Ep 04: The Politics of Investing in Women’s Sports - Featuring Alexis Ohanian Sr. - Spolitics

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, what's up everybody. I'm Jamel Hill and welcome to
politics and iHeart podcast and Unbothered network production. Time to
get spolitical. My first two years as a professional sports reporter,
I primarily covered women's sports. I was working at the

(00:21):
News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the paper
made the bold decision to ride the wave of women's sports. Now,
this was nineteen ninety seven. The newspaper's decision to dedicate
a reporter me to covering primarily women's sports was fairly uncommon.
At the time. Female athletes generated very little media coverage.
Nineteen ninety six, though, was an undeniably shape shifting year

(00:43):
for women's sports, and the News of Rebserver had the
foresight to understand that women deserved more coverage. In ninety six,
the Olympic Games were held in Atlanta, and female athletes
were the stars of the games. Women's soccer debuted as
an Olympic sport, and the US women's soccer team took
home the first gold medal.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's over United States Test one way, first ever hold
that a women's soucker two one over chine Off.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
The US women's gymnastics team celebrated as first team gold
medal with a group that came to be known as
the Magnificent Seven.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Up until the Vaults, it looked like the Americans would
be a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Her first goal nine point one.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Sixteen not high enough.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
A couple of things at stake here. It's drug scores big.
She will not only win the team goal, but she
will advance to the individual all around. Her teammate Mochiani
will not. She knows what to do. She will go
and she is ready. Karen's drug is hurt. She is

(01:53):
hurt badly right well, Tad, we saw her lipping after
the first ball. She has either twisted her ankle or
or something worse. She hurt herself on the first ball.

(02:15):
Probably the last thing she should have done was the
ball to again.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
But she did and now she.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Isn't a lot of band. We have got to find
out if she's nine seven one tone. She has done it.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
And the US women's national basketball team solidified the future
of professional women's basketball in America with a dominant Olympic
run in which they won eight games by an average
of twenty nine points and a then record crowd of
nearly thirty four thousand fans in the Georgia Dome witnessed
them obliterate Australia in the gold medal game. Some mendous explained, they're.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
On their faces, the capacity crowd here at the Georgia Dome,
the final seconds, there's the buzzard. What's official? The United
States says that women's basketball team.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
In the world, but the women accomplished in Atlanta was
yet another example of women having a watershed moment and
proving that as long as they gave us greatness, we
were going to watch. And now twenty twenty four is
proving to be another watershed year for women's sports. This
year has been the year of the female athlete from
the women in the College Basketball National Championship Game outrating

(03:17):
the men for the first time in history, to Caitlin
Clark's excellence driving the WNBA to new heights, to the
women powering this country at the Paris Olympics, to the
National Women's Soccer League also enjoying a record year in
viewership and attendance. Jane McManus, an adjunct professor at NYU,
columnist and author of the upcoming book Fast Track, which
is about the surging business of women's sports, believes this

(03:40):
latest moment in women's sports is in line with what
we've already seen.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
This is actually a process that started a long time ago,
and there's a lot of a lot that has held
women's sports back as much as there have been people
now putting energy into the space. But yeah, of course
you go back to nineteen seventy two seventy three had
a couple of things happened at that time time. You
had Billy Jean King, of course, the Battle of the Sexes,
beating Bobby Riggs, and just very visibly being a woman

(04:07):
who could beat a man in a one on one
sporting contest. I think there were a lot of people
who didn't think that was possible. Then you will said,
Title nine the year before was passed, and of course
Title nine was never really originally meant to be about
sports or about women playing sports. It was more about
educational opportunities in institutions of higher learning. So but of

(04:27):
course once you actually read it, it does include sports.
There's nothing about it that excludes sports. So that created
a lot of opportunities as well.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
The investment in women's sports has largely been more stopped
than start. Regardless of the number of times women's sports
has proven to be a viable product. As much as
you might be tempted to believe that the underinvestment in
women's sports is just the result of women's sports not
being as interesting or dynamic as men's, history shows that
more often than not, the lack of investment was entirely purposeful.

(04:56):
In nineteen seventy two, Congress enacted Title nine, one of
the most significant pieces of legislation this country has seen
in the last fifty years. The law was pretty simple.
It prevented sex discrimination in any educational program or activity
receiving federal funding. But why was Title nine even necessary?
Once upon a time, people believed that if women participated

(05:17):
in sports, it would hurt their reproductive organs true story.
They were also worried women would become too masculine, and
they had these other crazy notions about how women would
be impacted by participating in sports. Consider this history lesson
from Kelly Harper, the former head coach of Tennessee women's basketball.

Speaker 5 (05:36):
So, during the time Title non legislation was being debated
in Congress, high school girls in the state of Tennessee
played a modified version of basketball.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
The game was six on six.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
Players were not allowed to cross the half fort nine.
You either were a defensive player or an offensive player,
and the game was basically three on three half court
basketball if the ball wasn't on your end of the court.
While this version of basketball was played because many felt
five on five was too strenuous for girls, the six
on six game was widely popular in America.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
And Gordon, a nineteen fifty nine graduate of Harvard who
played women's basketball there, recalled this incident to the Harvard
Gazette that took place when the Harvard women were playing
against Pembroke College. Bain said, we used to play half
court basketball because it was thought that women couldn't run
from one end of the court to the other. We
hadn't finished a varsity game, and they said, sorry, it's

(06:31):
our court, so we walked off the court. That's the
way it was in those days. Now, Banin's story was
a common one. Female athletes were treated as an afterthought
and often had to deal with substandard equipment, facilities, and
overall treatment. Now, right before Title nine passed, only thirty
thousand women played college sports. In nineteen seventy one, three

(06:53):
point seven million boys were participating in high school sports,
compared to two hundred and ninety four thousand girls in
seventy one. Women's college sports were governed by the AIAW,
the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. It was women
led and women run. The league even managed to strike
deals with ESPN and NBC to broadcast all of its championships.

(07:16):
When Title nine passed, the NCAA didn't want anything to
do with women's sports. In fact, the NCAA filed a
bunch of lawsuits to try to avoid complying with Title knine.
But once they lost that battle, they had a new goal,
totally destroying the AIAW because they viewed the organization as
a threat. The NCAAA eventually wore the AIAW down through

(07:36):
legal challenges and by luring member institutions to its side,
But just like any good colonizer, they made sure that
the women knew their place, even though they spearheaded the takeover.
When the NCAA took over women's sports, ninety percent of
the teams were coached by women, and the majority of
the people overseeing those sports also were women. A little
over a decade after the NCAA took over, only half

(07:58):
of those teams were coached by women, and today among
the Power conferences there's only six women athletic directors. The
NCAA has had plenty of opportunities since taking over women's
sports to actually invest in boost it, but they mostly
chose not to. In nineteen eighty three, USC basketball legend
Shcheryl Miller made her debut on national television against Louisiana Tech.

(08:19):
The game aired on CBS and attracted nearly twelve million viewers.
Let's see here, a big star out of Los Angeles
who can draw that kind of attention kind of seems
like the perfect time to double down on women's basketball. Instead,
the NCUBA spent years prioritizing, promoting, and cultivating men's basketball,
resulting in the men's tournament being worth billions of dollars.

(08:42):
That's not just my opinion, but it's the findings of
a gender equity review commissioned by the nc DOUBLA. Now,
the reason the NCAA commissioned that review is because they
got put on blast in twenty twenty one when the
men's and women's tournaments took place in bubble environments because
of COVID. Thanks to former basketball players on a print,
we got an up close. Look at what the NCUBA

(09:04):
really thought about women.

Speaker 6 (09:06):
I got something to show, y'all. So for the NCUBA
March Madness, the biggest tournament in college basketball for women,
this is our weight room. Let me show y'all the
men's weight room now in pictures of our weight room
got released versus the men's. NCUBA cannot with the statement
saying that it wasn't money, it was space that was
a problem.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Let me show y'all something else.

Speaker 6 (09:25):
Here's our practice court, right, and then here's that weight room,
and then here's all this extra space. If you aren't
have said about this problem, then you're a part of it.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
As Sadona said, it wasn't a money issue. ESPN was
paying the nc doublea hundreds of millions of dollars to
broadcast women's sports. They gave the women some bullshit equipment
simply because they could. That attitude has been pervasive in
the history of women's sports. It's not that women can't sell,
it's that the people in charge don't even try. Men's

(09:57):
sports often automatically received the benefit of the doubt when
it comes to investment. In two thousand and one, the
XFL debuted. It was the brainchild of Vence McMahon. Despite
being a completely unproven product out the gate, the XFL
had a fifty to fifty partnership with NBC. Their games
were broadcast across three networks, NBC, UPN, and TNN. After

(10:19):
generating huge ratings and a season opener, the ratings plummeted
and it was a bona fide money loser. That iteration
of the XFL lasted one year. When Duane the Rock
Johnson bought the XFL later on and attempted a comeback,
he lost sixty million dollars. The USFL and the XFL
have since merged. But the point is, despite losing a

(10:39):
ton of money, the investment is still there and the
games are being played on ABC, ESPN, and Fox. That
kind of investment, even with no return, is typical in
men's sports, and a lot of times those investments are
maintained because there is hope and belief that things will
eventually change. But women's sports don't often get that same

(11:00):
benefit of the doubt or receive that same energy. To
grow something, you have to keep investigating. Women are told
out the gate they aren't worth it, or and this
is my favorite, that it's their own fault they aren't
more successful. Yes, some have had the audacity to blame
women for why women's sports aren't Further along, a narrative

(11:21):
has been that if women became bigger fans of women's sports,
things would be different. Now. As it stands, about fifteen
percent of women watch women's sports on a daily or
weekly basis, compared to twenty three percent among men. Obviously,
there's a disparity, and the number of women supporting women's
sports should be higher, but men have been the primary
gatekeepers when it comes to women's sports, controlling the access,

(11:43):
the budget, and the media coverage. So blaming women for
structural barriers they didn't create, well, let's given pull yourself
up by the bootstraps. Women's sports were never a charity,
but that should be really clear now that they've reached
this important historic inflection point in their history. The expectation
is that by the end of this year, women's sports
will have generated over a billion dollars in revenue for

(12:06):
the first time in history. According to j McManus, there
is an entirely new business narrative being created around women's sports.

Speaker 4 (12:15):
Yeah, so this is something that Natie Rollinson talks about
she's you know, the chairperson at the Chicago Sky and
you know when she talks about this idea of value
and valuing yourself and really expecting more that you know,
she looks for investors, for example, who are not looking
at this as a five ZHO three C charity. She's
really looking for people who are you know, investing in

(12:37):
the long term and see the value in women's sport.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Like it or not, the best investment in sports right
now is women. I'm Jamelle Hill and I approve this message.
Coming up next someone who has won big by investing
in women's sports, and not just because of his own
personal morality, but because it's a money maker. He also
happens to have a fairly deep attachment to one of

(13:00):
the greatest athletes in history. Up next on his politics
Alexis on Hanny and senior entrepreneur and proud husband of
these Serena Williams. Alexis, I want to thank you so
much for joining the podcast, and right the top, I

(13:21):
want to make you think. I hope to make you
get your out. But this is a question I ask
every guest that appears on politics and that is named
the athlete or even the moment that made you love.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Sports Sean Taylor, And there was a moment. It was
Monday night football in Dallas, and it was the night
my mom was diagnosed with ternal brain cancer. And I

(13:58):
was in a bar watching this game with a buddy
of mine, my dad. My dad did we were getting
our but just whooked. Skins did not have a very
good offense back then, and I think we were down
thirteen to nothing and it was just an ugly game,

(14:18):
most scoring ugly, and and my dad turned it off
and he was just like, I can't I can't keep us.
Has been the worst possible day, right, I can't watch him.
But I stayed to the end. And there were a
couple of very very crucial plays, some deep balls from
Mark Brunel to Santana Moss almost back to back for touchdowns.
But what sealed the deal was my favorite player, Sean

(14:42):
with a crucial I think it was a third down stop,
it might have been a fourth down. The Cowboys were
just trying to get in field goal range, which would
have given them the win, and Patrick Creighton took this pass,
caught it. He took two maybe three steps. I'm being
picky now, but Sean just on loads on them, ball
pops out and I was ruling complete pass. Again. If

(15:03):
you watch it again, I'd argue it should have been
a fumble, which the Skins recovered, but that's fine, but
it still was incomplete pass and it was either third
down or fourth down. But it was just defining. And
you know, what was easily the worst day of my
life at that point was fixed at least for the
day because of Shawn's talents, because the whole team coming

(15:26):
through with this upset last minute, it just felt symbolically,
it felt God just life changing. It was a weird
thing because, yeah, how the team performed on that Monday
night against an art tribal obviously had nothing to do
with how my mom was going to deal with this

(15:47):
brain cancer. But it felt like as dark as it got,
there was still light. There was still a reason to
be hopeful. And you know that night, you know, Skins
came up on top of Manders Now came up on
top up and for the next three four years, my
mom fought like hell. The cancer ultimately one but it

(16:08):
was so inspiring. And that's when I was already a
Sean Taylor fan. And like I said, it wasn't for
the touchdowns. So I mean, Tanna had two great touchdowns,
but I always had I always like, maybe it's because
I played defense in high school, but I always liked
the guys on the d more. They were, you know,
less flashy. They're not they're not there putting up points
every day. They're just doing the work. And yeah, that

(16:31):
made me fall over sports.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah, and I guess I don't know if you've thought
about it in this terms, in terms of, you know,
I don't know how often you've shared that story, but
you know, you mentioned the fact that you lost somebody
dear to you and your mother, but obviously Sean Taylor
also not here anymore. So to have that connective tissue
there with such a very specific sports memory with two
people who aren't there, I don't know if you've ever

(16:53):
thought about it in those terms.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
I definitely have. And he was also born eighty three,
so he's the same age, would have been in the
same age as me. I now have two daughters. He
obviously had one, and it just, I don't know, you
find you find ways to find the connection right as
a fan to these players, and yeah, it's a it's

(17:18):
such a strange thing because you grow up thinking of
it as almost like a religion. Like you, I grew
up indoctrinated by my father. He would be very disappointed
in me if I became a Cowboys fan, for instance,
or any other team fan in the NFL. And even

(17:38):
when I stepped away from supporting the team for those
last once Olympia was born, I was like, I can't
do this to her because at the time the team
was still owned by Dan Snyder, and I was just like,
I can't. I don't want to indoctrinate you in this
because it's so against my values at this point, like
I just can't. Now obviously new ownership, I'm back. It's
great to be back, and at the timing, it's been

(18:00):
pretty swift turnaround. I we'll see it still early. But
it's so funny because this is a we're talking about
a kids game that adults play and at least the
men get paid a lot of money for for now
the wer War two. But it's just I think it'll
be one of the last parts of American society and

(18:23):
culture that will still be thriving in a big way
even ten years from now, as technology as AI, as
all these things continue to get better. And better and better.
There's I think, going to be even more reason why
we will love sport, and we'll make these connections between
what these humans do on the field and our own lives.

(18:46):
That gets us fired up, It makes us happy, it
makes us sad, it makes us angry, and at its best,
I think it can be a tremendous unifier for folks
and really powerful.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, I'm really happy for Washington fans because you all
have been through a lot. Just mentioned the horrible ownership
of Dan Snyder, who was definitely one of the worst
owners in sports for a lot of reasons, most of
which did not have to do with the sometimes product
that they put it on the feet. It was for
a lot of other Yeah, he was just seemingly coming

(19:19):
off like a very horrible human being. But as you mentioned,
that's all in the past. But you know, you mentioned
something there about kind of alluding to what sports is
going to look like in the future, and you, in
the present are making a monstrous investment in women's sports
because it seems like you have not only understood what

(19:41):
the future in sports may entail, you've understood that women
are a huge part of this. And when I look
at the course of your career as a financier, as
somebody who's in tech, you have been able to master
putting your money behind the causes that you care about
in a way that's very tricky for a lot of
people in your position. So what was it in that

(20:02):
inspired you to use your money in ways that you
feel like, as you know, Pollyannish as it may sound,
to make the.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
World look all of my every investment I make is
first and foremost and investment right, the business matters above all.
And I want to show in all these investments in
women's sports, like don't get it twisted, Like yes, obviously
I'm married to Serena the Goat, Yes I have two daughters,

(20:32):
But the number one driving force behind all these investments,
starting with Angel City back in twenty nineteen, has been
business opportunity. And sure those things matter to me too,
but the business has to come first and foremost. And
what I found when I rage tweeted back in March
and nineteen about how undervalued women's in this case soccer

(20:52):
was in the United States, I came at it from
a business standpoint, and I knew that these there were
women on this World Cup team in twenty nineteen that
I knew about, even though I wasn't a fan of
the sport, and that showed me that there was stardom
right So Alex Morgan, Megan Rapino. Now there's a reason
I got a Morgan jersey up here signed. That was
the That was the jersey she signed for me, technically

(21:14):
for Olympia when she came down in March and nineteen
in response to my tweet threat when I said I'm
gonna buy an n TOWSL team who can help me?
And she volunteered it. I got hired a car to
bring her down and I just took notes for like
three hours, asking her all these pretty naive questions about
what was the state of women's soccer in all the
areas where it could be better. And that convinced me.

(21:36):
And then that you obviously led me to start in
Angel City and funding it, and I think that was
the beginning of a realization. And believe me, this was
one of the most contentious investments I had ever made.
I had men and women investors tell me that this
would never be successful, that women's sports was you know,

(21:57):
at best, you could point to a couple teams that
were worth I don't know at the time, maybe tens
of millions of dollars max, and that there could never
be a billion dollar women's professional sports team franchise. And
it's funny because in this world of early stage investing,
you know, I've been very fortunate, right sitting aside creating

(22:18):
and turning around Reddit, I've been the first investor in
companies like coinbase. So back in twenty twelve, like Brian Armstrong,
brilliant founder and CEO, had this vision that people would
want to transact this magical Internet money Bitcoin as often
as as potentially USD, and that there would need to
be like a JP Morgan Chase for crypto. And in

(22:41):
my industry, someone advocating for magic Internet money to one
day be worth billions or trillions of dollars is a
very reasonable pitch. It's it's bold, it's ambitious. But you
can sit there and be like, okay, yeah, and obviously
I did well investing in that, But you do the
same thing around women's sports, and all of a sudden,

(23:02):
it's like whoa, whoa, whoa hold on, now, that's just nuts, right,
there's no way, and it really it disappointed me. But
when I hear that I have to check my assumption
to sort of re underwrite again, but usually it gives
me even more resolve that what I'm doing is so
so so fundamentally right and low and behold. Right, Angel
City is now the most viable professional women's sports team

(23:24):
in the world, three hundred million dollars in value, and
that you know that team. It was a million dollar
expansion fee that I paid in twenty nineteen technically early
twenty twenty, so not bad for four years, right, And
I think the sky is the limit there. But then
my experiences of the NWSL, when I showed up at
that first Board of Governors meeting it, I met every

(23:47):
other owner and every single one of them had the
same point of view, which was no one really cares
about women's soccer. And I'd always ask my favorite question ask,
and it's the scariest question for some people was why
and and they'd kind of roll back to, well, like,
no one cares, right, no one watches the games, there's
only a few thousand people in the stadium. The one

(24:07):
city where it can work is Portland because it's you know,
soccer town, USA, and it's exception, not the rule. And
I said, well, why and and well, no one wants.
No one wants to watch. But I'm like a lot
of people seem like they want to watch every four
years for the World Cup, those same athletes are still playing.

(24:28):
Maybe it's because people don't know about it. Maybe it's
because owners aren't investing the money into it. And the
thing that I heard overwhelmingly was, you know, but this
is a charity thing, like I have a men's team
that I really care about. This is you know, it's
because I have a granddaughter who likes soccer, or it's
and it was this vicious trap. And some of these
people were well intentioned. Now there were others who weren't,

(24:53):
and it was it was very simple with them. I
was just like, listen, like, I don't get out of
bed unless I'm trying to build Literally, I said this,
unless I'm trying to build a billion dollar business, like
that's I come from tech. That's our bar. So I
wouldn't be here starting a team if I didn't think
it'd be worth at least a billion dollars. And if
you don't think that, that's fine, just move along, right,
We'll bring other folks in who are building enterprise value

(25:15):
in the long term, and that's that's fine, it's not.
It doesn't have to be for you, But that's that's
what gets me out of bed. And what was wild
and I think what was and as I spent more
time here, that I've come to find is there were
even well intentioned people who came at this from a
charity standpoint, and even that mired women's sports for so

(25:39):
so long, because even well intentioned folks are like, oh,
this is just a thing we're doing because of quality,
because of feminism. Because like, even again, even the well
intentioned folks, I think by by it. And that's why
I always make it so so so clear all this
I'm doing, whether it's Angel City, whether it's off season,
whether it's Athlos, whether it's been the Sports Bra, whether

(25:59):
it's been Together, which was an early investor in too,
Like this is all for the investment opportunity first and foremost.
I think there's a potential for great, great, great returns,
and yet it also aligns with my worldview. Sure, but
that's not first. And I think what's changed now, even
for years layers, you're starting to see that shift. But
I'll tell you what you you get under the hood,

(26:23):
and really quickly realize those that mindset alone at inception
changes the DNA of everything else down the road, or
that that fundamental DNA at the start has an impact
in every other decision going forward. It affects the types
of owners that get into the leagues, It affects the
type of people who get hired at the leagues. It
affects the decisions those people at the leagues make. It

(26:45):
affects and it just compounds and compounds, And thankfully I
had a front row seat to the most powerful counter
narrative in the world, which was Serena and Venus. Where
you have a sport in America biggest market I think
still biggest sports market in the world for a single country,

(27:05):
where the sport of tennis, which everyone would agree is
a tier one sport, global major sport. Is more popular
in the women's game than the men's. More Americans watch
the US Open final. Check it every year. ESPN reports
it more Americans watch the women's final than the men
and it doesn't even need to have an American woman
in it. More Americans watch the women and even if

(27:29):
it was equal, that would still be a story. But
like it's not. And so my favorite question why because
decades ago Billy Jean King forced pay equity. Once that
pay equity happened, now all of a sudden, let's just
use the US Opening as an example. It's the biggest
tournament here in the US. Right, They're like, okay, well,
we got to pay everyone equally. They're all here at

(27:49):
the same time. We might as well market them at
the same time. Since we got to put butts in seats.
Maybe you come for a women's match, but really, we're
going to get you in. I think this was their mindset. Really,
we know you're going to come for the men's match,
but like, let's get you a ticket here too. And
again you're just thinking about getting butts and seats, selling merch,
selling food and bev And then along comes generational talent,

(28:12):
and Serena and Venus are so great, and they're so
great in a space that is so not used to
them that folks can't stop talking about them, Folks can't
stop looking the way a whole ton of new fans
become fans of the sport because of them. And now
they've been given us Tennis has been given the greatest
gift they ever could have dreamed. Right, and now all

(28:33):
of a sudden, again Americans love greatness. You've got more
Americans showing up to see the greatness of the women
than the greatness of the men. Because again I love
Andy Roddock. You know, there are a bunch of other
great American men, but they just were not capital g
great in the way of Serena and Venus. And in
this country, boy do we love greatness. And so now

(28:55):
you have a sport where because all those things happened,
and again shout out to the og Billy Jean King,
you have the brands saying, well, yeah, these are multimillionaire
athletes who are defining culture, certainly in fashion. Who are
there was no Internet to break in the same way.

(29:16):
But if Serena and Venus had come up in the
age of social media, you better believe they would have
broken the Internet like weekly. And so brands are like, well,
we want to be where the attention is. We want
to be aligned with greatness. Here's the greatness, there's the attention, Like,
let's sign up. And now, all of a sudden, tennis
is the one sport where consistently you'll find multi multi

(29:36):
millionaire women athletes. Because all those things had to happen,
and then I'm just still sitting here in twenty nineteen going, well,
why the hell doesn't happen to other places? And you know,
soccer was the first I've been. I've been if I
had more hours in the day, I was tweeting about
what an opportunity basketball was about four years ago, and
if I had more hours in the day, I would
have leaned in more on a w team back then.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
But because I was like, I remember that, I remember
when you were tweeting about it, and you know, I'm
really glad that you made such a critical distinction. I
think when it comes to investment in women's sports, which
is the charity mindset versus the investment mindset, and at
least in my years of reporting on women's athletes and leagues,
is that I find that a lot of the times

(30:21):
the infrastructure is shall we say, lacking, not because it
is unable to, not because they can't afford to, but
simply because that charity mindset extends to how the athletes
are treated period. I bring up a couple of years
ago when the NCAA women's basketball players brought to the
attention through TikTok of you know, during COVID, right, they

(30:44):
where everybody's under the bubble, and they show what the
women's wait room look like versus what the men's and listen,
the women are on like a you know, two three
hundred million dollars deal through ESPN. They can afford some
dumb bills, all right, but they treated them that way
because they could not, because they could not afford it.
And so as somebody who is in an investment strategist

(31:07):
and sees these inequities, you know up close, how much
is that kind of mindset holding back women's sports from
blossoming financially and providing.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
That tweet went viral, and I attacked and and asked
the NC double A. I said, straight up, tweets are
still there. I'm pretty sure. I said, listen, if you're
not going to invest in the women of college basketball,
like just sell it, Like can I buy this tournament
from you?

Speaker 1 (31:39):
At the time women, you were ready to buy Women's
Best at the time, they woun't even let women say
March Madness because they believe that brand is too valuable.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
To let the women use. And in my argument, I said, listen,
if you just and again I come from the internet
as the red of guy. I I I understand the
value of traditional media for sure, but I lived sixteen
years of my life building in the free market of attention,
which is ruthless. Like you know, you could point to

(32:11):
the incumbents saying, well, like, we're not putting women's college
basketball on television because no one wants to watch it,
and because they've never put it on television in the
past or rarely given at the platform and the marketing,
they have numbers that justify quote unquote that no one
wants to watch it. And it's this vicious circular trap.
But on social media, where I believe attention has to

(32:33):
be earned every minute, it's not because some old guy decided, Hey,
this is going to go at the five o'clock slot.
Not to make fun of old guys, but all white
guys tend to run these things. It's because in the
free market of attention, people have chosen to follow the
athletes they care about. And if you looked back then
and I put this, I pointed this out the top
twenty athletes in college basketball, the top twenty women crushed

(32:58):
the top twenty men when it came to followers and engagement.
And my point to them was you're clearly messing up
because in the free market of attention, more people are
paying attention to the women Instagram is ubiquitous. They're not
hitting follow because they you know, because of feminism, or
because they they want to do the right thing, or
because it's a charity project. They're hitting follow because they

(33:19):
care more and there's an audience there that they had
to earn that isn't showing up for any other reason
other than they care. They're interested, they have their attention,
and if you just put them on TVs and market them,
you've got the data right there. Folks are going to
show up. And so I mean.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
It funny how that works, right, It's funny how that
I give you invest and how that goes along. I
want to ask you something because like you brought up
your mom earlier, and from what I've read, you did
a like a personal blog post that I read some
time ago that or you talked about what it felt
like for you to be able to share some of

(33:59):
your bild successes from Reddit with your with your mom.
You became a millionaire at twenty three years old. What
was that time like for you?

Speaker 2 (34:10):
It was it was definitely surreal because to be. I
mean literally, okay, hold on, we sold So I sold
Reddit two thousand and six October. Yeah, I sort of
just remember twenty two is at twenty three. Wow, and

(34:33):
you know, to make more money for sixteen months worth
of work than my parents would make their entire working lives.
Was already kind of crazy, like that didn't feel right.
It felt like I had gotten away with something. And
at the same time, you know, this point Mom would
have been diagnosed, was already starting her treatments chemo and
everything else. So at the same time, it was incredibly

(34:54):
liberating because I knew, hey, you know, she got to
hear that phone call from me letting her know at
all happened, money was in the bank. You know, her
belief in me was worth it. It paid off, and it
did give me some of the financial security to be
able to like spend that time and also just know
I could get her the best possible care, et cetera,

(35:15):
et cetera. But it was a very surreal feeling, and
I think the best thing that came out of it
for me was being at such a young age blessed
with this windfall and knowing just knowing what I should
be thinking about what I should be caring about, what

(35:36):
I should be prioritizing, and it was clear you see
someone going through that, you know very quickly what matters
in life, when you know, you get to see someone
basically deciding how they're going to spend their final years
and it's never about stuff. It is it is about people,
and it's about experiences with those people. And those are
the two things that she was optimizing for. And so

(35:58):
to come into that wealth and then also just be
be fortunate to keep, you know, keep building, keep finding
success as a inmester in a company builder. All these
years later, I feel like I've avoided a lot of
the pain that even peers of mine encountered when they
found wealth and didn't really have any kind of grounding
for it. And that's probably, frankly, that's probably the best

(36:19):
gift she ever could have given me, was that perspective.
But it definitely, it definitely felt surreal. And for all
the milestones I've had since, obviously coming back to Reddit,
turning it around I p O and then just professionally
as an investor in building seven seven six, there there
are so many times I wish I could call her,
or I wish you could be there to see that

(36:40):
debut of Athlos. But you know, then there's the personal stuff,
which obviously which even more she could have been a
part of, but gives you perspective, that's for sure, and
that that that I'm grateful for.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah, let's talk about Athles Athlo since she brought it up. Athlos,
which means you held a spectacular track event in New York.
My good friend Carrie Champion was a part of it.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
The show.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah, she was running the shows as the host. You
had Megan thee Stallion and you know Shonda Rhymes. It
was a star studed event and I haven't even gotten
to the athletes that were competing in it. Gabby Thomas,
who a lot of people watched her in this past Olympics.
Brown Like just a really tremendous event because once again,

(37:31):
the philosophy you just talked about, you took to put
in an action, which is little. So let me get
this straight. Every four years we're all in the track
and field. I've covered two Olympics track. The Olympics do
not start until track and field starts. It is a
marquee event. As much as I know people love the
US team, yet it is track and field is the event,
and you found a way to sort of capture that enthusiasm,

(37:54):
that interest and bring it to New York. What made
you decide, Hey, I want to push my chips to
the center of the table and go all in on
bringing track and field to the state too.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yes, so I clearly have never run track. I am
not a fan of track before probably a year ago,
I would not have considered myself one. But again, it
was a lot of pattern matching, just like twenty nineteen.
You know, I wasn't a fan of women's soccer. I
wasn't a fan of soccer period, but I knew the
American women were great and there was a legacy of greatness.

(38:29):
I knew that every four years we were all paying attention,
we're all excited, and then they seemed to disappear. And
I knew a couple of the stars. Again, even when
I didn't follow the sport, they had transcended the sport
and those were those are the key ingredients. So imagine
me a year ago, looking ahead towards the Olympics, thinking, well, gosh,
I already know some of these stars. Right at this point,

(38:51):
you know, Shakerri had gone viral a handful of times,
Gabby as well, and I knew that the American women
had a legacy of greatness, right. I mean even Serena
was wearing Flo Joe inspired tennis outfits. And again, I
know I can market greatness to Americans. We love it,
and if you have this legacy of it, and especially

(39:12):
when you have larger than life stars already in the
sport like we do on the American side. In particular,
I thought, God, okay, there's a there there. And then
I did the same thing I did four years ago.
I started calling all the best athletes I could, and
just like I spent that time with Alex, I started
spending time and thankfully every one of them took the call.

(39:32):
And it was great talking to folks like Shicerri. It
was great talking to folks like Gabby and Gabby in particular,
she just has so much horsepower and she came back.
She instantly instantly was like, I see it. This needs
to happen. I mean, to everyone's credit, there wasn't a
single woman who said this is a bad idea. Some

(39:54):
of my tactics, they said were bad. It is, which
is great. I needed that too, Like the curvy. I
wanted to have f one's. I was like, do we
need it to be an oval and every one of
them said yes, don't, don't mess with that and keep
it a NOV. I was like, okay, good, good feedback.
But as soon as I started talking about walkout songs
and I started talking about like orchestrating the meat from

(40:15):
first principles as an entertainment event as much as it
was a sport, so that you have like having a DJ.
I didn't know it was going to be nice at
the time, but I was like, what if we have
a local DJ and they're spending the entire time and
so now you have you have such an interesting sport
because you you don't have a chance to look away

(40:36):
once the sport is happening. So like again, I'm a
big American football fan. I grew up playing it. I
love it. It's that's the one sport where I have
tunnel vision because I know it too well. I was
sort of oblivious to that. Was oblivious to tennis growing
up too. And you know, over the course of NFL game,
you have lots of starts and stops, but those stops,
you know you're in the huddle you're sort of reflecting

(40:57):
on the last player, you're thinking about the next play.
Like the fan experience, you really only get a break
at the end of the quarter for a little bit
and then halftime and whatever TV tune, but you're you're
kind of casually like there's there's there's not this explicit
from the moment the first runner is called out to
when they line up. Certainly, once they're on the line,

(41:19):
you cannot look away. And you know how fast this
sport goes, so especially for the sprinters, you don't have
much time to be paying any or any other kind
of attention, and that to me is valuable, right, even
though it's a small window, you are locked in. So
then how do you tell the story of each of
these champions running up to this so that even someone
who is a total neophyte can show up and be like, oh,

(41:41):
this is what I'm going to cheer for, maybe this
is what I'm gonna cheer against. Right, you can have
these stakes, right, and in this modern storytelling age, it's
not that hard to tell those stories, right, And then
how do you make it engaging and interesting in between
those races? And what was wild is is we got
such great feedback, and when I asked, like, what would

(42:04):
make this a must attend event, not surprisingly everyone said,
well the prize money. And I was like, okay, jeez,
I'm like, all right, so, okay, what's the prize money?
And once I was told that thirty thousand dollars was
the top prize at the end of the season for
one of these ladies, I thought, oh my god, like,
I'll just double it. I don't have to be too scientific.

(42:25):
Let's just make it sixty k for one single race.
Make it really high stakes, really high ROI and again,
you're just building the tension, You're building the drama, building storyline,
and if that makes it a must attend event on
its own, just because you know, look, if thirty k
is the totally that's very very hard to be a
professional athlete unless you're the absolute best of the best

(42:47):
of the best of the best. And that to me
looks like an opportunity, Right, So how do we reimagine
what this even looks like so that we can build
the ecosystem for more of these athletes to be professionals.
And then I just got more and more momentum the
further along the process we gotten, and again credit to Gabby.
So what Alex Morgan is to Angel City and me
getting started investing in soccer, Gabby Thomas is absolutely that

(43:08):
for track flows and people showed up. I mean, we
we had nearly every seat filled of the five thousand
at Icon and then we got the final members in
over three million viewers on broadcast and we were so Twitter, YouTube,
ESPN plus, ESPN two and Design three million and if

(43:30):
you're if you're keeping score at home, Caitlin Clark's debut
and the W this year got like two point three
two point four, so you know, it was it was
everything we expected it to be and then some. And
we did this with a number of the stars from
the Olympics, but not even all of them, and so

(43:51):
to put up those numbers, I think really it sent
a signal to the track world and it's been so
fun seeing the response, seeing the podcast, seeing folks on
social media. I don't think we'll ever go back now
because of what we've done, and we obviously want to
keep getting better. There's so much more we're going to
do differently for next year. But it was a blast,

(44:12):
and the promise was three hours a nice you know,
typical American sports window of pure entertainment in athleticism and culture.
And we went head to head in Okay, so New
York City obviously say this is a four green kid like,
you know, the toughest market for getting people's attention and

(44:32):
justifying a Thursday night out high bar in New York.
If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
And we went head to head with Goliath. Right, the
Giants played the Cowboys just down the road in Jersey
for Thursday night football. The Yankees were playing just up
the road as we're getting ready for the MLB postseason,
and we still filled the house three million plus viewers.

(44:56):
I think we set a message and it all started
with the ladies on the track, their energy, their excitement,
their enthusiasm. That was our goal was everyone of these
ladies should come away from this meet saying it was
the best meat that ever participated in, including the Olympics.
I won't say everyone said that, but we definitely heard
it more than a few times, and we're still collecting
feedback from all the participants. But that was key because

(45:19):
if they felt like this was all the things we
knew it was, then the folks at home, the folks
in the stadium would feel it. You saw that reaction,
that energy coming from the crowd, which is then the
athletes feed off of more everyone at home watching the
broadcast is feeding off of And it was fun and
the last part of my rants I remember opening day

(45:40):
for Angel City, our inaugural first ever match, and we have,
you know, twenty two thousand sold out crowd and that
was a record. It never been done before in the NWSL,
and for a while everyone said, you know, there was
no chance it would happen, and it felt incredibly validating
to be in that stadium that day with twenty two
thousand people screaming. This felt different. There was an even

(46:03):
stronger energy. Even though the capacity of Icon where we
had Athos was about a quarter of what Angel City's
arena is. That packed crowd vibing on that Thursday night,
it felt different. It felt really, I don't describe it fun,
and I've been to a lot of sporting events. This

(46:25):
somehow blended the competitiveness of of any top tier, high
stake sporting event with just the fun that I haven't
really felt before. And like in sports, I don't know,
it just it was an energy.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
There's a lot more I want to ask you about
the future of this particular event, but we are going
to take a very quick break and I will be
back with more with Alexis o'han. All right, we'll be
back at a moment. You know, one thing about you.

(47:09):
You're putting on such a spectacular event, as you said,
like you already hinted about next year, what would you
ultimately like this event to be like if you can
compare it to other sporting events that are already ingrained
in American culture, Like what do you see as as
the ceiling for this, Well.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
At a minimum, I want this to be an important
part of the New York sports landscape. It is in
the same way like the US Open is one of
those musta tend events for not only tennis fans, but
just New Yorkers or even just Americans or I mean
international folks come over all the time, like it is
a marquee event of athletic excellence, and in a city

(47:51):
like New York. I think we proved we can go
to Totoe with anyone. And that was the first iteration, Right,
It's only going to get better again if you have
the attention, if you have the like generally speaking that
the free market should be solving for this, and where
it fails is that's my alpha, that's my opportunity to
build these champions, to build this And it shouldn't surprise

(48:14):
anyone that there's probably a high correlation between the fact
that this is a sport predominantly dominated by women of color,
Black women in particular, and it's also a sport that
has been notoriously underinvested in. And I can't help but think,

(48:36):
especially because again, why do we love sport? This is why?
Why is such a powerful question, you know, because of
Serena and Venus and really her parents realizing Okay, here's
a pathway to wealth and all the things that come
with it. Tennis was a gateway. The economics play a
big role here, and if we do our jobs well,
ten twenty years from now, this will be a sport

(48:58):
that has multimillion and why not, God bless them that
so many other athletes are able to make great careers
doing this.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
You know, you talked about sort of that historical undervaluing
that has happened in track and field, which can be
translated to a lot of sports where black women are dominant.
You look at the WNBA where you have seventy percent
of the league are black women. Now obviously with you

(49:25):
being husband to one of the greatest athletes in history,
their father to two girls. But for as much as
you may have known about how sexism, misogyny racism are intertwined,
being that this is personal to you now in a
different way, what have you sort of learned being the

(49:46):
father and the husband you know, two black women, Like,
what what have you What are some of the lessons
that you've or some of the realities that you've been
able to unearth.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
That I've really tried even for really from when I
resigned in protests from the Border Reddit back in twenty
twenty started seven seven six. That was the start of
a I don't know, like a letter to my daughter,
I guess now two daughters, but at the time only one,
where I wanted her to see her dad doing not

(50:22):
just the best work of his career, but doing it
in a way she was going to be very proud of.

Speaker 4 (50:27):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
And by the way, feel people in about why you resigned.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Sure so in the way of George Floyd. You know,
a lot of companies were now saying that they were
standing in solidarity with you as of color and black
folks in particular, and I was having a lot of
trouble reconciling the company's public statements this is reddits around
those things, with the fact that there were thousands of

(50:53):
very racist and hateful communities that I believed should have
been banned a long time ago. The rest of the
board did not agree, and so I resigned and asked
them to do it, to finally ban these communities, these
eight communities, to also replace me with a black director.
And I just said, I can't keep being a party

(51:15):
to this. And I think, just philosophically, there were other
things in the past that I didn't agree with being
on the platform around violence and all this other stuff.
And thankfully, about a month later, they did, and I
think the public pressure had a lot to do with it.
And then for you know, about the next month, I
was really thinking through, like, all right, well what is next?

(51:37):
Like I can do anything I want to do now,
and so building this firm seven to seventy six this
way was what I was going to spend the rest
of my life on. And again I just wanted to
make sure I was doing it in a way that
my daughters would be proud of. And what's been wild
is how well things have gone since, and how there

(51:58):
is some part of me that's like, God, do I
do it sooner? But that's what life is, right, and
so you can just keep learning and keep going forward.
And so I have these two little girls who I deeply,
deeply want to impress because I know they'll be very
proud of their mom, because they'll hear people saying all
the time how they should be, and rightly so. But
I'm a very competitive person and I want them to

(52:20):
be unreasonably proud of me too, and so I've tried.
I've tried to build with that in mind, and I
do think there is Look, Olympia was there. It was
so cool. She came to athlos got. She was there
nice and early, so I let her run on the track,
warming up with some of the ladies. And after it

(52:41):
was all over, it was way past her bedtime, but
she still she asked me. She was like, hey, can
I go run on the track some more? After? So
I was happy to oblige. You let her run, and
literally a day or two later, she came up to
me and her mom and said, I want to run
track now. Okay, okay, I mean, she's still doing tennis lessons.
I still do golf with there. We'll see, we'll see

(53:02):
how well this this track thing sticks. But like that
was the impact one of the things we had hoped
to have. You know, we had hundreds of kids from
the New York area who ran track, high school aged
kids that we gifted tickets to, who got to see
for the first time ever this caliber of not just
athlete but production. So they really got to see, like, no,
this this You know, by the time that you are grown,

(53:24):
there should be more infrastructure here for this to really
be a professional sport for you. And seeing it is
the first step to being it. And so yeah, I'm
not even I'm not in pervious to it in our
own household. Like I saw the effect it had on her.
That was empowering, and I think I also I want
to stress too. So I like winning. I like it

(53:48):
a lot, And I don't win in the same way
because business is not the same as sports. But I
like winning and investing on things, investing into things and
building things where I know it's going to keep compounding
and gettinger and better. And I like being early. That's
what gives me joy. Now it's seeing things maybe that
other people don't appreciate or don't value, and being first

(54:09):
to say no, no, no, there's something here, here's money, here's resources,
here's building, and go run with it. And even in
soccer one of the things I actually don't talk about
this much. So I'm glad you brought this up. You know,
there's the story, which is true. We're watching It was
the final the World Cup in our Wimbledon house in

(54:30):
twenty nineteen and Olympia was running around with her Alex
Morgan jersey, which I bought, and she was kicking her
a little ball and I was like, oh, wouldn't it
be great one day if Olympia played on the women's
national team. Serena, without missing a beat, said not until
they pair when she's worth like okay, touche, and then
let me. That gave me even more encouragement to want
to build and invest in the league and build a
team up so that again the market corrects. But it

(54:53):
was not lost on me. You know, the next generation
of US women's soccer or talent was frankly much more
black than it had ever been before. And you had
this new generation of soccer historically predominantly white sport, pretty
upper class, middle class type sport. And for all of

(55:16):
the again, for all the doors that were opened, for
all the excellence and all the greatness, you could see
in twenty nineteen that there was a new generation of
soccer talent coming through that was much more representative of
a much broader part of the population. Now, why else
is that interesting? Me? Yes, obviously have a black daughter.
And if you look at the intersection between sport and culture,

(55:40):
culture is disproportionately created by communities of color and black
folks in particular. And if you really want to get
in the nitty gritty of it, every successful social networking
app is successful because of young girls posting on it,
whether it's been Instagram, snap, TikTok like that. That is
where the the pulse of youth culture, which ends up

(56:04):
determining what app takes off and what doesn't, what music
takes off and what doesn't, What clothing, what make ego
on the list. It all starts with women can be
younger women and often black women. And so now again
I'm thinking, Okay, if the new athlete is direct to consumer, right,
they're building the followings on social media, none of them

(56:26):
expected to be handed anything right, and so they knew
they had to be their own creative director. They knew
women already create more content than on social and in general.
But if you're an athlete, again, you know you're not
just getting handered a sneaker deal. So you have to
be doing more storytelling. You just have to be more
savvy and sophisticated. And then with Nil knocking on the door,

(56:46):
that was going to be the thing that made it
unavoidable because once you could make millions of dollars in college.
And again that's not because of feminism, that's not because
it feels good. That's not because of charity. That is
the free market and brands saying take our money because
your audience is really that valuable to us. Once that happened,
it was very clear there was no going back. And

(57:09):
then once you see that the predominant women who would
be commanding this will be women of color, you're like, okay,
wait a minute, there's a seismic shift happening here. And
so even a sport, you know, in America we're not
really a soccer nation. Certainly none on the men's side,
because again, Americans love greatness. American men, sorry, Christian but

(57:29):
like American men not great. Yeah, yeah, I think American
women phenomenal. And then now all of a sudden, you
had all this latent energy and excitement around the sport,
You had a legacy of greatness, and it was about
to get supercharged because there was a new generation of
talent that finally broke a lot of color barriers historically
for the sport and was going to be driving culture online.

(57:53):
And again that's all that's where I look toward for
so much of this. And so it does feel good
knowing that even if it's soccer, even if it's track, whatever,
Olympia and Adira, I want to do that I could
be help investing in that infrastructure that I know is
going to help right some of the historical wrongs. And

(58:15):
again not because of charity, but because if you want
your brand to be relevant, like these are the athletes
you want to be investing behind. And and like I said,
track was just sitting there in play in sight. I
could explain it to my seven year old instantly. Right,
They're gonna the guns go off, and they're gonna run
as fast as they can from point A to point B.

(58:38):
And you already had you know, icons participating in the sport,
the legacy of American greatness, and you have something that
I think is just unlike I think we did something
at athletes that was just unlike any other sporting or
cultural event. It was it was somehow both and people

(58:59):
like said, people seem to have really good time. And
these athletes have been waiting. You know, they're they're hungry
for this. They know we're on the precipice of something here.
They're going to keep They're going to keep pushing.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
Now, you, obviously, with your financial acumen, have been able
to make an incredible amount of money. Serena is one
of the highest paid female athletes of all time. What
does financial lessons in your household look like in terms
of your children, Like, what do you tell Alexis an
end about money and investing? Like, I mean, I think

(59:29):
Alexis is she still like the youngest team owner ever.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
Yeah, Dera is. So what I made is well technically okay,
but so Olympia and I love it. So Alexis. Yes,
I am Alexis O'hanian senior. She is Alexis Olympia o'hanan Jr.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
So you guys just call her Olympia usually, but she
made a point.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
I was actually dropping her off today at school and
I had one of the old you puss with a
sign on your front windshields so they know that you're
a parent doing a drop off, and it was this,
uh it's still They had Alexis as her first name,
and she was like pop. She just started laughing. She's
like POPA says Alexis. Everyone knows I go buy Olympia. Okay,

(01:00:09):
it's just a sign, baby, I'm gonna change it for you,
don't worry. Uh, but yes, so for her, for Olympia
and Adira, look, they have no concept of being the
youngest owners in sports. When I when I started Angel City,
I set aside two hundred and fifty K that I
put directly into a trust for Olympia and then for
any other kids Serena and I had, which you know

(01:00:30):
they're still you know, we'll be holding onto that for
a very long time. That that was the official like
making Olympia the youngest owner in sports. But then when
Adira came along, technically she was sort of grandmothered into it.
So it's I guess technic they're gonna have to share
that title now and then when I did the ball
team in Tigers League, I did the same thing, so
they're also a part of that. And I guess technically

(01:00:52):
they would be an afflos too, So it's we're just
running up the tally, but they have no concept of that.
We're still I'm going to do here is just one,
so we're it's early for the financial lessons. But for Olympia,
you know, she has an allowance. She gets seven dollars
a week, She has her chores, just got to feed
the dog.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
Wait wait, wait, wait wait wait, Olympia gets seven dollars
a week. Can I represent her?

Speaker 5 (01:01:16):
Wait?

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
Get more or less?

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
I'm joking, but I think it's so cute.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Yeah, it's funny because I didn't know you got it
just for inflation, and I because I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Know it like a bag of chips might be the Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
Probably got like a dollar or two. I got asked
my dad for all my chores. And then when I
first proposed it, Serena was like, that's not enough. And
actually she's Serena has been her. She's playing both sides.
Serena is her lawyer in the negotiation, and because I
drew up a real contract, I mean just playing English,
not like legal ease. But I drew up a contract.
We negotiated it. Her mom was her counsel, which was
really frustrating. But it's okay, tough negotiator and uh yes,

(01:01:55):
she'll when she got to feed the dog, she got
to put her clothes in the hamper. She made her bed.
I think that's it. So she does that five days week.
Mom negotiated weekends off. Okay, good.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Does she get vacation time?

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
Is that no? Actually no holiday?

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Okay, choice, she doesn't have to do it chars.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
Okay, So I mean again, Mom took care of that.
I was a little I was trying. I was pushing harder,
but this is you know, it's his right to get counseled.
But it's good. I want her. It's funny. Half the
time she wants it all in roebucks. That's the video
game we let her play, and and she'll It was
a while before she actually even wanted it in cash.

(01:02:37):
And and then I figured out how to get hurt
at value cash, which was helpful. She really wanted this
Tamagotchi watch. I think it was a little bit was
like one hundred and twenty five dollars some friend of
hers had it. She was like, oh, I want this
watch and I was like, oh great, and I was like,
you got money, like, let's count it up, see what
you got, and she's like, I don't have enough. I

(01:02:59):
was like okay, good, Like embrace that feeling, like how
many more weeks of allowance do you need to be
able to save up for? And she's like three more.
I'm like, okay, great. As soon as she gets it,
we'd clear out the bank. Piggybank's empty and she gets
a time I got you watch. A week goes by,
she stopped caring about it, and then you know, another

(01:03:19):
week or two comes by and she's like, oh, I
really want this whatever American girl dress, doll, American girl
doll dress or some kind of outfit. And I was like, oh, well, yeah,
go to your piggy bank, see what you got. And
I know she's forgotten or I don't know, maybe she's
hoping to herself there'd magically be more money there because
an auntie snuck it in and she finds there's nothing

(01:03:40):
there and she's like, oh, but I really want this,
Like yeah, you do, but you don't have any money
and just trying like and she'll give me the cute
puppy eyes like to believe me. She knows how to work, Papa.
But I have to remain resolute in these moments. There
are other times I give in. I'll be real, I'm
not not one hundred percent of this, But in the
cobple these moments, I need her to feel this pain

(01:04:01):
of like, oh, like I'm gonna have to wait, I
gotta wait two more weeks for that paycheck. Right. I
need her to feel that little bit of pain and
then start to remember like, right, but because I do
this work, I get this money. And look, I don't
know neither Serena nor I obviously grew up with with wealth.
And so that's the other weird thing is we're both

(01:04:24):
trying to navigate how to create the circumstances for her
to be able to be a functional adult while also
having resources that we couldn't have imagined. And at the
same time, you want to have I want to give
for your kids. You want to provide the opportunities, but
I still need that. I need her to feel a
little bit of that pain and to hopefully hopefully have
it sink in. But we'll see, I'm gonna I joke,

(01:04:45):
although I'm not joking. I'm gonna make her work at
like a Pinkberry or something. She's got to work a
retail job or a service job. Papa worked pizza Hut
for three years, so I don't could be a pizza
I don't mind.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
So how do you I'm sure I know you get
us as commonly, but how do you How do you
feel about the prospect of Olympia or Deer becoming potentially becoming.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Professional I don't think become entrepreneurs, though I would love that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
I yeah, but people, it's hard to dismiss the genes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
I get that clearly.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
I'm talking about you. I mean, yes, by the way,
I mean you're tall.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Like they're both percent already height wise, and some tall girls,
and then you've got Screena's not very tall, but her
her father and then.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
I mean for a woman.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
All right, now, they listed five to nine, but that's
that's that's probably, but that's she walks tall, she stands tall,
but she's like maybe five spoiler. I wouldn't have said
that while she's still playing, because you got to keep
the mind games up.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Yeah, you got to keep the minds I'm six five, so.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
I think these girls will be tall. We'll see. I
mean I got I got introduced to Flage probably a
year ago, no, six, eight, nine months ago, got them connected.
So I'm like, I'm like, maybe it's some basketball. It
hasn't really stuck. She's playing tennis, she's playing golf. Apparently
track is her new thing. Yeah, but what about And.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
I'm super jealous because every time you post a golf
clip of Olympia, I took up a ten years ago,
me and my husband hearts swing. It's better than mine,
and I immediately.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
Compare me to me too. I've never played it before.
And then Uncle Tiger gave me some clubs at a
board meeting and I was like, I was like, Tiger,
these are too small for me. He's like, of course
they're not for you for Olympia, get out of here.
And I was like, oh, okay, I get it. I
get it. Okay. So I bring them home and I'm like, Olympia,

(01:06:53):
Papa's friend got you some golf clubs. She's like, what
what's up? Golf? C Lisse is like she's probably four
or five, like what golf clubs? And I'm like, yes,
and you're going to learn how to play golf. She's like, okay, whatever, Papa,
And so thankfully we've got a very good instructor because
I had never played, And so we go almost every Sunday.
We missed, missed yesterday because of the hurricane, but we

(01:07:15):
go almost every Sunday, and I'm her daddy caddie. And
I finally got some clubs because she got so good
that I was. I was like, this was it was
just humbling standing next to her when she'd rip it
like one hundred yards and I'd be like, okay, I
really got like this would be a great daddy daughter exercise.
But I've never played, so I got to learn. Anyway,
I'm slowly learning. But the way it'll happen is I'm

(01:07:35):
on the driving range and I'll be hitting balls and again,
still just learning how to swing. And it's hard, man.
It's a humbling sport. And you will. We'll start out
on the range for maybe twenty thirty minutes, and then
she'll go and she'll go hit a couple holes with
our with her instructor, and I'll just keep working on
the range because I'm still working on the front of us.

(01:07:56):
But it only dawned in me a few months ago.
We've been doing this for like six months. She sees
me with all the other older white dudes on the range,
and her instructor is a woman as well, and so
she goes and she plays golf with another lady, and
in her mind, all the old white guys are just

(01:08:19):
dads waiting for their daughters playing golf, because golf is
a sport for girls, and the dads are just you know,
trying their hardest to learn how to hit a ball
back on the range. And I don't want to ever.
I mean, at some point she's going to realize that's
not actually golf. But the idea that this sweet, sweet

(01:08:40):
black girl seven years old, she genuinely believes that golf
is a sport for her is awesome to me. And
so look, if she ended up playing some golf, it'll
be a hell of a story. Obviously, tennis is one
I think Vegas is probably betting on. But the nice
thing is, no matter what, she's got someone in her

(01:09:02):
mom who can give her the straight talk early on
of just what it will take. And you know, that's
I think there's there's Look, there's plenty of plenty of
parents who would love for their kids to get into
professional sports. But when you've got someone like her who
can actually help sit you down and just be like, listen,
it's going to be hard, and here's why, and here's

(01:09:24):
what you're going to endure. And then not to mention
being the daughter of Serena as what you know Lebron
and Bronnie are going through right now, there's certainly echoes
of that that any kid would have to fulfill in
terms of expectations. You know, Griffy Senior and Griffy Junior.
Now I'm really dating myself. I feel like that was
the canonical example of like multi generational sports. I mean,

(01:09:49):
Griffy Junior. What I mean, Griffy's senior was was good,
but I feel like Junior was better, right am. I
I don't know if I'm biased. I'm not a baseball guy.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
Or not.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
I mean, and that's that's special. Now. Uh, Griffy Senior
was not the Serena of baseball, nor the Lebron of
basketball or of baseball, but that'll certainly be a factor.
But look, like any parent, you just want your kids
to be healthy, be happy, thrive at whatever they do.
We certainly want our girls should try to be the

(01:10:24):
absolute best whatever they're for sure, and it's just certainly
a lot harder to do that in sports because there's
nowhere to hide. You have to go out there every
day and do it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
The controversy opens here. So here is the messy question
that I'm going to present to you, and that is
tell me something that you're better at than Serena.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
And it really Oh I thought, man, I thought you
were going to go to a totally different directions. So
this is this is easy. H all right, there are
a lot of things I'm better at than her.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
All right, talk yall ship.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
Would you didn't give me a sport? You didn't you
didn't say, like specifically a sport? What I come on,
I got it, Okay, I am a better artist. So
we'll do little drawing classes around the dinner table, like
I'll fire up a YouTube channel where it's like like
a step by step drawing class, like Olympia, what I
want to draw today? And she'll be like a unicorn.

(01:11:20):
I'll be like cool, and I'm a much better artist.

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
But I was.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
But here's the thing. Olympia is like, Papa, how do
you draw so well? I'm like, do you think I
was born this way. She's like no, And I was like, well,
what do you think I did practice? And I've because
I've done this so many times, She's gotten so used
to it. But I like, I need her to know, Yeah,
Papa's good a drawing, because you see in the forty
one year old version of Papa who's been drawing since
he was your age. And you know, you know the

(01:11:46):
pancakes I do every Sunday, Like that's just me getting
in more reps Olympia and if you want to be
good at this thing, keep drowing, do better and uh
and so that one, and I Serena knows much much
better artist. She would contest it, but I think I'm
a better cook. She's a better baker, But I am

(01:12:07):
a better cook just from a sheer like repertoire range.
And that's simply because I really got into smoking and
grilling over like I.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Noticed you posted instagram of the brisket.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
Okay, So so I so I think that one. She
would argue with a bit more. But I think I
think I come through. I just I really I obsess
over stuff when I get a thing, especially we went
to Austin, Olympia. Loved to brisket, and I was like, great,
my baby's gonna have brisket every weekend. And I got
a smoker. I was on the YouTube with the Meat

(01:12:43):
Church shout out Meat Church instructional videos. I'm getting the seasoning,
I'm getting the gloves. I have a guy now in
Western just west of here that actually ships the like
I get the meat that does it never hit a freezer, Jamelle,
my girls they get the best. And also just from
a health standpoint, I'm like, look, I got what's the

(01:13:03):
point of money if I can't use it to provide
my girls the best possible food. And so now I've
gotten really into smoke and grill and all that stuff.
And then what else? Hold on video games better than her?
Video games though that that's much of a skill, but
I'll take it. She's she's better at board games, okay,

(01:13:24):
but but yeah, there's a lot of things.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
So so that's that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
Yeah, her jump shot is terrible. Uh, And that that
was That was a key moment early in the relationship
because you you kind of expect an athlete to be
just ridiculously great at everything, and it turns out she's, like,
there's a lot of things. She's also ridiculously great at athletically,

(01:13:50):
but then there are these weird technique things like shooting
a basketball where if you just haven't done it, you're
actually pretty bad. And if you are someone who went
to a few basketball camps through middle school and high school,
like you're just slightly better at it. And while so there's.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
Well, it kind of reminds me of sometimes when you
see pro basketball players try to play softball and they
look so awkward, like this is that or even obviously
if we seen with golf, golf makes everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
Look a little bit. Let's talk about tennis right like that. Oh,
I've never picked up a racket in my life, and
it will. I don't think I'll ever change that for
the sake of my ego. Now, some of those, any
of those stick sports, whether it's hitting a baseball or
a softball, playing tennis, golf, those stick sports I have
found so incredibly humbling and so damn hard. And I

(01:14:42):
didn't play any of them as kids, so I didn't
even get I don't even get a few of the
reps in early that I could lean back. And then
first time I took us out with us from one
of those daddy daughter golfing sessions. She's like, let me
try this, grabs a driver and she's like, oh, it's

(01:15:03):
kind of like a backhand, and I'm just like, god,
damn it. She crushed up. Of course the motion is
not it's similar, but it's not like the exact same,
but it's similar enough to the backhand. She just ripped
it and I was like, all right, well, should have
picked a different sport.

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
Alexis so humbling.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
Well look Alexis, thank you so much for joining me.
You're out numbered in your household. I love this for you.
Good luck argument, good like. I feel like that allotitz
negotiation is just really a sign of how the rest
of that is all going to track. So I can't
wait to Sadares chart because she's going to hit you

(01:15:47):
about twenty bucks a week because inflation.

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
But and she's going to have her mama and her
sister on her side too.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):
I knew I was. I just knew I was destined
to have daughters. And it is awesome. As as trying
as it can be at times to always be wrong,
it is. It is always. It's just it's so easy
to just fall in love with those little girls. All
over again, every single time. And I got buddies and

(01:16:18):
all my childhood fends. We all got kids now, and
you know, some of them got boys and girls, some
of them all boys. And I see these little dudes
running around, and I'm just like, what's I like this?
And my dad looks at me. He's like, yeah, you were.
You were like that, just a terror, just run around,
and I'm like, these little angels here, they're the best.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
Well that's dope. All right, Well, thank you again for
joining me. I appreciate you. Time now for this week's
viewer slash listener question. This question comes from Mark Walker. Hey, Jamil,

(01:16:54):
I have a question, how difficult is it to cover
a male sport being a female sports reporterer? Has that
gotten more difficult post Trump? With this maga cult mentality,
with being a minority reporter. Well, Mark, the parts of
my job that are difficult, and I'm saying this more
as a commentary on our entire industry, have less to
do with gender and how that is impacted by the

(01:17:16):
Trump error, and it has more to do with how
his presence has so easily made us abdicate our responsibilities
as journalists overall. Now, there are certain things as a
women you have to deal with when you're a sports reporter.
And these things didn't just surface because of Donald Trump.
You know you'll be doubted more. People will assume every
woman in this job isn't knowledgeable. There will be an

(01:17:37):
often uncomfortable emphasis on the way that you look. We
just have to deal in general, with a lot of
double standards. But for the most part, dealing with athletes, coaches, teams,
and owners isn't nearly as problematic as it used to
be for women reporters. I mean, there are women before
me who can tell you some real horror stories. I mean,
there was a time when those men in those professional

(01:17:57):
settings truly resented our present, and they made it know.
It's so much better now than it used to be.
But the fans, however, that's kind of another story. A
lot of them are abusive. On any given day, some
fan will tell me either to go back to Africa
or go right for good housekeeping. I mean, women in media,
especially women of color, take a ton of abuse, especially
on social media, which is an element I didn't have

(01:18:18):
to deal with for most of my career. But Trump's presence,
it's ushered in an era of cooperation and complicity by
the media. Remember, the morale of the media is to disrupt,
not capitulate. That's why when the owners of The Washington
Post and the Los Angeles Times intervened to stop their
editorial boards from endorsing Kamala Harris, it was just enough
front to the reason why most of us became journalists.
You know, our job is to comfort the afflicted and

(01:18:40):
afflict the comfortable. We're supposed to challenge authority, not a
bow to it. Thank you for your question.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
Mark.

Speaker 1 (01:18:47):
Now, if any of you guys out there would like
to ask me a question, you can email your question
or send me a video with your question. But if
you send me a video, make sure that it is
thirty seconds or less. So send your questions to spot
Politics twenty twenty four at gmail dot com. That's Politics
twenty twenty four at gmail dot com. That's s PO

(01:19:08):
l I t I c s. Also make sure you
follow spolitics pod on Instagram and on TikTok. A new
episode is Politics drops every Thursday on iHeart or wherever
you get your podcasts. This is politics where sports and
politics don't just mix, they matter. Spolitics is the production

(01:19:28):
of iHeart podcasts and the Unbothered Network. I'm Your Host
Jamel Hill. Executive producer is Taylor Shakoigne. Lucas Hymen is
head of Audio and executive producer. Megan Armstrong is associate producer.
Original music for Spolitics provided by Kyle Visz from wiz
FX

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Ep 04: The Politics of Investing in Women’s Sports - Featuring Alexis Ohanian Sr.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep 04: The Politics of Investing in Women’s Sports - Featuring Alexis Ohanian Sr.