Episode 375: BONUS Episode: A conversation with Mark Steed of Arizona PSPRS: Ipswich Town Football Club investments, AI and Decision Making

This bonus podcast captures some of the audio we recorded in London on September 4, when we were delighted to host Mark Steed, CIO of the $27 bn+ Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System for a breakfast in London. Our agenda was ambitious, intending to cover three main areas: Football, AI and Decision-Making. We barely got through the first one.We started with the investment by the fund in Ipswich Town football club - an investment made post-Covid that returned (based on publicly available information) 10x on its initial investment to date, traced the value that the fund created through infrastructure and personnel investment and discussed the future for other similar football club investments. The discussion revealed a fascinating intersection of luck, skill and aligning stars - starting with a bold investor with a streamlined and friction-free governance regime. The investment at the time was less than 0.4% of the pension fund’s size so line-by-line approval was not necessary. The management of the investment from afar was achieved by employing a liaison from one of the fund’s manager relationships - a real estate expert, who proved to be critical in catalysing the necessary real estate and infrastructure improvements in the stadium and surrounding facilities. The value-add approach extended to deepening and broadening the team too - the ultimate investment in talent - paying up for star players, investing in a good manager. This proved to be pivotal to enhancing the morale and the performance of the team. The team just secured a promotion to the Premier League earlier this year, its second since the PSPRS investment (its first in 2024-2025 was short-lived), and the pay-packets and team valuation have soared. We discussed the surge in interest in investing in sports teams, the price inflation that is accompanying it and the perceptible development of sport as an investment that is now taken seriously. It is not just a game.Finally - because all stories need both a story arc and an ending, we discussed the recent reduction in the PSPRS stake in Ipswich Town and the entry of Ed Sheeran among a group of other investors. It is true that sports are unifying - uniting a politician, a CIO and a musician.In this follow up podcast recorded 6 days after that breakfast we finished the thoughts that we didn't have time to capture and have a full discussion on the topic of AI and decision making. A special thank you to our sponsors at Baillie