We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC179: The Business of Football and Bitcoin w/ Peter McCormack (Bitcoin Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey everyone, welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. On today's show, I have Good Friend and football team owner, Peter McCormick. Now, many in the Bitcoin community know Peter for his top-notch podcast, but very few know Peter McCormick, the sports team owner, who spends nearly all of his time trying to take a team from the very bottom in the pyramid and growing it clear to the top of the professional sports world in the UK. And of course, Bitcoin sits at the center of this strategy.

Starting point is 00:00:30 It doesn't matter whether you're in the sports. What Peter is doing is a lesson for anybody in business regardless of the industry. So without further delay, I'm really excited to bring to you this fun and thoughtful conversation with Mr. Peter McCormick. Celebrating 10 years. You are listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. All right.

Starting point is 00:01:08 Hey everyone, welcome to the show. I'm here with the one and only Peter McCormick. thrilled to have this conversation with you, sir. Oh, mate, I'm thrilled to have it with you. I don't get invited on many podcasts now, but I think with the football club, I've earned my right somewhere along the line. You've been telling people for years,

Starting point is 00:01:24 I don't feel like I do good when I'm being interviewed. I like to be the inner, you know, the person doing the interview. Yeah, I do. But with the football club, I'm happy I love talking about it. So anyone who wants to hear about it, I love talking about it. I love this. This is where I want to start, though, Pete. For me, when I'm looking and just kind of analyzing you and the football club and Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:01:50 and all of this, the thing that I think is at your core and is upstream of all of this is this deep desire for Bedford, which to me is just kind of like, I don't know. Because for me, like I have the hometown I grew up in and whatnot. and, you know, I go back there rarely. And I just don't have this, I don't know why, but I don't really have this connection to it, even though I spent the first 18 years of my life in the same town and all that. So I want to start there. You want to transform your hometown.

Starting point is 00:02:23 So like your love for your town. This is what I want to start off and just kind of understand, like, what is driving this deep love for your hometown? Yeah, it's a hard thing to answer, Preston, because I don't have a clear answer to it, really, other than that, I know my investment in Bitcoin and timing, there's a lot of luck with it, right? I could have discovered it four years later or eight years later, and I discovered it at the time I did, I yolode in, lost a bit, made a bit, figured it out, and then ended up launching a podcast, which enabled me to then understand how to invest in it. And then eight years later, I'm kind of in this position where the podcast is a platform.

Starting point is 00:03:04 I've got some of these good connections, people like yourself, other people in the industry who are experts and companies. And I've got a bit of capital myself. And I feel very lucky with that. So, yeah, how do you pay it forward? I've got, you know, when I first started this podcast, I emailed James and Lop, I'd made two episodes. And he didn't know who the hell I was. And he said, come out to Raleigh, let's shoot some guns and record a podcast. And lots of people did give up their time.

Starting point is 00:03:30 They do give up their time to allow me to make the podcast and bring an income in. in. And then with the football club, I'm asking everyone to back it and come and visit us and watch games and buy jerseys and burgers. And so if I'm like asking for so much, I want to give something back. And I think Bedford's the right size town where I can make a difference. And I like living here. I've lived here my whole life, preston, apart from kind of like a year and a half at two years at uni, I've lived in my whole life. So I've got everything I want in life. So can I give something back and that's what I'm trying to do? This was the funniest part for me coming to Bedford. So you had prepared all of us.

Starting point is 00:04:07 And you're just saying, oh, yeah, it's, and we try not to swear on the show. It's a crap town, Preston. It's a crap town. Don't worry. Like, lower your expectations and all this. And as an American, I show up. And I'm staying at this just beautiful hotel, very nice, the Swan Hotel, very nice hotel.

Starting point is 00:04:24 And there's this gorgeous river right next to it. There's people out there doing crew right there on the water. There's these gorgeous paths that go walking, the beautiful. beautiful flowers. Like, I'm just enamored by this town. And I'm thinking, what is he talking about? Now, I do realize you got Cambridge and Oxford that are like next door neighbors, like, right between or like Bedford sits in between these two like renowned towns. And I guess, is that why everybody says what they say about Bedford? Because for me, as an American, this would be like a top-notch town in the U.S. if you came over here and like walked around. It's crazy.

Starting point is 00:05:01 Well, I mean, look, I kept people to the good bits. that kind of area of the swan, the river and the corn exchange. But I also turned up in the morning of the conference and there's a guy sleeping in a tent and outside the corn exchange. First time I've ever seen that in the morning of the conference. And then I'm sat in my car outside and getting ready and I'm seeing the crackheads go in and out of the toilet outside. I didn't even know it was there and I witnessed the dealing.

Starting point is 00:05:24 But like most of us watching this managed decline of our economic situation in the West, well, everywhere. Everywhere. everywhere. I see it evidently in where I live. I've seen the rise of homelessness. I'm seeing the lack of capital and funds available from the council to spend on park projects, local sports, the local community. I'm seeing shops close down regularly. I'm speaking to people who are struggling financially. So I think that's all in the back of my mind. If anything, the thing about Beverly, it's not that itself a crap town. It's just a nothing town. You know,

Starting point is 00:05:59 people don't come to the UK and go, I'm going to go to Bedford. They go to London. They might go to Cambridge or Oxford or Bath or York. They might go to Wales, might go to Manchester or or Leeds. They'll go to a city. Nobody says, I'm going to go to the UK and I'm going to go to Bedford. It's not a place you go to. And so when I say crap town, I think like that. But now we have people come into the UK and the reason to come is Bedford, which is hilarious. I think it's amazing. And I think that it speaks to you, for people that don't know you personally, I've known you for quite a few years. For people that don't know you personally, you're just this extreme, you're an extreme giver. And you're a person that just cares deeply about others.

Starting point is 00:06:40 And I don't know, I just see a lot of reflection in what you're trying to do in the town and very admirable and just very exciting for what you're trying to do for it. And I don't know. I just, I think it's a story about you that is, that is very untold and that people do not see. on the surface. They might see you, you know, online, like poking different things. But as a person that knows you personally, I can just say it's really exciting to see what you're doing, Peter, and hats off to you. Well, you came. I mean, you saw it. You came to a match day. I didn't have any time to spend with you because I'm wandering around and checking on everyone. Everyone's having a good time. Trying to win a game, which we didn't. Yeah, trying to make sure everything runs

Starting point is 00:07:22 okay. But yeah, look, I've been very lucky. I've said to the conference when I gave my little short speech. I think Bitcoin represents so many different things to so many different people. It's hard to describe what it is. You can explain it as money. But the more time you spend in Bitcoin, I think the more time you realize what it is for you. And for me, I just see it as a, as I said, I see as a pay-up forward technology, if you can survive your first tour of duty, your first four years in Bitcoin, and you can get out alive at the end of it. you should be in a position whereby you can help others, and that's either with time or capital. And I don't have as much time as I was like by certainly have capital or access to other

Starting point is 00:08:00 people's capital, which I can use to try and help people where I live in Bedford. And it's very easy to move to a big city or to move to a beach somewhere and help an already thriving economy. But, you know, I want to help here. I love it here. I like the people here. Yeah, I just want to do something here, mate. So we were at the conference that you set up there in Bedford, but you had a

Starting point is 00:08:22 massive announcement. Tyler and Cameron Winkle Voss, the Winkle Voss twins, invested in Real Bedford, your football team, and they invested $4.5 million. That's the number that I think is hitting the headlines, but the number that I'm seeing, when I see this, I'm saying, hold on a second. If I know Pete well, he's going to put that amount into Bitcoin. Let's say we have a 5x or a 7x run, so that's more like 25 to maybe 50,000. million in buying power in just 12 to 18 months from now, assuming this bull market does what many of us expected to do in the coming 12 to 18 months. That number, the 4.5 is already insane for a club this size. But if you 5 or 7x that, it gets really insane, like really fast.

Starting point is 00:09:14 And the irony for me is the name of the conference over the weekend was cheat code. And when I'm watching what's happening play out, I'm thinking, holy cheat code for what you're competing. Like, the people that you're competing with, I don't think can see what's maybe about to play out here. So break it down for us. Is that my assumption correct of how you're looking at the treasury and walk us through some of this strategy? Yeah, absolutely. You've nailed it. Look, you and I know one thing is that the world is repricing in terms of Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:09:48 I don't want to spend Bitcoin right now. I don't want to spend the clubs Bitcoin. I want to spend the pounds that it brings in, similar to how when I was in Lebanon, when people have both the Lebanese pound and they have the US dollar in their pocket and they go and buy coffee, they give the Lebanese pound.

Starting point is 00:10:02 They don't want to spend the dollar because that's holding value for them. And we're in this world, this repricing in terms of Bitcoin. And when I first spoke to Cameron and Tyler about this, it was just over two years ago. We were at conference in Texas. I met up with them for a beer

Starting point is 00:10:18 and I just said to them, look, I've got this idea. I'd like to buy my local football club and get them in the football league. So I explained to them in the league structure and Tyler immediately said, how do you get them in the Premier League? I was like, okay, that's a different prospect because it gets increasingly expensive every league you go up in. And you have to have infrastructure and you'll need a stadium. So, I mean, look, rough number.

Starting point is 00:10:41 If I picked a number out of the air to take a team from the 10th tier to the Premier League, I think is a 300 million pound project. You might be able to do it for 100, 150. I don't know. But at some point you need a stadium that's going to cost $50 million. If you're in the championship, you're going to be spending $30 million on wages every time you want to have a go at it. It's an expensive project.

Starting point is 00:10:59 Or you can invest a load of Bitcoin, sit in the treasury. And if Bitcoin does what it says it will do, then maybe you can do it that way. So when we got to the point of raising, because I essentially spent the last two years, I think proving that I can run a football club and that I can understand how promotions. Yeah. Yeah. And I was able to do it sustainably. Then that was, we can come back to that.

Starting point is 00:11:20 That's just using why I always say cheat code. And I said we need to raise as much as possible and stick it in Bitcoin. Now, with $4.5 million of Bitcoin sat in the ninth tier of football, about to go into the eighth tier of football, we're the most well capitalized club at that level in the country. And if Bitcoin does what I think it will do over the next two years, I think our capital needs will never catch up with the compound annual growth rate of big. So essentially our treasury will always be ahead of our capital needs because, you know, we're not going to get promotion every year, Preston, but take that back.

Starting point is 00:11:57 Well, I hope so. Let's go on the low end. Say Bitcoin does a Forex in this cycle and we have 20, and maybe in four years we're in the National League and I need to spend, you know, a couple of million on infrastructure. So that takes me down to 18 million and maybe the next year another couple of years. that takes me another $16 million, but Bitcoin does another run, and maybe that 16 becomes 60 million, you know, just a 3x at that point. Even a 2x becomes 40 million. You know, 32, and then the next year I might need a couple. Like, the math in my head is, is that I think,

Starting point is 00:12:31 if Bitcoin reprises how I think it will do over the next two decades, we will not spend at the rate that we will grow that treasury based on even a declining compound annual growth rate. So that's my thesis. Now, alongside that, to make that work over the next two, three years, I want the football club to be sustainable, live within its means, and still get promotions. Now, we've done that for the last two years, and we're an expensive club to run. Compared to other clubs at this level, we're a very expensive club to run. My budget for next year in step four is going to be about £600,000 across the whole club.

Starting point is 00:13:06 There will be clubs with budgets probably anywhere ranging from $100,000 to maybe $400,000,000, What's driving yours being so high? We always want to have a competitive playing budget. So I kind of estimate what I think the top budgets will be and make sure we have one there so we can compete. We don't want to overspend there and we're doing that for men's and ladies football at the same time. So we have high budgets. We also stream all the games. I mean, that's a 60,000 pound a year investment.

Starting point is 00:13:36 We have lots of infrastructure requirements. I mean, we spent 40,000 pound in the ground this year just alone. on putting in a stand, in changing the walkway. There'll be more requirements to do that every year, because every division you got up, you have some ground grading whereby you have to do certain improvements. So there's costs that all could be going into that. Well, those costs keep going into the pitch that I saw.

Starting point is 00:14:01 Yes, until we have the new location ready to build on that, but we still have to have that ground ready for each level whilst we're working on another one. You can't stop work. So there's costs that go. on that. We will have full-time staff next year. A lot of clubs entirely rely on volunteers, but we're trying to build a project for years ahead, so we need to invest in the staff. So we'll have full-time staff working on the club. We have a large outgoing in terms of stock, which is

Starting point is 00:14:29 part of the budget. And if we don't sell all the stock, that ends up sitting within our P&L, but it's still something we have to spend money and we have to have the cash flow to do that. we will spend a significant amount on travel next year because we'll be going further distances and we'll have to hire buses to take teams to games. So once you start going through it, it all kind of adds up. But where we probably different from other clubs is we will invest in full-time staff. We will invest in the streaming. We do have this large investment in ladies football that we want to happen at the same time.

Starting point is 00:15:00 We do support youth football. So we've built a model that works. I will, if we hit the crowds, I think we'll hit next year. and we do the merch sales, I think we'll do, which is conservative. We should be a break-even club. And if we can beat that again, because we did that last year, then great. But we're not building a club for always for next season. It's always like the Michael Saylor thing.

Starting point is 00:15:24 I'm building a club for the next hundred years, a club that can get up there and compete. And so then it's important to be sustainable. And that's a lot of work, but we're managing it at the moment. Talk to us about this dance that you had with Tyler and Cameron, because it happened for multiple years and then you guys finally got a deal across the table. So talk to us about how that initially unfolded. Yeah, they've been very good to me from the very start. They used to sponsor the podcast a while back.

Starting point is 00:15:52 And when I told about the football project, I mean, they got it immediately. When I explained it, they're like, oh, no, I get this. This is just like Bitcoin. It's a grassroots movement. And when they said about the Premier League, I kind of got it in reverse when I said, well, If you pitch Bitcoin 15 years ago and said what it was trying to achieve, everyone would say, look, you're an idiot. You're not going to launch a decentralized currency that is going to dethrone every

Starting point is 00:16:16 fiat currency in the world and become a global reserve currency, launched by somebody we don't know and we'll never find out who they are. People think you're an idiot. And the same with this, same we can take a football club from the 10th tier of English football with 40 fans to the Premier League. Again, nobody's ever done it and everyone thinks I'm an idiot. But when you merge the two together, you realize powered by Bitcoin and hard work is possible. So they got it straight away.

Starting point is 00:16:43 And I kind of got why they got it afterwards. And look, I think what they did, and I haven't had this confirmed, but I think what they did is they agreed to sponsor the club to begin with, almost like a test. Because this isn't like a traditional investment. When you invest in software, there's traditional metrics you can look at in terms of customer acquisition. customer acquisition cost, lifetime value. You look at the team, you see how they're doing, you maybe start with a very small seed investment. This is a very different investment.

Starting point is 00:17:14 This doesn't matter how good you are running businesses, do you know how to win a league and do you know how to recruit the right manager so you can win promotions? Because most businesses are fairly simple. If you're good at marketing, you create a good product, you look after your stuff,

Starting point is 00:17:28 you should create a successful business. You can do all the businessings right with the football club, but if the 11 players go on the pitch on that day don't win enough games, you don't get promoted. So I think, if anything, they did the sponsorship to help me with the cost of running the club

Starting point is 00:17:45 and almost like a test to see if I can go and do this. And look, first season, we won the league by nine points. This season, we've won it with a game to go. It could be by five, six points. Our ladies are top of the league. They're most likely going to win the league a week on Sunday, I think it is.

Starting point is 00:18:01 So I think I've proved I know how to get promotions. or certainly you started off just so people understand the context. You started off at tier seven or six

Starting point is 00:18:10 when you first bought the clubs. Tier six of non-leagues. I'll explain the pyramid. The English pyramid, we have the professional leagues, which is the Premier League Championship,

Starting point is 00:18:20 League one, league two. And you have promotion and relegation between the two. And that's the professional leagues. And then you have

Starting point is 00:18:25 what's known as non-league. And the first level on non-league is called step one. Okay. But it's the fifth tier. We start in

Starting point is 00:18:33 step six, which is the 10th tier. And that's a, that is a genuine pyramid where once you get to the national league, there's only one national league division. But below that, there's national north and south. And as you below that, there's four more divisions and so on. So there is a pyramid up to the national league and it's a straight line up. If you finish top of most leagues, you'll go up. And then depending on the league, you'll go up if you're second or if you're second to fifth or third to six, you'll go into a playoff. It's very competitive. because everyone wants to win their league, or if you,

Starting point is 00:19:06 you know, on the lower budget end, you're trying to survive. And so I think I proved to them a few things. I think I proved that I can win promotions. I think I proved in other things. I can do it whilst building a business, which is sustainable,

Starting point is 00:19:16 and I could grow the crowds. So we, our average attendance last season was the highest in our division and the same this season. And so I think I've kind of proved I can do it. And so when I went back to them and said, okay, I need investment,

Starting point is 00:19:32 I think it was, it was a fairly quick decision. Really, the dance was about how much and how to value the club, which is a difficult thing to do. And again, I said to them, look, if the investment's too small now, there's a chance I'm going to come back at a later day and ask for more sooner than I'd want to. If we raise this amount right now and I can leave in the treasury and not spend it for a couple of years, I might never need to come back for more money.

Starting point is 00:19:58 And so they understood that. They understood the strategy that they believed in it and wanted to be part of it. So yeah, it happened all fairly quickly. It was really painless. I've never raised money before. And it was relatively painless. Well, you had the right partner. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:15 Yes. You had the right partner that understood what you're trying to do. And they understand sports as well. Like, as Olympic was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They understand sports and they understand the nature of sports. and I think they like the competitive side of this. I think what will happen is down the road is this is more successful.

Starting point is 00:20:33 I think there might be other billionaires and Bitcoin will be like, damn it, I wish that was me. I mean, I'm already kind of feeling that way. Not that I'm the billionaire, but. Well, we will press some one day. So I've kept some equity back because I would like to do a fan sale at some point of like small amounts of equity. So yourself, anyone else who loves the club,

Starting point is 00:20:54 who wants to invest in the club. have just a small, a small amount of ownership can do. So that's something we'll look to do. I think you'd have a ton of interest in that, Pete. I really do. Well, we already do. We've got a form on our website that's had over 600 inquiries. What?

Starting point is 00:21:10 Really? Yeah. Yeah, and some people want to write big checks. You know, we're talking tens, hundreds of thousands. And we just don't have the ability to take that much capital on now because I didn't want to dilute too much down. Yeah, of course, yeah. You've got to have control, Pete.

Starting point is 00:21:25 You've got to have control. Yeah, I think it's that. But there will be a time beyond me. And again, it's another interesting investment for us because I was talking to the time on camera about this. I said, this is an investment for you whereby if we do get to the Premier League, you'll own a significant amount of equity in a highly valuable asset. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:21:43 In the most watch sporting league in the world. Yeah. For me, it will never be about the money. So I'm asking them to depart for money for something where I don't care about the money. I just care about the success. Yeah, the journey. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:21:57 So if anything, because I don't need the money and the success is more important, I probably will work harder at this. There will be a time beyond me where I somehow, I don't think it's the part of my inheritance that would go to my children. I think it would somehow go to the town in some kind of trust that the town owns and no individual owns. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo

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Starting point is 00:26:27 I've got a really strange tangent, but I think it's connected. I read, and I don't know if this is rumor or real, that Universal Studios is trying to set up a theme park in Bedford. Is this true? This is true. It's also totally insane.

Starting point is 00:26:42 So this is about a four-minute drive. from my house. This is a really big deal in my opinion. Huge. For the club. Yes. Because it's going to bring such a different level of capital into the town and interest into the town.

Starting point is 00:26:59 And what's the time? Is this like, is this happening or is there just talk about this? Like, what's going on? They've bought the land. No way. Yeah, they bought 500 acres. It's about a four minute drive from my house. It's just insane.

Starting point is 00:27:15 This is crazy. Yeah. So, Pete, I want to tell you, so I got to tell you a story. So there's a, there's a theme park in, in Pennsylvania. It's called Hershey, like Hershey chocolate. The whole town, the whole town revolves around this, this chocolate factory. A lot of it's been outsourced out of town. But what's really interesting is they've set up this massive sports complex in association

Starting point is 00:27:38 with the park. And so you'll have like state championships and like all these types of events that happen at Hershey Park. And I guess I'm looking at what's happening with Universal coming into the town and I'm looking at your situation and how you guys are going to have to grow. And it almost seems like there's this situation that could be like mutually beneficial to each other if there's somehow a way that you could preemptively kind of work together or I don't know. The Universal Stadium is the Universal Stadium? Yeah. The universe got a range. So is this something that you've just, is this something you've thought about?

Starting point is 00:28:15 Is this something that you're entertaining? Is there any way you could have a conversation with them early on from like before they start work? Yes. So the stage of the project, it was announced, I think about a year ago. I think everybody was like, what? What? It's the land. They got the land there.

Starting point is 00:28:33 Yes. So we're a good location. So where they bought the land is really interesting. There's two main motorway spines that go out through the country, through the left and the right. You've got the M1, which goes up towards Manchester, and then you've got the A1. And Bedford's really interesting in that we've got a bypass between the two about, and we're 40 minutes north of London. And so we connect the country very well. So what we have had around here is lots of logistics places pop up.

Starting point is 00:28:59 We have a huge Amazon warehouse here because we're perfectly located. On that bypass is where they've bought the land. So getting that amount of land near London is very difficult, but a train to bedside. from London is 40 minutes. So if you fly into London, we're very easy to get to, but we're also good to get to from the north of England as well.

Starting point is 00:29:19 So we're in a very good location. The talk is that they think it will take up to 10 years to complete the planning and the infrastructure requirements and the build. But think where our football club might be in 10 years time. You know, we might be a professional team in the professional leagues by then. I mean, that's certainly my hope.

Starting point is 00:29:36 So, no, it's certainly on my mind. Yes, I want to speak to them. I do have connections who can get me to talk to them. I hope it's something they'd be interested in. I certainly think our investment from Cameron and Tyler Winklevers gives me the credibility to sit in the room with them and say, I think there is a potential relationship here. But I also think of it a little bit like the Raiders move into Vegas.

Starting point is 00:30:01 If you support, I don't know, let's think of another team. Who's that team that's owned by the town? The Green Bay Packers. I expect the Green Bay Packers is the whole town going to watch the Green Bay Packers when they play. That's pretty much it. But I think with the Raiders, I think a large number of people going to watch the Raiders play, people who've come to Vegas for the weekend. And so I think Rail Bedford has an opportunity of being that kind of team whereby we have the people from the town going.

Starting point is 00:30:28 But if there's thousands, tens of thousands of people going to this theme park, they may also choose to come watch a Rail Bedford game over that weekend. So, no, it's definitely on my mind. It is an incredible gift for the town of Bedford. It certainly puts us on the map. We have another place called Alton Towers, which is a huge theme park. There's no reason to go to Alton, unless you're going to Alton Towers. But now we might have two reasons to come to Bedford, which is one to go to the Universal Studios or two to go to Rail Bedford.

Starting point is 00:30:57 There's another interesting fact. I don't know if I saw you and showed you, but when you came to our football ground, did you see the large aircraft airship hangers? No, I didn't see that. They're about a two-minute drive from the football ground. That's where they shot Batman. Oh, wow, really? Yeah, they're the largest indoor structure in the UK. They built Gotham City in Bedford.

Starting point is 00:31:18 No way. Yeah. There's so many films that have been shot there. I think there's a huge advantage of Bedford being very close to Cambridge and Oxford, which are two literally tourist destinations. I was joking on Twitter the whole time I was in Bedford calling it a resort town. And it might turn into a resort town with all this stuff happens. And oh my God, Pete, the comments from, it was hilarious.

Starting point is 00:31:41 The people from the U.S., like, oh, wow, that looks so beautiful. The people from the UK, I can't believe you actually put that into writing that this is a reason or not. Some of the comments were hilarious. The funny thing is, you commented in a very British way. It was always very British. And I was like, I was just looking at that picture going, Preston, you're not allowed to stamp on that grass.

Starting point is 00:32:05 The grass picture was hilarious. and then your comment. And then you replied back to me and I was like, oh, I think I did sort of piss Pete off. Just a touch by Stephanie. You didn't. You did. All right. Well, no, you embrace.

Starting point is 00:32:18 I don't want to do that. And it was just, it was such a, it was really surreal and overwhelming to, because we do this job. We make this podcast. We go to these events. We become a community of friends. But to have everyone come to my place, honestly, it was really humbling. So I was overwhelming a lot of it.

Starting point is 00:32:36 I've been to a lot of conference. I'm not just saying this because you're a close friend. I had so much fun there. The pubs, just like everything was in within walking distance. And it was just everybody was having a blast. I don't know if you're going to take this recommendation, but the size was actually perfect because you can get to know the people that are there. I think you had like 500, 550 people at the conference.

Starting point is 00:32:59 And for me, it's a lot of fun to have like real conversations with people and not feel like you're getting kind of pulled in numerous different directions. But the attendees are the same. One other thing. And I heard this from at least five people when I was there. I'm so glad that the panels and like the conference was only one day. And we had another day to just go have fun with everybody that was there. And I'm serious.

Starting point is 00:33:25 I heard that from so many people that it wasn't like three days of like listening to panels over and over again. So as far as a sustain. So a lot of people said to us things like, do you know, like the attendees? because it's not cheap to go. I mean, $1,000 a $1,000 of your VIP, but they said the cool thing was, I would go to a bar, and there would be Preston Pish or Jeff Booth,

Starting point is 00:33:45 and I could talk to them, and they were real in front of me. Because if you go to Bitcoin, Miami previously or Nashville now, it's a huge event, and it's hard to get that connection with people. I think we're going to make it slightly bigger. I think we're going to add a couple more,

Starting point is 00:34:00 a couple hundred more next year, and I think it'll sell out. I think there was a lot of foamer. But what was interesting, is we did it last year as just a light of podcast, casually 150 people and took them to the football. And then we realized the thing about the conferences, nobody really wants to go to the second day. They're all hung over. If you've got the opening slot on the second day, you've essentially got the ghost shift that no wants to be at.

Starting point is 00:34:24 And so it's really difficult to get people interested in the second day. But if the second day is a barbecue and beers and watching a game of football. Later in the afternoon. Yeah. It's just so much fun. And I think that's why people have such a good time because they're like, And this is so different. And I think the conference scene will start becoming more experiential.

Starting point is 00:34:42 Because there's a couple I've been invited to recently. It's three days at all. So I'm like, I don't want to do this. I like Pacific because at Pacific, they do such a good job of the non-conference thing, the outside with the basketball and the game and the bar. I love that one. And I, you know, I love Bitcoin magazines because it's so big and everyone goes and I'll be in Nashville. But the ones which are just two, three days of panels, I've got zero interest because

Starting point is 00:35:06 personally I just want it more experiential now. Yeah. Well, so much of it is just the networking that takes place and just meeting other people, like-minded people that have a love for like what the whole movement's about, being able to network with them. And dude, it was so much fun. Oh, my God. Was it fun?

Starting point is 00:35:24 Okay. Let me hear some other cool things. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So firstly, the vegan restaurant next door, vegan coffee shop, she had her busiest Friday ever. And she decided to keep all the Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:35:38 She said, you know, I'm going to keep the Bitcoin. I think this is the future. She said, everyone was so nice. It's the nicest event that's ever been on. And I think I want to keep. So she's keeping all the Bitcoin she brought in. There was a local restaurant for Wagamomomas. It's a chain of Japanese restaurants.

Starting point is 00:35:56 They've emailed me and they said, our restaurant was full of people wearing Rail Bedford merchandise on the Saturday night. And the atmosphere was great. So they've invited me for dinner on Monday to go and talk to them about, it. There was another one, the pizza place that did the pizzas outside. I had to settle my balance with them because we owe them for the VIP food. They've asked for us to pay them in Bitcoin. And so we've got this kind of gradual orange pilling of people in the town as well. La Terraza, the restaurant had their busiest night. So I think a lot of people in the town who maybe were

Starting point is 00:36:27 skeptical, so I'd have realized, I know, this is a really good thing for Bedford. Well, no doubt. And I like I paid for this sweatshirt I'm wearing right now with Bitcoin. It was amazing. You know, XSS. I want to talk a little bit about the business of a football team. Specifically just like how like your thought process and I don't know if you're comfortable sharing your thought process on this. I'm assuming you will. just I would think it'd be so hard and time consuming to be able to audit all the players, the up-and-coming players, like who I'm going to add to the roster, whether I'm overpaying. I think that's the part that would be as a value investor, as a deep value investor,

Starting point is 00:37:11 I'm thinking in terms of can this guy literally kick the ball five times better because of the value that you'd pay than this other guy that I can get? And like performing this quantitative, qualitative dance in a way. way that like, hey, maybe next year this guy's just going to kind of suck because he's getting old or whatever. Like taking so many variables into account, clearly you can do it. You've done it very well for two years in a row. You were number one in running a team right out of the gate.

Starting point is 00:37:43 I find that miraculous. How do you go about that process? It seems like it'd be so difficult to look across the whole spectrum of players and being able to select. And I don't know. Well, this talk sounds in the manager. I will get a lot of plaudits in the Bitcoin world for doing this. In the football world, a lot of the plaudits will go to the manager.

Starting point is 00:38:02 And I think it's a job that both of us do together in that we have a very clear separation of roles and responsibilities. He's everything on the pitch, which means players, player selection, player acquisition, player performance. I don't interfere with that at all. The team is his team. And I'm okay with that. I'm everything off the pitch. I'm the brand, I'm the marketing, I'm the business side. And we talk all the time.

Starting point is 00:38:29 We speak every day. I mean, we had a coffee this morning. We're meeting up at 5 o'clock today. We speak regularly. But I can talk to you in detail about the business side of it. But in terms of the players and the player acquisition, that's all the manager. What I can tell you is really interesting is how important they are. So when I actually bought the club, I had them for half a season when under their old name,

Starting point is 00:38:53 Bedford, F.C. And they were just below the playoffs. And I changed the manager straight away. And the new manager I came in, I gave a really good budget. I said, just get us in the playoffs. They recruited a bunch of players, well paid, very well paid players. We had one player in the team who's paid more than anyone's been paid since. But it didn't work.

Starting point is 00:39:13 We didn't get in the playoffs. We weren't getting the results. And I realized this is, there's a lot harder than I think. You can't just throw money at it. And so at the end of that season, when we became Rao Bedford, I knew I had to change the manager. I realized it is the manager that drives this. You can have a great

Starting point is 00:39:28 manager and no budget and you won't go up. It would be very hard. You can have a great budget and a terrible manager and you won't go up. You need a good budget and a manager knows how to spend it. So I was told by a couple of people to speak to this guy Rob Sinclair. He was an ex-professional he played in the professional leagues.

Starting point is 00:39:45 He played for Stevenage. He played for Forrest Green. And I was told he's trying to play expansive entertaining football and to dominate teams. And he was running a team called Ainsbury who didn't have a budget. And I went and looked at their results before he took over and after they took over and he changed the team around. But he did without a budget. And so when I met him, I immediately knew who was the guy for the job.

Starting point is 00:40:07 He was so professional. He was ready with a presentation to explain his strategy of how we win the league. And I said to him, tell me what you need. And he told me what he needs in terms of budget and infrastructure. And I gave it to him. And he went and won the league in the first season. And then I said the same at the end of that season, what do you need to go and win the league?

Starting point is 00:40:25 And he told me, we've just won the league again. I already knew, we did the work earlier. I said, if we win this league, what do you need? He's told me. And so I've got everything in place for next season. But in terms of player budgets, player selection, player recruitment, that's entirely him. I don't get involved in any of it at all.

Starting point is 00:40:41 All I do is say, what budget do you need to challenge for the title? He tells me, and I go away and I do all the business side of things to make sure he has that budget. But it's a very clear separation. I don't criticize it. It was interesting, Preston. So we had a run recently. We had a run of games where we lost to Leverstock and we had three draws.

Starting point is 00:41:03 And we went from a position of very clear, eight points clear at the top of league, to being in a position where if MK Irish won their games in hand, they would have been five points clear. And so what happens at that point, people start coming to me and say, well, right, why is Rob doing this? Why is he picking that person? They're being backseat managers. And I said, I don't know. That's his decision. I trust him.

Starting point is 00:41:24 I love this. Yeah. I love this. Pete, I always had a saying whenever I was managing large teams, give people, when you charge people with responsibility, they'll take responsibility if you have the right people. And then you can't get in there and start messing with them, right? You cannot mess with them.

Starting point is 00:41:43 You hired the guy that you think is the right guy. Let him run with it. He's going to make mistakes. you're paying for those mistakes. And he's going to learn from those mistakes. And if after a certain amount of time you've determined, all right, I let him do his thing and it just didn't work out. He was the wrong guy.

Starting point is 00:42:00 But you gave him a shot to go through the cycles of learning, making mistakes, you know, making good decisions and seeing the rewards of those. That is the epitome of leadership. So I said Rob won the league last year by nine points. we're still top of the league now. Irish have to win their games and they've got a hard run. I'm not going to second, I'm not going to question Rob.

Starting point is 00:42:25 I'm not going to guess his decisions. It is down to him. We're top of the league. Why are you questioning this? We can't win every game. And look at the games. Look, when we lost a leverstock, fair play, they played well.

Starting point is 00:42:37 When we drew with Potten, we missed the last minute penalty and we dominated them. When we drew a Biggles away, they scored a last minute penalty. And so I said, these footballers at a game of margins. But Rob is such a professional over the space of a season, we're going to come out the good side of these fine margins. And we did. We won the league with the game to go. And I think

Starting point is 00:42:56 that's one of the things about becoming a chairman. I think one of the things I learn very quickly, two things actually, I've learned a lot, but two things I learned I've got to come to terms with that it's a weird business in that you can do everything right and then you can lose a game. And that affects a business. And so I've emotionally separated myself and I've become very stoic. If we don't get promoted, fine. We're carrying our job. We're carrying our school team. Not going to get over emotional about it, unless we win, of course,

Starting point is 00:43:24 and I'll look crazy. But secondly, absolute trust in everybody in their position. Absolute trust. It's like Emma, Emma, Emma works. I mean, Emma, how good is Emma? Emma's amazing. Emma doesn't know how good she is. She is unbelievable.

Starting point is 00:43:41 And she loved my fake neck tattoo that I had for the day. She compliments. I want you to get that for real. Emma will phone me up and she's like, I don't want to do about this. What do you think I should do? And I'm like, I say it straight away,

Starting point is 00:43:55 what do you think you should do? She's like, and she'll tell me, I'm like, we'll do that. She's like, is it the right answer? I was like, I don't know, go and find out. Or she'll phone me up and tell me a decision she's made. And I'm saying, you've made the decision. I can't change it.

Starting point is 00:44:08 You don't even need to tell me this. For our football club to keep growing, it has to be able to run outside of me. I need to focus on growing the brand, focusing on the business, all these other things, just get on with it. And I've learned this with this business more than any other business I've run because it is so unique that you just have to put people in a position of authority and trust them and say, get on with it. Yeah. And let them make their own mistakes. And football accelerated that because it's such

Starting point is 00:44:32 a weird business. Yeah. Wow. What would you say he thinks his secret is to hiring? Like, what's he doing? Are you, or are you just so hands off just like getting out of his way? I think that's something that's changing. I think originally, I think his secret to recruitment is just telling people what his ambitions are and how he's going to approach training. Rob demands professionalism from everyone, even from me. He will pull me up if I'm not being professional after something. Absolute professionalism and commitment.

Starting point is 00:45:07 And so there are players out there who you consider maybe journeymen who are happy to pick up their wage, they're good players and naturally good players. but they don't care about going up too much further. Rob wants to find young, talented players who want to play at higher levels that will listen and develop and work with him, who will train twice a week, train hard,

Starting point is 00:45:26 who won't drink or focus on their fitness. So I think his secret was that is convincing people that under him, he will develop them and they'll become better players. I think we're in this fortunate position now is that people want to come to us. People want to play for a team. You want to win leagues.

Starting point is 00:45:42 Do you think people want to play for us? Is it his huge? Humility as well. It seems like he's a very humble person that it is, yeah. But I think mainly it's, it's not just people wanting to play from him. He's got to find players that want to play and be professional in the way he is. So there are people he wants to find,

Starting point is 00:46:02 but there are people out there who want to find him as well. Yes. Yeah, because they want to play at higher levels of football. We've got so many good young talented players, like Josh Settrell on the wing, Ben Stevens. Ben Stevens last year, he played for Kemston Rovers. I think he scored 12 goals.

Starting point is 00:46:19 This season scored 40 in the number 10 position. Under Rob, he will become a better footballer. He will learn more. And so for him being at our club is a great thing. And so I think it works both ways. But with such high profile now, people will want to come and play for us. At first, they didn't take it seriously. It was just this guy from Bedford, big loud mouth saying,

Starting point is 00:46:41 I'm going to take this team to the Premier League. They've seen back-to-back promotions, growing crowds, investment. They know we're the real deal now, and people will want to play for us, Preston. I love it. Talk to us about how the business side of this changes. Let's say you get up into Tier 4 or 3 from here. What changes? Because I was hearing from some friends that, like, once you get up to a certain level, that

Starting point is 00:47:05 the amount that you can spend on players is somewhat capped based off of a multiple of your revenue that's coming through the club. That way you just can't like, I guess, buy your way up. Yeah, buy your way up. So talk to us about some of that and like what the challenges are and how you plan to navigate something like that. Yeah, that's the financial fair play rules,

Starting point is 00:47:24 which a number of teams have been docked points at the higher levels for Everton, Notting Forest, have been docked points. And I think Manciti are under investigation because they've bent the rules. It doesn't affect us at our level, but I don't think about it anyway because we're already sustainable based on our revenue model.

Starting point is 00:47:42 This is why I focus so hard on the business. I was chatting to my son about this yesterday because he was asking. I said, look, there's a film you need to watch, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, where we talks about always be selling. I'm always selling. Everywhere I go, when people ask me about the club, I say, have you been to a game? Are you coming?

Starting point is 00:47:56 There's a game on Tuesday. Come down. I'm recruiting one person at a time around Bedford. Because people through the door, every person who comes through the door on a match day means £12. 12 pound 50 for the club. And so when we get a crowd of 200, that's two and a half thousand pound, but you have base costs of a match day of paying the referees, putting on the food. So you may only make about a thousand pound profit with that. Whereas on the game you came, when we had a thousand

Starting point is 00:48:24 people there and we took 18,000 pound. And we made take off our base costs and our cost to sales. We made over 10,000 pound that day. Now, if you could do that every day, every game, you got 25, home games, that's 250,000 pound revenue just on a match day. That side of things is why sustainability is so important because even with the investment, you can't just go and splash it on wages. You'll break the financial fair play rules and you'll lose points. But there's a couple of the things that have become really important to the club in terms of growing. As you got through the leagues, that is really important, but infrastructure is the big one. And there's two big things on my radar. One is our ground. So I've talked about our ground.

Starting point is 00:49:04 we can sweat this asset up until probably three more promotions. But realistically, if we keep getting those promotions, we need a ground suitable for a league football, which itself will be a five to six million pound investment. But we have to start that work now. We have to be ready for when we're ready to be able to have that ground ready. But there's another really big change that's going to come that's really important, is going from

Starting point is 00:49:31 art time to full time. And so in the National League, the one below the four professional leagues where Rexham, where Rexum were when Ryan Reynolds bought them, they will be full time. And then below that National North and South, you'll have a mix of teams

Starting point is 00:49:46 which are full time and hybrid. And so hybrid would be your manager, will be full time. And you maybe have a squad of 10 to 12 youngsters, younger players who are full time. And then maybe some youth team players, you know, teenagers, and then you'll have a core of first team

Starting point is 00:50:05 experienced players who are maybe 25 to 35 years old, who will only train twice a week on, or maybe three times a week in the evenings. Because you've got to think, if you're 30 years old, you're a very, very good footballer, may have a job, only 60, 70,000 pound a year, and you're also bringing maybe 15,000 a year playing football. You're not going to earn that as a professional footballer playing at this level. And so what you tend to do, you tend to find a lot of players, they never reach their full potential because they're never going to play in those divisions

Starting point is 00:50:36 because they're not going to risk the finances for their family. So they tend to stay around this level. I'm always working one season ahead. So Rob always says one game at a time. If I ask him about our cut final on Wednesday, he'll say, forget that, we've got a league game on Saturday. We'll talk about that afterwards. I'm the same with leagues.

Starting point is 00:50:56 I think one year at a time. So all the work for next season is done in terms of my preparation and we're ready to go. I'm thinking about the season afterwards. If we get promoted, we're now up in step three. And so I'm thinking, can we be hybrid that year? Because not many teams do at that level. But if we are, if Rob is full time, we've got full time youth players and we've got young players full time, that's going to give us such an advantage over everyone else.

Starting point is 00:51:22 So how do I fund that? How do I finance? What's the infrastructure for that? And so there's all of these things of a growing football club that you have to think about to try and get in place. And then to do that, you have to be sustainable. So, okay, if I want to have that full-time model, what does it cost me? Okay, well, it costs me that.

Starting point is 00:51:40 Then I need to bring in this much revenue on sponsorship, this much money in on merch sales and this much money on a match day. So there's like these competing things of what you want to do, but being able to afford to do it sustainably. It takes up a lot of my time. Luckily, I have Danny on the podcast from the show so I can do this because I'd say, Preston, this football club is 80% of my time now. Yeah, yeah, I would imagine so.

Starting point is 00:52:00 Not to mention Danny's incredible, by the way. Yeah, he's amazing. And by the way, Pete, you said you're always, you're always closing. I'll close this one for you. This merch is amazing. We'll have a link to the, in the show notes for people if they want to buy a Bedford hat or real Bedford shirt or sweatshirt's nice. I like sweatshirts without the hoodie on it.

Starting point is 00:52:22 So when I saw this, I had to own it. By the way, we usually sell about one item a day on the club shop. We sometimes, like, in the start of the season, we'll sell a bit more. But it's about one item a day. Since the announcement, we've been selling about 10 items a day. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, it just supports the sustainability of the club. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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Starting point is 00:56:22 Which has to be a little surreal people walking around with Bedford stuff on. Well, I get photos. So one guy was in a gym in London, sent me a photo. There was a guy working out in one of our shirts and one of our jerseys. another guy at the World Cup. And so it's starting to get spotted around the world, which is the really surreal thing. So if you, I want to go back to this additional micro equity offering that you had talked about earlier. I would recommend, and I'm curious if you would agree with this, you got to strip the voting rights out of whatever additional equity you're going to issue here.

Starting point is 00:56:54 Yes. And I, okay, that's good. And I think that a person that would, I know personally, if I was going to buy a small portion of equity of Bedford, I wouldn't want to own any voting rights. I want you to have the voting rights. I don't want somebody to step in there and start influencing the way you're doing this. So, well, that's the same with Cameron and Tyler as well. Really? Okay. They're co-owners now. Yeah. They don't want to be making decisions. They don't want to vote. They trust me. It's like, Pete, you get on with this. And yes, look, a football club, it kind of needs to be a dictatorship. It really kind of, and it is at

Starting point is 00:57:29 the moment. I mean, I have people as opinions I seek. But if we, we do this raise, yes, we would strip out voted rights. I think there's a lot of people who just want to be part of the project. It would be another way to stack more Bitcoin into our treasury. But ultimately, I think the big part of this is if it's a thousand people, 10,000 people buying tiny shares, that's a 10,000 person marketing department. Yeah. Yes. Who are bought into the future of the club going around. I mean, did you meet Edgar? No. The guy from Minneapolis who had the flag. So, Edgar, this is the second year he came.

Starting point is 00:58:06 He runs a Real Bedford supporters club in Minneapolis. He gets 16 people together in a bar every game and watches the live stream. That's hilarious. I've seen Real Bedford. I think there's one up in Ohio, too. I saw it on Twitter, just like they had their own little Twitter group. It's everywhere, then. All right.

Starting point is 00:58:28 So I was having so much fun when I was there at the game. I come back and I'm still watching a lot of the antics. You guys win the division after I got back to the States. And I'm talking a little smack online with the other team. So for people that aren't familiar, there's two teams in Bedford. Pete, when you bought the team, correct me if I'm wrong, you were two divisions lower than the other team in town. Correct?

Starting point is 00:58:53 Well, yeah, well, actually, kind of. Yes, but within six months, we were three below because they got promoted. Oh, okay. So you were, you know I tried to buy them. So I didn't realize this. So you tried to buy the other team, which was higher. What happened with the negotiations? Why did that fall through?

Starting point is 00:59:11 So I went and told them, I made a very good offer, an offer that you don't get for a club like that, way more than they deserve. But because they were going, they were about to get promoted and go three divisions by hire, I basically offered what I thought the cost was for us to get there. Yeah, it's half a million pounds. That's a lot of money for a club at that level. But they also said to them, look, this is the plan I wanted to do. do. I'm working on an investment with some very significant billionaires. I think I could take him to the Football League. So we had a long conversation. They ultimately said no. I think for a

Starting point is 00:59:44 couple of reasons. One, they were going into a higher division and I believed he thought he could do it himself. I don't think he fully understood the proposition, but then I don't think many people have. I think a lot of people thought it is not a serious offer. But I think the bigger issues were is that I didn't want to change their name. They wouldn't have been Robert. But they would have stayed at the bed for town. But I did want to change the colours. And ultimately, the current chairman, I didn't want any involvement for him. It had to be a clean break. You can be a fan, you can come along, but you'd have no involvement. And I think that was difficult for him. His dad used to be very much involved in the club, very respected, respected man in the town. And look, ultimately,

Starting point is 01:00:21 it wasn't right for him. So fine. That's not a problem. I think they were very surprised when we announced the buying of the next door neighbors. And rightly, we're a little bit of a little bit of worried. I also think they thought I was trolling them calling it Rail Bedford, which I wasn't, because I think they read it as real Bedford and said they're not the real Bedford. But really, it was just more of a joke because it's a bit like Real Madrid, but from Bedford. So we're obviously nothing like them. So I thought that was kind of funny. But that's been a rivalry that's been bubbling. And this season has been bubbling a lot more because it's getting close to us being in the same division. We're confirmed to go up to theirs. They have a

Starting point is 01:01:02 a chance for promotion in theirs. If they do, then they'll go up to one above. But if they don't, we'll be in the same division. Crazy. I mean, they're very, they're very sensitive. I mean, I kind of deserved it. Like, I'll admit, if I get blocked by somebody, I'll admit, I deserved what I was, I mean, I was calling them babies. I was saying that they were watering your field with their tears. I was telling them that they needed to have a box of tissue, I'm sorry, a palette of tissues delivered to their front door. So I deserve the block. But I, I find it hilarious this rivalry. And I think that it's only a heating up.

Starting point is 01:01:36 Do you think they're going to get promoted this year, the other team? They should do. Look, if I was betting on it, I would say yes. But winning the league is going to be hard for them now. They could do it, but it's going to be hard. If not, they've gone to the playoffs. And the playoffs can be a lottery. It's one game.

Starting point is 01:01:51 You don't turn up. When the other team turns up, you can lose it. And so, look, interestingly, I want them to go up for two reasons. one main reason. I want to win the league next year and if we're in the same division, that will be a distraction. That's all people think about

Starting point is 01:02:10 we'll be competing on budgets. It will be a distraction. It'll be a psychological distraction. So if they go up, I don't have to think about that. I can focus, and Rob can focus on winning that division. And then maybe we're meeting the one above it,

Starting point is 01:02:23 but the one above it, the level is so much higher, it'll be a great rivalry, but less of a distraction. So ultimately, I want them to go up. If they don't, I mean, it's going to be fire, Preston. I recommend you fall over that. I might fly over for those games, yeah.

Starting point is 01:02:41 It will be a sellout. It will be fire. It will be noisy. The whole town will come out. Financially, it'll be great for both clubs because we can host 1500 and we will, and they can host 3,000. And I would not be surprised if you get 3,000 there in the town out for that game. The rivalry is interesting.

Starting point is 01:02:59 because I think they've got a big problem. Everything we've been doing, we've been working on for two, two and a half years, building a brand, building a match day experience. And I don't think they realize the threat early on,

Starting point is 01:03:14 and they certainly do now. And so now they're trying to change things at their place, but their crowds are falling. Their fans, some of their fans are disgruntled. And the way I explained it, I think they're trying to turn around a tanker

Starting point is 01:03:27 and catch up with a speedboat. And so at some point, we will get ahead of them. If they don't get promoted, I think we're the bigger club at that point. We've certainly got the bigger following. We've definitely got the better business model, and we've certainly got higher revenues. The only thing they may have on us is crowds, but I think that's changing. Like I say, the trajectory of our crowds is up. Our crowd on the game when you were there was the bigger than any crowd they've had this season.

Starting point is 01:03:53 Their average is higher than us. Our average is like 250. There's is like 450, 500. But more people are going to come next year. us because of the Winklevus announcement, because of what we're doing. Are the twins coming over to a game? I mean, they're going to have to at something. They're going to have to.

Starting point is 01:04:07 They'll have to come to the UK at some point for business, so we'll just time it. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, they're going to be forced to play your game, which there's no better way to define winning than having your opponent be forced to play your game, right? And every football club will have Bitcoin eventually. And this is another funny thing, Preston, because a lot of people laugh at us and make jokes about us and make jokes about the Bitcoin thing. So, like, I'll go to a club and they'll make jokes.

Starting point is 01:04:34 Or we're not going to accept your Bitcoin. Or they call us to Bitcoin. They just make all these jokes about us to do with Bitcoin. But I'm there thinking, ha, that means you don't understand it. Yeah. That means right in front of you is this thing which can solve so many problems for you. And you don't understand it. You don't take it seriously.

Starting point is 01:04:51 I'm sure if I turn around you and say, you know, how's your cost of living going? What's, what's happened with your groceries? What's happened with the price of fuel? You feel in the squeezes if your interest rates come up on your mortgage. If you've got less disposable income each month, they're going to say yes to all of those. And I'm going to go, okay. Well, I sure don't. In fact, in fact, my cost have been going down, bro.

Starting point is 01:05:10 I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. And so they're making jokes. And it's like this thing here that will help you. So we've got this advantage over other football clubs because we're ahead of them with this. They'll all eventually get there. And I hope it's sooner rather than later. But I just can't imagine.

Starting point is 01:05:27 Seriously, how we started off the show. I can't even imagine. 12 months to 18 months from now when these other clubs are looking at your treasury. It's going to be nuts. It's going to melt their brains. It's like if you look at what else. We're kind of the grassroots English football version of El Salvador a micro strategy. Yes.

Starting point is 01:05:44 Everybody laughed at Buckely. The press were writing articles saying he's squandering their treasury. He's squandering the country's finances. He's wasting it on this Bitcoin thing. Michael Saylor, yeah, there was a time. I think his investment was down about a billion and people were laughing him and mocking at him. Look where we are now. Michael Saylor was right. Buckely was right. I know I'm right. It's going to take that cycle when people say, oh, ask us about the $4.5 million investment.

Starting point is 01:06:13 I'm like, oh, do you mean the $20 million investment? They're like, yeah, we haven't spent it in here. It's $20 million now. And then it's somebody to be $40 million. And then other big clubs, big clubs up in the football league who are in debt and struggling, you're going to look us and go, damn. Yeah, yo. What is that? What is the size of the treasuries, if you had to guess on average, for the now the one that you're promoted into, you're now and four,

Starting point is 01:06:39 what do those treasuries look like just so people can kind of understand the delta here? They probably don't exist treasuries. Most clubs will limp through to the end of the season. Wow. I know some clubs won't be able to pay the wages and will lose players. football is very much hand to mouth for a lot of clubs. There are out of our examples. There's a club called Farnham, very good club run by a guy called Harry Hugo.

Starting point is 01:07:05 They're similar to us. They're trying to do something different. He's investing. But most clubs lose money or break even. Very few clubs actually make money. Plymouth are a great example outside of the Premier League, and a lot of the top Premier League clubs do. Most clubs are losing money and limping food to the end of the season.

Starting point is 01:07:24 We're finishing the end of this season. Forget the Winglewurst investment. We've still, I think, got four and a half Bitcoin. I mean, that's, you know, in English pounds, that's $225,000, just sat there that we can use at some point. But itself might be $600,000 next year. We've still got, I think, about $60,000 in the bank. We are a comfortable club that's expensive to run because we're a good business,

Starting point is 01:07:48 and we use Bitcoin. And I've given it all out there. I've said to everyone, here it is. Here's the Playboy. Here's the playbook. If somebody phoned me up for another company and said, listen, I want to do what you're doing. Look, I'll take the phone call. I'll explain to them.

Starting point is 01:08:01 They won't be able to do exactly what we're doing. They're not going to get Gemini as a front of shirt, sponsor, and Galaxy as a sponsor and ledger. Those things aren't going to happen. They're not going to have Bitcoiners fly from all around the world to their ground. There are four other Bitcoin clubs now. I've spoken to all of them, and they've asked for advice. And the truth is, whilst they're Bitcoin clubs, we are the Bitcoin Club.

Starting point is 01:08:22 And so they can use the benefit of power of Bitcoin. But they're not going to get the community thing that I've managed to get. It's just because I went first. But if any club says, and I'll be saying to them, you need to get investment. You need to build a sustainable model. And if you have capital left over, you need to put it in Bitcoin and forget about it. You need to be thinking about 10 years from now, not a year from now. Because that's what I'm thinking about Preston.

Starting point is 01:08:45 I'm thinking about if we get in the football league and we need a 50 million pound stadium and we want to have a go at the Premier League and that's a 30 million pound wage bill, where do I get that from? Well, hopefully it's my treasury that sat there for four cycles. My Lord is this exciting stuff. It is. Yeah. Will you be telling me to you, don't it? Oh, God, yeah. You tell me the dates, I'd book it like that on the spot.

Starting point is 01:09:10 And I wanted to tell you one other thing that for me was just amazing to see. I'm there watching the game and I look up and you're in the stands and who's right next to you, your son. I see your dad there at the game. I'm leaving, I'm catching a bus to head back in the town and a gentleman comes up to me and says, oh, Preston, hi, blah, blah, blah. I'm Pete's brother. And I have a conversation with your brother. And for me, it was just so amazing and just speaks to you, your family, the town, like the whole bit of it.

Starting point is 01:09:44 I don't know. There's so much more than that. Because it's real community. Yeah. And so big that, you've got Emma, her son, Sebastian's there. He always helps. There's Mark who's a local bit-liner. He comes to every gamer sells the merch for us.

Starting point is 01:09:57 Jim behind the bar, Karen behind the bar. Everyone is so invested in this personally and emotionally. And people just want to help and be part of it. It's a family. Yeah, it's a family. And it was just, it was really inspirational, just very simple. It was very inspirational to see and to just experience. And I don't know, man, you're a close friend of mine.

Starting point is 01:10:18 And I just can't thank you enough for bringing me out to Bedford because I had a blast. And this was an amazing conversation. So thanks for making time. Well, I'm grateful for coming on your show. You know, I love your show. And just appreciate you coming out. I knew you were having a good time. I could see it.

Starting point is 01:10:33 There was a moment at the football. I was from a distance. I saw you with your Bitcoin tattoo in your neck. I can't remember who you were talking to. But you had this big grin. And then I looked around and everyone was growing. I was like, people are having a good time. They're going to come back.

Starting point is 01:10:46 Yeah. Yeah. So thank you, Preston. I appreciate you. A good friend as well. I felt bad after the, I got back. I took a shower and the tattoo was gone. It was gone forever.

Starting point is 01:10:55 Have you got no tattoos? I have no tattoos. Let's get you a tattoo next to this. Pete, we'll have the link for the merch. Anything else? A link to your podcast. Anything else you want to highlight or make sure it's in the show notes? No, just the football club promote that.

Starting point is 01:11:11 And just, yeah, I appreciate you. And thank you again. And we'll see you before then. But I'll definitely see you in bed for next April. Yes, sir. All right. Thanks. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application

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Starting point is 01:11:51 And with that, thanks for listening, and I'll catch you again next week. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Bitcoin Fundamentals on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only, before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication. or reprocasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC179: The Business of Football and Bitcoin w/ Peter McCormack (Bitcoin Podcast)

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