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00:00Another big deal in the world of sports. David Beckham has partnered with his former teammate Gary Neville and global advisory and investing platform Concello to buy Salford City Football Club.
00:09Alongside a number of other business executives, the consortium aims to take the English League 2 team all the way to the Championship League in the next five years.
00:18Let's discuss the deal. Gary Neville is here, former Manchester United and England defender, owner of Salford City Football Club and Concello partner.
00:24As well as Declan Kelly, founder, chairman, CEO of Concello and now owner too in your right.
00:29And Gary, I want to start with you because you're already a part owner alongside, of course, David Beckham and indeed what is called the class of 92, some other teammates from Manchester United days.
00:40And I'm interested is why now, why this sport, why this particular team, why inject more money?
00:45Yeah, I mean, Salford has been part of our lives now for over 10 years and it got to the point about 12 months ago whereby we were restructuring the ownership.
00:57Peter Lim, who'd been a longtime partner, had exited in the class of 92, as you just mentioned, took control of the club.
01:03And we had a couple of offers for the club pre-Christmas, but it was really important in particular to me and David that we had an authentic partnership, one that we knew we could trust and also that the club could be protected for the next five years to 10 years.
01:18So me and David went and met Declan back in January and it was an ambitious ask to bring together a group of people in such a short period of time.
01:28But if you've met Declan before, you know, he's a force of nature and we got straight into it.
01:34Delighted to say that we completed yesterday and obviously we've announced the partnership today and Declan's immense support has been critical in the last few months in bringing it together,
01:44along with Lord Mervyn Davis, who introduced me to Declan quite a few years ago now.
01:49And what's also interesting, Declan, is there's expertise from the sports side of things, there's expertise from the business side of things.
01:55What did you go out there and say to these other business executives?
01:58What was the opportunity, the commercial opportunity, do you think?
02:02You know, I think sport and business are becoming more and more intertwined each and every passing week.
02:07Actually, you can see a lot more capital travelling across the Atlantic to invest in all different tiers of English football.
02:13I think the digital transformation of these clubs, the loyalty side of things, how you engage with fans, that whole thing is changing.
02:21And so we put together a group of people from the backgrounds of technology, the law, business and sports and entertainment.
02:28And I think the group that we've put together all has a perfect sort of locking into mechanism to be able to do this together.
02:35And it's been put together with a lot of thought.
02:37And so I'm very confident that we'll be able to work well together.
02:40And everybody's doing this for the right reasons.
02:43They're not doing this for a laugh.
02:44They're not doing this because it's a vanity project.
02:46They're doing it because they think they can really make a difference.
02:49The most important priority is to be successful on the field.
02:52So that's where we're going to focus our first piece of attention.
02:54And then the second is the commercialisation of the club.
02:57And as Mervyn said yesterday, I think we can turn this club into the best small club in the world if we do it properly.
03:02So, Gary, what is the opportunity for Salford City?
03:07For those who haven't tracked the success that they already had since 2014 when you first put in money, boy, did they climb.
03:13But then it sort of plateaued off a little bit.
03:15What injects that precision on the pitch more broadly?
03:21Look, I think the last 10 years have been fantastic.
03:23But you're right, in the last three or four years, we have plateaued.
03:26We've been stuck in League Two.
03:28And I think that the priority of every football club and the biggest opportunity is to be successful on the pitch.
03:32I don't think you should ever forget that when you're the guardian of a football club and the owner of a football club,
03:37that fans want to see success on the field of play.
03:40But I think there's also an element to football that means that we want to make this, as Declan just said,
03:45referring to Mervyn, one of the best small clubs in the world.
03:48And that means being innovative on the pitch, but also being successful off the pitch.
03:52And the sort of the network of people that have been brought together and the skill sets of the people that have been brought together
03:59and the expertise, I think, are going to ensure that the club not only is successful on the field,
04:04but also that we very importantly increase our revenues to become sustainable,
04:08to ensure that the long-term sort of future of Solver City is prosperous.
04:12We want to become a championship club, yes,
04:14but do it in a way which is sort of authentic and true to what we believe in is right,
04:19which is to run a successful business more sustainably.
04:22And a lot of these people, like Lord Davis, Nick Woodhouse of Authentic Brands,
04:27of course, David Beckham yourself, perhaps not going to be having the day-to-day management.
04:32But Declan, when you're thinking about your own role and Cancelo's role,
04:36what is the day-to-day going to look like?
04:38How do you pull those levers?
04:39Because there's not exactly economic nirvana out there at the moment.
04:42No, I know it's not going to be easy.
04:43We have a commercial capability inside of Cancelo that we've agreed to make available to the club.
04:49It'll be run by my partner, Janie Whiteside, who was the chief commercial officer at Walmart for a number of years,
04:53and American Express before that for 20 years.
04:56So we have a sports advisory business that actually does this for a living for some of the biggest brands in the world.
05:00So I'd like to think through those relationships and that level of expertise we'd be able to help.
05:05But, you know, we're also realistic.
05:07We're almost in built-in a day.
05:08We're going to start small.
05:09We're going to see what we can do.
05:11I really like the team we've put together.
05:13It's an honour and a pleasure to work with David and Gary and Mervyn.
05:16And, you know, the fans deserve success.
05:18This is a great club.
05:19It's done great things out of nothing for a long time.
05:22And we're very optimistic we can make a difference.
05:25And, Gary, it is about the fans.
05:27It's also about the team.
05:29Many are going to be thinking to the Wrexham playbook in some ways
05:32and the way that they've seen success on the pitch,
05:34but also the content that's driven with that
05:36and the way in which it's galvanised a global fan base.
05:39What do you think the fans, the true long-term fans of Salford City
05:43are going to be feeling at this moment?
05:44How do you play to them?
05:46Well, we know the feedback, obviously.
05:49They've been so excited this last few hours,
05:51the amount of texts and calls and feedback that I've got from the team there in Salford.
05:56I'm in London today, but they've been feeding back into me
05:58the excitement that's been growing in the city.
06:00And you refer to, obviously, Wrexham.
06:02They've done a great job there over the last few years.
06:04But we've been in Salford now for 10 years.
06:06We had a documentary nine years ago.
06:08I think the very first fly-on-the-wall documentary of a football club
06:11that was on the BBC and used to get millions of people watching it.
06:14We definitely want to revisit that type of model and grow commercial revenues,
06:19but doing it in such a way whereby football is always deemed as a priority.
06:23And, you know, there is great excitement on the ground here.
06:26It's a new injection of life into Salford City.
06:28I think over the last two or three years, we have, to be fair,
06:31lost a little bit of momentum on the pitch,
06:33and we need to get that back now.
06:34So there's great excitement around doing that.
06:36And, Gary, how do you do that?
06:38I mean, I know David's given an interview to The Athletic, I think,
06:43and he's saying, look, I've got my eyes on the Premier League,
06:45but I'm going to dream big.
06:46Like, how do you take it step by step?
06:49How do you ensure that you get that sort of success galvanised in the actual players?
06:52The club has been running this in a certain way over the last 10 years,
06:58which was true to the ownership that owned it for that 10 years.
07:00And I think it'll be very different moving forward.
07:03I think we will be appointing a brand new CEO in the next couple of months,
07:07which will mean that there'll be a new leadership group within the club.
07:10You know, I ran the club part-time for eight years as an operating shareholder.
07:14And you think of the sort of investment that's gone into the club,
07:16it's mad that I was doing it two days a week,
07:19obviously with a team that were working with me.
07:21But we weren't really, to be fair, full-time looking at it.
07:24We were still running it as a semi-professional club,
07:26which is where it started.
07:27This will be a serious football operation,
07:29a serious business operation with people in the boardroom
07:32and their shareholders who really are, you know,
07:35they've been successful in life.
07:37You know, my exposure to Declan, to Cancelo,
07:40to Lord Mervyn Davis over this last few years
07:42has had an enormous impact in my learning.
07:44And I know that that learning is going to now be sort of integrated
07:48into Solford City from a business perspective.
07:51And Declan, you could get more investors,
07:54from what I understand.
07:56How are you drumming up that support?
07:58How are you thinking about the capital that needs to be injected?
08:00There were reports of what, 15 to 20 million was put in.
08:02Is that the sort of amount that's needed for this size of team?
08:05Yeah. First of all, my phone has been buzzing a lot this morning.
08:09It always does.
08:10So, well, thank you.
08:11But a lot of people actually contacted us already today
08:14asking if they can join the investment group.
08:17So I think that's a good sign.
08:18The good news is we've kept a stub of 20% for people who are interested.
08:22And we'll talk about valuation down the line
08:24and see what we can do with that.
08:26But, look, I feel very good about the investment.
08:30The money is there to put into the club.
08:31We will spend the money where it needs to be spent.
08:35And we're not going to spare the horses.
08:36This is important.
08:38And it comes at a time where we ultimately question globalization.
08:41We question an ability of people coming together.
08:43You've got people from backgrounds in India and technology.
08:47You've got people in the U.S. with brand exposure.
08:50And you're buying a U.K. asset.
08:52Is globalization dead?
08:53Is this the time to be putting money in globally?
08:56You know, I don't really think about it that way.
08:57I think sports brands in particular are global by nature,
09:01especially when you've got somebody like David and Gary involved.
09:04And if David has proven anything and into Miami,
09:06he's proven that he can, you know,
09:08invest properly in sports and do it intelligently.
09:10And he's a wonderful person.
09:11And Gary's been doing it for 10 years
09:13and has been successful in eight or nine different businesses.
09:16You know, I'm in London or the U.K. every month.
09:18I don't think about it that way.
09:20We spent the last three or four months putting this together.
09:22And I think this brand, this club, more importantly,
09:25the story and the passion that the local people have for the team
09:28is quite unique.
09:30We're not trying to be Wrexham.
09:32We're not trying to be any other team.
09:34We're trying to be Salford.
09:35And we'll write our own history.
09:37We'll write our own story.
09:38And we'll do it patiently and calmly in a business-like manner.
09:41And hopefully we'll make some special things happen.
09:45It's been wonderful.
09:46Can I just add to that?
09:47Yeah.
09:48Yeah, I mean, I don't want to get caught up in politics.
09:51It's not where we want to go with this.
09:52But what I would say is that sort of growing up here in sort of the U.K.
09:56and in Manchester, you know, the United States of America was...
10:00I felt as though they were almost like the grandfather of the world,
10:03the grandfather of the family.
10:04They looked after everybody.
10:06And I think when I played in the dressing room at Manchester United,
10:08we had players from the U.S., we had players from Europe,
10:11we had players from Africa, we had players from Asia,
10:14we had players from all around the world that congregated together
10:16into a dressing room with local people from Manchester,
10:19but also people from different parts of the U.K.,
10:22and integrated together as one and formed a fantastic team.
10:24And that's how I always believe the best partnerships exist.
10:27And the idea of sort of when we met in January with Declan,
10:30Declan wanted to bring together a diverse group of shareholders,
10:33not just with different levels of expertise,
10:35but also people who were different experiences
10:38from different backgrounds and cultures.
10:40And that's why I think this club has got a great chance of success
10:43in the future, that we don't all believe that we have to stay local
10:46and sort of know everything locally.
10:48And I'm proud of the fact that we brought together
10:50this diverse group of people, some from the U.S.,
10:52some from parts of the Middle East and Asia,
10:55some from Ireland, some from the, obviously, UK.
10:58And I still think we're always better when we work together.
11:02And I was actually delighted to see that we'd done a trade deal
11:04with the United States just before our piece started,
11:09which is quite encouraging.
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