The Athletic.

Hello, I'm Mark Chapman.

Welcome to the Business of Sport on the Athletic. Now, Matt Slater is away this week.

Before we went on holiday, though, we did do a couple of interviews.

So you're going to hear two of those. First up, our conversation with Michael Kalt, who was part of the investment group that transformed the Tampa Bay Rays from one of baseball's worst teams to one of the best.

Working for the New York Mayor's office, he led the development of the new Yankee Stadium as well and he now leads consortiums investing in football across Europe.

And then on that theme you're going to hear Matt in conversation

with Ipswich Towns American co-owner Brett Johnson and CEO Mark

Ashton to hear about their plans for the club following the US-backed takeover.

This is the business of sport on the athletic.

So let's start then with our interview with Michael Calt as well as comparing financial

strategies in US and European sport. He discusses how US investors have been seeking out

bargains in football drawn by the game's ever-increasing

global reach and lower valuations.

He also explains how we could soon see less on-field decisions made by head coaches of top European football teams

with more direction from analytics departments as we see in North American sport.

It is a fascinating insight. We began with a very simple question, why does he invest in sport?

You know, look, I think it's like any other investment opportunity. There are there are pockets of places where it's you know financially

accretive and there are pockets places where it's not and at the end of the day

we're doing it from a business perspective we think there are places where there are lots of opportunity. I think it varies from place to place and sport.

Frankly, part of the reason we turned our attention to football in Europe was that we thought that pricing in the United States

to become very, very frothy and that there weren't the same degree of opportunities as there were, you know, 10, 15 years ago, but at the end of the day, you know, it's a business decision

...