Steve (00:02.254) I usually just take a minute to just do my thing in kind of just refreshing of the holistic package I've learned about you. And... Steve (00:43.022) You know, it's interesting. It's very, very interesting. And I'm going to pause for one sec. And by the way, drink away. Just the beginning, I need you for just 30 seconds and then we'll be good. Ryan, is the image coming? Do I have too many windows open? Or are we OK? Mark Scrivens (00:49.541) Thank you. Steve (01:03.628) Right, you hear me? He's lagging on my end as well. Mark, do you have many tabs open by chance on your computer? He's frozen. Mark Scrivens (01:17.883) me close a few. I'll close some tabs. Steve (01:22.958) Mark, can't hear you. Mark Scrivens (01:27.061) Can you not? This is bad. Let me just check what I'm on. Steve (01:33.88) No, we recommend you go out and come back in, please. Thank you. Mark Scrivens (01:38.395) Okay, I will do. Steve (01:56.91) Alright, well that gives me one chance. found an article that I wanted to summarize. And I usually read, but I'm gonna summarize. Steve (02:34.178) Ryan, are you still there? I hope I didn't scare him away. Steve (02:47.086) Do remember the comment, it was, we're not involved in sponsorship and we're not, do you remember the two things he said? Thank you so much. That was great, Ryan. Great. Football, that's right. Steve (03:06.894) Football, okay. Steve (03:12.59) This is very good that he's... Steve (03:16.738) Yeah, I'm excited about this discussion with him. Steve (03:23.949) Yeah. Steve (03:29.454) I've some pretty extraordinary interviews, by the way. Yeah, I've got another 11 more today. Steve (03:43.831) non-stop. Steve (03:55.438) You think he bailed on us? Mark Scrivens (04:42.884) I have two networks in my house. One of them is a carabine fibre to home. Steve (04:55.278) It's like a different world, by the way. Mark Scrivens (04:58.616) Is this better? Steve (05:00.462) Like night and day. Thank you. This is great. Great. Okay. So I think we're good. Mark Scrivens (05:02.914) Good. Mark Scrivens (05:13.859) wicked. Steve (05:15.854) Okay, thank you, Ryan. Steve (05:23.35) And by the way, it's FTP, FPT or FPT software. Mark Scrivens (05:28.046) Happy tea. Steve (05:29.688) Thank you. Steve (05:35.704) Ryan, are we? Steve (05:42.674) Okay, I'm sorry, didn't know if the countdown was coming. Okay, beautiful. Steve (06:07.01) When you think about perhaps one of the most potent forms of sponsorship in the world, there's no question that among the, we'll call them the goats, if you will. Up there, you just can't deny it guys, particularly for us in the United States, there's no denying it. The Premier League is certainly up there on Mount Rushmore and one of the paragons of sports expression. of sports athleticism and a fandom perhaps that we in the United States and other markets can't really even comprehend. When you find a brand that associates with a critical sports asset, like a Premier League team, and just for example, let's say Chelsea football club, one of the London based renowned clubs. in the lore of Premier League football. But when you meet a steward of a company, a technology company, across eight different fields of expertise, including software and enterprise builds, and it goes on and on, IP addresses that they own in certain markets and 30 different countries of operations. But you meet a CEO of a brand in a country like the United Kingdom. who's been involved in multiple sports sponsorship. And the first thing he says to you when he meets you and you're discussing sports, in that particular sports sponsorship happened to be soccer or what they call football in the UK, as well as sponsorship. And you get a response that says, well, it's interesting because we're not in football, i.e. soccer, and we're not in sponsorship. You know what you're getting today here on the Transaction Report is the real deal. And it's the ultimate accomplishment of what truly effective sponsorship is about. With that said, Mark Scrivins, CEO of FPT out of the United Kingdom, what a pleasure it is having you on the transaction report today. Mark Scrivens (08:16.932) Steve, it's a real pleasure to be here. I'm very honored by your very long lengthy introduction. I have to be honest and call this out straight away. I have never been involved in any business relationship with a sports club before. So this was a very new experience to me. And I think, you your introduction, you mentioned sponsorship, you mentioned football. I think they're the two things that I would actually say this is not about. It was very much about a relationship from the very start, building a relationship with the club. And once we'd established our bonafides, if you like. We then started talking business about how our relationship could develop into something. And we're at the start of a journey. We started these conversations just over 12 months ago. I'm sure you're aware that anything to do with the Premier League can take an awful long time. think transactions can be quick, transactions can be slow. Steve (09:18.156) Mmm. Mark Scrivens (09:30.204) And probably that's the wrong way to describe this because it's anything but transactional. From the very start, what we saw in Chelsea was people like us, very like-minded, and we had a really strong relationship from the very start. And that's what's going to underpin whatever we're able to achieve together over the coming months and I hope years. Steve (09:59.95) You know, I'm glad you mentioned that, Mark, and I want to just make sure I did my due diligence on you and my team and I as we research and understand better. And I'm delighted that one of our partners here, Ben Gunning, made the introduction, who works in our marketing and revenue generation team. At the end of the day, when I looked at your background, one of your prior positions was at DXC Technology. And if I understood correctly, DXC technology is actually the sleeve sponsor of Manchester United. So when you said you have not been involved in, what we're gonna define together is this thing not called sponsorship. I just wanna be clear, at DXC technology, the actual kit sleeve sponsor is DXC technology, which is your prior position before coming over to FPT. Is that correct? Mark Scrivens (10:32.119) You Mark Scrivens (10:55.268) I was certainly there, but I had nothing to do with any of the sponsorship. And it was sort of a kind of, almost a lesson about where we wanted to take this relationship. Because one of the challenges I think is where the club is based. I think Manchester United is probably... arguably one of the biggest clubs in the world. think Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich. Then you get to the UK clubs and it's definitely in Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal. And I don't want to offend any other clubs. I think there's some really big brands, particularly around, you know, the sort of Asian fan base, which is enormous, by the way. And one of the challenges, think, and being really personal, I live in the capital. I live in London. I'm kind of a bit biased, but I think a lot of visitors to the UK, business visitors, their first point of call, on average, to be London. And I think people who are new to the UK, generally feel more comfortable coming to London, first of all. Again, I don't want to offend people in Manchester, in Scotland, it's a small country. But I think certainly for a startup business in the UK like us, London's sort of the locus. And I always found that at DXC, while I wasn't involved, I was often asked if I wanted to travel up to Manchester to attend a game. I think looking back at my younger self, I'd have probably bitten arms off many years ago. But now it's a big chunk of time that I would have to give up to travel up to Manchester from London. Mark Scrivens (13:00.304) I never went and I think it was a bit of a challenge and maybe that's just my personal bias. A lot of very good Manchester United friends and they served the club really well. But for me it was always about, I had a need, it was about London and during my time at DXC I never got close to that partnership. A former employer as well also sponsored the Olympics. Steve (13:14.766) Yeah Mark Scrivens (13:29.86) And that was, it was, was fascinating to see the branding and how that, how that lifted the workforce in many, many respects being, being part of a global event. And I think when I joined FPT, my, my underlying sort of feeling was Vietnam is not really there on the world map and Vietnam is painted unfairly. by Hollywood in many Western countries, UK, US. I think you say Vietnam to the unenlightened and you get an image of apocalypse now, of platoon, of sort of a very negative sense. You get the words communism, you get the words. third world and again having grown up in the 80s with a sort of cold war going on in the background and communism seen as the evil empire, again, being very candid and open and honest here, it just had a very negative impression. And I think what I wanted to do from a leadership perspective was put Vietnam on the map. to start to show Vietnam in a light that it really should be. I don't know whether you've been to Vietnam. Steve (14:58.574) So I spent 13 years living in the Far East. We used to have a very large event management group and athlete representation group throughout the region and then globally. And at the end of the day, did a lot of work in a lot of Asian countries. But one of my, and I don't have many regrets there, but one of my great regrets, and I'll be frank with you, having demonstrated as a young man against the Vietnam War, I'm a little bit older. And at the end of the day, I... Mark Scrivens (15:07.588) Mm. Mark Scrivens (15:23.096) Yeah. Steve (15:27.532) was my family and I, my parents went to Washington, marched on Washington. I want to hold it in before we get out of the Vietnam. I want to just encapsulate why we're talking Vietnam for a moment. Mark's company and what caught my eye and made this so exciting, it's for me personally, and I was just about to actually look this up, it's probably, I'm going to take a stab at it, Mark, correct me if I'm wrong, but it probably is, unquestionably. the highest profile Vietnamese sponsorship in the history of Western sport. And with that, you get into, and I'm gonna give a very dramatic, because yours is not, but something that I actually go onto webinars for and debate the issue of sports washing and how countries use very effectively and continue to ratchet it up very effectively, winning the hearts of minds of people who have virtually nothing in common with certain cultures of those countries and their particular zeitgeist, Weltanschauung, nothing in common, but love the fact that billions upon billions of dollars are facilitating activities in the sports they're passionate about. With Vietnam, to your point, and I lived there and saw the revolution that took place, and I use that word commercially, the commercial revolution. that you have a country that yes, is stigmatized, I must be frank with you as an American, it's usually stigmatized certainly post 1980 as a country that was victimized and one that you feel very sorry for and one you feel that your country did a tremendous act in grievance to those people and systematically, know, again, I was raised with the, you know, the post-Tet, my line massacre. So at the end of the day, the fact that your company is one of the biggest companies employing at least what I found over 80,000 people and is such a behemoth of an organization, I'm very serious about this. I think we're going to see sports at the pinnacle of its effectiveness because I never heard of your company before. And by your associating at the moment, Steve (17:47.416) Perhaps it will shift to the test at some point and you'll have other forms of visibility that are meaningful. But at this moment in time, having sleeve sponsorship after a colossal failure of multiple years of brands coming in and out from Live Nation and others, just, you don't wanna see brands coming in and out. That's not good for the brand. It's not good for the sports property. And you're seen very serious about the future. I'm gonna just summarize by saying, I think this conversation is gonna elucidate some of the most potent aspects of sports sponsorship that as you said to me off camera, goes so far beyond the sport of football, goes so far beyond sponsorship that we need in this conversation to think of a new name to encapsulate what is this effective alliance between someone who has something to offer called a sport team and their athletes. and their fans and their stadia, their culture and their history and their merchandise and their VIP corporate hospitality and their broadcasting, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And my brand that I can get to that level. So if you could give us some color on why you're not involved with football and you're not involved in sponsorship, but you are FPT. your company, this big technology company, on the sleeve of Chelsea Football Club. Mark Scrivens (19:22.115) It's a hard one to unpack, I think it's about projecting Vietnam, it's about projecting FPT, and it's trying to bring the passion that the nation has for sport and for putting themselves out there for the great they can do. think... What I learned about Vietnam even prior to joining FPT, and look, I'd never heard of FPT before I joined. And I've been in tech for 25, 30 years. And I was amazed that such a big company existed that I didn't know of. This cultural revolution that's happened in Vietnam, it's one that people are proud. They're friendly. They're also humble and they want to show the world what they can do. And this is almost at the ethos of FPT. We've got a really young workforce. They are incredibly talented and they're doing the work that we don't have these skills in the West, at least not in abundance. We've got young kids that basically can... Steve (20:38.222) I'm going to interject by saying two things. One is, in some of your work, would imagine a group like an Accenture is a competitor at times, based on some of what I saw in your enterprise work. And first of all, they're going to be a lot more expensive, although you've acquired a lot of international companies. I agree with you that there are services that you're able to provide, again, with an 80,000-person workforce and growing. I do want to just ask one question before we journey on. Mark Scrivens (21:03.618) Yeah. Steve (21:04.148) It behooves me to ask you, because I worked with so many tourism bureaus. And when you, as I told you, I went over in 89 to learn Mandarin. And then I started my company, my first sports event management group, only a lot of sports events and tourism bureaus to this day are massive, massive sources of capital, of revenue for sponsorship. So it seems to me what you've said already, Mark Scrivens (21:16.641) Hmm. Steve (21:32.846) Does your company in any capacity, first and foremost, and I know you're a publicly traded company, but do you have government monies from a tourism standpoint supporting you in this investment that your rights fee might be somewhere between 16 and 22 million US dollars and or thereabouts? And at the end of the day, do you have any capital coming in from the government itself? Because you're basically now speaking as an ambassador of Vietnam. Mark Scrivens (22:04.917) And, you know, I'm obviously not qualified to do that. It's felt very much since I've joined that I've been one of the big voices in the UK speaking up for Vietnam. And very recently, we had a state visit to the UK. We don't receive any money from government, at least not that I'm aware of. But obviously, we're out. It's kind of, this is one of the cultural nuances that I've picked up. about Vietnam, people are proud about Vietnam and they're proud about helping the country. There's a video that was produced by Discovery called Silicon Delta and that tells the story of the tech revolution in Vietnam. It basically takes it from, you know, the sort of war years when there was nothing. There was no trade and it basically shows our founder, Dr. setting this company up with his founders, which was his village. And it was about people can't eat. FPT actually stands for food processing technology. It's very similar to Samsung. think Samsung's beginnings were... Steve (23:10.403) Bye. Mark Scrivens (23:28.117) around noodles and making food because back in the day, people were starving and so it was about, you know, how do we feed people? And then it was about, I think the story was people servicing IBM printers and working at how to do And this brings the uniqueness of Vietnam out, which is this engineering problem solving spirit. And... Steve (23:45.293) No. Mark Scrivens (23:55.381) I was fascinated by this because in my humble opinion, the tech market globally has stagnated and it's quite boring. When I started, was, it was about big deals. It was about doing things for the first time, doing things people had never done. And I think where we are today is we're in this stagnation offshore equals India. everything goes to India. And it's the same old, same old, same old and nothing against India at all. But I think Vietnam has now come along and said, Hey, we've got the, we've got the smarts and we've got engineers and we can solve problems. And I look to the West now and I think in from a, from a technology standpoint, we all want to embrace cloud. Most of us have done that. We all want to embrace AI now, but to embrace AI, we need data. And there's so much data floating about. To be able to use that data properly, you need people to be able to access it, to be able to remove the legacy barriers that are in place. And this is where you need engineers. This is where you need problem solvers, people that want a problem. If I went back to my teams in Vietnam with a very simple, I want you to maintain this product. They'd be bored. They'd do it, but they'd be bored. What they're really looking for, and these are young kids that want to challenge themselves. They want the, how do I move this clunky mainframe app to a brand new platform to wow the customer, to give me access to new features, functionality, and this is where I think we have our strength. Steve (25:44.11) I want to go back to those kids for a moment before we go along. It's very new sponsorship, one month announced ago, as I understand your sleep partnership. And obviously, traditionally, the man you, that you were involved previously is probably 20X some of the cheaper ones or less expensive ones. But for your young, talented team, do you think already there has been, and this is, Mark Scrivens (25:47.874) show Mark Scrivens (25:52.803) Yep. Steve (26:13.994) One of the, again, one of the critical path, 12 benefits of what we define as benefits of sponsorship is internal employee satisfaction, rewards, affiliation, sense of my company cares about what I am value off work. And that makes me feel good to be part of this company because there's a culture where I can cheer Chelsea and that means something to me. And we know Chelsea is a global brand. And you mentioned our friends from Madrid, the Madridistas. The Madridistas who are working with Adobe have 650 million followers. So when you're in fan engagement where some of your services are, I'm curious, let's go back to your team internally. Do you have a coordinated plan? to bring the beauty of your sponsorship of Chelsea into those who are in other markets around the world and particularly your headquarter which is in Vietnam. Mark Scrivens (27:08.739) It's a very good question. Let me start with when we first started telling our team that we were engaged with the club and that something was likely to happen. And obviously we have to be very careful with announcements because these things are tricky notoriously and you can get so close and then something doesn't happen. So we were quite guarded into what we said. was speaking with one of my team, one of the younger members and. Steve (27:38.242) You know what, I apologize and I'm never here to interrupt you, but if I hear something I don't understand, I've got to ask. You said it's tricky to make an announcement about a sports sponsorship. Well, I've been doing this for 37 years and the trick is perhaps having people with expertise to strategically know how to maximize and get the optimal results from it. Could you clarify what you meant by tricky? Mark Scrivens (28:04.951) And let me come back to that if I may because there are nuances that we need to develop. Steve (28:08.11) On passant. Back to the chessboard. Mark Scrivens (28:12.484) My young team member who is in her twenties, she started crying when I said we're probably going to do something with Chelsea. And I said, What's the matter upset you? she's like, no, it's just no one's ever done this for Vietnam. And this is going to be so amazing. And I can't believe that we're building this team that are doing something. obviously we had the support of HQ to sort of get to this point. But I think to your point, it was incredible in terms of the... The reaction that I saw, and I'm not a social media person, I was shown other people's feeds, just the positivity that it generated. And when we made the announcements, the club shared the sentiment and we saw, and their reach is even bigger than ours, of course. And the sentiment was very, very positive and it was incredible. To your point about tricky, so we didn't engage an agent. And I think that's quite unique. I think it's very different. Myself and my advisor, David O'Brien, who really deserves a massive name check on this, he and I cooked this up. we, the whole thing started in a bar in Hong Kong, as these things often do. Steve (29:48.526) Which one? You'll tell me afterwards which one it is. I might have lot of nostalgia there by the way. Okay. We usually conclude every interview with at least a 60 second rendition of the melody so I'll leave it to you at the last minute. But you concocted Mark Scrivens (29:58.563) A karaoke bar and whiskey on the table, so to speak. Mark Scrivens (30:14.061) You'll be lucky tonight. Steve (30:17.228) You concocted it in your former colony where I lived. And by the way, I own the Hong Kong Open Golf Championship for many, many years. It was the Royal and Ancient Golf Club when I first got there. And then it became, unfortunately, after the handover, was no longer part of the Queen's portfolio. So you thought this up over in Hong Kong. You guys spearheaded the negotiations. You brought this to fruition. Mark Scrivens (30:23.875) Thank Mark Scrivens (30:43.011) We, when we started this, we had no idea how it was going to develop. And that's the honest truth. It was a conversation about... We need to do something with our brand. We need to project it out there. But equally, we're not going to spend loads of money on sponsorship because it's just never going to fly with our company because we've never done anything like this before. We need to do something different. My sort of ultimate boss, the global CEO, he's a Man United fan. My boss in the US is a Man United fan. die hard. They can give me stats and information about the Premier League that I just wouldn't even know. They are fanatical about football. Steve (31:37.416) But Man United is covered by DXC technology, your former. So you really didn't have an end there for your global CEO. Mark Scrivens (31:40.643) But it was about them almost saying what I said to you earlier about we're flying into London, we don't want to get a train up to Manchester. And it was, we're going to follow your lead because I have always been a Chelsea fan. we're going to follow your lead and sort of go with Chelsea to watch a game. And it literally started with watching a game. We started to build a relationship with various members of the club. And it was, we weren't promising anything. We weren't talking about anything. We were just telling each other about our respective companies, our respective cultures, and our ambitions. I think most of the board watched Silicon Delta, which is 23 minutes of your life that you probably won't regret if you've got any interest in Asia at all. And it tells a fascinating and very truthful story about... our origins and how we've got to where we are today. And it starts to put into context what we can do because I don't think any of our customers, when they first hear about FPT, have got any idea how strong our capabilities are, how good our campuses are, and how talented our people are. I think it's just something that blows them away when they actually get there and they see it for themselves. Steve (33:19.406) So I'm going to redirect just for a moment. want to get into again. the value to me, this is a no brainer in the context of a perfect Alliance for a company that is a behemoth of an organization that clearly in its own home turf is certainly perhaps and I'm speaking from the hip, one of the most respected companies in the nation and it is publicly traded. And it has 30 offices around, more than 30 countries in which it's represented. And it's competing at a higher level where people like us who hire data scientists and engineers, software engineers, front end and back end developers, et cetera, et cetera, and first obviously for your level of enterprise companies in the midst of the most transformative technological period in the history of the human race. to be with competence, but where someone like you can look them in the eye and say, I'm going to save you 50 % on your spend. And you're going to get a work ethic you've never seen before. And it's not going to be punitive. They're going to love working for you. And the transparency is keen. And obviously, since the embargo was lifted by Clinton, I believe in 1994, and I was in Asia at the time, You know, that was the watershed moment. obviously, as prices went up in China and the manufacturing scene in China instituted insurance as a mandatory, a big thing for Chinese factories, which jacked the price up dramatically of workers in China, and then top that off with tariffs from Trump. And I'm going to just go back to one thing that you said earlier. I heard a lot of commentary about the tariffs on Vietnam going, what? from a real distributed base of folk from all across the political aisles. Like, why would you put those types of tariffs on Vietnam? Particularly when we want, and we've seen it, I have family members in it who have manufacturing business in China who literally have taken 50 % of it and moved to Vietnam. So to me, besides a friendly recommendation that... Steve (35:28.938) I think we can get your company some money from the Tourism Bureau in Vietnam to supplement your work for what would be bonafide Vietnam promotional commercial spots in tandem with a joint promotion of featuring one of the great companies in Vietnam. It's a perfect blend for advertising commercial spot tying into the sport where you can get another 5-10 million supporting your annual efforts. that aside for the moment. Your primary, because again, you're not Vietnam Tourism Bureau. And I get the reach level that puts you into contention to say, yeah, I've heard of you guys. as you can, obviously you're a month old, the next 12 months of what you can exploit, and I'm saying that in the most positive way, to maximize your relationship with what you've just entered into. So you're not football, you're not sponsorship. Give us the top three. of what makes this sponsorship so compelling, where you may be with activation and marketing and rights fee to Chelsea Football Club, be all in over 20 million bucks, 25 million perhaps over a year, what makes that so darn compelling beyond the reach? Mark Scrivens (36:41.304) So for us, Chelsea Football Club is the shop window. It's the shop window for us to showcase what we can do. Sport, certainly in the UK, and football in particular, is very untapped in terms of AI, analytics, how we can use predictive analytics on all this data that's out there. And every day now, it seems, we've got a new advance and we've got... compute power now, which is so much further advanced than it was even six months ago. You the latest Nvidia GPUs are able to do things that we just couldn't even imagine even 12 months ago. And you start to think about what those benefits are from a sort of sports perspective. You can go, what can I do in the back office? What can I do on the pitch? What can I do on the training field? What can I do for the customer? How do I make the customer experience even better? And how do I make it more accessible and more global? And it's not. even about the UK now, it's about what else can we do globally with this? And for me, as a brand that no one had heard of, and for an organization that's so successful in its home market and in the surrounding markets, it's how do we go big in the largest markets in the world, the US, the UK? And it's a platform for us to build and start to get Mark Scrivens (38:25.396) that name out there, to get the capabilities out there and it's a credibility thing almost in that if we can be there, why can't we be working for you? You name the company, why can't we be working for you? And it's that sort of almost vote of confidence that many big buyers who would go, I've never heard of FPT, I don't trust FPT, so I'm not going to go there. It's putting us into a place where we can play. Steve (38:51.96) So. Salient, I want to go to the opportunity cost. You're sitting with Mr. O'Brien, your number two in Hong Kong, with a few fine LaFrog or LaDegs, 15-year LaDeg, I imagine, and you're really feeling great about being in one of my favorite cities on the planet Earth, having spent six and a half years there, and loved every single second of it. I'm sorry. edit this, got a call. I don't know why it's ringing on my computer. It's not do that. Let me just try to put that to this. Let me just do this. Should never first time that's happened. So my apologies. 15 year LeFroy. And I'm curious. If just like you had with Man United, Mark Scrivens (39:24.259) It always does that Mark Scrivens (39:34.934) Yeah. Steve (39:51.03) Your former company has the technology space carved out and they have an exclusive. You can't get in there, right? Your company's, let's just say, are too similar. And you can't go to any other football club in the Premier League. What would you have done? What would you have done? And what do you think your executive, Mr. O'Brien, what was his first name again? David. What do you think David and you would have done in the context of, dang, Chelsea said we can't, they've already got to deal with another party. And as does every other football club in the Premier League. What would that... Mark Scrivens (40:17.889) David. Steve (40:32.795) next best alternative option have been for you had it not been Chelsea. Mark Scrivens (40:39.068) So that's a very, very good question. And I think in my mind, we were always wanting to be a partner, but it was never something that was set in stone when we began this conversation. It was something that we evolved into, and it was about relationship. Everything that we've done so far with the club has only been achieved because of relationship. It's about transaction, it's about relationship. And you know, it's a two-way thing. This is not us paying them money, it's them getting us to do work for them as well. there's a two-way piece. They are spending money on tech before we even arrived. What we've come along with is we've come along with a very different lens of this is our ambition. We're about AI first. there's always an opportunity to be a Chelsea didn't have a tech partner and you we were maybe it was all about right place at the right time I think it's they could they could choose they can they can turn down someone and I think we just hit it off It was as simple as that. Steve (42:11.694) So I want to go, and again, you know this is all TLC. If they were not available for a sponsorship and all the other clubs were not available, what do you think if you were just meditating back to that moment and you were thinking of where can we get that bang for buck? Is it only sport from your and David's mindset? Mark Scrivens (42:32.312) Hmm. Steve (42:38.062) Was there any other option? Because let's just say Chelsea said to you, you know, we're going to go out eight years from now and we're going to charge you 40,000 pounds for the sponsorship. And you say, seems like 2.5 times more than I really want to spend right now. Or based on my knowledge of what other brands are spending across the league and knowing where Chelsea is on the totem pole. That just seems really outrageous to be frank with you. And because we're a Southeast Asian company, I'm starting to feel we're being taken advantage a little bit. What would have gone, what went through your mind as an option to get that bang for buck that wouldn't have come from Premier League football? Mark Scrivens (43:28.203) I don't think there are other sports, and again, with the greatest respect, I'm a massive sports fan. I'm a big rugby fan. But I don't think rugby has that global appeal. I think probably NFL's becoming much more popular in the Western markets now with the games that are being held here. maybe that would be something that we might have looked at as an organization. but it was... Steve (43:58.446) You don't have the last stability of it, number one, at this point in time. I you will see your Euro League. But right now what you've done is you've tied into a recurring asset that has a fan base that obviously is so broad that, yeah, while I love the games that come to London, those are what we call in our world one-offs. I can't go back to Wembley the next week or talk and watch the game. Mark Scrivens (44:27.969) Yeah. You mentioned Hong Kong, and it's one of my favorite cities too. And part of that whole trip was being in a bar and seeing the screens. There's always TV screens in a lot of the bars there. And Premier League is looped. and it's just being played over and over and over again because you've got this audience that wants to go. You go to Africa, it's the same. You go to Europe, there are many, sports bars that are truly looping the various leagues and Premier League is right up there. it just pushed that whole message of this is the sport. Then I looked at Deloitte who do a report. and Deloitte clearly show in terms of ROI that Premier League is second to none. And that's fact. Steve (45:24.706) And with your enterprise clients, the essential level execution, usually when you speak to guys like us, it would be a no brainer to come back to you and say, if you're looking at that level of VIP integration, VIP activity hosting, but doing it in a novel way so it's just not cookie cutter, you might find that being part of a very significant golf universe. whether that's the European golf, whether it is the league association, whether it's a major one week event or in your neck of the woods, a major championship, perhaps the oldest called the Open Championship, what we call in America, the British Open Championship. Or it might have been, let's say, a two-week male-female unbelievable, what we call Wimbledon in our world, ability to get involved in something where people want their strawberries and cream at Wimbledon, and it's elite and you're reaching enterprise-level prospective clients and existing clients. What is it that we get through Chelsea? And I can think of a whole bunch, but I am curious, what was your calculus that said, nah, PGA, the tennis world, that stuff, Formula One, it just doesn't compare for us to the value we're getting from Chelsea. Mark Scrivens (46:46.979) I think to our domestic market in Vietnam, Premier League is really important. Not necessarily a particular club. I think to the domestic market, Premier League is really Steve (46:53.628) I Wait, so again, just don't mean, this is not my goal to stop you from speaking, but it's just something that's so interesting to me that I will forget, and I don't want to forget it. And it's so keenly interesting, you're... the CEO of FPT in the UK, but you've entered into a sponsorship that you've maybe on three occasions, which is wonderful. I'm not judging it. I just want to understand it. You've said how important this is back to your team in Vietnam. Why would a sponsorship undertaken in the UK where you are the CEO of, wouldn't you, to me, it seems counterintuitive. I would have thought you're number one. point of origin would be those executives in your Great Britain market, surrounding European market for the benefit of the Champions League, which you're playing in now, and the Premier League, that you would have the ability to maximize relationships in greater Europe and in your own quote unquote UK. Mark Scrivens (48:03.265) And that was my earlier point about by having this, we suddenly get that access. can talk to people that we'd never have spoken to before and it's happening already. We're getting that access. That's kind of a given. And I'm sort of moving on from that. Steve (48:24.664) Got it. Mark Scrivens (48:25.156) I think what put Chelsea in as the only choice for us. And again, there's a lot of amazing football clubs. I don't want to be disrespectful to any of them. I think Chelsea, by the name alone, it attracts more business people. I love people saying, no, you're wrong. It's Liverpool. It's this. We've just got this part of London where people gravitate to. It's not a million miles from the airport. The King's Road has always been sort of famous for its fashion, its luxury. I think it attracts my attention. Steve (48:59.982) And by the way, I just heard a show about King's Road back in the 60s for its brutalist architecture. And that it was actually a home for folk who could be near the stadium who really were, they were building low cost housing. And that today if you walk down King's Road, good luck trying not to lose your wallet on any acquisition of anything being sold to you on that strip. Mark Scrivens (49:09.047) Yeah Steve (49:28.706) but a great history of Kings Road, a great culture of Kings Road and Chelsea Football Club and the blue that they converted to back in the 70s of having that very distinct identity. I'm curious, by the way, on your activation side, Mark, as a CEO of a major corporation, we know that there... And again, I'm not here to rain on anybody's parade. And we do this professionally every day. And we built our own computer vision model in one of our works. And we have an extremely capable data science team that spent a lot of time in finding analytics that we as event owners and team or association league owners never could present to our clients before. And today, as objective agnostic operators building AI-empowered SaaS software, we're capable of saying, you know, but did the folk really see it? It's there, but is it really visible? And we know in sports sponsorship, in this 60 year run of this industry, that those like yourself who go beyond the understanding of sponsorship, meaning just give me my benefits as... of legal benefits that you've bequeathed me in contract that we've negotiated. Ones that do so well in technology partners are masters at this, not all, of integrating the pro quo. We're gonna give you 20 million quid, but we need to have you buy back from us the technology that we're gonna serve you. So it's not just 100 % out of our pocket spend. There is some revenue generation for the work that we're going to provide to you as your technology partner. Perhaps some of that is integrated into contract for our fee. So there is in kind or contra component parts. But of course, from your vantage point, there's a lot of upselling or a lot of acquisition that will come down the line. But that's behind the scene. You see, I don't see that. Steve (51:42.99) So as a fan of Chelsea and I lived a year in Marvel Arch, and I should mention just for the record, I used to represent 150 premier league. Okay. And we own their internet rights globally. Mark Scrivens (51:51.299) you Steve (51:57.302) and I worked with a lot of cool people. And actually in my headquarter in Hong Kong, Roy King came in and just my office went nuts of a hundred people. And one of my closest partners was David Giannola, who I still am friends with to this day. And he was active playing at the time. So my question to you is, Mark Scrivens (52:06.822) Ha ha. Steve (52:18.208) Everything's checking the boxes at an elite level. I mean, I believe you're going to get out of this sponsorship more than you ever dreamed of. And I think you can then put another exponential notation to that. But we know that you can go so much beyond that by what we call effective activation. And that's where a lot of brands get frustrated. because they start seeing like also rands. We seem to be doing a lot of what other brands do. So they came to our suite, but last week they were at the other suite and before that the other suite. And as you said, I get lost and you yourself get invited to so many VIP activities. At some point you're saying, who invited me to that? I don't even remember. Activation on a VIP corporate hospitality level, activation on a getting the message out B2B. so that they feel you're appealing to their passions. What is the game plan? Mark Scrivens (53:18.017) And I think for us, this sort of plays to our strength, which is we're a Vietnamese company. And again, I come back to, yeah, I'm from the UK, but I've seen this uniqueness, this passion, this energy, this totally different way of working. It's a culture that I think more and more very large enterprise customers are warming up to, to go, want something different. I'm fed up of not getting innovation. We, it's, yep. Steve (53:49.454) But how do you think about that, Mark? My question to you, and I love it, and it's a very, very potent, and I think in today's world of enormous sensitivity to having those who can truly perform in the tech world and AI complement and understanding the trajectory we're on because we're not gonna be married to what is here today. And as you said very rightfully, almost every week we are advancing in multimodal tools and all aspects from a graphic... creative presentation that can be used within social media, within video highlights, within all sorts of integration of corporate identity. My question to you, is really to me I'm super interested in, and I know our viewers are as well, is what is the, if you will, let's call it the strategic marketing advertising VIP corporate hospitality plan, so that the message you just said to me, which is beautiful. gets communicated and heard because when I see FPT on the sleeve, I don't hear that message. Mark Scrivens (54:54.071) And this is where I think our wonderful marketing team, and again, they're youthful, they're creative, they're doing something different. They're churning out content. They are pushing relevant information now out into various forms of media. And then when we're hosting people, when we're meeting people, and this is something, you it's new for us. We've never done this until this year. I've never hosted in this kind of environment until... April, and it's, it's, it's been a massive learning curve. And the way we've been doing it is by being ourselves by telling stories because having been successful in business from a, from a sales perspective, it's been about telling stories, not. Steve (55:23.756) Mm. Mm. Mark Scrivens (55:43.081) not relating what a function, a feature is going to be. It's about giving a customer, giving a partner a story of how we solved a problem, what the challenges were, how we did it, how we built it. And I make sure that we've got a mix of locals like myself and people over from Vietnam who can really bring that passion to life. To give you an example of the stories that we can now tell, we took members of the club out to Vietnam very recently. And we did what we call what I call a hackathon, which I'm told off by my company for calling because hackathons in our company last for a number of weeks. And it was, it was called a rapid ideas jam. 24 hours, we get three teams of six people randomly chosen. They've not worked together before. We put them together. Our customer will then give them a challenge or a number of challenges and I want you to solve the problem and within 24 hours they will come back they have 45 minutes to present I've seen this done twice now these guys are able to build almost MVPs in terms of an application they can build front end the marketing and video they put round this stuff it is I have never seen anything like it One of the biggest criticisms I've had throughout my career is over the word innovation. And I think in tech, we... We use it incorrectly and we say, yeah, we're going to innovate. We'll put an innovation fund into the contract. We'll show you innovation. What I can do with the people we've got in Vietnam, we can really innovate and we can do it real time in 24 hours and we can show the scale of what we can do. And I think it's that that's putting us in that very different place. I think the club saw something different in us. Steve (57:45.912) You know, I'm ideating as you're speaking, or I'll say I'm innovating as we're speaking. I'm having spent so much time in corporate hospitality because as an event owner of major domestic, regional and global sports events, that's a big part. Frankly, it's when the event becomes alive and for the people who spent the money, they get the chance to really experience it on a personal level. Mark Scrivens (57:51.586) Yeah. Mark Scrivens (57:57.464) Mm. Steve (58:11.982) And I'm trying to weave something that's not cheeky or predictable or sugary, but I'm seeing, because you know, everyone has the Lexus suite, the Chase suite, the club, and they all use the same, and you come in, and again, for super VIPs, and many of those are your target market, they get lost after a month or two because they, it all seems the food tasted great, the drinks were great. Mark Scrivens (58:17.603) Yeah. Steve (58:39.658) And very often it gets a little confusing. Well, which event did I watch with which company? And there are lot of ways to do VIP. Again, 37 years doing this, you see a lot of mistakes we've made, and then you start to see what just blows it out of the marketplace. One of them happens to be a very simple element, is how you take your existing dedicated corporate suite. and then in a very sophisticated, thought-through way, integrate the beauty of your home base in a very sophisticated technological way where we can now see and experience a taste of Vietnam without putting them into, you know, cheap house, a gong house, but something where it doesn't look like it's, you know, obsequious. but again catering to your expertise of technology. And then when they came to that suite and maybe they had choices of food and perhaps one of the food options of Vietnam, some of the greatest drink options and not mao tai from China, but a really good drink option that you can feel you're gonna have another day of life ahead of you. And at the end of the day, Mark Scrivens (59:48.589) Yeah. Steve (59:59.426) be in a position that they left a suite just as a simple ideation. And they said, I will never forget that experience. It was done very delicately, very, very, very sophisticated, but I got a taste of Vietnam on a technology level that made Mark's FPT experience so dramatically different from every other wine and dine I just went to. Just a thought. Mark Scrivens (01:00:23.8) Yeah. And I think, you know, I think what you're saying is fabulous. And we've we've thought long and hard about this. And I think in the next two, three months, we will make changes. one of the ideas we've had is having some some live feed screens on the on the wall that are actually live feeds from Ho Chi Minh, from Hanoi. So you can you can see the hustle bustle. mean, Ho Chi Minh, it's a megacity. It's it's 24 7. And I was fortunate enough to be there when they're projecting on one of the big buildings, the Union Jack and the Vietnamese flag, along with the the announcement that was just made about the Steve (01:00:46.52) Yeah. Mark Scrivens (01:01:07.371) strategic partnership and just to be able to have that imagery in the suite would be fabulous. Steve (01:01:14.444) like it, let's brainstorm. So just because that's the purpose of our show, but we're gonna do it anyway, because this is sports marketing. And at the end of the day, I would be, if I were working with you, I'd say to you, great, I love it. But you know what, since they're not mutually exclusive, I wanna get a beautiful screen of your staff, the staff you speak about in their laboratory and seeing the productivity. of this incredible workforce that you've spoken about with some view of some majestic view out of your office that has a very majestic view and feeling like, and maybe again, by integrating other elements that they can enjoy about that high tech ability. that responsiveness of AI. Again, a visual of Ho Chi Minh City I get, but that AI doesn't get communicated to me. It can evoke other types of thought processes like traffic. And I don't want to be reminded of traffic. So I hear you, great. Remember in our world, and you're obviously on it, the message of FPT here will never be what we think it is. Mark Scrivens (01:02:09.751) Thank you. Steve (01:02:22.796) because it's like my putting my name Steve Feuerstein on the front of the chest. And I'll see it every moment it's on screen. But you know what? The TV viewer and live spectator came to watch a match and they're following that ball. They're listening to the announcer say, wow, know, Ginola's got the ball. He's at half 20 seconds left in the match. And they are all in on that leg, the kick, the arc, the goalie, the fans, the excitement. and that compliment of getting that message out so that the passion of the consumer is in a very smooth, natural way, being like, wow, so that's FPT. And when I think of them, I just think of a company that just very naturally cares about my passion. And I've got that supplemental message. whether that's through, and again, it's usually not one thing, but through commercial advertising, through breaks, through obviously a lot of streaming messaging and creating certain messages that people want to participate in and having some type of redemptive that you're rewarding me for being a part of your world. So it's awesome. Again, I knew when I read about and learned about you, I feel I've learned so much about FPT in a very short period of time. I'm rooting for you. It is a brave new world. It is the post-tariff era. Mark Scrivens (01:03:44.195) Thank you. Steve (01:03:47.726) You guys, it's not the 1960s. And the embargo was lifted by President Clinton in 1994. So there's a whole world ahead of us. And that helps sometimes countries also evolve their performance and their worldview. So I think they lucked out on getting you, Mark. That's all I can tell you. I've never met anyone who can speak of the country of origin of their headquarter in my entire career. Mark Scrivens (01:04:09.217) Thank you very much. Steve (01:04:16.62) than Mark Scrivins, who is CEO of FPT based out of the UK. Haom Holmterf out of Vietnam will be hearing a lot more about his company and about him because you can see someone who's gravitating to a powerful, powerful strategic tool, one of many, but a powerful one that's universal. And just in the early stages, And I think it's gonna be very, very meaningful to watch your, if you will, evolution and maturity as a very powerful sponsor in one of the most important leagues in the world, that being the Premier League. So I thank you for joining the Transaction Report today. Mark Scrivens (01:04:56.791) Thank you, Steve. Good night. Steve (01:04:59.906) Likewise, Ryan's going to jump back on and.