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Sport governing bodies in 30 years
52 Plays1 year ago
Since the times of Coubertin the Olympic Movement has implemented the same model and the same structure.
Michael Naversnik proposes a new governance and management model that could create a different future for the athletes and the sports world. Michael shared with us two powerful proposals:
- Transforming the sports world: moving from B2B (meaning International Federations to National Federations) to B2C (International Federations to Athletes).
- Centralization vs decentralization: what’s the best for sports? How to find the perfect mix?
Michael Naversnik is our guest in SCORE Podcast and he combines over 10 years of global management consulting with more than 10 years of strategy and development roles in the sports, public, NGO sectors and beyond.
Mike shared with us his ideal future and highlighted different pillars through the episode, why and how the transformation of the sports world is needed and some of the difficulties that the Olympic Movement faces today when we talk about sports development, and engagement with grassroots and athletes.
Check out our website score-sport.com and our LinkedIn page, to find more information about what we do. Please rate, comment and share, if you feel like it.
This episode was recorded in September 2022.
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Transcript
Introduction to SCORE Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to SCORE Podcast.
00:00:12
Speaker
In this podcast we discuss the responsibility of sports for and within society.
00:00:16
Speaker
What impact should sport have on our world?
00:00:19
Speaker
Can sport do more?
00:00:21
Speaker
Who's responsible?
00:00:22
Speaker
To address these questions, we focus on possible solutions and desired scenarios.
00:00:27
Speaker
We break our discussion down in four parts.
00:00:29
Speaker
First, we describe the current situation.
00:00:31
Speaker
Second, we draw the ideal future scenario.
00:00:34
Speaker
Third, we walk backwards, defining the key milestones.
00:00:37
Speaker
Then, we call for actions needed today.
00:00:40
Speaker
And we are your hosts today, Donata Taddea and… And Alexandra or Sasha Volkova.
Engagement of International Federations in Grassroots
00:00:54
Speaker
Today we got together to discuss the future of International Federation's engagement with grassroots.
00:00:59
Speaker
And we invited Mike Naivelersnik to do this exercise with us.
00:01:03
Speaker
Welcome Mike to SCORE Podcast.
00:01:06
Speaker
Hello, hello from Munich.
00:01:09
Speaker
Mike is an international senior sports management consultant.
00:01:13
Speaker
Mike switched over to the sports sector in 2011 after 10 years in corporate management consultancy.
00:01:19
Speaker
Ever since, Mike has been mainly working in strategic planning and commercial business development in various international sports federations.
00:01:26
Speaker
Mike paved the way for 3-3 basketball to become an Olympic sport and reorganized volleyball's event assets for media and partnerships.
00:01:35
Speaker
Currently, Mike is working on Handball Masterplan 2028 and is a member of Sports Climbing TV and Marketing Commission.
00:01:43
Speaker
Mike told us that throughout all these years working in sports, he has been amazed how well sports governing bodies are exploiting their commercial rights for the elite sports in comparison to how little is invested into global grassroots projects.
00:01:57
Speaker
I'm quoting Mike here, but instead, I suggest we start right away talking to him.
00:02:02
Speaker
So let's move to the first part of our discussion and define what is happening now and today.
00:02:14
Speaker
Mike, let's actually start by establishing a common ground.
00:02:19
Speaker
What are grassroots programs and why should they be important for international sports federations?
Understanding Grassroots Sports
00:02:30
Speaker
Well, it's complex and as multidimensional like many other things in sport.
00:02:35
Speaker
My personal description of grassroots is literally everything that is not elite.
00:02:40
Speaker
And now, as we know from the Olympic history and from the history of many other sports, even the discussion about what is an elite competition or what is elite sports is rather complex.
00:02:49
Speaker
So I would break it down to grassroots sport for me is everything where people are doing sports and not getting paid for it.
00:02:59
Speaker
And can you explain how it's different from amateur or the concept of amateur sports then?
00:03:04
Speaker
What's the difference between grassroots and amateur?
00:03:06
Speaker
Well, there is, as you probably know, back from the 70s or 80s, there was this big discussion like which, for instance, in tennis, but even in boxing, that certain players or certain athletes had amateur status.
00:03:19
Speaker
And then on the other hand, were not allowed to participate in certain professional events, which I personally never understood.
00:03:26
Speaker
why this distinction was actually made anyways.
00:03:28
Speaker
But from our perspective as of today, and I would think that's probably the definition that most modern sports marketers and sports management people have in mind, elite sports, elite competition is really where professional compensation for the players is involved.
00:03:45
Speaker
where everything else, so, meaning grassroots, is really people practicing and participating in sport events, but not getting paid for it.
00:03:54
Speaker
But this is, again, my personal definition and it's probably something that you would not find, or maybe you would find it on Wikipedia, I didn't check, actually.
00:04:04
Speaker
Mike, and why then this ecosystem of grassroots should be important for the International Sports Federation?
Challenges in Investing in Grassroots
00:04:13
Speaker
Well, the interesting thing is that over the last, I would say, 20, 30 years, so let's say as of the 70s, 80s maybe, were really not only the American leagues as probably one of the first ones, but then also event organizers, of course, like FIFA, like UEFA, like the IOC, really commercially drove their assets to a whole different level.
00:04:36
Speaker
I would say this really started in the 70s, maybe in the 80s.
00:04:40
Speaker
And what happened is, in my opinion and from today's view, is that many of the sport marketers and of the sports governing bodies, of course, realized that you can make a lot of money with the creation of your elite competition through media rights, marketing rights, licensing, you name it.
00:05:01
Speaker
And this worked well.
00:05:01
Speaker
I mean, if you look at the income those organizations are making over the last decades, that's really impressing.
00:05:07
Speaker
And I feel that at the same time, because there was so much money to be made, in a way, most international sports federations, at least, in a way, forgot about the development of the grassroots.
00:05:19
Speaker
because they did not see an immediate return on invest financially on one side and on the other side.
00:05:25
Speaker
And this is now a highly political point.
00:05:29
Speaker
And we might go into more details later on.
00:05:31
Speaker
But the second reason is that from an international Federation's perspective, the grassroots sports, meaning that development aspect per definition was not part of their responsibility, but was actually
00:05:45
Speaker
the responsibility either of a national federation of the respective sport, if not even more local, meaning some kind of regional federation.
00:05:53
Speaker
So they didn't really feel responsible for a global development of their sport.
00:06:00
Speaker
Again, not in every case, but I would say in the majority of the cases.
00:06:04
Speaker
And this also really just changed maybe a little bit over the last five or 10 years, I would say.
00:06:11
Speaker
I just want to come back to what you said before.
00:06:13
Speaker
Can you explain by what you mean by international sports federations are quite reluctant to invest in grassroots?
Sports Governance vs Business Strategies
00:06:21
Speaker
So why is it important for them?
00:06:24
Speaker
Why they should invest and why they are not investing?
00:06:27
Speaker
If you could give us more detail.
00:06:30
Speaker
Well, if you benchmark it, literally what is happening in the private sector, I mean, if you see or if you just read what the big management consulting companies, for instance, the McKinsey's, the Boston Consulting Groups and so on, what they did over the last 20, 30, 40 years is there was always a trend of centralizing and decentralizing businesses.
00:06:50
Speaker
This happened in many industries.
00:06:52
Speaker
There were certain periods of time where it was very
00:06:55
Speaker
en vogue to centralize businesses.
00:06:57
Speaker
Then after a couple of periods, there were other times where then decentralization was very much en vogue.
00:07:04
Speaker
Today, the common, let's say, management sense is that it depends.
00:07:11
Speaker
There is no one fits all solution for different businesses, for different industries.
00:07:17
Speaker
For instance, in the private sector, if we take the automotive industry, where I used to work before,
00:07:22
Speaker
It is in a way common sense now that of course you have a headquarter and of course you have centralized business operations, for instance, accounting, for instance, central product development on one side, but then on the other side, the whole sales process in the automotive industry, so where you buy your car, for instance, is a very much decentralized business.
00:07:46
Speaker
So this is just a benchmark from the automotive industry.
00:07:48
Speaker
Now, if you copy paste this into the sports world,
00:07:52
Speaker
In my opinion, the same thing should actually be happening.
00:07:55
Speaker
So as international sports governing body should actually reflect and think, okay, what's the status?
00:08:01
Speaker
What are my capacities?
00:08:03
Speaker
What of my entire work that I need to do in order to grow my sport can I do centrally and should I do centrally?
00:08:10
Speaker
And what can or should I outsource to my national federations or so on?
00:08:15
Speaker
So this is the choice that they could actually make.
00:08:17
Speaker
But what I'm trying to say
00:08:19
Speaker
is that in my opinion, many international sports governing bodies were focusing on the elite part only, as I said before, purely because of commercial reasons.
00:08:29
Speaker
And second, because they always thought no development is done by the national
Declining Sports Participation and Grassroots Investment
00:08:34
Speaker
federations.
00:08:35
Speaker
Now you asked me, Sasha, why do I think that this should potentially change?
00:08:39
Speaker
Or why should they have a motivation to change?
00:08:41
Speaker
Again, if you think about the benchmark that I gave you, of course, if you centrally at least steer and define
00:08:49
Speaker
your development programs and your grassroots programs, if you do this centrally, well, then of course you have a way higher chance to have a, let's say, common and aligned development process along the entire world.
00:09:03
Speaker
If you leave this to every country or to every continent, well, then they can literally do whatever they want.
00:09:09
Speaker
And this is unfortunately what happened in many, many sports over the last years.
00:09:15
Speaker
I want to come back to what you said previously, that they have to grow the sports.
00:09:20
Speaker
So apologies, I'm repeating the same question like third time.
00:09:24
Speaker
Why is it important?
00:09:25
Speaker
What's happening now that the grassroots should be involved?
00:09:28
Speaker
Do we see the decline in participation rates, which affect eventually the fund base, like the fund base going down and then less people participate, so less elite athletes consequently?
00:09:39
Speaker
Or what's the problem?
00:09:41
Speaker
I want to come back to this essence of why question.
00:09:45
Speaker
Well, if you look at what's happening recently or over the last 10 to 15 years in the sports participation in general, we have declining number of active sportsmanship anyways across all levels of society, across all sports.
00:09:58
Speaker
Being at soccer, being at football, being at tennis, all of them are facing declined participation.
00:10:04
Speaker
They're all facing declined participation of youth.
00:10:08
Speaker
They're all facing fewer membership in sports clubs.
00:10:12
Speaker
So
00:10:13
Speaker
literally all those sports governing bodies have actually the same problem.
00:10:17
Speaker
So this is in a nutshell, Sasha, this is actually the answer to your question that because of different, let's say, trends in society, being it people become more lazy, being it because people are much more attached to TV and social media, there are many, many reasons that we can discuss for hours.
00:10:36
Speaker
But the fact is that the numbers of people practicing sports grasp
00:10:41
Speaker
Sports is declining globally.
00:10:43
Speaker
So literally, this is the one and most important reason for all international sports governing body that they need to invest in grassroots sports.
00:10:51
Speaker
If they want to make sure that their sport survives both on a grassroots level, but then ultimately also on the elite level, because of course, without grassroots, without development, you will not have elite sport as well.
00:11:06
Speaker
I think this is quite a strong statement.
Successful Grassroots Investment Examples
00:11:09
Speaker
Grassroots are essential for the survival of sports, elite sports and international federations.
00:11:15
Speaker
And this brings me to a how question.
00:11:20
Speaker
And I'm connecting to what you said before about this idea of centralization.
00:11:26
Speaker
Is there nowadays an international sports federation that is implementing this model that is successful in investing in grassroots?
00:11:37
Speaker
Not very many.
00:11:38
Speaker
Again, if we do a little benchmarking and see how, let's say, sports funding or development work is being done these days, I would say you can technically separate or cluster all international sports governing bodies in five, let's say, development statuses.
00:11:57
Speaker
So you have the really, really small federations.
00:12:00
Speaker
I don't know.
00:12:01
Speaker
Just making examples now, archery or bowling or trail running or you name it.
00:12:07
Speaker
Those federations, especially also the ones that are not part of the Olympic program, they are so small and they have such limited budget that they are not really doing centralized global development efforts anyways, simply because they don't have the money for it.
00:12:23
Speaker
The second level, a little bit more developed, are probably the ones that at least they have a certain amount of budget and they are able to financially support their national federations or their continental federations.
00:12:36
Speaker
Again, this is better than nothing.
00:12:37
Speaker
Unfortunately, this is what probably most federations are doing until today.
00:12:42
Speaker
And Sascha Donate, as you both know, because you also worked in sports,
00:12:46
Speaker
we know how, I would say, little success those purely sending money development efforts actually had.
00:12:54
Speaker
Because in many, many cases, then the receiving countries did not use the money the way it was actually earmarked for and then normally you don't have any development success.
00:13:04
Speaker
Yeah, there is also a problem of accountability and reporting about the money expense.
00:13:07
Speaker
Exactly, exactly.
00:13:09
Speaker
Then the third level, I would say again of the little bit advanced ones, those are the ones that are maybe on top of sending money, developing really active development programs for the grassroots, mainly everything around, of course, coaching and refereeing, which is understandable because again, coaching and refereeing is probably the most important element of in sport on grassroots level anyways.
00:13:34
Speaker
So if you want to make sure that your sport is developing correctly in one country or the other, you need to make sure that you have the coaches and the referees.
00:13:43
Speaker
So this is the third level.
00:13:45
Speaker
Then the fourth level, I would say are the ones
00:13:48
Speaker
that already have understood that they need to centrally develop a development plan.
00:13:55
Speaker
So meaning they are on top of maybe sending money on top of maybe providing coaches and referee support.
00:14:02
Speaker
They are centrally spreading the word and centrally doing development work.
00:14:08
Speaker
And there you have, of course, the prominent examples, for instance, of UEFA or of FIFA, they have,
00:14:15
Speaker
They are professional freelancers, they are professional development staff.
00:14:19
Speaker
They are actually traveling literally from one country to the other and really teaching and educating people on site.
00:14:28
Speaker
But obviously this is only to be done with a certain amount of money that you have in your business.
00:14:32
Speaker
in your budget and then the fifth hold on mike just a little clarifying question when you say like when they they have coaching and refereeing programs so do i understand the grassroots coaching and amateur coaching and referees programs or at the end it doesn't really matter at the end you need to start with educating referees and coaches if they then at the end educate and and and work with grassroots in their country or with elite
00:14:57
Speaker
At the end doesn't matter at the beginning, but ultimately, of course, you have a certain development curve, both with coaches and with referees.
00:15:05
Speaker
So when you start to educate them, you would, of course, prepare them first to work with grassroots themselves because the rules and regulations are not as strict.
00:15:14
Speaker
But then in the long run, of course, you can or you should develop a
00:15:18
Speaker
those people then also to be able to, for instance, work with international competitions.
00:15:23
Speaker
So it's also like a gradual growth that you have both with coaches and with also the referees.
00:15:28
Speaker
So you need to do both, but you start with grassroots.
00:15:31
Speaker
Understood.
Need for KPIs in Grassroots Programs
00:15:34
Speaker
Thanks.
00:15:34
Speaker
So I was saying, so the fifth level, maybe if you want to use this model of development of the grassroots are the federations that are really building, I would say, a holistic academy.
00:15:46
Speaker
Now, if again you take the example of UEFA, they even call it Academy.
00:15:51
Speaker
As I said, of course, you cannot compare the budgets of UEFA with a sport that is not even Olympic.
00:15:57
Speaker
But I would say those national governing or international governing bodies that are able to really build a holistic academy that would really include all elements of a professional development program, that's then probably the fifth, in my opinion, and really, let's say, highest level of development that you can offer to your stakeholders as an international sports governing body.
00:16:23
Speaker
Mike, you made me think about these layers and different capacities of International Federation's focus and structure.
00:16:32
Speaker
I'm thinking, how are they measuring their success?
00:16:37
Speaker
Are there any general indicators common across all these five layers of categories or are there any specific innovative indicators that have been developed?
00:16:49
Speaker
Well, Donata, I think this is pretty much a new ground.
00:16:55
Speaker
I mean, if you think about what I just explained, that in many cases you don't even have reached, let's say, a holistic level of global development anyways, well, this automatically explains you in a way that, of course, none of them or very little of them have defined any kind of measurement or KPI.
00:17:14
Speaker
In my opinion, but again, I'm coming from the corporate world,
00:17:17
Speaker
always literally working with KPIs, with dashboards and so on.
00:17:21
Speaker
I personally believe that of course you can, maybe not easily, but you can definitely measure the return on investment and even the success of your development efforts.
00:17:30
Speaker
This can be KPIs like growing numbers of children playing your sport.
00:17:36
Speaker
This can be number of clubs in a certain territory.
00:17:39
Speaker
This can be number of sponsors, sponsorship income.
00:17:42
Speaker
So there's actually a whole variety of
00:17:45
Speaker
of numbers that you can collect that could give you an indication if your money that you spent on your development efforts was actually successful.
00:17:56
Speaker
But I agree, Donate, this is probably a pretty new field still, and I'm not aware of many
00:18:02
Speaker
international sports governing bodies that are actually doing so i actually had a pretty interesting discussion about this topic a couple weeks ago where i was also saying well you know what technically if you really mean it very serious in your development efforts you could even make the money that you give to your national federations dependent on their own development efforts and this is also something that's
00:18:27
Speaker
that's hardly ever ever happening i mean as you know i have worked with basketball with volleyball with many others to my knowledge until today this is not happening so they are still giving money as i said in addition maybe also some other kind of support but they are hardly ever really asking for hard
00:18:46
Speaker
feedback or hard kpis that would justify what they actually spent the money with and also there are no consequences so if you give 500 000 to some country and you hear nothing back you maybe don't get any kpi maybe no project well they will still keep those 500 000 and they will probably receive the same amount next year because there's no
00:19:08
Speaker
follow up and no consequence and this is by the way let me just continue here and this is also coming back to what sasha asked before what is the advantage or why should international sports governing body invest in grassroots and why should they do it centrally well again because if you don't have one central hub really taking care of it well then the money goes everywhere and you will never see it again
00:19:33
Speaker
You actually summarized the first part well for us doing our job here, Mike.
00:19:37
Speaker
Thanks.
Future Governance Models
00:19:38
Speaker
And I think we understood, we got the idea of what's going on today, right, Donata?
00:19:43
Speaker
Yes, I think so.
00:19:44
Speaker
I think it is time to jump to the second part of our conversation, our desired future.
00:19:54
Speaker
Mike, what future have you taken us to?
00:19:57
Speaker
Where are we?
00:19:59
Speaker
Well, we are in the year and again, I haven't aligned this proposal with the IOC, but we are now in the year 2054.
00:20:06
Speaker
And by then we got rid of all national Olympic committees and of all international sports governing bodies because we realized that we actually don't need them anymore.
00:20:14
Speaker
Now, of course, this is a little bit accelerated, but what I'm coming down to is.
00:20:19
Speaker
And again, we don't need to define a certain period.
00:20:22
Speaker
I mean, what I'm going to walk you through now in my mind, this is of course something that's not happening in 10 years, maybe not in 20 years.
00:20:30
Speaker
So maybe the year 2050 is not that far away.
00:20:33
Speaker
So let's come back to what I said before with the benchmarking from the automotive industry.
00:20:39
Speaker
In the ideal scenario, all the international sports governing bodies underwent the same professional, let's say, procedure of strategic planning and really making sure where are their strengths and where are the weaknesses when it comes to the development of their sport.
00:20:56
Speaker
And then maybe you will have some sports that say, oh, you know what?
00:21:01
Speaker
In a way, we do feel actually powerful enough and knowledgeable enough to do the entire grassroots development centrally
00:21:09
Speaker
from whatever, Lausanne, Geneva, you name it.
00:21:13
Speaker
By the way, you see first examples of federations going a little bit in that direction.
00:21:17
Speaker
If you think about FIBA, International Basketball Federation, as you probably know, they still have their continental confederations, they call it.
00:21:26
Speaker
But from a legal perspective, they are more or less under one umbrella with FIBA.
00:21:32
Speaker
Also with the same, by the way, you probably know with the same look and feel,
00:21:37
Speaker
of their events.
00:21:38
Speaker
So this is already very much centralized, at least on a commercial level.
00:21:44
Speaker
But then, okay, you will also have other sports governing bodies that say, oh, you know what?
00:21:49
Speaker
We are so weak in our headquarter.
00:21:50
Speaker
We don't feel, for whatever reason, we don't feel like developing grassroots centrally.
00:21:56
Speaker
We will maybe continue writing certain books and maybe certain educational material, but we will continue to leave
00:22:05
Speaker
the development of the grassroots sports to our continental confederations or to our national federations.
00:22:12
Speaker
And then maybe, and I'm not making this up, maybe you will have other sports that will actually say, well, you know what?
00:22:17
Speaker
It would actually be super efficient if we really get rid of all those boundaries and borders of national federations and continentals.
00:22:27
Speaker
Let's just be the governing bodies for our athletes directly.
00:22:33
Speaker
And then we come also to a, let's say, quote that I always like to mention is, by then sports would really move from being a B2B business to a B2C business.
00:22:46
Speaker
So what do I mean when I say this?
00:22:47
Speaker
B2B business is what's happening today.
00:22:50
Speaker
An international federation is serving the national federation.
00:22:55
Speaker
The national federation then is serving the regional federation.
00:22:58
Speaker
The regional federation is then serving the local club and so on.
00:23:02
Speaker
So you have this cascade of businesses serving businesses.
00:23:07
Speaker
Whereas B2C business, again, as you know it from many other businesses, is an international sports governing body, would be directly be in touch and in contact with the athlete.
00:23:19
Speaker
And there I can give you some examples as well.
00:23:21
Speaker
You know the 313 basketball project probably.
00:23:25
Speaker
launched back in 2012.
00:23:25
Speaker
This was a first attempt to say, okay, the entire three-in-three competition landscape, so meaning all events, all organizers, all results, all players are on one central platform.
00:23:38
Speaker
So we don't need a national basketball federation anymore.
00:23:42
Speaker
We don't need a national club anymore.
00:23:44
Speaker
If they want to be part of this project, organize three-in-three events, perfect.
00:23:48
Speaker
But the end FIBA has now, I don't know the
00:23:52
Speaker
the numbers up to date, but in the three on three planet, which is this central platform, I think FIBA has access
00:24:01
Speaker
120 000 basketball players so this is pure
Direct Athlete Engagement Models
00:24:05
Speaker
b2c business in sports climbing where i'm in the in the in the sports commission now as well in the tv and marketing commission this is also an idea that we are that we are playing back and forth because we say should we not have the opportunity or give climbers sports climbers the opportunity to become direct member of the ifsc
00:24:27
Speaker
with all the benefits that you then could then give them.
00:24:30
Speaker
So what I'm trying to say in the year 2050, in my ideal future, at least all those boards governing bodies made this exercise to contemplate about it and not just leave their governance and leave their way of management and leave their way of grassroots development just the way it is because it has been done like this forever.
00:24:53
Speaker
Sorry, just to clarify about this third model, actually, like a step back.
00:24:57
Speaker
So you drew for us three potential models, not necessarily calling them ideal.
00:25:03
Speaker
One is when it's totally centralized.
00:25:07
Speaker
Another one...
00:25:09
Speaker
with the same umbrella structure when there is international federation, then confederate confederation level, regional confederations, then national federations, et cetera.
00:25:20
Speaker
And the third model, which is governing body for athletes, B to C model.
00:25:27
Speaker
So this is kind of ideal model we are talking about.
00:25:29
Speaker
So when you say that, just a little question before you continue.
00:25:34
Speaker
When you say that athletes are members, like it is happening in IFSC, you mean all the athletes?
00:25:46
Speaker
Not only athletes performing in elite competition in the world level, you mean all the athletes even performing on a local, regional, city level?
00:25:54
Speaker
In the ideal world, yes.
00:25:55
Speaker
Okay, thanks.
00:25:56
Speaker
Because other question, why shouldn't it?
00:25:58
Speaker
And just to clarify, Sascha, those examples I gave you before, none of those models is the ideal model.
00:26:04
Speaker
model because again think about the benchmark that i gave you in automotive or the money that boston consulting mckinsey is doing the money they are making is by every 10 15 years contemplating what is for my asset for my industry or in that in our case for my sport what is the elite and the perfect governance model so i'm not saying that one is better than the other but what i'm saying is that right now they're all doing the same thing
00:26:31
Speaker
they all have an international federation then they have a national one a regional one blah blah blah what i'm saying is that it's worthwhile looking and contemplating if this is really the best way to go and because for instance maybe for one sport or for some sports and this is part of the solution in my personal opinion part of the solution is indeed a mixed model so you will have certain again
00:26:56
Speaker
Let's again take the comparison of automotive from before.
00:27:00
Speaker
Also in sports, I believe there are certain aspects of the operations that should be central.
00:27:06
Speaker
For instance, of course, the organization of the world championships, for instance.
00:27:11
Speaker
This is something that will always be and should always be centralized and should always be made or developed from the headquarters.
00:27:20
Speaker
Or Olympic qualifiers as well, yeah?
00:27:21
Speaker
For instance.
00:27:22
Speaker
Then there are other parts of the operations where I think, okay,
00:27:27
Speaker
And let's stick with the development program.
00:27:30
Speaker
I do believe that a development effort and development program should be steered, managed and governed centrally.
00:27:39
Speaker
But I do believe that the implementation should happen locally.
00:27:42
Speaker
So I'm not a super big fan of those, let's say,
00:27:48
Speaker
Jan Bogaert, PhD.
00:27:48
Speaker
: Your professionals or consultants travel from one country to the other and explain them how to do things.
00:27:54
Speaker
I do believe that the local development works best with the local resources that you have.
00:28:00
Speaker
Of course, you fly in external and capacities once in a while, but it should still be happened locally.
00:28:06
Speaker
So in a nutshell, Sasha, what I tried to say is in 2050, I'm not sure what is the ideal model.
00:28:13
Speaker
I'm just saying I do believe that having more B2C is helping in any case.
00:28:19
Speaker
And we might come back to that why I'm thinking this later on.
00:28:22
Speaker
But I'm not saying that central or decentral is the one is better than the other.
00:28:26
Speaker
I'm just saying it depends on the sport.
00:28:29
Speaker
That's the one thing I'm saying.
00:28:30
Speaker
And the other is I don't think that this procedure is being done by many of the international organizations.
00:28:35
Speaker
sports governing bodies because they just replicate as i said before how the structure of sports and the structure of development has always been since coubertin and since the games in athens we have this model of again ioc national olympic committees ifs nfs and so on
00:28:54
Speaker
Yes, definitely, Mikey.
00:28:56
Speaker
There is a lot of repetition, right?
00:28:58
Speaker
There is perhaps lack of creativity.
00:29:00
Speaker
So in 2050, you envision a future where there is more experimentation playing with these models, governance models.
00:29:08
Speaker
And my question is, do you also see new stakeholders joining this new governance system?
00:29:16
Speaker
Do you see any new actor arising and taking a key role in defining this future?
00:29:21
Speaker
Personally, Donata, I would hope so.
00:29:24
Speaker
We come back again, what we just discussed, because also the inclusion of the private sector in the operations of a sports governing body is happening quite rarely.
00:29:34
Speaker
So if you could, I mean, you could question, for instance, why an international federation is actually organizing events themselves.
00:29:45
Speaker
So if you question it really critically, you could really argue that
00:29:49
Speaker
Is a sports governing body per se really the perfect event agency?
00:29:54
Speaker
In my opinion, they are not.
00:29:56
Speaker
And maybe they also shouldn't be.
00:30:00
Speaker
But this comes back to, in a way, chicken and egg discussion.
00:30:03
Speaker
Okay, so what is then the core responsibility of a sports governing body?
00:30:08
Speaker
And this on the other way is coming back to our vision of 2015.
00:30:10
Speaker
That's where I said from a sports perspective, I'm not really sure if we really need the sports governing bodies in the way they are today.
00:30:22
Speaker
We might need them for certain organizational reasons.
00:30:28
Speaker
So for, again...
00:30:31
Speaker
being sure that we have the qualifiers for the Olympics and so on.
00:30:34
Speaker
But other than this, at the end, ultimately, you might really challenge that question to which extent you still need those international federations and what their core purpose at the end then should actually be.
00:30:47
Speaker
so to come back to to your question donada i would yeah i would by 2050 i would hope for way more corporate and private sector involvement again we see first trends there if you take of course the example now of cvc investing in volleyball world or if or if you look at other private equities investing in major soccer clubs so you already see
00:31:12
Speaker
private sector money flowing into sports and of course mainly affecting again the elite part of sports by 2050 i also hope that we will find this engagement and investment of external money also into the grassroots part because and maybe this is also for our discussion still yet to come i also do believe that there's a lot of money to be made in the grassroots sport and not just in the elite sport
00:31:39
Speaker
I just want to trip further a little bit here.
00:31:42
Speaker
So talking about this other stakeholders involvement, I just had an idea.
00:31:48
Speaker
What do you think if the model was like to adopt one grassroots engagement of development agency like WADA is for anti-doping matters in the Olympic world?
00:32:01
Speaker
So the same could be like completely different centralized body.
00:32:07
Speaker
So, which is independent from international federations, but they're subject to comply with this World Development Agency kind of thing.
00:32:17
Speaker
This is, for instance, one very good example, or you can have other examples.
00:32:21
Speaker
What I also never understood is why many national federations don't see the benefit of cooperating with their neighbors.
00:32:31
Speaker
especially if you look at territories like Europe, where the territories are so small anyways.
00:32:37
Speaker
I never understood why then countries like, and again, I'm just making examples, again, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, so on, why they are not in different sports, but also across sports, working way, way more together in every terms of the sport, in organizing their own leagues,
00:32:53
Speaker
So we come back to a whole different discussion.
00:32:55
Speaker
Why does a little country like Austria or Switzerland really think that it's of any global value to have their own national league in football, for instance.
00:33:04
Speaker
My personal opinion, there is no real value, just the fact that they are stubborn and think that they need a national league because they are their own nation.
00:33:12
Speaker
But we know that there are tendencies of combining certain smaller national leagues from a sporting perspective.
00:33:20
Speaker
But what I'm saying is also that in the development area, I never understood why smaller countries or neighboring countries are not making common efforts, why they are not combining their coaching programs.
00:33:34
Speaker
why they are not organizing maybe certain kids camps together.
00:33:38
Speaker
So why do they all need to facilitate and create their resources by themselves and not share them?
00:33:46
Speaker
Like again, take the corporate world as a benchmark like you would have in a corporate world in many, many aspects.
00:33:53
Speaker
A company like Apple or a company like Tesla, they don't sink in national borders.
00:33:58
Speaker
They think as a national company, they maybe have still their local regional sales agents, but that's about it.
00:34:06
Speaker
Everything else is managed centrally and they make sure that they can add value and exchange knowledge across any kind of national
Regional Collaboration in Sports Development
00:34:15
Speaker
borders.
00:34:15
Speaker
They don't exist for companies like that.
00:34:20
Speaker
Saying on this reasoning, I'm thinking now about the examples of the European Union.
00:34:26
Speaker
They have euro regions and they invest a lot of regional cooperation.
00:34:30
Speaker
So I'm thinking that the sports sector has a lot to learn also from these other experiences, institutional experiences.
00:34:38
Speaker
And I'm also thinking...
00:34:40
Speaker
Could these new regional entities be the one thinking centrally the development programs?
00:34:48
Speaker
Because I'm not so sure that the international layer, the international level is the rightful owner of the development programs, leaving up to the national actors to implement.
00:35:03
Speaker
What if is the other way around?
00:35:06
Speaker
What do you think?
00:35:07
Speaker
If it's the national...
00:35:09
Speaker
the one more entitled to define the development program because they leave their experience on site and the international layer stakeholder should be the one supporting the implementation.
00:35:22
Speaker
Yeah, Donata, this is what I meant before with what I mean with a really very distinct and very clear definition of what the capabilities are and that they really probably differ from one sport to the other.
00:35:35
Speaker
To answer your question, in a way, yes and no.
00:35:38
Speaker
So for instance, of course, when you think about development, of course, the central guidance on the rules and regulation of a sport, they always need to come from the very, very top.
00:35:49
Speaker
So you cannot have your national federations now all of a sudden create development programs.
00:35:55
Speaker
And at the end, after a couple of years, you actually see that they used for the same sport, all of a sudden they use different laws of the game.
00:36:04
Speaker
So there are certain
00:36:05
Speaker
Key elements, and this is what I mean with those are the key elements that will always be the main purpose of a sports governing bodies and rules and regulations is definitely one of them.
00:36:16
Speaker
So this will always, even by 2015, be, this needs to be centrally steered and needs to be centrally managed.
00:36:24
Speaker
But then I agree, Donata, that then the implementation or the development of certain grassroots initiatives.
00:36:30
Speaker
So
00:36:31
Speaker
whatever programs for kids after school or certain programs for disabilities or certain programs for obese people you name it those different maybe now national initiatives that's exactly what you also said they don't necessarily need to be national those can be maybe private sector companies private entities that create their own
00:36:55
Speaker
let's say, development plans and maybe even finance them themselves.
00:37:00
Speaker
There are examples that those kind of things are actually working, even financially independently from an international sports governing body.
00:37:09
Speaker
And then, yeah, maybe this is the solution.
00:37:11
Speaker
I always, in that regard, Donata, Sascha, I'm always a big fan of the word endorsement.
00:37:18
Speaker
So I always believe that a national or international sports governing body should, at the end,
00:37:23
Speaker
work together with as many parties as possible.
00:37:26
Speaker
And they should be coming from the private sector, they should be coming from the governmental sector, they should be coming from the educational sector.
00:37:34
Speaker
And I know that for many old school presidents, secretary generals, this endorsement, this inclusion is a mindset that they just have never appreciated.
00:37:46
Speaker
And this is slowly, slowly changing and shifting.
00:37:50
Speaker
There are examples of different sports
00:37:53
Speaker
where I do believe that the management is already quite open to corporations in different ways.
00:38:00
Speaker
Let's face it, it has always been a typical white man problem that those certain presidents, certain senior staff just always wanted to protect their sport against any kind of influence from the outside.
00:38:14
Speaker
And this is why they for many decades never allowed corporations, again, with private sector or with other cooperation partners.
00:38:23
Speaker
Before we move to the next part, I just want to clarify one thing from what you said.
00:38:28
Speaker
You are talking about shifting from B2B to B2C mindset.
00:38:32
Speaker
Yes.
00:38:33
Speaker
But then now you're saying that on the international level, there should be key elements should be worked on, like rules and regulations, guidelines and other things that are going down to the local level and that's where it should be implemented.
00:38:50
Speaker
So isn't it a bit controversial to B2C mindset when the International Federation should work directly with a client?
00:38:58
Speaker
Oh, I'm misunderstanding something here.
00:39:01
Speaker
No, that's exactly what I said, but this is also exactly what I meant.
00:39:05
Speaker
There are certain key elements that always, no matter B2B, B2C businesses, that always need to be
00:39:13
Speaker
at the core and at the center and rules and regulations are one of them because as I said before otherwise you end up with different rules for the same game.
00:39:23
Speaker
but many, many other things.
00:39:24
Speaker
And I would say, if you think about the entire, let's say, value chain or let's say operational chain that a sport is facing, I would say 90% can be decentralized and also made, let's say, to a B2C business at the end, but 10%, core 10%, and as I said, things like anti-doping, things like rules, regulation, those 10% will always stay
00:39:53
Speaker
within the headquarters and will always be centrally and again if we let's make up our mind again with the benchmarking what i said before this is exactly what's happening in the private sector as well you have those certain elements as i said the development of a new apple product or of a new tesla model this will always be done central you will not leave your sales agent in switzerland and leave him all of a sudden with the task to to create a new tesla that's not going to happen this will always remain
00:40:22
Speaker
at the center of the corporation, whereas then other elements are then definitely up to a B2C business.
Strategic Planning in Sports Governance
00:40:30
Speaker
All right, I think it's a bit more clear for me, but let me summarize before we move to the next part.
00:40:36
Speaker
So you are talking about the mixed model that could be different and should be different for every sport, where certain processes are clearly centralized and clearly defined on the international level.
00:40:49
Speaker
Lots of other operations should be left on the national level, but to thinking about accountability and quite a strict control.
00:40:56
Speaker
Certain types of operations should shift to B2C mindset when international federations are working directly with athletes, even if we talk about basic and just participation level sport.
00:41:09
Speaker
And as I understand, what is needed is just to act.
00:41:15
Speaker
So this question needs to be raised and the action should start.
00:41:19
Speaker
And with this, talking about actions and thinking about actions, I suggest we move to the next part of our conversation.
00:41:26
Speaker
Or do you have anything to add, Donate, actually?
00:41:28
Speaker
Let's walk back.
00:41:30
Speaker
Let's start to walk backwards.
00:41:32
Speaker
Deal.
00:41:37
Speaker
So, Mike, what are important milestones in this pathway?
00:41:43
Speaker
And I remind you that we are walking back from the future to the present.
00:41:49
Speaker
It's not an easy exercise, but let's try.
00:41:54
Speaker
Well, ultimately, I mean, at the end, we talk about the typical change management process.
00:42:02
Speaker
And as we know, change always hurts and change always costs resources and change is always painful.
00:42:09
Speaker
So again, those are ideas that we just discussed that not going to happen from one presidential election to the other.
00:42:16
Speaker
So if we, as we said before, if we keep the year 2050 or 2040 in mind,
00:42:25
Speaker
The way or the operational work to actually make up your mind and move in that direction is not that much of a hard work.
00:42:34
Speaker
Ultimately, this would be the outcome of a typical strategic planning process that you do with your sports governing body.
00:42:40
Speaker
Like the IOC is doing, like UEFA is doing, like FIFA is doing.
00:42:43
Speaker
Normally, you do your long-term strategies and they include then the development and the grassroots part.
00:42:50
Speaker
Normally, you do those strategic plans for a five to 10-year period.
00:42:53
Speaker
And the process to get to those kinds of plans can be as quick as, let's say, a three, four intense week workshop.
00:43:02
Speaker
Or like in the case of European handball, for instance, one of my mandates I just had over the last
00:43:07
Speaker
period with was actually a process of 18 months.
00:43:10
Speaker
But this is still the first step that you would need to do.
00:43:16
Speaker
You would need to get the engagement of the senior staff of the president, of the secretary general, of the board of the sports organization to be really up for a strategic planning process and including of this strategic planning process a clear
00:43:35
Speaker
review of the governance model that we have right now um and then if the if the oh by the way let me not forget in this in this process it's always super important to get the external input
00:43:50
Speaker
So of course we will never come up with a new governance model and a new way of development.
00:43:55
Speaker
If only the president, the secretary general and the board of administration sits together, you need to have the external input, of course.
00:44:02
Speaker
And with external input, I mean critical external input.
00:44:05
Speaker
So meaning you need someone from the media, from the media partners, from your sponsorship partners, from your players, from some grassroots representatives,
00:44:14
Speaker
So the bigger the party, the better, I always say.
00:44:17
Speaker
It's again, a lot more work to get all those opinions together.
00:44:21
Speaker
But at the end, the outcome will be way, way better.
00:44:24
Speaker
So this, I would say, is the first milestone to get this agreement at the end.
00:44:30
Speaker
signed by everyone, like a written documentation.
00:44:34
Speaker
We, by the year of 2050, want to make sure that we have found our new governance model that best serves our grassroots players.
00:44:43
Speaker
We want to have this and this targets and goals, and those can be KPIs.
00:44:48
Speaker
And we also want to move our sport from a more, or from a, let's say, old-fashioned B2B to a B2C business, wherever possible.
00:44:58
Speaker
this will be
Private Sector's Role in Grassroots Development
00:44:59
Speaker
the first step.
00:44:59
Speaker
And I think this can be, this alignment can be done within two years maximum.
00:45:08
Speaker
Mike, to summarize, external input, engagement of senior staff, so a fundamental shift in the mindset.
00:45:16
Speaker
What else to achieve this agreement?
00:45:19
Speaker
What else do we need?
00:45:20
Speaker
What resources do we need?
00:45:24
Speaker
Well, as I tried to say, it's...
00:45:28
Speaker
If, I mean, if we compare or if we look at the sports industry, how is it working these days?
00:45:34
Speaker
It is still very hard to find ways to get external input really be heard by management staff.
00:45:42
Speaker
And again, this is actually applicable for all the major international sports governing bodies.
00:45:47
Speaker
In my experience over the last 10 years, Donata, the best way to open up minds is
00:45:55
Speaker
is by having private sector businesses in the room.
00:46:00
Speaker
So again, if we take some prominent examples, FIBA signed a very prominent deal with Infront and DAZN already back in 2012, I believe.
00:46:11
Speaker
And great things happened afterwards because with Infront and DAZN, you had two very capable, strong commercial partners who just know how businesses are run in the private sector.
00:46:22
Speaker
Again, we talked about this before.
00:46:24
Speaker
If you take a recent example of the FIFIB, where you now have with CVC, a strong American venture capital company in it, of course, with also their own expertise in how to run commercial businesses.
00:46:38
Speaker
European Handball, another client of mine, they also signed a deal with...
00:46:43
Speaker
in front of DAZN, I think in 2016.
00:46:47
Speaker
So having those external views, ideally from commercial partners is always the best step to open eyes and ears for new sorts.
00:46:58
Speaker
So for everyone listening out there who is maybe working for some international sports governing bodies and is wondering
00:47:04
Speaker
how change in his or her organization can start and he or she does not have the feeling that it's happening internally.
00:47:11
Speaker
And it, by the way, never happens internally.
00:47:14
Speaker
Getting partners from the commercial external private sector is probably the best route to go.
00:47:22
Speaker
I'm thinking now about civil society organizations, how they fit into this equation.
00:47:29
Speaker
Because often grassroots overlaps with social programs, social impact programs.
00:47:36
Speaker
So were these NGOs, the experts, let's say, on specific matters, come in this picture?
00:47:44
Speaker
I think they will actually come in more and more in the future.
00:47:47
Speaker
Because if you see what happened just in the last four or five years,
00:47:52
Speaker
Everything around, of course, the, let's say ecological topic of sustainability, but also the CSR topic of corporate social responsibility is these days almost mandatory.
00:48:06
Speaker
Part in every strategy that you read from any kind of company or sports governing body that is working in sports.
00:48:14
Speaker
And if we take the prominent example from before, if we look at those companies, as I said, CVC, Infrontazone, just to take those three examples.
00:48:22
Speaker
Those are companies that are, of course, coming from a strong commercial background only, but even they by now have their own units dealing with CSR topics, dealing with sustainability topics and so on.
00:48:35
Speaker
And since all those companies, and again, this can replicate to many, many more, since these topics are not their core expertise, they will engage themselves more and more NGOs.
Financial Gains from Grassroots Investment
00:48:47
Speaker
and more and more other partners that are experts on development programs.
00:48:52
Speaker
And then kind of the circle closes to what I said before.
00:48:56
Speaker
At the end, the word endorsement, so meaning the cooperation of many, many stakeholders, is the key to success.
00:49:03
Speaker
So you will not create your successful grassroots program only with your commercial partner.
00:49:09
Speaker
Of course not.
00:49:10
Speaker
But it's definitely helping if you have your commercial partner and your development NGO partner, if you have them
00:49:17
Speaker
together on one table, just as an example.
00:49:21
Speaker
Mike, I want to challenge one of your ideas here and to ask a question here.
00:49:26
Speaker
So you say strategic plan.
00:49:29
Speaker
So to develop a strategic plan, which is not short terms, but a real strategy, like 30 years from now.
00:49:35
Speaker
Recently, we've seen by many sports covenant buddies, they are presenting even 10 years ago, World Archery and Olympic Agenda 2020.
00:49:44
Speaker
We've seen many examples of such strategies that have been presented, that have been worked on, that included in the working and development process.
00:49:55
Speaker
They've included lots of outside, I wouldn't use the word outsiders, but external.
00:50:01
Speaker
stakeholders and where are they going now?
00:50:06
Speaker
So is creating a strategic plan and publishing it, is it efficient tool?
00:50:13
Speaker
What should be, what could be the other milestone from just creating and signing under the strategic plan?
00:50:19
Speaker
This is one question and another question, they are related a little bit, you say involving private partners and you gave example of a five EB, FIBA and other things.
00:50:30
Speaker
When this partner signed up, do they, did they claim any plans to engage grassroots?
00:50:38
Speaker
Did they show any KPIs about involvement, about their development programs or something?
00:50:46
Speaker
to your first question sasha um excellent comment and um excellent um yeah um putting into words the current situation i would say 99.9 percent of all strategic plan in sports are only documents um and no implementation so
00:51:09
Speaker
I know my friends from McKinsey will now not like me if I say that, but they have this typical McKinsey approach.
00:51:14
Speaker
They have excellent presentations and they have a great command in publishing it.
00:51:22
Speaker
But then the implementation, normally they leave to someone else.
00:51:26
Speaker
Now in sports, it's even worse because in sports, the implementation is normally done by no one.
00:51:31
Speaker
So you're perfectly right that as of today, and I'm aware of many, many strategic plans in sports because I also worked on many of them.
00:51:39
Speaker
the strong willingness to actually implement so meaning to not just put down the goals but to really make a proper project management following up so where you clearly define who is working on what kind of matter with which timeline which priority which budget which outcome and so on and so on so on this is literally work for two three people full-time staff
00:52:04
Speaker
And literally no one of the, let's say bigger, again, except maybe the IOC, FIFA and UEFA, no one of the other sports governing bodies is actually working on the implementation of their strategy the way they actually should.
00:52:17
Speaker
So to answer your question, the difference between just signing and then other results is simply the execution.
00:52:26
Speaker
And that is really, really missing.
00:52:29
Speaker
To your second question, um,
00:52:34
Speaker
And again, I think I have a quite good view into this industry.
00:52:38
Speaker
So companies, as we said before, but let's make the picture wider.
00:52:41
Speaker
It's not just the zone and in front and so on.
00:52:45
Speaker
It's, of course, the IMGs and Sports 5 and you name them.
00:52:48
Speaker
Even they have now understood that you can easily monetize
00:52:53
Speaker
um grassroots sports that you can easily monetize even sustainability efforts that you can easily monetize ccsr efforts now of course again they are doing this with a different view on things because at the end ultimately those are still private sector businesses but all of them and then ultimately also the sports governing bodies understood that with the investment
00:53:20
Speaker
In grassroots, in sustainability, in CSR, there's also money to be made.
00:53:25
Speaker
So it's not just that they do it for the sake of it, because those are trendy topics and you need to do it.
00:53:30
Speaker
But all of them understood that you can actually monetize it very, very well.
00:53:34
Speaker
And this is, again, nothing that is just very special for the sports industry.
00:53:39
Speaker
Literally all the bigger companies out there understood by now that there's also money to be made with sustainable business.
00:53:47
Speaker
And there is definitely money to be made in B2C rather than B2B businesses.
00:53:54
Speaker
I like this monetization, very difficult word, conversation.
00:54:03
Speaker
There is a clear benefit to invest on grassroots.
00:54:06
Speaker
This is what you're saying, right?
00:54:07
Speaker
There is definitely.
00:54:09
Speaker
There is definitely.
00:54:11
Speaker
How can then we shift, and I say we as sports professionals, how can we shift this mindset from this solidarity approach that is still embedded with ideas of charity, of giving because it's good to give back to society, into a more structured approach that benefits not only the international federations, but all key stakeholders through society.
00:54:39
Speaker
capacity development programs, empowerment to implement their own projects and so on and so forth.
00:54:45
Speaker
I think Donata, in order also to keep our conversation really on the point, I think if the audience kind of can take away two arguments in that regard, I think that's
Grassroots Investment for Elite Sports Survival
00:54:57
Speaker
already helpful.
00:54:57
Speaker
The first one is to really, and we said that before, to really see investment in grassroots into the future of the sport because without grassroots development,
00:55:08
Speaker
you will ultimately also not have any elite sport because you need coaches to educate young children.
00:55:16
Speaker
You need referees, even in young age, to tell young people how certain games are actually played.
00:55:21
Speaker
So if you don't invest into that, well, then ultimately you will have no one left to play in the Champions League or in the NFL because you need those players and they need to be educated in some way
00:55:34
Speaker
And okay, there are ways or different ways to do it.
00:55:38
Speaker
Maybe the American system of having, let's say, all the sports development happening in schools, that's maybe one way to do it.
00:55:46
Speaker
But even there, you see the United States are heavily investing already in high school sport because they know if they don't invest in high school sport, they will not have proper college sport.
00:55:59
Speaker
And if they're not having proper college sport, they will not have an NFL or an NBA.
00:56:04
Speaker
It's that easy.
00:56:05
Speaker
So that's the one argument.
00:56:06
Speaker
And the second takeaway is because by exploiting grassroots, there is also money to be made, as I said.
00:56:14
Speaker
And this is a very, very easy argument because if you look at the pure numbers of grassroots
00:56:21
Speaker
players that you have in all those sports and at the end if you just say through whatever initiative you get just one dollar one Swiss franc from all those players well then in most sports you talk about two if not even three digit millions that you get and there are already prominent examples where where this B2C approach meaning directly taking money or selling items
00:56:50
Speaker
to your grassroots players is actually working.
00:56:55
Speaker
I still want to come back to the same question and I'm a bit annoying today, no, with this coming back to the same question, milestones.
00:57:02
Speaker
So strategic plan and make sure it's implemented.
00:57:07
Speaker
What else could you name as a success factor to enable the change?
00:57:14
Speaker
Well, if we continue the example that
00:57:16
Speaker
that we started before so let's say after two or three years we really have a strategic plan that would then include or implore or yeah include a proper development plan as well then I would say whatever is written down in this development plan of course needs to be yeah needs to be executed on a smaller scale first so I would not roll out globally
00:57:43
Speaker
especially not if we really talk about a significant change, then I would go step by step and maybe make changes just with some very prominent countries initially.
00:57:53
Speaker
And this is also a time period that I would allow to do for two or three years.
00:57:58
Speaker
So to make it very concrete, remember what we said before about those five development phases, literally, that you maybe have for an international sport.
00:58:07
Speaker
So let's say one international sports governing body now says, oh, you know what?
00:58:10
Speaker
Okay, let's move from just sending money to our members.
00:58:15
Speaker
Let's move to centrally decide what we're going to actually teach to our member countries.
00:58:21
Speaker
And let's also send certified coaches to travel from one country to the other and actually execute those development efforts.
00:58:30
Speaker
So let's say this is the goal that is written down in this development plan.
00:58:34
Speaker
Of course, I would then not start to implement this in all whatever 180 or 220 countries at the same time, because you need to see
00:58:42
Speaker
and try and error if this is really working for your respective sport.
00:58:46
Speaker
So maybe just take five, six, seven countries.
00:58:49
Speaker
Maybe it's even good to start with some big countries in your sport, or maybe some smaller ones so that you really have kind of the feedback on, let's say, a very professional organizational level on a very primitive organizational level.
00:59:03
Speaker
And this is something where I also believe you should take your time.
00:59:06
Speaker
So this, let's say, testing phase,
00:59:08
Speaker
I believe should go at least over a season, if not even two.
00:59:12
Speaker
And then because you will not see any of the results quicker than this.
00:59:17
Speaker
You will not see increased numbers again of referees or of children.
00:59:21
Speaker
You will not see this within a year.
00:59:24
Speaker
So this testing period definitely needs to go over two years.
00:59:27
Speaker
If you have more time, the better.
00:59:29
Speaker
So, and then if we continue our example and we have a proper
00:59:34
Speaker
analysis that would then say, yes, okay, this new development, grassroots development initiative is working for our sport, then a global rollout can actually happen.
00:59:45
Speaker
And this, again, if you think about it, to roll this out then to 180 countries, and let's say you're not a federation with huge amounts of money where you can send several dozens of experts in parallel, this is a process that will also take years.
01:00:00
Speaker
we are probably not that far away if we say the final status will be reached by 2050.
01:00:07
Speaker
Okay, just to quickly summarize.
01:00:09
Speaker
So if we go backwards from 2050, 2054, so we have a phase, final phase before total rollout of testing it on small federations, big federations.
Trialing New Development Strategies
01:00:19
Speaker
So step before that of developing the guidelines and implementation strategies,
01:00:25
Speaker
And the step before is developing a strategic plan that is embraced by everyone and that involves a lot of external collaborators to make it innovative and really the one that would enable the change.
01:00:41
Speaker
Danada, do you have to add something?
01:00:44
Speaker
And the previous step work on the change of mindset, which I believe this is the first thing that we can work on.
01:00:54
Speaker
Let's not answer for Mike, because I think it brings us to the last part of our conversation, which is a call for action.
01:01:07
Speaker
So Mike, tell us what should be done already today and by whom to enable this change?
01:01:15
Speaker
Now, I could make a very quick and dirty answer and say you should send every president and every secretary general who has never worked outside of sports, you should send all of them to do an internship in the private sector.
01:01:27
Speaker
That would already help a lot.
01:01:31
Speaker
But no, funny things aside, what Donata actually just said before is also a very important thing.
01:01:36
Speaker
So let me just quickly also connect those two points.
01:01:39
Speaker
This change of mindset is, of course, something that's not
01:01:44
Speaker
only happening initially again if we think about a change management process that might go over 20 years if not longer um hell we all don't know um how the world entirely will actually be developing or changing in 20 years anyways so this constant review of the current status of a sports governing body needs to be done constantly this is also why and is also coming back to what sasha said this is why
01:02:12
Speaker
doing those strategic plans but also implementing them and also
01:02:17
Speaker
review and correct them every other day is so important because no long-term strategy if you even if you do it for three or five years and maybe that's already the max you can do these days anyways if you want to look further into the future it's really getting tricky so you need to be sure um donata did this change of mindset and this raising awareness of new topics this needs to be a constant process you just need to be sure in your organization
01:02:44
Speaker
that you have someone in the organization that is actually challenging you enough and at least on a yearly basis to really make sure that you actually, that you're actually doing this.
Democratizing Sports Governance
01:02:58
Speaker
Sorry, just to clarify a little bit.
01:03:00
Speaker
So who should start acting already today?
01:03:04
Speaker
Who is that key point to, key Enabler?
01:03:08
Speaker
So in the private sector, those would be the shareholders.
01:03:11
Speaker
Very,
01:03:12
Speaker
Easy answer and probably very clever answer because in that way you already have a very wide public and a wide publicity of shareholders that will judge the success of the management board of a stock traded company.
01:03:29
Speaker
And now you will probably realize that again, since I take this benchmark, how, and this is what I said before, how the sports governance needs to rethink if the way they operate
01:03:40
Speaker
is the perfect thing.
01:03:41
Speaker
So should they're not also, and again, I'm, I'm, I'm accelerating now, but since we talk about moving sports into a B2C business, shouldn't then be the C meaning the clients, the consumers, the grassroots, should those not be the directed shareholders of the sports governing bodies.
01:04:00
Speaker
Now the presidents, the reason once they will hate this idea, of course, because they want to be elected by their 180 national Federation members.
01:04:09
Speaker
But just imagine that the sports governing body is 100% reliant on the election and on the results and on the wishes of the grassroots or of everyone that is doing that sport, how massively this would actually change the democracy in a sport.
01:04:26
Speaker
And now we talk about really about 2050.
01:04:31
Speaker
And let's say on 2050, and I suggest we wrap up, we start wrapping up.
01:04:38
Speaker
Mikey gave us a lot of insights and an interesting and desired future in 2050 with less bureaucratization, less structure.
01:04:51
Speaker
More centralization balance with decentralized program.
01:04:57
Speaker
Mike has suggested that sports sector, International Federation can explore B2C initiatives, can explore what endorsement is, can be more creative and experiment more with their stakeholders outside of their ecosystem, like private sector,
01:05:19
Speaker
civil society organizations, athletes, directing, engaging with athletes.
Importance of Data in Strategic Planning
01:05:24
Speaker
There are some things that I really liked from this conversation.
01:05:32
Speaker
The idea that this centralization also entails more democratization, give more space directly to local actors, athletes, private sector, but also associations, civil society organizations.
01:05:49
Speaker
essential a change of mindset of the leadership, but also of the sports professionals that have to embrace a new narrative in understanding the true potential and opportunity based in grassroots programs.
01:06:02
Speaker
And there is also a lot of work to be done in understanding the peculiarities of the sport.
01:06:09
Speaker
Each sport, Mike said, has its own capabilities, its own features, and there may not be one size fits all solution.
01:06:17
Speaker
But sports, international federations have to be more aware of their strength and opportunities that lay ahead.
01:06:26
Speaker
Sasha, am I missing anything?
01:06:30
Speaker
No, I don't think you miss anything, but I know that our guest is Mike today, but I start thinking because I like this topic very much and I'm moved by this cause as well of increasing the participation in sports and working with grassroots more.
01:06:45
Speaker
And I'm actually thinking that we could have missed something.
01:06:48
Speaker
I just had an idea.
01:06:50
Speaker
what is needed as well as the first step it's also to raise awareness and to understand where we are to work with numbers and do some statistics about the participation rates about what's going on in the world we we we don't have this numbers maybe we have numbers of amount of obese people of amount of
01:07:12
Speaker
infrastructure existed.
01:07:13
Speaker
But I think collecting this data could be an interesting step to start with to understand where we are in comparison where we were and actually where it leads us to with some projections.
01:07:25
Speaker
But you summarized it well, Donata.
01:07:27
Speaker
Do you have anything to add to this, Mike?
01:07:30
Speaker
Sasha, just a very prominent example because you just mentioned this.
01:07:33
Speaker
If you ask the majority of international sports governing bodies how many people are playing their sports,
01:07:42
Speaker
The majority will not have the answer.
01:07:44
Speaker
And this is, I think, is the perfect prominent example why the status is the way we describe them today.
01:07:54
Speaker
Why the international sports governing bodies know exactly how much money they can make with world championships and so on, but why the majority of them don't know how many people are actually playing handball, volleyball, football, baseball, you name it.
01:08:08
Speaker
The reason being because they never had this strategic centralized approach to take care about grassroots.
01:08:15
Speaker
They always left it to the national federations.
01:08:18
Speaker
And then with good luck, you can summarize the numbers they have and come up with something.
01:08:23
Speaker
So the example you gave was like working on those numbers.
01:08:26
Speaker
Yes, that's a great effort, but unfortunately, at least the federations will not be of great help.
01:08:33
Speaker
I have the feeling that Mike is not ready to wrap up yet.
Conclusion and Call to Action
01:08:37
Speaker
So Mike, I think we're going to invite you again to dig down on this last point you mentioned, because we think it's very relevant.
01:08:44
Speaker
Sasha, over to you.
01:08:46
Speaker
Thank you very much, Mike, for being here with us today.
01:08:48
Speaker
It was an amazing conversation.
01:08:50
Speaker
Thank you.
01:08:51
Speaker
Thank you very much, Donata.
01:08:53
Speaker
Thank you very much, Sascha.
01:08:54
Speaker
Great talking to you.
01:08:55
Speaker
And always keep in mind, let's make sport more democratic and let's endorse it more and let's make it B2C.
01:09:01
Speaker
All the best from Munich.
01:09:02
Speaker
Bye-bye.
01:09:04
Speaker
Thanks again.
01:09:05
Speaker
And this brings us to the end of our show.
01:09:08
Speaker
Thank you for listening.
01:09:09
Speaker
This show is produced by SCORE, a sport think tank based in Lausanne.
01:09:13
Speaker
Check out our website, scoresport.com and our LinkedIn page to find more information about this episode and what we do.
01:09:22
Speaker
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01:09:25
Speaker
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01:09:27
Speaker
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01:09:29
Speaker
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