Агент Соболенко и Осаки — Стьюарт Дюгвид: путь в теннисный бизнес

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Hello and welcome to the First&Red channel. My name is Anna Chakvetadze and today we've got a special guest, well-known tennis agent Stuart Duguid. Stuart, thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. We all know you as an agent of Naomi Osaka, Aryna Sabalenka, Nick Kieros. Could you tell us what brought you into the business? I was a corporate lawyer in London after university and this was about 15 years ago and I was a very bad lawyer and I hated it. And I wanted to change. Yeah, terrible. But how did it help you? I would say it helps to understand business and contracts. And also when you're meeting with a player or their parents, them to feel the comfort that you're not an idiot. Like some of my competitors can be helpful. But yeah, so I did that in London. And then Andy Murray's mom, Judy Murray, was my tennis coach. I'm from Scotland. Really? Yeah. So I messaged Judy and I said, can you introduce me to like IMG or Octagon or Lagardère? And she did various introductions for me. And I met a guy called Donald Dell, who was running an agency called Lagardère, which I think managed you for a while. And yeah, that's where I started my career. And that was about 15 years ago. And from there I went to IMG. And then from there I started my own company about three years ago. I guess some people think that being a sport agent is just signing a player and waiting for sponsors to come. Is that really how it is? No, no, it's definitely not like that. It's the opposite. Even when you do a contract, like even if you do a contract with Nike, for example, doing a Nike contract is not even the hard part. The hard part is managing that contract for four years and making sure that... your player's happy and that she has the dress that she wants and she can be unique and that they shoot her in the right campaigns and that the messaging is correct and they're advertising. So there's many, many different things that go into being an agent, not just signing the contracts. I think when I first started, every player, or I managed maybe seven or eight players, and I did it all myself. Now, if you take Aryna's team, there's me, There's a creative director that does the fashion projects. There's a social media manager. There's a publicist. There's a finance manager. There's an investment manager. And there's a couple of assistants. There's probably eight or nine people that work on her business. And everyone has an important job. There's no way I could do all these things because you can't specialize in, I can't be an expert in social media and an expert in PR and also be an agent. So the business has definitely changed a lot. in the time that I've been doing it for the top, top players like Aryna, like Naomi. We actually have quite a large business team. You mentioned that you worked for Lagardère and IMG. What did you enjoy most about that experience? When I worked at Lagardère, it was very, felt like a family, like we were all friends, like people, you know, like Sam and John and Ken. It was a really good atmosphere and I learned a lot there. And then IMG was also a good training. probably the most clients and it's the biggest of the companies. So there's lots of things you can learn from that network. But I really enjoyed doing my own thing with my own company. It has the players much more flexibility. So when you work at a company like IMG, they want you to do a deal and get the commission and do a deal and get the commission. My vision is to make sure that they can have careers and businesses that last 10, 20 years. And I'm more interested in being involved in that. whole process than I am getting a quick deal tomorrow. IMG is one of the most successful and powerful agencies, probably in all sports, not only in tennis. What makes it so successful? Well, legally, I'm not allowed to say anything bad about them. But I think there's some good people there, some good experience. There's been some great players that have been managed by them and stayed, like Sharapova and Serena were there their whole careers. Some other players left, like Roger. and Rafa, and Novak, and Naomi, and Irina, and Nick, and a few more. Would I ask you what made you decide to leave? I was very happy having a safe career and having health insurance and a salary. I have two kids. It was never my dream to start my own company. But it was more the circumstance with my particular players, especially Naomi, but Nick also. She wanted to start different businesses, so she wanted to start a production company. She wanted to do various investments, which I work on her together with as more like her business partner than her agent. And it was just a different structure than doing it at one of the larger companies, probably less entrepreneurial. So it was just because these players were quite different and they wanted different things that led me to that. What makes Evolve different from IMG and other companies in the industry? I think there's a couple of things. Mainly it is that we're thinking long-term. So a lot of the deals that we do for the players sometimes involve, they might involve some equity in the company where, you know, for example, we had a deal with a company called Body Armor, which was a sports drink that Naomi did. Yeah, she was one of the first ones who actually made it. Well, Colby Bryant was the first athlete with Body Armor and Naomi was close after that. And at the time, she could have signed with Coca-Cola or she could have signed with before the Tokyo Olympics or Body Armor. And with Coca-Cola, they were offering her a lot of money. But she said, number one, I don't drink Coca-Cola. Number two, like, if this company does really, really well, I'll make even more than I'll make with Coca-Cola. So in the end, we signed with a company called Body Armor, which is a hydration drink. That was eventually sold to Coca-Cola, ironically. And when there was a transaction, it was sold for over a billion dollars. owned a percentage of that company. So she made much more from that deal than anything else. You look at like Roger and on. So Roger, I could be wrong, but from what I understand and I guess, I guess Roger made more from his last two deals in his career than he did from 20 years of going to play exhibitions and fulfilling sponsor commitments and all of that. When you think about his Uniqlo deal, which if the numbers are to be believed is massive. And then his on running deal. is is is even more massive so um you know we kind of take inspiration from deals like that like you can work really really hard and do quite well or you can take a couple risks and do extremely well um that was really the vision for evolve and then more recently i think especially on the female clients we have a creative director happens to be my wife actually but she was with um saint laurent um and framed denim for a while so her background is fashion So when the girls have deals with, in Naomi's case, like Louis Vuitton, in Aryna's case, Audemars Piguet, these brands that are luxury fashion brands, like, again, I'm not the expert. You're not the expert, but you've got a nice watch. Well, thank you, thank you. It helps to know important people. Having a female is very helpful to be at these shoots, to make sure, like, I don't want to be the one going to a Nike shoot and, like, touching the dress and saying your makeup should be different. Like, a 40-year-old man shouldn't be really doing that. It's great to have like a cooler female character doing those kind of things for our clients, which I think is beneficial. So we do a lot of things different. Also, some of the things are the same. You know, a lot of people are transacting the same kind of deals. Like right now, we're renegotiating Aryna's Wilson deal. Like that's something I've been doing for like 15 years that hasn't changed that much. So some things stayed the same, some things are extremely different. Yesterday I saw Robbie Williams in Cat's Food commercial. And I was thinking, could even something that different ever work with a tennis player? Yeah, of course. I think if it's authentic to the player. I've had some offers from... Naomi used to have a dog. We explored doing some pet stuff for a while. Yeah, I want to see this commercial. I haven't seen it yet. But I can imagine Robbie Williams and Katz actually goes together quite well. What drives Naomi forward outside the court? You know, I think she's had a really interesting career in life. And there was a time when she was winning a lot. And then we did a lot of commercial things. And then she didn't win. And then everyone said, oh, it's because she did too much of that stuff, right? Which, by the way, they never say about the men. Like I never heard anyone say like, oh, LeBron did too much or David Beckham did too much and now he's playing shit at the, now he's playing card at, you know, Paris Saint-Germain or whatever. But anyway, so like in her case, I said to her like, is this too much? Do you want to do, do you not want to do this? Do you want to do that? And she said, no, I actually love this because playing tennis, large part of your life, but there's another part of your life where you train in the morning and go to gym and then you have the whole afternoon to do nothing. So in her case, it was, do I want to watch Netflix and play video games? Or do I want to learn about business and companies and go to shoots and, you know, try and make a name for myself in fashion? And that's how she wanted to use her time. So that's her right to do so. And I think as a result, she has a career outside of tennis. And I think, you know, some people would argue maybe if she hadn't done that, she'd have won more. But on the contrary, maybe not, because actually, like, it really helps keep her as sane and as focused as possible. And how is she in business? Does she have time for that? You know, I think what these really great athlete business people do is they put smart people that they trust to handle their business. So she's not on conference call. She's not in board meetings. But she knows and trusts my opinion. So if I say something's a good idea, we don't have to spend five hours deciding why it's a good idea. We maybe have five minutes. Do you have fights sometimes? That's a good question. I mean, I've been managing her since she was 17. She's 27 now. So if I said we never had a fight, I'd be lying. But I think it's good. I don't want to be the agent that just says, no, you're so great. Yes, do that, do that. And if she says no, I say, okay, don't worry. I think it's better to push her a little bit so that... She can learn and ultimately she makes the decisions. So if she really pushes back, then it's her life and her business. But I think agents that don't push the players are not good agents, in my opinion. Which markets are most attractive to sponsors these days? Countries, you mean? Yeah. Could you name the top three? Top three markets for sponsors. USA, number one. China, number two. And then it would be still probably Japan. And then after that, close behind France, Great Britain, Australia, the Grand Slam nations for tennis players. What about Belarus? Belarus, you know, I think, I don't know politically what I can say, but I'll speak my opinion freely. I think probably in Aryna's case, it's not perfect. But also, I think it was more of a problem two, three years ago. I think people understand now. There's a separation between her and politics. My opinion, it's absolutely ridiculous that she has no flag beside her name. Same for the Russian players. I think that she's involved in any way is absurd. She's a tennis player. I think enough time has elapsed that we should go back to the way things were. I think what people understand in the West now is that Irina is Belarusian, but she's also a global international athlete. And there's a big difference. And I think people see her as like a representative of the world and a global athlete as opposed to like a niche Eastern European market, which is why I think we're going to be extremely successful. And we've only been working with Aryna for about six months now. And I think if we had this conversation in a year's time, like you'll see some brands that are some of the best global brands in the world. And it will have made no difference where she came from. Evolve has become third agency in two years for Aryna. Could you tell how it all started? I don't really know her history before IMG, but I know she was at IMG. Do you know why she was not satisfied with them? Let me answer that very diplomatically. I think there was maybe a personal relationship that was an issue for her. I think it was number one. And number two, if I was to say something nice about IMG, probably they were a little unlucky with the timing. Like I think just when the war started, I think it probably was more difficult to get commercial opportunities for her because a lot of brands were doing a sort of wait and see for the first year or two. So maybe she didn't get the deal flow that she deserved as like the number one player. You said personal relationship. Is it really important in the business, personal relationship with the agent to have the right person? I mean, maybe you know even better than me, but I think I think that's the number one most important thing. Is it most important than big company name? Yeah, of course. I mean, let's not use IMG as the only example because there's other big agencies, but let's say you're a kid and you're excited because you signed with Octagon. At Octagon, there's like, and for the purposes of an example, this is not reality. I don't know much about Octagon's business, but let's say you signed with Octagon. I believe Octagon, there'd be If there's 10 agents, there's two or three that are world-class, and then there's maybe some that are not so good. So just to say I signed with IMG or Octagon or CAA really means nothing. Who did you sign with? Where is that person in their career? How much time do they have? How many clients do they have? That's more interesting than probably the logo above the door when you go to their house. Coming back to Aryna, what makes you a good fit for your agency? And vice versa. Yeah, I mean, I think what makes her a great fit for our agency is that she's authentic. She's amazing on social media. She relates to Gen Z. Brands love her. What I really love about her, among many other things, is I can take her to meet the CEO of Stella. And they will immediately fall in love with her. So, like, there's other plans. I heard she preferred tequila, no? I think... I think maybe alcohol, zero, zero Stella. But yeah, that was just for the purposes of an example. But she does great amongst like important business people. And some players are better, are not so good at that. So that's one of her big strengths. And then, yeah, I think all of our players, the phrase I would use is they transcend culture. So they're not just tennis players. So I think there's certain players, you know, maybe even if you look at like, arguably like the top ranked male player or some of the girls in the top five, they're more tennis focused and that's what their existence is and that's what their brand. And then I think when you look at Osaka, Kyrgios, as well as Aryna, like people know them outside the tennis court and for different things. And that's my strength. And other people are good at just pure tennis, but I'm probably better at where tennis meets culture, meets fashion, meets music, meets other parts of life. Is agency responsible for social media? As you said, Irina is extremely active on her own account. No, both Naomi and Irina have independent social media managers, companies that specialize in only that. What I'll do is I'll oversee that. So I'm involved in the process and I see what they're considering to post and recommending. But really, I let them do their own thing. But Naomi and Irina have social media managers. All the content is theirs. It's their ideas, but they'll say, hey, I'm thinking about this TikTok today. What do you think? And then maybe they'll suggest we'll do this dance or that dance or use this track. Should I use this track? Or does this picture look good? So they're, you know, world-class at doing that. The companies that they work with really mostly have like Hollywood actors and actresses and they're in a different business model than I am. But I think that's good. I think you need that. And then you take like, on the other hand, like Kyrgios does all his own social media. Like that's just him. Sometimes that's a bad thing. But, you know, sometimes it's a good thing. I think people understand that it's very real. Do you think number of followers matters? In what context? In context for sponsors, maybe sponsors are interested in particular platforms. I think followers definitely matters a lot. I don't think it's the only factor. I think engagement is really important. Like Irina, if you look at her. you know, maybe she has, I think she has 3 million Instagram followers. Her engagement is incredible. So like when she posts, you know, 10% of all those followers will like, another X percent will comment, another percent will be reposting it to their stories. So that to a degree is probably more important than just the number at the top of the followers. And then, you know, TikTok's important for certain brands, other brands, Instagram's important, other brands. Twitter could be more important. What about Facebook? No, not important. No, no. I can't think of the last time anyone asked me anything about an athlete's Facebook. Evolve works mostly with female athletes. How did Nick Kyrgios fit into that picture? Well, probably he doesn't fit. That's the honest answer. But the reason I started working with Nick, when I was, before Naomi exploded, I probably had. six seven eight clients and he was one of them he was not one of them and then when she blew up i reduced that number down to just naomi because the economics and the scale were such that she was making so much money and taking up so much of my time but it didn't make so much sense to manage other ones and out of respect for them also like they deserve to have a great agent who's focused on them and can give them time and that wasn't me so i only managed naomi for a while and then img said would i take a meeting with nick And I said, he's the only player I would want to manage. Why so? Just because I love to watch him. Like I've been working in tennis so long and I love tennis, but I've seen so much tennis that even if Sinner was playing Alcaraz in the final or Roger had played Rafa, like you couldn't pay me to watch that match. I'd rather be going home, sitting on the beach, playing with my kids, get back to work. But Nick, and I would say Carlos now I like to watch, but Nick at the time was the only player I was like, I would pay money to watch him as a fan. So I was very interested to work with him. So that's how I got started with Nick. And then, you know, people think he's, people have very preconceived ideas of what they think Nick is. And some of that's true. Like sometimes he can be difficult, but for the most part, he's like extremely loyal, extremely humble, always been nice to me, nice to my kids, nice to my family. He's a really great person and great human being. So I love to work with him. But is he a natural fit considering all my other clients are female? Probably not. How this unique idea came up? Nick against Aryna, how did that idea came up? This is very interesting. And I also sadly can't say too much about this one. I wish I could say more, but I'll tell you, Patrick Mortoglu and I have been speaking for years and years about this idea that I'll give him credit for. And he scientifically worked out that like a woman, I don't know the exact number, but a female player moves at about, let's say, like 7% slower than the men. It's like ball striking is actually not that far off. If you look at like the pace of forehands and stuff, serves a little. Especially arenas. Especially arenas, right? But movement, they're generally just scientifically a little bit slower. So we had this idea, if you make the court, I'm going to show you, if we make the court smaller on Nick's side, from what Aryna's playing, then that's going to level the playing field. And we're going to use the format of his tennis exhibition, UTS, where you only have one serve. So if you only have one serve, Nick can't really go out and just bomb first serves. And, you know, so that takes away that part of the equation. So that was part one was like, how do we do this? And this time we're not thinking of who the players are. And then more recently, I'm thinking like, I have the perfect players for this arena because she's the best player in the world and like ball striking is unbelievable. Nick, because he's the only one crazy enough to take the challenge. He said he's nervous. Most of the men don't want to do it. Because if they lose, they can't go back into the locker room. They'll never hear the end of it. But Nick, you know, Nick being Nick, he's up for it. Who's your pick for that match? My pick is Aryna. Go, girl. Davai, Aryna. I'm going to say Aryna also. Do you think tennis schedule is kind of too packed for this kind of creative and fun events? Way too packed. Not for this event, but it's too packed for tennis players. The top players should be playing the four slams and maybe eight to ten masters. And that should be it. No one cares about 500s. No one cares about 250s. They don't generate much revenue. The players are playing. If I'm a top player, I'm just speaking for the top players. I'd give you a different argument for other players. But for the top players, and I know this, Sinner, Carlos, whoever, they want to play less. They want to play less and they should be paid more because they're driving much more of the revenue than all the other players. And I think all these other players... completely respect and i want them to be able to have jobs and to be able to contribute to the ecosystem that is tennis look at us open what they've done with mixed doubles yeah i love it love it right to me it makes way more sense than mixed doubles here which um no one cares about right poor mixed doubles players um and i want them to have i don't want to cut them out of the ecosystem but like it's a different sport than this different event like wimbledon for Carlos and Yannick and Aryna and Coco is a different style of event to the other ones. You know, qualies as well. I love qualies. That's where you can unearth some really amazing players. But it's a different event. I'm not even sure it should be connected to the main event. I don't know. We probably don't have time to even... I have a lot to say about that. But in summary, I think what would be best for the sport would be the top players play a little bit less and they get paid a little bit more. Coming back to Nick, as far as I know, he will participate in the new project sponsored by OnlyFans. Could you give us more details? He's been with OnlyFans for, this is the second time we renewed. So we had a contract already like a year and a half, two years ago, maybe. And it was just for him to make content on the platform. He's not taking his clothes off or anything like that. It's more like behind the scenes and OnlyFans are trying to get into more things like... He's not the only athlete that's on that platform or that they sponsor. So they want to get away from just being known from what we all know them for and try and get more mainstream. He was a good person for them to work with because, again, most tennis players would not be brave enough to take that step or crazy enough to take that step. But he is. But yeah, it's just a behind-the-scenes content partnership. If Nick doesn't get back to play, which role do you see him in? TV. Yeah, he's a host and commentator. I think he's amazing. His insights are incredible. I think his tennis IQ is off the charts, like incredible when he talks about the sport. He obviously played his whole career with no coach, so I'm not saying that's a good thing, but he knows the sport very well. He's also played against a lot of these guys very recently, so he speaks. His voice is actually even good for commentary. And I think he brings something very different than like, you know, the other people that have been doing it for a long time, like the McEnroes and the Andrew Castles and whatever we hear here. So I think probably TV, but then I think he needs to be less risky. You know, I think TV also don't want to just have a story about why Nick doesn't like Yannick. Is that why he's not with BBC this year? The correct answer and the honest answer is he was never with BBC. So this whole story that he was dropped by BBC is telling you this 100% true. He was never doing BBC. He was meant to play, and then he pulled out about two weeks ago, and he'd done BBC last year. And then when the list came out, he wasn't on the list, so the newspapers in the UK wrote, Kyrgios dropped from BBC. He was never, ever doing BBC. And we even sent, like, a strong legal letter to The Telegraph, which is a newspaper that thought they broke that story, even though they asked me the day before if he was dropped by BBC. And I told them, no, he was never doing BBC, but they didn't write that part. But we didn't really care. Like, sometimes you say, like, any publicity is good publicity. So, you know, it was fine. And now he's actually doing a show with Talk Sport, which is BBC's big rival, which is doing crazy numbers on digital. And on the back of that, he's now doing, so there's another platform in the UK called TNT, which has owned the rights to the Wimbledon women's and men's finals for years and years, but they've never used the rights because they don't want to go up directly against BBC because there's no point because everyone's going to watch BBC. This year, they're now doing it with Nick. So we'll see who tunes in to TNT versus who tunes in to BBC, which will be very interesting. The women's market changed a lot over the last five years. Yeah, incredibly a lot. I think women athletes are more valuable than men athletes now, especially in the US. I think because there's a finite number of superstars. If you think about male sports, you go through football, basketball, tennis, golf, so many people to choose from. And when you think about female superstars, it's a smaller pool. And I think it's more interesting storytelling. And I think they can work, and men can too, but I think seeing them work with luxury fashion brands and different partners, I think is more interesting than men. In your opinion, what should the ATP and WTA change to better respond to today's challenges? I think we already spoke about it a little bit. I think the schedule should be changed. And I think they've been trying, but they can't agree. There's so many. parties and tennis that have different agendas and stakeholders and that's all understandable but you know i think it might take someone coming in and doing something like they did in golf and where it's like live tennis and they say look these guys are just going to go and play over here they're going to make more money unless you like really focus on refining this this calendar for them do you think they promote tennis players well enough the tours yeah i don't think it's their job like i don't personally i don't blame the tours for doing a bad job of promoting the players like that that's our job as the agents um and the sponsors that we align with so sometimes you might do a deal with a brand like if no we did a deal with beats we did that deal not only because of the money they might not have paid as much as a bank but we knew that we'd use their platform to make an amazing commercial and tell a great story so always we're thinking about um how do we use all the platforms we can to make them more prominent and to tell their stories. And I would never rely on the tour to do that. I would never sit back and think my job is, oh, the WTA will make Eva Jovic, our next player, a superstar. Like, no chance. Like, we will do that. Do you have any advice for younger players starting out? I think it's really, really, really hard because I know there's now, again, when I started in the business, there was maybe... 15 agents across all the companies, maybe 20. I wouldn't be surprised if there's 100 now. And like 95 really don't know what they're doing. And these are the ones that are going to the junior tournaments and meeting with a 12-year-old kid and saying, sign with me for six years. And they don't know what they're signing. But is it good to sign 12 years? I know Alcaraz was signed. I don't think so. I don't think it's correct. Maria Sharapova. Look, there's maybe some exceptions when you, it's very clear. Madison Keys. We don't represent any 12-year-olds. Why do you think it's not correct? I just think they're obvious. They're too young, and I think the families have probably not had enough time to learn about what could be happening. Often these contracts that they sign at 11-12 has a clause that says, okay, if we do a Nike deal for you today, which might even just be some clothes, or it might be like 10 grand. then if you stay with Nike for your whole career, we're going to get the money forever. Even if you leave and join Evolve or Octagon or whatever. I mean, for me, that's absolutely insane. And that's so unfair on a kid that is probably desperate to sign with IMG because they need the money and they need the prestige and they think it's amazing. So you just sign whatever's in front of them. And I think that's what you see. That's where you see a lot of problems later in the career. And that's where the players fight with the agencies. In my company, we don't have that. If a player ever wants to leave Evolve, sure, they'll have to pay what they're owed for the term, but I want them to be able to leave and say he was really fair and I was a good experience. I don't want people going in the locker room and being like, shit, I got to stay with Evolve for another two years because I signed this stupid contract and they've got this crazy term. No, I'd rather like, Even if someone leaves, they go and say, like, I was a good experience. He was really fair. And that's how I want to handle my business. And last question. What deal you're most proud of? Naomi's Nike deal because she got three patches. Second one after Nali, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty special. Thank you very much for your time. It was very interesting conversation. Thank you. It's great to speak to you.