Alexis Ohanian: The Full P&L Breakdown of the World's Most Valuable Women's Sports Team | E1187

Intro and if you can't show me a sport where the highlights go viral on social media the freest Market of ideas that has ever existed in the world you might have some stuff missing and so part of the job of a club is to then tell the story of our players every minute they're not on the pitch because one that's some of those are brandable opportunities if you're not Relentless every day as an athlete trying to improve yourself trying to get better you're going to be left behind the teams around and that are supporting these athletes need to have that same mindset ready to go [Music] Alexis dude I am so excited for this I mean this is the first time that we got to do this in person that's right we have met in person we have met in person the first time we're recording in person and it makes such a difference I don't know do do you find it makes a big difference doing things in person I do I think so I'm I'm convinced like the best part that came out of Co was at least defaulting to and we we see this culture internally defaulting to not having the Casual meeting it requires I don't know I like yes I love coming together in person I just tell the team all the time let's make sure it's intentional let's make sure there is a reason why it's not just I don't want to spend I'm going to point in my life I don't want to just hang out for coffee for 30 minutes to like pick brains right or or do a catch up or do a catch up [ __ ] all these VCS that do catch up no I'm always just like what do you do what do we accomplish I never know what to say so I just ghost them yeah it's like because the is like why what should we catch up you got to guard your inbox that's totally reasonable but so when it's in person and with an agenda and good people it's it's the best dude I want to start when we look at like the the career there's Reddit there's obviously initialized From Tech Success to Sports Ownership there's 776 yeah and we have this unwavering success across different technology elements from operating to investing mhm and then it's like you know what I'm going to start owning sports teams yeah as just an entry point how did you get into the sports ownership game you know it was one of the most contentious deals ever at initialized and this was so okay well it originally started with a tweet storm in 2019 March I saw that Megan Rino's team she's an American footballer or soccer player had just sold for like $4 million and I saw it in my feed and I just thought wait that makes no sense like a whole team is worth $4 million like if you're marketing Megan rapino well alone she should be worth that much a year in brand Revenue so something doesn't make sense and I literally tweeted this all out stream of Consciousness and somewhere in the third or fourth tweet I just said you know what I'm going to buy a team in this league I'd never heard of it before it was called the nwsl I was like all right fine you know the World Cup's coming up this is 2019 right American soccer is defined by women and for non-american listeners you have to understand our men are terrible all right they've never won anything on a global stage I love I mean USA all day but I I remember Landon Donovan that was I mean they it's just and look I love Christian you're doing awesome like you are great but the the legacy of American soccer is is women in terms of excellence and I can Market greatness all day long in America and I just thought man everyone is paying attention to these women every four years and then disappear years like what the hell are they doing the rest of the time and Alex Morgan one of our stars to her credit replied to me and said I can help you with that um because I was talking about buying a team so anyway long story short she's playing for Orlando I brought her down to Miami probably like a month later just took a bunch of notes and just started asking her a bunch of dumb questions about the sport about women's soccer and what we could do and I came away from that saying okay I'm going to buy a team then I started talking to existing owners and I found this very weird dynamic because all of them basically had gotten the team because they had a daughter or a granddaughter who liked soccer and they thought oh this will be nice for them and they really thought of it as Charity and and I I did not want to inherit a team with that kind of DNA and and then I got introduced to uh by the end of the year through I think it was Larry Freeman at lafc got introduced to Cara Julie and Nat Natalie porman who said that they wanted to put on a team but they didn't have any money and so I was like okay this could be a good fit I told my my vision it aligned with theirs and so I said all right great I'll fund this team I'll own this team and you all can operate it and you know at the time I was so I was investing out of initialized how large was the investment so to buy an expansion was a million back then now you obviously need another few million dollars to like actually Finance the team but remember an entire team had sold for $4 million so even the million-- doll expansion fee was pretty rich I I think a previous owner maybe had paid like a few hundred but this was the state of women's soccer now I looked at this and this was the longest memo I'd ever written because I just I fell down this Rabbit Hole of opportunity because I I started learning about sports and I was like okay well how do sports teams generally make money okay meteor rides deals where I already knew it was broken at the time soccer matches in America these these women's soccer matches were being played on Lifetime now this is a station in America that basically shows like sappy docu uh sappy uh films like Hallmark movies so it's not a place for sports at all and it's aggressively targeting a demographic of women that like are not the like young generation of sports fans that would actually watch sports okay so you had an obvious mismatch an obvious underinvestment a broken mindset among so many of these owners at the time and I just thought okay this is all upside this is easy stuff to fix right and and and the prices were incredibly low and so you know I brought this together and I said listen I want to do this in investment the you know the nice thing when you have the track record that I have is LPS are fairly lenient you you get you get to do more weird stuff and you can look at you know some of some of my favorite Investments that I've seen Folks at like Thrive or Founders fund do have been a little batshit when you looked at them at early stage Kei boy always says if my friends look at my investments and think that half are not insane then I'm not doing my job right and I and look I don't agree with Keith on a lot of things but I absolutely agree with him on that like it's I and I feel like that is a that is a privilege you have once you've got a great track record that LPS is just kind of like whatever let him roll so this was a classic example of that because one of the things that I believed in 2019 that few others did wasn't just that women's soccer and women's sports was a huge opportunity but also that you know there was more private money going into sports at this time I think one of the leagues had started investing started taking outside like private money historically sports teams certainly the United States and I think in the rest of the world uh were just basically Rich family toys and they were inherited by multiple generations and and there wasn't really an exit for them but my hunch was as soon as you had one set of private money in there there's only so many billionaires in the world to buy these billion dollar sports teams but once you had private money now you have obviously a much larger pool of capital and once you get that wedge in and a few teams start having what I would say is the water from the open ocean flood into their aquarium there's a culture shift what do I mean by that you know when you have teams that have been inherited over multiple Generations when you have sports that operate in a kind of bubble they don't have to compete in the free market every single day when you come from the open ocean especially consumer social which is so hard I mean I put content creation up there too right you have to compete every second of every day with all of the content in the world you have to compete not just with what's on screens but like what's in people's lives to win the attention economy I always but it's Taylor Swift is our competition 100% right so you're going up against fierce fierce fierce competition in sports you have sort of by definition this this scarcity because there's only one winner of the blah league if you're winning if you're playing that match if you're in that League like there's a fixed number of teams in a league there's there's a controlled scarcity so a lot of the muscles that you have to exercise in let's say Tech especially in in the open market you don't exercise In This World of Sports and so atrophy took place in a lot of these organizations and they could you know I'll I'll say this personally I grew up as a fan of the they were then the Redskins but the Washington commanders uh they had literally one of the worst owners in the history of sports Dan Snyder okay for decades this guy mismanaged the team did all of the worst things if he ran a tech company he would have been run out of town Long Ago by by shareholders by anyone right why was he so bad he did everything from suing season ticket holders like dieh hard fans to selling skunky beer to fans to I mean significant culture problems internally like vile sexual harassment of female employees like awful stuff and this is all this has all been well documented well reported for decades and eventually he he saw his way out but when he sold the team he made billions of dollars and and the team was also pretty bad on the field too so here you have someone and I and I just I look at this and I think my God like the bar is actually really low and so okay back to 2019 I realized private money is coming in as those private dollars come in these teams are going to get more sophisticated because people are going to show up and they're going to say look why are you here oh cuz my daddy gave me this job okay well that's nice but are you the best person for this job and and you could sort of imagine how that evolves right so now as that happens the teams are going to start making more and more money and this trend had already started you could see it in some of the big four the Golden State Warriors are probably one of the best examples Fenway group is another I'm not saying like I other people clearly saw this and we doing this but I saw this trend was happening and so then the BET was okay now there is an exit opportunity in 10 12 years in a standard early stage VC cycle you could imagine a decade plus from now having this asset be worth a billion dollars or more and returning the fund on it it was a very contentious deal and and but the good news is and this is one of the reasons I love early stage venture like some of my most contentious Investments row Papa Angel City those have all done extremely well and so you have to be able to build I remember with each one of them I thought respectfully I've always L you dude but I was always like what is he yeah well I mean there there are some there are some Investments like Rippling no-brainer right with with Rippling those votes come back strong yes for the love of God win this deal because we knew Parker this was his second act basically doing the same business that's just make sure you win the deal and and there are some companies that look like that but but then there are others and I'd put those in the categories where we needed to build a release valve to basically Silver Bullet and just say even though everyone is vly against doing this deal you know as a GP of the firm like I get to override that was one of my silver bullets and so the the smartest thing I did though now I got a lot of things wrong I can tell you about those yeah the so the smartest thing I did was I I asked our lpac I said listen I believe it's going to help this and I think it did it's going to help this deal a lot if I can invest 250k personally via a trust for my daughters because the storytelling around hey look you know Serena at the time one daughter but Serena and Alexis's daughter is the youngest owner in pro sports that's going to be valuable for helping us tell the story why this is great marketing it's good marketing right thank you um and so the good news is I put that I set that up it's not just for Olympia but all of our future kids sorry Olympia but you don't mind sharing um and they're now actually because of this latest round literally multi-millionaires because of that one investment four years ago and and so there's a part of that that makes me feel really good which was like Hey saw something early obviously my kids are going to be fine but I I this I'm in the point of my life where I'm in the Legacy building mode and the two people who I care the most about are these little kids and so that feels good they have no idea by the way I don't think they watch your podcast because they're seven and one but they'll know at some point they have no idea but the the things I got wrong though I set up this team like a startup so what does that mean normally in sports if you're the capital you are the control so and I the league in hindsight never should have allowed it but I was the control owner in the eyes of the league so my ass was on the line team's out of money the League's like Alexis you got to pay up but I didn't have board control because in a typical fairly typical startup scenario if it's seed stage you're not you're not obsessing over a board sure whatever let's just get done right and so this was actually a preed so I didn't insist on any kind of board and then as the board got developed with successive rounds I was just fine with actually not having control which was a mistake and again the league shouldn't have allowed it but I also structured and this actually wasn't a mistake I feel I feel very good for these folks um I actually made sure the three founders um Natalie Cara and Julie actually had a majority of the ownership again normal for a startup I know you're looking at me so so another a very success uccessful Silicon Valley uh executive found out about this deal and she called me up and she said Alexis you were literally the most generous investor in the history of investing and I was like this doesn't make me feel that much better but thanks um because they didn't put any money in but I felt like okay if this is a startup presumably you're going to put your Blood Sweat and Tears and and you're going to put all the work into it now that wasn't also I mean it it was what it was and so at the end of the day uh created a structure that was like a tech startup but in a sports model and because the nwsl was so dysfunctional back then they just let it happen and so how much did you put in uh all told uh 3 four five six seven 7 million 8 million 7 million entry price well okay so the we did it as a uh the very very first round was I think six CU you you C you kind of you're it here's what's different from and this was similar to how we did with uh the team in tigers Golf League you're funding unlike a startup you're funding dollars in that immediately go out the door like a million dollars immediately goes out the door is because you're just you're just funding for the franchise fee so you're just immediately paying the league to get the asset and then you're not playing for a couple of years and this was also during covid so we had an extra year now before we were even going to get on the pitch which in theory would have meant you know a lot less Revenue to begin with than little sponsorships little merchandise little tickets that's tough it is the good news is though we were taking a very Tech first approach so I used I'll give you an example so before we even had a logo we were selling merch and I was doing it on Fourth Wall portfolio company and and what was nice about it was it's print on Dem band so low overhead for Merch still high quality and every time someone bought some Angel City merch I would actually I do it right now I still do it for La Golf Club um I would get one of these notifications uh here we go so right here you can see here are people who have recently purchased merch oh wow um let's see here here's Stefani so I can see what she bought I'm not recording uh there's a selfie video and then I can see this is her second order so these orders would come this is during Co so I was I mean you could the clips I look feral and I be walking my dog walking around the house and I just be recording videos saying hey Stefani thank you so much for being a day one supporter I appreciate you we can't do this without you you are awesome you're in your golf girl era I can tell cuz you just bought this shirt thank you for making your second order much love okay so I'll actually send that because why not I and I've done literally 1,600 of these the fourth wall team told me just for La Golf Club but the champion evangelizing that comes from that is in I bet you they take that they share it with all of their friends and half of them buy it they put it on socials and so so in the first year actually Kayla who ran this for Angel City she's now doing it for she did it for La golf club and then she's doing it for athlos um she said we did I think it was a couple $1,000 in Revenue that first year with fake merch not fake merch but like merch devoid of a logo with no team or players ever having played simply on this idea of here are the values of the brand here's what it stands for and then the willingness to do crazy [ __ ] that normal people would never do I actually sometimes I think what would Dan Snyder do that Commander's owner and then I do the opposite and so I know he would never do that and so that's part of what fuels me to do and so for the first year you know we're building this brand Grassroots it's the same spoiler it's the same way I did it for Reddit it's showing up in the comments in the replies it's going to every Meetup it's just doing the the blocking and tackling most people don't want to do every single follower until 50,000 I sent a personal DM to every night with Savage this what I'm talking about with Alex's thank you so much and then that a copy and paste but I always did your name and said hi Savage and see that's that's the day one stuff when people talk about building Community they talk about the the fancy fluffy oh we have a community no one talks about the actual work that it takes and it's it's Justice it is unsexy it's not glamorous it's Brute Force it's showing up it's doing the work and then we also had some good fortune right uh Jess Smith who's now the president of the Valkyries which is the WNBA team at Golden State she was our head of Revenue um for Angel City and and she's talking to some of these Brands and she's trying to secure the biggest ever front of of Kit deal in women's soccer maybe even women's sports um and and it was a seven figure deal low seven figureure but it was a seven figureure deal that was record-breaking at the time and she's she's meant she's giving the update and she's like we're talking to Door Dash and I'm like door Dash I'm like Tony was a YC founder while I was there as a partner and I was like let me just let me holler at Tony and I was like hey man listen dude you know I know you you all your CMO you got this pitch in front of you for this crazy women's soccer team it's not a ton of money for you guys but I'm telling you it's going to work like you got to believe in this and to his credit to his team's credit they were like okay let's do it so all of a sudden then we have another headline largest ever you know front of Kit sponsorship door Dash tier one tech company women's sports and then the halo effect right because now that's signal to the rest of the world like oh okay maybe there is something here and you know thank you Tony and door Dash like we borrowed from their Halo being a successful I think at the time they were public or soon to be going public tech company and and that legitimized it because prior to that the kinds of front of Kit sponsors for women's soccer in the US were like you know I don't know not not Blue Chip tech companies let's say you know it's such a great buy for Tony because as he said the largest ever that is going to go in the Wall Street Journal that is going to go across so many different Publications I always look for the the ripple effect in media distribution which is like will this one thing cause 10 other people to write about you do you know what I mean a startup does some crazy advertising campaign and then 10 other articles are written about how crazy it is that's a really effective campaign this is why you build a media Empire that's why you build media Empires okay so you you invest then it's crazy the thing that we Managing Ongoing Costs in Sports Ownership don't have investing in Tech that you have here is ongoing cost though you have to pay players you have how did how did that work and what was that ongoing cost there so so there is and there isn't like if you abstract away there is a dynamic where there are some contract nuances to this because obviously players there's collective bargaining agreements you know there's salary caps there it's not it's not a one forone match to say that like oh yeah our Star Striker is the equivalent as like a 10x engineer but it's it's similar and so when it came to uh when it came to funding it was two things one you know funding off of good oldfashioned Revenue which is a nice thing right just focusing on having revenues coming in the door that you can then invest more in the team um and so it doesn't look as let's say high growth at all costs as a traditional startup um and then there's also future rounds of financing and so it was it from our vantage point my thinking was okay this has been a slog to get done at initialized now not surprisingly I don't know six months later I split the firm up and so Caitlyn Lizzy and I left went and started 776 basically took took the the squad and we spun this up and then I invested out of 776 as well so now here's the that sort of next round of financing now the the the bigger question and the bigger unlock that we can't control is when those media deals get renegotiated because when those get renegotiated now you have a new source of Revenue you probably see these headlines now right oh no big NBA imedia deal well we had a similar one because remember we were on Lifetime and so it was imperative once we had some momentum you know not long after Angel City uh a few other strong teams were started San Diego wave came out now you started to see more professional investors putting dollars behind women's sports I remember pitching friends of mine for years on women's sports and specifically the NSL and I remember saying like guys please buy a team trust me it's going to do well and they'd say no thank you but would you like to invest in pickle ball with me now I'm gonna upset a lot of pickle ball fans but I my answer to them was okay but have you ever seen a pickle ball clip go viral and they're like well no have you have you seen a pick ball clip go viral I we live on the internet right and and again maybe For Better or For Worse because I created Reddit I think this way like the the only attention that matters to me is is here it's digital I actually don't media deals are all Based on data that is very out ofd and an audience that is much older right what is relevant is where things are headed and if you can't show me a sport where the high highlights go viral on social media the freest Market of ideas that has ever existed in the world you might have some stuff missing and I don't know what the the the there there is but there's something missing and so but there was still this notion that women's sports was uninvestable so how much was was it Lifeline the the lifetime sorry uh maybe need a Lifeline um but uh how much were they paying oh it was a pittance I I it was it was nothing it was like 50 Grand 100 Grand sty I I the I honestly don't remember but it was so small it didn't even matter and so what then does that look like for you you're the new owner your like sh we Navigating Media Rights & Negotiations as a New Sports Owner need to renegotiate media rights who do you go to how do you get it done what happens there well okay this one there was a just this was a a whole Stampede of events so unbeknownst to me the nwsl also had this big Scandal Brewing underneath it and and there was a Yates report there was a bunch of work very importantly being done to investigate all these other a number of these other teams that had existed for horrible abuse of players uh coaches mismanaging their Authority favors all kinds of just awful stuff and so the NW cell was going through this tremendous turmoil not long after getting it it's like great got a team I believe in the sport and then oh [ __ ] now here's a serious investigation happening on some serious charges but it was actually the best thing that could have happened because [ __ ] well look it it brought sunlight is a great disinfectant and so it cleansed it it really forced the league to overhaul everything we got a new commissioner that's Jess Burman and and it was a big forcing function for the league to face a lot of its demons and and really do the work to exercise them and so now enter Jess Burman new commissioner and you have someone who comes in both with fresh blood and a mandate to basically say like I got to get this right like this league has been failing the players we have new owners who are committing dollars who are sophisticated Business Leaders like let's get to work and so credit to Jess the team she built and as more and more new owners came in there was just a natural push to say okay what is the most obvious thing we can fix medeor rides deal when it came up I think ended up being CBS largely was the the big winner there uh and that was good this was a few years ago now that deal just came up I have to get my time right last year and the New Deal which you can read about was a very big step up and so now all of a sudden you've got how big was it the will pay the league $60 million a year for four years $60 million here for four years and that's a medley of Amazon CBS ESPN and then I how many teams are there uh 12 and 12 and then a couple expansions okay so you're basically getting four year yes but you've got to understand this is coming from zero it's an interesting flywheel so you need a top tier brand like door Dash and a seven figure brand deal to then show everyone else in League hey you all can be charging more sponsor money now the way that multiplies is then it it you know if San Diego gets a a great brand deal and like it's this information gets pretty well shared within the league like intentionally to say like it's it's weird it's like a subtle flex but it's also really helpful because then our Revenue team goes to Market and and now knows okay well this Market or this team that we think we're worth more than is getting this much money so you have to pay us more like it's actually it's a it's a positive some you have to have a positive some mindset actually see that what great that just means we want other teams to charge more cuz we get to charge more and and so at the end of the day and you this is reported so we you know I think last year the team did like 31 mil in revenue and that's just in brand deals with a little bit of merch and everything else oh pause pause pause 31 million in revenue from Brand deals yeah largely where does that 31 million come from I'm just so blown away by that number the bulk of it's in brand deals so sponsorships you're not remember out these things get renegotiated every few years um and so sometimes there it might be a four-year deal 2E de three Etc um but there are lots of spots uh around the facility I think this is another thing this is actually a good lesson from Esports where I was always enamored with like 100 thieves did such a good job building a brand around their players fazeclan also did too where people would watch them playing Uno like it you you you have to always work backwards so why why best question ever why do people care people care because they fall in love with these players they want to see them all the time not not just on the pitch but also just in their lives and what they're doing and so part of the job of a club is to then tell the story of our players every minute they're not on the pitch because one that's some of those are brandable opportunities right I can go to a sponsor and believe me the the difference going to can Lion now this is where every brand in the world comes to basically get drunk and and then convince themselves where they're going to spend their money for the next year and so I'd go you know in my capacity with Reddit for years and years and years trying to convince these Brands hey please spend money on Reddit this is the year like we're we're rebuilding we're turning around it's it's a it was a must attend event to try to convince them now in the World of Sports those conversations are so much easier because there's nothing more brand safe for these advertisers than Sports and specifically women's sports it it's been night and day and so we have these conversations now we can say okay you know we have here we have these athletes let's put together a pack package where we're creating content around them talking about their routine uh training and maybe that's something we can coell to some brand that now becomes an Advertiser for our team it now makes some money for our athletes and it supports the bottom line as well and for male athletes one it's just much harder because men are less good at creating content and part of that's biological like men or women Drive social media content creation content consumption but also female athletes have never been handed anything I mean even tennis is the one exception where you can get paid tremendously well to be an athlete as a woman maybe golf too and so for all these other sports you got to imagine when Alex Morgan was starting out she decided I'm going to do this sport in spite of the fact that it'll be very very very hard for me to make a professional living out of it and so there's so much more sophisticated about storytelling about content creation and so when you give them the opportunity they are they're out outperforming the men and and it it's it's a different it almost looks more like an agency model built in to the team right we think about things like how do we create facilities to make it easier for them to create content how do we how do we build this storytelling into the nature of of what they do and how we do it um and it's the same way it's the same way we're building alos it's the same way we're thinking through a lot of this uh but yeah it's brand dollars want to show up for women's sports and four years ago few people believed it what age do you most want to capture fans ah yes the youth the youth like 7 8 9 10 like as kids are really starting to form opinions about their favorite players and their favorite sports that's when we want them to to start dreaming of our players and either idolizing them putting their poster on the wall and it's starting now even Natalie has this great thing she said her son has a poster of Messi and a poster of Alex Morgan on her wall Alex is not on our team so that's fine he's he's to like who he really likes but I think we're entering an era now where young boys will it'll be just as easy for them to idolize male athletes as female athletes and I think that I mean that's a great thing uh and it's it's just starting to turn the corner here and it'll be a wild New Generation with that idolization comes uh purchasing of merch you bet merch is massive for for you and for the team yeah how much revenue is from merch How Much Revenue is From Merch? it is still a fraction right it's still on the order of single digit Millions um which is good but relative to brandals is still small now part of this here's another this is another fun one we see this so nwsl was kind of a mess back in 2019 it's getting more professionalized and with that you're getting more and more infrastructure created to support all the teams which basically means the teams can be less sort of cowboy Renegade about how they do stuff we had the exact same thing in Tigers uh T tgl where we got to start doing exactly what we wanted the way we wanted you can see all those thank you videos with merch with Partnerships with dope Brands but at some point the deal with Fanatics happens and when that deal with Fanatics happens that merch now goes and lives at Fanatics and so it's double-edged like there is definitely it is good that we're professionalizing because you have great Partners that's that's more revenue for the league that's more revenue for the teams it's simplifying life for a lot of other team owners that don't want to handle that stuff but then there's us they're the folks who really want to lean in get our hands dirty with those things even something like merch because we have expertise my first I'll never forget the first fight I had with Steve at Reddit was like six n months in not even six months in and it was a blowup fight because I desperately wanted to sell merch on the website and Steve was like absolutely not that stupid no one's going to want our merch and but I was CEO the end of the day I won and I put up I this is before this is 2005 so it was like a janky like PayPal integration I don't Shopify didn't exist or I didn't know about it and so I built this shitty thing got it online bought I don't know 100 200 shirts from a local printer had them literally in my bedroom sold out overnight and you better believe and I packed every one of those envelopes I wrote a thank you note signed it myself and like like a weird Santa Claus had two garbage bags full of shirts that I brought to the post office and I was so smug when I left the apartment that morning when I was like we [ __ ] sold out 200 shirts but that was the first time I'd ever made merch and realized the power of someone willing to put their logo on your on their torso like that is a Hu I sincerely meant those thank you notes because it was insane that someone would do that for our crappy little startup in an apartment in ' 05 so take that now today where it is totally normal for sports fans to tattoo the logo on their body so merch is is I I think it is still an underinvested in opportunity and this is here's a che code for most of sports and I almost feel guilty telling you but I'm going to share it with the world fine all of sports has been told by and large through the mail lens of sports media which has been great I've loved it man hits ball gets to second base it's very it's it's it's just the facts right it's it's what happened in the story we are starting to realize how powerful it is to tell the story of sports through a female lens well what do I mean by that you know even if you look at some of the docu series that have made great traction over the last few years you like a drive to survive or now there's a great NFL one called quarterback and receiver you're getting the humanity of these athletes and and Men I love them too but women especially love this part of the storytelling right unbeliev especially for Drive surv the amount of American women now love F1 is insane it is nuts and and that's the Liberty Media that has been deal of the century it and it's been a brilliant execution around storytelling through a different lens and again it's I think it is it is first principles thinking around Sports why do people love these athletes like yes it's because they they hit the ball well and because there's something about them as people that we connect with in this new world you're going to see so many more and it won't just be women's sports because you do have to tell the stories around women sports differently but it'll also be applied to male sports like we see drive for survive and elsewhere and it is going to be a gold mine it's the reason it's does the owners not go on the talent though which is like it is their responsibility to tell their story to open up to show a side of themselves that they maybe hadn't needed to before to take the camera behind the scenes to that training to that diet so so most women athletes are already doing some version of this but and and it's growing I mean this is yes well look at the end of the day you can't for you don't want to force anyone to do anything but you're already seeing women athletes predisposition I to doing this the male athletes right the first drive to survive was you couldn't get they they had to go with whoever they could get cuz no one really wanted to do it and even then it was kind of like pulling teeth but then they saw the value women athletes are far more predisposed what's crazy so I funded a reality show called The offseason which was 11 national team and and professional women soccer players in a house for three weeks for an offseason in Miami they trained together they party together they live together cameras rolling the whole time how much did it cost to fund let's say four five ion did it make money well it gets even better um so we got box to box who obviously made drive to survive and then 32 Flavors which is they make Vander pump rules but what no one understood and what mij really had to engineer was that if you have professional athletes living in a house together you don't need to manufacture drama as if it's Housewives living in a house together you can actually let the cameras roll but make sure you still have their trust that they're being authentic they're not going to get portrayed like they're not going to make up drama like you're actually just going to be honest with your editing which is a level of trust that's not usually there in you know the the reality TV show World um and for the sports side that they never really experienced if you're in drive to survive if you're doing a traditional Sports stock and someone doesn't like an interview they just get up and they're like okay we're done but if you're putting cameras in the house you can't escape them and so it was this very different format we ended up actually going with x to uh stream it and it's going to first episode is going to drop uh towards the end of the season probably like October um but we launched the trailer tens of millions of views and and what's intriguing is as people saw it then we started to get inbound and now we're talking to some you know obvious let's say basketball folks about this because here's a format but again it's telling the story of sports through this lens that for whatever reason has never been told before I'm the kind of person who doesn't really enjoy reality TV shows but if my wife is watching one I'll sheepishly pay attention while I'm on my laptop and by like episode three I'm like Allin why would you do it if you're a top 1% if you are say A you can name anyone in the top 1% of any sport they probably don't need the money they probably don't need the extra exposure and it's like my offseason is my offseason I don't want a [ __ ] reality TV show The sad state of women's sports is it's just not that the the the even the top top top are still like they're doing well but they're not doing anywhere near what a like a male footballer is making like when you're talking how much does in a salary a couple million dollars a year like and then in taxes uh and then maybe a few million dollars in brand deals but I mean we're talking like you know a Top Male footballer is making what 50 60 70 million a year0 133 I mean it's a whole another right it's a whole another Stratosphere and and so in the short term I think it I mean fortunately it hasn't been a challenge um and also because again the drama isn't you know the cameras are rolling the drama is not like oh who you know some petty thing it's it's the tension between a player in the house who's now making a record high salary and a player who's a veteran who's been around the league for 10 years and entered who has a Stanford engineering degree and is M you know is making much less do you ever worry about so I love your business media Centric mindset and I think it's Media Strategy: Impact on Team Culture & Performance what traditional Sports owners lack and really as every Club becomes a Content house but what I worry about is two things here culture it could cause Rifts in the team with Superstar cultures being created and not everyone Rises at the same time or Speed and Performance on the pitch yeah what a lot would say is the only thing that matters how do you think about those two and is it detrimental doing all the media activity for those two and then when it comes to teams specifically look there's always going to be that gap between the star player and the you know the role player at the end of the bench but teams find a way to navigate it um I do think in this new era you're actually going to find more opportunities for those role players because you're going to see you're going to see folks who have fans that don't just have fans for their work on the court or on the pitch or on the track they have fans because they're just beloved and you know I I'm not an F1 expert but I feel like Danny Ricardo punches way above his weight because he has such a strong fan base now thanks to that show 100% and and and it's and I think there's a version of that that then extends to other teams and these are look these are things for coaches to handle but it's not the worst thing in the world for them to to navigate okay so we have like say 5 million a year in merch we got 31 million a year in sponsors amazing the challenges there there's also this tension between you know you have 22,000 capacity stadium I think we average 20 oh yeah thank you we average about 20,000 attend s so sell out about half the games and ticket prices there's always this tension you know we have something that's still pretty accessible uh to fans and one of the things I remember hearing from the very start were you know plenty of fans saying like please do your best to keep this being something accessible for us because as you get more valuable ticket prices are naturally a thing that goes up um because it also lets us play players more Etc um but it's something that we haven't had I haven't had yet um I also think the big trend is going in the other direction stadiums and new build outs are getting smaller and and that tracks I think even though we're craving more and more of this Humanity together because the rest of the year you have to fill a a 990,000 person Arena and there's not that many Taylor Swift shows that can fill it so like if you have let's say I can pick up and it's more the most the interesting thing we see doing the show like experiential side of events is the monetization gold mine that everyone wants to do which is like we want you that before we want you that after drinking having food and you can have more room for that and great events if you don't have all the seaing capacity exactly and and then you also get this um you also get a chance to create different types of experiences for fans so I think I am very long in this age of AI on sport Sports obviously cuz I that's the one pillar of entertainment that is not going to be upended like we will never want to see robots playing football we'll see it cuz of human right the emotions that come from seeing humans be great is is unique and it actually becomes more interesting in a world where every screen is giving us AI filtered Perfection all the time so we've got say I'm making up numbers here but like say 40 million all in revenues from all the above no no no sorry okay the top line is 31 for the whole team the vast majority of it is brand deals okay so total 31 and then deduct a few million from uh merch and tickets so what is the annual revenues basically annual annual is 31 how much do it cost it varies the from the actual team standpoint that's salary capped um what's the salary cab I think for the league right now it's three or four it should be a lot more three to four that's egregious for how many 22 hold on I'm going to tell you exactly for the whole team it's cap at I know well this is a sorry 2.75 per team but that's up but we've been pushing so there's there's a that's going to be players who are on $100,000 a year yeah dude the the the but in La is that the salary when I came into the league the median salary was like 40 maybe $30,000 can you sorry ridiculous I do not mean to be a VC out of touch with Society but on $30,000 a year can you even live in LA as a primary job well we didn't have a team at 30 but like even at uh let's say 100 yes you can but it's hard and the way it gets supplemented is usually women athletes end up doing a lot of brand deals this is part of the reason they're so formidable on social is they're doing their own brand deals on the side that helps supplement that's [ __ ] unbelievable the tension we have right now is so 2.7 million for the whole team yeah and so you know again it was it was 1.3 a year ago so we've been pushing it up not every owner necessarily wants it to go up but all of the new generation we obviously do because we need we we know this helps it's a rising tide um but look this is another issue like the same opportunity that I saw in how underinvested in women's soccer was in 19 is what I saw in women's track and in track broadly last year um the top prize for the diamond League was $30,000 like the championship and that's a solo sport so you have to pay everything out of pocket the team pays for things right if you're a team athlete it how can you expect to be a professional athlete if the very biggest prize you could win all year is 30 grand like you can't and so that's why I came out the gate and said okay we're going to have a record-breaking purse like $660,000 is the top prize for our event it's a one-day event and we're redefining this sport simply because there's missed opportunity here we know if the incentives are aligned and you can do what's right by athletes you're going to compound in in big big ways you can find a way to make a lot of money why going back to our conversation earlier why is that 60,000 such smart marketing go back to ripple effect record breaking exactly how many articles have I gotten just from that yeah Alexan doubles Pur [ __ ] that's a great arle it's you know what it came from was simply talking to all of these athletes and to their credit like they responded to my DMs I I probably a year ago started reaching out and just saying hey I'm really interested about learning more about track do you think salary caps are good well it's okay so track doesn't have this there's no sort of collective bargaining because it's a bunch of independent players football most team sports have a version of this it goes completely against Adam Smith's invisible hand so the here's the Steelman argument for a salary cap is smaller clubs in smaller markets have a better chance of competing so it's not just the New York teams the LA teams Etc there's a fun Dynamic so I think on the one hand you want a league where you where enough fans believe anyone can win and you still have epic epic Dynasty type teams because and this is that tension right you want the league to grow overall you know the way someone says hey dude come to this match with me you never know who's going to win it's hey dude come to this match with me we're going to go see blah and they are awesome they are so good and right that's that that's how you get your friend to come with you to the match that's how you grow the game and so you have to you have to be willing to tolerate a certain amount of disparity and at the same time still give fans again I was one of these fans in Washington I may never see the Washington commanders win a Super Bowl again they won a Super Bowl in 1991 when I was eight years old and I thought this is great I'm going to be able to go see them in Super Bowls for all time then Dan Snyder bought the team and and I resigned myself to the fact that I mean there's a new owner now and I think how much did he buy the team for o maybe 500 million and how much did he sell it for 6 billion let me let me double check that but I yeah and again one of the worst owners of all time and what's crazy about that is I still want to watch I stopped watching when my daughter was born because I didn't want to indoctrinate her with that I was like she's she's it's a blank slate like I don't want to give her that burden like I If if I if there was a coffee company that had a CEO that was that bad I would switch coffees right I can't I can't bring myself to switch teams because that feels Blasphemous but I'll stop supporting them so anyway I got back I'm a supporter now but I've also resigned myself to the fact that I I don't know I could never see them in a Super Bowl but I still want to watch because there's always a chance sure and and so that's the tension that everyone needs to create I think I I don't know if salary caps are the best way to do it um I would love to see a better one but that's the kind of Brute Force solution the other massive cost bases then I'm just looking at this as a business person over I mean it's humans it's overhead on the team side now that's gosh that's 31 million we got 2.7 million out for players another 2 million for personnel no that's that and well that's that's also one of the big so I told you I wasn't in charge of the board one of the tricky Parts here was trying to draw a line around what does building a modern sports team look like and I come from a world of software so many of the things that we do are done better cheaper faster using software built tools so Founders can help themselves using software it's it's a force multiplier we built things into our teams like even the merchandising around that thank you video app like there are so many easy ways to level up using software and most sports teams are devoid of it and when we started the tgl team La Golf Club I was I had learned a lot of lessons and I realized okay one I'm going to make sure I own and control this thing and two we're going to build this with all of the effectiveness and software that any Tech startup would have and so we can do so much more with so many fewer people that now I've seen The Matrix and I'm like I there's no going back and so again I've learned with every one of these the challenge with sports it's a gift and a curse because of the industry people get very seduced by sports like it just feels it's you walk into even on the best day walking to the Reddit office like you're not like you're like yeah cool Reddit but you you walk into an arena with 22,000 people like it's a drug right and unfortunately that drug can bring out the best in people but also the worst and so I think the most effect and as I've gotten to know more and more owners the most effective operators in sports have an immunity to that drug and it's this drug of like I don't know it's a sort of like Fame proximity it's a I see it I mean I I watch I watch people get really loopy in front of my wife and it's just so it's very amusing to me and very entertaining and endearing but it's like there's a how do they get loopy with sports though about salary everything like it's something that you would not tolerate this is uh this goes back to the like this is also what manifested in so many of those teams that had been owned just as like a vanity project for Generations if you're not Relentless every day as an athlete trying to improve yourself trying to get better you're you're going to be left behind the teams around and that are supporting these athletes need to have that same mindset and and need to be able to have a a culture that supports it uh a culture that lives its values and all these things and it's like any other type of business can I ask the question then of like you know uh the sale or like acquisition that a reported $250 million so that was an investment um but yes so we were basically I don't know year and a half ago I came to the conclusion the best outcome was we find someone who can come in who can be the source of capital and control and would also be able to get board control and so we mutually agreed listen let's find someone who can come in give them both of those things I'll give up control of the team and you know no longer be the source of capital they'll give up control of the board and finally align these two things that should have never been out of alignment in the first place and it was great uh we couldn't be happier than having you know Bob Iger and Will O Bay and and making this investment they did at this stage in this valuation is you know it's exciting also someone who understands storytelling better than anyone definitely so so then you sold out yours in secondary no why why is this where did the selling meme come from the selling yeah yeah I mean all the all the headlines were especially around here say acquisition oh that's so funny yeah no that's not true so didn't sell anything you didn't sell anything no always a holder like I said I the reason reason I saw this opportunity in 2019 because I thought we could build a billion dollar franchise so talk to me after that what is the number we do Prem morms for investment members what's the number one reason why this would not be a billion dollar company from here oh that's funny so we we call it a Steelman so like what's the what's the reason why this company won't be successful assuming everyone kind of does the right thing I don't know I mean with with Bob and Willow uh in control of the board I this guy has the limit I really I don't know what would stop it I mean the sports is so funny it's like I said it's not probably okay maybe the biggest threat would be a meta threat about the nwsl and other leagues like could Europe get its act together and have a competitive league with the nwsl there are some great teams here obviously in England um but that League's catching up but it's still not not at the level the endl how How Private Equity is Shaping the Future of Sports do you think about like the private private equitization of sport you know we've seen private actually come in and buy teams on mass and now we've seen you know CVC and other large providers come and invest in leagues yeah investing large Parts in you know everything from the All Blacks in rugby but also uh La Liga I think it's a good thing on the whole to have more dollars and more sophisticated managers involved um I get the there is this tension of like what are their incentives long term and I think always going to be some balance but there's only so many billionaires and as some of these teams and leagues become worth so much money um I think you have to have private money come into it is there an ASM toope to team value you know we're seeing teams being valued at 8 10 billion in some cases yeah what's an ASM toope like a a ceiling oh um are we in a bubble for sports team Enterprise Value some teams sure uh but I don't think there are definitely some leagues that I think are overpriced I'd say the MLS is one that's overpriced the messy effect has been phenomenal what they've built there is like real do you think that is sustaining can the whole league sustain no I think it's very hard to justify in a world where the best footballers don't consider the MLS even what a top two League top three yeah so exactly see the face you're making top three top six six so okay so all of the European leagues are superior to it 100% okay so that like that tells you can can that change in the next 10 years I don't think so uh and unless that changes you're not going to get the values to really match up that's why I think the nwsl will be bigger than the MLS in 10 years uh because we can tell a story of excellence in women's football in America using the NW but not the MLS but do I think it's the ceiling no I I still look at most of these teams and I think of them as traditional organizations like in the same way that I think Venture Capital should be run like a tech company I think sports teams should have they should be building software they should be software companies when you see under the hood how many like I give you a specific example in sports we in the media rights business at at the core right that's the traditional business model but it also plays out in modern ways so score playay another investment they they have thrived now because they're taking all these assets to come in live game footage photos from the sidelines Etc using AI buzzword okay but it's true and able to generate reports social content all this stuff so much faster more efficiently so instead of having multiple humans go through a bunch of photos to find the one photo of a particular star in Victory pose with the Brand's logo 99% visible it happens instantly and these seem like really small things but when you realize how many human beings are doing this work just to put a deck together for a brand that they deliver after a match you you you're shocked you're like how is this 2024 software should do that assumes a high level of customer education within Lack of Tech Awareness & Fan Engagement the current Sports ownerships and management teams and I think the thing that has astounded me is the lack of Education technological awareness everyone says fan engagement but has no freaking clue what fan engagement actually is that they do not have any clue I'm so shocked by how poorly sports teams are managed yeah well I look you said it I think it's I so I agree I also know nothing speaks louder than revenue and success and what I've found I mean I'm I'm speaking at Artois I don't know if I'm allowed to say that whatever I'm speaking at aros's event next week to you know 50 team presidents and owners from whole arctos Investment Group right and these are all the owners all the presidents of all the teams you know who are I think doing some of the best work and the fact that they even want to hear from me and the like it's going to be a full tear down on the ways we're using technology between Angel City LA golf club and athlos like that to me is a good sign that someone like me is invited there to basically talk about how I'm building and how we're building and I think give it five more years and folks will level up quickly because you'll see all you need is one example in a league one team to be doing it really well and everyone will Fast follow but it takes so much to get that one it's just then The Dominoes fall quickly but there is a ton of friction because it's the way we've always done stuff it's multi-year contracts that the league made that you can't get out of it's it's all the inertia but to what extent Enterprise Value in sports teams will follow the same distributions as they normally do of 80/20 80% of the Cru to 20% of the players oh oh really 80% interesting like will there be a few nwsl teams that are very very valuable and very famous power law yes no I think it'll be I think it will be a power law but even in the big four in America I think you'll see a power law where maybe it's 9010 even where so much of the value is going to very few of the teams because we know that's what software does and right now if it's 8020 devoid of software simply because like the Warriors know how to run a good basketball team when you layer in technology I think it it shifts now obviously everyone can have access to that but I do think there's a first mover I think there's like even it's little stuff this is it's going to sound so silly but like the the the Clippers installing USB ports at every seat of their so there's a brand new so the big so the Clippers have always been the second rate team in La sorry Clippers fans uh because the Lakers the number one team uh Balmer obviously very successful invested a ton in this team and they've built a brand new Arena and one of the things that went viral recently was they showed off um it's not open to the public yet but they showed off USBC charging ports at every seat and it's such a dumb on the one hand like technologically this is moot this is so stupid anyone could have done this but making sure everyone can charge their phone means making sure everyone can be on their phone posting content now if they can just be I don't know how good the Wi-Fi is going to be in stadium I've never built an arena so what do I know but I would make damn sure like throw starlinks on every roof every section of the roof like make sure people have fully charged phones and make sure they've got great internet because that is a huge Army of people who should be broadcasting as much of this thing as possible to their fans and it's little like it's stupid little things like that that show me that things are starting to change because they're realizing this is important I went to Taylor Swift with my brother at um Wembley mhm because of I don't know uh no phone signal worked no no uploads no nothing this often happens in the UK I don't know if you have in the US it's like stadiums have this blanket against any mobile data and so you won't have any posting literally it is the biggest problem and I get but see this and this is and then it says like e which is a mobile phone carrier here banned everywhere and I'm like you're literally saying where the reason why you have no signal that's tough and I bet there's some Legacy television rule law thing maybe that they don't want to compete with I assume they don't want people competing with the broadcast the official broadcast but that's that is such a perfect example of this will be a brick wall and this is why so few historically so few tech companies have tried to get into sports and do Sports Tech and it's finally starting to crack through just because I mean this a lot of this Tech should have happened a decade ago 15 years ago but none of the best entrepreneurs we all I certainly talk them out of doing it cuzz I was like you're never going to be be able to sell your way in these are not early adopters they have all the like they're they're picking software for the wrong reasons not because it's like the best product so I think stuff like this is protecting traditional you know revenue streams but at some point the new Revenue stream becomes so big and unmissable that the thing Falls over like there's it probably on the order of the next five to 10 years you'll start to see them just when we think about the Content Creation in Sports: What Media Takes a Hit? attention economy and sports as content creation houses and taking more and more consum mindsets and time the question I ask then is whats out of the attention economy is it reality TV is it documentaries is it movies what slips uh I think it is let's go back to that PTO 8020 action I think 80% of movie television that kind of scripted created even non-scripted that that sort of entertainment slips uh I think it it is especially imagine AI is going to trivialize or it's going to expedite so much in the way of production and content creation you're still going to go to Taylor Swift because it's a religious experience I'm I know I'm taking my daughter this year I went with my brother we weren't massive Taylor Swift fans came out oh my God I bought 50 Quid t-shirts I'm listening every day that that is a religious experience but imagine I maybe even 90% of Music That's created is so either derivative or pop or one hit wonder like it's just that that's the stuff that's going to be the biggest loser and whatever that version of like television entertainment content also the biggest loser and the stakes will be so much higher basically we'll be able to have this every screen is going to be so good at delivering us what we want when we want it how we want it it's this sort of like opiate that's just and it's it's I think a lot of it's going to be user generated pretty low friction like just dumb easy to consume stuff and so what breaks through has to be impactful it really has to be exceptional and and then you have sports which can even be like the match doesn't have to be exceptional but the fact that it's your favorite team competing with so and so like that that's going to make it stand out that's why I'm so bullish on it I really feel for a lot of the really Med you don't want to be mediocre in this world on the content side you there needs to be a powerful why why am I going to pay attention to you for a few minutes my team will laugh at this but I I'm naughty easy to work with but I always say like this was never meant to be fun like if you wanted fun and we have very high expectations I will push you to do the best work of your career and you will learn a lot but do not expect an easy [ __ ] ride yeah that's real um one more question before we do a quick fight and it's just you invested in Mr beat kind of aligned in terms of Investing in MrBeast media next generation of entertainment you first outside investor in Mr Beast feals yes pre-launch and and I just needed so just talk to me how did that come about you know i' had been chasing in Jimmy for a while so I seated patreon in 14 and over the years as patreon started growing and defining this idea of membership and the Creator economy i' I'd introduce them to folks creators all the time and they always said the one that they really want to get is Jimmy and the thing that I learned was for Mr Beast it was never even on the table simply because one he was so relentlessly focused on just creating these great videos and two he was already tracking so well that he didn't want any Outsider to own the thing he wanted to just have it all be under this Empire and he didn't quite know how he was going to do it but then as soon as this idea popped up I was like literally I don't need to know anything about what this business is as long as you're making something and you believe in it it's going to do well and and there were definitely some false starts on learned a lot making uh candy bars but seeing the growth has been phenomenal I don't know if I'm going some of the stuff's probably public he's probably talked a little bit but it has you know Prime and febles are the two examples that's Jake uh no Logan Paul his drink um those are the two examples of what I think is it's unprecedented in terms of we're now seeing what Apex creators like the apex predators of the Creator economy are able to do to move product so you invest in the feasts company it's a separate company yeah and now it and now it's being can I be blunt how much she put in at what price uh we might have to cut it but I bought 10% at 40 mil at a 40 mil price yeah it was pre-launch and at the time I mean I it's funny it's one of those things where you put it that sounds actually really well priced if you look at his like audience base you're going to be guaranteed at least 20 mil on the first year revenues remember this was remember this was 2020 yeah this was 2020 so it was also a zery time and so I was thrilled I was like oh my God 40 mil like I it's pre-launch pre- everything but I was like this is a no-brainer and and plenty of other firms tried to win that deal too um but it was a funny one in the lp updates cuz we definitely had a few LPS that were like really like a a chocolate a cpg like a chocolate company like how is this Venture back and I was like listen guys like this is why you pay me to do this job just just just trust me I think the you know yes you're pointing out an accurate thing if you just look at his subscriber base but also their intent like like if he truly co-signs a thing which is I was like look as long as Jimmy's happy as long as you're making something you truly stand behind I'm long on it all day even if it's a [ __ ] commodity right you can break through with something that is solved in terms of making it liquid death I mean a fantastic example water can great branding yes and and I'm sure there were plenty of LPS that reached out early in for years yeah it is a a case book a case study and uh and what Jimmy's realized is and now having also invested in the hold Co um this is and I've told them I'm like you you control such you you drive internet culture in a way that's similar it reminds me of Reddit except you actually create the culture and you actually have influence over your audience like you can actually tell your audience hey here's a thing I'm making and they go buy it we can't do that credit you actually have a thing that's incredibly brand safe that Brands desperately want to be aligned with we can't really do that what did he do well with febles that he didn't do well with the Burger Company oh he actually controlled it and and there's there's layers to that one too but that Feasta bles was a direct result of the Burger Company and the learnings from that um and here's the good news he's a smart dude obviously but he's also been very very quick to iterate and learn from wins and losses uh and so febles was a great lesson but even now I mean he launched a God view uh what the hell is it called it's a basically YouTube stats software it's a SAS business and uh you you should be a customer of it view we're gonna I'm G to pull it up I'm definitely going to be a customer it and and he took all of his learnings from uh from building his channel and productized it and basically said okay there are all these shitty tools that they sell to YouTubers to like improve blah blah blah but who is going to be the best at it but Jimmy it's crazy how much YouTube leans on him for insights oh yeah so this is to compete with vid IQ yeah it's view stats okay good job Alexis view stats okay and and what's Wild is you know now I've got him on the drug stop it stop it okay um so part of the reason view stats no I don't want to cook part of the reason view stats is so brilliant is cuz now he's got a taste for a high margin software business and now it's like Jimmy you don't have to worry about cocoa bean prices like you can just make this thing and it keeps growing and it people keep loving it it keeps growing and and this is a business I mean it's going to have Revenue competitive with reddit's Revenue before our IPO in the not too distant future the the no no sorry the hold Beast Industries and and when you start talking about revenue on that scale is that I mean that's publicit 800 Reddit to 800 Million last year so before going public is Mr Beast worth five billion yes like the hul for sure what do you think it's worth at least that today at least that on a I mean even on a yeah fairly conservative Road in multiple yeah what is the biggest opportunity that Mr Beast could do that he hasn't done he has a deal that was a record setting deal with Amazon Prime video for a show that he's doing and that's public they they he's getting a great Payday for producing a show on Prime video which is basically going to be a version of he's doing such high production quality he's investing millions and millions into the shows he's putting on YouTube oh my god when Amazon Prime video sees the traffic that he will drive to Prime video you better believe the next deal is not going to be the same as the first because we're still all undervaluing the power of distribution from someone like him until you see those numbers and you're like oh holy [ __ ] like this it's it is a different math if Prime Prime video I love the boys great show right you have this original content you're producing it is very costly it's very high quality it's wonderful I'm not saying stop it please don't stop it but when you can hand money to a guy like Mr Beast and produce something that's not only going to get tremendous engagement but bring in new subscribers that's what they want they want new that's the Gold Dust they want new users new subscriber acquisition and and and this is also so the the why behind Jimmy is the same why behind Sports where now and this is the downside is for fans we're going to have to hunt more places to watch our matches over the next 10 years but it means for new creators so like trying to create a new track event like athlos I have a very receptive audience of folks who want to get new people who have to see musy programming and Sports Live Events is is is so useful for that how is Feast is a billion dollar business and is that a trade sale to like Mars but can it be I mean look look at its rate of growth I mean her's I know Europeans are going to be appalled by the state of American chocolate although we are now I think Feast is now in the UK it's around the corner yeah all right so it's around the corner but um but absolutely do you like it absolutely love it newest version I trying not eat too much of it did you try the new one I'm going to be totally honest dud I think you Americans just don't understand sh oh okay like have you ever tried ladak my friend go to go to Switzerland no go I'll send I'll I'll send you and Jimmy some ladder okay but you can't compare European chocolate to American chocolate Hershey look at how much money Hershey's makes that's that is the that is the apex predator of American chocolate right we have a very different taste in America it's lower quality for sure compared European but we're it's it's like do you want like a $1 Walmart cap or like a Laura Panic cap of course I want the Laura piic C please is much nicer Laur piani is a brand yeah that's that the one that's the David Sachs one that everyone makes fun of I'm not sure but it's uh it's a little bit it's a little bit douchy I'm not fancy yeah uh listen Quick-Fire Round dude I want to I can talk to you all day I want to do a quick fire sure okay what has been the single best investment you've ever made it would be ethereum at the uh I think it was the it was the pre-t token sale the token sale for ethereum so the pre-launch token sale how much did you make 17.1 million how much did you today's prices uh $10,000 no yeah you put in $110,000 and it went to 17. but I mean here it's a shitty little screen but you can see this at the top what's the second again sh I don't know what you can scroll over wow what's the startup which one see the second one uh so was 10 grand in hold on goat goat so I put 10 grand it was called grub with us back then in 2011 and so that 10 grand is worth whatever it was 3 no yeah three estimated La no sorry current last $7.4 million wow you not tempted to sell everyone has a chall second wise oh well okay so I definitely sold some ethereum I actually the bigger mistake was I had a bunch of Bitcoin that I sold to pay for I mean it wasn't that bad I sold it for like you know a wedding and engagement ring and all that stuff so it was a good investment but um the goat one that one we actually warehoused into initial that's actually a part of fund one um but that'll go at some point what did you not sell that you wish you had sold for example oh zenitz I should have sold we we could have returned eared the fund once over in whenever the Fidelity markdown was like literally putting an SPV together to sell zenitz and then the markdown the Fidelity markdown happened and it killed the SPV oh that was one that was the one that hurt the most um so Sor this is what I wish I had sold oh Clubhouse that's one I should have sold I had I had at okay now I feel I I don't want to publish this cuz I feel bad I don't want to [ __ ] on Founders but I should have sold Club too should have sold Clubhouse I had like the series a and I remember when that multi-billion dollar round came up I actually put more money in cuz I'm an idiot oh but no no you're not an idiot cuz at the time it was like the unbundling of audio and the future Facebook dude I remember when there was like a genuine play for like are we going to see the unbundling of Clubhouse into like sports radio yeah totally I remember that completely what is your biggest lesson or observation from seeing Serena in terms of the training the dedication the consistency the weirdest Dynamic that we have is I genuinely love every bit of what I do my worst days I really I like like we were saying before that I I I I know how lucky I am to do something I love this much all the time I could do it all the time I literally could and I love my family but I could do this all the time she did not love the process all the time and she'd be the first to admit like I am doing this thing because I I want to win I do it for the trophy I do it for the outcome and obviously look being a professional athlete at that level is much harder than the work that we do so I get that like it's just harder work as well but the fact that she put in that commitment so consistently since she was a kid is a inspiring and and I and so then it just makes me even more motivated even more incentivized uh but it is a weird dynamic because I like it's not like and I I think she's been pretty outspoken about this like this is this was not something that she I don't know it was it was a labor of love but not in the way that we think about it it was it was a love for the outcome and you just knew the process was something you just had to do and it was the only way to get to that outcome but you didn't like whistle on your way to work type of thing and there are some days where I'm I'm not whistling but I'm like rocking out uh on the way to work cuz I'm like fired up I'm excited uh but again we have much easier jobs and we don't have to do it in front of millions and millions and millions of people live what TCH company we mentioned Ash earlier doing you know the big deal what tech company is not in sports branding that should be the two big Industries are Beauty and Fashion which spend a ton of money on brand marketing but don't spend it on Sports yet because men don't really drive that value um so then my mind goes to like not a bit stupid because we actually spend also Christmas time Valentine's Day birthday presence sense to have Sephora BLS are pretty basic also like if they see Sephora on shirts my my wife likes jewelry Sephora yeah dude it's that this will change massively and you can already see it coming out of the WNBA has always done a good job but now people are really paying attention to like the the fits the walk-ups the clothing that they're wearing it will seem crazy that for years we watched what LeBron was wearing going into an NBA game but no one was paying attention no one was broadcasting in what the women were wearing we were describing to an alien this idea of fashion and and the importance of Storytelling fashion and we have you know six foot plus athletic women walking in very fashionable clothing we could be talking about a Runway at Paris fashion week or we could be talking about the WNBA like it will seem Preposterous that we cared what a guy was wearing on a walk up to a match but this this is where it changes so I don't know I don't know what tech companies I don't glossier started investing skims has a big partnership with the WNBA like they're smart they're moving and and for Pure Tech I don't know any anyone that's trying to reach I mean coinbase has made some smart Investments around the NBA because they know this is a way to tap into the culture especially youth culture so any brand that wants to get there in Tech should I think [ __ ] nailed it expensify being on F1 cars the exposure that they get from their F1 card deal and a good implication of speed is unbelievable yeah and you think about F1 branding it's for hours you see the helmet and you see [ __ ] good that over an advert that's a good one unbelievable that's a very good one final one for you my friend what you do tons of shows you're always on panels what question you never asked that you should be asked I've been running lately from uh from interviews and stuff but I I was in London and I was like I got to see Harry oh uh but I don't know I all the questions you asked me are the ones that I wish I had been asked I got one which I think is great which is like what skill are you slightly almost a little bit ashamed of that's also contributed to your success I was going to say Relentless but why Relentless it has been criticism levied at me in the past which is good it's always good feedback but um I just Relentless I think for better for worse when it comes to things that I believe are right when it comes to things that I think aren't good enough when it comes to just doing the things and I think I have a lot of trouble and I'm getting better at it but like I have a lot of trouble interfacing with folks who aren't oriented similarly and I like I always had a strong sense of mortality I feel like even as a kid I had no lives remaining because it was like a video game thing and I noticed I had it on my wall and I noticed it was that that was when I played the best uh in a video game cuz I didn't have any more lives left and you always play best when it said no lives remaining or zero lives remaining and then for whatever reason I had that on the wall I was a little weird goth kid but wasn't really go but little romstein era and uh and then my mom gets sick terminal cancer all of that and it really crystallized at like 21 how crucial it was to maximize the time that I have and do it in the right way I I know your mom's got health issues too I think it's a tremendous blessing that you can get in in the wake of a lot of sadness and tragedy to have that perspective uh and then it sometimes makes you a hard person to be around because I I really don't want to squander time even if even in my leisure time like I really I I I mean my my best friends are still the guys I've known since I was like six and so when we're together we are together but in I might go silent in the group chat for two weeks and they'll always [ __ ] with me and be like you know you alive uh but but it's because I'm I'm really trying to show up when I'm on call as a dad and a husband I really try to show up and do the best I don't always but I really try when I'm working I really try to show up do my best and I don't know it's I I have a very low tolerance for folks who aren't oriented that way and that is fine uh it's not a judgment it's just not something I want to spend time with and what I've and it's actually I guess maybe this is the ashamed part I think for probably the first 15 20 years of my career I was less comfortable in that and so I tolerated more and four years ago that shifted and that was when I that was when I resigned from the border of Reddit that was when I started 776 split up initialized and it has been like a wind at my back since and I feel so grateful for that and at the same time I'm like damn why didn't I do that sooner and I think it's because some part of me wasn't comfortable being that comfortable with this part of my personality and so there's some good advice for anyone listening uh is to to spend that time working on yourself understanding what really is important and then not compromising on those things that really matter to you dude thank you so much for coming I know it's a Sunday morning on a trip to London for you you're lucky my girls are still asleep so I crept out of the house this morning they're still J like they were up way too late last night so they're asleep I'm going to go take my daughter out either to tea or an escape room after this so we're good but I so appreciate it and this has been absolutely fantastic man always good seeing you Harry you're a great interviewer a master of the craft and uh and you have a good cup of coffee so anytime