August 29, 2022 • 40 mins
Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin joins Colin to discuss his strategy to take the world’s leading licensed sports merchandiser into gambling and NFT’s, why he got out of his ownership stakes in the Sixers, why he hasn’t sold the company, what sells in Europe that doesn’t work in the U.S., if he’s ever regretted selling a company, why he doesn’t want “yes” men around, and how he stays on the front end of cultural trends as he gets older.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume Callinn Coward podcasts presented by FanDuel Sports Book.
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L I N FanDuel sports Book App sign up. You know,
(00:51):
one of the things when I looked over your bio,
and it probably speaks to a lot of who you
are because lots of people drop out of college and
they're called people who struggle with math. You dropped out
of college very quickly, so I think it takes you
know Bill Gates did it takes a certain amount of
independence and courage to do that. I couldn't have done that.
I didn't have enough confidence. If you could, Michael go
(01:14):
back that week or that moment. And I don't know
if it was epiphany, but did something frustrate you? Were there?
Caps were there where you did you feel like you
were being boxed in? You know? For me, I was
always a terrible student. I was always an awful athlete.
I was good at one thing. I always loved to work,
and any variation of business was like what I love
(01:35):
to do is well, right, that was the way I competed.
And so I actually only went to college because I
made a commitments to my mom and dad after I
nearly went bankrupt a couple of times in high school, right,
and my dad helped me once and said, look, I'll
do this, you have to go to college. So I
went to college problems. By the time I got there,
I was, you know, doing so well buying and selling
closeouts like yeah, this, this isn't for me. So you know,
(01:56):
I'm gonna give them the money back. I'm gonna go
full time in business. So you've expanded into spaces that
some are obvious, like from the sports apparel you moved
and then you recently said sports gambling, And I thought,
all right, how is he going to you know, synchronize
all these so take me to the thought. Because a
(02:18):
lot of your apparel stuff, you know, like lids, like
and different. You know, I've watched Amazon grow, like I
get it. When they went into the Washington Post. I
was like, that's kind of a left turn, isn't it. Now?
I get their strategy. So you go into gaming, how
does it fit? Yeah? So I really think about what's
a sports fan one? I think you really think about
(02:39):
everything through the lens of your customer, the sports fan.
What's in their best interest. I think there's really not
another company today who's working to build a really end
ended digital sports platform. So you, as a fan, want
to go to place, you know, can you one day
watch live games? Can you be in the games as
you're watching the games. Can you, you know, buy the
jersey the hat of the player you like? Can you
get a collect from that, you know, whether it's a
(03:01):
trading card, physical, digital ft you know, do you want
to get a ticket for an upcoming game? So we
really want to give the sports fan everything they want
digitally in one place. I think that's a massive opportunity.
We spent really the last ten years building i'd say
a really good experience for the sports fan with merchandise,
and we woke up. We said, wait a second. We
have close to one hundred million sports fans, and they
(03:23):
do a lot of other things digitally. How about if
we could give them everything in one place. And that's
where the desire we have is to give the sports
fan the ultimate digital sports experience for everything they want
in one place. There's a lot. I mean, it's not
legal to bet sports yet in California. That would obviously,
and there's political reasons, and you know, some conservative states
may not lean into it. California's more left leaning, but
(03:45):
there's some politics behind it. So when you look at
sports gaming, what inning timing is so violent, all this stuff?
What inning are we in? In your opinion? Very early?
I think we're in the second or third inning of
sports gambling. What does it look like to you? Because
in Europe halftime in stadium stuff, my mom European, I've
(04:07):
always kind of up it. Yeah, well, I just in
the culture, and the culture is you can drink with
your parents at dinner. My mom wasn't really beholden to
some of these sort of more rigid, sort of you know,
cultural American realities. So I look at gambling in a stadium,
and I'm like, well, they're doing it in England forever,
and those fans are crazy. I mean they call them
(04:28):
soccer hooligans. Our fans actually buy and large the nature
of our fans, the behavior is pretty good if you
look globally. So do you think we're it's going to
be that easy and accessible for fans in five years,
ten years? I think, you know, I think very long term.
I feel like, even though I'm getting on a Philip,
a young guy, my lens is, what's a fan want
ten years from now, twenty years from now, thirty years
(04:49):
from now. I think ten years from now sports gambling
is completely mainstream in most places in North America. I
think the experience wants to be to MA really better
and I think that's a great thing. And so for us,
you know, we don't worry about how things start. We
finished worry about how they finish. And this is you know,
this is a marathon, it's not a sprint. And we're
(05:09):
going to make sure to create the best product for
sports fans, the best experience, and we have, you know,
huge strategic advantages. Today we have more than one hundred
million fans to go to fanatics. You know, every year,
and to be able to take that hundred million fans
and not only service them with all their merchandise needs
and all of their collectible needs, but also with their
sports game needs is a big opportunity for us and
(05:30):
one that I think we can you know, service the
fan better, do things better for them, and at the
same time have a better business model. So you owned
a couple of sports franchises, you moved out of that space.
My guest was for the gaming purposes, am I right? Yeah,
it just got Look, it got too complicated, Like for
me when I you know, we bought the Sixers together
in two thousand and eleven, I was the third largest
(05:51):
sharehold of the team. It was a great experience, you know,
I was, you know, pretty involved in the last several years,
and I think as fanatics start getting much bigger, we
were two hundred fi million dollar company the year that
I bought into the six Ers together with Josh Harrison's
even Blitzer, who you were kind of the managing partners.
You know, this year, you know will be you know,
more than seven billion dollars in revenue. And it just
(06:11):
based on us now being in the collectible's business in
a big way where we have deals with individ with
thousands of individual athletes, with us starting to take beats
in the sixers by the end of this year. Neither
one of those business has really worked with being an
owner of sports. And you know, it was great when
it wasn't a conflict, and when I saw that it
was holding back Fanatics, it was immediately an easy decision
for me to reach people. You're I'm sure your cash fluid.
(06:37):
A lot of people would like to buy Fanatics and
you've held off on that. Are there almost DNA reasons?
Are there independent reasons? People that don't sell are often
people that want control don't want to answer them. Yeah, people,
why why haven't you? Because you would be in this
sports now is working the global money? Michael goes right.
(06:57):
Somebody once said to me, you know, the Red Sox
will be there in a hundred years Liverpool. You don't
know if a tech company is going to exist. Why
haven't you? Yeah? For me, it really gets down to
one thing. We're just getting started. Like even though we've
goron from two hundred fifty million dollar business to you know,
I think next year we could be approaching potentially ten
(07:18):
million dollars in revenue. We're just starting like this is
you know, you asked me what inning with sports gambling
in I'd say fanatics is. You know, we're in the
fresh quarter of the game. I think we have so
much potential ahead for us. There's so much to improve
how sports fans are kind of serviced by us. You know,
there's so many things we're doing. We're you know, we're
cutting the speed of deliveries in half in our merchandise business.
(07:40):
We're doing so many things to improve the collectibles business
where we're going to mark at the category for the
first time. In gambling, I think we're going to create
a great experience for fans. So for me, it's not
like there's a little bit of unfinished business. There's so
much to do and that's a blast. Like I'm so lucky,
and I think our ten thousand plus associates, we're all
fort you to work in such a Iran industry. Sports
(08:01):
is a great you know industries. You said, it's a
global business, communities together, and why would I want to,
you know, kind of sell out when I'm you know,
in the beginning of the game. When you buy a company,
you do your due diligence yeah, but there's probably there's
a secret to every industry. Yeah, or you buy it
and six months later you're like, wow, collectibles, Yeah, what
(08:23):
was the first moment when you were in the business
and you went what that goes against my instincts. I
am surprised this is the business. Yeah, I'd say in
the collectibles business, there are a couple of things where
they just defy gravity and don't make sense today. The
first is, you know, tops Pininy upper Deck all really
(08:46):
good companies, all owned run by good people. You know,
we bought tops Are earlier this year. But like I
heard from so many customers about redemptions, like we hate
when we get a redeption. You buy a box of
cards and you get every redemption because you know, it
was too difficult to get the autograph on the car
at the time they made it. And so I think
the industry had worked that way. We're not looking at
(09:07):
this saying, you know, that's not acceptable, Like you know,
so many collectors they hate it. It's a practice that
or like so we're saying, like, how do we eliminate it?
And it's just like the mentality of like we need
to do better. You know. Another example would be marketing.
You know, the industry today spends less than one percent
of revenue in marketing. Like, there's so much we can
do to bring I couldn't say the last time I
saw a commercial. And by the way, whether it's a
(09:28):
commercial or whether it's more grassroots marketing, there's so little
done to promote the collectible's industry but has grown and
grown and grown. So like, I look and say, there's
so much opportunity to innovate the product. There's so much
opportunity to market the product. There's so much opportunity to
take better care of collectors and have the business done great.
So for me, it's like, if this business doing this well,
(09:50):
treating customers this way, you know, without innovating, without you know,
marketing the products, like the sky's the limit for what
we can do. So like, in a lot of ways,
I feel like the business I'm really well, you know,
in spite of not being like the companies haven't woken
up and said like we're gonna be Like you know,
Nike's a product of marketing company that you know, I
think we all look in respect, you know, I think
we take that same mentality into the collectible's industry as
(10:11):
a massive opportunity. It's interesting. Do you you know Starbucks
didn't do any advertising forever. It was just sort of
we do coffee or coffee shops are advertising. So as
you touch on that, is there a company that you
look at and you say to yourself, because there's different
ways to do it. Is there a company that, to you, Michael,
(10:33):
you ever look at and go they are really clever? Yeah? Well,
first of all, I study everything, like I'm a sponge.
Like I barely made out of high school. We just said,
I you know, I went to college for about six weeks.
I'm actually people people. Someone said to me last night,
do you speak in any other language of like I
barely speak English? Okay, but you know what, I have
(10:53):
a little bit of common sense, and so like I'm
a sponge, So I'm always looking at like what's Amazon doing,
you know how they pushing the envelope from a customer
experience perspective. What's Netflix doing, What's Apple doing, What's Google doing,
what's Nike doing? Like, you gotta look at great companies
and like get ideas. Like I mean, you don't need
to be the first creative thing. What you need to
do is figure out you know what I have is,
(11:15):
you know, we work with the best sports properties at
the world cluster thousand collegiate professional sports properties globally, and
we have this incredible ip that we're fortunate enough to
work with the people's service sports fans with. But we
got to do it better every day, Like we need
to go into this with the mentality like what we're
doing today it's not near good enough. How do we
get better? How do we do everything that we do
a lot better for the sports fan? And so there's
lots to do. When you buy, you create, or you
(11:38):
bought Fanatics, we really start. Really what happened was we
had we operated the five leagues e commerce businesses and
my old company of GSI and then and then we
bought Fanatics and kind of change the name of the
company in two thousand and eleven. Take me back to
the beginning of it. Was there epiphany is probably the
wrong word, but was there a moment when you said
to yourself, Wow, this is untapped like the IO. When
(12:03):
I read your story, I thought, man, I can't believe
there weren't thousands of business people going after this. Did
you think to yourself, man, this this business people just
don't understand. No, I had the opposite reaction, going to
be honest, in twenty eleven, when I sold Gussy Commerce,
which is my first company in the eBay and then
(12:25):
they said, hey, we don't want to be in the
owned inventory business, and we bought an axe back for them.
ACTS says, you know what, I just watched two little companies,
one in Seattle called Amazon, another in China called Ali Baba,
that have been literally decimating retail. I said, if I
don't completely reinvent this business, we won't be here, will
be irrelevant. So I actually had had the kind of
(12:46):
like the fear of death. By the way, the fear
of death, it's a great motivator to make you figure
out how to make things work right. And so we
did exactly that. We said, you know, how are we
going to make sure we have the best assortment, How
are we going to make sure that we give the
best experience to fans? How are we going to make
sure we do things other people can't do. How we're
going to make sure that we just keep innovating to
a way that you know, unlike most other retail categories
(13:06):
that have been look Amazonali Baba two. The best companies
of the world. Okay, and they do it because they're
they're they're doing things for their customers that others can't do.
We took the same Antitiy said, Look, if we get
laser focus in sports, that's a massive opportunity. Because it's
a complicated business. It's scut in tests. We can have
more than a million products today. When you focus on
one thing, you can do it really well. And again,
the great thing is ten years into it, I think
(13:27):
we're just getting started. Is the delivery system as difficult
as it feels to an outsider, you know, it's Look,
if you have more than a million products in our
core merchandise business, if you make you know, we're gonna
you know, we print billions of trading cards a year.
You know, it's pretty complex. But I'll tell you what
our focus, our tenacity that one business I think gives
(13:47):
us a chance to be really special and do things
for fans that others can't do. I'll tell you again,
if you just think about think about the first two
business we started, whether it's you know, our core e
commerce business, merchandise business. We're now going to cut the
delivery speed in half, more than half in the next
three years by replicating our inventory, by building spending hundreds
of millions of dollars to build out more distribution steps
(14:08):
because we want to get the merchandise to fans more
quickly and by the way, more cost effectively. That's how
we can do better for a fan in the collectible's business.
We're sitting here saying, you know what, how do we
eliminate redemptions? How do we mark at this industry for
the first time? How do we build more innovative products?
So everything we're doing, we're saying, how do we do
it better? What are we're doing? It's not near good enough.
We've gotta keep doing better. College football is back, baby,
(14:33):
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(14:53):
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bet I like Utah minus two and a half to
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for the Gators. I think they're fairly pedestrian at quarterback
Billy Napiers first year, and the Utes bring back several
(15:15):
All conference linemen on both sides of the ball. I
think they control the line of scrimmage and control of
the game. Take the Utes to win by about a touchdown.
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(15:38):
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Terms and conditions apply. I, along with a couple other people,
(17:12):
created the volume about eighteen months ago. And I think
I'm pretty good at delegating. I'm not a control freak,
and I think a lot of it is. I know
I'm not really gifted in many areas I'm I talk
so I might takeaways, hire good people and get out
of their way. You have a lot more mitstake than
(17:34):
I do. Is it hard to delegate for you. So
I gotta say, first of all, your concept of hiring
great people and get out of the way, it's generally
a very good concept, okay. And you're for me, like,
I think what's important for a CEO to knows what
are you good at? What you're not? You sat and
you told me like, hey, I'm good at speaking. I'm
also good at picking great people and getting out of
the way. That's a pretty successful manchum business. For me.
(17:55):
What I know is like, there's areas that I'm really stronger,
and there's areas I sucking. Okays, as I sucking. I
don't get near when you say to me, like, we
have thousands of people that work in technology in my company,
I don't spend any time because all I would do
is confuse myself and confuse them. Okay, I don't spend
time figuring out how to deliver you know, um, you
know how to make the films has work better? But
I could say, you know, what we need to deliver
(18:17):
much more quickly to the the customer, and how are we
going to compensate And if you pick the right people,
then you figure that out together. And so you know,
for me, I think we have, you know, some of
the best talent in the world. We focus day and
night about how do we get the best people around,
how do we keep growing the talent we have, how
do we keep bringing great talent from the outside in.
I think at the end of the day, like like,
let's keep this world. We're not like we're not curing cancer.
(18:39):
Facts like we're building you know, great products for the
digital sports fans. So it's all about the people that
we have. And for me, I'd say I am a
you know, I think I'm a pretty decent leader at
knowing you know, we're to spend my time and we're
to not spend my time. And you know what, if
it's an area like you know, strategy, I feel like
I'm pretty good. I'll dig in and I'll peel the
layers back and keep asking questions and I could be
(19:00):
annoying and just be unrelenting, and if it's an error,
I can add value. I'm never gonna get in the way.
But I won't even ask you a question. I just
get the right leaders, they say, people who are on
the spectrum. And I think I'm certainly not Dustin Hoffman
and rain Man, but I'm probably on it to some degree,
and when you speak and say that, it makes me
feel like that you're probably on the low end. You
(19:22):
are strategic. They always say strategy is for those who
feel they have a weakness, and so those people. I
think I'm good at strategy because I know I'm not
often great at details. So I don't know your personality
and I'm not here to make any genetic guesses. But
when I hear you talk, strategy feels like a big
(19:44):
component to you. Like you like it. You acknowledge tech.
Most people don't want to acknowledge of a weakness or
a liability. You are well first of all. I love
to acknowledge all the things I suck at. That's fun
for me. I'm like, my person now is to be
self deprecating, to make fun of myself. If listen, if
you look at my phone right now, I'm sure that
my friends and I were, like, we're beating each other
every day, like just making fun of you do. Let's
(20:06):
start personalities, like we're all self deprecating. Like you know,
for me, by the way, there's a lot to make
fun of. There's a lot of easy things to give
myself a hard time about. But look you gotta know
what you're good at, what you're not good at, and
you know you gotta, you know, build organizations around what
are you not strong at. Like you know, for me,
if I try to get people to do exactly what
I do, but I'm good at that, then we're like
in the way of each other. Conversely, like if I
don't have people who do all the things I stick at,
(20:27):
then we're never going to be successful. TV ratings for
pro teams. NFL is better than college. Yeah, NBA's generally
better than college, NHL better than the college equivalent. So
that would lead me to believe with fanatics or a
company like LEGI but that the pro sales are much
(20:48):
greater than college. But you get these tribal fan bases,
for instance in the South Alabama, Georgia. Would I ever
be surprised, how does call ledge of merchandise sell compared
to pro merchandise, you'd be surprised. So college is the
second biggest business, So NFL is one. Colleges to college
(21:09):
football or basketball or both just college together would be two.
Because you know, we're not looking as you know, even
though you might say, hey, Alabama is obviously a football school,
you know, we're looking at the sales of you know,
a university, you know, for the university, not kind of
pro sport basis. Obviously we know what rives what. But
I'll tell you college is our second largest business and
is growing like crazy. It's the fastest growing business that
(21:31):
we had. Why do you think that is? Because it
wasn't where we started. We started in the pro business,
so I think we made more progress than pro sports
early and we kind of playing catch up in soccer
and college today. To be honest, the biggest support is
actually soccer. Second biggest sport for US would be the NFL.
The third biggest sport would be college. Kind of long
term today it's still NFL one, College two. But I
(21:53):
think long term for US, soccer should be our our
biggest business. Internationally, Are there things that sell here and
not other places? Like? Is there something in Europe that's
stylistically this doesn't work here? I'll tell you something. Right now,
Lids is opening hundreds of stores in Europe for the
first time, and there's so many fans of the product
we sell. You know, we sell so much. You know,
(22:14):
baseball caps in Europe, they're not fans of the teams
the fans of the product. And so that's a great
opportunity for us. You're talking about like, you know, if
you go if you said outside of lid store and saying, hey,
why are you buying that, and be like, because that's
a cool product. I like that product. It's fashionable. I
enjoy wearing it. It's not because hey, I'm a diehard
fan of the you know, Saint Louis Cardinals as an example.
The great thing about our business is things change every
(22:35):
day based on how does the player perform, how does
a team perform. If I looked at today's sales, you'd
see there's always things emerging, always things falling apart. I
guarantee you when Kevin Durant came back and said, hey,
you know what, I'm gonna stick with the nets. I'm
gonna make this work, his jersey sales would have immediately
blown up, okay, and leading into that, they would have
done poorly because people like, hey, this kid, you're gonna
play in the nets or not. And so that's the
(22:57):
great thing about this business. You know, great moments, bad moments,
great wins, bad losses. That drives the whole business. I
tried to years ago buy into an MLS team, and
I just couldn't afford it, and I tried LAFC, but
it was Tony Robbins and Magic and all that kind
of stuff. It was interesting you owned a hockey team
at NBA. The NBA is a very unique business where
(23:19):
there are a handful of agents and a handful of
star players that really run the league. The NFL is
about the shield. Tom Bradio retired tomorrow. The ratings will
go up. We watch it, we gamble on it. Basketball
has always been player driven. Hockey isn't necessarily the NA
Baseball is a front office driven when you own that
NBA team, because I've always thought they report a lot
(23:43):
of NBA teams don't make money, and it's when you
buy and the stars you have. If you looked at
the NBA when you were an owner and said, hey,
I would tweak this. I would tweak that if I
was Adam Silver, was there anything as an owner you
were ever frustrated with? So, first of a tell you,
I believe the NBA is incredibly well positioned, strategically, very
(24:07):
global business. You know when you talk about kind of
you know, it's kind of run by stars. I don't
look at it that way. The way I look at
it is I love to have a partnership in whatever
we do, and whether it's with the ten thousand plus
associates at fanatics, whether it's you know when we were
up until recently when I was, you know, an owner
of the Sixers. Yeah, you're in partnerships with you know,
the people who you know play the game. It's the
(24:29):
same thing in the NFL. I think that's a healthy
mentality to say, you know what, I usually respect ambiration
for my players. I want to work with them. I
want to have a great relationship with them. I think
it was an edge like to me, I look and say,
look at you know, our best two players today, Joel
and Beat and James Harden. You know our team has
a great relationship with those players. I have a great
relationship with those players. I think those players have done
a lot to help the Sixers position as well as possible.
(24:51):
Look at James Harden, who just played for fourteen million
dollars less because he wants to figure out how to
win a championship in Philadelphi. He didn't come to us
and leverages. He came down and said, hey, I want
to take money off of my contract so I can
get better teammates around me, so we can have the
best odds to in a championship this year. So to me,
if you have the right mentality, you know how to
work with people, how to work together with people. I
think that's an advantage. You know, some people may say, hey,
(25:12):
you know they don't like the people have so much power.
I do with powerful people every day, and you know
my jobs. Have a great relaship with those powerful people,
and figure out how to work, whether they play it
on the court, whether they're partners of ours, whether they're
owners of ours, whether they're commissioners, whether there are fans.
I mean, you got treat everyody of the right way,
and then you get a good outcome. When you do
acquire a company and you know it's it's labyrinth of
attorneys and accountants, you seem more of a buyer than
(25:36):
a seller. To me, you feel like I don't always
sell anything. Yeah, you feel like a builder and a buyer. Again,
it's a personality thing. Have you ever sold anything and
regretted it? Even a car? I had an old BMW
I sold it, I regretted in an hour later. First
of all, I don't have the personality to ever look back,
and like, the only thing I want to do when
(25:57):
I look back is learned to get better. I don't
like what's done done. Like, by the way, if I
go out and I screw something up, all I want
to do is learn from that. L Okay, I don't
want to go back and say, like, oh my god,
this is going to eat me up. At first of all,
I'm trying to think. I think of one thing that
I sold that I regret, and I literally do not
have one example of it. Okay, by the way, I
suld things like I had a you know, I'm one
hundred percent locked in building fanatics right now. So I
(26:19):
had business shop runer that we sold in Fanacs a
couple of years ago. I felt great about it because
it allowed me to focus more of my energy on Fanatics.
I'd love to build, Like I'm a true entrepreneur at heart.
It's fun, it's support for me again. I remember I
started by telling you I sucked at sports, I sucked
at school. What was I good at? I was good
at building, and so you got to gravitate to what
you're good at. So like, you know, the only time
I would sell something if I thought, like, you know,
(26:41):
I got it wrong. It wasn't working. I sold GSI
Commerce for two at billion dollars to eBay in twenty eleven,
which is the first company I started, because I felt
that was the best thing for the company. And I
really thought that I had a massive opportunity if I
reinvented Fanatics, which was this little business that they didn't want,
And it was great for me that I was able
to day on the business and said, hey, Michael, would
(27:01):
you be willing to buy this? And I had this
big vision. It was completely different for what it was.
But you know, I guess there's sellers and there's builders.
I'm a builder. The sports uniforms, I like the Dodgers
home uniform clean. I like the next home uniform with
the piping, the orange and blue. It's clean. My least
(27:21):
favorite uniform ever was the mid eighties. The Vancouver Canucks
wore something that was black with a V. It looked
like something your grandpa would wear to Thanksgiving and people
would talk about it for like two hours, like he
picked the wrong slaughter. Are there things ever? In the
merchandise business you're like, how does that sell? It goes
against your instincts. Definitely, I like clean, not like every year,
(27:45):
like every month, I'll look at something and be like,
this isn't good enough. We need to do better. I'll
give you an example right now, and I'll look at
some of the championship products that will make I'll be like,
this is the same ship we've been doing for dozens
of years. Like, no, we have to do better, but
you know what, that's our job. Like right now, we've
kind of we've made the experience better, but we haven't.
Like we're not good enough, Like we need to make
(28:06):
better product, faster delivery, more innovation, more breath Like, yeah,
I look at all I look at stuff all the time.
We'd be like it's not near good enough. Yeah, I
like I think the Baltimore Ravens. That uniform feels like Baltimore.
It feels like it's got a little chip on it shoulder.
Who was your when you were a kid? Who was
your favorite team? Definitely the Sixers, not even a question,
(28:28):
so you buy your favorite team? Yeah, look I was Porch.
I grew up in It's actually a great story. I
don't think I've ever told the story before. But so
I grew up in Philadelphia, born and raised. Lived my
entire life there, including the still now and the guy
that owned the Philadelphia Sixers was my next door neighbor,
Ed Snyder. I lived on a lives in Mona now. Yeah,
he lived in Mona Ceda until I passed away few
(28:49):
years ago. It's great, great, great, great man. And in
two thousand eleven I sold Fanatics. I think it was
March twenty eight to twenty eleven and Ed Snyder called me.
He said, hey, I want to come over, and came
over the bottle of champagne. He said to me, hey, Michael,
you know what you know first congratulation and selling a company.
He said, you know you should buy the six Ers
from me. He said, you know I'm selling the team.
(29:12):
I said, you know what, This team loses a lot
of money. You know, I'm like focused on Fanatics. You know,
I don't want to spend my time this. I thought
they were gonna sell the team for four hundred million dollars,
and you know you had to come with four undred
million dollars. I was losing thirty forty million dollars a year.
I didn't do any work. I said. Now I'm not interesting.
He says, you know, I don't, you know, I like
you too much. I don't want you to buy the team. Okay.
Then Josh Harris and Dave Blitz about the team and
(29:32):
they were looking for a local partner, and that's when
I met them and I realized they didn't actually pay
four hundred million dollars. They bought it for two hundred
and eighty million dollars. And by the way, they were
able to borrow whenever it was one hundred and thirty
five million dollars. It was like instead of being a
four dred million dollars check, it was like maybe one
hundred and thirty or one hundred and fifty million dollars check.
And in addition to that, the team wasn't actually gonna
lose forty or fifty million dollars in anymore. It was
(29:53):
actually on the path to making money. And I realized,
you don't. I wasn't educated. But for me it was fine.
It was Josh and David, we're incredible partners. I was
fortunate to work with them, and for me, it adds
is the massive opportunity, and it's a company today that
I think can be, you know, potentially the most valuable
company in sports. One of the most valuable companies in technology.
As I said, I feel like when the fresh quarter
(30:14):
of the game, it's like I am locked in the
laser focus, Like I'm working at this, you know, sixteen
eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, you know,
probably fifty one weeks a year. When I look at fanatics,
I say to myself, Man, this is wow gaming merchandise,
because I believe this to be true. When I was
a kid watching television, I didn't understand how everybody didn't
(30:35):
like sports. Everything was scripted. I don't say that at all. Exports.
I don't understand it, like it's the only thing. It's incredible.
How do you take your ownership of a sports team?
Can you transfer it and go? Man? This is something
I learned from the NBA. Do you take lessons from
businesses or do stuff not crossover? A lot? It absolutely
(30:55):
crosses over, you know. I think my entreprene neural mentality,
my kind of pretty like, you know, kind of down
to earth, relatable personality by the way, that relates well
to players. Everywhere I go, I'm you know, seeing people
and you know, we're all helping each other building. I
think it's like like the same mentality I use in
sports with the Sixers, it was the same mentality. I
(31:17):
use business and fanatics and vice the verse. And by
the way, I learn all the time from each business.
I'll learn about players who were calling up and say, hey, Rube,
how do I get on the home page of Fanatics
or how can we do things together with fanatics because
they're interested, they want to build their brands. I'll learn
other people who aren't a nursing. You'll see who are
the hard workers, who are the lazy people who have
certain priorities, who don't care about things. You learn so
(31:38):
much from from each of the businesses, and I think
for me it was a you know, being part of
the six Ers for eleven years, it was a great education.
It was great experience. The only regret I have is
we haven't won yet, and that's a failure. Like every
year you own a sports team, if you don't win
the championship, you failed And if you look at it
any other way, you're a bad owner. Okay, like literally,
you have a three percent chance to win a championship
(31:58):
and that's your job. If you don't do that job,
you're not doing your job. You've failed and sour prosessly
eleven years we didn't win, and that's something like I think, Look,
we have a championship contending team today, we were on one.
Yet what crushes you more? A bad earnings reported fanatics
or a playoff elimination game in the NBA? Which one
do you? That's a great question. Um, both a crushing
(32:22):
I mean, I don't like. I don't like to lose.
But the good thing with me, you lose all the time.
When you lose, I pick up and I'm like, that
was Jesse's news. Let's go. You know, I don't. I'm
not looking back. I'm all they saying, how do we
get better? How do we go for it? But I've
had I've had many of both. So fanatics is B
two C. It's a business two consumer business, okay, And
we don't want to do anything we said. People call
(32:43):
us all the time and say, hey, do you want
to buy this business? Is B to B the business like, No,
we are a business to consumer digital company. If it's
not digital, if it's not consumer, we have no interesting
all right, gaming is business to consumer? Yeah? Why does
that attract you? Why does B two C attract you? Yeah?
You know, for me, it's really about being able to
service the digital sports fan wherever they want to be.
Service to euro fan. Yeah, for me, I gotta tell
(33:04):
you when I think about Vanax in the future and
I could potentially watch live sports bet on them, get
the jersey from the player, I like, get the training
card to the digital an FT, get a ticket to
an event on one place. That's like an incredible experience.
So for me, what we have is one brand and
one fan base that we can do so many different
(33:25):
things digitally with them. But the most important thing we
need to do every day is say, how do we
do it better? It's not good what we're doing. How
do we improve? How do we innovate? Because you know,
I still say like, yeah, we've met a lot of progress,
and you know, two hundred fifty million dollars last year.
I think we could be, you know, approaching ten million
dollars next year. It's not you know, it's not good enough.
What keeps you up at night? I'm the worst sleep
(33:46):
in the planet. I said to my girlfriend this morning,
like I literally need a sleep doctor. Like I could
sleep three hours and then I wake up and no
matter how many times they say, don't look at your phone.
I look at my phone, I start responding to text messages,
responding to emails that I look at news. What's going
on in this world? You can obviously tell me a
pretty competitive human being, you'd like to win. I don't
really believe in losing, even though it happens to the
(34:07):
best of us. So you know, for me, what keeps
me up at night is we're growing quick, not having
the wheels come off the bus, not doing you know,
dumb things, self inflicted things. You know, I want to
make sure you're making the big decisions that look, we're
gonna fail. You have lots of failures every day, and
a compy you fail. I want to fail fast, like
you know for me, and I'm gonna fail, Let's do
it fast and move on. Let's not have a slow
pain for failure. Let's do it fast and get it
(34:28):
out of the way. One of don't the vagaries or
one of the problems with being rich and powerful is
that people are often afraid to confront you or disagree
with you. How do you ensure that when you walk
into a room. Yeah, your lieutenants are willing to say, Michael,
I think you're completely wrong on this. Yeah, So first
(34:48):
of all, I love that, and I create that culture.
That's a bad leader. Who doesn't, you know, create the
relationships with their with their leaders where they know they
have to come and say, Like people come and say
this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. I'll come
up and say, I got a great idea and one
of my If any of my trust people who know
me work with me, if they can't sit by me,
if someone's a yes man, they're out, Like I've no interest.
You talk about somebody, I've no interest been working with
(35:09):
this yes people. I want people who going to make
us better, challenge us and I every day, you know,
we debate stuff. That's like, that's our life. Whether I'm
you know, banching with my friends, banching with executives, that's
who I am. It's also my personality pretty, you know,
I'm like pretty, you know, down to earth broads into
a you know, guys build a decent sized business. Yeah.
So the best ideas I get are being in groups
of people and listening and kind of sponging it. Where
(35:32):
do your best ideas come from? We must be like
kindred spirits, because I would have given you exactly the
same answer I would have told you. It's from getting
really smart people of different backgrounds around me and then
being a sponge, and I'll contribute and we can all
learn from each other. So people said to me all
the way, Like someone just said to me last night,
like you seem comfortable anywhere. I'm like, I could go
in the roughest neighborhood in the world and enjoy talking
(35:52):
to people and asking questions and learning, by the way,
watching what the where and what fashion trends are developing.
You know, what do they want, what do they need?
How can I help them? How can they help me
to being you know and you know, and with any
type of sports fan like that. That's that's how I learned.
Like I'm a sponge. That's literally I said, if you
watch anything I've ever said, I'm a sponge. My first
(36:14):
impression when you walked in is you dressed like a
young fan and you're fifty and so that's impressive to
me because I believe in your business you have to
relate to these guys. Yeah, okay, not me as much. Right,
So you dress as a billionaire, you dressed like a fan.
I don't know if you ever thought about that. You're
(36:36):
in young businesses. You know, seventy five year old guys
don't wear as many baseball hats. You go to a
Mets game, everybody's got one on. So do you force
yourself tech music people? How do you stay young and
twitchy with culture? Because the world living now, it's so fluid, Michael,
Like every fifteen minutes there's new tech. Yeah. So first
(36:57):
of all, I think you need to be authentic to yourself.
Like I dressed the way I want and by the way,
when someone will say, hey, you have to wear this
to this, I'm just like, I am who I am.
I don't give a shit yea, And you know if
someone doesn't like me, you know what I just you
gotta be authentic, gotta be who you are. The biggest
thing I like. I do love having all different backgrounds
around me because that gives us an opportunity to learn
from different people and take different perspectives. But look, I
(37:19):
have a young mentality, like I don't like I generally
will say as a stereotype, and I probably feel bad
saying I don't like being about old people in general
because it makes me feel old, Versus I like to
be around young people that can learn from growth from
I won't go to Palm Springs because of that. Yeah,
I feel old. Park City people ski and everybody in
LA loves Palm Springs, and I'm like, I don't play bridge,
(37:41):
it's old. I go, I want to hear from Conchella.
Well that's young. Sorry, nobody in the Rady's there. No,
I think that's a really could have been the most
person in Cachella. Finally, I remember interviewing full Night one
time and I asked this question. My producers like, that
is such a pithy, silly question. But when you can
have anything, you know the old saying, oh, what do
you get somebody that has everything? You could have any
(38:03):
piece of sports memorabilia you've wanted. I'm not a sports
memorabilia collector. I don't have a press pass i've ever had.
But is there anything like if somebody told me what
could I have? I say, give me Muhammad all these
gloves against Foreman and Zaire. That to me was the
one of the first moments as a kid. I was
watching a JP patch's morning show. The product that I
(38:24):
don't have, this is something you don't have. It's my
first memory of me knowing sports is a cartoon on
a Saturday morning, breaking in and said, Muhammad Ali's beat
George Foreman, this is a cartoon show in Seattle. And
to me it was the first moment I was a
huge Ali fan. It was the first sports moment. I
was like, well, I'm really into this. I did a
(38:46):
book cover mimicking a Muhammad Ali shoot, so that to
me would be the sports thing. Do you have one?
I'll have you don't have? Yes? What is it? This
is so easy? What do you think I want? Okay,
let me guess doctor Jay's the uniform when he did
the dunk over Michael Cooper or the that's a good
(39:08):
guess for you're off by about thirty or forty years.
I want a two thousand and twenty two two thousand
and twenty three six ers Championship ring. Those are hard
to get, you know. That's why I want it, because
you don't want the ship that's hard to get, because
that's what makes it interesting. You can't even find that
on an eBay. It's not currently available on the market.
(39:28):
You know what, you asked me what I want? That's
what I want. Well, it's been great for me, Thank
you so much. I learned a lot of it was
fun for me. The volume
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L I N FanDuel sports Book App sign up. You know,
(00:51):
one of the things when I looked over your bio,
and it probably speaks to a lot of who you
are because lots of people drop out of college and
they're called people who struggle with math. You dropped out
of college very quickly, so I think it takes you
know Bill Gates did it takes a certain amount of
independence and courage to do that. I couldn't have done that.
I didn't have enough confidence. If you could, Michael go
(01:14):
back that week or that moment. And I don't know
if it was epiphany, but did something frustrate you? Were there?
Caps were there where you did you feel like you
were being boxed in? You know? For me, I was
always a terrible student. I was always an awful athlete.
I was good at one thing. I always loved to work,
and any variation of business was like what I love
(01:35):
to do is well, right, that was the way I competed.
And so I actually only went to college because I
made a commitments to my mom and dad after I
nearly went bankrupt a couple of times in high school, right,
and my dad helped me once and said, look, I'll
do this, you have to go to college. So I
went to college problems. By the time I got there,
I was, you know, doing so well buying and selling
closeouts like yeah, this, this isn't for me. So you know,
(01:56):
I'm gonna give them the money back. I'm gonna go
full time in business. So you've expanded into spaces that
some are obvious, like from the sports apparel you moved
and then you recently said sports gambling, And I thought,
all right, how is he going to you know, synchronize
all these so take me to the thought. Because a
(02:18):
lot of your apparel stuff, you know, like lids, like
and different. You know, I've watched Amazon grow, like I
get it. When they went into the Washington Post. I
was like, that's kind of a left turn, isn't it. Now?
I get their strategy. So you go into gaming, how
does it fit? Yeah? So I really think about what's
a sports fan one? I think you really think about
(02:39):
everything through the lens of your customer, the sports fan.
What's in their best interest. I think there's really not
another company today who's working to build a really end
ended digital sports platform. So you, as a fan, want
to go to place, you know, can you one day
watch live games? Can you be in the games as
you're watching the games. Can you, you know, buy the
jersey the hat of the player you like? Can you
get a collect from that, you know, whether it's a
(03:01):
trading card, physical, digital ft you know, do you want
to get a ticket for an upcoming game? So we
really want to give the sports fan everything they want
digitally in one place. I think that's a massive opportunity.
We spent really the last ten years building i'd say
a really good experience for the sports fan with merchandise,
and we woke up. We said, wait a second. We
have close to one hundred million sports fans, and they
(03:23):
do a lot of other things digitally. How about if
we could give them everything in one place. And that's
where the desire we have is to give the sports
fan the ultimate digital sports experience for everything they want
in one place. There's a lot. I mean, it's not
legal to bet sports yet in California. That would obviously,
and there's political reasons, and you know, some conservative states
may not lean into it. California's more left leaning, but
(03:45):
there's some politics behind it. So when you look at
sports gaming, what inning timing is so violent, all this stuff?
What inning are we in? In your opinion? Very early?
I think we're in the second or third inning of
sports gambling. What does it look like to you? Because
in Europe halftime in stadium stuff, my mom European, I've
(04:07):
always kind of up it. Yeah, well, I just in
the culture, and the culture is you can drink with
your parents at dinner. My mom wasn't really beholden to
some of these sort of more rigid, sort of you know,
cultural American realities. So I look at gambling in a stadium,
and I'm like, well, they're doing it in England forever,
and those fans are crazy. I mean they call them
(04:28):
soccer hooligans. Our fans actually buy and large the nature
of our fans, the behavior is pretty good if you
look globally. So do you think we're it's going to
be that easy and accessible for fans in five years,
ten years? I think, you know, I think very long term.
I feel like, even though I'm getting on a Philip,
a young guy, my lens is, what's a fan want
ten years from now, twenty years from now, thirty years
(04:49):
from now. I think ten years from now sports gambling
is completely mainstream in most places in North America. I
think the experience wants to be to MA really better
and I think that's a great thing. And so for us,
you know, we don't worry about how things start. We
finished worry about how they finish. And this is you know,
this is a marathon, it's not a sprint. And we're
(05:09):
going to make sure to create the best product for
sports fans, the best experience, and we have, you know,
huge strategic advantages. Today we have more than one hundred
million fans to go to fanatics. You know, every year,
and to be able to take that hundred million fans
and not only service them with all their merchandise needs
and all of their collectible needs, but also with their
sports game needs is a big opportunity for us and
(05:30):
one that I think we can you know, service the
fan better, do things better for them, and at the
same time have a better business model. So you owned
a couple of sports franchises, you moved out of that space.
My guest was for the gaming purposes, am I right? Yeah,
it just got Look, it got too complicated, Like for
me when I you know, we bought the Sixers together
in two thousand and eleven, I was the third largest
(05:51):
sharehold of the team. It was a great experience, you know,
I was, you know, pretty involved in the last several years,
and I think as fanatics start getting much bigger, we
were two hundred fi million dollar company the year that
I bought into the six Ers together with Josh Harrison's
even Blitzer, who you were kind of the managing partners.
You know, this year, you know will be you know,
more than seven billion dollars in revenue. And it just
(06:11):
based on us now being in the collectible's business in
a big way where we have deals with individ with
thousands of individual athletes, with us starting to take beats
in the sixers by the end of this year. Neither
one of those business has really worked with being an
owner of sports. And you know, it was great when
it wasn't a conflict, and when I saw that it
was holding back Fanatics, it was immediately an easy decision
for me to reach people. You're I'm sure your cash fluid.
(06:37):
A lot of people would like to buy Fanatics and
you've held off on that. Are there almost DNA reasons?
Are there independent reasons? People that don't sell are often
people that want control don't want to answer them. Yeah, people,
why why haven't you? Because you would be in this
sports now is working the global money? Michael goes right.
(06:57):
Somebody once said to me, you know, the Red Sox
will be there in a hundred years Liverpool. You don't
know if a tech company is going to exist. Why
haven't you? Yeah? For me, it really gets down to
one thing. We're just getting started. Like even though we've
goron from two hundred fifty million dollar business to you know,
I think next year we could be approaching potentially ten
(07:18):
million dollars in revenue. We're just starting like this is
you know, you asked me what inning with sports gambling
in I'd say fanatics is. You know, we're in the
fresh quarter of the game. I think we have so
much potential ahead for us. There's so much to improve
how sports fans are kind of serviced by us. You know,
there's so many things we're doing. We're you know, we're
cutting the speed of deliveries in half in our merchandise business.
(07:40):
We're doing so many things to improve the collectibles business
where we're going to mark at the category for the
first time. In gambling, I think we're going to create
a great experience for fans. So for me, it's not
like there's a little bit of unfinished business. There's so
much to do and that's a blast. Like I'm so lucky,
and I think our ten thousand plus associates, we're all
fort you to work in such a Iran industry. Sports
(08:01):
is a great you know industries. You said, it's a
global business, communities together, and why would I want to,
you know, kind of sell out when I'm you know,
in the beginning of the game. When you buy a company,
you do your due diligence yeah, but there's probably there's
a secret to every industry. Yeah, or you buy it
and six months later you're like, wow, collectibles, Yeah, what
(08:23):
was the first moment when you were in the business
and you went what that goes against my instincts. I
am surprised this is the business. Yeah, I'd say in
the collectibles business, there are a couple of things where
they just defy gravity and don't make sense today. The
first is, you know, tops Pininy upper Deck all really
(08:46):
good companies, all owned run by good people. You know,
we bought tops Are earlier this year. But like I
heard from so many customers about redemptions, like we hate
when we get a redeption. You buy a box of
cards and you get every redemption because you know, it
was too difficult to get the autograph on the car
at the time they made it. And so I think
the industry had worked that way. We're not looking at
(09:07):
this saying, you know, that's not acceptable, Like you know,
so many collectors they hate it. It's a practice that
or like so we're saying, like, how do we eliminate it?
And it's just like the mentality of like we need
to do better. You know. Another example would be marketing.
You know, the industry today spends less than one percent
of revenue in marketing. Like, there's so much we can
do to bring I couldn't say the last time I
saw a commercial. And by the way, whether it's a
(09:28):
commercial or whether it's more grassroots marketing, there's so little
done to promote the collectible's industry but has grown and
grown and grown. So like, I look and say, there's
so much opportunity to innovate the product. There's so much
opportunity to market the product. There's so much opportunity to
take better care of collectors and have the business done great.
So for me, it's like, if this business doing this well,
(09:50):
treating customers this way, you know, without innovating, without you know,
marketing the products, like the sky's the limit for what
we can do. So like, in a lot of ways,
I feel like the business I'm really well, you know,
in spite of not being like the companies haven't woken
up and said like we're gonna be Like you know,
Nike's a product of marketing company that you know, I
think we all look in respect, you know, I think
we take that same mentality into the collectible's industry as
(10:11):
a massive opportunity. It's interesting. Do you you know Starbucks
didn't do any advertising forever. It was just sort of
we do coffee or coffee shops are advertising. So as
you touch on that, is there a company that you
look at and you say to yourself, because there's different
ways to do it. Is there a company that, to you, Michael,
(10:33):
you ever look at and go they are really clever? Yeah? Well,
first of all, I study everything, like I'm a sponge.
Like I barely made out of high school. We just said,
I you know, I went to college for about six weeks.
I'm actually people people. Someone said to me last night,
do you speak in any other language of like I
barely speak English? Okay, but you know what, I have
(10:53):
a little bit of common sense, and so like I'm
a sponge, So I'm always looking at like what's Amazon doing,
you know how they pushing the envelope from a customer
experience perspective. What's Netflix doing, What's Apple doing, What's Google doing,
what's Nike doing? Like, you gotta look at great companies
and like get ideas. Like I mean, you don't need
to be the first creative thing. What you need to
do is figure out you know what I have is,
(11:15):
you know, we work with the best sports properties at
the world cluster thousand collegiate professional sports properties globally, and
we have this incredible ip that we're fortunate enough to
work with the people's service sports fans with. But we
got to do it better every day, Like we need
to go into this with the mentality like what we're
doing today it's not near good enough. How do we
get better? How do we do everything that we do
a lot better for the sports fan? And so there's
lots to do. When you buy, you create, or you
(11:38):
bought Fanatics, we really start. Really what happened was we
had we operated the five leagues e commerce businesses and
my old company of GSI and then and then we
bought Fanatics and kind of change the name of the
company in two thousand and eleven. Take me back to
the beginning of it. Was there epiphany is probably the
wrong word, but was there a moment when you said
to yourself, Wow, this is untapped like the IO. When
(12:03):
I read your story, I thought, man, I can't believe
there weren't thousands of business people going after this. Did
you think to yourself, man, this this business people just
don't understand. No, I had the opposite reaction, going to
be honest, in twenty eleven, when I sold Gussy Commerce,
which is my first company in the eBay and then
(12:25):
they said, hey, we don't want to be in the
owned inventory business, and we bought an axe back for them.
ACTS says, you know what, I just watched two little companies,
one in Seattle called Amazon, another in China called Ali Baba,
that have been literally decimating retail. I said, if I
don't completely reinvent this business, we won't be here, will
be irrelevant. So I actually had had the kind of
(12:46):
like the fear of death. By the way, the fear
of death, it's a great motivator to make you figure
out how to make things work right. And so we
did exactly that. We said, you know, how are we
going to make sure we have the best assortment, How
are we going to make sure that we give the
best experience to fans? How are we going to make
sure we do things other people can't do. How we're
going to make sure that we just keep innovating to
a way that you know, unlike most other retail categories
(13:06):
that have been look Amazonali Baba two. The best companies
of the world. Okay, and they do it because they're
they're they're doing things for their customers that others can't do.
We took the same Antitiy said, Look, if we get
laser focus in sports, that's a massive opportunity. Because it's
a complicated business. It's scut in tests. We can have
more than a million products today. When you focus on
one thing, you can do it really well. And again,
the great thing is ten years into it, I think
(13:27):
we're just getting started. Is the delivery system as difficult
as it feels to an outsider, you know, it's Look,
if you have more than a million products in our
core merchandise business, if you make you know, we're gonna
you know, we print billions of trading cards a year.
You know, it's pretty complex. But I'll tell you what
our focus, our tenacity that one business I think gives
(13:47):
us a chance to be really special and do things
for fans that others can't do. I'll tell you again,
if you just think about think about the first two
business we started, whether it's you know, our core e
commerce business, merchandise business. We're now going to cut the
delivery speed in half, more than half in the next
three years by replicating our inventory, by building spending hundreds
of millions of dollars to build out more distribution steps
(14:08):
because we want to get the merchandise to fans more
quickly and by the way, more cost effectively. That's how
we can do better for a fan in the collectible's business.
We're sitting here saying, you know what, how do we
eliminate redemptions? How do we mark at this industry for
the first time? How do we build more innovative products?
So everything we're doing, we're saying, how do we do
it better? What are we're doing? It's not near good enough.
We've gotta keep doing better. College football is back, baby,
(14:33):
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(15:15):
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Terms and conditions apply. I, along with a couple other people,
(17:12):
created the volume about eighteen months ago. And I think
I'm pretty good at delegating. I'm not a control freak,
and I think a lot of it is. I know
I'm not really gifted in many areas I'm I talk
so I might takeaways, hire good people and get out
of their way. You have a lot more mitstake than
(17:34):
I do. Is it hard to delegate for you. So
I gotta say, first of all, your concept of hiring
great people and get out of the way, it's generally
a very good concept, okay. And you're for me, like,
I think what's important for a CEO to knows what
are you good at? What you're not? You sat and
you told me like, hey, I'm good at speaking. I'm
also good at picking great people and getting out of
the way. That's a pretty successful manchum business. For me.
(17:55):
What I know is like, there's areas that I'm really stronger,
and there's areas I sucking. Okays, as I sucking. I
don't get near when you say to me, like, we
have thousands of people that work in technology in my company,
I don't spend any time because all I would do
is confuse myself and confuse them. Okay, I don't spend
time figuring out how to deliver you know, um, you
know how to make the films has work better? But
I could say, you know, what we need to deliver
(18:17):
much more quickly to the the customer, and how are we
going to compensate And if you pick the right people,
then you figure that out together. And so you know,
for me, I think we have, you know, some of
the best talent in the world. We focus day and
night about how do we get the best people around,
how do we keep growing the talent we have, how
do we keep bringing great talent from the outside in.
I think at the end of the day, like like,
let's keep this world. We're not like we're not curing cancer.
(18:39):
Facts like we're building you know, great products for the
digital sports fans. So it's all about the people that
we have. And for me, I'd say I am a
you know, I think I'm a pretty decent leader at
knowing you know, we're to spend my time and we're
to not spend my time. And you know what, if
it's an area like you know, strategy, I feel like
I'm pretty good. I'll dig in and I'll peel the
layers back and keep asking questions and I could be
(19:00):
annoying and just be unrelenting, and if it's an error,
I can add value. I'm never gonna get in the way.
But I won't even ask you a question. I just
get the right leaders, they say, people who are on
the spectrum. And I think I'm certainly not Dustin Hoffman
and rain Man, but I'm probably on it to some degree,
and when you speak and say that, it makes me
feel like that you're probably on the low end. You
(19:22):
are strategic. They always say strategy is for those who
feel they have a weakness, and so those people. I
think I'm good at strategy because I know I'm not
often great at details. So I don't know your personality
and I'm not here to make any genetic guesses. But
when I hear you talk, strategy feels like a big
(19:44):
component to you. Like you like it. You acknowledge tech.
Most people don't want to acknowledge of a weakness or
a liability. You are well first of all. I love
to acknowledge all the things I suck at. That's fun
for me. I'm like, my person now is to be
self deprecating, to make fun of myself. If listen, if
you look at my phone right now, I'm sure that
my friends and I were, like, we're beating each other
every day, like just making fun of you do. Let's
(20:06):
start personalities, like we're all self deprecating. Like you know,
for me, by the way, there's a lot to make
fun of. There's a lot of easy things to give
myself a hard time about. But look you gotta know
what you're good at, what you're not good at, and
you know you gotta, you know, build organizations around what
are you not strong at. Like you know, for me,
if I try to get people to do exactly what
I do, but I'm good at that, then we're like
in the way of each other. Conversely, like if I
don't have people who do all the things I stick at,
(20:27):
then we're never going to be successful. TV ratings for
pro teams. NFL is better than college. Yeah, NBA's generally
better than college, NHL better than the college equivalent. So
that would lead me to believe with fanatics or a
company like LEGI but that the pro sales are much
(20:48):
greater than college. But you get these tribal fan bases,
for instance in the South Alabama, Georgia. Would I ever
be surprised, how does call ledge of merchandise sell compared
to pro merchandise, you'd be surprised. So college is the
second biggest business, So NFL is one. Colleges to college
(21:09):
football or basketball or both just college together would be two.
Because you know, we're not looking as you know, even
though you might say, hey, Alabama is obviously a football school,
you know, we're looking at the sales of you know,
a university, you know, for the university, not kind of
pro sport basis. Obviously we know what rives what. But
I'll tell you college is our second largest business and
is growing like crazy. It's the fastest growing business that
(21:31):
we had. Why do you think that is? Because it
wasn't where we started. We started in the pro business,
so I think we made more progress than pro sports
early and we kind of playing catch up in soccer
and college today. To be honest, the biggest support is
actually soccer. Second biggest sport for US would be the NFL.
The third biggest sport would be college. Kind of long
term today it's still NFL one, College two. But I
(21:53):
think long term for US, soccer should be our our
biggest business. Internationally, Are there things that sell here and
not other places? Like? Is there something in Europe that's
stylistically this doesn't work here? I'll tell you something. Right now,
Lids is opening hundreds of stores in Europe for the
first time, and there's so many fans of the product
we sell. You know, we sell so much. You know,
(22:14):
baseball caps in Europe, they're not fans of the teams
the fans of the product. And so that's a great
opportunity for us. You're talking about like, you know, if
you go if you said outside of lid store and saying, hey,
why are you buying that, and be like, because that's
a cool product. I like that product. It's fashionable. I
enjoy wearing it. It's not because hey, I'm a diehard
fan of the you know, Saint Louis Cardinals as an example.
The great thing about our business is things change every
(22:35):
day based on how does the player perform, how does
a team perform. If I looked at today's sales, you'd
see there's always things emerging, always things falling apart. I
guarantee you when Kevin Durant came back and said, hey,
you know what, I'm gonna stick with the nets. I'm
gonna make this work, his jersey sales would have immediately
blown up, okay, and leading into that, they would have
done poorly because people like, hey, this kid, you're gonna
play in the nets or not. And so that's the
(22:57):
great thing about this business. You know, great moments, bad moments,
great wins, bad losses. That drives the whole business. I
tried to years ago buy into an MLS team, and
I just couldn't afford it, and I tried LAFC, but
it was Tony Robbins and Magic and all that kind
of stuff. It was interesting you owned a hockey team
at NBA. The NBA is a very unique business where
(23:19):
there are a handful of agents and a handful of
star players that really run the league. The NFL is
about the shield. Tom Bradio retired tomorrow. The ratings will
go up. We watch it, we gamble on it. Basketball
has always been player driven. Hockey isn't necessarily the NA
Baseball is a front office driven when you own that
NBA team, because I've always thought they report a lot
(23:43):
of NBA teams don't make money, and it's when you
buy and the stars you have. If you looked at
the NBA when you were an owner and said, hey,
I would tweak this. I would tweak that if I
was Adam Silver, was there anything as an owner you
were ever frustrated with? So, first of a tell you,
I believe the NBA is incredibly well positioned, strategically, very
(24:07):
global business. You know when you talk about kind of
you know, it's kind of run by stars. I don't
look at it that way. The way I look at
it is I love to have a partnership in whatever
we do, and whether it's with the ten thousand plus
associates at fanatics, whether it's you know when we were
up until recently when I was, you know, an owner
of the Sixers. Yeah, you're in partnerships with you know,
the people who you know play the game. It's the
(24:29):
same thing in the NFL. I think that's a healthy
mentality to say, you know what, I usually respect ambiration
for my players. I want to work with them. I
want to have a great relationship with them. I think
it was an edge like to me, I look and say,
look at you know, our best two players today, Joel
and Beat and James Harden. You know our team has
a great relationship with those players. I have a great
relationship with those players. I think those players have done
a lot to help the Sixers position as well as possible.
(24:51):
Look at James Harden, who just played for fourteen million
dollars less because he wants to figure out how to
win a championship in Philadelphi. He didn't come to us
and leverages. He came down and said, hey, I want
to take money off of my contract so I can
get better teammates around me, so we can have the
best odds to in a championship this year. So to me,
if you have the right mentality, you know how to
work with people, how to work together with people. I
think that's an advantage. You know, some people may say, hey,
(25:12):
you know they don't like the people have so much power.
I do with powerful people every day, and you know
my jobs. Have a great relaship with those powerful people,
and figure out how to work, whether they play it
on the court, whether they're partners of ours, whether they're
owners of ours, whether they're commissioners, whether there are fans.
I mean, you got treat everyody of the right way,
and then you get a good outcome. When you do
acquire a company and you know it's it's labyrinth of
attorneys and accountants, you seem more of a buyer than
(25:36):
a seller. To me, you feel like I don't always
sell anything. Yeah, you feel like a builder and a buyer. Again,
it's a personality thing. Have you ever sold anything and
regretted it? Even a car? I had an old BMW
I sold it, I regretted in an hour later. First
of all, I don't have the personality to ever look back,
and like, the only thing I want to do when
(25:57):
I look back is learned to get better. I don't
like what's done done. Like, by the way, if I
go out and I screw something up, all I want
to do is learn from that. L Okay, I don't
want to go back and say, like, oh my god,
this is going to eat me up. At first of all,
I'm trying to think. I think of one thing that
I sold that I regret, and I literally do not
have one example of it. Okay, by the way, I
suld things like I had a you know, I'm one
hundred percent locked in building fanatics right now. So I
(26:19):
had business shop runer that we sold in Fanacs a
couple of years ago. I felt great about it because
it allowed me to focus more of my energy on Fanatics.
I'd love to build, Like I'm a true entrepreneur at heart.
It's fun, it's support for me again. I remember I
started by telling you I sucked at sports, I sucked
at school. What was I good at? I was good
at building, and so you got to gravitate to what
you're good at. So like, you know, the only time
I would sell something if I thought, like, you know,
(26:41):
I got it wrong. It wasn't working. I sold GSI
Commerce for two at billion dollars to eBay in twenty eleven,
which is the first company I started, because I felt
that was the best thing for the company. And I
really thought that I had a massive opportunity if I
reinvented Fanatics, which was this little business that they didn't want,
And it was great for me that I was able
to day on the business and said, hey, Michael, would
(27:01):
you be willing to buy this? And I had this
big vision. It was completely different for what it was.
But you know, I guess there's sellers and there's builders.
I'm a builder. The sports uniforms, I like the Dodgers
home uniform clean. I like the next home uniform with
the piping, the orange and blue. It's clean. My least
(27:21):
favorite uniform ever was the mid eighties. The Vancouver Canucks
wore something that was black with a V. It looked
like something your grandpa would wear to Thanksgiving and people
would talk about it for like two hours, like he
picked the wrong slaughter. Are there things ever? In the
merchandise business you're like, how does that sell? It goes
against your instincts. Definitely, I like clean, not like every year,
(27:45):
like every month, I'll look at something and be like,
this isn't good enough. We need to do better. I'll
give you an example right now, and I'll look at
some of the championship products that will make I'll be like,
this is the same ship we've been doing for dozens
of years. Like, no, we have to do better, but
you know what, that's our job. Like right now, we've
kind of we've made the experience better, but we haven't.
Like we're not good enough, Like we need to make
(28:06):
better product, faster delivery, more innovation, more breath Like, yeah,
I look at all I look at stuff all the time.
We'd be like it's not near good enough. Yeah, I
like I think the Baltimore Ravens. That uniform feels like Baltimore.
It feels like it's got a little chip on it shoulder.
Who was your when you were a kid? Who was
your favorite team? Definitely the Sixers, not even a question,
(28:28):
so you buy your favorite team? Yeah, look I was Porch.
I grew up in It's actually a great story. I
don't think I've ever told the story before. But so
I grew up in Philadelphia, born and raised. Lived my
entire life there, including the still now and the guy
that owned the Philadelphia Sixers was my next door neighbor,
Ed Snyder. I lived on a lives in Mona now. Yeah,
he lived in Mona Ceda until I passed away few
(28:49):
years ago. It's great, great, great, great man. And in
two thousand eleven I sold Fanatics. I think it was
March twenty eight to twenty eleven and Ed Snyder called me.
He said, hey, I want to come over, and came
over the bottle of champagne. He said to me, hey, Michael,
you know what you know first congratulation and selling a company.
He said, you know you should buy the six Ers
from me. He said, you know I'm selling the team.
(29:12):
I said, you know what, This team loses a lot
of money. You know, I'm like focused on Fanatics. You know,
I don't want to spend my time this. I thought
they were gonna sell the team for four hundred million dollars,
and you know you had to come with four undred
million dollars. I was losing thirty forty million dollars a year.
I didn't do any work. I said. Now I'm not interesting.
He says, you know, I don't, you know, I like
you too much. I don't want you to buy the team. Okay.
Then Josh Harris and Dave Blitz about the team and
(29:32):
they were looking for a local partner, and that's when
I met them and I realized they didn't actually pay
four hundred million dollars. They bought it for two hundred
and eighty million dollars. And by the way, they were
able to borrow whenever it was one hundred and thirty
five million dollars. It was like instead of being a
four dred million dollars check, it was like maybe one
hundred and thirty or one hundred and fifty million dollars check.
And in addition to that, the team wasn't actually gonna
lose forty or fifty million dollars in anymore. It was
(29:53):
actually on the path to making money. And I realized,
you don't. I wasn't educated. But for me it was fine.
It was Josh and David, we're incredible partners. I was
fortunate to work with them, and for me, it adds
is the massive opportunity, and it's a company today that
I think can be, you know, potentially the most valuable
company in sports. One of the most valuable companies in technology.
As I said, I feel like when the fresh quarter
(30:14):
of the game, it's like I am locked in the
laser focus, Like I'm working at this, you know, sixteen
eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, you know,
probably fifty one weeks a year. When I look at fanatics,
I say to myself, Man, this is wow gaming merchandise,
because I believe this to be true. When I was
a kid watching television, I didn't understand how everybody didn't
(30:35):
like sports. Everything was scripted. I don't say that at all. Exports.
I don't understand it, like it's the only thing. It's incredible.
How do you take your ownership of a sports team?
Can you transfer it and go? Man? This is something
I learned from the NBA. Do you take lessons from
businesses or do stuff not crossover? A lot? It absolutely
(30:55):
crosses over, you know. I think my entreprene neural mentality,
my kind of pretty like, you know, kind of down
to earth, relatable personality by the way, that relates well
to players. Everywhere I go, I'm you know, seeing people
and you know, we're all helping each other building. I
think it's like like the same mentality I use in
sports with the Sixers, it was the same mentality. I
(31:17):
use business and fanatics and vice the verse. And by
the way, I learn all the time from each business.
I'll learn about players who were calling up and say, hey, Rube,
how do I get on the home page of Fanatics
or how can we do things together with fanatics because
they're interested, they want to build their brands. I'll learn
other people who aren't a nursing. You'll see who are
the hard workers, who are the lazy people who have
certain priorities, who don't care about things. You learn so
(31:38):
much from from each of the businesses, and I think
for me it was a you know, being part of
the six Ers for eleven years, it was a great education.
It was great experience. The only regret I have is
we haven't won yet, and that's a failure. Like every
year you own a sports team, if you don't win
the championship, you failed And if you look at it
any other way, you're a bad owner. Okay, like literally,
you have a three percent chance to win a championship
(31:58):
and that's your job. If you don't do that job,
you're not doing your job. You've failed and sour prosessly
eleven years we didn't win, and that's something like I think, Look,
we have a championship contending team today, we were on one.
Yet what crushes you more? A bad earnings reported fanatics
or a playoff elimination game in the NBA? Which one
do you? That's a great question. Um, both a crushing
(32:22):
I mean, I don't like. I don't like to lose.
But the good thing with me, you lose all the time.
When you lose, I pick up and I'm like, that
was Jesse's news. Let's go. You know, I don't. I'm
not looking back. I'm all they saying, how do we
get better? How do we go for it? But I've
had I've had many of both. So fanatics is B
two C. It's a business two consumer business, okay, And
we don't want to do anything we said. People call
(32:43):
us all the time and say, hey, do you want
to buy this business? Is B to B the business like, No,
we are a business to consumer digital company. If it's
not digital, if it's not consumer, we have no interesting
all right, gaming is business to consumer? Yeah? Why does
that attract you? Why does B two C attract you? Yeah?
You know, for me, it's really about being able to
service the digital sports fan wherever they want to be.
Service to euro fan. Yeah, for me, I gotta tell
(33:04):
you when I think about Vanax in the future and
I could potentially watch live sports bet on them, get
the jersey from the player, I like, get the training
card to the digital an FT, get a ticket to
an event on one place. That's like an incredible experience.
So for me, what we have is one brand and
one fan base that we can do so many different
(33:25):
things digitally with them. But the most important thing we
need to do every day is say, how do we
do it better? It's not good what we're doing. How
do we improve? How do we innovate? Because you know,
I still say like, yeah, we've met a lot of progress,
and you know, two hundred fifty million dollars last year.
I think we could be, you know, approaching ten million
dollars next year. It's not you know, it's not good enough.
What keeps you up at night? I'm the worst sleep
(33:46):
in the planet. I said to my girlfriend this morning,
like I literally need a sleep doctor. Like I could
sleep three hours and then I wake up and no
matter how many times they say, don't look at your phone.
I look at my phone, I start responding to text messages,
responding to emails that I look at news. What's going
on in this world? You can obviously tell me a
pretty competitive human being, you'd like to win. I don't
really believe in losing, even though it happens to the
(34:07):
best of us. So you know, for me, what keeps
me up at night is we're growing quick, not having
the wheels come off the bus, not doing you know,
dumb things, self inflicted things. You know, I want to
make sure you're making the big decisions that look, we're
gonna fail. You have lots of failures every day, and
a compy you fail. I want to fail fast, like
you know for me, and I'm gonna fail, Let's do
it fast and move on. Let's not have a slow
pain for failure. Let's do it fast and get it
(34:28):
out of the way. One of don't the vagaries or
one of the problems with being rich and powerful is
that people are often afraid to confront you or disagree
with you. How do you ensure that when you walk
into a room. Yeah, your lieutenants are willing to say, Michael,
I think you're completely wrong on this. Yeah, So first
(34:48):
of all, I love that, and I create that culture.
That's a bad leader. Who doesn't, you know, create the
relationships with their with their leaders where they know they
have to come and say, Like people come and say
this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. I'll come
up and say, I got a great idea and one
of my If any of my trust people who know
me work with me, if they can't sit by me,
if someone's a yes man, they're out, Like I've no interest.
You talk about somebody, I've no interest been working with
(35:09):
this yes people. I want people who going to make
us better, challenge us and I every day, you know,
we debate stuff. That's like, that's our life. Whether I'm
you know, banching with my friends, banching with executives, that's
who I am. It's also my personality pretty, you know,
I'm like pretty, you know, down to earth broads into
a you know, guys build a decent sized business. Yeah.
So the best ideas I get are being in groups
of people and listening and kind of sponging it. Where
(35:32):
do your best ideas come from? We must be like
kindred spirits, because I would have given you exactly the
same answer I would have told you. It's from getting
really smart people of different backgrounds around me and then
being a sponge, and I'll contribute and we can all
learn from each other. So people said to me all
the way, Like someone just said to me last night,
like you seem comfortable anywhere. I'm like, I could go
in the roughest neighborhood in the world and enjoy talking
(35:52):
to people and asking questions and learning, by the way,
watching what the where and what fashion trends are developing.
You know, what do they want, what do they need?
How can I help them? How can they help me
to being you know and you know, and with any
type of sports fan like that. That's that's how I learned.
Like I'm a sponge. That's literally I said, if you
watch anything I've ever said, I'm a sponge. My first
(36:14):
impression when you walked in is you dressed like a
young fan and you're fifty and so that's impressive to
me because I believe in your business you have to
relate to these guys. Yeah, okay, not me as much. Right,
So you dress as a billionaire, you dressed like a fan.
I don't know if you ever thought about that. You're
(36:36):
in young businesses. You know, seventy five year old guys
don't wear as many baseball hats. You go to a
Mets game, everybody's got one on. So do you force
yourself tech music people? How do you stay young and
twitchy with culture? Because the world living now, it's so fluid, Michael,
Like every fifteen minutes there's new tech. Yeah. So first
(36:57):
of all, I think you need to be authentic to yourself.
Like I dressed the way I want and by the way,
when someone will say, hey, you have to wear this
to this, I'm just like, I am who I am.
I don't give a shit yea, And you know if
someone doesn't like me, you know what I just you
gotta be authentic, gotta be who you are. The biggest
thing I like. I do love having all different backgrounds
around me because that gives us an opportunity to learn
from different people and take different perspectives. But look, I
(37:19):
have a young mentality, like I don't like I generally
will say as a stereotype, and I probably feel bad
saying I don't like being about old people in general
because it makes me feel old, Versus I like to
be around young people that can learn from growth from
I won't go to Palm Springs because of that. Yeah,
I feel old. Park City people ski and everybody in
LA loves Palm Springs, and I'm like, I don't play bridge,
(37:41):
it's old. I go, I want to hear from Conchella.
Well that's young. Sorry, nobody in the Rady's there. No,
I think that's a really could have been the most
person in Cachella. Finally, I remember interviewing full Night one
time and I asked this question. My producers like, that
is such a pithy, silly question. But when you can
have anything, you know the old saying, oh, what do
you get somebody that has everything? You could have any
(38:03):
piece of sports memorabilia you've wanted. I'm not a sports
memorabilia collector. I don't have a press pass i've ever had.
But is there anything like if somebody told me what
could I have? I say, give me Muhammad all these
gloves against Foreman and Zaire. That to me was the
one of the first moments as a kid. I was
watching a JP patch's morning show. The product that I
(38:24):
don't have, this is something you don't have. It's my
first memory of me knowing sports is a cartoon on
a Saturday morning, breaking in and said, Muhammad Ali's beat
George Foreman, this is a cartoon show in Seattle. And
to me it was the first moment I was a
huge Ali fan. It was the first sports moment. I
was like, well, I'm really into this. I did a
(38:46):
book cover mimicking a Muhammad Ali shoot, so that to
me would be the sports thing. Do you have one?
I'll have you don't have? Yes? What is it? This
is so easy? What do you think I want? Okay,
let me guess doctor Jay's the uniform when he did
the dunk over Michael Cooper or the that's a good
(39:08):
guess for you're off by about thirty or forty years.
I want a two thousand and twenty two two thousand
and twenty three six ers Championship ring. Those are hard
to get, you know. That's why I want it, because
you don't want the ship that's hard to get, because
that's what makes it interesting. You can't even find that
on an eBay. It's not currently available on the market.
(39:28):
You know what, you asked me what I want? That's
what I want. Well, it's been great for me, Thank
you so much. I learned a lot of it was
fun for me. The volume
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Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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