The Athletic.

Hello, I'm Matt Slater, and welcome to the Business of Sport podcast on The Athletic.

Now, coming up today, we'll be reacting to the news that Gary Hoffman has announced

he is resigning as chairman of the Premier League after just 18 months in the job.

He will step down at the end of January 2022.

The Athletic revealed on Tuesday that Hoffman was leaving, and it followed David

Ornstein's story last month that some Premier League clubs wanted Hoffman to leave his position with the Premier League.

We are joined by Simon Johnson, currently chair of the rugby football league.

He spent five years as chief operating officer at the English Football Association

and was director of legal and business affairs at the Premier League before that.

Also with us is Alex Horne, former chief executive of the English FA for five years,

who oversaw the financing completion and opening

of both Wembley Stadium and the National Football Centre.

Okay, so thanks so much for joining us, guys.

Let's start with a nice gentle one.

Simon, well, actually is a chairman. And how do they work?

A chairman is somebody who is, in the simple terms, is there to chair a board or chair a company or a group of shareholders.

But it goes much further than that. And I think the thing you have to remember is the distinction between a chair and a chief executive. So a chair is part-time, what we call non-executive. That means they're

only working within the business for, it could be a couple of days a week, it could be a few days

a month, but they're not there all the time. And their responsibility is to manage and oversee the executive team, to represent the

views of the shareholders or stakeholders to the executive team, and to deal with issues and to

make sure that the interests of the shareholders are always being looked after.

...