Peter McCormack, Real Bedford Owner: Can Billionaire Investment Take You From Non-League To The Premier League? (Ep79)

Peter McCormack is the Owner and Chairman of Real Bedford, who play in the 8th tier of English Football. But this is unique for a number of reasons. We always look for the stories that represent a different approach to running sports assets, and building your Premier League ambition around Bitcoin is certainly one of those.

Peter is the host of one of if not the biggest Bitcoin podcasts. As you’ll hear his journey to club ownership is as colourful as it is extraordinary; this is someone who has come through some challenging times to get to where he is now. As you’ve just heard in the intro, everyone laughed at him when he laid out the plan for Real Bedford, but with a wealth of both deep pocketed sponsors and investors, most notably the storied Winklevoss twins (of Olympic rowing, Facebook lawsuit, and Gemini fame to many of you I’m sure), this is quickly becoming a team with both the resources and strategy to fly up the pyramid.

With a women’s team competing in the third tier and proving equally ambitious, the plan is to build a club fully representing the community, full of opportunity and success. The usual challenges remain: success vs profit, full attendances, wider football governance. But as this is a place where we want to look at how to create sustained value beyond football’s historic and increasingly out of date financial levers, the Real Bedford model is a captivating alternative. Not for everyone, not guaranteed to work, and certainly unorthodox, but a bold attempt to break the wheel.

On today’s show we discuss: 

Buying a Football Club

• How Peter went from addiction to building a media brand around Bitcoin
• The inside story of how Peter bought Real Bedford FC with podcast money
• How he convinced the Winklevoss twins to back a team in the tenth tier
• Why Real Bedford is run more like a startup than a sports club
• The brutal financial reality of owning a non-league football team
• Why so many lower-league clubs are unsustainable

Brand, Identity & Culture

• Why Real Bedford has a clearer identity than most football clubs
• The value of cult storytelling, local community, and crypto-native branding
• What clubs get wrong about women’s football and how Real Bedford does it differently
• How ambition and relentlessness are what drives the project
• Why does crypto present an opportunity on the financial side of football ownership that traditional approaches miss?

Leadership & Legacy

• What owning a football club taught Peter about management, burnout, and ego
• Why he’s building a club for his kids, not just for wins
• How he thinks about failure and what he’d do differently next time
• "It's not all about winning": Having this approach allows you to recognise success in broader terms, but does it only work at a lower level?

A huge thank you to our amazing partners on the show:

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