August 22, 2024 • 33 mins
In this episode of The Deal, Jason Kelly discusses his recent interview with the owners of the Kansas City Chiefs, Clark and Dan Hunt, as well as the burgeoning sports betting industry. Kelly and Alex Rodriguez then interview Carsten Koerl, founder and CEO of Sportradar, about how his sports betting technology company partners with leagues and wagering platforms around the world. Koerl tells the hosts about how Ted Leonsis set him up with all-star investors like Michael Jordan and Mark Cuban, and how integrity in sports is at the center of the work he does.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hi everyone, welcome to the deal.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
I'm Jason Kelly alongside of my partner Alex Rodriguez. All right, Alex,
we're going to get to a really interesting interview in
just a second with sport Radar founder and CEO Carston
curl So. Sports Radar it's a huge information provider in
the world of sports betting. They work with all the
major sports leagues and betting platforms to make data analytics
(00:38):
much more accessible.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But before we get to that, I guess you.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Want to know why I'm in yet another nameless, faceless
hotel room. I'm actually in Dallas, and you're not going
to believe who I got to sit down with. I'm
so excited for you to hear this interview when it
comes out in a couple of weeks. The Hunt Brothers, Wow,
Ark Hunt, Dan Hunt arguably one of the most influential
families in the history of American sports. I think you
would agree, not American sports, global sports. I mean they
(01:03):
are the north Star. I mean they really are admired
and respected by all.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
So it was fascinating because what we realized was this
was the founding family really one of the founding families
of the NFL, and by the way, the MLS too.
I mean this was you know, American soccer didn't really
exist until they and your friends, the Crafts, really got
involved in it have really propelled it forward. Now soccer
(01:30):
is headed for this huge moment in the United States
in twenty twenty six, between Kansas City and Dallas alone,
they're going to host sixteen games. Nine of them are
going to be here in Dallas at AT and T
Stadium is obviously going to be the centerpiece of all that.
The other amazing thing that we talk about in this interview,
(01:50):
which will come as a surprise to you, Taylor Swifts. Oh,
Taylor Swift had a tremendous impact on the Kansas City
Chiefs FANDI. Yes, winning back to back Super Bowls was big,
but really the biggest thing that happened in terms of
you know, we talked about the zeitgeist all the time,
was Taylor Swift and Travis Kelcey starting to date. And
(02:14):
I'd tell you Clark Hunt and Dan Hunt both told
incredible stories about the impact that I was going to
have so excited for you to hear about that. We've
got a story that we're gonna rune on the Bloomberg.
We recorded a TV interview as well. My partner in
that case was Julie Fine, the Text Spirit chief. So
we've got a lot of cool stuff coming up.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
There, Jays.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Let me add one thing to that, because, first of all,
I'm so excited to see this interview. I've admired the
Hunts for a very very long time. What they keep
doing over the last many decades is just keep setting
the bar higher and higher.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And I got one quick story.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I recently was at a convention where Roger Goodell spoke
and on that day the baseball schedule had come out
in Major League Baseball for twenty twenty five, and ironically,
they asked them, how do you think about the network?
How do you think about went to position games for
better ratings? And he said, we wait to the very
last minute. And this was interesting because it ties into
the Hunt family in Kansas City Chiefs. They said, Kansas
(03:09):
City did huge numbers. Obviously they're a great team. Homes Kelsey,
but Taylor Swift, her name come up again and one
of the things they said is they're looking at her
global schedule to see when they can schedule the NFL
games to make sure that she is there, and I'm
just like, this is incredible. The NFL waits for her
(03:31):
global concert to go out so they can set their
games so hopefully she's there and the numbers can go up.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
That's unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
I mean, and to that point, the audience expansion that
she brought to the Chiefs and to the league. I mean,
they're figuring out the best ways to measure it. But anecdotally,
one of the things Clark Hunt told us was he
just had people coming up to him saying, my ten
or twelve year old daughter wants me to tell her
every single time the Kansas City Chiefs are on TV
(04:03):
because she's gonna watch.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
That is amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
It's a literal game changer. When we think about game changers,
watch what I'm gonna do here. Sports betting has obviously
radically changed the landscape.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
There's a BusinessWeek.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Cover story that is out now and it is all
about the world of sports betting. I got the opportunity
to head down to South Florida. You were away so
we couldn't hang out, and I was up the road
in Fort Lauderdale. I met up with several current and
former Dolphins who talked about from the player's perspective, what
(04:39):
this huge increase in legalized betting has meant for them
both as players and also, I think importantly, and something
you can understand far better than I what it means
to be the product that's being bet on and sort
of the implications of all of that. Obviously, fantasy has
been a huge driver of both interests revenue. So it
(05:02):
is a world that I'm not sure any of us
could have imagined when we were kids because betting was
not legal, and now it is and it is a
booming business. So Carlston Girl is a fascinating guy. I mean,
this is an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. And one of the things
I loved about this interview that we're about to play is,
(05:22):
you guys, we are sort of like swapping notes on
what does it take to you know, really have that
have that right stuff right.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
First of all, the way he talks about some of
his investors, I mean, he has a wild story or
two about Michael Jordan, Mark Cuban, tet Leonses and is
wild how these deals came together. And he's going to
share something about the day they went ipo. He takes
us behind the scenes with Michael Jordan and I'm not
going to spoil it and those spoiler alerts here and
(05:50):
just the whole space. I mean, you gotta understand my
first love, Jason's baseball, right, and when you talked about
gambling anything with the word gambling, gaming or on base
for or sports, it was a pariah. It's amazing the
paradigm shift, the radical change where now we're getting leagues involved,
we're getting players involved, we're getting owners. It's just fascinating,
(06:10):
and I think he does a beautiful job of explaining
a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
All right.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Coming up next on the deal, our interview with Carlston Curl,
the founder and CEO of sport Radar. All right, so
now we're going to bring in Carston Curl. He's the
CEO and the founder of sport Radar. Carson, we are
(06:37):
so happy to have you here to talk to us
all about data sports vetting. It's something that the numbers.
This is what we love on this show. Alex and
I talk about it all the time. I want to
start by asking you, like, when you get to meet
somebody at a cocktail party or at dinner party, and
they say what do you do?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
What does sport Radar do?
Speaker 5 (06:56):
What do you say, Well, we are collecting sport information,
we are prosing it, aggregating it, we are selling it
to thousand media clients and eight hundred sports betting operators
in one hundred and eleven countries. At the moment, we
have offices in thirty four of those countries and we
have round about four thousand and five hundred employees sitting
(07:16):
in those offices.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
So where does that idea come from? I believe before
sport Radar, you started off in the sports betting world
in the nineties with a company called b Win. Then
you sold that company and started sport Radar back in
the early two thousands.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
So walk us through what happened.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
Okay, it's a long story, but if I'm looking back, So,
it was a long night in Switzerland, in a small city,
and I was sitting with a friend and I think
at two or three o'clock in the morning, we came
to a conclusion. I love sport, I love technology, so
what can I do to really bring those two things together?
And the answer was, let's develop a platform for sports
(07:56):
betting in the Internet. Now, that was nineteen ninety six,
and whenever I'm telling the story, I'm feeling damn old.
This is something where that took us three years. I
programmed that platform together with the colleagues, and then I
wanted to sell it and went to England to the
big book makers, Labbroks Hills Chorus, you name it, and
(08:17):
that I have a fantastic thing. It's a sports batting
platform which is doing sports betting over the Internet. And
the CEO said to me, well, you sound very passionate
about this and it looks pretty cool, but you know what,
we are not so sure if the internet is a
sustainable channel. And now, okay, that's the trouble. So I
gotta take this. I believe in it. I operate this
(08:38):
sports betting platform myself. I went to Austria, I took
a license that was one of the few countries which
can do it. To cut a long story short, the IPO,
the business. It was the most successful IPO I think
in the Austrian market. Still today. We have been oversigned
close to two hundred times. But it's a small market
there and I, as a very young entrepreneur, got a
(08:59):
lot of money, but I lost the control of my
business and losing the control of the business and having
people telling you what you should do is difficult for
an entrepreneur. So I decided to do something new and
I founded sport Rada. So I knew that there was
a demand on data. I knew that this is international.
It's not so easy to have team names in fifty
(09:21):
different languages, including Hindi and Mandarin and whatsoever, in a
correct spelling. Even these basic things. There was a need
for it, and there was a need how you transmit
this and how you're making a market transparent by somehow
crawling that informations together and comparing it. That was the
origin of sport Rada. We started with four clients. I
(09:42):
invested I think one hundred and fifty thousand viewers at
this time. Since then I never invested, and now the
business is worth yeah, a bit more than three billion,
and I still the major shareholder and the biggest shareholder
in there. So that is the story in a nutshell.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Amazing, amazing, and congrats, I mean it's that was an
amazing journey. I guess my question is how quickly did
you identify with the TAM the addressable market is on
a business like this.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
As an entrepreneur, you love what you're doing. I love
sport and I love technology. At this time, very honestly,
I was not interested in whatever TAM. I simply had
a passion to say, Wow, what I can do is
I can work with the sport which I love, and
I can work in a fast growing global market where
(10:30):
I know it's a market with the sharpest brains on
the planet. Because it's a regulated industry, you need to
be very quick, you need to react very quick, and
it's a global competition. And that was driving me saying
it's an excitement and it's a pleasure to work there.
And I think in the first years we simple progressed
in this perspective. It was a startup business without looking
(10:52):
too much on the TAMS. Because I financed it by myself.
I didn't need any kind of investors in there. And
I still recall after four or five years, we had
the first management meeting on a big, big whiteboard moderated
by a friend of mine and one of my colleagues
draw on that whiteboard versus three meters to four meters high,
so really big, draw a number in saying how target
(11:15):
is eighty million revenue. That was in the year number five,
probably year two thousand and five, two thousand and six.
Today our revenue is more than one point one billion,
and for the eighty million revenue target, we didn't believe
that we ever get there, because we have probably at
this time fifteen or seventeen million yearly revenue from that market.
(11:35):
That shows you we grew with this market. The industry
by itself had a tremendous growth that was accelerated, of
course by the Internet, and all the things which you
saw then coming live got more and more appealing. The
live coverage is much more important that things which I
see now in the US I see in the early
days of sports betting. Here it's the same kind of
(11:57):
learning curve which I saw in Europe. So you realize
that betting while the match is running is so more repeating,
so it's so much more engaging. You have all these emotions,
you have all those things which you see and then
you place your bet on this. So it's the thing
which was driving this industry and worldwide, I would say
(12:18):
it's the same phenomen around the globe. You see a
constant development. Now you see more development into player information.
I'm a big believer that the players are making the game.
Even if some of the teams are seeing this different
the players is really where the people follow, the fans
are with them getting more information about the players, putting
(12:40):
betting prepositions out there, using AI, using computer vision to
put that in a correlation is fairly complex. But this
is so engaging. And if you make a complex story simple,
that's where we are heading. If you hyper personalize this,
you have all the ingredients is for the future sports consumption.
We are sitting on the crossroad here, and I see
(13:02):
sports betting more as a technology enabler for all these
adjacent markets.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
But I want to get back to one of the
very core elements of this is and honestly, you know, Alex,
this is very reminiscent oddly enough of Bloomberg. Candidly, you know,
in terms of like creating a place where the data.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Are all sort of collected.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
I want to ask you a very basic question, Carson,
which is, how do you get all this data together?
Where is it living that you're able to collect it?
And how do you do that?
Speaker 5 (13:35):
Yeah, I'm sitting here in Bloomberg, and we had a time, Jason,
where we called ourselves to Bloomberg of sport to cut
it short, and it's an information transmission to a highly
classified and qualified audience. In all case the sports betting operators,
and on the beginning that was crawlers, and if those
crowdits are extracting information from the Internet, you begin to
(13:58):
validate this. We very quickly came to the conclusion that
we're going to need to have a highly specialized sport
agency to really validate the information to be right with
the information. It sounds easy, but it's not so easy.
If you have a tennis tournament, you get the order
of play in the morning from the organizer, and then
sometimes the matches are quicker, sometimes not. Sometimes matches are
(14:19):
starting quicker than scheduled, so you're going to need to
validate this information. Nowadays, it's fast video access. It is
coverage on the ground. We operate a network of twelve
thousand sports journalists around the globe. They're going live into
the arenas reporting with our application and we cover the data.
We do this, by the way, for the NBA, we
(14:40):
do that for UEFA, and we are quite sophisticated on this.
The better thing is you have this data production in
a controlled environment, so you have fast video feits and
that goes into one of our operation offices. We have
four of them. Imagine them as a kind of call
center for monitors on one table and they we have
(15:00):
a fast video feed in there, and we have a
situation of four people are operating one match or one
to one situation. In American sports, it's usually one to
four because you're going on very detailed data to pick
and roll and all those kind of things. Five years
ago that started to get into a computer vision. And
with computer vision, you extract the player, and you extract
(15:22):
the ball, and you extract the information from the referee.
It's only a question do you have the camera angle
that you can do all those things. But what it
is doing is it is more accurate than a human being,
and it's faster than a human being, and it gives
you so much more data points. For tennis, I know
now the reaction when the ball is leaving the record
(15:44):
from the other side, from the other player, how quickly
is the knee reacting into this direction? Is it less
than twenty milliseconds while the player is in a good
shape physically and mentally in the match. We can aggregate
this over the match, and we can use it for
predictive models. So this is possible with technologies and we
don't need human beings anymore for this. A trouble still
(16:05):
is team sports. There is much more complex to applied
computer vision. But I'm pretty positive that we will see
the same development like we saw in record sport in
player sport with the team sports, and that gives a
lot of additional applications.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
So Carston, obviously you love sports, you love technology, and
you're really good at raising capital. Walk us through how
difficult it is or how much fun it is to
go out and get a guy like Michael Jordan or
Mark Cuban and others to invest into your platform. Is
it more difficult than if you were going to a
private family office versus a celebrity or former icon athlete.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
So I think it doesn't matter do you go to
a family office or do you go to private equity
or a venture capital or do you go to one
of the woodraw rich people which are interested in that sector.
The thing which really counts is are you convincing when
you doing the pitch? Can you show that the level
(17:03):
of engagement but the knowledge there and can you tell
a consistent story the numbers of course must fit together,
but you must be convincing. Now. For me, it was
never really raising money when I went into private equity.
I had to go into private equity with sport Rada
because I had two founding partners, two Norwegians, and you know,
(17:26):
in every meeting they said, hey, Carson, you know how
those things are going. You're going to do it. And
I said, we have now four hundred people, and I
want you to challenge me, and I want you to
help me to give us structure because doing the decisions
only alone is quite a risk in such a growing
and hypergrowth environment. And I found a partner with Venture
(17:49):
Capital who had an approach which I liked and saying
we can help you with this structure and we can
help you with experts from outside. It was not so
much the money. How I do business is I try
to learn very fast. I try to make smaller steps.
I'm not the guy who is saying I need a
hundred million. Leave me alone for two years and then
(18:12):
I will tell you what I made out of it.
So for me, it's more I'm testing things if I
see that it's successful, and the measurement of success is
money hits your bank account. That's the only measurement. Success
is really very simple. A client is paying for a service.
If that hits your bank account, it's successful. If that
(18:32):
success is there, I'm ready to go double and triple
and all in because I see I have a learning
and I see there's a value for me. Was always
incremental steps and is always incremental steps. It is a
slower story to grow the business you have, not that
big bang, but it's for me the much better thing
(18:53):
because I have a control and I understand what I'm
doing and what we are doing is needed in the market.
There is a buyer that doesn't stop innovation, but you
get the feedback of saying is there a value in?
And the value is defined by a client is paying
you for this.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
One of the things we try to do in this
podcast is really educate and share our stories that are
really important as an entrepreneur. And it's not as sexy
as people think it is. I think young entrepreneurs overestimate
what they can do in the short term and highly
underestimate what they can do in the long term. And
you see here a perfect example of really long term thinking.
Much like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, So, I guess one of the things that I'm
so interested in, Carson, is this idea of you've been
able to become an official partner of just about every
major league across the world. What do they see as
the business opportunity here, like help us understand the ecosystem
that you're building in sort of who has what stake
in it?
Speaker 5 (19:54):
It's innovation. It's brutally looking for innovation. How can I
be better that I'm attractive in the global mark it
for the digital sport fan. How can I get my
product into the market that it's appealing for them? And
the digital sports fan they want a different consumption. Probably
you're me. We are looking to the big screen sometimes
looking for a match, cheering and being fully engaged during this.
(20:17):
If I look to the audience in Korea, for example,
in a generation set that's minimum seven matches which they'll
follow parallel, and they want to have the overlay data
in and they want you to know what player is
interesting and for which player they want to have some
additional information. They maybe want to have predictive games, or
they want to have some merchandising, and they want you
(20:39):
to understand this. That's a topic where you need to
use technology, and if I'm looking now to the MBA,
they are an excellent partner for us. Seem like Major
League Baseball. We get tracking data from the match. We
have the skeleton data of every MBA match, and we
have that in real time, so we could make a
funny thing out of it. Put the phase of ad
(21:00):
on the body of Lebron James and put the parameters
in there, or put my face in there to personalize this.
But the whole thing is going in real time and
it is then viewed in the way like you know,
I want to view the match. This is an understanding
of the sport van marrying it with deep sport data
(21:21):
to drive the product of the future. And for the
smaller ones, the story is more airtime. It's really building awareness.
A thing like pickleball is something which is really picking up.
It's played by so many people and it's such a
fun sport. And of course we can transport this sport
from the world of batting into a broader audience and
(21:44):
then get all the statistics behind it, the coverage and
all those things. The roles that we can organize the
tournaments and help them to do this So every sport,
I would say, has different characteristics at the end, its
usage of technology and achieving the aim for.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
The So one of the things that you know comes
up in any story or any conversation about sports betting
is the integrity of the game. And my understanding is
(22:22):
that you guys have a lot of people devoted to this.
You have players who could be tempted by what's effectively
insider trading, you know, tipping off who's healthy, who's unhealthy,
who's playing well, who's not playing well, et cetera. There's
the social impact of betting. How do you think about
that philosophically? How do you guys tackle those issues?
Speaker 5 (22:45):
There is no sport without integrity. If you know the
outcome of the match, that's killing the sport. So this
is aligning us and it is very bad for our
business model. Frankly speaking, if people know the outcome of
a match, you don't bet on it. So integrity of
the game is is there somebody who knows the outcome
(23:07):
of the match or has more knowledge about this can
be a player, can be somebody bribing the players in
most of the cases in this way, and the player
has a lot of opportunities so no show is something
of the things which is very hard to spot. In
a tense of a second, you don't do what you
can do. So this is something very early when we
(23:28):
had been probably in year number three to four of
our business, we had an accident with a German referee
who manipulated football soccer matches. The guy was doing it
in a way that in overtime we knew there must
be a three goals difference. He gave three penates in
the last three minutes of a ninety minute match. That
was a very obvious thing to detect, and from there
(23:51):
we began to develop those algorithms. Now we are seeing
the whole market. We are seeing all line movements and
there is always money involved behind them. With the algorithms
which we have by ourselves to predict match outcomes, and
if we see spread and differences, that gets into an
AI exercise in a very sophisticated system. Now this system
(24:11):
is used by the European Court of Justice, it's used
by COSS, which is the sport court in Lausanne, as
an evidence that there is something going on with this.
We never can say it's so much money which is
played here. But the thing while we do it, and
it's not a profit unit for us. You went on
a second topic and saying responsible gaming super important. We
(24:36):
work only in regulated markets. That's the only way how
you can grow a business. And I think here the
state and the regulator has an obligation to protect the people.
That's the highest good. So I'm going to have to
protect the people for getting gaming addicted. I'm going to
have to monitor those patterns, and I have to build
(24:59):
a framework for this, and they have to monitor this.
We believe we can do this very well, and we
developed the system for this. So far we have managed
to sell the system. I'm totally sure in two, three,
four years you will see a big pickup because there
is a huge need. And the third one where I
think that's needed, and that's for regulators, is taxes. The
(25:22):
reason why sports betting is so popular around the globe
is it's generated taxes, and those taxes can be used
for sport, can be used for developing something in the public,
which is good for the people. You're going to need
to monitor this in a much better way than it's
done at the moment. Putting that all together, you might
(25:42):
say that the regulatory service framework, which in every betting
environment in one or the other way.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
You need to have, Kirton, I have one quick one.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
I know that you mentioned IPO in twenty twenty one
and being one of the most successful ones. Have you
ever thought about taking a private again and maybe pros
and cons private versus public.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
First for the IPO that was one of the moments
in your life. And I've been standing there short after
COVID with Michael Jordan and a short story. Hopefully he's
not listening to this podcast, but he said to me
in the morning, it is a cursten today. I'm your
cheerleader and I only smiled. You know that would be
pretty funny if you are my cheerleader. And then we
had to click on the buzzer and they simulate this,
(26:25):
of course, but you're counting down from ten to one.
And when we had been on three, I looked on
him and saying, I'm faster than you, and he smiled.
Made no chance, and of course I went on one
on the buzzer. I was quicker. But he is so competitive,
and that's what I get from Michael. He is I
think the most competitive person on the planet I know,
(26:49):
and learning from him that spirit, I want to win
was an is for me a great exercise. And he
is a fantastic businessman, which many people don't realize too much.
But the things what he is doing is very well organized.
He's very much looking to the details. He's very attentive,
and he wants to provide value. He understands sport on
(27:12):
the level I'm not able to understand it, and he
understands sports betting on a level where we are competing.
So I see the directions here and he's seeing that.
Think that would be a cool thing to do. That's
a perfect mix to engage on a business level. Same
story somehow with Mark Cuban, who is so passionate about basketball.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I love that.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
I mean one quick Michael story to put a button
on yours. Jason, haven't told you this. A few months ago,
I was at his golf club in Girl twenty three,
me too. Here's Michael Jordan with his business partner and
they're sitting there for like four hours going over all
these p and ls, line by line by line, and
I asked them, Michael, you're playing today? He goes, no,
today's my business day. I got to go down the numbers.
And he probably does this once a month, right. So
(27:56):
to your point, I have the same experience. He's been
a great friend and mentor of mine. So I love Jordan.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
I hope you played not against him in his golf club.
It's an experience. But he's also, as we both know,
a very good and competitive goal for.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah, and he's the fastest golfer.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Him and Mark Wahlberg can play eighteen holes like an
hour and a half.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I mean, that's way too much stress for me. I'm
not that good.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
Same for me, Alex, same for me Carston.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Before we get too far away from I mean, I
would love to know how did you and Jordan get
linked up? You know, it's not like he's sort of
like out there. You don't just like text me and
be like, hey, bro, are you interested in this? Like
how does that deal come together?
Speaker 5 (28:33):
It's all about networking knowing people. In this case, there
is a third person which is involved in here, and
I'm very grateful for him. He has helped me on
the very beginning. In the US. That's Tad Leon this.
I think he owns the most of the teams, and
Ted is so well connected. I told him the story
what I want to do, and he was the first thing, Okay,
(28:54):
I'm backing this, I'm investing into this. I'm very grateful
for this, and I learned a lot and I got
a lot of connections from Ted. So Ted connected me
with Michael. Michael played for him, so that was an
easy way to go.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Well, I'm glad you said that because Ted is coming
on the pod next month.
Speaker 5 (29:11):
That will be an interesting part.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
I mean Ted is a great partner obviously in the NBA,
but I'm also going to pick a bone with him, Like,
how can you not call me for this great investment
you called Michael.
Speaker 5 (29:25):
Yeah, look, you should pick on him on this one.
So trust me. T is a fantastic person and very
visionary if it comes to technology, sports, sports batting. He
understood that as one of the first and he's a
great ambassador for US sensational.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Well, it's interesting too. I mean, if you think about it,
just talk about Ted for a second. I mean, through AOL,
he saw the collision of sports and technology and information
and being able to aggregate that in real time. And
I mean when you guys first met, to have been a
lot of overlap in terms of even sort of the
(30:04):
underlying philosophy of what you were trying to do.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
Look, that was such a quick thing. So we talked
and is that well, we understand the direction which this
should take. And he understands or understood at this moment
in time everything about the US and I was a
very starter. And even now I would say I probably
have ten percent of his knowledge if it comes to
the details in the US and what happens here in
(30:29):
the sport and technology. So I'm good in the sports
batting sector. I'm good in sports technology sector. But Ted
has an overall knowledge and he has that for multiple
sport and he has a track record which is hard
to beat. And that was easy. So if you meet
somebody who's talking the same language, who has that expertise,
(30:51):
who has the network and connection, that was a fairly
simple thing to do.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
All right, So let's do the lightning round. This is
our favorite part of this. So we're going to go quick.
We're going to go back and forth. I will start,
so you know, give us the first thing that jumps
to your mind. We may have already talked about this,
but I'm going to ask it anyway, what's the best
deal you've ever made?
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Carston created my own business.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
What's the best piece of advice you've received on deal
making or business.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Two small steps, prove them, and then accelerate and double
and triple down.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
What's the worst advice you've ever been given?
Speaker 5 (31:35):
Invest the fortune from people not your own money, and
don't have the right cadence.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
What's your best advice for someone who's listening wants to
be an entrepreneur? What would you tell them, especially maybe
in a moment where they're not sure that it's all
going to go their way.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
Every good entrepreneur I know and have a few friends.
The older you get, the less you have, but they
all have the same experience as an entrepreneur. You might
run bankrupt once or twice. You're going to need to
believe in yourself, but you need to find the point
when something is not working. Don't put all the passion in.
Be realistic on this. It happens to everybody that you
(32:15):
struggle sometimes, and the skill is to detect it. I
know it was not a quick answer, but it's an
important point.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
What's your hype song before you go into a big meeting?
Speaker 5 (32:26):
Cold Play?
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (32:27):
I like Chris Martin?
Speaker 5 (32:29):
Yeah, well I don't know him, but I love it,
and probably a sky full of stars.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Okay, love it all right, So, Carson Curl, thank you
so much, CEO and founder of sport Radar.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
You told us some good stories. Listen anytime, Alex.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
We get a good Michael Jordan's story and a good
Ted Leons the story. Like I feel like that's a
successful episode right there. So Carson, we're very grateful for
your time.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Thank you for your time.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me Jason Kelly.
This episode was made by Stacey Wong, Annamasarakus, Lizzie Phillip,
and Victor Eveez. Our theme music was made by Blake Maples.
Our executive producers are Kelly Laferrier, Ashley Honig, and Brendan Newnham.
Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Additional support
(33:23):
from Rachel Scaramzzino and Elena Los Angeles. Thanks for listening
to the Deal. If you have a minute, please subscribe, rate,
and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us.
And remember, if you're a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen
to all of our episodes absolutely add free on Apple Podcasts.
All you need to do is find the Bloomberg Channel
and connect your Bloomberg account.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
I'm Jason Kelly. See you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hi everyone, welcome to the deal.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
I'm Jason Kelly alongside of my partner Alex Rodriguez. All right, Alex,
we're going to get to a really interesting interview in
just a second with sport Radar founder and CEO Carston
curl So. Sports Radar it's a huge information provider in
the world of sports betting. They work with all the
major sports leagues and betting platforms to make data analytics
(00:38):
much more accessible.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But before we get to that, I guess you.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Want to know why I'm in yet another nameless, faceless
hotel room. I'm actually in Dallas, and you're not going
to believe who I got to sit down with. I'm
so excited for you to hear this interview when it
comes out in a couple of weeks. The Hunt Brothers, Wow,
Ark Hunt, Dan Hunt arguably one of the most influential
families in the history of American sports. I think you
would agree, not American sports, global sports. I mean they
(01:03):
are the north Star. I mean they really are admired
and respected by all.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
So it was fascinating because what we realized was this
was the founding family really one of the founding families
of the NFL, and by the way, the MLS too.
I mean this was you know, American soccer didn't really
exist until they and your friends, the Crafts, really got
involved in it have really propelled it forward. Now soccer
(01:30):
is headed for this huge moment in the United States
in twenty twenty six, between Kansas City and Dallas alone,
they're going to host sixteen games. Nine of them are
going to be here in Dallas at AT and T
Stadium is obviously going to be the centerpiece of all that.
The other amazing thing that we talk about in this interview,
(01:50):
which will come as a surprise to you, Taylor Swifts. Oh,
Taylor Swift had a tremendous impact on the Kansas City
Chiefs FANDI. Yes, winning back to back Super Bowls was big,
but really the biggest thing that happened in terms of
you know, we talked about the zeitgeist all the time,
was Taylor Swift and Travis Kelcey starting to date. And
(02:14):
I'd tell you Clark Hunt and Dan Hunt both told
incredible stories about the impact that I was going to
have so excited for you to hear about that. We've
got a story that we're gonna rune on the Bloomberg.
We recorded a TV interview as well. My partner in
that case was Julie Fine, the Text Spirit chief. So
we've got a lot of cool stuff coming up.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
There, Jays.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Let me add one thing to that, because, first of all,
I'm so excited to see this interview. I've admired the
Hunts for a very very long time. What they keep
doing over the last many decades is just keep setting
the bar higher and higher.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And I got one quick story.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I recently was at a convention where Roger Goodell spoke
and on that day the baseball schedule had come out
in Major League Baseball for twenty twenty five, and ironically,
they asked them, how do you think about the network?
How do you think about went to position games for
better ratings? And he said, we wait to the very
last minute. And this was interesting because it ties into
the Hunt family in Kansas City Chiefs. They said, Kansas
(03:09):
City did huge numbers. Obviously they're a great team. Homes Kelsey,
but Taylor Swift, her name come up again and one
of the things they said is they're looking at her
global schedule to see when they can schedule the NFL
games to make sure that she is there, and I'm
just like, this is incredible. The NFL waits for her
(03:31):
global concert to go out so they can set their
games so hopefully she's there and the numbers can go up.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
That's unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
I mean, and to that point, the audience expansion that
she brought to the Chiefs and to the league. I mean,
they're figuring out the best ways to measure it. But anecdotally,
one of the things Clark Hunt told us was he
just had people coming up to him saying, my ten
or twelve year old daughter wants me to tell her
every single time the Kansas City Chiefs are on TV
(04:03):
because she's gonna watch.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
That is amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
It's a literal game changer. When we think about game changers,
watch what I'm gonna do here. Sports betting has obviously
radically changed the landscape.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
There's a BusinessWeek.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Cover story that is out now and it is all
about the world of sports betting. I got the opportunity
to head down to South Florida. You were away so
we couldn't hang out, and I was up the road
in Fort Lauderdale. I met up with several current and
former Dolphins who talked about from the player's perspective, what
(04:39):
this huge increase in legalized betting has meant for them
both as players and also, I think importantly, and something
you can understand far better than I what it means
to be the product that's being bet on and sort
of the implications of all of that. Obviously, fantasy has
been a huge driver of both interests revenue. So it
(05:02):
is a world that I'm not sure any of us
could have imagined when we were kids because betting was
not legal, and now it is and it is a
booming business. So Carlston Girl is a fascinating guy. I mean,
this is an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. And one of the things
I loved about this interview that we're about to play is,
(05:22):
you guys, we are sort of like swapping notes on
what does it take to you know, really have that
have that right stuff right.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
First of all, the way he talks about some of
his investors, I mean, he has a wild story or
two about Michael Jordan, Mark Cuban, tet Leonses and is
wild how these deals came together. And he's going to
share something about the day they went ipo. He takes
us behind the scenes with Michael Jordan and I'm not
going to spoil it and those spoiler alerts here and
(05:50):
just the whole space. I mean, you gotta understand my
first love, Jason's baseball, right, and when you talked about
gambling anything with the word gambling, gaming or on base
for or sports, it was a pariah. It's amazing the
paradigm shift, the radical change where now we're getting leagues involved,
we're getting players involved, we're getting owners. It's just fascinating,
(06:10):
and I think he does a beautiful job of explaining
a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
All right.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Coming up next on the deal, our interview with Carlston Curl,
the founder and CEO of sport Radar. All right, so
now we're going to bring in Carston Curl. He's the
CEO and the founder of sport Radar. Carson, we are
(06:37):
so happy to have you here to talk to us
all about data sports vetting. It's something that the numbers.
This is what we love on this show. Alex and
I talk about it all the time. I want to
start by asking you, like, when you get to meet
somebody at a cocktail party or at dinner party, and
they say what do you do?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
What does sport Radar do?
Speaker 5 (06:56):
What do you say, Well, we are collecting sport information,
we are prosing it, aggregating it, we are selling it
to thousand media clients and eight hundred sports betting operators
in one hundred and eleven countries. At the moment, we
have offices in thirty four of those countries and we
have round about four thousand and five hundred employees sitting
(07:16):
in those offices.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
So where does that idea come from? I believe before
sport Radar, you started off in the sports betting world
in the nineties with a company called b Win. Then
you sold that company and started sport Radar back in
the early two thousands.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
So walk us through what happened.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
Okay, it's a long story, but if I'm looking back, So,
it was a long night in Switzerland, in a small city,
and I was sitting with a friend and I think
at two or three o'clock in the morning, we came
to a conclusion. I love sport, I love technology, so
what can I do to really bring those two things together?
And the answer was, let's develop a platform for sports
(07:56):
betting in the Internet. Now, that was nineteen ninety six,
and whenever I'm telling the story, I'm feeling damn old.
This is something where that took us three years. I
programmed that platform together with the colleagues, and then I
wanted to sell it and went to England to the
big book makers, Labbroks Hills Chorus, you name it, and
(08:17):
that I have a fantastic thing. It's a sports batting
platform which is doing sports betting over the Internet. And
the CEO said to me, well, you sound very passionate
about this and it looks pretty cool, but you know what,
we are not so sure if the internet is a
sustainable channel. And now, okay, that's the trouble. So I
gotta take this. I believe in it. I operate this
(08:38):
sports betting platform myself. I went to Austria, I took
a license that was one of the few countries which
can do it. To cut a long story short, the IPO,
the business. It was the most successful IPO I think
in the Austrian market. Still today. We have been oversigned
close to two hundred times. But it's a small market
there and I, as a very young entrepreneur, got a
(08:59):
lot of money, but I lost the control of my
business and losing the control of the business and having
people telling you what you should do is difficult for
an entrepreneur. So I decided to do something new and
I founded sport Rada. So I knew that there was
a demand on data. I knew that this is international.
It's not so easy to have team names in fifty
(09:21):
different languages, including Hindi and Mandarin and whatsoever, in a
correct spelling. Even these basic things. There was a need
for it, and there was a need how you transmit
this and how you're making a market transparent by somehow
crawling that informations together and comparing it. That was the
origin of sport Rada. We started with four clients. I
(09:42):
invested I think one hundred and fifty thousand viewers at
this time. Since then I never invested, and now the
business is worth yeah, a bit more than three billion,
and I still the major shareholder and the biggest shareholder
in there. So that is the story in a nutshell.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Amazing, amazing, and congrats, I mean it's that was an
amazing journey. I guess my question is how quickly did
you identify with the TAM the addressable market is on
a business like this.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
As an entrepreneur, you love what you're doing. I love
sport and I love technology. At this time, very honestly,
I was not interested in whatever TAM. I simply had
a passion to say, Wow, what I can do is
I can work with the sport which I love, and
I can work in a fast growing global market where
(10:30):
I know it's a market with the sharpest brains on
the planet. Because it's a regulated industry, you need to
be very quick, you need to react very quick, and
it's a global competition. And that was driving me saying
it's an excitement and it's a pleasure to work there.
And I think in the first years we simple progressed
in this perspective. It was a startup business without looking
(10:52):
too much on the TAMS. Because I financed it by myself.
I didn't need any kind of investors in there. And
I still recall after four or five years, we had
the first management meeting on a big, big whiteboard moderated
by a friend of mine and one of my colleagues
draw on that whiteboard versus three meters to four meters high,
so really big, draw a number in saying how target
(11:15):
is eighty million revenue. That was in the year number five,
probably year two thousand and five, two thousand and six.
Today our revenue is more than one point one billion,
and for the eighty million revenue target, we didn't believe
that we ever get there, because we have probably at
this time fifteen or seventeen million yearly revenue from that market.
(11:35):
That shows you we grew with this market. The industry
by itself had a tremendous growth that was accelerated, of
course by the Internet, and all the things which you
saw then coming live got more and more appealing. The
live coverage is much more important that things which I
see now in the US I see in the early
days of sports betting. Here it's the same kind of
(11:57):
learning curve which I saw in Europe. So you realize
that betting while the match is running is so more repeating,
so it's so much more engaging. You have all these emotions,
you have all those things which you see and then
you place your bet on this. So it's the thing
which was driving this industry and worldwide, I would say
(12:18):
it's the same phenomen around the globe. You see a
constant development. Now you see more development into player information.
I'm a big believer that the players are making the game.
Even if some of the teams are seeing this different
the players is really where the people follow, the fans
are with them getting more information about the players, putting
(12:40):
betting prepositions out there, using AI, using computer vision to
put that in a correlation is fairly complex. But this
is so engaging. And if you make a complex story simple,
that's where we are heading. If you hyper personalize this,
you have all the ingredients is for the future sports consumption.
We are sitting on the crossroad here, and I see
(13:02):
sports betting more as a technology enabler for all these
adjacent markets.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
But I want to get back to one of the
very core elements of this is and honestly, you know, Alex,
this is very reminiscent oddly enough of Bloomberg. Candidly, you know,
in terms of like creating a place where the data.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Are all sort of collected.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
I want to ask you a very basic question, Carson,
which is, how do you get all this data together?
Where is it living that you're able to collect it?
And how do you do that?
Speaker 5 (13:35):
Yeah, I'm sitting here in Bloomberg, and we had a time, Jason,
where we called ourselves to Bloomberg of sport to cut
it short, and it's an information transmission to a highly
classified and qualified audience. In all case the sports betting operators,
and on the beginning that was crawlers, and if those
crowdits are extracting information from the Internet, you begin to
(13:58):
validate this. We very quickly came to the conclusion that
we're going to need to have a highly specialized sport
agency to really validate the information to be right with
the information. It sounds easy, but it's not so easy.
If you have a tennis tournament, you get the order
of play in the morning from the organizer, and then
sometimes the matches are quicker, sometimes not. Sometimes matches are
(14:19):
starting quicker than scheduled, so you're going to need to
validate this information. Nowadays, it's fast video access. It is
coverage on the ground. We operate a network of twelve
thousand sports journalists around the globe. They're going live into
the arenas reporting with our application and we cover the data.
We do this, by the way, for the NBA, we
(14:40):
do that for UEFA, and we are quite sophisticated on this.
The better thing is you have this data production in
a controlled environment, so you have fast video feits and
that goes into one of our operation offices. We have
four of them. Imagine them as a kind of call
center for monitors on one table and they we have
(15:00):
a fast video feed in there, and we have a
situation of four people are operating one match or one
to one situation. In American sports, it's usually one to
four because you're going on very detailed data to pick
and roll and all those kind of things. Five years
ago that started to get into a computer vision. And
with computer vision, you extract the player, and you extract
(15:22):
the ball, and you extract the information from the referee.
It's only a question do you have the camera angle
that you can do all those things. But what it
is doing is it is more accurate than a human being,
and it's faster than a human being, and it gives
you so much more data points. For tennis, I know
now the reaction when the ball is leaving the record
(15:44):
from the other side, from the other player, how quickly
is the knee reacting into this direction? Is it less
than twenty milliseconds while the player is in a good
shape physically and mentally in the match. We can aggregate
this over the match, and we can use it for
predictive models. So this is possible with technologies and we
don't need human beings anymore for this. A trouble still
(16:05):
is team sports. There is much more complex to applied
computer vision. But I'm pretty positive that we will see
the same development like we saw in record sport in
player sport with the team sports, and that gives a
lot of additional applications.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
So Carston, obviously you love sports, you love technology, and
you're really good at raising capital. Walk us through how
difficult it is or how much fun it is to
go out and get a guy like Michael Jordan or
Mark Cuban and others to invest into your platform. Is
it more difficult than if you were going to a
private family office versus a celebrity or former icon athlete.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
So I think it doesn't matter do you go to
a family office or do you go to private equity
or a venture capital or do you go to one
of the woodraw rich people which are interested in that sector.
The thing which really counts is are you convincing when
you doing the pitch? Can you show that the level
(17:03):
of engagement but the knowledge there and can you tell
a consistent story the numbers of course must fit together,
but you must be convincing. Now. For me, it was
never really raising money when I went into private equity.
I had to go into private equity with sport Rada
because I had two founding partners, two Norwegians, and you know,
(17:26):
in every meeting they said, hey, Carson, you know how
those things are going. You're going to do it. And
I said, we have now four hundred people, and I
want you to challenge me, and I want you to
help me to give us structure because doing the decisions
only alone is quite a risk in such a growing
and hypergrowth environment. And I found a partner with Venture
(17:49):
Capital who had an approach which I liked and saying
we can help you with this structure and we can
help you with experts from outside. It was not so
much the money. How I do business is I try
to learn very fast. I try to make smaller steps.
I'm not the guy who is saying I need a
hundred million. Leave me alone for two years and then
(18:12):
I will tell you what I made out of it.
So for me, it's more I'm testing things if I
see that it's successful, and the measurement of success is
money hits your bank account. That's the only measurement. Success
is really very simple. A client is paying for a service.
If that hits your bank account, it's successful. If that
(18:32):
success is there, I'm ready to go double and triple
and all in because I see I have a learning
and I see there's a value for me. Was always
incremental steps and is always incremental steps. It is a
slower story to grow the business you have, not that
big bang, but it's for me the much better thing
(18:53):
because I have a control and I understand what I'm
doing and what we are doing is needed in the market.
There is a buyer that doesn't stop innovation, but you
get the feedback of saying is there a value in?
And the value is defined by a client is paying
you for this.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
One of the things we try to do in this
podcast is really educate and share our stories that are
really important as an entrepreneur. And it's not as sexy
as people think it is. I think young entrepreneurs overestimate
what they can do in the short term and highly
underestimate what they can do in the long term. And
you see here a perfect example of really long term thinking.
Much like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, So, I guess one of the things that I'm
so interested in, Carson, is this idea of you've been
able to become an official partner of just about every
major league across the world. What do they see as
the business opportunity here, like help us understand the ecosystem
that you're building in sort of who has what stake
in it?
Speaker 5 (19:54):
It's innovation. It's brutally looking for innovation. How can I
be better that I'm attractive in the global mark it
for the digital sport fan. How can I get my
product into the market that it's appealing for them? And
the digital sports fan they want a different consumption. Probably
you're me. We are looking to the big screen sometimes
looking for a match, cheering and being fully engaged during this.
(20:17):
If I look to the audience in Korea, for example,
in a generation set that's minimum seven matches which they'll
follow parallel, and they want to have the overlay data
in and they want you to know what player is
interesting and for which player they want to have some
additional information. They maybe want to have predictive games, or
they want to have some merchandising, and they want you
(20:39):
to understand this. That's a topic where you need to
use technology, and if I'm looking now to the MBA,
they are an excellent partner for us. Seem like Major
League Baseball. We get tracking data from the match. We
have the skeleton data of every MBA match, and we
have that in real time, so we could make a
funny thing out of it. Put the phase of ad
(21:00):
on the body of Lebron James and put the parameters
in there, or put my face in there to personalize this.
But the whole thing is going in real time and
it is then viewed in the way like you know,
I want to view the match. This is an understanding
of the sport van marrying it with deep sport data
(21:21):
to drive the product of the future. And for the
smaller ones, the story is more airtime. It's really building awareness.
A thing like pickleball is something which is really picking up.
It's played by so many people and it's such a
fun sport. And of course we can transport this sport
from the world of batting into a broader audience and
(21:44):
then get all the statistics behind it, the coverage and
all those things. The roles that we can organize the
tournaments and help them to do this So every sport,
I would say, has different characteristics at the end, its
usage of technology and achieving the aim for.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
The So one of the things that you know comes
up in any story or any conversation about sports betting
is the integrity of the game. And my understanding is
(22:22):
that you guys have a lot of people devoted to this.
You have players who could be tempted by what's effectively
insider trading, you know, tipping off who's healthy, who's unhealthy,
who's playing well, who's not playing well, et cetera. There's
the social impact of betting. How do you think about
that philosophically? How do you guys tackle those issues?
Speaker 5 (22:45):
There is no sport without integrity. If you know the
outcome of the match, that's killing the sport. So this
is aligning us and it is very bad for our
business model. Frankly speaking, if people know the outcome of
a match, you don't bet on it. So integrity of
the game is is there somebody who knows the outcome
(23:07):
of the match or has more knowledge about this can
be a player, can be somebody bribing the players in
most of the cases in this way, and the player
has a lot of opportunities so no show is something
of the things which is very hard to spot. In
a tense of a second, you don't do what you
can do. So this is something very early when we
(23:28):
had been probably in year number three to four of
our business, we had an accident with a German referee
who manipulated football soccer matches. The guy was doing it
in a way that in overtime we knew there must
be a three goals difference. He gave three penates in
the last three minutes of a ninety minute match. That
was a very obvious thing to detect, and from there
(23:51):
we began to develop those algorithms. Now we are seeing
the whole market. We are seeing all line movements and
there is always money involved behind them. With the algorithms
which we have by ourselves to predict match outcomes, and
if we see spread and differences, that gets into an
AI exercise in a very sophisticated system. Now this system
(24:11):
is used by the European Court of Justice, it's used
by COSS, which is the sport court in Lausanne, as
an evidence that there is something going on with this.
We never can say it's so much money which is
played here. But the thing while we do it, and
it's not a profit unit for us. You went on
a second topic and saying responsible gaming super important. We
(24:36):
work only in regulated markets. That's the only way how
you can grow a business. And I think here the
state and the regulator has an obligation to protect the people.
That's the highest good. So I'm going to have to
protect the people for getting gaming addicted. I'm going to
have to monitor those patterns, and I have to build
(24:59):
a framework for this, and they have to monitor this.
We believe we can do this very well, and we
developed the system for this. So far we have managed
to sell the system. I'm totally sure in two, three,
four years you will see a big pickup because there
is a huge need. And the third one where I
think that's needed, and that's for regulators, is taxes. The
(25:22):
reason why sports betting is so popular around the globe
is it's generated taxes, and those taxes can be used
for sport, can be used for developing something in the public,
which is good for the people. You're going to need
to monitor this in a much better way than it's
done at the moment. Putting that all together, you might
(25:42):
say that the regulatory service framework, which in every betting
environment in one or the other way.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
You need to have, Kirton, I have one quick one.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
I know that you mentioned IPO in twenty twenty one
and being one of the most successful ones. Have you
ever thought about taking a private again and maybe pros
and cons private versus public.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
First for the IPO that was one of the moments
in your life. And I've been standing there short after
COVID with Michael Jordan and a short story. Hopefully he's
not listening to this podcast, but he said to me
in the morning, it is a cursten today. I'm your
cheerleader and I only smiled. You know that would be
pretty funny if you are my cheerleader. And then we
had to click on the buzzer and they simulate this,
(26:25):
of course, but you're counting down from ten to one.
And when we had been on three, I looked on
him and saying, I'm faster than you, and he smiled.
Made no chance, and of course I went on one
on the buzzer. I was quicker. But he is so competitive,
and that's what I get from Michael. He is I
think the most competitive person on the planet I know,
(26:49):
and learning from him that spirit, I want to win
was an is for me a great exercise. And he
is a fantastic businessman, which many people don't realize too much.
But the things what he is doing is very well organized.
He's very much looking to the details. He's very attentive,
and he wants to provide value. He understands sport on
(27:12):
the level I'm not able to understand it, and he
understands sports betting on a level where we are competing.
So I see the directions here and he's seeing that.
Think that would be a cool thing to do. That's
a perfect mix to engage on a business level. Same
story somehow with Mark Cuban, who is so passionate about basketball.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I love that.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
I mean one quick Michael story to put a button
on yours. Jason, haven't told you this. A few months ago,
I was at his golf club in Girl twenty three,
me too. Here's Michael Jordan with his business partner and
they're sitting there for like four hours going over all
these p and ls, line by line by line, and
I asked them, Michael, you're playing today? He goes, no,
today's my business day. I got to go down the numbers.
And he probably does this once a month, right. So
(27:56):
to your point, I have the same experience. He's been
a great friend and mentor of mine. So I love Jordan.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
I hope you played not against him in his golf club.
It's an experience. But he's also, as we both know,
a very good and competitive goal for.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah, and he's the fastest golfer.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Him and Mark Wahlberg can play eighteen holes like an
hour and a half.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I mean, that's way too much stress for me. I'm
not that good.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
Same for me, Alex, same for me Carston.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Before we get too far away from I mean, I
would love to know how did you and Jordan get
linked up? You know, it's not like he's sort of
like out there. You don't just like text me and
be like, hey, bro, are you interested in this? Like
how does that deal come together?
Speaker 5 (28:33):
It's all about networking knowing people. In this case, there
is a third person which is involved in here, and
I'm very grateful for him. He has helped me on
the very beginning. In the US. That's Tad Leon this.
I think he owns the most of the teams, and
Ted is so well connected. I told him the story
what I want to do, and he was the first thing, Okay,
(28:54):
I'm backing this, I'm investing into this. I'm very grateful
for this, and I learned a lot and I got
a lot of connections from Ted. So Ted connected me
with Michael. Michael played for him, so that was an
easy way to go.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Well, I'm glad you said that because Ted is coming
on the pod next month.
Speaker 5 (29:11):
That will be an interesting part.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
I mean Ted is a great partner obviously in the NBA,
but I'm also going to pick a bone with him, Like,
how can you not call me for this great investment
you called Michael.
Speaker 5 (29:25):
Yeah, look, you should pick on him on this one.
So trust me. T is a fantastic person and very
visionary if it comes to technology, sports, sports batting. He
understood that as one of the first and he's a
great ambassador for US sensational.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Well, it's interesting too. I mean, if you think about it,
just talk about Ted for a second. I mean, through AOL,
he saw the collision of sports and technology and information
and being able to aggregate that in real time. And
I mean when you guys first met, to have been a
lot of overlap in terms of even sort of the
(30:04):
underlying philosophy of what you were trying to do.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
Look, that was such a quick thing. So we talked
and is that well, we understand the direction which this
should take. And he understands or understood at this moment
in time everything about the US and I was a
very starter. And even now I would say I probably
have ten percent of his knowledge if it comes to
the details in the US and what happens here in
(30:29):
the sport and technology. So I'm good in the sports
batting sector. I'm good in sports technology sector. But Ted
has an overall knowledge and he has that for multiple
sport and he has a track record which is hard
to beat. And that was easy. So if you meet
somebody who's talking the same language, who has that expertise,
(30:51):
who has the network and connection, that was a fairly
simple thing to do.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
All right, So let's do the lightning round. This is
our favorite part of this. So we're going to go quick.
We're going to go back and forth. I will start,
so you know, give us the first thing that jumps
to your mind. We may have already talked about this,
but I'm going to ask it anyway, what's the best
deal you've ever made?
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Carston created my own business.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
What's the best piece of advice you've received on deal
making or business.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Two small steps, prove them, and then accelerate and double
and triple down.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
What's the worst advice you've ever been given?
Speaker 5 (31:35):
Invest the fortune from people not your own money, and
don't have the right cadence.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
What's your best advice for someone who's listening wants to
be an entrepreneur? What would you tell them, especially maybe
in a moment where they're not sure that it's all
going to go their way.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
Every good entrepreneur I know and have a few friends.
The older you get, the less you have, but they
all have the same experience as an entrepreneur. You might
run bankrupt once or twice. You're going to need to
believe in yourself, but you need to find the point
when something is not working. Don't put all the passion in.
Be realistic on this. It happens to everybody that you
(32:15):
struggle sometimes, and the skill is to detect it. I
know it was not a quick answer, but it's an
important point.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
What's your hype song before you go into a big meeting?
Speaker 5 (32:26):
Cold Play?
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (32:27):
I like Chris Martin?
Speaker 5 (32:29):
Yeah, well I don't know him, but I love it,
and probably a sky full of stars.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Okay, love it all right, So, Carson Curl, thank you
so much, CEO and founder of sport Radar.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
You told us some good stories. Listen anytime, Alex.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
We get a good Michael Jordan's story and a good
Ted Leons the story. Like I feel like that's a
successful episode right there. So Carson, we're very grateful for
your time.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Thank you for your time.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me Jason Kelly.
This episode was made by Stacey Wong, Annamasarakus, Lizzie Phillip,
and Victor Eveez. Our theme music was made by Blake Maples.
Our executive producers are Kelly Laferrier, Ashley Honig, and Brendan Newnham.
Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Additional support
(33:23):
from Rachel Scaramzzino and Elena Los Angeles. Thanks for listening
to the Deal. If you have a minute, please subscribe, rate,
and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us.
And remember, if you're a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen
to all of our episodes absolutely add free on Apple Podcasts.
All you need to do is find the Bloomberg Channel
and connect your Bloomberg account.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
I'm Jason Kelly. See you next week.
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