July 4, 2024 • 30 mins
In this episode of The Deal, entrepreneur Joe Pompliano tells hosts Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly about his rise in the sports media landscape, potential directions for sports valuations and future trends in sports media.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hi everyone, welcome to the deal. I'm Jason Kelly alongside
my partner Alex Rodriguez today on the show Joe Pump Leiano.
He's the host of The Joe Pump Show, founder of
Huddle Up, and a founding partner of Pump Investments. That's
coming up later in the show. Alex, this is a
guy we're excited to talk to.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I gotta tell you, if ten years ago you were
to say who's going to be the most influential media
personality media, sports, entertainment, you could say he's going to
be Joe Pump because he's ahead of the curve.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, I'm excited to chop it up with him. But first,
one of my favorite things to do is just talk
to you about, like what you've been up to. You're
at Aspen Ideas Festival. Greg Lemcow, who you and I
both know very well, interviewed you and another guy we
both know very well, David Rubensiein. He's actually going to
be a guest on this show not too long from now.
Tell me about what was going on. I mean, that's
(01:06):
a tough assignment man, going to Aspen in June.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I love going to Aspen.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I wish I was there more than like twelve hours,
but I literally flew in, flew out. I had to
get to New York. You know, I think David he's
the new greatest asset for Major League Baseball. I think
he's the ideal owner the Baltimore Orioles, that's where he's from.
He's a giant in private equity, he's a giant in communications.
For seventy three years old, he's one of the most
brilliant marketers there is. And I think he's just going
to be an awesome, awesome asset to baseball.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
I do wonder, like, as you guys talked about the
state of baseball, what's he bringing to the table or
what's on his mind in terms of what could happen
with the game.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Well, if you think about everything he's done, you know,
going back forty years when he started the great Carlisle Group, right,
you know, twenty years ago, he was the first guy
to go across the pond and raise money. He's like
probably the best, most ferocious capital raiser over the last
several decades. And I think he's just a progressive thinker.
He's always ahead of the curve. He's a wonderful communicator.
I think that's exactly what major League baseball needs and
(02:04):
he's just the perfect guy in the perfect time for it.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So it's interesting that you were talking to him this
week because I spent this morning at Bloomberg and Vast.
This is an annual conference that we do, and not
surprisingly to you or to me, we had a couple
sessions on sports and sports as an asset class. I
hosted a conversation with markott Andasio and Tom Werner. Marktt
(02:27):
Andasio owned the Milwaukee Brewers. Tom Werner, of course, the
chairman of Fenwaig Sports Group, owners of Boss Red Sox Liverpool,
they ConTroll Nessen. They owned the Pittsburgh Penguins as well.
And it's funny hearing you talk about, you know, David
and baseball. One of the things that these guys were
talking a lot about, because they've both been in Major
(02:47):
League Baseball for a while, is how massive these rule
changes have been for the business of baseball. I have
to think you have seen that and knowing the game
like you do, like, what do you make of where
the game is at this moment?
Speaker 4 (03:02):
I think it's brilliant.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
You know, you wish you would have had these changes earlier,
but better late than never. Give Rob Manford a lot
of credit, Give Tony Clark the head of a union,
and a lot of credit for coming together and something
that's not been you know, very easy to do for
owners and players to come together with obviously their history
going back to Marvin Miller and Don Fear and the battles.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
So I think what.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
This is it should give them confidence that it's okay
to be progressive and move the ball forward and move
the chains. And what they've done with the game is
made a shorter, better to watch, better to play, just
a better product. Now they need to do the same
things in the business and entertainment side, And how do
they move that to another lane and just keep making
(03:41):
the game better and better and take some notes from
the NFL, take some notes from the NBA, and go
from there.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, it's funny you say the thing about the NFL,
because one of the things Tom Werner pointed out is
is like, hey, listen, the NFL makes changes to the
game literally every season. You know, they get in, they
do it. If something doesn't work, stopped doing it. He's like,
baseball is just so like these are my words, not his,
but like's, it sort of gets caught up in its
own tradition and it just won't move forward. And you know,
(04:10):
I texted you on Saturday because I was at the
Yankee game with my family. It's like, beautiful night, unbelievable,
you know, a Saturday night in the Bronx with your family.
Nothing's better than that. And honestly, it's two and a
half hour game. It's really exciting. It was high scoring.
We got on the train and went home. It was fantastic.
You know, I didn't get home at two in the morning,
which I feel like could easily have happened before these
(04:31):
rule changes. So enough about me and my you know,
get off of my lawn. But I will say one
other thing I wanted to mention to you. So I've
spent a session with Josh Harris, owner of the seventy
six ers and more recently ownered the Washington Commanders. I
was pressing him a little bit about a couple of things.
One is valuations. I mean, holy smokes man. He fully
admitted that when he bought the Commanders a couple of
(04:53):
years ago for six billion dollars, he gave up all
credibilities a value investor. Probably true. I think times revenue
was what he paid. But if you look, and I
brought this up with him, reports on Bloomberg and elsewhere
saying that Jeffrey Loriie of the Philadelphia Eagles is selling
a minority stake in his team. In his franchise valuation
(05:14):
seven and a half billion. That's a team in the
same division as the Washington Commander. So if you just
do apples to apples, that's a twenty five percent appreciation
for Josh Eris in two years. If in fact those
franchises are roughly valued the same, which I believe that
they are. Stephen Ross, your your neighbor and friend down
there in Miami talking about a ten billion dollar valuation
(05:36):
for all the assets around the Dolphins, that of course
includes F one and the Miami Open. I did ask
Josh you know where he thought the ceiling was, and
he said, this growth has tracked and he sees no
reason it won't continue to track in terms of the
valuation of franchises, whether it's NFL or others. It's a remarkable,
(05:58):
remarkable time to be watching.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
This, It really is.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
And our guy down here with Miami Dolphins, Steve Ross.
You know, word on the street was that, you know,
he turned down ten billion dollar enterprise from Ken Griffin.
Now I don't know if that's sure or not, but
even those conversations to be written are pretty frightening. I
will say this, Josh probably paid market or a little
bit more for Commanders. You have to these days to
have a general partner.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Piece, But when you look at the price he paid
for the.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Sixers and the Devils in the NHL, oh, that's sixty times,
Jason comes way down.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
So he's done pretty well. Nobody's gonna feel sorry for Josh.
He's a brilliant investor.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
No, no, absolutely, And I'll give you the numbers because
I looked him up ahead of this conversation. Roughly two
hundred and twenty million dollars for the Sixers in twenty eleven.
Now importantly, and I do think this is important, at
the time, they were losing thirty to fifty million dollars
in Ebitdad like, it was not a just stress saleses,
a corporate carve out from Comcast who was getting out
(06:52):
of that business. But you know, he saw something there.
He fully admitted that he did not anticipate that he
would go into sports the way that he and David
Blitzer did, and obviously they've expanded into the Premier League,
and interestingly enough, one of their big projects individually, he
and Blitz together is in youth sports and specifically baseball.
They're in business with Cal Ripkin, as you know, Cal
(07:13):
and Bill Ripkin in putting together this company called Unrivaled.
I mean, it's just it's unbelievable. I did want to
also mention one of our favorite episodes that we've done.
I think it's fair to say was with Steven A. Smith.
You mentioned him earlier. He's about to get paid, my friend.
We don't know exactly how much. Reports are out there
that ESPN has put an offer for eighteen million dollars
(07:33):
a year. That is less, I think than what he
is looking for. But I mean, he talked to us
about how he was going to negotiate this deal and
so we'll see how it comes to fruition. This story
is far from over. It sounds like there's going to
be a lot of back and forth in the coming months.
But eighteen million bucks, even that, I don't think he's
going to settle for that. But even if he ended
(07:54):
up there. What a remarkable story and I obviously highly
encourage people to listen to that episode of the Deal.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
I think for listeners this is just a great inspirational
story when you think about it. He is the number
one media personality probably in the planet. He's synonymous with ESPN,
He's doing over ten hours a week of content. He
now has his podcast. He may want to be the
next future Johnny Carson, or maybe get into politics. And
here's what's amazing for listeners. It's ten years ago. This
(08:21):
guy was met at a diner by one of the
es Men executives and said you are fired.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Yeah. Then he went and got a job.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
With Fox, didn't give up, got himself cleaned up, got smarter.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
He admitted to us, and his words were.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
I was arrogant, and I was the worst kind of
arrogant because I was stupid while I was arrogant. The
biggest lesson I learned was the importance of mastering my business,
not just from a negotiating standpoint, not just to empower
myself as a talent, but as a man, learning to
separate emotion from business.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
But for anybody who's gone through a tough time, Steven
a smith just a decade ago, did not have a
job and put it together piece at a time.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Amazing story, So check that out in the podcast feed.
Coming up, Joe Pump joins the deal. We're excited to
be joined by Joe pomp Leiano. He's the host of
(09:23):
the sports podcast The Joe Pump Show, and he's also
the founding partner of Pomp Investments. They've invested in more
than one hundred early stage companies. Most notably, he's the
founder of Huddle Up. That's a daily newsletter breaking down
his personal opinion on the money and business behind sports. Welcome, Joe.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I love that.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
I've been a big fan of your guys show too
for a while. It's really become a great resource in
sports business. So thank you guys for doing this because
this is awesome.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Joe, getting to know you a little bit.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
What I thought was really interesting about kind of studying
your progression and your growth in the media. And you
know your letters are so popular, you know, coming from
JP Morgan in an analyst, I think you bring the
rigorous research and work ethic, You understand numbers, and you
love sports and like that trifecta makes you. I believe
so effective, and on top of that, you're a great communicator.
(10:12):
Did you always know you were talented communicator, because usually
people with math are not great communicators and vice versa,
but you got both.
Speaker 6 (10:18):
No. I still don't really think of myself as a
great communicator, especially not a writer. I don't have a
writing background, so when I write the newsletter, it's almost
kind of like a journal to some degree. I write
in a very casual setting. I try not to be
or pretend to be smarter than I am, and I
think people have adapted to that and appreciate it. And
what I noticed is that specifically in sports business, you
(10:39):
guys know this, there's publications that do a really good
job Bloomberg everyone else, right, And from an individual perspective,
there wasn't really a ton of people who were doing
it quite well. So I thought there was an opportunity
to really just lean into that and be myself and say, hey,
I don't know all the answers, but these are things
that I'm really interested in and I'm willing to put
in the work to kind of learn alongside you guys.
And what I've found is that people appreciate that, whether
(11:02):
it's on the podcast or newsletter or social media. It's
just like anything else, right, you try something, it doesn't work,
you move on to the next that works. Okay, let's
go do more of that. And really that's how I've
built all the stuff on the media side.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I'm taken back, Alex to the conversation we had with
your other partner, Mark Lori and his decision to like
ditch Wall Street and like go all in on being
an entrepreneur. I just need to do this because I'm
like all in kind of guy, Like I was just
doing banking so intensely I couldn't like focus. So he said,
you're serious. I said, yeah, there are echoes of that here, Joe, Like,
(11:37):
I mean, what was that moment like where you went
to JP where and You're like, hey, this has been great,
but I'm out and I'm gonna go like do my
own thing and create all this and by the way,
I'm going to do it in sports, like this is
every person's dream in some ways. But what did it
feel like to you at the moment?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
It was scary. But you know what's funny, Jason, is
they legitimately laughed.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
My boss at the time was global had a fixed income,
so You have to imagine he's got a million different
things going on, and this obviously wasn't at the top
of his priority list. And associate at the time coming
to him and saying, hey, I think I'm going to
leave right and he said, You're going to be a writer,
and I'm like, well, kind of, but not really right.
There's a bunch of other stuff that goes into it.
You know, he didn't really get it. I think today
a lot of them have reached out and understand it more.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
But it's scary. It's just like anything else. I was fortunate.
Speaker 6 (12:21):
I always tell this story because I really appreciate it
at the time, and I certainly appreciate it now given
everything that's happened.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
There's a company called Athletic Brewing.
Speaker 6 (12:28):
Anyone who's ever heard of them knows they're a non
alcoholic beer company. And the founder of the company came
to me at the time. I had met him through
a mutual friend, and he essentially said, hey, look, I'll
sponsor everything you're going to do for six months. You're
probably going to get a better deal for the first
few months. Given how things are growing today, I might
get a better deal at the end of that six months,
so he gave me enough leeway to just say, hey, look,
I have security for the next six months. There's people
(12:50):
that do this with much less security, and that's when
everything really started to accelerate. So, like, I owed a
great debt of gratitude to them for making that happen.
But it's scary, right, like anything else where, people just
need to kind of have confidence in themselves and have
belief that internally that they can make it happen.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
So, Joe, you've been a great forecast.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
I mean, probably nine out of ten people that decide
to do what you do or you did, would probably fail. Right,
you were obviously in the right side of history there.
When you think about the landscape of media today and
how much it's changing with OTT and everything else, and
the way you think about your newsletter, your podcast, and
also you're investing arm where do you see your business
(13:30):
one three five years from now.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
Well, I think there's a few different routes. The concern
with some of that stuff, right is like what is
the end goal? What are you trying to create? Are
you trying to build something over the next three to
five years that you can sell? Are you trying to
use that for something else, and me specifically, what I've
always used the media.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
As is leverage to do other things.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
Right, we make money, it's profitable, it's a good business,
but really what I want to do is use it
as leverage for something that I think can be more profitable,
which is the investing side. And what I mean by that,
right is like when I go to a business, I
can basically get into any deal that I want right
now on the sports side because they know that I'm
going to help them on the media side when it
comes to announcements, product features, or anything else related to that,
(14:10):
and it makes a real meaningful difference in their business,
which is tangible value that not every investor can say, right,
and look, I'm investing personal money, so it's not you know,
multimillion dollar.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Checks in most cases.
Speaker 6 (14:21):
And I think that has been really helpful for a
lot of founders that I've worked with, and something that
I've been really keen on keeping distant from building this
into something that maybe I'm not as happy as I
am today.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
I think I speak for alex in myself. We love
people's processes. How do you pick your stories? What's your
process like when you identify something and then how do
you go about sort of digging deep into it.
Speaker 6 (14:43):
So one of the things that I'm very cognizant of
is that media has been democratized completely at this point. Right,
if you think about media today, all you really need
is an iPhone, Like you can create a TikTok account tomorrow,
you can make a video on something that you're knowledgeable
about or care and they're going to push that video
to million other people if it's good.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
What are you offering that's different?
Speaker 6 (15:03):
Obviously you're going to pick stories that have a wider
audience or a total addressable market that's bigger than other things.
That's kind of like the first level of everything. But
then how are you explaining those stories? And I think
one thing that I've really found success in is storytelling.
When it comes down to it, everything is storytelling, right,
How are you conveying the messaging? Communication is everything. You
can say the exact same story in two different ways,
(15:25):
and one is going to hit with people way more
than the other, just based on how you communicate that.
And then it's just communicating it in a way that
is authentic and compelling to an audience through typical narratives
and what I found is that doing that on different mediums,
i e. The newsletter is one audience, social media is
a completely different audience. The podcast sometimes is a different
audience too, And by being in a multiple different places
(15:46):
at once, you're able to reach a way wider audience
and you maybe would be otherwise.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Can you share maybe one or two storytelling techniques that
actually has made you better as you hone your craft.
Speaker 6 (15:57):
So I think at the simplest form, you need a hook, right,
You need to be able to hook people into the
content within the first If it's a video, I mean
you literally have five seconds, right, That's how short attention
spans are today. When it comes to writing, you have
a little bit longer, maybe you know, the first paragraph
or two to really be able to get someone interested.
And then from there it's explaining kind of where the
conflict is in the story.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Right.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
Everyone loves having a little bit of conflict and someone
overcoming that. You want to be a little bit contrary
to kind of the opinions out there, sometimes depending on
what the story is. But ultimately I really do think
that it just comes back to like an innate interest
in some of these topics. People can tell if you're
talking about something that you don't care about. I get
asked all the time, right write about cricket. I'm like,
(16:37):
I don't watch cricket, right, Like, Cricket's a massive sport.
Anytime I've ever tweeted about cricket in the past, it
goes viral because there's hundreds of millions, billions of people
that care about cricket.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
But I don't watch cricket. I don't know enough about cricket.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
I don't care enough about cricket to be able to
write about it or talk about it on a consistent basis.
And that's like the perfect example of me of what
you should be talking about is things that you care about. So, like, Alex,
if you wanted to go do something, I've seen videos, right.
You post some of these videos that are short formed
sometimes talking about your playing days or had a grip
a bad or the grip on a baseball or your
glove and things like that, and those always overperformed because
(17:10):
one you have the expertise to be able to talk
about it, but two people can tell that you really
care about that.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
And for me, those are the things that perform really
well too.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, one of my favorite things Joe is some of
the stuff you've done about Formula one, which I really
am interested in. And I think one of the trickiest
things about that subject, and Alex and I have talked
about this a little bit, is you know, getting that
broader audience interested in it. Was that one that you
had a relationship with as a fan or was it
something that you just identified and wanted to figure out,
(17:38):
Like it's just an example that sort of springs to
my mind.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
Yes, So I've watched Formula one for a while, but
the reason why I've gone so much more into it
is because my wife became much more interested in it,
and now it's become something that we can do together.
We talk about She actually finds a lot more information
about it than I do it first, which has become
really fun. But the thing about Formula one is that,
and actually just content in general, is if you read
the newsletter, there's one hundred and twenty five thousand subscribers
(18:02):
on the newsletter, and for sports business.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
That's relatively large because.
Speaker 6 (18:07):
Sports business is sort of such a niche topic, right,
And the reason I've been very thoughtful about that is
I want to cast a wide enough net to where
I can have subscribers all over the world. There's like
one hundred and eighty countries that are represented on the
newsletter today, right, So it's very wide net that has
been cast. But then you want to go deep enough
to a point where still the executives and commissioners from
(18:27):
all the major sports leagues in the US still care
about the work and are reading it. Right, So there's
a really big quality there, and that's why when you
read it, you'll understand that I don't ever go way
too deep down the rabbit hole and talk about terms
that people can't understand. It's breaking it down in the
simplest terms, in the shortest concise amount that you can.
And Former the Ones a great sport for that, because
while it's incredibly complex, you're essentially teasing it to an
(18:48):
entirely new audience here in the United States who hasn't
followed it. And now it's grown and there's a great
story there with Liberty Media and the numbers and everything.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Associated with that.
Speaker 6 (18:57):
But you're explaining it and you're talking about it, and
you're associating it with the business that they know.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
In liberty media here.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
So form of the one has been a great additive
sport to everything that I've done over the years. But
again it goes back to everything that I said previously
about just a sport that I've watched and I've loved
over the years too.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
You know, Alex and I we have a constant text
back and forth of like stuff we're looking at. You know,
we don't need you to give away any ip and
like future newsletters and things like that, but like, what
are you watching out there right now? Like, let's capturing
your attention at the moment.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I'm an open book.
Speaker 6 (19:26):
I think specifically, if we talk about the US, there's
a few things. The NFL is really interesting to me
right now. I think at some point in the near future,
they're going to be approving the private equity funds to
come in and buy the minority stakes like we've seen
in the NBA and other leagues like that. I think
that's going to be incredibly helpful for a lot of
the owners who either want to take money off the
table or a lot of investors that just want to
put and park money in an asset that is known
(19:48):
to appreciate and is going to be ill liquid. And
obviously there's a lot of investment funds that are going
to be spun up and want to do that too,
So that's one thing with the NFL. And then I
think the NFL is going to be making a lot
more money in the future. If you think about the
NBA today, right they're going to go out and sign
these seventy five billion dollar media contracts. The NFL is
one hundred and ten billion dollar media contracts, but they
can opt out of those in the next five years.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
I think they're probably going to do that.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
Given what's happening in the media space today, their numbers
have appreciated a lot. The thing that is really interesting
about the NFL is that Roger Goodell has done a
really good job, I think of democratizing who gets the game.
So they brought in a bunch of different partners without
losing the ability to find those games. So he's kind
of balanced that line between broadcast, cable and streaming. But
(20:31):
more importantly, he's created a bunch of premium inventory of
these like one off games. So Christmas Day is the
most obvious example, but Black Friday, they have these international games.
Now the first week of the season, there's going to
be an international game. And what I think they're going
to do is they're going to go to the networks
and say, hey, not only is our numbers up and
we want to make more money, but now we have
all these individual games that we can sell as one
(20:53):
off instances too, And it wouldn't surprise me if they
make significantly more than the contracts they've made over the
last few years. On the NFL side, that's something that
I'm particularly interested in and I think is going to
be a big storyline over the next decade.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Jason and I were just talking before you jumped on
about baseball and some of the challenges and then some
of the great things they've done with the rules changed
and all the other things they've done. You've talked a
little bit about the NFL and what a powerhouse that is,
a little bit about the seventy five billion with the NBA.
If you were commissioner for one day, what are two
or three things you would do to make the game
(21:38):
more popular and.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Grow more in baseball?
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Yes, baseball, So baseball.
Speaker 6 (21:42):
I think a lot of fans are frustrated with the
blackout rules. You know, that's something that's a difficult challenge
and if it would have been easy, it would have
been solved a long time ago, so I think that's
something that continues to kind of fester with fans, but
I think the rule changes were overwhelmingly positive. Look, the
attention span of people has changed a lot over the
last couple of decades, and that's something that baseball has
to deal with because of the structure.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Of the game.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
At the end of the day, though people love going
to baseball games.
Speaker 6 (22:06):
The attendance numbers are fantastic, and I think the things
that are really going to improve that stuff over time
is just creating more narratives around the game. If you
think about what is most powerful today, it's storylines that
resonate with people online. So the NFL does a great
job showing the personality of players like Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Thing.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
You know, people got tired of it at the end
of the day, but the NFL pushed it so much
because they knew it was attracting people to the game.
And you can see the Super Bowl viewership numbers. The
numbers were up tremendously, specifically with women and younger women,
and that's very important for advertisers and sponsorship revenue. So
Major League Baseball can do a better job. I think
with some of that stuff of getting their stars in
front of people more. But it takes two to tanga right,
(22:45):
And the stars of today's baseball game need to want
to do that and want to build up their profiles.
And I think that's a position that Major League Baseball
can aspire to get to.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah, Jason just went to the game with his family
on a couple days ago. He was texting me beautiful picture,
great seats. But one of the things quickly that I
believe is a low hanging fruit for Major League Baseball
is the word access. You talked about F one. You
see hard knocks in NFL inside the NBA, Like I
would have loved for Jason two and a half hour game.
He's on the train, but if he wanted to with
(23:17):
his family, see whatever Aaron Judge is doing for the
next hour after the game, whether that's going.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
On the batty cage, ice in his knees.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Like, we need to open up the floodgates and take
a page from the other sports.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
And the more access, the better.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
And that's the one thing where baseball has the ultimate
competitive advantage because they have unlimited content and they can
be much better partners to partners in media by offering
all these you know, micing everyone and doing all the
things that you know we as fans.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Like, So why aren't they doing that, Alex.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
There's still this embedded fight among owners and players, and
you wish that for the next century they should be
thinking about just grow the pie and owners would do better,
players would do better. And if you do that, bring
the glory days back to Major League Baseball.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Joe. That sort of builds on exactly or references zactly
what you were saying about the NBA. The NBA has
done that brilliantly, right in terms of like having the
owners and the league and the players really come together
around these common interests. I mean, there's a business proposition
there that is much cleaner and more successful in a
lot of ways.
Speaker 6 (24:23):
I totally agree, and I actually think the reason why
Drive It Survive was so successful for Formula One, Right, Yeah,
if you think about what Formula one used to be
before Liberty Media bought them, there's this famous story of
they used to send ceasined assist letters to Lewis Hamilton
for posting pictures from the paddock. Right, He would take
a photo of himself or something in the paddock and
he would post it on Snapchat at the time because
that was what he was using, and he used to
(24:44):
get ceasined assist letters from the business side of things,
just saying, hey, you can't do this. Our TV holders,
rights holders are going to get mad that you're sharing
content that they own, right, And I think what Formula
one realized through Liberty Media was, no, we have to
build up the storylines and create stars out of these people.
And now these I mean even in the United States,
they can't go anywhere without being treated like movie stars, right,
(25:05):
they get swarmed because now people care about them.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And it's the same thing in the NBA.
Speaker 6 (25:09):
And I think that's something that Major League Baseball, through
Alex's point, can strive to get to.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, and Jayson, just because I'm so passionate about this
that Joe's got me going a little bit here. But look,
I mean, I am an enormous fan of baseball, right
like the last thirty years has been my life. And
I challenge both of you to find four bigger stars
in any sport bigger than Otani, Judge, Sodo, and Mookie Bets.
But yet we know nothing about them. It's like Kurry
(25:34):
Grhant back in the fifties or sixties, like you know
the star, but you don't know anything about them. And
that used to be cool then, but today the fans
need more, they demand more. But unless we take the
helmet off and reveal who these players are, it's hard
for the consumer or for us to ask the consumer
to fall in love with these great players.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Joe, We're gonna move to the lightning round in one second.
But I got to ask you because Alex and I
talked about at the top of the show before you
came on. You know, steven A is negotiating his new deal.
You know the McAfee effect, like as someone who is
both in the media and deeply interested in sports and
deeply interested in that nexus of sports media. I mean
McAfee obviously has a different business model in terms of
(26:13):
licensing to ESPN. Steven A may end up doing that,
Like what's the endgame here in your estimation?
Speaker 4 (26:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (26:20):
I actually wrote about this the other day and it
was kicked off by Jon Rannet. Pluck said that he
reported that steven A was asking for twenty five million
dollars a year on his new deal, and ESPN was
at eighteen at their initial offer, and kind of where
would that divide close And my opinion at the time,
which seems to be proven true now through pass reporting,
is that steven A is going to kind of structure
(26:40):
this deal in a more unique way than he has
in the past. Right, his production company does a lot
of work with First Take already. My guess is he
tries to spin it out like McAfee does with his
show and license that content back to ESPN. He gets
a little bit more profit by doing the production company
side of things too. He'll probably have some appearance fees
for other Disney stuff. The difficult part for me, right
is that steven.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
A isn't tied to live rights.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
So you can make a case that Joe Buck and
Troy Aikman what they're paid is fine, it's fair, it's
totally acceptable because of how much ESPN is investing in
Monday Night Football and the return that they're going to
get from advertisers.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
I mean, their salaries are paid back in the.
Speaker 6 (27:15):
First week or two through commercials alone, not even counting
affiliate fees or anything else, So that money totally makes sense.
The problem with stephen A is as we transition to
a world that is closer to streaming and less linear
and kind of broadcast television, that salary becomes harder to
justify because.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Of that lack of live rights.
Speaker 6 (27:33):
Now, look his programming, he's a superstar, he's a celebrity
at this point. It's adjacent to that, and it certainly
points people towards everything. So I think he'll end up
getting a number that's over twenty million a year. It's
going to be a huge deal and he's going to
be happy with it. They're going to structure it like
a licensing deal similar to McAfee, similar to maybe what
Paidon Manning is doing with Omaha, and they're going to
find a way to pay him what he wants. One
(27:54):
of the things too with ESPN is they've made a
very concentrated effort as they transition to streaming to pay
up for premium products. Right So the College Football Playoff
was a good example of this. They came in over
the top, paid more than anyone else, and they wanted that.
They're doing this with a bunch of other properties, the
NBA of course, and other properties like that, because they
know that the premium property is are what everyone wants,
(28:15):
that's what people are going to tune into and that's
why people are going to sign up for the subscription services.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
And I would put stephen A in that bucket.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
Obviously he's not as important as the rights, but I
think from a personality standpoint, he's super important.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
They'll find a way to get the deal done.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Yeah, I mean his ratings for First Take have delivered.
I mean in a world where everybody's viewership is going down,
his is going up, so clearly doing something right. Okay,
let's get to the rapid fire lightning round. We're going
to throw a bunch of stuff at you. Joe, keep
(28:48):
it tight. What's the best piece of advice you've received
on deal making or business?
Speaker 6 (28:53):
Trust your gut and always bet on people rather than ideas.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
Favorite doo you've covered in your newsletter this year.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
Here, that's a good one. Let's go with Stevenett. I
think that's going to be a good storyline for the
next few months.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
What's the best deal you've worked on.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
I like being kind of involved on the ground floor
some of this stuff.
Speaker 6 (29:11):
So I'm an investor in the PLL, the Premier Lacrosse League,
and I think that's a really interesting business because they're
essentially trying to create a new sports league from the
ground up, and that kind of stuff excites me. It
may not be as flashy as some of the other ones,
but it's certainly a fun project to be involved in.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
We're gonna have Paul Rabel coming up with the deal
later this year. Let's go, Joe.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
I was a jay Z guy for my walk off song.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
I want to know what's your walk up song where
you're for a big meeting or for a big negotiation.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
See you, guys will be surprised. I like country.
Speaker 6 (29:37):
I grew up in North Carolina, So you play anything country,
I'll be there.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Ah, all right. Final question, what's the biggest business lesson
you've learned?
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Always bet on yourself.
Speaker 6 (29:47):
I think if there's anything that I've learned over the
years is that if you put in the work and
you bet on yourself, good things will happen.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Joe Pompliano he's the host of The Joe Pomp Show,
founder of Huddle Up, founding partner of Pomp Investments. So
it's fun to mix it up with you, really really
fun in looking forward as always to your next newsletter,
your next pod, your next tweet, and your next deal.
So thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Thanks Guy, Thank you, Joe.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me Jason Kelly.
This episode was made by Victor eveyas Stacey Wong, Annamazerakus,
and Lizzie phillip Arthy. Music was made by Blake Maples,
Brendan Francis. Neonham is our executive producer. Sage Fouman is
the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Additional support from Kelly Lafarier,
(30:40):
Ashley Honig, Rachel Scaramzzino, and Elena Los Angeles. If you
have a minute, subscribe, rate and review our show. It'll
help other listeners find us. Thanks so much for listening,
See you next time.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hi everyone, welcome to the deal. I'm Jason Kelly alongside
my partner Alex Rodriguez today on the show Joe Pump Leiano.
He's the host of The Joe Pump Show, founder of
Huddle Up, and a founding partner of Pump Investments. That's
coming up later in the show. Alex, this is a
guy we're excited to talk to.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I gotta tell you, if ten years ago you were
to say who's going to be the most influential media
personality media, sports, entertainment, you could say he's going to
be Joe Pump because he's ahead of the curve.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, I'm excited to chop it up with him. But first,
one of my favorite things to do is just talk
to you about, like what you've been up to. You're
at Aspen Ideas Festival. Greg Lemcow, who you and I
both know very well, interviewed you and another guy we
both know very well, David Rubensiein. He's actually going to
be a guest on this show not too long from now.
Tell me about what was going on. I mean, that's
(01:06):
a tough assignment man, going to Aspen in June.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I love going to Aspen.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I wish I was there more than like twelve hours,
but I literally flew in, flew out. I had to
get to New York. You know, I think David he's
the new greatest asset for Major League Baseball. I think
he's the ideal owner the Baltimore Orioles, that's where he's from.
He's a giant in private equity, he's a giant in communications.
For seventy three years old, he's one of the most
brilliant marketers there is. And I think he's just going
to be an awesome, awesome asset to baseball.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
I do wonder, like, as you guys talked about the
state of baseball, what's he bringing to the table or
what's on his mind in terms of what could happen
with the game.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Well, if you think about everything he's done, you know,
going back forty years when he started the great Carlisle Group, right,
you know, twenty years ago, he was the first guy
to go across the pond and raise money. He's like
probably the best, most ferocious capital raiser over the last
several decades. And I think he's just a progressive thinker.
He's always ahead of the curve. He's a wonderful communicator.
I think that's exactly what major League baseball needs and
(02:04):
he's just the perfect guy in the perfect time for it.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So it's interesting that you were talking to him this
week because I spent this morning at Bloomberg and Vast.
This is an annual conference that we do, and not
surprisingly to you or to me, we had a couple
sessions on sports and sports as an asset class. I
hosted a conversation with markott Andasio and Tom Werner. Marktt
(02:27):
Andasio owned the Milwaukee Brewers. Tom Werner, of course, the
chairman of Fenwaig Sports Group, owners of Boss Red Sox Liverpool,
they ConTroll Nessen. They owned the Pittsburgh Penguins as well.
And it's funny hearing you talk about, you know, David
and baseball. One of the things that these guys were
talking a lot about, because they've both been in Major
(02:47):
League Baseball for a while, is how massive these rule
changes have been for the business of baseball. I have
to think you have seen that and knowing the game
like you do, like, what do you make of where
the game is at this moment?
Speaker 4 (03:02):
I think it's brilliant.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
You know, you wish you would have had these changes earlier,
but better late than never. Give Rob Manford a lot
of credit, Give Tony Clark the head of a union,
and a lot of credit for coming together and something
that's not been you know, very easy to do for
owners and players to come together with obviously their history
going back to Marvin Miller and Don Fear and the battles.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
So I think what.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
This is it should give them confidence that it's okay
to be progressive and move the ball forward and move
the chains. And what they've done with the game is
made a shorter, better to watch, better to play, just
a better product. Now they need to do the same
things in the business and entertainment side, And how do
they move that to another lane and just keep making
(03:41):
the game better and better and take some notes from
the NFL, take some notes from the NBA, and go
from there.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, it's funny you say the thing about the NFL,
because one of the things Tom Werner pointed out is
is like, hey, listen, the NFL makes changes to the
game literally every season. You know, they get in, they
do it. If something doesn't work, stopped doing it. He's like,
baseball is just so like these are my words, not his,
but like's, it sort of gets caught up in its
own tradition and it just won't move forward. And you know,
(04:10):
I texted you on Saturday because I was at the
Yankee game with my family. It's like, beautiful night, unbelievable,
you know, a Saturday night in the Bronx with your family.
Nothing's better than that. And honestly, it's two and a
half hour game. It's really exciting. It was high scoring.
We got on the train and went home. It was fantastic.
You know, I didn't get home at two in the morning,
which I feel like could easily have happened before these
(04:31):
rule changes. So enough about me and my you know,
get off of my lawn. But I will say one
other thing I wanted to mention to you. So I've
spent a session with Josh Harris, owner of the seventy
six ers and more recently ownered the Washington Commanders. I
was pressing him a little bit about a couple of things.
One is valuations. I mean, holy smokes man. He fully
admitted that when he bought the Commanders a couple of
(04:53):
years ago for six billion dollars, he gave up all
credibilities a value investor. Probably true. I think times revenue
was what he paid. But if you look, and I
brought this up with him, reports on Bloomberg and elsewhere
saying that Jeffrey Loriie of the Philadelphia Eagles is selling
a minority stake in his team. In his franchise valuation
(05:14):
seven and a half billion. That's a team in the
same division as the Washington Commander. So if you just
do apples to apples, that's a twenty five percent appreciation
for Josh Eris in two years. If in fact those
franchises are roughly valued the same, which I believe that
they are. Stephen Ross, your your neighbor and friend down
there in Miami talking about a ten billion dollar valuation
(05:36):
for all the assets around the Dolphins, that of course
includes F one and the Miami Open. I did ask
Josh you know where he thought the ceiling was, and
he said, this growth has tracked and he sees no
reason it won't continue to track in terms of the
valuation of franchises, whether it's NFL or others. It's a remarkable,
(05:58):
remarkable time to be watching.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
This, It really is.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
And our guy down here with Miami Dolphins, Steve Ross.
You know, word on the street was that, you know,
he turned down ten billion dollar enterprise from Ken Griffin.
Now I don't know if that's sure or not, but
even those conversations to be written are pretty frightening. I
will say this, Josh probably paid market or a little
bit more for Commanders. You have to these days to
have a general partner.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Piece, But when you look at the price he paid
for the.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Sixers and the Devils in the NHL, oh, that's sixty times,
Jason comes way down.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
So he's done pretty well. Nobody's gonna feel sorry for Josh.
He's a brilliant investor.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
No, no, absolutely, And I'll give you the numbers because
I looked him up ahead of this conversation. Roughly two
hundred and twenty million dollars for the Sixers in twenty eleven.
Now importantly, and I do think this is important, at
the time, they were losing thirty to fifty million dollars
in Ebitdad like, it was not a just stress saleses,
a corporate carve out from Comcast who was getting out
(06:52):
of that business. But you know, he saw something there.
He fully admitted that he did not anticipate that he
would go into sports the way that he and David
Blitzer did, and obviously they've expanded into the Premier League,
and interestingly enough, one of their big projects individually, he
and Blitz together is in youth sports and specifically baseball.
They're in business with Cal Ripkin, as you know, Cal
(07:13):
and Bill Ripkin in putting together this company called Unrivaled.
I mean, it's just it's unbelievable. I did want to
also mention one of our favorite episodes that we've done.
I think it's fair to say was with Steven A. Smith.
You mentioned him earlier. He's about to get paid, my friend.
We don't know exactly how much. Reports are out there
that ESPN has put an offer for eighteen million dollars
(07:33):
a year. That is less, I think than what he
is looking for. But I mean, he talked to us
about how he was going to negotiate this deal and
so we'll see how it comes to fruition. This story
is far from over. It sounds like there's going to
be a lot of back and forth in the coming months.
But eighteen million bucks, even that, I don't think he's
going to settle for that. But even if he ended
(07:54):
up there. What a remarkable story and I obviously highly
encourage people to listen to that episode of the Deal.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
I think for listeners this is just a great inspirational
story when you think about it. He is the number
one media personality probably in the planet. He's synonymous with ESPN,
He's doing over ten hours a week of content. He
now has his podcast. He may want to be the
next future Johnny Carson, or maybe get into politics. And
here's what's amazing for listeners. It's ten years ago. This
(08:21):
guy was met at a diner by one of the
es Men executives and said you are fired.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Yeah. Then he went and got a job.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
With Fox, didn't give up, got himself cleaned up, got smarter.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
He admitted to us, and his words were.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
I was arrogant, and I was the worst kind of
arrogant because I was stupid while I was arrogant. The
biggest lesson I learned was the importance of mastering my business,
not just from a negotiating standpoint, not just to empower
myself as a talent, but as a man, learning to
separate emotion from business.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
But for anybody who's gone through a tough time, Steven
a smith just a decade ago, did not have a
job and put it together piece at a time.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Amazing story, So check that out in the podcast feed.
Coming up, Joe Pump joins the deal. We're excited to
be joined by Joe pomp Leiano. He's the host of
(09:23):
the sports podcast The Joe Pump Show, and he's also
the founding partner of Pomp Investments. They've invested in more
than one hundred early stage companies. Most notably, he's the
founder of Huddle Up. That's a daily newsletter breaking down
his personal opinion on the money and business behind sports. Welcome, Joe.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I love that.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
I've been a big fan of your guys show too
for a while. It's really become a great resource in
sports business. So thank you guys for doing this because
this is awesome.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Joe, getting to know you a little bit.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
What I thought was really interesting about kind of studying
your progression and your growth in the media. And you
know your letters are so popular, you know, coming from
JP Morgan in an analyst, I think you bring the
rigorous research and work ethic, You understand numbers, and you
love sports and like that trifecta makes you. I believe
so effective, and on top of that, you're a great communicator.
(10:12):
Did you always know you were talented communicator, because usually
people with math are not great communicators and vice versa,
but you got both.
Speaker 6 (10:18):
No. I still don't really think of myself as a
great communicator, especially not a writer. I don't have a
writing background, so when I write the newsletter, it's almost
kind of like a journal to some degree. I write
in a very casual setting. I try not to be
or pretend to be smarter than I am, and I
think people have adapted to that and appreciate it. And
what I noticed is that specifically in sports business, you
(10:39):
guys know this, there's publications that do a really good
job Bloomberg everyone else, right, And from an individual perspective,
there wasn't really a ton of people who were doing
it quite well. So I thought there was an opportunity
to really just lean into that and be myself and say, hey,
I don't know all the answers, but these are things
that I'm really interested in and I'm willing to put
in the work to kind of learn alongside you guys.
And what I've found is that people appreciate that, whether
(11:02):
it's on the podcast or newsletter or social media. It's
just like anything else, right, you try something, it doesn't work,
you move on to the next that works. Okay, let's
go do more of that. And really that's how I've
built all the stuff on the media side.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I'm taken back, Alex to the conversation we had with
your other partner, Mark Lori and his decision to like
ditch Wall Street and like go all in on being
an entrepreneur. I just need to do this because I'm
like all in kind of guy, Like I was just
doing banking so intensely I couldn't like focus. So he said,
you're serious. I said, yeah, there are echoes of that here, Joe, Like,
(11:37):
I mean, what was that moment like where you went
to JP where and You're like, hey, this has been great,
but I'm out and I'm gonna go like do my
own thing and create all this and by the way,
I'm going to do it in sports, like this is
every person's dream in some ways. But what did it
feel like to you at the moment?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
It was scary. But you know what's funny, Jason, is
they legitimately laughed.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
My boss at the time was global had a fixed income,
so You have to imagine he's got a million different
things going on, and this obviously wasn't at the top
of his priority list. And associate at the time coming
to him and saying, hey, I think I'm going to
leave right and he said, You're going to be a writer,
and I'm like, well, kind of, but not really right.
There's a bunch of other stuff that goes into it.
You know, he didn't really get it. I think today
a lot of them have reached out and understand it more.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
But it's scary. It's just like anything else. I was fortunate.
Speaker 6 (12:21):
I always tell this story because I really appreciate it
at the time, and I certainly appreciate it now given
everything that's happened.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
There's a company called Athletic Brewing.
Speaker 6 (12:28):
Anyone who's ever heard of them knows they're a non
alcoholic beer company. And the founder of the company came
to me at the time. I had met him through
a mutual friend, and he essentially said, hey, look, I'll
sponsor everything you're going to do for six months. You're
probably going to get a better deal for the first
few months. Given how things are growing today, I might
get a better deal at the end of that six months,
so he gave me enough leeway to just say, hey, look,
I have security for the next six months. There's people
(12:50):
that do this with much less security, and that's when
everything really started to accelerate. So, like, I owed a
great debt of gratitude to them for making that happen.
But it's scary, right, like anything else where, people just
need to kind of have confidence in themselves and have
belief that internally that they can make it happen.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
So, Joe, you've been a great forecast.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
I mean, probably nine out of ten people that decide
to do what you do or you did, would probably fail. Right,
you were obviously in the right side of history there.
When you think about the landscape of media today and
how much it's changing with OTT and everything else, and
the way you think about your newsletter, your podcast, and
also you're investing arm where do you see your business
(13:30):
one three five years from now.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
Well, I think there's a few different routes. The concern
with some of that stuff, right is like what is
the end goal? What are you trying to create? Are
you trying to build something over the next three to
five years that you can sell? Are you trying to
use that for something else, and me specifically, what I've
always used the media.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
As is leverage to do other things.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
Right, we make money, it's profitable, it's a good business,
but really what I want to do is use it
as leverage for something that I think can be more profitable,
which is the investing side. And what I mean by that,
right is like when I go to a business, I
can basically get into any deal that I want right
now on the sports side because they know that I'm
going to help them on the media side when it
comes to announcements, product features, or anything else related to that,
(14:10):
and it makes a real meaningful difference in their business,
which is tangible value that not every investor can say, right,
and look, I'm investing personal money, so it's not you know,
multimillion dollar.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Checks in most cases.
Speaker 6 (14:21):
And I think that has been really helpful for a
lot of founders that I've worked with, and something that
I've been really keen on keeping distant from building this
into something that maybe I'm not as happy as I
am today.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
I think I speak for alex in myself. We love
people's processes. How do you pick your stories? What's your
process like when you identify something and then how do
you go about sort of digging deep into it.
Speaker 6 (14:43):
So one of the things that I'm very cognizant of
is that media has been democratized completely at this point. Right,
if you think about media today, all you really need
is an iPhone, Like you can create a TikTok account tomorrow,
you can make a video on something that you're knowledgeable
about or care and they're going to push that video
to million other people if it's good.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
What are you offering that's different?
Speaker 6 (15:03):
Obviously you're going to pick stories that have a wider
audience or a total addressable market that's bigger than other things.
That's kind of like the first level of everything. But
then how are you explaining those stories? And I think
one thing that I've really found success in is storytelling.
When it comes down to it, everything is storytelling, right,
How are you conveying the messaging? Communication is everything. You
can say the exact same story in two different ways,
(15:25):
and one is going to hit with people way more
than the other, just based on how you communicate that.
And then it's just communicating it in a way that
is authentic and compelling to an audience through typical narratives
and what I found is that doing that on different mediums,
i e. The newsletter is one audience, social media is
a completely different audience. The podcast sometimes is a different
audience too, And by being in a multiple different places
(15:46):
at once, you're able to reach a way wider audience
and you maybe would be otherwise.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Can you share maybe one or two storytelling techniques that
actually has made you better as you hone your craft.
Speaker 6 (15:57):
So I think at the simplest form, you need a hook, right,
You need to be able to hook people into the
content within the first If it's a video, I mean
you literally have five seconds, right, That's how short attention
spans are today. When it comes to writing, you have
a little bit longer, maybe you know, the first paragraph
or two to really be able to get someone interested.
And then from there it's explaining kind of where the
conflict is in the story.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Right.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
Everyone loves having a little bit of conflict and someone
overcoming that. You want to be a little bit contrary
to kind of the opinions out there, sometimes depending on
what the story is. But ultimately I really do think
that it just comes back to like an innate interest
in some of these topics. People can tell if you're
talking about something that you don't care about. I get
asked all the time, right write about cricket. I'm like,
(16:37):
I don't watch cricket, right, Like, Cricket's a massive sport.
Anytime I've ever tweeted about cricket in the past, it
goes viral because there's hundreds of millions, billions of people
that care about cricket.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
But I don't watch cricket. I don't know enough about cricket.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
I don't care enough about cricket to be able to
write about it or talk about it on a consistent basis.
And that's like the perfect example of me of what
you should be talking about is things that you care about. So, like, Alex,
if you wanted to go do something, I've seen videos, right.
You post some of these videos that are short formed
sometimes talking about your playing days or had a grip
a bad or the grip on a baseball or your
glove and things like that, and those always overperformed because
(17:10):
one you have the expertise to be able to talk
about it, but two people can tell that you really
care about that.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
And for me, those are the things that perform really
well too.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, one of my favorite things Joe is some of
the stuff you've done about Formula one, which I really
am interested in. And I think one of the trickiest
things about that subject, and Alex and I have talked
about this a little bit, is you know, getting that
broader audience interested in it. Was that one that you
had a relationship with as a fan or was it
something that you just identified and wanted to figure out,
(17:38):
Like it's just an example that sort of springs to
my mind.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
Yes, So I've watched Formula one for a while, but
the reason why I've gone so much more into it
is because my wife became much more interested in it,
and now it's become something that we can do together.
We talk about She actually finds a lot more information
about it than I do it first, which has become
really fun. But the thing about Formula one is that,
and actually just content in general, is if you read
the newsletter, there's one hundred and twenty five thousand subscribers
(18:02):
on the newsletter, and for sports business.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
That's relatively large because.
Speaker 6 (18:07):
Sports business is sort of such a niche topic, right,
And the reason I've been very thoughtful about that is
I want to cast a wide enough net to where
I can have subscribers all over the world. There's like
one hundred and eighty countries that are represented on the
newsletter today, right, So it's very wide net that has
been cast. But then you want to go deep enough
to a point where still the executives and commissioners from
(18:27):
all the major sports leagues in the US still care
about the work and are reading it. Right, So there's
a really big quality there, and that's why when you
read it, you'll understand that I don't ever go way
too deep down the rabbit hole and talk about terms
that people can't understand. It's breaking it down in the
simplest terms, in the shortest concise amount that you can.
And Former the Ones a great sport for that, because
while it's incredibly complex, you're essentially teasing it to an
(18:48):
entirely new audience here in the United States who hasn't
followed it. And now it's grown and there's a great
story there with Liberty Media and the numbers and everything.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Associated with that.
Speaker 6 (18:57):
But you're explaining it and you're talking about it, and
you're associating it with the business that they know.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
In liberty media here.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
So form of the one has been a great additive
sport to everything that I've done over the years. But
again it goes back to everything that I said previously
about just a sport that I've watched and I've loved
over the years too.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
You know, Alex and I we have a constant text
back and forth of like stuff we're looking at. You know,
we don't need you to give away any ip and
like future newsletters and things like that, but like, what
are you watching out there right now? Like, let's capturing
your attention at the moment.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I'm an open book.
Speaker 6 (19:26):
I think specifically, if we talk about the US, there's
a few things. The NFL is really interesting to me
right now. I think at some point in the near future,
they're going to be approving the private equity funds to
come in and buy the minority stakes like we've seen
in the NBA and other leagues like that. I think
that's going to be incredibly helpful for a lot of
the owners who either want to take money off the
table or a lot of investors that just want to
put and park money in an asset that is known
(19:48):
to appreciate and is going to be ill liquid. And
obviously there's a lot of investment funds that are going
to be spun up and want to do that too,
So that's one thing with the NFL. And then I
think the NFL is going to be making a lot
more money in the future. If you think about the
NBA today, right they're going to go out and sign
these seventy five billion dollar media contracts. The NFL is
one hundred and ten billion dollar media contracts, but they
can opt out of those in the next five years.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
I think they're probably going to do that.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
Given what's happening in the media space today, their numbers
have appreciated a lot. The thing that is really interesting
about the NFL is that Roger Goodell has done a
really good job, I think of democratizing who gets the game.
So they brought in a bunch of different partners without
losing the ability to find those games. So he's kind
of balanced that line between broadcast, cable and streaming. But
(20:31):
more importantly, he's created a bunch of premium inventory of
these like one off games. So Christmas Day is the
most obvious example, but Black Friday, they have these international games.
Now the first week of the season, there's going to
be an international game. And what I think they're going
to do is they're going to go to the networks
and say, hey, not only is our numbers up and
we want to make more money, but now we have
all these individual games that we can sell as one
(20:53):
off instances too, And it wouldn't surprise me if they
make significantly more than the contracts they've made over the
last few years. On the NFL side, that's something that
I'm particularly interested in and I think is going to
be a big storyline over the next decade.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Jason and I were just talking before you jumped on
about baseball and some of the challenges and then some
of the great things they've done with the rules changed
and all the other things they've done. You've talked a
little bit about the NFL and what a powerhouse that is,
a little bit about the seventy five billion with the NBA.
If you were commissioner for one day, what are two
or three things you would do to make the game
(21:38):
more popular and.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Grow more in baseball?
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Yes, baseball, So baseball.
Speaker 6 (21:42):
I think a lot of fans are frustrated with the
blackout rules. You know, that's something that's a difficult challenge
and if it would have been easy, it would have
been solved a long time ago, so I think that's
something that continues to kind of fester with fans, but
I think the rule changes were overwhelmingly positive. Look, the
attention span of people has changed a lot over the
last couple of decades, and that's something that baseball has
to deal with because of the structure.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Of the game.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
At the end of the day, though people love going
to baseball games.
Speaker 6 (22:06):
The attendance numbers are fantastic, and I think the things
that are really going to improve that stuff over time
is just creating more narratives around the game. If you
think about what is most powerful today, it's storylines that
resonate with people online. So the NFL does a great
job showing the personality of players like Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Thing.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
You know, people got tired of it at the end
of the day, but the NFL pushed it so much
because they knew it was attracting people to the game.
And you can see the Super Bowl viewership numbers. The
numbers were up tremendously, specifically with women and younger women,
and that's very important for advertisers and sponsorship revenue. So
Major League Baseball can do a better job. I think
with some of that stuff of getting their stars in
front of people more. But it takes two to tanga right,
(22:45):
And the stars of today's baseball game need to want
to do that and want to build up their profiles.
And I think that's a position that Major League Baseball
can aspire to get to.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah, Jason just went to the game with his family
on a couple days ago. He was texting me beautiful picture,
great seats. But one of the things quickly that I
believe is a low hanging fruit for Major League Baseball
is the word access. You talked about F one. You
see hard knocks in NFL inside the NBA, Like I
would have loved for Jason two and a half hour game.
He's on the train, but if he wanted to with
(23:17):
his family, see whatever Aaron Judge is doing for the
next hour after the game, whether that's going.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
On the batty cage, ice in his knees.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Like, we need to open up the floodgates and take
a page from the other sports.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
And the more access, the better.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
And that's the one thing where baseball has the ultimate
competitive advantage because they have unlimited content and they can
be much better partners to partners in media by offering
all these you know, micing everyone and doing all the
things that you know we as fans.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Like, So why aren't they doing that, Alex.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
There's still this embedded fight among owners and players, and
you wish that for the next century they should be
thinking about just grow the pie and owners would do better,
players would do better. And if you do that, bring
the glory days back to Major League Baseball.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Joe. That sort of builds on exactly or references zactly
what you were saying about the NBA. The NBA has
done that brilliantly, right in terms of like having the
owners and the league and the players really come together
around these common interests. I mean, there's a business proposition
there that is much cleaner and more successful in a
lot of ways.
Speaker 6 (24:23):
I totally agree, and I actually think the reason why
Drive It Survive was so successful for Formula One, Right, Yeah,
if you think about what Formula one used to be
before Liberty Media bought them, there's this famous story of
they used to send ceasined assist letters to Lewis Hamilton
for posting pictures from the paddock. Right, He would take
a photo of himself or something in the paddock and
he would post it on Snapchat at the time because
that was what he was using, and he used to
(24:44):
get ceasined assist letters from the business side of things,
just saying, hey, you can't do this. Our TV holders,
rights holders are going to get mad that you're sharing
content that they own, right, And I think what Formula
one realized through Liberty Media was, no, we have to
build up the storylines and create stars out of these people.
And now these I mean even in the United States,
they can't go anywhere without being treated like movie stars, right,
(25:05):
they get swarmed because now people care about them.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And it's the same thing in the NBA.
Speaker 6 (25:09):
And I think that's something that Major League Baseball, through
Alex's point, can strive to get to.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, and Jayson, just because I'm so passionate about this
that Joe's got me going a little bit here. But look,
I mean, I am an enormous fan of baseball, right
like the last thirty years has been my life. And
I challenge both of you to find four bigger stars
in any sport bigger than Otani, Judge, Sodo, and Mookie Bets.
But yet we know nothing about them. It's like Kurry
(25:34):
Grhant back in the fifties or sixties, like you know
the star, but you don't know anything about them. And
that used to be cool then, but today the fans
need more, they demand more. But unless we take the
helmet off and reveal who these players are, it's hard
for the consumer or for us to ask the consumer
to fall in love with these great players.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Joe, We're gonna move to the lightning round in one second.
But I got to ask you because Alex and I
talked about at the top of the show before you
came on. You know, steven A is negotiating his new deal.
You know the McAfee effect, like as someone who is
both in the media and deeply interested in sports and
deeply interested in that nexus of sports media. I mean
McAfee obviously has a different business model in terms of
(26:13):
licensing to ESPN. Steven A may end up doing that,
Like what's the endgame here in your estimation?
Speaker 4 (26:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (26:20):
I actually wrote about this the other day and it
was kicked off by Jon Rannet. Pluck said that he
reported that steven A was asking for twenty five million
dollars a year on his new deal, and ESPN was
at eighteen at their initial offer, and kind of where
would that divide close And my opinion at the time,
which seems to be proven true now through pass reporting,
is that steven A is going to kind of structure
(26:40):
this deal in a more unique way than he has
in the past. Right, his production company does a lot
of work with First Take already. My guess is he
tries to spin it out like McAfee does with his
show and license that content back to ESPN. He gets
a little bit more profit by doing the production company
side of things too. He'll probably have some appearance fees
for other Disney stuff. The difficult part for me, right
is that steven.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
A isn't tied to live rights.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
So you can make a case that Joe Buck and
Troy Aikman what they're paid is fine, it's fair, it's
totally acceptable because of how much ESPN is investing in
Monday Night Football and the return that they're going to
get from advertisers.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
I mean, their salaries are paid back in the.
Speaker 6 (27:15):
First week or two through commercials alone, not even counting
affiliate fees or anything else, So that money totally makes sense.
The problem with stephen A is as we transition to
a world that is closer to streaming and less linear
and kind of broadcast television, that salary becomes harder to
justify because.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Of that lack of live rights.
Speaker 6 (27:33):
Now, look his programming, he's a superstar, he's a celebrity
at this point. It's adjacent to that, and it certainly
points people towards everything. So I think he'll end up
getting a number that's over twenty million a year. It's
going to be a huge deal and he's going to
be happy with it. They're going to structure it like
a licensing deal similar to McAfee, similar to maybe what
Paidon Manning is doing with Omaha, and they're going to
find a way to pay him what he wants. One
(27:54):
of the things too with ESPN is they've made a
very concentrated effort as they transition to streaming to pay
up for premium products. Right So the College Football Playoff
was a good example of this. They came in over
the top, paid more than anyone else, and they wanted that.
They're doing this with a bunch of other properties, the
NBA of course, and other properties like that, because they
know that the premium property is are what everyone wants,
(28:15):
that's what people are going to tune into and that's
why people are going to sign up for the subscription services.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
And I would put stephen A in that bucket.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
Obviously he's not as important as the rights, but I
think from a personality standpoint, he's super important.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
They'll find a way to get the deal done.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Yeah, I mean his ratings for First Take have delivered.
I mean in a world where everybody's viewership is going down,
his is going up, so clearly doing something right. Okay,
let's get to the rapid fire lightning round. We're going
to throw a bunch of stuff at you. Joe, keep
(28:48):
it tight. What's the best piece of advice you've received
on deal making or business?
Speaker 6 (28:53):
Trust your gut and always bet on people rather than ideas.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
Favorite doo you've covered in your newsletter this year.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
Here, that's a good one. Let's go with Stevenett. I
think that's going to be a good storyline for the
next few months.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
What's the best deal you've worked on.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
I like being kind of involved on the ground floor
some of this stuff.
Speaker 6 (29:11):
So I'm an investor in the PLL, the Premier Lacrosse League,
and I think that's a really interesting business because they're
essentially trying to create a new sports league from the
ground up, and that kind of stuff excites me. It
may not be as flashy as some of the other ones,
but it's certainly a fun project to be involved in.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
We're gonna have Paul Rabel coming up with the deal
later this year. Let's go, Joe.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
I was a jay Z guy for my walk off song.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
I want to know what's your walk up song where
you're for a big meeting or for a big negotiation.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
See you, guys will be surprised. I like country.
Speaker 6 (29:37):
I grew up in North Carolina, So you play anything country,
I'll be there.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Ah, all right. Final question, what's the biggest business lesson
you've learned?
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Always bet on yourself.
Speaker 6 (29:47):
I think if there's anything that I've learned over the
years is that if you put in the work and
you bet on yourself, good things will happen.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Joe Pompliano he's the host of The Joe Pomp Show,
founder of Huddle Up, founding partner of Pomp Investments. So
it's fun to mix it up with you, really really
fun in looking forward as always to your next newsletter,
your next pod, your next tweet, and your next deal.
So thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Thanks Guy, Thank you, Joe.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me Jason Kelly.
This episode was made by Victor eveyas Stacey Wong, Annamazerakus,
and Lizzie phillip Arthy. Music was made by Blake Maples,
Brendan Francis. Neonham is our executive producer. Sage Fouman is
the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Additional support from Kelly Lafarier,
(30:40):
Ashley Honig, Rachel Scaramzzino, and Elena Los Angeles. If you
have a minute, subscribe, rate and review our show. It'll
help other listeners find us. Thanks so much for listening,
See you next time.
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