Exploring Community and the Business of Rugby with Martin Anayi
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Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to The Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 Group, and I'm really pleased to welcome Martin Anayi, CEO of United Rugby Championship, to the show today. Welcome, Martin.
Martin Anayi: Thank you very much, Dane. Yeah, pleasure to be on.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. It was interesting catching up just now. It's been a good while since we were probably in the same place. I'd say about 20 years or so.
Martin Anayi: It has, yeah. Time flies, doesn't it? But yeah.
Dane Groeneveld: And it was probably around the rugby event too.
Martin Anayi: I think it probably was. I think it was the last time we might have actually been at a game or played the game together at one point. So yeah.
Dane Groeneveld: Maybe.
Martin Anayi: You've done well. You've done well, mate. You've done very well.
Dane Groeneveld: Oh, thank you. And it's great seeing as we come here today to talk about the future of teamwork just how your careers evolved, and you are now building teams around team sports. You're right in the thick of it. Maybe for the benefit of our listeners, you can provide a bit of a background on your personal story and your business story. What's brought you to where you are today?
Martin Anayi: Yeah, thanks. It's you mentioned that when we're a team, and I guess that's always been a thing for me. Through school, team sports was always a thing. It wasn't individual sports. It was always that I just loved that team environment. I felt like I thrived in that environment, whether that's football, soccer, whether that's rugby, hockey, field hockey which we play a lot of at school.
Dane Groeneveld: Yes.
Martin Anayi: Cricket. Really, it really was all team sports that we were introduced to at quite a young age. I see that now with my kids. They're interested in team sports, and I love that environment that they're in and what they learn from that. I probably did early school years to set me on a course to say, "Actually, just if I can remain involved, ideally at a very young age, professionally in a team sport and in a playing capacity." And I played to a relatively good level but not to a top level, so I knew relatively early that it wasn't going to be on the playing side, that I was going to take that forward. And I crossed over from playing rugby into the sports business world through the legal profession and found myself at IMG in the days where we had quite a lot of major rights holdings, and we represented quite a lot the world's best athletes at the time, whether that's Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Djokovic. We had Serena and Venus Williams. And so it was just a brilliant schooling in the sports business world. And even within that context, I ended up gravitating towards guess what? Rugby World Cup, which is one of the rights that we had. We were representing world rugby, so I became one of their lawyers on the commercial side. And then an opportunity came up for a rugby job. And I thought, " Okay, here we go." Which was at time was a precursor to United Rugby Championship. It was called the Pro12 and had all the teams from Wales, the Welsh team, the best teams from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy. And again, it was that environment where I thought, " Actually, there's something we can do here." So I made that move in 2015 and been there ever since. We've developed that into United Rugby Championship which is today. Been quite a journey.
Dane Groeneveld: Oh. A great journey, yeah. And it's fun that you've been able to string together that passion for sport through some different roles, the legal profession into where you are today.
Martin Anayi: Of course.
Dane Groeneveld: I know as a kid, that was always the thing, wasn't it? I'd be sitting around looking at sports and going, " Gee, I want to do more." I'd watch Jerry McGuire and I'd be like, " Gee, I want to be in the sports engine."
Martin Anayi: Yeah, I think we all did that.
Dane Groeneveld: And I had no idea of the... I've seen the IMG brand a lot, but no idea of that list of rights holdings and sports stars that were in. What is the IMG business to people who aren't that familiar with what goes on behind the scenes in professional sports?
Martin Anayi: Sure. I guess there was a really important person within the sports marketing business world, a guy called Mark McCormack. I'm probably going to get these years wrong, but'60s,'70s. And again, he was a lawyer from Cleveland and he became friends with Arnold Palmer who was the preeminent golfer of the day. Through Arnold, and he realized actually this guy's incredible. So there's a business side to this. It's not just an amateur sport. And he really did. It's quite literally transformed what was amateur sport into professional sport. And he worked with Rod Laver who was the greatest tennis player of the year, Jackie Stewart who ended up being my client, the greatest Formula 1 racing driver of the era, and built this connection of very famous sports stars in their own fields. And then it was quite militant. He created effectively their rights. He was representing the players and created the business of sports rights, really. It's quite exceptional. He then represented things like the All England Tennis Club, which is Wimbledon, really helped them create what it is today. It's just ginormous mammoth business once a year. And it is a members' club in southwest London. It's crazy that he was able to really start that off to what it is today. The Open golf as well, again probably through his connections in the golf world with Arnold Palmer. He was just exceptional. And he wrote this book, What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, and it was just this quite seminal book for quite a lot of people to think, " Actually, do you know? There's a street smarts to this. And though I might not have gone to Oxford at Cambridge, but doesn't matter. I can still tussle with the best of them as long as I'm hopefully quick- witted and be able to actually work hard and do all these things." So it was a little bit of a manual towards your career, if you like. And especially within that sports marketing business world. It's actually from school. I went and tried to do a different internship and they said, " Well, you're a little bit young. Go away to uni. Come back and we'll talk about it." And then I went back to do an internship when I was at uni and they said, " Well, look. You can go into the TV site," because IMG was this... At that point actually, Mark McCormack passed away at that point. And then private equity firm Forstmann Little and Ted Forstmann took it over. And so he was developing out this slightly different strategy where they had the media business, ginormous media house, selling rights, acquisition of rights, production business, and then the event business and personalities. But he also then had the models business, so IMG Models became the biggest modeling agency in the world. It's just collection of his incredible businesses and quite multidisciplined. And when I went to go and see them, what was apparent to me was that quite a lot of lawyers and finance people at the top of the business. So I was thinking, " Okay, do I need to go and become a lawyer?" And they said, "Actually, that's not a bad idea." And that was the route that they set me on. And so I went and qualified in the city and I came back and I said, " You know, you said that you like lawyers. Well, I'm a lawyer now." And they gave me a job and put me working as a lawyer for a wee bit, and I absolutely loved it. And I worked across such a broad array of different subject matter, whether that's golf, tennis, rugby. I was even doing a licensing business and we were licensing Muhammad Ali's image and likeness. It was incredible, honestly. Almost anything they were involved with in some shape or form, TV, production. They were doing PGA Tour golf productions. They got into the gaming and gambling and betting industry quite early on. And now it's IMG Arena. Honestly, it's quite an exceptional business. And it was going through a period of growth when I was in it. And when I left actually, it got taken over by Ari Emanuel and his business called Endeavor. So WME- IMG became an Endeavor brand, and they are the ones who bought the UFC for example. So it's become even bigger, absolutely a mammoth in the industry and a great place to cut my teeth. Is that even a phrase? Grate my teeth.
Dane Groeneveld: Great place.
Martin Anayi: Yeah, it's great fun where I'm from.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I think it is. And so you're getting this mental challenge working across all these different teams, and it's just got to be a buzz being involved-
Martin Anayi: Actually, that's right.
Dane Groeneveld: ... with thosesports players, those sports.
Martin Anayi: 100%. Because I was a lawyer, originally. I ended up moving across the business side, but the structures that we are trying to put in place here where I now work. And that's an interesting development because CVC, a private equity fund, has invested in three separate rugby businesses to try and reduce the fragmentation in the rugby market. And rugby for those who don't know is a sport that's played globally too, but really it's quite a big sport. UK, Ireland, France, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia. So quite a few places, but it's not that big in the US or anything like that. And so it's a really interesting one for a private equity fund to be involved with because what it needs is this consolidation of different businesses. Relatively, we're all doing a similar thing. And that, the start of that process, is here in London where we're sharing an office. So a lot of what I learned at IMG, I'm starting to try and see actually, can you implement a lot of that centralized business teams servicing different functions? And in IMG, that with different divisions but with centralized services.
Dane Groeneveld: Yes.
Martin Anayi: So still trying to implement what I learned back at IMG and what I do now.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. No, that's really cool. And there are a couple of interesting points just to pick up on there, Martin. One, the fact that you went and did an internship in college that pointed you towards the legal profession as a way of getting back in the door, that's pretty cool. Internships, I think particularly in this day and age, they're far more available because we can do these hybrid remote virtual internships. And I think we still run into this problem where young people are coming out of education and not really knowing where they want to go on what they're inspired to do. So that's a good example of how it can create a very successful career path for individuals.
Martin Anayi: Yeah, I think so. I think I would really, really encourage people. And we try and do that as much as possible, to have internships that really do mean something where you're actually getting a broad approach to what that business is. You're not just going and making the tea or the coffee. You're actually going in and getting experience with what the business is and how it operates. And so we are quite careful about when we do internships and how we do them because we're still small. And so IMG had a whole internship program, but I think they are incredibly important and becoming more and more important that you... Because you're going to commit your life to a certain area. You've got to be sure that it's a right area and not getting into something that you later think, " Well, I wish I hadn't have gone down that path." So I think doing as many internships as possible at an early age gives you a sense of, "Actually, I'm pretty sure of this direction of travel that I'm on," and that you don't have to course correct later on. Because I've seen a fair few of people have to do that in the legal industry because they've got into the legal industry and then they've gone, " Actually, I'm not sure I really do enjoy this so I'm going to have to course correct and do something else." So internships, I think, are a really vital part of that pathway to what do you want to do next.
Dane Groeneveld: I think so. And I think what we're starting to see as well where internships at the past probably when you and I were coming out of school were really a way to attract future talent. I think in today's world where it's so much more distributed and so much more tech first, actually bringing some of those interns, particularly those Gen Z interns into the business, can give us a lot of insight that we wouldn't normally have. Particularly in a business like yours where you're trying to build competitions and branding for all of these sports, what do young people think? Where do young people look at their media and how do they assess values of these things?
Martin Anayi: Especially rugby because as you know, rugby tends to skew a little bit older in terms of the fan base. It tends to skew towards people that have played it rather than people that are introduced to it later on in life. And so to try and get a new audience, we've got to go after a younger audience. We've got to go after women. We've got to go after people who haven't played the game before to try and broaden its approach. And so of course, what we like to do is just go and ask loads of people loads of questions. And if you've got interns that are coming in that's not played the sport before, tick because we're after your viewpoint. How do we approach you?
Dane Groeneveld: And all of your friends.
Martin Anayi: And all of your friends and bring them into the game? And that might be through TikTok or that might be through coming to an actual game. What is your entry point? And ultimately, watching it on TV. You're right though. We definitely use that approach. It's a useful insight into the audience that we're trying to attract into the sport.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. So that was one theme I picked up on, which I love and which I think is a big part of the future of teamwork, these internships. The second theme I picked up on not knowing the IMG background but I'm seeing it now is what you explained of picking up those early sports stars, the Arnold Palmers, the Rod Lavers, the Jackie Stewarts, and building an environment where they had rights and they had good commercial access at sports professionalized through the'80s, the '90s, the 2000s so that they would get good income, good sponsorships. The events would attract the right piece. There's a very similar parallel there that can be drawn with I think where we're going today, which is we're now taking employees and consumers into this world of data and the internet and action access to content. So it's interesting, these big shifts that happen that the early professional media shift that clearly IMG did amazing at. And now, this move into streaming and remote and Web3 as it really starts to go out there. How is rugby going to exist in the metaverse? They're very interesting structural shifts.
Martin Anayi: Totally. Because actually, if you can accelerate past other sports through investment, through CVC, and through bringing great people in, because actually what we've hopefully done is made tremendous strides forward. And what have we done? We've invested in people. We've invested in the best people that our money can buy. That's to boil it down. And what they're doing and what our team are doing is saying, " Okay. Well, this is where we are right now." This is where cricket is. This is where other sports are. Football tends to be this thing up here, especially the Premier League football. You almost just let that go. Just let that go. You take a few things from it, but it's almost a different sport. It is literally a different game. So how do we compare and contrast against things that we're really competitive against? And can you bring the best people that you can bring in from outside of the game or indeed from the sports world to help us accelerate past where we are today and past the other competitors? And to get there quicker is through people, through better people. But of course, better people then come with the ideas about how technology can do that and how we can segment an audience and how we can actually go and use first party data to inform what is to us the largest single revenue stream, which is media revenue, broadcast revenue. But of course, the best way of doing that is through first party data. And so everything that's invested through these great people that we've got brought on board is about how do we generate more revenue for the business, which goes back to the clubs. And that comes through understanding data better, understanding how do we utilize our technology, our infrastructure better, and approach a larger audience, know more about that audience and ultimately bring that audience in, engage them. And that creates more value for us going into the next media cycle. And it all starts with people. It all starts with bringing the best people that you can bring in. So that's definitely something that I learned at IMG again, is they went out after the very best people they could. I'd say that we're next because I was one of them, but we could certainly feel that in the room. It was a tension. They created a tension. " You want to work, kid, don't you?" And so we ended up getting these really, really bright people that would've normally gone off to work in a bank or gone into the legal profession or whatever it might be. And they all wanted to work for IMG and they all wanted to live that life and then over deliver for IMG, and that was a great lesson again. That's if we can bring some of that mentality into what we are doing today, then I think we're going to win.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's cool. And I love it how you frame it as it's all about the people. We were at a conference this week and we had a speaker. Heather McGowan came on and she talked about the fact that we're entering the human value era. And that really is what it is.
Martin Anayi: Totally.
Dane Groeneveld: It's the value of the people on your team, the value of your consumers, the value of the players. It's how do we connect those human values to reinforce each other?
Martin Anayi: Human values is essential to any sport to become a business. And sometimes that's a bit of a moot topic or a tricky topic for people, sport business. But ultimately for the sport to continue to grow, it needs to be a business. It needs to be sustainable. It needs to move from surviving to thriving. And the best way again for rugby to accelerate where it can be is through people, through the players, through the coaches, through the narrative. It's what the NFL have done so well with all- or- nothing Hard Knocks, the way that we've never played American football. Getting to the NFL is through the people stories that we are being served, whether that's on Netflix, Amazon, wherever it is, around who are the Detroit Lions and why do I care about Rodriguez getting the last spot on the 53- man roster. Seven weeks ago, I didn't know who he was. So-
Dane Groeneveld: Become invested.
Martin Anayi: ...I'm invested in him, yeah. And so after all my years in the business, I'm still sucked into that. And that's all through the value of a person and the personality. I think.
Dane Groeneveld: Oh, absolutely. It's funny that you brought up Hard Knocks. I've never watched Hard Knocks. I've probably seen one episode, but I see that it's got a really big following. And it does become about story and about getting to know the people. I think that actually flows down into the youth sports too. And it's interesting when you're managing teams, what you do in your team but also what you do in your community that supports those values of your team and what you're all trying to work towards.
Martin Anayi: Quite value-
Dane Groeneveld: Where do you see-
Martin Anayi: Sorry, go on.
Dane Groeneveld: I was going to say where do you see the intersection of youth rugby and what you are doing in the professional environment as you guys continue to take the whole program forwards?
Martin Anayi: It's interesting because they tend to almost be kept separate when they shouldn't be. And what we are trying to do more of with our clubs is to, and they already are, but tell this story. I think I'll phrase it another way. The clubs are already pillars of the community. Our job as a league is to shine a light on that and to create a platform by which the great work that they're doing in the community is told to as wide an audience as possible. And that's very much how we see ourselves as the league. We are in that context the NFL, but in our own terms, the Detroit Lions or for us, the Scarlets and Connacht actually are a key, key pillar to that community. They do run junior programs all the way from under 8 all the way through to senior rugby, male and female, disability rugby, wheelchair rugby. It is everything. It is everything to the community. And so our job is as a league where we're not actually in the community ourselves, it's to shine a spotlight on the work, the great work that those clubs do already in the community and to try and emphasize that and to highlight it and to make it even better and make it more broadly aware. And I think that's the bit that we really, really love. Player profiles, we've got a player series called Players in Focus, and then the great work that the clubs do. And there's one that's fantastic, this guy called Maxime Mbanda, and he is an Italian rugby player. But during COVID, he joined voluntarily the medical service to take people at the height of COVID when Italy was really-
Dane Groeneveld: Scary.
Martin Anayi: ...getting hit. It's scary and a lot of people dying. The height of that during his professional career as an international rugby player, he went and became effectively someone that took patients from A to B. So he was getting them from their home. This is that time when COVID has just broken out, especially in Italy where it was very high mortality.
Dane Groeneveld: Very courageous,
Martin Anayi: Very courageous, very selfless. He did it without telling anybody, really. He got ordered the Order of Merit. It's a knighthood in Italy. And we told that story through a content series we did of him and it just exploded. So people are, they do care about the person. And through the conduit of that person and their story and their fantastic story, rugby gets the benefit. And that ultimately, hopefully more people come to see the game because they care about him, and he's playing the game of rugby so they care about rugby. It's that hopefully it's a process by which through the player and through that great story, we can drive an audience into the game.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I think it is. I was referencing with you before we started today that I'd work with the Southern California Youth Rugby Board here, and my son Ryker is playing now. He's not quite got the Martin Anayi profile going into high school, but he's a pretty good, nice going.
Martin Anayi: Okay, great.
Dane Groeneveld: And he's definitely got that appetite that I think you want to see in a young player. But what's interesting is recruiting other kids to play. He's got a dad who played recruiting other kids to play. You need to start telling stories in the community. So Ryker is he's tiny. He's 70 pounds soaking wet. He's playing against these 150- pound islander kids up in LA who are brilliant athletes, and he's scrappy and he's got long red hair. And we're not doing any player profiles, but it's just interesting to go around and talk to other people and say, " Well, it's really good for him. He's a little guy but he's just out there in the mix with these big physical kids, and he's overcoming some fears and he's building some confidence and he is building your teammates." I feel like we need to be telling more of those stories in our clubs, in our schools, and then pulling those kids up to have relationships with the professional players so that they can see this continuum. And when you do that, I think then the kids have got someone to aspire to. And the parents see the positives and then the parents start to follow the sport and say, " This is healthy for my kid." And then they start watching the game. It's amazing the way it just threads through the ecosystem. So to bring the future players, the future customers, all the rest of it.
Martin Anayi: And the phrase is that rugby is a game for all sizes, shapes, colors, creeds, and so it's a very inclusive game. It's always been shaped that way. It's got a fantastic value set about teamwork, about hard work, about the ethic of being part of a team. And I think that all shapes and all sizes point is really critical. I see it when I take my kids down to rugby in our club. And whereas some other sports, you get streamed quite quickly. You're either going to be a great footballer or you're not. And you can tell quite early which kids are have or haven't. Whereas rugby, you can be a big kid and you can be in the front row and you can be a prop. And then you suddenly come into row, you've got a role within that team. I'm guessing it's like American football too. You've got a very, very distinct role in that team. Therefore, you get your self- worth from being good in that position. And if you're not good in that position, the team fails. I think that's what I love about team sports. You see you get a self- worth from your role. And some kids are going to have a bigger role than other kids, but if that kid doesn't do their job, that team's going to not do as well as it could do. And you get fulfillment from that, and I love that about it. And you can see the kids at the weekend do that. You can see them getting a bit more confident. " I did that. Okay, right. Now, I can do the next thing." And in individual sports like golf, you don't really get that because it's like, " Did I hit a good T shot or not? And who's looking?" You don't really get that same thing.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Did I help?
Martin Anayi: Exactly. Who did I help? And then afterwards of course, you have that bond with the other players that even to this day, I'm on an email and a WhatsApp group with players that I stopped playing rugby with however many years ago. And so you don't ever really lose it. It might change somewhat. So that it is quite special, I think.
Dane Groeneveld: It does create a sense of, I agree with you, a sense of appreciation. I bet I could bump into you or any number of people that we played rugby with in high school and still be telling stories about how we helped each other out. And that that's very different from what did we learn in class together. It's very different.
Martin Anayi: I think most of us would struggle on that latter question, wouldn't they? But on the former-
Dane Groeneveld: There are a few good teachers.
Martin Anayi: Yeah, you do remember. You do remember. And again, some of the best teachers were those that engendered that team spirit, I think. The best teachers that I can remember, Captain McConnell- Wood, if you remember hearing, was a small stocky captain in the army, but he was a rugby coach as well. And so he was the one that everybody followed and wanted to hang around with or talk to, but he was still respected. He was a captain in the army and blah blah blah. So I think the team ethos was probably, looking back and talking to you now, it was probably pervasive for everything we did at school actually. All the way through school-
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, of course.
Martin Anayi: ... it was all about theteam. Even house sports if you do that.
Dane Groeneveld: Actually, Tim McConnel- Wood... House sports were great, but actually that's an interesting thing. I'm going to say two things. One, Tim McConnell- Wood I think just got made the headmaster of Cranleigh in Abu Dhabi.
Martin Anayi: Oh, right. Okay.
Dane Groeneveld: I just saw that on LinkedIn the other day.
Martin Anayi: Right, fantastic.
Dane Groeneveld: So that's cool that he's going strong and continuing to make a big impact on young people's lives. Two, house sports for people, for listeners who don't understand it, you play for the school, and then if you're in a boarding house, you have your boarding house team. The really cool thing about that is that going back to all shapes and sizes, all ability levels too, you've got a smaller group of people. So you've pulled this team together. I think it was mainly seven. We used to play at rugby at the end of the season, and you're out playing with first team players and 15 players and it's-
Martin Anayi: It was just a blast.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. It was great, wasn't it? Just everyone scrapping to make it happen. I had some of those-
Martin Anayi: It was some of the most fun, favorite kind of moment.
Dane Groeneveld: Oh, for sure. Yeah. I had so much fun on those events because it was not high stakes, but there was still pride at stake. And it was more about having fun and taking down, " Hey, I get a chance to take down Martin," or, " I get a chance to take down..."
Martin Anayi: That's right.
Dane Groeneveld: Whoever it was. Yeah, it was pretty cool.
Martin Anayi: Yeah, that's cool.
Dane Groeneveld: You get a target on your back if you were a generally higher-
Martin Anayi: That's right.
Dane Groeneveld: ...ranking player. On that theme of good team experiences, where did you really see great teamwork in your professional career, or where do you continue to see great teamwork in your professional career? And how do you define when it's working best?
Martin Anayi: That's a good question. I thought we have one of our teams in our competition called Leinster, and Leinster are effectively the province in Ireland around Dublin to the capital. And Leinster, I would probably say, is right up there with two or three teams that would be classed best teams in European rugby. And they've won, I think, the Champions Cup, which is the very pinnacle tournament four times. So these guys are... And when I look at the how they've created a coherent team, they do it really early through schools of Leinster, and it's provincial. So there's 12 counties, I think, of Leinster. And Dublin is one of those 12 counties, the biggest. And so they've got this network of coaches that go out and they spread the gospel, so to speak, of how a Leinster player should play. And so by the time that person, that individual gets to Leinster's Academy, which is under twenties, but then through to the first team, they are schooled in the way of that team. They understand the ethos. They understand the culture. They understand systems. And so you have this incredible high performance pathway, we call it, where I imagine it's one of the fastest in the world where you can be an academy player and then 12 months later, you're playing for your country island, which are top rugby countries in the world and recently beat the All Blacks, which arguably one of the best teams of all time in New Zealand. And they do that from a very small group of players and mainly because they understand their role in that team, which translates to the national team. And I think that ability to know your role within a team, even if you are 16 going to 20, but actually that role is a progression of the same culture. I've never seen anything like that before. I've not seen too many high performance pathways like that where you've got a group of individuals that are almost working through their age groups as a cohort, and by the time they get to the top level, they're absolutely peak performance inside the team and individually. I've never seen that before. It's quite exceptional. So I think that's one area I'm almost in awe of occasionally of saying, " How did you just step in and become in international within 12 months?" But that's not just one player that they have. They've done that six or seven times in recent years. So I think that's a really incredible example of teamwork.
Dane Groeneveld: And you said culture and systems. So it's not just, " My role is I take the head up," or, " My role is I'm going to be really pushing up to be aggressively tackling." It's how they communicate together, how they talk about each other about problems on the field. So it sounds like it's endemic from a behaviors and a role perspective.
Martin Anayi: It is. And they've got incredible coaches at the top end. Stuart Lancaster who was head coach of England, he was my coach at university. So I know Stuart. They've got some of the best coaches from around the world. They had Felipe Contepomis from Argentina there. But they had this incredible... And actually, that's the other aspect of teamwork, which is the coaching team and the staff and the way that the coaching team interacts with, if you like, the commercial team, which is the marketing, the PR, the comms. I think in the US sports parlance, it's front office, back office and so on. We don't quite use the same terminology, but you have a sense of these different groups and these different units within the business of rugby working in harmony with one another. And the moment they don't work in harmony and the moment that, if you like, the team side, the head coach to the director of rugby which is the highest role within the rugby, high performance seeker, doesn't work in harmony with the commercial side, you always have problems. And so again, that's the other element to teamwork within a sports business. It's always a slight tension, hopefully not a negative tension, between what's required commercially and what's required from us high sports, high performance point of view.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I like that. And tension's the right point because if there's no tension, then it means that someone's getting their way all the time and they're not considering the wider viewpoints or drivers for commercial or operations facilities, whatever it is that's important leading into a bigger venture or into a big season.
Martin Anayi: That's right. They could've... You've got the harmony.
Dane Groeneveld: That's the word, tension.
Martin Anayi: The harmony to tension dynamic is really interesting, right? Because sometimes, good tension, there's a good tension. Sounds an odd phrase, but there's a good tension. And the best teams have a good tension, I think.
Dane Groeneveld: Definitely. It's funny that's come up again because yesterday, I'm at this conference. There's a guy called Tim Sanders talking about how teams operate, and he's talking about the Beatles. And he said Ringo Starr was what made the Beatles because when Ringo came in, the former drummer, Pete... I can't remember his name, but the former drummer was too much like Paul McCartney. So they were getting their way too much. And Ringo comes in and he's a bit more of an everyday man and he starts challenging John and Paul and George and saying, " We guys need to build. We need to write our music in a way that the everyday man can pick up and actually play some of it on their guitar. And we need to do this and we need to do that." And naturally, he didn't always get his way, but that tension meant that they were able to create music that so many people could just gather around and be a part of.
Martin Anayi: That's funny, yeah.
Dane Groeneveld: It's four people with different viewpoints.
Martin Anayi: Different viewpoints, but they work harmoniously together. But there is a tension where they are, it's just on the edge of being right. And I think that's sometimes in a rugby club can go the other way. You can get sometimes... And this come with ebbs and flows of performance. Because obviously, a coach or a player reacts differently to a team performing well, to a team performing badly, or their own performance or injury, or there are lots of different factors that come into play. And so it's never a steady state. It's always this non- moving beast. And I think you just got to have the right blend of people, and you've also got to have people that are patient with each other, and you've got to have people that hold the team together, crack the jokes. You've got to have people that are serious, and it's a blend of all of that. And that's where the CEO comes in or the general manager. And in, I guess, a US sport parlance again. But go back to that Ringo Starr and he won't like me for saying this, but the director of rugby at Leinster is a guy called Leo Cullen. Leo Cullen played for Ireland, incredibly successful, played for Leicester Tigers in England also and won many championships, but a quiet reserved man. So when Stewart Lancaster came in who had been the head coach of England came in, everyone at the time thought, "How's this going to work? You've got Leo and then you got this guy, and how's that going to work?" But it worked brilliantly because lack of ego or whoever put that together together. And the CEO at the time, Mike Dawson, put it together. He was confident that actually they would work. And of course two championships later and European championships and honors. So to the outside world and to the uneducated of that system that they had created and that ecosystem and the culture and everything else that goes with it, he thought, " That's never going to work." But to them and to the people that really knew, the CEO, he thought this as, " This is going to work. I can tell that they will work well together." So that was a good lesson for me. You can't judge a book by its cover, can you? And you definitely can't judge a team by its outside appearance. You've got to know what it's like on the inside.
Dane Groeneveld: And you've got to look at how people work together over time. I think that's this theme that we're circling, is gone are the days when you say, " I need a person to fill this role that has this, this, and this," because it's not the task they're bringing in. It's those behaviors. It's how are they going to mesh with the team? And that's exciting because I think it gives us opportunities, particularly in today's era where it's easier to learn. There's so much more digital content. You don't have to go to school to get a decent level of understanding on something. It's easier to hire for behaviors and to bring in people that have different views, and are they going to drive the sport or the team or the club in a very different, or the business in a very different direction.
Martin Anayi: I totally agree. I think more and more now, I don't even look where someone's gone to school. I don't look where anyone's gone to university. I look at where they've just been come from to just get a sense of it. And then you go and meet them and you say, " How would this person fit into the environment that we're trying to create? Are they going to be..." And not too scientifically. " Are they going to be a positive force or middle of the road force or a negative force?" Obviously, if it's negative force, go on straight onto the next one. If it's middle of the road, you're like, " Well, you need a bit of middle of the road. You need some neutral people within an organization." And obviously, you're looking for those that can make a positive, have a positive involvement in your business. So I think that to me when we're recruiting is far more important than, " What have you done? What have you got in your CV?" And obviously, you've got to speak intelligently at the interview about the subject matter or the role that you're going for. But more importantly is are you going to be a positive to the business from a culture point of view? Are you going to be a positive force? Or are you going to be the person who looks at the negative and everything? Because in any environment, again in our environment or any business environment, if you've got people who look naturally at the negative, I'm not sure I can work with you. I need people to either be neutral and very calm and sensible or positive, and I tend to work better with people that are positive.
Dane Groeneveld: And there's always ways to frame challenges in a positive way rather than, " This doesn't work." It's more like, " Well, if we could overcome this challenge, we could achieve X, Y, and Z." And it's just that little nuance of how you frame the problem that allows the team to come around and say, " This is how we're going to work through it."
Martin Anayi: We actually came up with a series of values, and one of those was lead from your position. Because we said, " Look, if you're going to come in..." And why lead from your position is important is it means that you're inquisitive. It means you're willing to challenge in a positive way. Lead means forward normally from your position, so don't rest on your position. You're leading from your position. You've got to go forward and you've got to add to the business. And so it was a really important one for us. We have others. We want people to be brave. We want people to aim to amaze. And we overall are trying to change the game. It's quite a broad and grand vision. We're trying to change the game. But ultimately, it's about being united as one team. And so if you can do those, if you can do all of those things and you can just display that, then we've got the right people in the building.
Dane Groeneveld: I agree. And now that we've got so much fragmentation in skills, we were talking about data earlier. You look at media, you look at communications, you look at the actual sport and advertising and all of these micro niches, you need everyone to lead from their position. Because it's gone is the day when the boss in the room has the best knowledge you've ever seen.
Martin Anayi: No, no.
Dane Groeneveld: You need each individual to share their expertise as to what that contributes to the team's goal or objective.
Martin Anayi: Because if you think, I guess I started with three people in my team. And the owners of the business said, " Look, you go and invest in the business, and we're going to give you some time to go and grow a team." And so I come with my own thoughts and I come with my own positions on things. But then after a while, the more and more good and great people that you bring into the business, it would be stupid of me to not listen to them. I brought them in. So I got to bring in the best people I can bring in and then give them the freedom and the room to operate. Knowing where some key framework is to that as well. What are we trying to achieve? What's the grand vision? What general direction are we trying to get and head towards? Perhaps even, what is the goal ultimately? Now, you guys are going to tell me how the best way get to the goal. And that's-
Dane Groeneveld: It's a good way to frame it.
Martin Anayi: As just key because hopefully as a leader, you need to still lead. You can't just push people off and say, " Good luck to you." You've still got to lead and be there and guide and counsel and take a decision now and again on things that maybe decisions are being slow to be made, or whatever it is. Sometimes you've got to be know when to be forceful with things. But most of the other times, I'm listening to my team and they're telling me how we're going to get there.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Which is really empowering for the team too because then they feel like they have a voice. They feel like they have a sense of belonging. And I think that's what really unlocks the magic. That's what excites people to get out of bed in the morning and go in and try and make a difference.
Martin Anayi: It's no different to what I had when I was coming through work, or people trusted me to go and gave me the security, the blanket to say, " Okay, if I did fail, it's not the end of the world." I knew where the lines were, but within that box, I had to go and deliver something for them. And it empowered me to go and deliver it for them. And so if we can try and engender that here, hopefully that translates to the modern environment. And of course we need to change it somewhat because it is different now to when I was doing it. And so I'm still learning that. I'm still trying to get that balance right.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I was in the airport last night with a colleague and we were saying that we're trying to put ourselves in the position of some of our more junior staff, and we were doing what I think every generation of leaders called foul of and saying, " In my day, it used to be like this." And we stopped for a minute and we were like, " Yeah. But in our day, we didn't have all of these web- based platforms. We were writing ads and putting them in newspapers to find people." So of course it was different. We had to spend more time out on the street meeting people because you couldn't access them digitally. It takes a bit of... It's that constant adjustment, constant tension again that we brought up earlier that helps us all know where we should be today.
Martin Anayi: It's funny because technology is one of those things where in our environment, and it's no different in media generally, but in the States, there's a great phrase of cutting the cord. And I think that's an interesting thing of going direct to consumer, going over the top. And rugby businesses, ultimately a lot of sports businesses tends to develop from the amateur era where you're an organizer of things. I'm putting a match on and I get the match officials and I get that... In the NFL, be the umpire, whoever it is. You get them there. Then the next phase of development of professional sports, I'll get the broadcasters there, I'll go and do the broadcaster, and I'll bring sponsors in and I'll go and sell tickets. And that evolution of the sports. But you were never direct to consumer other than ticketing. You're never direct to consumer.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.
Martin Anayi: Gave that to the broadcaster who is then direct to consumer. But now of course with technology the way it is, we can actually get to the fan as quick as broadcaster X, Y, and Z. And so it's about trying to shape our business going forward. And we're no different to many rights holders around the world where you have the ability, not necessarily exclusively, but the ability through technology to talk immediately to your fan and to the clubs fans. Whereas before, you didn't have that. You had to go through terrestrial TV or linear TV. You don't need to do that anymore. The fact that we choose to is a choice. It's our choice to do that, but we could go direct to consumer. And so you have to have a different approach to the people we have in our team, that we are in our consumer- facing business rather than a business- to- business business. And that's almost a wholesale change to philosophy of professional sport here in Europe. It's been like that in the US for many years, but not here.
Dane Groeneveld: I think a lot of other industries are seeing that same progression. I don't think that's unique. I think it's probably a bigger shift in sports. But even for some of our businesses, like our recruiting business, it used to be B2B but now it's more about what is the relationship with an individual hiring manager with candidates? What are we doing to inform them of things that are changing in the market? It's far less about the transaction now. Just like in rugby, it's probably far less about just the game. It's about everything from player development to community impact, like you said, shining that light on what people are doing in the communities. I guess the more specific, people want to see media in smaller bite sizes now because we're so overloaded. So you're probably also starting to see that, " Hey, these people really like watching highlights of tries where these people like seeing key plays." And it's just so fragmented, so different, the average consumer.
Martin Anayi: And also because technology also helps you, one, segment the audience so who you're talking on what platform, so you can create content that is engaging to that particular segment or that demographic. You can mostly do that through AI now, quite honestly, because if that example of tries which is the equivalent of touchdown in American football, all you need to do now is you have a piece of software that does it for you. It clips up all the tries in a game and puts immediately out. And something that used to take three or four people to get all the right footage in and play around with some editing equipment is done by AI. And so it's just automated. It's just automated. And we then give that to our clubs to do as well because obviously they're as good, if not better, conduit to their fan base than we are. So it's constantly evolving, and we're trying as best as we can with the resources that we've got to keep being innovative and to create content on platforms that is appropriate to that platform and to which audience we know is there and try and put content where the audience we want to come into the game is already watching it. And that's a different thing. Before, it'd be just blanket. Put it on YouTube, that's it. Done. We can't do that anymore. You don't have that luxury. People will go and watch something else.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, they will. It's like my son likes to see, I don't know if you ever saw it with the rugby league in Australia, they used to do the Falcon videos where someone would take a pass right in the head. They're running a decoy line and they get one in the head, and so he's like," I want to watch videos of Falcons," or, " I want to watch videos of guys getting like dump tackled." But he knows exactly what he wants to watch.
Martin Anayi: Very specific.
Dane Groeneveld: I'll often ask to sit down and watch a whole game with me. And he is like, " No, Dad. Not interested. But if you can show me Faf de Klerk tackling big forwards as a small scrumhalf, I'm all about it."
Martin Anayi: Yeah. And exactly, because he's automatically through his own experience with the game thinking, " Okay, I want to see what I could then replicate on the pitch," or whatever. I think the fan base now is quite discerning, a lot more discerning than perhaps we were growing up. We'd watch whatever we were given to watch. Whereas obviously through technology, you'd go and search out what you want to watch.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it is cool. Well, it's been a great conversation, Martin. Good connecting. And I really enjoyed learning a little bit more about what IMG was, how you got into it through the internship, what you're now doing with United Rugby Championship and this wider strategy around rugby. I think it's such a great sport. It's such an important sport, I think, for a lot of communities and a lot of countries. And it's great that we've got the Olympic format of Sevens now too, so awesome to see all of your...
Martin Anayi: You're have a Rugby World Cup in America, 2031. You're going to have a Women's World Cup before that Men's World Cup in 2031. So keep up the good work and some will try-
Dane Groeneveld: And the California Olympics in'28.
Martin Anayi: Incredible, yeah.
Dane Groeneveld: With the Sevens.
Martin Anayi: With sevens rugby.
Dane Groeneveld: All soon.
Martin Anayi: Yeah, keep up the good work.
Dane Groeneveld: Yep, yep. No, it's super fun. No, thanks Martin. And my big takeaway, I loved your lead from your position value. I think that's a great... That's a really good framework for the future of teams, and it's a good way to bring every team member into a position of leadership, which I think is it's where we're at today. It's important.
Martin Anayi: Brilliant. Good to see you, Dane.
Dane Groeneveld: So thanks for sharing.
Martin Anayi: Yeah, you too. All right. Take care.
Dane Groeneveld: Thanks, Martin.
DESCRIPTION
Martin Anayi drops by The Future of Teamwork to talk about his journey to becoming the CEO of United Rugby Championship, as well as his history as a lawyer and the importance of internships in his career path. Martin takes the host Dane Groeneveld through the ins and outs of sports in professional environments, and where he has seen examples of great teamwork throughout his career. Along the way, the two discuss everything from Ringo Starr and tension, to framing challenges in positive ways, and capping off the conversation with a look at technology's role in teamwork and leadership.
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Dane Groeneveld
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