WBD452 Audio Transcription

The Bitcoin Football Club with Peter McCormack & Dominic Frisby

Interview date: Wednesday 19th January

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Dominic Frisby. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, Bitcoin advocate and good friend of What Bitcoin Did Dominic Frisby talks to Peter McCormack, Chairman of Real Bedford. We discuss the dream to help Bitcoin and Bedford, learning to run a football club, and documenting the adventure.

“Most football clubs stand for one thing, which is winning... we stand for a little bit more, we stand for financial literacy. Which I think is super important in the world of football because most clubs operate like they haven’t got any fucking idea about financial literacy.”

— Peter McCormack

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Hi, Dominic.

Dominic Frisby: Hello, Peter.

Peter McCormack: Thank you for doing this.  Okay, let me set this up.  I've done this once before where I've asked someone to interview me, which is a little bit weird, because it's my show, but I want to tell the story of the football club to everyone on the podcast, and I thought you'd be one of the best people to do it.  You're English, you understand football and you understand Bitcoin, and I don't want to abuse the podcast for the football club.  I want to get it out there and then want to get back on with the show, but I do want to leverage it a bit, and everyone listening, hopefully, will go and check it out and support what we're doing.  So, thanks for doing this and over to you.

Dominic Frisby: My pleasure, and I would say, you can say you're leveraging the podcast, but it's a fantastic story, and one of the things you've done on the podcast is give a platform to fantastic stories.  And it is a huge development for Bitcoin, I think as well, assuming it all goes well with the club.  But I guess the place to start is, as always, at the very beginning.  You're from Bedford, as we all know, and you tried to buy Bedford Town and that didn't work.  Shall we start with that?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that was always the goal.  I've actually got a Chief Executive working with me now, a good old friend called Tom Pattinson.

Dominic Frisby: I know Tom Pattinson.

Peter McCormack: Oh, you do, don't you?  No, you know a different Tom Pattinson, we've had this conversation before.  It's a different Tom Pattinson.  But my Tom Pattinson you would like, I think you would get on really well with him, and we should get together at some point, because he's a great guy. 

But about four years ago, during the 2017 bull run, I knew the current Chairman at that time wanted to let the club go.  He wasn't willing to invest and we started doing some initial research into buying them, and then I realised I can't afford this, I can't make this work.  And it's something I've wanted to do since, you speak to my dad, since I was a kid, I've been saying to him.  And I always used to say to my mum, "I'd like to buy the Bedford team".

So, what happened was, it was only this year I realised, "Actually, I think I know how to do this", and it's not about me doing it on my own, it's about leveraging Bitcoin and leveraging the podcast.  What happened was, I approached Bedford Town and approached the Chairman and said I was interested in acquiring the club.  Here's my plan, here's my strategy, and we tried to get to a deal.  Couldn't get to one, sadly for me, but he's done a great job, they're top of the league in the 8th tier, and he wants to finish his project on and I wish him the best of luck, because he's done a great job there.  They should get promoted and they should go into the 7th tier, but it wasn't any reason for me not to do this. 

I've got a guy working as a consultant from a top Premier League Club, and he said, "Well, there's another club, Bedford FC, which might be available.  Why don't you try and buy them?"  So, I approached the Chairman.

Dominic Frisby: Had you even heard of them?

Peter McCormack: I knew of them, because they're next door to Bedford Town; I just hadn't considered them.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.  And are they just sort of one up from a park team?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, they're a 10th tier.  On a good day, they'll get 100 people come and watch them, and on a bad day, a couple of men and a dog, as we say.  I just hadn't thought about them.

Dominic Frisby: And did you grow up supporting Bedford Town, or were they too low down the league?

Peter McCormack: When I was a kid, I didn't know they existed.  When I went to school, I supported Liverpool, a bit like yourself.

Dominic Frisby: So, what team would most people from Bedford support; Luton, or someone?

Peter McCormack: If you want to support a local team, it's Luton.  Tom's a Luton fan, he was there on Saturday.  But when you would go to school, it was Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal.  It wasn't City or Chelsea in those days, it was just those three, some Tottenham fans.  Then you would have the odd random one, like a Burnley fan, and then a handful of Luton fans.  No Watford fans, even though we're not far, and there are some MK Dons fans now, because they're nearby.  But it really was Luton or one of the top teams.

Dominic Frisby: And Luton were a top team for a bit.

Peter McCormack: Luton were a top team for a bit, yeah.

Dominic Frisby: David Pleat.

Peter McCormack: The first time -- it wasn't the first game.  The first game I ever went to, my dad took me to a playoff game actually at Watford, because my dad's a Blackburn fan, so I went to Blackburn v Watford.  But my first Liverpool game, my first two Liverpool games were at Kenilworth Road, when they used to have the plastic pitch.  The first game we lost 3-1, but I got to see my hero, John Barnes, play which was amazing.  And then, it was a 0-0 draw the following year.  I might have them the wrong way round; it was a 3-1 defeat and then a 0-0 draw.

Dominic Frisby: Do you follow John Barnes on Twitter?

Peter McCormack: I do, yeah.  He's on a specific --

Dominic Frisby: He's on a one-track Twitter feed!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, one-track.  I saw him at Watford recently.  I mean, I love the guy.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, what a player.

Peter McCormack: Unbelievable.  When I was a kid, funnily enough, I wanted a Liverpool teddy and she wanted to get me one of the ones, but I said I wanted the John Barnes one, so she made me one.  So, I had a John Barnes teddy that she made.

Dominic Frisby: A bespoke John Barnes.

Peter McCormack: A bespoke John Barnes.

Dominic Frisby: You should sell that as an NFT!

Peter McCormack: Do you know, I don't have it anymore.  I don't know where I got rid of it.  It's probably in the loft at my parents' somewhere.  But yeah, anyway, so what happened was, I went away to uni, came back, and then I would go and watch Bedford Town very occasionally, but it was a crap experience, and some people listening will be, "Well, you don't understand non-league football, you've got to support that", and they're right, but I didn't.  But I always felt like Bedford could support a league club.  We're a population of 174,000 people, we've never had a league club, for people listening.

Dominic Frisby: If places like Blackburn and Wigan can, then Bedford certainly can.

Peter McCormack: Well, Burnley's a population of 90,000 and they've got a Premier League team.

Dominic Frisby: Bolton?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and they've got a lot of competition in their area.  We've got very little competition, but we've never had a league club.  And just for people listening, there'll be Americans who won't understand this, the league is four tiers of football: Premier League, Championship, League One and League Two.  I think we can support a league club, as in League Two minimum.

So, yeah, I wanted to do it, I always felt it could support it.  So, I approached Bedford Town, but they didn't want to do it.  So, here we are, I've agreed on a deal for Bedford FC.

Dominic Frisby: And, may I ask, how much did you buy Bedford FC for and who did you buy it from?

Peter McCormack: I can answer one of those.  It's a guy called Lui La Mura, who's a great guy.  He's run the club for the last 20 years to the point whereby, not only is he Chairman, he mows the lawn and marks the pitch out and does a lot.  He's done a great job there.  Just for the interest of him, I agreed just to keep the price confidential, just because he doesn't want people --

Dominic Frisby: And will you give him a job?

Peter McCormack: That's a good question.  I wonder what -- because, it's a big thing to give over, it's a big part of his life.  I wonder whether he wants -- how he feels about letting go.  He's never really told me.  I mean, he will always be welcome there and I'd love to recognise the work that he's done within the club, and he's a friend of the club and he's a friend of mine now, and permanently welcome. 

I can just imagine handing over is going to be a tricky thing, because he's probably going to see me make decisions that he won't agree with or won't like, but knows I have to go and figure my own journey out.  But he's a really great guy and he has kept that club going for 20 years with zero budget.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.  And, are we allowed to know what the current running costs are?

Peter McCormack: I mean, the current running cost is about £15,000 a year, pre myself.

Dominic Frisby: Are the players paid?

Peter McCormack: No, none of the players are paid.  But I was with Tom two days ago and we wrote our budget, and we've done an 18-month budget, because through to the end of this season until the end of next season.  So, we're running it as an 18-month budget, and I've put in a budget of £300,000 of which, I think I've put in a £2,000-a-week budget for the playing team next season.  So, if you think, that's about 40 weeks, it's about £80,000; plus the rest of this season, I've given the managers a £1,000-a-week budget for the rest of the season.  But we've put in budget for lots of things like upgrading equipment --

Dominic Frisby: New bibs?

Peter McCormack: New bibs.  I bought some new bibs yesterday, I've got them coming in today.  New balls, bibs, training ladders.  We've got to put in place software, we've got to get a groundsman in.  All the things they've not had, we're putting in place.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, so what division are you currently in?

Peter McCormack: We are in the Spartan South Midlands Division One.

Dominic Frisby: And are there paid players in the Spartans South Midlands One?

Peter McCormack: There will be some, maybe on £50 a week.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.  And do you, to have a player, to sign a player, do they have to join the club, do they have to sign some kind of contract; can you have any old Jo playing for you?

Peter McCormack: You can really sign anyone.  I mean, there are rules on approaching players who are already at clubs, but you don't actually have to sign a contract.  I mean, we've just signed three players and a couple of other players are going to be put on a fee, a match fee.  We don't have to sign contracts with them, but if you want to sign somebody who's already at a club, you've got to put in a seven-day notice.

So, you approach the team, you say, "I want to talk to so-and-so".  They have to inform the player and they make the decision whether they can talk to you or not.  If they say no, you have to wait seven days.  If they say yes, you can speak straightaway, but you have to follow those procedures.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.  What's the division above you?

Peter McCormack: It's the Prem, so it's Spartan South Midlands Prem.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, and is it too late for you; where are you in the table at the moment?

Peter McCormack: Well, that's why I've given the current managers a budget.  So, we are 8th in the table.

Dominic Frisby: Top two go up?

Peter McCormack: Well, first, and then two to five go in the playoffs.  So, we could definitely make the playoffs, absolutely make the playoffs, and I want to.  But I've said to the management, "Everything this season's a bonus.  The remit from essentially next season is promotion", which is a remit given to my Chief Executive, given to my Sporting Director, given to my management team.  "The remit is promotion.  You have to tell me everything you need to give yourself the best chance, whether that's players, whether that's equipment, whether that's match-day facilities, whether training facilities.  You tell me what you need and we will give you everything we can to try and make that happen.  But the remit is promotion next season, and the remit will be promotion every season".

Dominic Frisby: When do you take the club over, 1 January?

Peter McCormack: Well, we've not completely taken over, because we agreed the deal just prior to Christmas, lawyers took Christmas off, so we're just waiting for contracts to be signed.  So, we have not taken over the club, but I'm --

Dominic Frisby: Your tentacles are already --

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so I'm supporting in the running of the club, I'm providing equipment and facilities, but the club is still being run by the same team at the moment, but we're just supporting it.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.  Now, my son, when he was about five, that kind of period, five to eight, in his class there was a boy who he became best friends with, and the boy's dad was a former player by the name of Carl Hutchinson.  Carl had played a couple of games for Chelsea, and he was a real proper journeyman pro from South London and I think he had quite a long career at Bristol City, so 2nd, 3rd division kind of journeyman player.  I've played football with him a few times, and he's just so much better than --

Peter McCormack: You played?

Dominic Frisby: I still play now.  I'm 52.  When I finish this, I'm going off to play.  But it's old man, six-a-side that I play now, but I love it.  I used to play with Carl and Carl became an agent, so he would train players, and I would go and train pre-season with some of his players, and they were just so much better than me, but he always said I was Baresi at the back.

Anyway, what Carl used to do, when he was in his mid- to late-30s is he didn't have a contract with any particular club, and he just effectively became a freelance player.  I think he would go and play for Tooting and Mitcham, or one of those South London teams, and he'd just get a little brown envelope at the end of the game with £300 or £400, or whatever the match fee was, in the envelope; maybe it wasn't even as much as that.

There are a lot of players who, they're 32, 33, the clubs decide their career's over, they let them go, but they're still pretty good players.  And I imagine, if you put the feelers out, you could find three or four guys like that, you know, a centre back, a midfielder and a striker, maybe a goalkeeper, and that would be -- I don't know any of the Bedford players, so I don't know how good or bad they are, but do you know what I mean, the spine of a team.  Pay a little bit more and that might get you up.

Peter McCormack: So, one of the things that's really interesting is the amount of things I've learnt in the first few weeks about football, and I'm continuing to learn, and understanding what I don't know.  I'm not getting involved in player signings, or obviously I'm not getting involved in team selection, because I know nothing about that, and I'm giving that as the remit to my managers, "You're the managers, your job is to get us promoted".

Dominic Frisby: Is the guy who's the manager, are you changing manager, or are you sticking with the same guy?

Peter McCormack: Well, we've changed manager already.  So, the managers, "Your remit this season is to try and get the playoffs.  Do your best and if you get us in the playoffs, we get promoted, there's a bonus, and there's bonuses throughout the team".

Dominic Frisby: And everything's paid in Bitcoin?

Peter McCormack: No.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.

Peter McCormack: We'll come back to that.  But the players have got a win bonus, which they haven't had before; they get a certain amount each game if they win.  I actually gave it on the last game, which was a draw, just because when we took over --

Dominic Frisby: Are the players like the postman, the local chippie, the local sparky and all that?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, a little bit, but there's a range of people.  But once we announced that we'd agreed the deal, the next game we lost 6-1!  It's just typical, I was just like, "Oh, for fuck's sake!"

Dominic Frisby: Was this to a good team?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, to a decent team.  You know, whatever the reason.  So, the next game was a tough game against Ampthill, above us in the table, a good team, away game, big turnout, 300 people.  And they called it a draw and they could have won it, and I was just really kind of proud of them for pulling that off.  So I said, "I'm going to give you your win bonus, even though it was a draw, and keep plugging away".  But what I've learnt is, give it to the managers, "You guys go and do this.  You're in charge and if you get us up, there's a bonus".

Dominic Frisby: So, who is your manager?

Peter McCormack: Nathan Abbey, and he is supported, the Assistant Manager is Gavin Hoyte, who used to manage the team a couple of years ago.  But one of the things I'm starting to learn is, there's teams that you can have per division that suit the division you're in.  So, for example, you could have a relationship with a Premier League club, say Crystal Palace, and say, "Can we get players on loan?" and they might have the best nippy winger.  He's going to get lumps kicked out of him in this division, because it's a different style of football.  So, you've got to understand the style of football for your division.

I watched the whole Salford documentary, I binge-watched it over the weekend.  And what was really interesting there is the managers did a really great job; three promotions in four seasons, and the one they didn't go up, they got in the playoffs.  And the final season, where they had got promoted, they still let them go; because I think what they'd realised is that those managers had reached the limit of what they were going to be able to achieve at that point.

Now, I think it was unfair to let them go, but I can see why those decisions were made, and I think it's the same with players.  You've got to find the players for your division that suit your division, and you've got to find the managers that suit your division.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.  I'm going to just put a contrarian point of view here, and this is just speaking, you know I'm a comedian as well, and this is something I've seen with comedy, is you'll go in your player room and you'll see the room and you'll go, "Right, this is a really beery, rowdy crowd.  I need to put on my laddish hat here and be one of the lads and play the room this way".  And then another week, you might go and do a gig at an arthouse centre, and you're like, "Okay, I'm going to do my highbrow arty material".

Now, the guy that only sees you, the agent or the booker from the telly, he comes to the laddy club and he's looking for arthouse acts and he only sees you doing your laddish material, he's going to go, "Well, that guy's a beery, laddy act and he swears and I can't have him doing…" do you see what I mean?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I understand where you're going.

Dominic Frisby: So sometimes, you can be almost a victim of your own versatility, and I find it incredibly frustrating when other people are making decisions about you when they don't know what you're capable of as much as you know what you're capable of.

Peter McCormack: That's fair, I understand where you're going with that.

Dominic Frisby: But that's all part of the game.  You've got to make decisions, and has this guy got what it takes, has he not got what it takes?

Peter McCormack: Well, the conclusion I've come to --

Dominic Frisby: I guess you've got to say to him, "Look, if you get us up, you've got the job next season", I don't know.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and Salford got rid of those guys.  Who's to say they wouldn't have still got promotion again?  I mean, when I started the podcast, I didn't know anything about podcasting and now that's my career and that's my job.  So, who's to say they can't figure it out? 

Dominic Frisby: I saw it with Fulham, who I'm sort of part-supporter of.  They got promoted and they didn't stick with the players who got them up, they got a whole load of new players in and went straight back down again!

Peter McCormack: Yeah!  But I think what I've come to the conclusion is, as a Chairman, I've got two main roles.  Role number one is profit.  What do I drive commercially in this football team, which is a business?  Let's be honest, every football team is a business.  How do I maximise the commercial opportunity to give us the best resources available for the team, the club and also, building out stuff for the community?  A football club is part of the community.

The second job is hiring and firing of a manager really, get the best manager for the job, trust them, give them what they need and if they don't achieve, then get rid of them and get the next one in.  I think that's the main two roles of a chairman.

Dominic Frisby: I'm reading a very good book at the moment, called The Psychology of Money, by a chap called Morgan Housel, I can't recommend it enough.  But he talks about, what was the famous American oil tycoon?  Okay, so the great oil tycoon at the end of the 19th century, you'd think as an oil tycoon, he should have known about -- he was famously quiet and reclusive and didn't talk to anyone, and he was famous every time he went into a meeting, he didn't say anything.

It turned out that what he recognised about his job was, he wasn't the guy in charge of drilling of exploration or trucking or whatever it was, his job was just to think and make decisions and get the decisions right.  And I guess there's a parallel with you there; you've just got to think, absorb all the information and make the right decisions?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean look, what's my main skills?  It's communication, sales and marketing.  So, what am I going to do?  I'll brand the club, market the club out to fans, I'm going to focus on the commercials for the sponsors, I'm going to focus on the commercials of the merchandise sales, and build up a company.  I think that's going to bother some people, Dominic.  I think some people are going to be like, "You don't understand football.  A football club's more than a company".  Sure, but it is a company.

Dominic Frisby: Let's come to this now, because the football clubs in the UK were born, in fact probably all over the world, they were born, you know, it would be a local club and it would be the young bucks of the area representing that area.  So, you would have the young bucks of Bedford playing against the young bucks of Luton playing against the young bucks of Liverpool against the young bucks of Manchester, whatever it is.

As the game's grown and it's got incredibly commercialised, a lot of clubs have lost touch with their community and there are no longer any people -- I mean, how many people from Highbury & Islington play for Arsenal?  Very few, I think.  And even clubs like Liverpool, which are historically very close to their community, I think there's only Trent who's actually from Liverpool.

There's two big forces there.  On the one hand, I understand why a lot of traditionalists would go, "We want the local players, we've got the local bond", and so a local player will be betrayed when they get Johnny centre midfield from Real Madrid to come and play centre midfield and he's lost the gig in central midfield, when it means that much more to him to play centre midfield than it does for the bloke from Madrid.  So, I understand that side of it.

Then, on the other side, we want to win the league, and to win the league, we have to have the best players from the world and the best managers from the world, etc.  So, there are two contrarian forces there.  The point is that the clubs were born out of their communities.  We're now obviously, with the internet, we have a whole new type of digital community, so people congregate on the internet when they have shared ideas or shared goals or shared experiences, rather than necessarily a shared location of origin.

What you're doing with Bedford in making it the Bitcoin team, you're birthing the club, if you like, in a digital community, rather than a local community.

Peter McCormack: Yes, but I'm doing both.

Dominic Frisby: You're actually doing both, you are doing both.

Peter McCormack: I'm doing both and I'm really conscious of that.  This doesn't work with only one.  If we have this digital, international community that supports the club because they support Bitcoin, but no one coming to watch it, you don't want to get into the league and not have -- you want a few thousand people there.  And it definitely doesn’t work without the international support that I've got behind this.  And I'm kind of lucky, Dominic, in that --

Dominic Frisby: Let me just clarify.  I wasn't saying that you're not doing it locally, but you're creating a whole new digital community on the top of it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  But I'm really lucky, because there are three or four things in my life, the important things in my life, outside of family and traditional concepts: Bitcoin, because that's my job; football, because I probably watch at least a game every two days; and Bedford, like anyone who's been listening to my podcast, who follows me on Twitter, I talk about Bedford all the time.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, you certainly big-up Bedford!

Peter McCormack: Well, you know what it is, it is my town, it's where I grew up and it's where my family grew up and it's where my friends are and it's where I live.  And it's really easy, especially as a British person, well anyone really from your town they're like, "Where are you from?"  It's really easy to go, "Yeah, I'm from Bedford, it's a fucking shithole", and a lot of people do it. 

I'm like, "Yeah, it's got its bad aspects, but it's also got its good aspects.  It's got a beautiful river and it's got beautiful parks, it's got one of the best parks I've ever been in.  And I like the people.  I like the fact that I can go from my house, I can walk through town to this pub I always go to, called The Embankment, and I will see at least five to ten people I know, and I love that.  But it is a deprived area.  We don't have a lot of successful industry there, a lot have moved away.  We did have some.

Dominic Frisby: It's got that London satellite town shithole thing to it, hasn't it?

Peter McCormack: It has, because we've got a good connection to the M1.  We're right on the M1, junction 13, near enough to London, but can connect to the north, that we've got down all the bypasses, we've just got the big distribution centres coming, which I understand what they're about, but --

Dominic Frisby: They're soulless.

Peter McCormack: They're soulless.  I was just talking about this on a previous interview with Ben, talking about Amazon, and I'm going to try and do a month of not using Amazon, because I realise they're a fucking horrible business who've destroyed local businesses and the souls of people who work there.  But it's a deprived town and we don't have a lot of big industry.  We've got some good people from there.  John Oliver is from Bedford.

Dominic Frisby: Is he?  I know John.

Peter McCormack: You know John?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.  I'll message him.

Peter McCormack: Okay, great.  Well, John's from Bedford.

Dominic Frisby: John and I used to play football together, funnily enough.

Peter McCormack: Did you?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, he's a very good left-footer, he's got a very sweet left foot.

Peter McCormack: He's another Liverpool fan.

Dominic Frisby: A bit weak in the challenge!

Peter McCormack: Paula Radcliffe's from Bedford, the marathon runner.  But yeah, so we don't have a lot going for it and we don't have a lot of investment.

Dominic Frisby: He'll love this.

Peter McCormack: I know he'll love this.  It's funny you should say that, because he's the one person I want to go and have a chat with and get him to get behind it, because I think he could support it.

Dominic Frisby: Well, I've got his email and he sponsored my Bitcoin book, Life After the State.  But I haven't spoken to him in five or six years, so I'm not sure that the email is still functioning, but I can certainly message him.

Peter McCormack: Well, we can try.  I'm going to be in LA soon, so I'd love to meet him, just have a coffee.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.  I think he's based in New York; I don't know.  Every time I do Edinburgh, I share a flat with Andy Zaltzman, and Andy Zaltzman and John, they did the Bugle together and all that, they sort of started out together.

Peter McCormack: I'm sure you two can connect again somehow.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Okay, we'll talk about that.  But yeah, these are the three biggest things in my life.  The only other thing is music, I'm a big heavy metal fan.  But these three things I can make come together.  Actually, four things, because obviously once we get a PA system, I'm going to be blasting AC/DC as the players come out!  And people have said, "Why have you got a skull and crossbones as a logo?"  Apart from skulls are cool, I've got one on my hand, I like heavy metal, so that's a touch of it.

Dominic Frisby: It's cool, it's the pirates, it's the Bitcoin pirates and all that.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  But I've got these things I can bring together, Dominic, at the same time.  I can support my town, I can do something really cool for my town.  If we can get league football to Bedford, what a cool thing to do for my town.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, I'll say.

Peter McCormack: And it brings economic opportunity, because you bring fans in spending money; you can grow grassroots football, so that's cool; but I can also do a really good thing for Bitcoin, because we're going to run a Bitcoin standard and I can help educate people about Bitcoin, and I can also prove the business case of why this works.  And obviously, football is one of my passions and loves, but I get to bring these all together; I can bring these together, but they're also blessing me with an opportunity to do this in a way that wouldn't have been possible.  All three have just come together at the same time.

One other thing is, I knew I had to be the first.  If somebody else did this before me, I'd missed it.  It had to be the first one to do it.  And in doing so, I've captured Bedford as the Bitcoin team.  It's a bit like, I've talked about this before, but Michael Saylor talks about building a 100-year company.  We don't have a long history, we weren't born in 1886.  I want to build the 100-year football club.

Dominic Frisby: When was the club born?

Peter McCormack: It was about 50 years ago.  I should know that, but I don't know their full history.  Actually funnily enough, I've got a coffee soon; there's one guy who turns up with his black and white scarf every game.  I've got a coffee with him soon, he's going to tell me the full history.  But a year and a half ago, no one had really heard of MicroStrategy and no one knew of Michael Saylor.  Now, every CEO in the world knows MicroStrategy and they know Michael Saylor, and they know what they're up to.

It was the same with El Salvador.  Most people couldn't point to El Salvador on a point, certainly didn't know who Bukele was.  Now they do, now they know what they're up to.  And Bedford, for me, is the MicroStrategy, El Salvador of sports and everyone will know who Bedford is when we do this, everyone is going to have heard of us.  And hopefully, if we get this right, other teams will do it as well.

Dominic Frisby: You know Man United's nickname is The Red Devils or Chelsea is The Blues or Everton is The Toffee men or Northampton is The Cobblers, whatever it is, have you got your nickname?

Peter McCormack: Not yet.  Do you know what's funny?

Dominic Frisby: What?

Peter McCormack: When I tell you the name of the current team, Bedford FC, the one we've acquired, you're going to crack up.  They're called The Printers!

Dominic Frisby: Why's that?

Peter McCormack: Back to a printing press.

Dominic Frisby: There used to be a printing centre, presumably?

Peter McCormack: Well, I think again it's --

Dominic Frisby: That's the other thing.  A lot of clubs came into existence because of local industry, and they would… yeah.

Peter McCormack: I think again, this is why I'm meeting up with Paul, the old fan, to talk about all this.

Dominic Frisby: Printers is great, isn't it?

Peter McCormack: Isn't the irony, that they're called The Printers!  So, there's this dilemma, do we keep that, or do we change it and if we change it, what would it be?

Dominic Frisby: The Maximalists?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you've got to get it to work though.  The Maxis?

Dominic Frisby: I think The Bitcoiners.

Peter McCormack: The Miners?

Dominic Frisby: I think The Bitcoiners.

Peter McCormack: I kind of like The Wizards, because you know that magic internet money wizard guy?  I kind of like that being our mascot and having a guy running up and down the pitch as the wizard, "Come join us, magic internet money!"  The Honey Badgers.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, Honey Badgers is cool.

Peter McCormack: The Cyber Hornets. 

Dominic Frisby: Cyber Hornets is cool, Cyber Hornets is really cool.  The problem with Honey Badgers, Jon Matonis coined that term, Honey Badger, but it doesn't mean anything to the English, because we don't have Honey Badgers.

Peter McCormack: But I just like the idea of our mascot being the --

Dominic Frisby: The Badgers is cool.

Peter McCormack: By the way, have you ever seen that Twitter account, Mascots Minute Silence?

Dominic Frisby: No.

Peter McCormack: I've got to show you after this.  So, at the football matches, whenever there's a minute silence, what they do is show all the players stood there and then the mascot with them, and it's the weirdest Twitter account.  But I do like the idea of having this wizard at every game running up and down.

Dominic Frisby: That's funny.  The other great wizard is obviously the wizard at the end of The Wizard of Oz.  Because, you know The Wizard of Oz is an allegory.  The yellow brick road is the gold standard, did you know this?

Peter McCormack: I did not know this.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, so the yellow brick road -- and in the original book, she had silver slippers.  They changed it to ruby slippers because of technicolour, but she had silver slippers and it was the relationship between silver and gold.  The strawman is agriculture and the tinman is industry and the lion is the military and Oz is obviously an ounce, as in an ounce of gold.  Then he pulls back the emerald curtain and there's nothing there, and that's the whole allegory of The Wizard of Oz.

Peter McCormack: I'm going to have to watch that again now.

Dominic Frisby: Well, the book's not actually that good, and the film is obviously amazing.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, the film's incredible.

Dominic Frisby: But the film's lost a bit of the allegory.  But once you know the allegory, you'll see it again.

Peter McCormack: Which one was the one that had The Wheelers, was that The Return to Oz?

Dominic Frisby: I don't know.  And I think the Wicked Witch of the North, or whichever one it was, was the evil bankers!

Peter McCormack: I'm going to have to go back to that.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, so when there's nothing there behind the curtain, the Emerald Wizard and there's nothing there, you could incorporate that into your magic internet wizard moneyman. 

Peter McCormack: I do like the idea of getting that made as an outfit though, and somebody run up --

Dominic Frisby: That's great.

Peter McCormack: We don't have that, and that's to be figured out.

Dominic Frisby: He has to have a shield with a massive ₿ on it.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what's funny, is that the name, Real Bedford, was originally a joke.  Because what it was, I changed the name and when I was thinking about the name, I was actually in Miami at the time, and I was aware that Beckham had created Inter Miami.  I was like, "That's kind of cool, maybe we'll do Inter Bedford", and I was just like, "Inter Bedford --"

Dominic Frisby: It doesn’t ring right.

Peter McCormack: No.  I was like, "I wonder if I should go with Read Bedford as a joke?"

Dominic Frisby: It's a great name.

Peter McCormack: I think it is.  People hate it; some people hate it.

Dominic Frisby: Only people with NSOH, no sense of humour, and it's really funny.  One of the things with comedy, you put two things that aren't supposed to go together next to each other, the Real being sort of exotic and Spanish, and Bedford being as ordinary as it comes.  You put the two together and you have comedy and it puts a smile on your face.

Peter McCormack: You know what, sometimes doing this podcast, people have said, "What's it like with it growing and everything?" and I always say, "You can never objectively see yourself, so you are just still you, from day to day, you're still you.  Whereas, other people may see you and go, "You're interviewing a President", or you're doing this, but you're still you.  I can't objectively see Bedford.  What do you think of Bedford?  When you think of Bedford, what comes to mind?

Dominic Frisby: Well, there's something intrinsically comic in the sound of the word, Bedford, because it's "for bed".  It's just got a sort of, "derr" sound to it.

Peter McCormack: Shit town!

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, and then I just associate it with Luton, Slough, all those kind of satellite towns, do you know what I mean?  And I just do it from, just back in the day, I used to do gigs when I was still on the circuit and you'd come out on that High Street at 11.00pm when the pubs used to shut at 11.00pm and they'd throw everyone out, 11.30pm on the High Street.  There'd just be a fight every ten metres, just lads pissed having fights over girls and girls screaming.

Peter McCormack: Where were you playing, The Corn Exchange?

Dominic Frisby: I did The Corn Exchange a few times, and there was another club, I think it was called The Shed.  But you'd come over a bridge and if you went straight on, you'd come into the town centre where The Corn Exchange is, but you'd turn right and you'd go up the road there for about a mile and there was a pub.

Peter McCormack: The Shed, that's off Castle Road.  There's a pub next door to it?

Dominic Frisby: Well, no, it was in the back of the pub.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so that area is called Castle Quarters.  That's the nicest area of Bedford.  It's right by the river, it's beautiful.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.  It was nice gig.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's a nice area.  But The Corn Exchange is right in the town centre, so you come out of that and take a left, and there's a pub, a famous pub at the end, called The Rose.  I mean, I don't go there anymore, because I'm too old, but you used to say, "Rose to close", you'd go there until it closes.  My son's just started going there, it's so funny!

Dominic Frisby: I will say just an interesting thing.  When you go to most towns doing gigs, again my days of doing this are in the past now, I don't drive and do the circuit as much as I did; but most towns you go to and you'd go to the audience, "What's it like here?" and they'd all go, "It's a shithole!" and they would say that at Luton, Bedford, whatever, Watford, they'd all go, "It's a shithole!"  The one place where they would never say that, I'll see if you can guess what it is, and it's in your next of the woods; the one they were really precious about it and defended the town's reputation.

Peter McCormack: Milton Keynes?

Dominic Frisby: Yes!  Isn't that interesting, and I think it's because it's a new town, and everyone says Milton Keynes is a shithole.  So, the people are actually, "It's quite nice, good, it's really good".

Peter McCormack: Well, I think the thing about Milton Keynes, it's essentially SimCity.  You've played SimCity, the game, right?

Dominic Frisby: No.

Peter McCormack: SimCity's the game where you create a city, you put in the roads, you put in the hospital, you put in the schools and things go wrong and you have to fix it.  And the natural thing to do is you build a grid.  You basically build New York, because you think straight roads.  And Milton Keynes is very much like that, it's a grid.

Dominic Frisby: It's so easy to get lost.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it's a new city and it seems new.  But actually, when you live locally, Milton Keynes is great, because of the facilities it has.  There is a snowdome so you can go snowboarding, there is a big shopping centre, there's a massive lake if you want to go wakeboarding and go for a walk, there's Milton Keynes village which is beautiful.  So, there are a lot of shit parts of Milton Keynes, but facilities-wise, it's got everything you'd want out of a new city.  And now they have a football team with a crap reputation!

Dominic Frisby: I was going to say, yeah, because they were born out of Wimbledon.  And controversially, I've got a lot of people who are founding shareholders in AFC Wimbledon, born out of that.  But the fact that MK Dons came into existence shows that that next of the woods needs a big football team.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, they just did it the wrong way there, because we know Wimbledon, The Crazy Gang, was it in 1989 they beat us in the Cup final?  Beardsley missed a penalty, or was it Ray Houghton?

Dominic Frisby: I don't remember.

Peter McCormack: I think it was Beardsley.

Dominic Frisby: It was a game we should have won.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, we lost 1-0.  There should have been a sending off as well, but at the time I was disappointed; I'm so glad they had that day now.  And what a team!  Vinnie Jones, Dennis Wise.

Dominic Frisby: Fashanu.

Peter McCormack: Brutal.  But what was done to them was wrong, franchising a club away.  They should have found them a ground, and that was wrong.  Some people have already criticised me and said, "You're no different to what's happened at Wimbledon.  You're taking over a club, you're rebranding it".  I was like, "Hold on a second".

Dominic Frisby: No, it's very different.

Peter McCormack: The club I've bought has got really no fans, a few, a handful, and are usually the friends of the team.  They're like, "Well, you're changing the name".  I was like, "Well, check the history, they've changed their name before.  You weren't bothered before".  And actually, we're doing something good.  If I'd have bought Bedford Town, if I'd had the chance, we would not have changed their name, they would have stayed as Bedford Town, and they would probably have stayed --

Dominic Frisby: Real Bedford is a great name.

Peter McCormack: Can you imagine a Cup draw where it comes out, Gary Lineker, "Tottenham playing Read Bedford"!

Dominic Frisby: It's just funny.  It will make all the pundits laugh, it will make everyone smile.  Arsenal changed their name.  Would Arsenal be where they were if they were still in Woolwich?

Peter McCormack: What were they called?

Dominic Frisby: Woolwich, they were called Woolwich Arsenal.  That's where the actual Arsenal is, in Woolwich.  Then they moved from there up to Highbury.  So, other clubs have done it.

Peter McCormack: And people are not going to forget the name.  They're going to hear Real Bedford --

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, they dropped the Woolwich and kept the Arsenal.  Real Bedford is a great name and if people don't like it, as I say, no sense of humour, it's their problem.

Peter McCormack: "Nobody likes us --"

Dominic Frisby: "Nobody likes us, we don't care".

Peter McCormack: "-- we don't care.

Football toxicity on social media

Dominic Frisby: That is poetry, the best football chant of the lot, Millwall.  Now, I think you said a lot of people complaining and don't like you.  I think, when you're on Bitcoin Twitter and you're arguing about shitcoins or whatever it is, you get how aggressive Bitcoin Twitter is.  I say to people, "If you think arguments on social media over Brexit was bad, you wait until you see arguments between bitcoiners over Bitcoin and Ethereum", or whatever it is.

Football is like ten times even more vitriolic.  The only thing that's worse than football, I think, is boxing, but they're both equally bad.  You hear all those former players complaining about racist tweets, or whatever, but it's not just race, it's just full-on aggression.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what, I think I know why.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, tell me why in a sec.  But I was just going to say, you're going to get this now, this is going to be your life, and you know how to deal with it.  But the bigger Bedford get, on one side the bigger your support will grow; but on the other side, the bigger the vitriol, the more vitriolic things will get too.

Peter McCormack: Well I mean, it's not new to me getting trolled on Twitter, and I've brought it on myself a number of times and even recently when I was tweeting about having COVID and saying, "I'm lucky I'm vaccinated, or it would have been much worse"!  It wound some people up and I got a lot of shit and that's fair.

Dominic Frisby: It was funny.

Peter McCormack: It was funny, but it made me step back and realise the best way is to ignore things and just have that thick skin, and sometimes I have it and sometimes I don't.  So, when these football people are coming at me now, I'm used to this and that's absolutely fine.  There are criticisms, Dominic, there will be more criticisms, and it will be a range of things. 

But the truth is that we know the model of football is broken.  It is broken for all but maybe six, seven, eight teams.  The reason it's broken is because of player wages, and it will continue to be broken because of player wages.  All I want to do is --

Dominic Frisby: Well, player wages, they'll say, "Well, it's TV money and agents".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and it's just a weird model.  Free market people will hate this, but football needs a salary cap to protect it from that, because without a salary --

Dominic Frisby: Jimmy Hill will be turning in his grave.

Peter McCormack: I know.  I'm not saying you should, but the only way to fix that is a salary cap, otherwise it's always going to be chairmen going into their pocket trying to find money, because he's going to get, in our division, another £50 there, the top division, another £50,000 there.  So, I'm not saying there should be, I'm just saying that would change that part of the financing.

Anyway, the point is non-league football does struggle, everybody struggles, and they always need a chairman with a bit of money, and I've come in and said, "Okay, I've just got a new model here and my model isn't based on just the town, it's based on an idea.  We can own Bitcoin and therefore, the bitcoiners can support us globally and they can help us grow this club".  And in the end, if I get this right, what does it mean?  Outside of the fact that Bedford hopefully get into the football league, I can deliver grassroots football to Bedford.

I mean already, we are about to launch an academy, an actual facility so a bunch of kids can get educated and train in football every day.

Dominic Frisby: Have you had to buy land; have you got land?

Peter McCormack: No, we've got land, we've got a lease from the council.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.  Do they like you at the council?

Peter McCormack: We haven't had the meeting with them yet.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.

Peter McCormack: If they dislike us, they are anti-Bedford, because my message for them will be, "This club had a £15,000 budget last year.  I'm now up to £700,000 in sales and sponsorships, haven't even got our merch listed".

Dominic Frisby: That's $1 million for our American listeners.

Peter McCormack: Yeah!  We haven't got our merch listed, we're weeks into this and we've already closed £700,000 in sponsorship.  Our turnover for the year, I think will be about £1.5 million, which is about the same as a League Two club, okay.  So, what does that mean for Bedford?  It means I can launch an academy, a set of youth teams, a woman's team; I can build a 4G pitch, which is desperately needed.

Dominic Frisby: What's a 4G pitch?

Peter McCormack: The kind of astroturf, but not like the Luton astroturf pitches, the modern ones.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, that's for training and stuff?

Peter McCormack: You can actually play on it as well, up until, I can't remember which division.  I think it's The Conference, we'll have to check; it may even be League Two.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, I had to play 11-a-side on astroturf, you can't slide tackle.

Peter McCormack: You can't slide tackle and you can't shoot, shooting of that floor's really hard.  But I don't want to play our home games on there.

Dominic Frisby: Do you play football at all?

Peter McCormack: I used to, I was shit.  I've got one claim to fame with football: I've scored at St James' Park.

Dominic Frisby: Oh!

Peter McCormack: I used to play Sunday League, and one of our players was a big Newcastle fan, and he found out, off-season, for a month or two months, they allow people to pay to play on the pitch.  You pay £1,000, you play another team who pays £1,000 and then what they do is they used that money to re-lay the pitch.  It was an hour game, it was 30 minutes each way.  I was on the bench, I came on, I don't know, 20 minutes in, we were 1-0 down, and I used to play up front, but I was a big guy, I wasn't fast.  And it came over my shoulder and I just wellied it, a 25-yard lob!

Dominic Frisby: Oh, beautiful.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I also set up the winner.  But no, I was shit!  I was always too fat and slow.  But anyway, if I get this right, we get a woman's team, we get a youth team, we get an academy, we get a 4G pitch, which the community can use, we can put money into grassroots football.  And if we get in the league, there will be other teams and their fans coming into the town spending money, creating jobs. 

I will always say, "What is the downside to what I've done?  Just tell me that.  If you don't like what I've done, what's the downside?  What's the net impact?  You don't like the name, okay fine, you don't like the name.  The name has lots of international supporters who are spending money, which is putting money in Bedford.  Tell me the downside?" and it won't be a downside, it will just be, "Oh, you've got no history, you don't understand football", and it will be all that stuff. 

But it's like, we're a company, every football team is a company, whether you like it or not, and we're going to be a successful company that isn't a faceless corporate thing.  It just gives us that leverage to support local football in Bedford and, like I say, just do something for my town, and I've been very proud of that; I'm not ashamed of that.

Dominic Frisby: Will you televise the games; or not televise, but put them on YouTube, or whatever?

Peter McCormack: Well, not YouTube, so we're streaming a game this Saturday for the first time.  You have the geoblock at 3.00pm because of the blackout; do you know about that?

Dominic Frisby: Oh, right, explain what that is.

Peter McCormack: So, in the UK, to protect non-league football, lower league football, Saturday afternoon 3.00pm, there is a blackout.  I believe it's from 2.45pm or 2.15pm to 5.15pm.  There's a blackout, you can't show games, because if you start showing Premier League games there, people won't go and watch their local team.  That's a great idea, I love it, I love the blackout, fully support that. 

Dominic Frisby: And your games will always be on a Saturday afternoon?

Peter McCormack: Well, one of the things is, we can approach the league and say, "Can we play on a Friday evening so we don't clash?"

Dominic Frisby: Or Saturday lunch or whatever, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so we can stream the games.  So, we're going to be streaming that for the first time this Saturday, got a commentator coming down.

Dominic Frisby: So, how will you stream it, because you're playing at a different time?

Peter McCormack: We're playing at 3.00pm.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, you'll stream it at 5.00pm?

Peter McCormack: No, we'll stream it at 3.00pm, but we'll have a geoblock so you can't watch it in the UK.  That's why we can't do it via YouTube.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, I see, I've got you, I've got it.

Peter McCormack: Then, anyone in the UK who wants to watch it can watch it at a later time.  But yeah, we've got a company coming to do that.

Dominic Frisby: So, you hired a professional broadcasting --

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.  Who's the commentator?

Peter McCormack: It's just some local lad.  So, Tom found him and we listened to some of his stuff, and he's quite interesting and let's give him a shot.  And we're paying him and he's going to come along.

Dominic Frisby: What, does he comment on local radio or something?

Peter McCormack: No, he's done some local sports.  Someone like you next to him would be helpful.

Dominic Frisby: I'd be honoured and delighted.

Peter McCormack: You free this Saturday?

Dominic Frisby: This coming Saturday, yes.

Peter McCormack: 3.00pm?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.  I'll sit next to him, I'll be the pundit.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  So, we wanted to get a local celeb, but we don't --

Dominic Frisby: I won't know any of the players.

Peter McCormack: Well, we've done all the research.  So again, Tom's brilliant, Tom's been on this.  He's basically reached out to all the players, got all the information about them, their background, their best moments in football, so the commentator's got stuff so he can talk about the players.  But yeah, we've got a gantry being built, we've got two cameras, and we're filming and streaming that game on Saturday and it will go out to the --

Dominic Frisby: You know, back in the 1990s, I used to work for Eurosport?

Peter McCormack: I did not know that.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, well I used to be the voice of all their promos.  But what would happen is, it was always out in Paris and people were flying in and out.  And you'd always get a French bloke.  You'd get £250 to do a job, to do the day's promos, but then there'd be a guy walking up and down who goes, "Right, the commentator for Strongest Man hasn't shown up.  Can anyone commentate on Strongest Man?" and you'd go, "I'll do it", because you'd get another £175, and you were out in Paris anyway.  So, I've commentated on loads of sports I know absolutely nothing about.

Peter McCormack: I think you'll be great!

Dominic Frisby: I used to do Football Mundial, I used to be the voice for Football Mundial, if you ever watched that, and Euro Goals and various things, but that tended to be scripted.  But I'd be delighted.  But this guy, if he's a young guy and he's got ambitions as a sports commentator and he's done all his research, he is the ideal person for it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, he does, and we've listened to some of his stuff and he's young and he's interested and enthusiastic.  But he is local, which is good.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, he wants to be totally biased!

Peter McCormack: I think having you next to him would be good for him.  But what will be interesting, I still think some of the people, the international people, because I'm building up this community of international people, I've registered 65 international supporters' clubs, bitcoiners, Cambodia, 3 in Australia, 20 in the US, in Chile, and all around the world.  They're bitcoiners who want to support this team.  They are, "This is my club now, I support them".

I think there's a handful who still don't understand what this team is, who think I've bought maybe a Premier League football team, despite the fact of me saying, "Listen, this is 10th tier".  The problem with the Americans is their sport is one level and their divisions are flat and then you playoff.  Whereas, we have hierarchy.  So, they don't have this idea of non-league and FA Cups, etc.

Dominic Frisby: They'll be charmed by it.

Peter McCormack: Well, that's what I think.

Dominic Frisby: You've got to do post-match interviews and all that.  Another quite good thing is to engage the local schools and so on is to have the kids on to do a penalty shootout at half time, and all that.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean local community engagement's super-important.  We're going to be running a fan's forum, hopefully in February, where I'm going to present the vision of the club and what I want to do for the town, and people can come down and criticise and ask questions, and the goal is to just get people along.

Dominic Frisby: I just know, as soon as I read your thread, I just thought, "This is absolutely glorious".  It's a real convergence of things going on and it's just fantastic.  Calvin Ayre's sort of done -- I know, but he sponsors Ayr United.

Peter McCormack: I do know that.

Dominic Frisby: And I think, do they have Bitcoin SV on their shirts?

Peter McCormack: They do.

Dominic Frisby: So, I think he must have given them some money.  But I think that's more of a vanity thing for him, because it's Ayre and Ayr.  He's not from Ayr, you know.

Peter McCormack: Do you want to hear something funny?  I haven't actually told this publicly yet.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, I forgot, because of all the Craig Wright; I forgot all that.

Peter McCormack: No, it's something else.  Do you remember Richard Heart, the HEX guy?  Motherfucker, fair play to him, it's quite funny.

Dominic Frisby: I met him the other day actually.  I had dinner with him and I'll never forget it.

Peter McCormack: You can tell me about that later.  I mean, I'm not a fan of HEX and I'm not a fan of his techniques, and I've told him that quite publicly.  But fair play to him, he tried to troll me and nearly got away with it in the most brilliant way.  He tried to sponsor, buy the naming rights, for Bedford Town at the time where I was trying to get them.  And he tried to do that and he offered them £40,000, which is something you should definitely take if you're Bedford Town and you don't understand Bitcoin and HEX.

If he'd have done that, that would have really put me in a fucking tricky position.  So, they turned him down.  They asked me about him and I was like, "Do not take this money, and don't not take it because it's me, don't take it because you don't want this shit associated with your stadium".  But if Richard Heart had pulled that off, I would have been, "Fair play, that's funny, you dickhead!"

We should talk about the Bitcoin stuff.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, I'm interested in the model, the business model.

Peter McCormack: So really, I'm leveraging Bitcoin and I'm leveraging my community to try and make this work, and I'm leveraging my contacts to try and make this work.  I've sold a lot of sponsorship so far, and I've sold shirt sponsorships for similar prices you would pay for a team in The Championship.

Dominic Frisby: Who's sponsoring the shirt?

Peter McCormack: I haven't announced the front of the shirt yet.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, you've got one sponsor for the back and one for the front?

Peter McCormack: I've got front of shirt and then I've got shoulder home and shoulder away.  So, shoulder home is Compass Mining, and shoulder away is Casa.  So, my model is we're a Bitcoin standard.  The companies that sponsor us will be companies we use.  I mean, we're not mining as a club, but Casa are going to secure our Bitcoin Treasury.

Dominic Frisby: I've got a Casa wallet.

Peter McCormack: There you go.

Dominic Frisby: There you go.

Peter McCormack: And, there's a couple of others I just can't announce just yet, but we're going to use their services, and it's very much that we're on a Bitcoin standard.  We're not forcing Bitcoin down people's throats, because people are like, "Are you going to pay the players?"  I mean look, if a player comes to me and says, "Pete, can you pay me in Bitcoin?"  "Yes, we will pay you in Bitcoin", but I'm not going to mandate it, because that's fucking annoying. 

These guys might be on £50, £100 a week, they're like, "I don't want this fucking Bitcoin shit, I've got to buy some beer.  Just give me some pounds".  Likewise with the club, it's not going to be forced to pay people in Bitcoin, but we will have the ability to buy your burger in Bitcoin if you want it.

Dominic Frisby: What, at the ground; all the facilities at the ground will take Lightning wallet and all that?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, eventually we'll get to that.  What I want to do is on match days, a certain time before the game, I want to run a Bitcoin Meetup.  If you want to come down a couple of hours early, we'll have a Bitcoin Meetup, introduction to Bitcoin, what's been going on; not forcing it down people's throats, just helping them understand and learn it.  But most football clubs stand for one thing, which is winning and excellence.  We stand for a little bit more, we stand for financial literacy, which I think is super-important in the world of football, because most clubs operate like they haven't got any fucking idea about financial literacy.

Dominic Frisby: I want football chants where fiat money is in the football chant!

Peter McCormack: I'm conscious of not doing too much of that.  We're the Bitcoin club, but I don't want to be the "force Bitcoin down your throat" club to the point of being fucking annoying.  But football is broken, because of the finance.

Dominic Frisby: You'll refer to other clubs as fiat teams!  Saifedean calls it fiat food and fiat music and all that, fiat teams; oil-backed teams!

Peter McCormack: If the Bitcoin standard is right, then it should work for this club.  And, this is another thing, Dominic --

Dominic Frisby: So, you'll keep your main treasury, your cash holding is in Bitcoin?

Peter McCormack: We'll keep a certain amount, not all of it, because we don't know what will happen to the price.  We wouldn't want the price of Bitcoin to crash and it ruin the future of the club.  But we will put some of it in there, because we believe in Bitcoin long term.

Dominic Frisby: And presumably your sponsors will pay you, sponsor you, in Bitcoin?

Peter McCormack: Again, they don't have to.  One has.  We announced Luxor, the mining pool, they paid us in Bitcoin and we just put that straight in our treasury.  The other thing we're doing, I've put a donations thing up on the website, you can donate Bitcoin or Lightning and at the end of the season, we're just going to collect that up and donate that to local grassroots football.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, very nice.

Peter McCormack: And everything's audited, do you know what I mean?  I've just done my first transparency report up on the website.  You can go on, you can click December, you can see our accounts, what we've spent money on, what's coming in, what we've got in Bitcoin.  We've even got the address of the Bitcoin wallet, so it's fully transparent.  I mean, no other football club is going to do anything like this, and we've opened ourselves up.

Dominic Frisby: And if Bitcoin goes on one of its bull runs again and goes to £100,000 or something, the finances will be looking very good.

Peter McCormack: Well, that's another interesting -- well, I'll tell you that now.  So, one of the things I've been considering is raising money.  Like, I can run this club.  I could run this as cash cow.  I mean, if we do £1.5 million turnover and it costs us £250,000 to run it, there's £1.25 million profit, I can pay myself a lovely dividend.  But I'm not going to do that, because I want the money to go to the club and bank it.

But I do like the idea of opening up the equity to fans to own some.  And I'm going to do a consultation with bitcoiners on the idea of a security token, so bear with me.  Tokens historically with bitcoiners have a very bad reputation.  I think it's because shitcoins, you don't tend to have claim to anything.  But if you have a security token, you're essentially buying equity.  Your token is a representation of equity in the club.  I like the idea of going out and saying, "Okay, I'm going to put 30% up available for bitcoiners to buy".  That does a few things.

Dominic Frisby: And would it be auction, or would you put a valuation on it?

Peter McCormack: I don't know yet.  There's a lot to think about with that.  That's why I don't really want to do it until the end of the season, because I want at the end of the season to go --

Dominic Frisby: If they're exchangeable tokens, then it's beautiful, people can trade the shares.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  So, that would be nice, because that gives them some kind of claim.

Dominic Frisby: You've got to keep 51%.

Peter McCormack: I'm going to keep more than 51%!  But yeah, to give people that option, because that gives them skin in the game.

Dominic Frisby: I think so, and also give players the option to take a share.  I mean, then it will go back to the old cooperative societies, where all the locals had a share, and it's a bit like paying your employees in options and shares in the company.  It often inspires greater loyalty and greater deeds from them.

Peter McCormack: But think about it like this.  I have the ultimate goal of bringing Premier League football to Bedford, which is the most ridiculous concept ever.  How can you take a club like Bedford into the Premier League?  It's nigh on impossible, right?

Dominic Frisby: If everything went your way, it would take ten years?

Peter McCormack: If everything went our way, it would be nine years, nine promotions.  Now, that's unrealistic, because Man City can sign all the best players in the world and still not win the Champions League, so we know that in football.  But Salford proved you can take a non-league team up the divisions into the league.

Dominic Frisby: Have Salford gone tits up; what's happened to them?

Peter McCormack: They're losing money.  I think they lost a couple of million quid.

Dominic Frisby: But they're backed by Scholes, aren't they?

Peter McCormack: Scholes, Neville, Beckham, Nicky Butt and Giggs.  But I think they've stopped putting money in and I think it's this, what's his name?  The billionaire guy is putting money in.  But I think they lost £2 million in their last year.

Dominic Frisby: And what division are they in?

Peter McCormack: They are in League Two now, so they got up into the football league.

Dominic Frisby: So, they're not doing that well?

Peter McCormack: Well, I mean they got into league football.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, so from nowhere?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, from nowhere, but they're losing a lot of money.

Dominic Frisby: £2 million is a lot for a League Two side to lose.

Peter McCormack: They're losing a lot of money because they have that same problem, that their revenue model is a catchment area of Salford and maybe some people who like their players.  We have this unique thing, there's 150 million people own Bitcoin around the world.  How many of those can we get into this that buy a shirt?  Will Bedford become a pilgrimage like El Salvador has, "I need to get to Bedford and go and watch them play"?

So, we've got a unique thing.  We've got something that only the top Premier League clubs have, is we have direct access to an international audience.  But sorry, the thing I was going to say is that Salford went from non-league to the football league; and Brentford went from League Two to the Premier League.  How do you do both?  Let's not put a timescale on it, just how do you do both?  It's always going to come down to money being a major part of this.  But even with the best money, you still need excellence around everything else.

Dominic Frisby: Brentford did the whole money, what's that where they only bought --

Peter McCormack: Moneyball?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, they did the moneyball thing.

Peter McCormack: A very smart guy who runs those, the Chairman.  So, my current plan is, can I get us in the football league?  Well, my commercial model is based on local and international audience, merchandise sponsorships, and trying to direct sponsorships to Bitcoin people who might want their products and introducing new people to Bitcoin.  Cool, that works, so let's get in the football league.

My big idea is, what if I raised £50 million?  Bear with me!  Firstly, it would be completely unheard of, because people would be, "What do you mean you've invested £50 million into a tenth-tier football team?"  Bitcoiners will understand it, nobody else will.  But they'll have a Bitcoin treasury.  Hold it there for eight years whilst we try and get them to the football league.  What could the value of that treasury be in eight years?  Give me your low and highball.

Dominic Frisby: If you buy Michael Saylor's argument and then it's the dominant monetary network and it becomes the default international currency, and we saw just this week, Iran is now taking Bitcoin for its oil, you know, $500,000 a coin or something, I suppose, is possible in eight years; probably $1 million a coin is possible.  It depends how much they debase money.

Then, in the opposite scenario and they put up rates and all risk goes off and we head into a deflationary depression, which I just think that's so unlikely, because of the "inflate or deny" scenario, but a full-on Great Depression style depression, Bitcoin could go into the single thousands, I suppose, but I find that extremely unlikely, because cash holds its value in a deflationary depression.  I mean, Bitcoin at $50,000, it's expensive, but it felt expensive when it was $1,000.

Peter McCormack: Bitcoin always feels expensive.  There's never a time I've looked at Bitcoin and thought, "This is cheap today".  Even when it drops, you know it still doesn't feel cheap, because you don't immediately always go out and buy a load more.  But there is a range.  I mean, I don't see a scenario wherein eight to ten years Bitcoin is worth less than it is now.

Dominic Frisby: It's got to be six digits at least, hasn't it?

Peter McCormack: So, you raise a £50 million treasury, what you're giving yourself is a chance --

Dominic Frisby: Even if it just goes up at 10% a year?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  But if it does that $1 million, which a lot of people think it will be, that's a 20X.  Our treasury is suddenly £1 billion.  We raise £50 million, 20X is £1 billion.  We are the most well capitalised club in the world, we have no debt, we have a secure model.

Dominic Frisby: What happens if you do the Saylor model and you take out debt against your Bitcoin?

Peter McCormack: That's a potential as well.  What I'm saying is, nobody will understand what we're doing, but when it works they're going to be like, "What's going on here?  That guy we laughed at, that guy from Bedford who says he's going to get them in the Premier League, who said he's doing it on Bitcoin, we laughed at him.  We said he's an idiot, we said he doesn't understand football.  What's he done?  He's now got a team in the football league, they've got a treasury which is worth tens of millions and we're all in fucking debt.  He's created football opportunity in his town.  He has delivered.  Maybe we should look at this Bitcoin".

It's a bit like if El Salvador's right in five years' time, because it will take years for them to prove it, every other country's going to be going, "Why didn't we do that?"

Dominic Frisby: Crypto.com sponsors quite a lot of American sport, North American sport, but that's different when it's sponsorship.  This is the core of the club.

Peter McCormack: It's the core of the club, it's a Bitcoin standard.  If we're right about Bitcoin, then I will be right about Bedford and we will deliver league football, and I fundamentally believe this, Dominic.  I'm so certain that I can do this.  All I'm doing is working on this right now.  I get up at 6.00am in the morning and my eyes open and it's like, "Great, what can I do?"

Dominic Frisby: We all have our things we want to do, and you have a clarity.  When I say you, I don't mean you personally, one has a clarity of vision and you go, "This is where the world's going, this is where I'm going", and I can see your vision and I can see it and I can see how it's you and I can see the clarity that you're seeing it with.  If you're looking for investors, I'm one of them!

Peter McCormack: A lot of people want to do it.

Dominic Frisby: I'll say!

Peter McCormack: There's a little form on the website, "If you're interested in investing, fill in this form".  270 applications.  I've already had one fund offer to cut me a check for £1 million right now.  They said, "When can we give you money?" but I've just got to try and find the right way of doing it.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, you don't want to give too much equity away too quickly, but at the same time, investors become your cheerleaders.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  And I will face a dilemma one day of like, "If this is successful, will I want to sell it?  I could become super-rich, but wouldn't it be nice if the town owned this club somehow and the town benefitted from it?"

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, you could give a share to the town, not to the council!

Peter McCormack: Definitely not Dave, the mayor.

Dominic Frisby: You don't like Dave, the mayor?

Peter McCormack: I think he created too many white elephants in Bedford.

Dominic Frisby: Meaning?

Peter McCormack: I mean, they built this cinema complex and restaurants and they put it in a weird location and they just made it difficult for businesses, all the businesses in it.  There was a really good bar there that's closed down.  He's just done a big project.  The High Street used to be two lanes.  He's put it down to a single lane now and bigger sidewalks to try and encourage people to go into the town and to use the facilities.

Dominic Frisby: So, there's a permanent traffic jam now, is there?

Peter McCormack: No, it's not that permanent, it's just, "How much fucking money have you spent on this and when are you going to recognise that high streets are dying because of the internet?"  He's trying to hold up the melting ice cube.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, I think the difference is when he's spending other people's money, whereas yours is slightly different because, I mean I know it's other people's money, because people are investing in it, but it's still your money because you own the club and it's a different dynamic.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  But you know what, I believe in this so much and I absolutely, fundamentally think that I can do this.  And I think supported by the bitcoiners, I can do it.  What I hope is, by doing this, other people look at this and go -- somebody else said to me, "What happens if Man U turns round and they go, 'This is amazing.  Maybe we should buy Bitcoin'?  That's somebody else doing it and that means you'll never catch them", I was like, "Great, that's brilliant, that's success".  That's success, because if other clubs start being more financial responsible and thinking about their treasury and promoting Bitcoin, then that's a good thing.

Dominic Frisby: It's good for Bitcoin, and there's nothing wrong with being the trendsetter.  Can I just come back to this subject of players' wages?

Peter McCormack: Yes.

Dominic Frisby: I've just got a thought on this, and again this is me thinking as a comedian, not as a football player, but there are so many parallels between the two.  A lot of football players have got this reputation for being totally mercenary and they'll go wherever the biggest paycheque is.

Peter McCormack: And that's a threat for us.

Dominic Frisby: It is a threat for you and there's a certain amount of truth to it, especially when the football player is advised by an agent, and the agent's responsibility is to get his client the biggest possible paycheque.  So, there is that dynamic.

But what you notice with comedy, and I bet this applies to football as well, is a lot of comedians are famously mercenary.  There's an expression, "Comedians are laughing all the way to the bank", and they will go wherever the biggest paycheque is.  But they will also go to where the best platform is, which isn't always the best paycheque.

So for example, in the 1970s, ITV paid more than BBC, but everyone would be on BBC, because BBC repeated the shows and BBC comedy was just the place to be, in the 1970s and 1980s; it isn't anymore.  A lot of comedians will, given the choice between a £5,000 corporate gig, or just a £200 gig at some nice club up the road, they'll go and do the cheaper gig, because it's a nice gig, they can do their material, they can make their statement, do you know what I mean?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Dominic Frisby: So, a lot of players will not necessarily go to the best paying club.  They'll want to play where they can play in the position they want to play, when the game suits them, where there's a really good camaraderie, there's a really good atmosphere, they feel a loyalty to that club, to that area, whatever.

So, I think even if you do cap salaries, if you have a well-run club that people want to play for which is a fantastic platform; let's say I'm your centre forward and I'm only being paid £50 a week to play for you, but I've got some Bitcoin miner in Kazakhstan who becomes my biggest fan, and he keeps giving me Bitcoins, I'm like, "Fine, I'll play for you", because I might not be getting the same wages I'd be getting if I were playing for Man United, but I'm getting all these donations from Bitcoin miners in Kazakhstan, do you know what I mean?  There's all these things at play.

Peter McCormack: Well, I mean a few people have got in touch saying, "Can you give us the player profiles and give each one a QR code?"

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.  Or maybe you want to sponsor a particular player, if that player does something that symbolises what your business does?

Peter McCormack: I mean, football is full of mercenaries, absolutely it is --

Dominic Frisby: But it's also an art.

Peter McCormack: It is.  Look, when somebody says, "These overpaid players", there are no players overpaid.  The market has dictated their wages and if you don't like it, so be it.  But what about your job?  If somebody came to you and said, "You come and work for the rival, I'm going to pay you double", are you telling me you wouldn't go?  If you were on £50,000 a year and you got offered £100,000, most people would.  That's how the free market works.  The market works out to reward the best people for the best job.  The best actors get paid the best, okay.  Well, generally speaking, the most marketable best actors, if you know what I mean.

Dominic Frisby: I know what you mean.

Peter McCormack: The rock, I mean, you know!  And footballers, the best usually get paid, etc.  Not always, but generally speaking.

Dominic Frisby: It's surprising how many weird uncontrollables are at play in sport.  For example, the one I always use, everyone says Gary Neville was the best England right back of his time, but I would argue that Phil was a better player than Gary; but because Gary was only able to play at right back, whereas Phil was good enough to play at left back or centre midfield, if Phil had just gone -- he was a victim of his own versatility.  If he said, "No, I'm playing right back", that would have been his position, do you see what I mean?

Peter McCormack: Kind of, yeah.  I don't know, I've never really --

Dominic Frisby: Gary Neville used to say, "I'm not even the best right back in my house!"

Peter McCormack: Anyway, just back to the mercenaries, so that is going to happen and I am thinking about that a lot and again, me and Tom talked about this.  We are going to have a very strict budget and transfer policy, because we know people are going to go, "What, Bedford?  The guys who've got £1.5 million?" because we're going to be a victim of our own transparency.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, when Bitcoin goes on one of its bull runs.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but we're going to say, "Look, if you want to come, this is our policy.  You're on £150 a week there, you can't come and ask us for £300; it's £150 a week.  But what I will put in place is I'm going to put in very good bonuses.  So, this is our bonus structure, so if you deliver, the team delivers, you get promoted, there's your bonus, come and earn it.  But no, you're not going to double your wages under us.  But you will come to a high-profile club and other opportunities come with that".

The other risk we've got is, everyone's going to want to fucking beat us, every game's going to be a cup final.  Salford had that.  Every game's a cup final, but so be it, we just have to put up with that.

Dominic Frisby: I think you'll find there's a load of players out there in their 30s who haven't got gigs who will come and play for you for a nice, give them whatever you pay them at the end of the game, and you might find there's a big well of talent there.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think you're certainly right.  Look, I'm a few weeks into this, Dominic, I've got a lot to figure out.  But I think it is exactly --

Dominic Frisby: And it's probably your talent scout or your manager's job to find those guys anyway.

Peter McCormack: Well, I need to find a scout!  Honestly, there's so many roles to fill.  Honestly, it's incredible the amount of stuff that goes into running a football club.

Dominic Frisby: Are you getting people writing to you asking for jobs?

Peter McCormack: All kinds.  So, I've already built up an exec team, where basically the rules are, "Nobody gets paid apart from the manager, the players and the support staff", like Big John who works behind the bar who's never been paid; he's now being paid.  But I want to bring in a team of professionals to run it in a very professional way and right now, it's all volunteers.  But we're divvying it up. 

Somebody's going to run merch, someone's going to run memberships, somebody's going to run supporters' clubs, somebody's going to run CRM and it's a few hours' work a week.  You come to the exec team meeting, you tell us what you've done and what you're doing, and everything's measurable and everything is about driving the success of this club forward commercially, and then creating this kind of environment of excellence, you know, what can we do to create an environment of excellence?

But yeah, I've had thousands of emails already and filtering them has been so difficult, but it's, "Can I try out for the club?  Can I be your manager?  Can I run your merch?"

Dominic Frisby: Any names?

Peter McCormack: What, known names?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: No, no known names, but --

Dominic Frisby: I mean decent, as like known within the game, known journeymen?

Peter McCormack: No, no journeymen yet and I think we're a bit early for that.  What I have had a huge amount of is, "Hey, I'm so-and-so, I'm a scout in Argentina and I've got players.  I'm so-and-so, I'm a scout in Brazil, I've got players.  Hey, I'm scouting across in the South of France, I've got players".  I can't believe how many of those I've had.

Dominic Frisby: Amazing.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that really surprised me, that they think a tenth-tier team wants these players.  But I've got some --

Dominic Frisby: I once wrote, in the 1990s, I wrote a play for Radio 4.  It never got commissioned in the end, but it was about a bloke who won the lottery and bought Le Tissier for his park team.  It's a bit like this, a similar story, isn't it?

Peter McCormack: I'll tell you, anyone listening, go on YouTube and search for Le Tissier's Greatest Goals.  This is the football player with the best collection of greatest goals ever for Southampton.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, yeah, he was the best player.  He's a proper contrarian and he's quite accessible.  I interviewed him, we did this thing called Unlocked about a year ago and I interviewed him on that.  He's quite reachable, maybe he could come and do something for you.

Peter McCormack: I'd like to talk to him.

Dominic Frisby: He's very active on Twitter.

Peter McCormack: I've seen that, yeah.  I want to go and see Gary Neville, I'm trying to get that, because I just want to go and say, "What did you do at Salford; what did you learn; what are the mistakes I'm going to make?" 

Dominic Frisby: I imagine he's harder to get hold of.

Peter McCormack: I think I've got it.

Dominic Frisby: Okay.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, somebody else who knows him is going to be asking him tomorrow night for us, actually, so hopefully that will happen, fingers crossed.  But I'd like to talk to him about that.  I'm willing to talk to anyone who can push this forward and help us with this, because it is such an important project for me and my town, but I also think such an important project for Bitcoin.

Dominic Frisby: If you can make the videos, the footage really entertaining; and in fact after a game, put together a highlights package of a game and make it funny, do you know what I mean?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well I need you for that.

Dominic Frisby: I'd be honoured and delighted.  I'll show you some of the old football videos I made of the Comedians' Football Game.  I had to take them off YouTube, because whatever, but I'll show you them; they're really funny.  But if you can make it funny and then have little viral videos on YouTube with funny football clips, it will be huge.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what I've also got tomorrow, the guy I made the film with, and it's imminently coming out, in El Salvador, the director I worked with, Neil Berkeley, he's flying in tomorrow; because what we decided is, we should be documenting this.

Dominic Frisby: I'll say.

Peter McCormack: The amount of shit I've missed is unbelievable.

Dominic Frisby: You've just got to start and do the Netflix thing, you know.

Peter McCormack: Well, Ryan Reynolds is doing his thing with Wrexham, but when he's bored of Wrexham, I'm going to still be in Bedford doing this.

Dominic Frisby: What is that; what's he doing in Wrexham?

Peter McCormack: He invested £2 million into Wrexham.

Dominic Frisby: Ryan Reynolds, the famous actor?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and another one, yeah.

Dominic Frisby: Is he from Wales or something?

Peter McCormack: No.  So, it came out about a year ago, a year and a half ago, and it's like, "Ryan Reynolds is buying Wrexham, investing in Wrexham", whatever and it's like, "Oh, that's weird and interesting".  Now they're about to make the documentary about it.  But look, great for them, great for Wrexham in that they've got some great sponsors now.  I think they've got TikTok as a sponsor and Disney as a sponsor, so that is great for Wrexham.  That team has got money and that team can be profitable.

Dominic Frisby: It hasn't got Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: It hasn't got Bitcoin.  But their problem, the Ryan Reynolds problem is, when does he get bored?  I don't get bored of Bedford, because I'm going to live there my whole life.  When does he get bored?  And it's a little bit contrived in that it's, "Oh right, you put the money in because you wanted to make a TV series, I get it, great".  Whereas, mine's the other way round.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, he's gone when that TV series is over, he's gone, isn't he?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so this is the other way round.  I want to buy Bedford, "Oh shit, we should make a TV series about this".  And I think it would be good.  Yes, you could go to Netflix.  It feels like a BBC thing.

Dominic Frisby: I'm talking eventually.  It's too early.

Peter McCormack: I'd love to get the BBC to care enough to make a documentary about this, because I think it will be fascinating.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, it's brilliant.

Peter McCormack: I won't get them to do it though.  Have you got any friends there?

Dominic Frisby: I do and I'm always trying to shill my own stuff and it's not easy.

Peter McCormack: You can narrate this!

Dominic Frisby: I'd be delighted.  The problem with the BBC is, a lot of the time it's decision by committee, and you think it's made up of leaders, but actually there's a just a lot of followers there and they follow the crowd.  It just takes so long to get a decision, even a negative one just takes forever.

Peter McCormack: What about Channel 4 then?

Dominic Frisby: They're quicker.  But I agree, this would be fantastic and it's just such a grassroots story.  Even just get some coverage on Football Focus.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  So the cameras start rolling tomorrow.  He's in, and the cameras start rolling tomorrow.  We're going to create a sizzle, try and get someone to buy it.  But even if they don't, we're just going to keep recording, keep recording.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, you build up the archive of material.  And keep doing, even if it's just videos on your camera, little vlog-ettes, even if they're just for yourself.  At the end of the day, you've had a really bad day because so-and-so's blown you out and whatever, you do your depressed one.  Then, when you're really happy because so-and-so's signed, do you know what I mean?  Just do your little vlogs and stick them on a hard drive somewhere and they'll come in useful at some point, 100%.

It's like, what do they say?  Keep a diary when you're young and the diary will look after you when you're old, and that's in the pre-vlog days.

Peter McCormack: That reminds me of something I think my dad told me about a car, "Look after your car and your car will look after you"!  Let me tell you one more thing, because the most interesting thing that's come out of this for me, and there's two parts, Dominic, I was telling somebody about this the other day; but the gap between games is like waiting for Christmas as a kid.

Dominic Frisby: That week, just those six days, seven days?

Peter McCormack: It goes so slowly, because all you want is that next game.  And once it's done it's like, "Right, what can we put in place to improve in the next game?"  That has blown my mind, I'm like, "Fuck, it's only Thursday".

Dominic Frisby: It must be so exciting.

Peter McCormack: It is, but it eats away at me, because I'm kind of wishing my life away, I want the next game.  And then even more interesting is, as a Liverpool fan, we've had some massive games, I think two Champions League finals that were huge.  But when I was at the last game at Ampthill, I was gripped like this just watching it.  It wasn't just watching Bedford, it was watching something that might change my town, where I'm from and how important it became.  And it became more important than any Liverpool game I've ever watched.

That away game at Ampthill Town became more important than any Liverpool game I've ever watched, and every Bedford game now will always be more important than any Liverpool game I've watched, because it means so much to me and what I want to do for Bedford.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, when they do those close-ups of the managers and the chairmen, and they look icy cool, you realise how cool those guys really are, given the torrent of emotions they must be feeling.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know Steve Parish, the Palace Chairman.  When I ran my digital agency, we did Palace's website work and email work and I've asked to go and see him just to pick his brain.  I was texting him the other day about it.

Dominic Frisby: He seems quite amenable.

Peter McCormack: He's great.  You know what, I'll tell you something about that guy.  He saw me the day when I found out I was separating from my wife and he said, "Are you all right?" and I was like, "No, I'm separating from my wife".  He's like, "You've just got married", I was like, "Yeah, it's horrible".  Bear in mind, he was just a client, and he texted me later on that day, and it was the same day England were playing Germany in a friendly at Wembley. 

He said, "Are you busy tonight?"  I said, "No".  He said, "I've left you my debenture, you've got two seats to England/Germany tonight.  You and your son can go and you've got a meal in the thing.  I mean, I was just a supplier.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, that's really nice.

Peter McCormack: And he's a busy guy and every single time -- I don't abuse the relationship, but every time I've reached out and said, "Look, I need something", he's always got back to me in 24 hours and he's always made it happen.  He is a good fucking guy.  But I said to him about this thing, I said, "Steve, I cannot wait for each game, I'm struggling between them".  He said, "Wait until you're on a bad run, you won't want the next one to come!"  He's done an amazing job of turning Palace around.

Dominic Frisby: Have you been to games at Palace?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Dominic Frisby: It's a fantastic ground.  They fly the eagle up and down the pitch in the air, it's great.

Peter McCormack: They've got great fans.  The atmosphere there's incredible.

Dominic Frisby: On Saturday, I went to The Den and I watched Millwall/Palace.  I mean, the Millwall fans were great, but so were the Palace fans; it was such a good atmosphere.

Peter McCormack: Do you remember when Brendan Rodgers was managing Liverpool and they nearly won the league, last game, no, was it second last game, the Palace game, they were 3-0 up?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, and they blew it.

Peter McCormack: I was at that game.  We'd already blown it in the Chelsea game.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, but you knew we'd really blown it then, we'd lost our heads.

Peter McCormack: So, I was at that game, and that was a good crowd.  I like Palace.

Dominic Frisby: It's a lovely ground.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I like what he's done.

Dominic Frisby: And it feels like it's maintained its relationship with the area, and it feels part of the area.  It's only about a mile from where I live.

Peter McCormack: I mean, Simon Jordan, he kind of fucked around with that club, he ran it like his own little empire, like it was an extension of his ego.  Whereas, what Steve's done, he's delivered something as a businessman for the fans, for the community.  If you went in there before he bought it and you go in there now, all the bars and the facilities he's put in there, it's incredible.  He's crushed it.

Dominic Frisby: I must say, I thought Hodgson was a great signing for them.

Peter McCormack: It wasn't for us!

Dominic Frisby: No, it was terrible.  I think he could have been given time.  I think he came into shit that was --

Peter McCormack: Players love him.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.  We met him.  It was my dad's birthday and we went to the golf club to have lunch, all the family, there were about ten of us around the table, and Roy Hodgson was on the next table.  So, my two sons went up to him and said, "Can we have your photograph?"  He was having lunch with his wife on a Sunday, and he was absolutely fine, he stood up, and he was a nice man.

Peter McCormack: Well, Andy Johnson is our best footballing export from Bedford.

Dominic Frisby: Andy Johnson, who used to play centre forward?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, Palace and Everton.  So, he's from Bedford.  My son went to school with his son and his son's now at Stevenage, doing very well, he's a good player.  But I'm sure it was him I talked to and he said Roy Hodgson's one of his favourite managers he ever played for, really understood and looked after his players.

Dominic Frisby: They hated him at England.  Well, maybe it was Lineker and all that.  He made some bad decisions, I think, for England.  I mean, Kane taking the corners and stuff like that.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, he was liked by the players though, the players really like him.

Dominic Frisby: But anyway, he did great.  You thought he was finished and he came to Palace and he did a great job for Palace.  Then this season, he stood down, and all the players were old and I thought Palace were going to go down this season.  I thought, "Vieira's coming in, there's too many old players".  They've been great. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Dominic Frisby: Where are they, 10th, 12th, something like that?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Well, when Vieira came in, it's one of those ones, "Oh, you're just being a manager because you were a successful player; let's see what you do".  I think he's going to be a great manager, I think he's going to be one of the better ones.

Dominic Frisby: Absolutely.  And they went 1-0 down against Millwall on Saturday and I thought, "Millwall are going to win this".  And half-time talk, bollocking at half time, they came straight back on and within five minutes, within a minute --

Peter McCormack: Who's that blond lad in the midfield?

Dominic Frisby: Conor Gallagher?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I think he's great.

Dominic Frisby: He's terrific.  Is he gay?

Peter McCormack: No, I don't think so.  I think that's just Millwall fans being dicks.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, because there's been an enquiry at Millwall about the homophobic abuse thrown at Conor Gallagher.  It's just because he's a pretty boy, is it?

Peter McCormack: I think so, and Millwall fans just being dicks.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, I won't hear that.  He's a terrific player.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, great player.

Dominic Frisby: I think Chelsea are trying to buy him.

Peter McCormack: Hey, listen, what about Steven Gerrard at Villa, what he's doing there?

Dominic Frisby: He's done great.

Peter McCormack: And he's signing Coutinho.

Dominic Frisby: Is he?

Peter McCormack: They've signed Coutinho!

Dominic Frisby: I didn't know that.

Peter McCormack: Coutinho's at Villa!

Dominic Frisby: That's a great signing.

Peter McCormack: Great signing.

Dominic Frisby: And what did they pay for him?

Peter McCormack: I don't know, it might be a loan signing.

Dominic Frisby: Even better.

Peter McCormack: I was worried about him taking the Villa job, because I had it down in my head that he took the Rangers job to learn his trade, knowing every year he had a 50/50 chance --

Dominic Frisby: Of winning the league.

Peter McCormack: And as soon as Klopp steps down, he's a shoo-in.  And when he took the Villa job, I thought, "If you have a disaster, that might screw up your Liverpool chance".  And I thought, "That is the balls of you to do that", because he could have stayed at Rangers until Klopp left, which we know will probably be three to five years, and that job will be his on a plate; we'd all love him to come and do him and we'd give him a chance.  And I thought that Villa was a big risk, and I really hope he gets it.

Dominic Frisby: He's got it right so far.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  His teams play good football.  Might get him at Bedford!

Dominic Frisby: One day, you might have to get him on the way down!  But they'll be someone, there'll be, I don't know, there'll be some former Liverpool player who's in his late 30s who's not got a gig who needs a gig, and I bet you could -- I'm trying to think of someone.

Peter McCormack: You need the right manager for the league.

Dominic Frisby: Dietmar Hamann, well now, he's probably too old, but you know what I mean?

Peter McCormack: Stevenage recently got, who was it, was it Tim Sherwood in?

Dominic Frisby: Oh, yeah.

Peter McCormack: What a great big name to come and run your --

Dominic Frisby: The spurs guy?

Peter McCormack: No, not Tim Sherwood, Teddy Sheringham.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, did they?  Because he's from there, I think he's from that neck of the woods.

Peter McCormack: It didn't work out.

Dominic Frisby: Too old?

Peter McCormack: Well, I just don't think he knew the division.  If you've played all your football in the Premier League, and then you're going to manage a League Two side --

Dominic Frisby: Oh, he went in to manage them?

Peter McCormack: Yeah. 

Dominic Frisby: Oh okay, I thought you were saying to play for them.

Peter McCormack: And that's the point.  If somebody says to me, "Who do you want to be the manager of your --"

Dominic Frisby: I loved Sheringham, he was a great player.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I loved him, "-- ignore your current managers.  If you're going to get a new manager in, who do you want?"  I'm like, "I want somebody who's won my division so they understand my division".

Dominic Frisby: Okay.  But I go back to my point of --

Peter McCormack: I know, I know.

Dominic Frisby: All players, even Gary Big-Bollocks from Real Madrid, he's had to at some stage -- actually, maybe they haven't, maybe they've just come through the academies and they haven't really got their knees dirty in a way that a lower league player has, I don't know.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's going to be a rollercoaster!

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, it's fantastic.  Do you want to talk some more, or do we feel like we've --

Peter McCormack: I think we covered everything.  Anything else you've not?

Dominic Frisby: No, I mean it's an ongoing -- why don't I come on in six months?  Oh, yeah, I've got one question for you.  I know you've got a big tour of the US coming up, recording a lot of podcasts.  Have you done that after the season's over?

Peter McCormack: No, I mean this is the challenge, it's like, "How do I balance both things?" because we went out and just did a two-week sprint, recorded a load of shows, and what's great is my team is able to get them prepared and published, because I've done nothing but football for the last four weeks.  But we're running out of shows, so I'm going off.

So what happens is, I leave, and then my Chief Executive, he takes over the running of the club.  We're going to have an hour call every day, update me, and then I'm back into show mode for two weeks.  I record those shows, then I come back and I go football mode.  This is the way I've got to do it, I've got to flip between the two.  I can't do it any other way, and it's going to be an interesting balance.

Dominic Frisby: I've got you.  It's not Vanderbilt, what's his bloody name?  But do your thinking, contemplating, quiet decision-making.  You're going to make a huge success of this.

Peter McCormack: Thank you.

Dominic Frisby: And I congratulate you, Peter, on your ambition and your dreaming and on your loyalty to Bedford and where you've come from and your roots, and on the way you are marrying all these things together, the imagination that you've shown and the way, you know, most people don't realise their dreams and you're doing that, and so I congratulate you.

Peter McCormack: Thank you, man, you're making me blush.  No, thank you and thank you for agreeing to do this, coming out of your way and doing this and helping me with this, and thanks for agreeing to come down on Saturday.  I'm going to tell Tom and he's going to be very excited.

Dominic Frisby: Any time.  So, if we're interested in finding out more about Real Bedford, about buying a shirt, about donating, about sponsoring, about possibly investing, what do we do?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, go to www.realbedford.com, on Instagram and Twitter, we're @realbedford but just note, the team we've acquired or agreed to acquire is Bedford FC.  They've got a separate website, so if you're trying to find the table or the fixtures, it's on there.  It's a bit confusing for now.  You can't change name mid-season.

Dominic Frisby: The season ends in May?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you can't change name mid-season, so at the end of the season, we'll be changing the name.  There is actually also already, this is the funny thing.  There's already a Real Bedford!

Dominic Frisby: You're kidding?

Peter McCormack: No, so we found out.  So, I've approached them and offered them some support facilities to allow us to have the name.

Dominic Frisby: What do they do, are they just --

Peter McCormack: They're a Sunday League Division Five team.

Dominic Frisby: Do they care?

Peter McCormack: No, he said, "You can have the name" and I said, "Look, I'll help support you and support your team as well, thank you".  But you can't have two teams with the same name, even if it's Sunday League.  And I was just like, "Can you believe it, there's a Real Bedford?!"

Dominic Frisby: That's so funny.

Peter McCormack: But anyway, thanks for this, I appreciate this.

Dominic Frisby: My pleasure.