EE518 - Jeff Dodds: The Formula for Scaling a Global Sport to 400m+ Fans

In 12 years, it's come from no fans, no media audience, to over 400 million fans, over half a billion TV audience. Obsessive-compulsive behavior can be an incredible strength. If you've got a business idea, first mover advantage is massive. Great sport in beautiful places with a media mechanism that allows you to put it in front of people in, in interesting ways.

Jeff, welcome to the pod.

Thank you for having me.

It's excellent to have you here. What do you do?

What do I... Um, so I'm the chief exec of Formula E, uh, which is a 12-year-old motor racing series growing incredibly quickly, 400 million fans around the world now, and, uh... Yeah, so, uh, when you said, "What do I do?" I could have broken that down to travel a lot, [chuckles] travel around the world a lot, but yeah, have the, the joy of overseeing that business.

Incredible. Motorsport just seems to be exploding, and sport in general, but motorsport in particular-

Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?

... seems to be exploding in popularity.

Yeah. Look, I think it's always been popular, but it's been popular, um, to a very specific audience, and I think nowadays it's a... It's not a sport, it's a sports entertainment platform. And, uh, yeah, the growth of Formula 1 has been great for all of us. But if you went to the US and looked at NASCAR, IndyCar-

Mm.

... you know, hugely popular, F1 and now Formula E growing around the world. So, uh, yeah, it's a good time to be in motorsport.

What was the tipping point for Formula 1?

[lips smack] Well, look, different people have different views of that. I mean, the, the kind of most commonly, um, [lips smack] trotted out one is that it was the Netflix documentary series Drive to Survive, and there's no question that came about a brilliant time for them 'cause it, it landed during, uh, lockdown, people desperately trying to find things to watch on TV and, and it was there and, and it's a great show and it gave you a real inside, uh, view of the sport. Um, but it wasn't just that. Of course, it's more than that. It's, you know... It was the takeover of Liberty Media who had taken over and invested money in broadcast deals around the world. They were marketing the sport differently. Um, the documentary series came along. So it was a combination of lots of things, but, but that was prob- I guess that was maybe the catalyst.

Mm. I wanna talk to you about the business of sport as well-

Yeah

... because you mentioned it there, Liberty Media. Sport seems to have kinda transcended what would've been its, its own niche-

Mm

... and is now a massive, massive-

Yeah

... global business in itself.

Yeah.

So, like, how do you think about that? Like, how do you think about the business of sport?

So you're right. So sports rights, I mean, I, I would say you look at sports in a few different ways, but there's, there's kind of the top-tier sports in the world, um, commanding massive media revenues, um, uh, very high valuations and multiples if you're looking to sell that business. So, you know, you would say people like, um, uh, the Premier League, uh, Formula 1, you know, these kind of sports right at the top tier. Then you've got a kind of a mid-tier of sports that are desperately trying to