Why do some big successful brands go bust?

Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt.

I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype.

They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time.

And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to owners and employees to ask, what can we learn?

It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just couldn't survive.

Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds.

Hello, and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast.

We're your weekly guide to the numbers in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Harford.

This week we're talking tennis and learning life lessons from match statistics.

That's all thanks to former World Number 1 Roger Fedra,

who earlier this year in a speech that has since gone viral regaled the graduates of Dartmouth College in the US

with advice on how to pick yourself up after a knockback.

There was one thing in particular, he said,

that made the more or less team sit up and listen.

In tennis, perfection is impossible.

In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches.

Now, I have a question for you.

What percentage of points do you think I want in

those matches? Only 54%. In other words, even top-ranked tennis players went barely more than

half of the points they play. A striking claim. We wanted to know more. Tennis aficionado, Jeff Sackman,

stepped in to serve up some stats.

...