, they're blessed, they're sitting on multiple
hectares site out there. They're sitting on over $100
(17:36):
million of assets, so unlike a normal consortium, the Dolphins
were kind of sitting quite well in a financial setting.
We're able to prove to the NRL that they could sustain those
finances to grow the game, but that's not always the case.
Some consortiums are put together by high net words or
other private equity interests, so you need to pull them
(17:56):
together and be able to substantiate the case of
sustaining a club through the leaner years until we start
actually making money. The last thing a league wants to
do is to have to step in and andsave a franchise from itself in
the early days because it couldn't get itself up and
running. So that's a really important
part, particularly from those consortia bid arrangements.
(18:18):
And the and the plan, is it a five year plan, 10 year plan
that you you push to them. And I suppose once they've been
accepted into the into the main league and they're going on
nicely. There's some variations and
things change and macro conditions change.
There's things like COVID and there's other things.
How do you continually to kind of does the league monitor it
and do you play a part in that sort of like, well, actually
(18:39):
we're three years way through the five year plan and we're
beating expectations or the opposite three years through and
going. Actually, we're financially in a
little bit of a hole. Yeah.
The typical time frame, Chris, is around 5 years.
So finding five year financial models, the meeting full time
frame, you obviously have a range of assumptions that you
need to build in there around ticketing revenue, merchandise
sales, memberships, all the restof it.
(18:59):
So it's pretty hard to see out past five years for the average
club, but it's a really good exercise to go through.
You know, it's, it's what I always say about a bid for a new
Sports Club is it's, it's not only a bid, it's really actually
a, a case of forced planning to prove to the league that we've
(19:20):
actually gone through and built a plan.
So that when Terry Arena became the CEO of the Dolphins, it was
a really easy exercise. He actually started putting on
his senior executives, bringing them all in, bringing on the
staff. Well, the plan was already
written. The plan was already written.
And it was fun to watch when that first game happened with
the Dolphins against the Roosters at Suncorp Stadium.
(19:42):
And a lot of fans were utterly blown away by this new, this new
entity that had ended the NRL ecosystem.
And you know, they couldn't believe the level of fandom, the
level of organisation, the even the branding, which we, we spent
a lot of time agonising over thedolphin over exactly how to get
that dolphin exactly right. So it appealed to not only men,
(20:04):
but women and kids as well. So, but that was all, all
planned for, you know, so it just goes, if you plan, you can
deliver. But you know, and I, I would
actually almost go so far to sayis the planning that you go
through to put forward a compelling bid.
I should have brought it for you.
Actually. It's quite a, it's quite a large
document. It's actually probably better
(20:27):
and stronger planning than a lotof incumbent clubs go through
for their own growth. So, you know, it's really,
really important thing to make apoint about that while we're
sticking. On the, the rugby league topic,
you, you did mention the Perth Bears before.
Do you want to talk about that? And the, the, the name, the the
history and I suppose the, you know, again, the rigorous
(20:49):
planning involved in submitting a bid to the NRL for a new
expansion team geographically a bit further away probably than
than the Red Cliff Dolphins. Yeah, absolutely.
The WA market's a fantastic rugby league market.
We have a little saying that it puts the end into the National
Rugby League. You can't really be national
without WA in the ecosystem. Whilst it is generally
(21:12):
considered an IFL state by many,there is a huge diaspora of of
of folks who are living in Pertheither from the East Coast, New
Zealanders, S Africans, English people who are living in in that
part of the world. And and also there's a great
actual quite a strong rugby league community in WA outside
(21:36):
of the diaspora community that are based in there.
Probably shouldn't call it diaspora.
A lot of people are from Australia, but you know what I'm
saying? You know, WA folks, they think
differently. They're very parochial out
there. But there is a lot of people
from other parts of the country in the world who prefer either
rugby league or rugby union. So we we've seen that as a an
obvious entree into building support for a club.
(22:01):
But in the first instance, the process that was run was a
little bit different by the NRL.This time around it was they
didn't geographically ring fenceSE Queensland.
This time they really threw it open and they said they will
open to bids from pretty much anywhere.
As your listeners will be aware,PNG have been successful as
well. There was a range of bidders
that came forth from New Zealandas well.
(22:24):
So there were other folks putting their hands up.
But I think the great strength of WA is it's a market that has
huge commercial potential, huge fan potential and it's an
underserviced market in terms ofsporting content.
WA folks love sport, but they'requite limited at the moment in
terms of how much sport content they have available to them.
(22:45):
So playing at AHTF Park, we think it's going to be we're
going to get some good crowds out there.
The NRLS process that they entered into was looking for
consortia interest, the consortia that we work with led
by Peter Cummins. So you may be aware of the the
founder of of Cash Converters, avery, very prominent W
(23:07):
Australian businessman. We worked with him and his
consortia on on the bid. We had very strong backing from
the WA government, in particularPremier Cook.
I need to say, you know, despitebeing the Premier of WA, Premier
Cook is a league, he loves his rugby league and from the
Premier down, this was a premier's level priority to get
(23:29):
this franchise up and running in.
In the end, the NRL has taken a slightly different approach to
not award the the actual licenceto a consortium itself.
But as you will have seen, the NRL will initially sort of
incubate the the club and it will move forward like that with
(23:51):
with full WA government backing.So we're we're just proud to see
a great result with the WA franchise coming into the league
in 2027. Fantastic.
On recent podcasts I've been chatting to the CEO and coach of
the Jack Jumpers out of the NBL and and more recently the Jack
(24:11):
Jumpers got acquired the whole business by a private equity
group based out of based out of Brisbane.
The PE interest, venture capital, high net worths and
sport very prominent in the US, very a lot of different team
ownerships by high net worth individuals in, in Premier
League etcetera, not as much andprevalent in Australia.
(24:35):
Do you want to talk about some of the experience that you're
seeing overseas and, and I suppose what you think Australia
may look like in the future withpotential investment from
external parties? As an example, Cricket
Australia, we had Alastair Dobson on talking about the Big
Bash and it's owned by Cricket Australia.
I'm sure there'll be interest financially there, but some of
your experience and I suppose a bit of comment on Australia.
(24:57):
Yeah. No, the great point, Chris, this
is a trend that we're really long on at freshwater is the
increasing level of private equity involved in, in sport.
That's obviously much more normal I would say overseas and
it's a newer thing for Australia, particularly for our
tier one sports which are probably the least likely to
(25:19):
have private equity ownership inthe current environment.
But we we think this trend is coming to Australia and will
come to Australia and increase increasing frequency probably
the two trends that we we have identified certainly the more
sophisticated elements of private equity, right.
So I think if we talked about private investment in sport
(25:42):
previously, it was always the high net worth model, the the
wealthy businessman or woman whohad made a lot of money in
another industry who wanted a, you know, a trophy asset or a
plaything who could afford to invest in a club.
We're now seeing, you know, probably the more sophisticated
(26:02):
private equity where you know, sports clubs and sports leagues
are now seen as an asset in their own right, are expected to
provide a a traditional propertyequity return.
So that's probably the first trend.
The other one is multi sport ownership and multi club
ownership. So, you know, in terms of like
(26:23):
managing risk and also spreadingexpertise, this is again a trend
we're seeing overseas where owners of clubs are picking up
various assets across different codes, right?
So, and you know, they, they're developing a level of IP that
they can deploy to help professionalise and, and
(26:44):
actually get better returns at aclub.
So they're taking learnings from1 sport, bringing them across to
another and then also just managing risk, right?
Because you know, not every, youknow, whenever you're investing
in the league, your fortunes aresomewhat tied to how that league
is going to turn out over the medium to longer term.
So you can spread your risk across multiple clubs and
(27:07):
multiple leagues as well. So and then obviously, you know,
the kind of the Saudi backed kind of initiatives rebel
leagues, if you like, like live golf, like professional fighters
league who were taking on the UFC globally.
So certainly a lot of that Middle Eastern money is
something to watch as well as itarrives in Australia.
(27:28):
And I've also recently had Victoria Denholm from wall of my
Capital Group about their acquisition or majority
acquisition of the WNBL. So we're talking leagues here,
not just teams and and the family interest is also in hoops
capital that owns some of the teams.
I'm curious to know about new leagues and leagues popping up.
And you just mentioned then the Professional Fighters League,
(27:48):
the, the PFL and your involvement in that and what the
the benefits are of starting a league and starting from scratch
and all the things that come with it over time.
Yeah. So we're quite involved in in
the development of PFL Oceania. So for your listeners who aren't
as acquainted with MMAUFC, obviously looms large.
(28:11):
It has incredible market share, particularly in the 18 to 35
year old category. It's, it's one of the, it's the
fastest growing new sport in terms of spectator interest
globally. The competitor to the USC with
Dana White is, is Pete Murray's,who is the CEO of PFL also run
out of New York over there in the States.
(28:33):
This the, the, the money that's come behind getting PFL out of
the ground is, is, is Saudi backed piff money in relation to
the PFL. So they've got tremendous
balance sheet to be able to invest and take on the likes of
the UFC. But where it's different,
there's probably quite a few different ways they're actually
(28:54):
tackling USC. First of all, they've got a
Federated model so that each of the regions, continents, if you
like, have their own independentleagues that have their own
ownership structure. And we can actually develop
talent in local areas, right? So in Oceania, you know, we can,
we can actually develop talent who currently have limited
(29:16):
options in Australia, we can develop them and proper
ecosystem for fighters and and talent and development within,
within Australia itself. That also goes for Africa,
Mainer with the Middle East, Europe where it's PFL is really
doing amazing things, North and South America and Asia.
So the various different regionsof PFL will operate allows us to
(29:39):
provide more content locally, provide a better ecosystem for
the development of talent locally.
And and then we we move forward like that.
But critically, the the other kind of point of difference is
that the UFC, many of your listeners may not be aware, but
do not pay the fighters terriblywell.
Only about 16% of the league's total proceeds go back to the
(30:04):
athletes. And there's, you know, I can
think of very few other sports where you, you get that level of
lack of investment in, in the athletes themselves.
It means that unless you're an utter, utter superstar in UFC,
you are going to be struggling financially on every account.
You know, So the only other comparable competition around
(30:25):
the world where I think it is genuinely hard for the athletes
to make any form of a living is,is the only comparable, I would
say is tennis. When you're outside the top 100
in, in global tennis, your your existence, your financial
existence becomes very tenuous, becomes very difficult.
So the UFC only provides a smallamount of its overall revenue
(30:48):
back to investing in fighter contracts, whereas the the PFL
has put aside serious money to attract the content across a
little bit like Lyft golf. So they're able to sign up
quality fighters and build that ecosystem out whilst
maintaining, you know, contractsthat will be enticing for the
(31:08):
fighters to join the new competition.
Jono, you talk about Australia being obviously a very strong
sporting nation and you're talking about broadcast.
And then you're seeing Netflix enter and you're seeing all
these other large streaming services into the play with
different, I suppose different packages and different types of
streaming services. And locally you've got things
(31:29):
like KO and KO mini, you've got the US sports that are coming
over here. You've got the NFL coming at the
NBA exhibition game. You've got, yeah, even my sons
would agree is very like strong and and understanding what's
going on in the IPL, which is something which I probably am
not a fait with only because of the timing, et cetera.
But he gets up and watches the minis and follows the teams.
(31:50):
Who are you competing with, I suppose, or, or what?
Where is Australia landing in the future of sport when you've
got these big global sports in the Premier League, et cetera,
where the access is much closer with the content generation?
Not when you and I are growing up and we probably had three
hours in the wide world of sports on a Saturday afternoon
to kind of watch our stars or get a brief glimpse of Michael
(32:11):
Jordan, for instance. But now with social media and
content, this is a pretty competitive market.
Where do you think Australia's sport is heading in terms of
that? Yeah, yeah.
It's a great question. I mean, the I guess the example
I would use is probably when youand I were at school, you know,
back in the day we were collecting NBA cards must must
have never seen an NBA game. It just wasn't available.
(32:34):
Whereas now with streaming global content, it is truly a
global marketplace for this typeof thing.
I, I think it is a little bit like the world before free
trade, we had protectionism and now we're moving into a world of
free trade where people can justgravitate to the content that
they like to, to see. Which means that certain leagues
(32:56):
like particularly NFL out of theStates or the NBA or as you
mentioned IPL, all these leaguesfrom around the world, obviously
European based soccer leagues, you know, that is very readily
accessible and the fans for all those leagues are going through
the roof. The opportunity is for
Australian sport to to go globalas well.
(33:17):
And I think the NRL is a great example of that where we're
taking what we're doing with NRLinternationally as well.
So we just need to be prepared to compete in that global
marketplace. We are known as a great sporting
nation. The other thing to say is that
there is ample opportunity for fans to be fans of multiple
sports. We talk about it regularly at
(33:37):
Freshwater, which is the rise ofthe the multi sport fan.
Back in the day, you know, fans probably were more probably had
a greater level of fandom for less sports, maybe even just one
sport. Now you're finding, you know,
perhaps more casualisation of fan support across a range of
(33:58):
different sporting content. But people, they're just
spreading their interest across a wider range of sports.
So what we're seeing is that oneleg, being a supporter of one
leg is not necessarily going to cannibalise interests in another
leg. And you're seeing some brand
affiliation almost. You look at what the NRL has
(34:18):
done with the Vegas round and actually watching the
partnership with UFC over there has been quite interesting
because the Venn diagram of the average UFC fan and the average
NRL fan is pretty, pretty close,or at least potentially could be
very close. So you're actually seeing the
leagues, you know, come togetherand start partnerships on that
basis because they're not actually going to cannibalise
(34:40):
each other at all. So I think we are living in a
new world order when it comes tothat marketplace, but it's an
exciting one for Australian sport.
Absolutely. And then you've got core
products like we talked about the Origin tonight.
It's a Wednesday night. It's always been a Wednesday
night. They've got their slight.
You've always got the Boxing DayTest match on Boxing Day.
It's pretty hard to compete witha alternative product.
(35:01):
You've got the, as you mentioned, Vegas round, which is
a new thing the NBA has done thein season cup.
You've got magic round in NRL, you've got gather round in the
AFL. These ideas have come from
somewhere. What are your what's what's your
thinking? Do you guys come up with some of
these ideas as well and suggest things and and rivalries,
etcetera, The Collingwood Brisbane Lions on Easter
Thursday, etcetera, these thingsare now getting better than they
(35:23):
were before. What's Freshwater's thinking
around some of these types of events per SE within the sport?
Yeah. Look, we, we, we kick around all
sorts of ideas here, you know, about how we can do things
better. You know, of, of the many that
you mentioned, I mean, they, they certainly didn't emanate
from, from our business necessarily.
(35:43):
But you know, I think the the goal is to continue to import
particularly the best of the ideas of how things are done
overseas. There are elements of Australian
sport that do need to be shaken up.
There's no question about that. And I think a lot of those ideas
are going to come from overseas.So yeah, that's probably how I
(36:05):
would answer that that question.I mean, you know, I just think
about some of the really creative ways that we we
launched the Dolphins in particular, and I think he might
have said it on a previous podcast, Chris, but like drawing
the sponsors in to a greater degree rather than just sort of
putting together a pro forma kind of standard sponsorship
agreement and they sign it and they send a big cheque multiple
(36:28):
times a year, actually getting really creative about the Co
branding opportunities. You know, I mean, I always
marvel at what Budget Direct have done with with with the
Dolphins around the fins that have been given out at the
sports. Dwayne Dwayne Bennett, the long
lost cousin of Wayne Bennett, who has his own social media
(36:50):
page. That's all Budget Direct.
That's all part of the Budget Direct sponsorship.
But it actually required them tobe really creative.
Now what I've heard in the Grapevine is that in terms of
ROI for Budget Direct, that's been one of the one of the
strongest ever campaigns they'veever had in the history of the
business. But it actually required some
creative thinking between the sponsor and the club to go, OK,
(37:11):
what can we do here? That's that's not BAU.
Yeah, that's, that's brilliant. And and I think your reference
to the, I think it was Wing Stopin the US had this play with the
Detroit Pistons. And I think there's also like it
was a particular chicken restaurant where if you missed 2
free throws, you got a free chicken burger.
And one of the blokes at the endof the season in a non important
game sort of missed the first one.
(37:31):
And he was a terrible free throwshooter and he sort of went to
the crowd like this and then kind of missed the second one
and got a big cheer and sort of did the thumbs up.
So the activation of brands and as you, you know, the the the
importance of a good long term sponsor was talking to Mel.
What's the bullets about it and Christine at at the Jack
jumpers. When brands look at sport now,
do they come to you? Do they think about like where
(37:53):
they can play? And do you think there's the
the, the growing rise of pools of brands that go actually
there's some activations we can do here.
What are you thinking about thatin terms of the the money in
sport and the sponsorship in sport?
Yeah. Look, in terms of a service to
the market, we do that work at Freshwater.
And you know, for most corporates, even for larger
(38:14):
corporates, sports sponsorship is is firmly outside of BAU for
even some of the larger corporations around the place.
So working with people who can think creatively and also
understand the value of sponsorship in maybe a more
detailed nuanced way. I mean when you see you're
seeing enough of this come through your organisation, you
(38:35):
do get a pretty good understanding of what value
looks like from a sponsorship point of view.
So helping, helping corporationsgo through that process and
think creatively about the Co branding activation
opportunities that could be possible between the brand
alignment is definitely top of work we do and you're very proud
of it. I've got 1.
(38:56):
Final question on sport before we delve into you a little bit,
Jono. It's about the scheduling, the
calendar. It's talked a lot about how you
fill all these things in and theFriday night slot.
That's the Thursday night and we've tried Monday night and
we've done the AFL has this and NRL has this and Premier like
how do you go think about the calendar as well?
And and on to your point about the multi sport viewer that that
(39:17):
can sit down and watch a Friday night footy NRL game that's been
around for for many, many years,but maybe flick over and watch
the AFL at the MCG which is alsopacked out at the same time.
Yeah. Well, I think the the the answer
to that question, Chris, is justaround how you actually find new
time slots that aren't already crowded.
So, and to bring it back to the WA opportunity with rugby
(39:39):
league, that actually opens up multiple new time slots on the
East Coast for for content, which is really exciting.
And so, yeah, I think, you know,looking at some of the stuff
that happens over in America, I think there probably is a bit of
a second look around even looking at Monday Night Football
potentially, which is done in the NFL.
So I think from a rugby league point of view, there's a lot of
(40:02):
learnings from the way the NFL do things in in the States.
But yeah, it's finding those newtime slots.
It's it's tough. Yeah, I remember.
Watching that documentary the Vince McMahon on Monday Night
Raw as well, like they introduced that Monday night
wrestling slot which was obviously very successful.
They tried, who was it? Was it?
NRL tried the Monday night thingfor a while didn't they?
They did. They did.
(40:23):
But I suspect there might be an opportunity to start to look at
that again. Yeah, and.
And Thursday is AAFL and and NRLnow, broadly speaking, but
mainly, mainly. But yeah, new time spots, sport
24/7. As a fan, we would love it.
As a player, maybe not so in terms of the injury prevention
and and management, et cetera. But Jonathan, we've talked about
(40:44):
your all time favourite sportingmoment, but I also asked guests
about their school board moment,which is a moment in life, which
is pretty vivid. It's like a Kodak moment or an
Instagram shop where you go. I remember that.
I remember that moment in my life.
And from there things changed for the better or for the worse.
But it's something that's prettygiven in your memory.
Jono, what's your school board moment?
If I'm obviously overlooked for a moment, you know, married with
(41:08):
three kids, which has to take preeminent spot on that list, of
course, absolutely. You know, you know, my wife
would kill me if I said anythingdifferent.
The probably the one. I just think just just keeping
in the in the vein of the conversation, it was an amazing
turning point for me when when the Dolphins got up.
(41:29):
Yeah. So for me, Chris, I mean, the
bit that I probably underestimated was the feeling I
was going to have when that announcement was finally made.
As I said, it was, it was beyondanything I've ever done in my
career in terms of what it felt like.
The importance of it was not only to me, but to a whole
community of people. And, you know, the thing about
(41:50):
putting, you know, a, a club in,in, in an area like Redcliffe,
like many parts of the country, is it's the ultimate way in my
mind to support the, the building of community spirit.
And, you know, you can, you can build hospitals and schools and
all those sorts of things. And they, they certainly
happened as you build communities.
(42:13):
But you know, to give it a community, a sense of pride, a
rallying point around a nationalsporting franchise is the
ultimate in my mind. And so the the bit that really
got to me was knowing how important it was to me to see
the Dolphins go back into top flight football after many
decades in the wilderness. But then knowing what that meant
to everyone, all the folks up inRedcliff, that whole corridor
(42:37):
north of Brisbane, to to providethem with a magnificent team to
rally around. For me, that was irreplaceable
and I think I underestimated thefeeling for when that
announcement was finally made. And it's sort of spurred me on
to do more, quite frankly. I mean, it's been a great
turning point in our business where we've just continued to
(42:58):
double down and do so much sport, sport work because quite
frankly, it's a great feeling. It gives you a lot more joy and
pride than in a lot of things you do in your professional
career when you can be part of that, that moment when a birth
of a new club, I mean, what a what a privilege.
What a what a great moment too. And and this year it's all very
(43:18):
even. Let's hope the the Dolphins tick
themselves up a great win last week, I think it was 44 eight
against the Canterbury team that's sitting up up there.
So you it's wide open. So hopefully one day you get
that finals and one day you get the the flag as well.
But congratulations on that moment, Jono.
Our previous guest Christy Jenkins talked about her
scoreboard moment and his all time favourite sporting moment
(43:40):
and she one of the three sports that she played before she went
into now running a startup accelerator was beach
volleyball. So it's part of the scoreboard
scramble, which is a new segmentthat I've introduced to our
guests is to put them on the spot on a Wednesday, Wednesday
morning to get that brain thinking and you're gonna have
to spell a word backwards. Two out of three I think have
got it so far. So there's no pressure at all,
(44:02):
by the way. So I'll give you 20 seconds, but
you're going to have to spell the words or words beach
volleyball backwards because that's one of Christy Jenkins
sport. And you've got 20 seconds to do
so, Jono. So I'm going to give you 20
seconds to spell the words beachvolleyball starting now.
OK, so ball LLAB volley YELLOV beach HCAEB.
(44:32):
How's that LLA? BYELLOVHCE A/B, you know that,
you know that? Fantastic finished on a high
mate. Sodo flag.
Thank you so much for taking thetime out of your day to day to
talk about what you're up to in the the world of business and
sport. What Freshwater Strategy has
(44:53):
done in the past is doing currently as well as behind the
scenes looks into some of the most important expansion teams
and also important moments of ofparticular code's history and
changing the, the, the sport andchanging the way the sport is
played forever. And you can be very proud of
some of the the work that you'vedone thus far.
With obviously a lot of more work to come.
(45:13):
I look forward to continuing to follow the progress of yourself
as well as Freshwater Strategy and look forward to catching up.
Thanks, Chris. And obviously I'm going to
follow your podcast with interest as well, mate.
So continue doing what you're doing and thanks.
Thanks for having me on.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.