You can never really predict where a journey will take you, what you will end up doing, and especially that for which you will ultimately be known. Building something is seldom predictable, linear and to-plan.
Especially ships.
In the 70s, Steve Jobs dropped out of his course at college and started frequenting a random class on calligraphy. As you do. Speaking at Stanford in 2005, after having utterly reinvented every possible type of computer user interface in the meantime, he told students:
If I had never dropped in on that font course in college, the Mac would have never happened.
Now, that’s a proper sliding door!
In 1981, at the height of his popularity, the British post-punk icon Elvis Costello found himself recording country-song covers. As a career path for an edgy music artist like him, it just made no sense whatsoever, but that’s what happened. One imagines the horror of the suits at Colombia Records.
The full origin story of Almost Blue (Almost Blue Elvis Costello), and why he felt the need to record it, is actually a very dark narrative. How does your mind go from Watching the Detectives to Tonight The Bottle Let me Down?
I went there in a very depressed frame of mind anyway. I had this sad feeling, I dunno why, it wasn’t anything specific in my life, I’d just wound myself up to it. […] Looking back now, I can’t imagine how I was so miserable sounding. It was a genuine feeling, so I never accepted the criticisms that the singing wasn’t authentic.
—Elvis Costello, NME, 1982
The whole bizarre adventure did however leave us this little ditty.
Things happen for a reason.
Almost Blue wasn’t well received, and still today doesn’t ever rate highly on critics’ lists of Costello’s work, but maybe that wasn’t ever its real role.
Perhaps exactly this is the lesson of today’s Sunday Column.
Things do happen for a reason, but often at the time it’s just not apparent what that is.
The romantic in us all wants to poetically ponder if, without those country songs, Shipbuilding ever sees the light of day.
One doesn’t need to agree with Costello’s politics to fully recognise that this is high, high art. A genuine masterpiece.
Albachiara was never meant to be an events or conference company. And yet…
The best things can never scale.
If you come out of any successful endeavour, finding genuine product-market fit, you will get a lot of compliments, and that always has its own dangers.
Leaving aside all the Mephisto stuff around vanity, hubris and pride, practical temptation will for sure present itself. To immediately kick-on, scale and ultimately “monetise”. That’s been the entire venture capital Silicon Valley Playbook for 25 years. Find product-market fit, raise a large Series B funding, and grow fast.
Do others events, other locations, offer access to this Como community for brands. “They’ll pay a lot to get around your room of people in that relaxed environment.”
But some things can’t really scale, not without losing what made them valuable in the first place, and this has always been the blind spot of the VC industry. It ignores the principle of scarcity.
FOMO by definition isn’t a product that can scale.
It’s been a Good Year for the Roses on the lake!
In fact it has been a good few years now. An entire garden of late-blooming flowers if truth be told. If we were getting ready to do our Q3 quarterly Earnings Call this week, it would be very tempting to stand there with the chest out, like Bryson after getting back to All-Square.
2025 has been a challenging year as a family, but these 9 months of work so far have nevertheless exceeded all our expectations. Important organisations like Google, 54, Bundesliga, European Leagues et al, have placed very significant trust in our team and collaborators, to deliver value to their thinking. We have also proactively invested capital directly in innovative fresh IP projects transforming their sports, like PTO and R360, on both occasions working very closely with Oakvale Capital on corporate finance and fundraising.
But it is the Summit that now defines us.
When the product is sharp insight, your reputation is the asset.
Our product is knowledge transfer (for beautiful minds) and the business model is as a consulting advisor and investor, making money on fees and carried interest.
“Honest operators who invest and make it happen” is the positioning, and that then gives us the “permission” to opine on our sectors with some in-the-trenches gravitas, across books, podcasts, speaking gigs, and Columns.
A very efficient brand fly-wheel.
Lasting success, for us, doesn’t ever come from fee income in the bank account, likes and reshares of the posts, sales of books, downloads of podcasts.
It comes from the quality of the people who feel comfortable and confident to hang out with us, and share their personal and corporate brand with ours. So, in reality, what happens at the end of Summer each year, on Lake Como at the Albachiara Sport Summit, is what we judge ourselves by. It is now without doubt the corporate scorecard that tells us the strength and health of the Albachiara brand. And if it is growing.
The 2025 Report Card.
The best by far.
The Summit is a product very hard to describe to others, especially under Chatham House Rules, so each year we try to capture the event with a closing video, which hopefully fully represents Italy, Como, our work, and our home.
This below in 2025 is our own little “Shipbuilding”.
It may not seem so now from this wonderful piece of film, but deciding to come and live here 20 years ago wasn’t an easy decision. Mid-careers, very young family, miles from any central hub of the sports and FMCG industries. Red-eye Ryanair flights, chasing revenues on-spec from myriad eclectic clients, meeting new people with a forced smile, kissing so many frogs, climbing difficult new learning curves with founders. At the same time seeing your peers thrive, with fancy business cards and expense accounts.
Not so easy.
🎶 Is it worth it?
A new winter coat and shoes for the wife
And a bicycle on the boy’s birthday 🎶
On reflection, all these struggles were absolutely our “Almost Blue”. Our calligraphy class to eventually arrive in 2025 with this video. It was our 4th Summit edition, and no false modesty can hide the reality of what has been created now.
Humans of power and influence meet.
It’s always very amusing each year to note how the first-timers arrive on the lake, with very little real idea as to “what all the fuss is about”. By Friday night, however, when they speak to camera, we like to think it’s clear.
It is simply a gathering where you attract a limited number of the very right senior people, put them in a frame of mind, (safe and relaxed), where they can freely leave their ego at the door, drop their guard, and dive in. The lake takes care of the rest.
The Sport Summit Como is also a case study in that principle of scarcity. Human nature wants more of everything that isn’t easily obtainable. That can be a Bugatti car, a villa with your toes in the water, a Basquiat, the one girl who annoyingly doesn’t find you charming. Or, in theme, a premium sports franchise.
You can’t buy a ticket to Como, and you need to wait for an invite.
A financing model only made possible by the right sponsors.
Like with all good modern sponsorship, it is not just their money, but how they help plan the whole event, propose invitees, craft the agenda with us. Our partners are key, and each of them needs to be undeniably at the fore-front of industry transformation:
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Anyone not fully absorbing the dramatic impact of Saudi Arabia on our industry must be asleep, so having Surj Sport Investment as a partner is so important. This year Danny Townsend brought with him senior representatives from PIF, The Ministry of Sport, and the global CEO of DAZN. Mike Armstrong of EA Sports had to cancel, I think now for obvious reasons. That’s real value. The room this year had a chance to hear about the insider reality of the Kingdom from Feras and Adwa, interestingly both well below the industry average-age for the sport C-Suite. Adwa’s personal story as a Saudi woman was truly uplifting and enlightening.
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All growth is dependent on raising and deploying risk capital to the right projects. That’s always the fuel. OakVale Capital is the most active independent boutique doing that in the (European) market now, and it was great to see Sandford and Dan there to share a lot of actual reality around corporate finance. They have dominated deals in data, gaming and gambling for years, and are now doing the same in sport, with deals like Baller’s league, PTO, R360. STATSports/Sony. True partners.
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The town of Como is really the main protagonist of the Summit and, as Ryan Shelton of Como 1907 says, it is a magical place that will seduce you more than you realise. To have this football club with us on this journey, mirroring their own rise from Serie D only a few years ago, is perfect. Both of us have made this place our home, and we want passionately to give something of real quality back to the territory.
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OneFootball, and its Chairman Elliot Richardson, was the very first company to see the vision of all this 4 years ago. Cutting a cheque over what was still nothing more than an idea. Their own journey, via Dugout and NFTs, to where they are today, with 32m known users of their platform, once again proves how progress and transformation is never linear. In the middle of a sector debating ferociously every day between walled-gardens, universal ubiquity on social platforms, versus owned-and-operated rights holder apps, OneFootball offers a unique vision of fan engagement and monetisation.
A garden where ideas can grow.
So what is actually discussed? That’s what people wanna know. Or do we just shoot the breeze over proper espresso and cannoli, watching the sea-planes land, and convince ourselves that we are working?
Over two days, observing the salotto room come alive, you instead realise how many different touch-points already exist across common projects and deals. And you wonder how many more there will be by the Friday evening. You can sense it all in real time. You really can. Interactions that, more often than not, will lead to something that could fundamentally change our sector, if not today, certainly tomorrow.
You can’t have Andrea Agnelli, UEFA, DAZN, Saudi, and Arctos in the same room talking about the merits of a European Superleague, (with the EPL clubs or not), without wondering what our future holds. Will platforms insist on global as opposed to national rights, perhaps presented very differently like Jamie Horowitz Manningcasts. Guy-Laurent Epstein is maybe sat there thinking about Netflix?
The doyen John Skipper chipping in knowingly, always with perfect timing, in that Southern drawl.
Wonderful stuff.
Yes, the Summit facilitates the connections that can practically change our sport, and offers a fertile garden where ideas can grow. Just as the artist Jacopo Zilliotto has drawn for this Sunday’s Column headline image.
Our Book of Brilliant Things.
As Danny’s said, this year was much more about trying to solve the issues, not just identify the weather fronts of the Storm.
Things like this:
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If not media rights, how do we make a sustainable business of all this? Have we moved from licensed exclusivity to intelligent ubiquity? And if so, how do we get paid? Is the funnel inverting? Who can still pay for sports rights, and what will interest them?
Is the media sector consolidating? Are Netflix and Youtube now Free-To-Air? Where does TNT end up now that WarnerBros Discovery is in play? What is the real ambition of DAZN, with The Kingdom on the cap table?
How valuable are the 32m users of OneFootball? What are the those famous “sport-adjacent” revenues? The role of sports tourism and whether the story of Como 1907 is a replicable playbook.
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If sport is an asset class, what type of asset is it, and how do you value it? The reality of the Saudi ambition? PE wall of money looking for a rare Da Vinci masterpiece, or a normal cashflow investment?
The big moves from the Mega Funds, and why? Is the PE model decaying or thriving? Leverage and debt distorting rational decision making? The importance of exit.
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The fragility of incumbent sport, especially in Europe. The oversupply of the event product. Can the imbalances of national leagues continue?
The exorbitant waste in player cost inefficiency in football, and how to do it better. Can the science and maths behind player XG be applied to managers and clubs, to inform better decision-making?
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Is the consumer, the sport fan, maxed out? Half of all consumer spending today comes from the top 10%, where the high-end keeps spending and the rest are forced to cut back just to get by.
Can you maintain and grow ticket revenues in this market, without pricing out the traditional working class fan?
The wisdom of crowds.
There were 60 guests this year in Como. That can’t be really defined as a crowd, but when they split into 8 groups and each presented their top 3 ideas for capital deployment into sport, the combined wisdom was off-the-charts. These are seriously talented people, all sparking off each other.
You know? Maybe you can “scale” Como after all!
Somebody, more than one actually, mentioned the idea of an active Investor Club to put these ideas into practice, with ready-available capital. And clearly the operator skill to deliver and execute.
Who knows?
🎶 It’s just a rumour that was spread around town. A telegram or a picture postcard 🎶
Thanks to all involved in the Sport Summit Como 2025, especially Raffaella and Valentina.
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