Around the Sports

Find out how the local creator of TopGolf is now a part of the NBA

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Been and skin Show ninety seven point won the eagle. Yes,
we will be giving away Ranger tickets. We have a
four pack for the August twenty seventh game. At some
point in the five o'clock hour, be listening for your
chance to win. Coming up about thirty minutes from now,
we have the Today game. We never podcast that you
gotta listen to it live, but right now it's time
for this. Now it's cool around the sports KTD queets

(00:27):
as all the sports. Yes, man, I ain't KT fun
tweets all right, this grab my attention. This morning, ben
Tom Dundon to buy Trailblazers keep team in Portland. I
was like, wait, what so if you don't know, Tom

(00:47):
Dundon is a Dallas dude, and we know we knew
him because you know, we had some friends that worked
with him and he got top golf up and going
and that was huge. And then remember he was dabbling
in that football league that Johnny Manziel was going to
play in, right, and so we actually had him in

(01:08):
studio when we were at the fan and he owned
like a NHL team too, right, So he ended up
buying the Carolina Panthers as well, and not Carolina Panthers,
Carolina Hurricanes, the NHL team, yes, and they've had a
lot of success. But yeah, so he's top golf Carolina
NHL team, and he dabbled into Johnny Manziel Side Football League,

(01:31):
and now he's bought the Portland Trail Blazers. And I
first started hearing about him because apparently he loves pickup basketball.
So he was a big pickup basketball player and he
would play in those games with Mark Cuban and Matt
Fitzgerald rest in Pece. Matt worked for him, so he'd
play in all those games and everybody knew about him.
And apparently he had this exclusive high level basketball game.

(01:53):
So he's apparently always loved hoops. Yeah, well the value eight.
So you know, basically, Paul Allen is the king of
that area. He passed away and is he had to
stake in the Seahawks and the Trailblazers and other you know,
franchises up in the Northwest, and all Dundon is buying

(02:15):
into is the trail Blazers. He's not, according to the
ESPN story, he's not buying into other of those things
that Paul Allen owned. But it's a four billion dollar
valuation and he has zero plans of moving the team
according to this article, and he is immediately going to

(02:36):
start working with trying to build a new arena in
Portland that works with the city of Portland. Well, what
are the MAVs. So for MAVs sold Cubans He's Hebans
still owned twenty seven percent of it, seventy three percent
of it sold for like five something something like that.

(02:56):
I might have been this week. I had a three
three point five, so the Blazer. But also keep in
mind that the Blazer sale is after the new media
rights deal for the NBA, so values of teams just
went up. Like, did you guys see that the Celtics
sold for six point one billion? Yeah, okay, I go, oh,

(03:17):
the Lakers sold for ten. Lakers sold for ten and
I think Genie Buss kept fifteen percent of that. Wow,
I think, yeah, But you know that's Los Angeles. Yeah,
and they're they're one of the teams too that still
has a lucrative TV deal because it's Los Angeles. The
guy that bought the Lakers is Magic Johnson's partner in
the Dodgers. The same guy owns the Dodgers and the Lakers. God. Yeah,

(03:41):
So anyways, I mean, I just think that's really really
interesting that a guy from here is owning the Trailblazers,
And it's like more and more private equity is finding
their way into professional sports. And this is kind of
a side story. Is this the thing that's going to
hurt the value of the NBA? Been? Because I saw

(04:01):
a really fascinating story Michael Porter junior good NBA player,
not a great NBA player, but a highly paid good
NBA player, And his quote is sports betting impact is
going to get worse in the NBA. And this is
a guy whose brother just got banned from the NBA
for throwing games for prop bets. Here's what he said,

(04:25):
and I find this to be terribly interesting. He said,
the enjoyment of the game isn't for the game anymore
so that people can make money. In reality, way more
people are losing money than making money. Talking about gaming,
he says, these people in the league that come from nothing,
think about it. If you could get all your homies

(04:47):
rich by telling them, YO, bet ten thousand dollars on
my under this one game, I'm going to act like
I've got an injury and I'm going to sit out.
I'm going to come out after three minutes and they
all get a little bag because you did it in
one game. That is so not okay. But some people
probably think like that. They come from nothing and all
their homies have nothing. Wow. I was wondering if he

(05:10):
could get in trouble for even just that thought process.
But then he said that's not okay. Yeah, he said,
it's ruining the game. Yeah, but like all the you know,
all the the betting on games used to be under
the table. Now it's all above board. And you know,
there's like we're big advocates of prize picks, for example,
we love prize picks. Casino owners now owned the Dallas Mavericks.

(05:34):
It's like, you know, Adam Silver's whole viewpoint was, why
do all this stuff under the table. Let's try to
regulate it and make it above board. But man, it's
just like any system. If someone can game a system
and get over on it, they're going to until they
get caught. One closing thought before we bail back to
top golf. Yeah, I think of Matt Damon turning down

(05:57):
the role of Jack Sully and Avatar, and he was
gonna get a here huge part of the movie rights.
And he said it's the biggest mistake he ever made. Huh.
I think it was Romo who told us he had
a chance to invest in top golfing. Oh wow, didn't wow,
and he had regret. Wished he had, he would have
done well. We were talking about Shack earlier. Do you
know what he decided not to invest in Starbucks? You

(06:18):
know what he told Howard Schultz Black people don't drink coffee.
Like that's a that's a story, like you can go
find that online and shaq and very much regrets that
tough day for Shack. Coming up next, it's a news quikie.
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