Key takeaways from elite sports for the business world

For anyone with a faint interest in sport, here are the approximate values of the top eight teams to compete in the quarterfinals in the recent Paris Olympics 2024 men’s basketball team: 

GOLD - USA: circa $1.2 billion, featuring top NBA stars like Curry, LeBron, Durant, and Embiid.
BRONZE - Serbia: $300 million, with key players like Jokic and Bogdanovic.
SILVER - France: $250 million, Gobert and Wembanyama.
[4th] Germany: $150 million, inc Schroder and Wagner.
[5th] Canada: $200 million, Gilgeous-Alexander and Barrett.
[6th] Australia: $180 million, Simmons and Mills.
[8th] Greece: $220 million, Antetokounmpo
[7th] Brazil: $100 million, Caboclo and Neto.

In 2010, authors of Liverpool FC, Paul Tomkins and Graeme Riley, carried out a football study on the English Premier League and devised the ‘Transfer Price Index’ which calculated “football inflation” for the EPL and the correlation between performances of teams and the value of its squad: the higher value the squad, the higher the table it will likely be. 

Another complimentary theory in sport called “Moneyball” or “Sabermetrics” uses empirical analyses in baseball to measure players' performances in a game to determine undervalued players and signing them before they reach their peak market value to compete with teams with far greater resources. 

Even so, a squad whose value is worth 4x more than the next most expensive squad, Serbia (who came third), shows how uneven a playing field the basketball competition was. Arguably, you could say that for the rest of the Olympics where many of the medallists had some government funding. There is the occasional outlier of course, take Pakistan’s javelin throwing village sensation, Arshad Nadeem. 

And the business world is no exception. Top tier international law firms pay top dollar for the best law graduates and top rainmaking partners, it's clear how divisions in the industry are created with their clientele, the nature of work, and how deep their pockets are. 

For many SMEs and startups, most of these law firms are out of reach for daily transactional support, strategic business or risk management advice, or plain boring, routine legal housekeeping. 

Speaking to many businesses, it's clear there’s more than one way to slice an apple. Alternative Legal Services Providers (ALSPs) help smaller companies to get the support of legally trained lawyers at far lower than Rolls Royce rates. And it helps support a growing demand among lawyers wanting more flexibility and choice in the work they do. 

It’s the 'sabermetrics' of legal/risk management; helping SMEs punch above their weight. 

And for MNCs, legal ops optimisation can help partly or fully automate many legal tasks that historically required armies to sort and process. It's why I’m so passionate about Yuzu ALSP as a complimentary service to Star Anise Legal; it’s a win-win for companies and talent alike. And it's the work that law firms simply do not find profitable to undertake.

This post was originally published on LinkedIn by Chris.

If you would like to read more about Moneyball, read ths earlier article. 

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