September 27, 2024 • 38 mins
Join host Michael Barr and Damian Sassower for a look at some of the latest headlines and stories in the business of sports.
Bloomberg investigative reporters Peter Robison and Noah Buhayar detail their Bloomberg Businessweek feature story and recent Bloomberg Big Take on how college athletes who aren't in the upper echelon of their respective sports are growing vulnerable to boosters who make promises they can't keep.
Then, Michael, Damian and Bloomberg Originals sports correspondent Vanessa Perdomo speak with Southern Utah University economics professor David Berri about a book he recently co-authored, "Slaying The Trolls!" - about how women in sports have historically been marginalized, the gender pay gap and some of the common misconceptions about women's sports.
Plus, a conversation with Playfly CEO Michael Schreiber on the impact of private equity in the NFL, and how his firm is navigating the changing sports media landscape.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is Bloomberg Business of Sports.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Business of Sports can be intimidating for hard for a
start to break into.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
We really appreciate where our owners are actually there, you know,
with us through the journey.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Teams ours especially been very intentional to diversify at all
levels of the company.
Speaker 5 (00:23):
I think we're in the golden years for the NFL
and college football.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
Our demographic reach has continued to explode.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
This is going to be really unlocking the streaming platform
for sports fans.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Sports evaluations are rising. We'll see when they peak.
Speaker 5 (00:36):
You don't have to be the best in your sport
to make a whole ton of money.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
This is the Bloomberg Business of Sports. We explore the
big money issues in the world of sports. I'm Michael
barn and I'm Damian's ass Hour. Scarlett fou is on assignment,
and Vanessa Erdomo will join us a bit later. Coming
up on the show, we'll dive into the growth of
women's sports and how to close the gender wage gap
with David Berry.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
He is a professor of economics at Southern Utah University.
And co author of the book Slaying the Trolls, a
book on why a lot of people are underestimating the
power and popularity of women's sports.
Speaker 5 (01:17):
When you go back and you think about college sports,
college sport for women really can't begin till Title nine
passes in nineteen seventy two, so men literally get a
century head start. Why is college football so popular? It
started in the eighteen seventies, It was a role It's
been around for one hundred and fifty years plus.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
We'll talk with Michael Schreiber. He is the founder and
CEO at Playfly, a company that places itself right in
the center of the relationship between teams and their fans.
All that is on the way on the Bloomberg Business
of Sports, but first we look at a growing problem
for college athletes. Bloomberg News investigative reporters Peter Robinson and
(01:57):
Noah the Higher recently published a new piece featured on
Bloomberg Bic Take and on Bloomberg Business Week, a very
good read about the ugly truth college players are facing
with payment deals, and they're here now to talk about it. Peter, Noah,
Welcome to the Bloomberg Business of Sports.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
This article is fascinating, unbelievable, And I'm going to start
out with something that I did not know, and I'm
a Michigan nut. This happened a year ago pretty much
that the Spartans Michigan State University. We're threatening to walk
because there was a problem over pay. Can you tell
(02:43):
us what happened?
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yeah, it was really a subtext during the season, and
players within teams, you know, often don't talk about what's
happening behind closed doors. But as we reported in the
story behind closed Doors, the collective, the group of boosters
who were paying players had had been was running out
(03:05):
of money. It's essentially, and players hadn't been paid. And
so before the game, you know, essentially, on the on
the plane headed to the game against Iowa, players were
told that they would no longer be getting money that
they were promised for the season. So, as we reported
in the story, you know, one player said, take me
to the airport, I'm going back, and other players, you know,
(03:27):
started to seriously consider sitting out the game.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
That is an unbelievable story. I can't believe it didn't
get more pressed and talk to us a little bit
about these collectives, these boosters. I mean, in this case,
the boosters were backed by some pretty deep pocketed investors.
I wonder if you could shed some light on that
as well.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, the people backing Spartan Dogs for Life from the
start were Matt Ashbia, who's famously the owner of the
Phoenix Suns, and Steve Saint Andre, who contributed more of
the money and was really more of the driver of
their organization. And Steve s and Andre is a technology
entrepreneur who've been involved with a company called for Direct.
(04:06):
And they're both Michigan State alumni and big boosters of
the university.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And so to be clear here, so you know, the
football team or football players, a number of them were
promised a certain amount of money at you know, they
got up to a I guess a bad start last season,
and within short order, you know, they received emails literally
before game time that you know they weren't going to
be getting paid, right, And so, I mean, what do
you do if you're managing a locker room, you're a coach,
(04:32):
I mean, forget about that, you're the athletic director, and
all of a sudden the boosters pull out and you
find out minutes before game time, I mean, is that
is that a one off or is this something that
you're hearing about recurring throughout all of college sports.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Well, I Noah can talk talk more about this, but
it's really ultimately it's a structural problem in the within
college football as it is today, because these are essentially
one hundred and fifty million dollars two million dollar dollar
businesses with with an unpaid labor force, and so structurally,
the coaches are paid, the administrators are paid, the assistant
(05:07):
coaches are paid, and they're all paid huge amounts of money,
you know, four hundred thousand for a running backs coach
to and a half million for a defensive coordinator. And the
players though, are paid in this very ad hoc way
through these collectives which are run by private business people
whose whose motives may differ from the athletic department the ground.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Yeah, And I think one of the things to really
note here about Michigan State and what was so exceptional
is we're hearing about this, you know, constantly in college
football now, you know, players alleging that they weren't given
what they were promised by by a collective. What was
so extreme about the Michigan State case is that it
(05:49):
affected so many players at the same time. But as
Peter said, I mean, these are large businesses essentially that
you know, top tier college football programs, the athletic departments
are one hundred and fifty million, two hundred and fifty
million dollar enterprises with unpaid labor forces, and a lot
(06:11):
of money has come into that space. But that money
is not coming from the university. So when you're an
athletic director or a coach of a team, you may
have to maintain morale, but at the end of the day,
you don't control the purse strings.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
So help me figure out this one. Within your article,
you talk about the saga of Jaden Rashada, quarterback from
the San Francisco Bay area, who you know, was very
highly recruited, actually committed, committed to the University of Miami,
the U and then all of a sudden, you know,
the University of Florida, the Gators, you know, they're boosters,
They wanted this kid, made him a huge offer that
(06:50):
he can possibly refuse. So I guess, if I'm hearing
you guys correctly, he he depledged. I guess if there
was such a thing from Miami decided to commit to
Florida and then what happened to this kid.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Well, he yes, that's that's exactly what happened as you
describe it. And the I mean, the amounts that he
said he was that were floated in him are enormous.
That it was, you know, nine and a half million
from the University of Miami, thirteen million from New Yorversity
of Florida.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Ten million dollars over four years from the University of
a Lorida forrook quarterback.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Wow, okay, yeah, and this is all but again, this
is all structured in a way that that's according to
the complaint, it was the money was to come from
multiple sources, not from the University of Florida itself, from
you know, a private business and another collective that was
going to be established. And ultimately, once according to the complaint,
(07:43):
once the pledge was made, the money just wasn't forthcoming.
And that is the crux of the issue at many schools.
There's a case recently involving a UNLV quarterback who said
that he's going to sit out the rest of the
season because he wasn't given the one hundred thousand dollars
to his agent that he was promised before he agreed
to play there.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yeah, but gentlemen, we're talking about fourteen million dollars. I mean,
that is an insane amount of money. I mean, I mean,
are you telling me that these universities and their donors,
their boosters can walk away without any ramifications whatsoever. We're
talking about you know, young nineteen year old you know, students,
I mean kids here.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Yeah, it's I mean, it's all starting much earlier and
at the highest levels. You know, these are seventeen eighteen
year old kids who are hiring agents. They are you know,
needing to their families early, are needing to understand the
business at a much higher level, much much younger.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
I would add here. You know, one of the one
of the core things we found in our reporting is
that oftentimes these contracts between the donor collectives and the
players are very lopsided. They have termination clauses that allow
the collective to basically walk away at any time at
(08:59):
their own discretion. Now, what you see in the Rashata
case is actual litigation over you know, what Rashada says
is money that was not paid. But I think one
of the important things for people to know is that
the leverage often in these contracts still lies with the
(09:20):
donors and the collectives.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Quick history lesson and it's in your article nineteen forty eight.
The NCAA they imposed a so called code that banned
the use of pay as an inducement. And you could
do it if you offered a scholarship. But that was
pretty much the only allowable compensation. Now, yes, you had
the boosters back in the day. Here you go, kid,
(09:44):
here's a little something for you. But that was pretty
much it. Now you flash forward, and as you put it,
the ground shifted in twenty twenty one when the US
Supreme Court cast aside the so called imagining ideals of amateurism.
How did you the mis ruling about the NCAA that
if you put that same model business model to any
(10:08):
other business, it wouldn't even fly. But times have changed,
and I wonder now is like we're in the infancy steps,
and I'll start with you, Peter. It is like, what
is it going to take to get the understanding here?
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Well, I mean, one thing that's happening is that the
antitrust suits against the NCAA are increasingly successful over the
last decade, and the Supreme Court ruling just put a
Capper on it. The NCAA has been losing badly in
the courts, and the amount of control it was exercising
over players was just not going to fly anymore. And
(10:46):
the House case in which the NCAA agreed to pay
two point eight billion to settle, which is an enormous
amount of money to former players an average of ninety
thousand to former Division one football men's basketball players. Plus
it's also agreed the NCAA has agreed that schools can share,
you know, up to twenty million a year in revenue.
(11:08):
And so this model will change in coming years. It's
just how quickly and how fair it is to the players,
because everyone seems to agree that ultimately there will be contracts,
there will be collective bargaining. It's just a matter of
how soon.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Noah Peter, you mentioned, you know, the husband of one
Terry Sabin in your article, Nick Saban, former coach of
the University of Alabama, won six national titles there. I mean,
he has killed it, but he's recently retired. And I
can recall back in March, you know, the you know
Nick Saban was you know, he was talking to a
bunch of senators on Capitol Hill right in front of cameras,
(11:46):
you know, talking about, you know, what is wrong with
college sports and what the you know NIOL means for
the future of college football, and you know, I mean,
isn't the proof in the pudding?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Right?
Speaker 1 (11:56):
I mean he retired. I mean, Terry went on the
record and said the reason my husband Nick retired because
these kids don't play for the love of the sport anymore.
They're playing for the money. And I wonder, you know
why the US federal government is so slow in reacting
to this, I mean, and letting all of this transpire,
because you know how it is. I mean, once these
kids and their families are conditioned to deal with college
(12:18):
you know, with college sports and with these universities in
this way, you know, it takes an awful long time
to change, you know, the playing field. I'm just you know, like,
what is the hold up? What is the waight? Why
aren't we seeing any progress there? I'm just curious to
hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
No, I do you give me thoughts on that?
Speaker 4 (12:33):
I was going to turn to you up said right,
oh yeah, our own Bloomberg News investigative reporters.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Thank you guys for joining us one of the Bloomberg
Business of Sports. Up next, we talk about why a
lot of people are underestimating the power of women's sports
for my colleagues Damien SaaS Sour and Vanessa Verdomo. I'm
Michael Barr. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business or Sports
Bloomberg Radio around the world. You're listening to Bloomberg Business
(13:03):
of Sports from Bloomberg Radio. This is the Bloomberg Business
of Sports show. Will we explored the big money issues
in the world of sports on Michael Barr along with
my colleagues Damian Sassuer and Vanessa Perdomo. Scarlett Fuo is
on assignment time now for Slaying the Trolls. That's a
recent book diving into why a lot of people are
(13:25):
underestimating the power and popularity of women's sports. David Berry
is co author of the book. He's also a sports
economist and professor of economics at Southern Utah University. His
career recently has focused more and more on gender issues
in sports and closing the gender gap, and he's here
(13:45):
now to talk to us about that and more. David,
Welcome to the Bloomberg Business of Sports.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
Ulad to be here.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I'm just going to ask the blunt question, the elephant
in the room. Why in the hell are we having
this conversation in the year twenty twenty four. I don't
get it.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
What part don't you get the fact that there are
men who attack women in sports, both as athletes, in
the media, as fans.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
All of the park.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, I mean it, this is silly. I don't understand it.
You've got people like Caitlin Clark just just blowing it
up there on the court and still is like, we
still got the trolls out there.
Speaker 5 (14:30):
They do not go away. So there are many men,
and the trolls are predominantly, almost entirely men who are
amazingly threatened by women in sports, and any participation by
women in sports makes them very insecure. So they question
(14:53):
whether or not women are sports fans they are, They
question women whenever they are in the sports media. Yeah,
they question women as athletes and so and it happens continuously.
If you are at all on social media, you interact
with any women in any of these roles, you'll see
(15:15):
you'll see people show up who say this. And there
also are you know, men in the media who echo
these same sentiments, So it's not just anonymous trolls online
to do this.
Speaker 7 (15:27):
David, when you're looking at I mean, the title of
your book is Slaying the Trolls, Why trolls are very
very wrong about women in sports? When you what were
you looking to set out when you, you know, started
writing this book. What did you exactly want to prove wrong?
And what do you think the biggest misconceptions are about
women in sports?
Speaker 5 (15:45):
Well, Neth Walker and I started writing this book back
in twenty eighteen, and so this came about. I was
I was interacting with women in sports and learning about
their experiences, and it was pretty clear that their experiences
were very, very different than my experiences were. So I
(16:08):
would have people I would say things related to my
research and sports economics, and I would have some people
argue with me, and that would happen occasionally, but usually
it wasn't persistent anonymous people, and it didn't happen every
single time. And then I would talk to women in sports,
(16:28):
especially women in sports journalists, and you would see this,
you would say, they'd make a comment, and immediately there
would be, you know, several troll showing up saying things
that that were derogatory, but also saying things that were
actually just not true. And so I spoke to f
Walker about this because she's done a lot of research
(16:49):
in this space as well, and I said, you know,
we should write a book. We should go through and say,
let's let's go through the things that the trolls are saying,
and let's the evidence that that's actually not true. So
some misconception. One misconception is is that women are not
sports fans. There's been anonymous polls that have been done
(17:10):
that show that forty five percent of NFL fans are women.
That that millions of women will say to pollsters that
they're sports fans. Women are not as willing to say
that to men in front of them. And there's a
reason for that, and we talk about this in the book.
When women confess to men that they are sports fans,
(17:33):
it is not uncommon and I've had many women over
time tell me this exact same story. It is not
uncommon for men to give the women a quiz to
see are you actually a sports fan? And the quiz
is something like, you know, can you name the starting
guard on the Super Bowl team from nineteen eighty two?
I mean stuff like that it's like, this is ridiculous,
(17:55):
Why would you? Why would anyone know that or care?
But they are suspicious of the entire notion that women
would like sports because there's a stereotype that sports are
just for women, just for men. But if you go
back to the very beginning, women have been playing sports
and participating in sports. Have actively banned women from playing
(18:17):
sports that has happened historically. That leads to another myth.
There's this idea that women's sports don't earn as much
revenue or don't have the same attendance as men's sports
because they're just not as good. What we go through
in the book is say, now, the story is pretty
plain on this one. There is a long history of
discrimination against women that have produced the results that we
(18:38):
see in terms of revenue and attendance. As I said,
actively banned from playing sports historically, when they started playing sports,
they were tremendously underfunded. So when you go back and
you think about college sports, college sports for women really
can't begin till Title nine passes in nineteen seventy two,
so men literally get a century head start. Why is
(19:00):
college football so popular? It started in the eighteen seventies,
it was around, it's been around for one hundred and
fifty years. You're going to build up a really substantial
fan base when you have one hundred and fifty year history.
Women's sports can't go back that far because Tittle nine
only came about in nineteen seventy two. Then when he
turned to the professional ranks, women don't get the same
(19:20):
investment that men get on in the private sector. That's
still true today. They definitely don't get the public sector investment.
So there's just this long history of discrimination that makes
women's sports have a smaller fan base, and it's nothing
to do with the quality of the games.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Doctor Barry, you have served as president of the North
American Association for Sports Economics. You currently sit on the
editorial board of the Journal for Sports Economics and International
Journal of Sport Finance. You are the defining voice on
economics and sports, and so I'm hoping you could put
some numbers around this for me. I know one such
number is that the WNBA currently he generates more revenue
(20:01):
than the NBA did fifty years ago, yet the gender
wage gap has emerged. You know that much more in
the sense at WNBA players today earned significantly less than
their male counterparts. I mean, I wonder if you can
give us some other statistical data to prove your point here.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
Well, I want to emphasize that point. That's a really
that's a really good point. The NBA back in the
early seventies made about thirty million dollars in revenue. If
you adjust for inflation, that's about two hundred million dollars
the WNBA today makes. According to Bloomberg, last year made
(20:36):
two hundred million dollars. They made much more this year,
but the WNBA player, the top WM player to day,
only makes two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. In the
early seventies. Kareem at Bill Jabbar was making four hundred
thousand dollars in nineteen seventy three, so Justiner and Flace,
she was being paid two million dollars. So there's just
this massive gender wage gap between men and women's sports.
(21:02):
You can also this is another little stat that's important.
The men's college basketball tournament gets a billion dollars a
year to broadcast in broadcasting rights. The NCAA was getting
only a million dollars a year for the women's basketball tournament.
They renegotiated it just a few months ago before the tournament,
(21:26):
and they were very proud of themselves. They said, we
have gotten the offer for the women's college basketball all
the way up to sixty million dollars a year. Again,
men are at a billion. Then the tournament happens and
the women get much higher ratings than the men. You're like,
you just negotiated this contract, and you negotiated a contract
(21:46):
that is that is less than ten percent of what
the men are getting, and the women are now getting
higher ratings. So this is the kind of thing that
happens to women a lot. Is that when it comes
to and when it comes to male leaders negotiating for women,
they undersell them repeatedly. They don't ask for very much
(22:07):
because they don't think it's worth very much because they're
not actually fans of it.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So I've seen, you know, what women can do. And
I remember at nine years old watching Billy Jean King
against Bobby Riggs. And this is some history, folks. To
tease you don't know what I'm talking about. Billy Jean King,
obviously the great tennis pro was up against Bobby Riggs
and this was one of those battle of the sexes.
(22:34):
And way back when you know, you had the big
women's lib argument. And I'll never forget doctor my mother
watching this saying please just beat the living snot out
of this guy, because that was a big turning point
to me about women coming into sports and women holding
(22:56):
their own.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Yeah, we talk about that in the book and it
is a great moment. We also argue in the book
it wasn't necessary. And the reason why we argue it's
not necessary is because when Canola Alvarez wins a title
as a middleweight boxer, nobody stops for a second and says, sure,
I mean, you beat up a guy who's one hundred
and fifty pounds. I got this old heavyweight guy. He
(23:20):
weighs two hundred and sixty pounds. He's like Bobby Riggs.
The dude's fifty years old, but he outweighs You buy
one hundred pounds. When you beat that guy, I'll take
you seriously. We don't ask men to do that. We
do not ask middleweight boxers and lightweight boxers. We don't
ask him to fight heavyweights because one thing, it's it's
not even they don't even permit it because it's dangerous.
(23:41):
But we understand that when it comes to men. We
evaluate men relative to their competition, and if the men
are really really good relative their competition, then we will
say something like Floyd Mayweather is the greatest box in
the world. He can't. Actually, he never could have been
the best box in the world. He only wigh eight
one hundred and forty five pounds. How could it be
(24:01):
the best? But we say, well, relative to his competition,
he was really really good. And men do this all
the time, and then when women play sports, suddenly the
trolls show up and say, I wonder if that if
that WNBA team could beat a high school boys team. Okay,
they can, but that's irrelevant. That doesn't make any difference.
(24:23):
It only matters how well they do against the competition
they face, and that's how we should evaluate him. So
Billy Jean King is way better than Bobby Riggs because
she won a lot more titles than Bobby Riggs ever won.
Whether she won that match or not, she was still
way better. And I think this is a problem is
that we have a different set of criteria for women
(24:46):
than we have for men. Because if men follow their
same logic that it's absolute best that matters, then nobody
should watch a college football game. Ever, you should put
a college football game on in Every single guy should
look at that and go, why am I watching this?
These guys are not even as good as the worst
NFL team. This is ridiculous, But they don't do that right.
(25:09):
You watch a college football game and there are men
in the stands who are hanging on every single play
as this is the greatest thing that ever happened, and
they're not thinking for a moment, I don't think this
team could beat an NFL team, So they're shifting the
criteria when women are suddenly on the field.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
The professor of economics at Southern Utah University, David Berry,
co author of the book Slay the Trolls, thank you
again for talking with us on the Bloomberg Business of Sports.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Thanks for having me up.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Next, we talk more about the Money behind sports with
Playfly CEO Michael Schreiber. For my colleagues Damien Sassauer and
Vanessa Bernomo, I'm Michael Barr. You're listening to the Bloomberg
Business of Sports Bloomberg Radio. Around the world, You're listening
(26:01):
to Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks for
joining us on the Bloomberg Business of Sports show, where
we explored the big money issues in the world of sports.
I'm Michael Barr, along with my colleagues Damian Sasur and
Vanessa Bernomo Scarlett foo is on assignment. Playfly is a
sports media, marketing and tech business that is positioning itself
(26:23):
in the center of the relationship between sports and their fans.
Here to talk to us about the business, the state
of private equity in sports, and more is play Fly
Founder CEO Michael Schreiber. Michael, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business
of Sports.
Speaker 6 (26:39):
Thank you, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Well, let's talk about Playfly is a business that you
have created. Tell us about it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
We actually just had our four year anniversary in the
past seven days, so hit four years old.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Congratulations, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 6 (26:55):
So it's exciting and we're a newish brand in the
world of sports, but we're not pretty big. We've got
about a thousand people. We work for most of the
pro teams in the US and some respect and a
big swath of the college athletic departments. And what we
do is we're the gateway that sits between the brands
and the teams. So our core business is driving sports
marketing activity between the teams and the brands. Whether we
(27:18):
do it through media, whether we do it through in
stadium or through digital and tech platforms, it doesn't matter.
We do that connection. We build that relationship. So whether
it's sales on the side of the selling for the team,
or whether it's consulting for the brand to make sure
they get into the right categories to connect to fans,
we sit in the middle and we use tech, We
use content, we use data to be able to connect
(27:43):
both the brands to the teams a little differently than
the rest of the competitors. So the cool thing about
Playfly is we get to sit in the center of
the ecosystem. You don't see our brand on TV when
you're watching the game, but the ads that are there,
we're sold.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Out your content right exactly. You control that content, and.
Speaker 6 (27:57):
Not only that, we produce a lot of it. So
we actually have a whole production company that produces a
lot of the commercials you'll see on TV whether you're
watching the Knicks or the Lakers or the Bulls or
any baseball team, hockey team, et cetera. But so the
exciting part for us is even though no one knows
our name when you think about it from a consumer perspective,
if you think about it from a B to B perspective,
(28:19):
most people know our name now after four years.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
So then you have to answer this with me. If
you're in the Nexus, you're touching a lot of different
players in the world of sports, right You're touching the teams,
you're touching networks, you're touching everything. So who are your clients, like,
who do you spend the majority of your time servicing?
Speaker 6 (28:34):
Sure, So what we end up doing is most of
our service is to the sports ecosystem because the currency
is fandom, and when you think about what drives the business,
it's fandom. But fandom is increasing, your currency is increasing,
you can sell more at a higher rate traditional currency
type model that investors speak would under a fast service. Yeah, exactly,
(28:57):
Fandom as a service is our mantra. So ultimately what
that means is the people who own the fan are
the teams. So the teams, the leagues, the conferences, the
athletic departments, and they're harvesting and harnessing those fans in
different ways. So that's what we spend the most of
our time with because if we do a good job there,
the brands will come, and then ultimately we match the
(29:19):
right brands with the right fans to get them activated
and their products bought. But first to your questions, always
starts with the teams and their fandom.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And I see you have a huge footprint, right, major
League Baseball, the NBA, WNBA, the NCAA, right, So you know,
I didn't see the NFL there. But I would love
to hear your opinion on the role private equities playing
in the NFL, Like what does that mean to the
valuation of these franchises? Number one? But more importantly, what
is the value proposition from the perspective of a private
(29:48):
equity investor. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 6 (29:50):
Yeah, it's a really interesting time. We do work with
the NFL directly and a number of teams as well.
It's a category that has changed, first the the other
Big four, right, it went through them, and now we're
getting to the final frontier with the NFL. But what
it's done is is actually created a mindset from a
team owner and even a league perspective to think about
(30:11):
their teams as media companies, as businesses, which is totally different.
They're ultimately going after more cash flow, more ways to
make money, more ways to slice the onion, and ultimately
they support and partners and consultants, and that's what we bring.
We bring those expertise, whether it's coming in with sales expertise, data,
whether it's coming in with technology. We're thinking about new
(30:32):
commercial strategies to optimize, whether it's putting a new sign
in the stadium, whether it's creating a new real estate
experience outside of your venue. All those elements are optimizations
of your existing business. There's always growth and when you
look at the pendulum of that, the NFL tends to
be at the forward end of the growth spectrum because
of their size and their fandom. But when you look
(30:52):
at someone like the NHL, they tend to be at
the forward side of the innovation spectrum. And that's really
interesting and to speak and from an investor standpoint. Sticking
with the NHL for a second, the NHL actually, and
these are our we come out with fandom based reports
using all of our proprietary data called the play Flag
Fan Score. We showed the NHL actually has the highest
level of CEOs and c level fans, which is really
(31:16):
interesting when you're thinking about advertising and marketing and especially
investors as to your question, but ultimately, all that comes
back down to, Okay, how do you create more cash flow?
Because that's what the pe investors are going to look for.
They're going to look for cash flow, they're going to
look for growth. If you're not providing that, you're not
going to provide the return because the evaluations are high
enough at the moment that you've got to actually show
(31:37):
financial success, not just excitement and scarcity.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
You just brought up a good point, which sport. I
guess one hand has got to watch the other. You
need the NHL. The NHL needs you now as you progress,
you know, because the NFL, you know, they're just noxiously
like can. But it does come back to the question
(32:05):
is like we're in an era now where one hand
washes the other.
Speaker 6 (32:09):
That's right, that's right. So ultimately, all boats are rising.
And if you think about it from a perspective, and
not only a perspective of the leagues and the teams,
but you're seeing multi team ownership across the leagues and
that's only going to continue to expand. So that combination
is not only just because those owners want to be
(32:30):
bigger owners. That's not the reason. It's because it provides
business opportunities, economies of scale, opportunities to use services like
the playfly Sports services across all of your teams, not
just one of your teams. It allows your head of
HR to be used across all of your teams. It's
business operations. That's the biggest change that we're seeing, not
only when you look at all the new money coming
(32:52):
into franchise ownership, but now the PE money coming into
franchise ownership. NFL being that last frontier, you're going to
see more and more business optimism and that's going to
be an interesting wave. I think that's going to continue
for the next ten plus fifteen years, and that's going
to be investible. Whoever's working on those elements for business
optimization is going to be a really interesting investable category.
In addition to the teams themselves.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Mike, I'd like to tap into your experience, you know
at Hulu. You know, you're a founder there, all the
stuff you did with you know, regional sports networks, a
model that is you know, arguably broken right now. What
does the future of a content consumption look like.
Speaker 6 (33:29):
That's a great one. I love this one because we
tend to talk to in most of the conversations about
some of the struggles with debt or some of the
struggles with bankruptcy that we're hearing in this space in
the regional sports network space. But the actual most interesting
thing I think is, if you think about it from
the future perspective, what's actually the consumer experiencing now? What
(33:49):
does it look like? And it breaks down into seven
different local media categories, because if you think about it,
local media is really the driving force of most impressions
in the ecosystem. Most people are watching their local tea.
That's the experience in the US. That's experience really in
sports globally is local fans. Local fandom drives it. So
when you think about what's happening now, when you break
(34:09):
down the RSN ecosystem, like you mentioned, there's still plenty
of very successful rsns and really amazing businesses like Nessen
in Boston and others. But now you have seven different models.
So let's move the existing RSN. That's leaves six. The
next is team owned networks. The teams are buying their
networks back. They want to have control they want to
(34:30):
be in the operating seat. Great example Monumental Sports in DC.
Third strategy is direct consumer. The newest example that has
just came out as the Dallas Stars just decided no TV,
just direct consumer only major relevant you know, revolution in
the in the in what we're looking at from local
(34:51):
media at number three, number four which is actually the
fastest growing and the biggest is broadcast stations. So taking
it out of the cable model and going back to
the rabbit ears right, going back to the or just
reach from a TV perspective and putting it back on
the station like it's nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
You know, I just I almost want to jump in here.
You know, we did a piece just the other day.
We were talking about Nike and Jim Donno, and we
were talking about some of the moves he made his
next being you know, obviously cost cutting. The type of
guy and one of the things that worked early on
was you know, going in house, you know, like the
Utah Jazz for example, you know, controlling everything that is
to do about how you reach your consumer. But when
(35:24):
you do that, if you run into some trouble later
on down the road, you don't have other avenues. You
have no other distribution mechanism to talk to us about that.
Is that happening in your neck of the woods? Is
that happening in the world of sports?
Speaker 6 (35:35):
Yeah, so definitely. So what you're seeing in all this fragmentation, right,
if you went through the rest of them, you'd see
differing models for the fan, for the businesses. What ends
up happening, and I call this the grand rebundling. What
you're gonna see is it breaks down. It breaks down
right into all these fragments, and then everybody looks at
each other and says, it wasn't the bigger package better
(35:55):
for everybody?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Right? Right?
Speaker 6 (35:57):
Wait, it was better for the consumer.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
They get over there, and then let's go back there
and you're like an.
Speaker 6 (36:01):
And you ask some key learnings from the Hulu experience
and the founding of that business. Right, the grand rebundling, Right,
you're seeing it. Now you're seeing TV. Hulu has a
TV service that looks like cable. Right, it's the grand rebunding.
Everything's coming back because that's the most efficient way to
drive the most value in sports media, period. So the
breakdown is always going to happen, and then the rebundle
is always going to happen. It's just how long in
(36:23):
between those two things.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
The secrets out of THEMBA by the way, that eventually,
I know, you guys are going to have to let
me put it this way, there's a lot of money
to be made in the WUNBA.
Speaker 6 (36:35):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. And fandom again, as I said,
the currency fandom is increasing. The largest growth categories of
fandom is in women's sports right now. Now they're still small,
but that the highest growth percentages. So you're one hundred
percent right that if you follow the currency of fandom.
As I mentioned, play Flag sports uses fandom as a service.
The currency of fandom, women's sports is a place to
(36:56):
invest at the moment.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Interesting. Interesting, So you know, I'll take it to the
next level. You know, the wild wild West where you
know there's tons of fans but they can't figure anything out.
Is the world of college sports. You do a lot
with the NCAA and il is real and what's going
on across the whole of commune. You've got you know
Nick Saban, you know he left his role as coach
of the of the Alabama Crimson Tide because he's like
(37:18):
everybody just wants money now, it's all about the money.
It's not about any fan, that's any loyalty to your
fan base. Talked to us a little bit about the
challenges that lie ahead for the NCAA and college sports.
Speaker 6 (37:27):
Yeah, it's the greatest turnover of atletic directors in the
history of college sports. It's gotten so much more complicated
than obviously an impetus for our business to be a
service provider at play fly Sports. But you're right, it's
it's a money game now. And the interesting thing is,
we talked about the dominance of the NFL earlier. The
largest attended sports category in the US is college football.
(37:48):
It is not there, and it's local, it is right,
it is not the NFL. So the NFL dominates TV
still college second by the way, ahead of MLB.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Right, NBA.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
But it's the largest attended event category in the country.
So when you think about that, it is not fully
harvested for its value. It has not created a national
model that is yet as big as the NFL has,
and a lot of jockeying between conferences, a lot of
elements are still too evolve. We're probably i would say,
(38:17):
forty percent done the evolution of college sports and Wow,
look at the last five years.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Our thanks to Michael Schreiber for joining us. He is
the founder and CEO A Playfly, and thank you most
of all for joining us on the Bloomberg Business of Sports.
We hear each and every week at the same time
for my colleagues Damien Sasaur and Branessa Brnomo. I'm Michael Barr.
Tune in next week for the latest on the stories
moving big old money in the world of sports. You're
(38:44):
listening to The Bloomberg Business of Sports Bloomberg Radio around
the world.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is Bloomberg Business of Sports.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Business of Sports can be intimidating for hard for a
start to break into.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
We really appreciate where our owners are actually there, you know,
with us through the journey.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Teams ours especially been very intentional to diversify at all
levels of the company.
Speaker 5 (00:23):
I think we're in the golden years for the NFL
and college football.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
Our demographic reach has continued to explode.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
This is going to be really unlocking the streaming platform
for sports fans.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Sports evaluations are rising. We'll see when they peak.
Speaker 5 (00:36):
You don't have to be the best in your sport
to make a whole ton of money.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
This is the Bloomberg Business of Sports. We explore the
big money issues in the world of sports. I'm Michael
barn and I'm Damian's ass Hour. Scarlett fou is on assignment,
and Vanessa Erdomo will join us a bit later. Coming
up on the show, we'll dive into the growth of
women's sports and how to close the gender wage gap
with David Berry.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
He is a professor of economics at Southern Utah University.
And co author of the book Slaying the Trolls, a
book on why a lot of people are underestimating the
power and popularity of women's sports.
Speaker 5 (01:17):
When you go back and you think about college sports,
college sport for women really can't begin till Title nine
passes in nineteen seventy two, so men literally get a
century head start. Why is college football so popular? It
started in the eighteen seventies, It was a role It's
been around for one hundred and fifty years plus.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
We'll talk with Michael Schreiber. He is the founder and
CEO at Playfly, a company that places itself right in
the center of the relationship between teams and their fans.
All that is on the way on the Bloomberg Business
of Sports, but first we look at a growing problem
for college athletes. Bloomberg News investigative reporters Peter Robinson and
(01:57):
Noah the Higher recently published a new piece featured on
Bloomberg Bic Take and on Bloomberg Business Week, a very
good read about the ugly truth college players are facing
with payment deals, and they're here now to talk about it. Peter, Noah,
Welcome to the Bloomberg Business of Sports.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
This article is fascinating, unbelievable, And I'm going to start
out with something that I did not know, and I'm
a Michigan nut. This happened a year ago pretty much
that the Spartans Michigan State University. We're threatening to walk
because there was a problem over pay. Can you tell
(02:43):
us what happened?
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yeah, it was really a subtext during the season, and
players within teams, you know, often don't talk about what's
happening behind closed doors. But as we reported in the
story behind closed Doors, the collective, the group of boosters
who were paying players had had been was running out
(03:05):
of money. It's essentially, and players hadn't been paid. And
so before the game, you know, essentially, on the on
the plane headed to the game against Iowa, players were
told that they would no longer be getting money that
they were promised for the season. So, as we reported
in the story, you know, one player said, take me
to the airport, I'm going back, and other players, you know,
(03:27):
started to seriously consider sitting out the game.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
That is an unbelievable story. I can't believe it didn't
get more pressed and talk to us a little bit
about these collectives, these boosters. I mean, in this case,
the boosters were backed by some pretty deep pocketed investors.
I wonder if you could shed some light on that
as well.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, the people backing Spartan Dogs for Life from the
start were Matt Ashbia, who's famously the owner of the
Phoenix Suns, and Steve Saint Andre, who contributed more of
the money and was really more of the driver of
their organization. And Steve s and Andre is a technology
entrepreneur who've been involved with a company called for Direct.
(04:06):
And they're both Michigan State alumni and big boosters of
the university.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And so to be clear here, so you know, the
football team or football players, a number of them were
promised a certain amount of money at you know, they
got up to a I guess a bad start last season,
and within short order, you know, they received emails literally
before game time that you know they weren't going to
be getting paid, right, And so, I mean, what do
you do if you're managing a locker room, you're a coach,
(04:32):
I mean, forget about that, you're the athletic director, and
all of a sudden the boosters pull out and you
find out minutes before game time, I mean, is that
is that a one off or is this something that
you're hearing about recurring throughout all of college sports.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Well, I Noah can talk talk more about this, but
it's really ultimately it's a structural problem in the within
college football as it is today, because these are essentially
one hundred and fifty million dollars two million dollar dollar
businesses with with an unpaid labor force, and so structurally,
the coaches are paid, the administrators are paid, the assistant
(05:07):
coaches are paid, and they're all paid huge amounts of money,
you know, four hundred thousand for a running backs coach
to and a half million for a defensive coordinator. And the
players though, are paid in this very ad hoc way
through these collectives which are run by private business people
whose whose motives may differ from the athletic department the ground.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Yeah, And I think one of the things to really
note here about Michigan State and what was so exceptional
is we're hearing about this, you know, constantly in college
football now, you know, players alleging that they weren't given
what they were promised by by a collective. What was
so extreme about the Michigan State case is that it
(05:49):
affected so many players at the same time. But as
Peter said, I mean, these are large businesses essentially that
you know, top tier college football programs, the athletic departments
are one hundred and fifty million, two hundred and fifty
million dollar enterprises with unpaid labor forces, and a lot
(06:11):
of money has come into that space. But that money
is not coming from the university. So when you're an
athletic director or a coach of a team, you may
have to maintain morale, but at the end of the day,
you don't control the purse strings.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
So help me figure out this one. Within your article,
you talk about the saga of Jaden Rashada, quarterback from
the San Francisco Bay area, who you know, was very
highly recruited, actually committed, committed to the University of Miami,
the U and then all of a sudden, you know,
the University of Florida, the Gators, you know, they're boosters,
They wanted this kid, made him a huge offer that
(06:50):
he can possibly refuse. So I guess, if I'm hearing
you guys correctly, he he depledged. I guess if there
was such a thing from Miami decided to commit to
Florida and then what happened to this kid.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Well, he yes, that's that's exactly what happened as you
describe it. And the I mean, the amounts that he
said he was that were floated in him are enormous.
That it was, you know, nine and a half million
from the University of Miami, thirteen million from New Yorversity
of Florida.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Ten million dollars over four years from the University of
a Lorida forrook quarterback.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Wow, okay, yeah, and this is all but again, this
is all structured in a way that that's according to
the complaint, it was the money was to come from
multiple sources, not from the University of Florida itself, from
you know, a private business and another collective that was
going to be established. And ultimately, once according to the complaint,
(07:43):
once the pledge was made, the money just wasn't forthcoming.
And that is the crux of the issue at many schools.
There's a case recently involving a UNLV quarterback who said
that he's going to sit out the rest of the
season because he wasn't given the one hundred thousand dollars
to his agent that he was promised before he agreed
to play there.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yeah, but gentlemen, we're talking about fourteen million dollars. I mean,
that is an insane amount of money. I mean, I mean,
are you telling me that these universities and their donors,
their boosters can walk away without any ramifications whatsoever. We're
talking about you know, young nineteen year old you know, students,
I mean kids here.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Yeah, it's I mean, it's all starting much earlier and
at the highest levels. You know, these are seventeen eighteen
year old kids who are hiring agents. They are you know,
needing to their families early, are needing to understand the
business at a much higher level, much much younger.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
I would add here. You know, one of the one
of the core things we found in our reporting is
that oftentimes these contracts between the donor collectives and the
players are very lopsided. They have termination clauses that allow
the collective to basically walk away at any time at
(08:59):
their own discretion. Now, what you see in the Rashata
case is actual litigation over you know, what Rashada says
is money that was not paid. But I think one
of the important things for people to know is that
the leverage often in these contracts still lies with the
(09:20):
donors and the collectives.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Quick history lesson and it's in your article nineteen forty eight.
The NCAA they imposed a so called code that banned
the use of pay as an inducement. And you could
do it if you offered a scholarship. But that was
pretty much the only allowable compensation. Now, yes, you had
the boosters back in the day. Here you go, kid,
(09:44):
here's a little something for you. But that was pretty
much it. Now you flash forward, and as you put it,
the ground shifted in twenty twenty one when the US
Supreme Court cast aside the so called imagining ideals of amateurism.
How did you the mis ruling about the NCAA that
if you put that same model business model to any
(10:08):
other business, it wouldn't even fly. But times have changed,
and I wonder now is like we're in the infancy steps,
and I'll start with you, Peter. It is like, what
is it going to take to get the understanding here?
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Well, I mean, one thing that's happening is that the
antitrust suits against the NCAA are increasingly successful over the
last decade, and the Supreme Court ruling just put a
Capper on it. The NCAA has been losing badly in
the courts, and the amount of control it was exercising
over players was just not going to fly anymore. And
(10:46):
the House case in which the NCAA agreed to pay
two point eight billion to settle, which is an enormous
amount of money to former players an average of ninety
thousand to former Division one football men's basketball players. Plus
it's also agreed the NCAA has agreed that schools can share,
you know, up to twenty million a year in revenue.
(11:08):
And so this model will change in coming years. It's
just how quickly and how fair it is to the players,
because everyone seems to agree that ultimately there will be contracts,
there will be collective bargaining. It's just a matter of
how soon.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Noah Peter, you mentioned, you know, the husband of one
Terry Sabin in your article, Nick Saban, former coach of
the University of Alabama, won six national titles there. I mean,
he has killed it, but he's recently retired. And I
can recall back in March, you know, the you know
Nick Saban was you know, he was talking to a
bunch of senators on Capitol Hill right in front of cameras,
(11:46):
you know, talking about, you know, what is wrong with
college sports and what the you know NIOL means for
the future of college football, and you know, I mean,
isn't the proof in the pudding?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Right?
Speaker 1 (11:56):
I mean he retired. I mean, Terry went on the
record and said the reason my husband Nick retired because
these kids don't play for the love of the sport anymore.
They're playing for the money. And I wonder, you know
why the US federal government is so slow in reacting
to this, I mean, and letting all of this transpire,
because you know how it is. I mean, once these
kids and their families are conditioned to deal with college
(12:18):
you know, with college sports and with these universities in
this way, you know, it takes an awful long time
to change, you know, the playing field. I'm just you know, like,
what is the hold up? What is the waight? Why
aren't we seeing any progress there? I'm just curious to
hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
No, I do you give me thoughts on that?
Speaker 4 (12:33):
I was going to turn to you up said right,
oh yeah, our own Bloomberg News investigative reporters.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Thank you guys for joining us one of the Bloomberg
Business of Sports. Up next, we talk about why a
lot of people are underestimating the power of women's sports
for my colleagues Damien SaaS Sour and Vanessa Verdomo. I'm
Michael Barr. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business or Sports
Bloomberg Radio around the world. You're listening to Bloomberg Business
(13:03):
of Sports from Bloomberg Radio. This is the Bloomberg Business
of Sports show. Will we explored the big money issues
in the world of sports on Michael Barr along with
my colleagues Damian Sassuer and Vanessa Perdomo. Scarlett Fuo is
on assignment time now for Slaying the Trolls. That's a
recent book diving into why a lot of people are
(13:25):
underestimating the power and popularity of women's sports. David Berry
is co author of the book. He's also a sports
economist and professor of economics at Southern Utah University. His
career recently has focused more and more on gender issues
in sports and closing the gender gap, and he's here
(13:45):
now to talk to us about that and more. David,
Welcome to the Bloomberg Business of Sports.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
Ulad to be here.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I'm just going to ask the blunt question, the elephant
in the room. Why in the hell are we having
this conversation in the year twenty twenty four. I don't
get it.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
What part don't you get the fact that there are
men who attack women in sports, both as athletes, in
the media, as fans.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
All of the park.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, I mean it, this is silly. I don't understand it.
You've got people like Caitlin Clark just just blowing it
up there on the court and still is like, we
still got the trolls out there.
Speaker 5 (14:30):
They do not go away. So there are many men,
and the trolls are predominantly, almost entirely men who are
amazingly threatened by women in sports, and any participation by
women in sports makes them very insecure. So they question
(14:53):
whether or not women are sports fans they are, They
question women whenever they are in the sports media. Yeah,
they question women as athletes and so and it happens continuously.
If you are at all on social media, you interact
with any women in any of these roles, you'll see
(15:15):
you'll see people show up who say this. And there
also are you know, men in the media who echo
these same sentiments, So it's not just anonymous trolls online
to do this.
Speaker 7 (15:27):
David, when you're looking at I mean, the title of
your book is Slaying the Trolls, Why trolls are very
very wrong about women in sports? When you what were
you looking to set out when you, you know, started
writing this book. What did you exactly want to prove wrong?
And what do you think the biggest misconceptions are about
women in sports?
Speaker 5 (15:45):
Well, Neth Walker and I started writing this book back
in twenty eighteen, and so this came about. I was
I was interacting with women in sports and learning about
their experiences, and it was pretty clear that their experiences
were very, very different than my experiences were. So I
(16:08):
would have people I would say things related to my
research and sports economics, and I would have some people
argue with me, and that would happen occasionally, but usually
it wasn't persistent anonymous people, and it didn't happen every
single time. And then I would talk to women in sports,
(16:28):
especially women in sports journalists, and you would see this,
you would say, they'd make a comment, and immediately there
would be, you know, several troll showing up saying things
that that were derogatory, but also saying things that were
actually just not true. And so I spoke to f
Walker about this because she's done a lot of research
(16:49):
in this space as well, and I said, you know,
we should write a book. We should go through and say,
let's let's go through the things that the trolls are saying,
and let's the evidence that that's actually not true. So
some misconception. One misconception is is that women are not
sports fans. There's been anonymous polls that have been done
(17:10):
that show that forty five percent of NFL fans are women.
That that millions of women will say to pollsters that
they're sports fans. Women are not as willing to say
that to men in front of them. And there's a
reason for that, and we talk about this in the book.
When women confess to men that they are sports fans,
(17:33):
it is not uncommon and I've had many women over
time tell me this exact same story. It is not
uncommon for men to give the women a quiz to
see are you actually a sports fan? And the quiz
is something like, you know, can you name the starting
guard on the Super Bowl team from nineteen eighty two?
I mean stuff like that it's like, this is ridiculous,
(17:55):
Why would you? Why would anyone know that or care?
But they are suspicious of the entire notion that women
would like sports because there's a stereotype that sports are
just for women, just for men. But if you go
back to the very beginning, women have been playing sports
and participating in sports. Have actively banned women from playing
(18:17):
sports that has happened historically. That leads to another myth.
There's this idea that women's sports don't earn as much
revenue or don't have the same attendance as men's sports
because they're just not as good. What we go through
in the book is say, now, the story is pretty
plain on this one. There is a long history of
discrimination against women that have produced the results that we
(18:38):
see in terms of revenue and attendance. As I said,
actively banned from playing sports historically, when they started playing sports,
they were tremendously underfunded. So when you go back and
you think about college sports, college sports for women really
can't begin till Title nine passes in nineteen seventy two,
so men literally get a century head start. Why is
(19:00):
college football so popular? It started in the eighteen seventies,
it was around, it's been around for one hundred and
fifty years. You're going to build up a really substantial
fan base when you have one hundred and fifty year history.
Women's sports can't go back that far because Tittle nine
only came about in nineteen seventy two. Then when he
turned to the professional ranks, women don't get the same
(19:20):
investment that men get on in the private sector. That's
still true today. They definitely don't get the public sector investment.
So there's just this long history of discrimination that makes
women's sports have a smaller fan base, and it's nothing
to do with the quality of the games.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Doctor Barry, you have served as president of the North
American Association for Sports Economics. You currently sit on the
editorial board of the Journal for Sports Economics and International
Journal of Sport Finance. You are the defining voice on
economics and sports, and so I'm hoping you could put
some numbers around this for me. I know one such
number is that the WNBA currently he generates more revenue
(20:01):
than the NBA did fifty years ago, yet the gender
wage gap has emerged. You know that much more in
the sense at WNBA players today earned significantly less than
their male counterparts. I mean, I wonder if you can
give us some other statistical data to prove your point here.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
Well, I want to emphasize that point. That's a really
that's a really good point. The NBA back in the
early seventies made about thirty million dollars in revenue. If
you adjust for inflation, that's about two hundred million dollars
the WNBA today makes. According to Bloomberg, last year made
(20:36):
two hundred million dollars. They made much more this year,
but the WNBA player, the top WM player to day,
only makes two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. In the
early seventies. Kareem at Bill Jabbar was making four hundred
thousand dollars in nineteen seventy three, so Justiner and Flace,
she was being paid two million dollars. So there's just
this massive gender wage gap between men and women's sports.
(21:02):
You can also this is another little stat that's important.
The men's college basketball tournament gets a billion dollars a
year to broadcast in broadcasting rights. The NCAA was getting
only a million dollars a year for the women's basketball tournament.
They renegotiated it just a few months ago before the tournament,
(21:26):
and they were very proud of themselves. They said, we
have gotten the offer for the women's college basketball all
the way up to sixty million dollars a year. Again,
men are at a billion. Then the tournament happens and
the women get much higher ratings than the men. You're like,
you just negotiated this contract, and you negotiated a contract
(21:46):
that is that is less than ten percent of what
the men are getting, and the women are now getting
higher ratings. So this is the kind of thing that
happens to women a lot. Is that when it comes
to and when it comes to male leaders negotiating for women,
they undersell them repeatedly. They don't ask for very much
(22:07):
because they don't think it's worth very much because they're
not actually fans of it.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So I've seen, you know, what women can do. And
I remember at nine years old watching Billy Jean King
against Bobby Riggs. And this is some history, folks. To
tease you don't know what I'm talking about. Billy Jean King,
obviously the great tennis pro was up against Bobby Riggs
and this was one of those battle of the sexes.
(22:34):
And way back when you know, you had the big
women's lib argument. And I'll never forget doctor my mother
watching this saying please just beat the living snot out
of this guy, because that was a big turning point
to me about women coming into sports and women holding
(22:56):
their own.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Yeah, we talk about that in the book and it
is a great moment. We also argue in the book
it wasn't necessary. And the reason why we argue it's
not necessary is because when Canola Alvarez wins a title
as a middleweight boxer, nobody stops for a second and says, sure,
I mean, you beat up a guy who's one hundred
and fifty pounds. I got this old heavyweight guy. He
(23:20):
weighs two hundred and sixty pounds. He's like Bobby Riggs.
The dude's fifty years old, but he outweighs You buy
one hundred pounds. When you beat that guy, I'll take
you seriously. We don't ask men to do that. We
do not ask middleweight boxers and lightweight boxers. We don't
ask him to fight heavyweights because one thing, it's it's
not even they don't even permit it because it's dangerous.
(23:41):
But we understand that when it comes to men. We
evaluate men relative to their competition, and if the men
are really really good relative their competition, then we will
say something like Floyd Mayweather is the greatest box in
the world. He can't. Actually, he never could have been
the best box in the world. He only wigh eight
one hundred and forty five pounds. How could it be
(24:01):
the best? But we say, well, relative to his competition,
he was really really good. And men do this all
the time, and then when women play sports, suddenly the
trolls show up and say, I wonder if that if
that WNBA team could beat a high school boys team. Okay,
they can, but that's irrelevant. That doesn't make any difference.
(24:23):
It only matters how well they do against the competition
they face, and that's how we should evaluate him. So
Billy Jean King is way better than Bobby Riggs because
she won a lot more titles than Bobby Riggs ever won.
Whether she won that match or not, she was still
way better. And I think this is a problem is
that we have a different set of criteria for women
(24:46):
than we have for men. Because if men follow their
same logic that it's absolute best that matters, then nobody
should watch a college football game. Ever, you should put
a college football game on in Every single guy should
look at that and go, why am I watching this?
These guys are not even as good as the worst
NFL team. This is ridiculous, But they don't do that right.
(25:09):
You watch a college football game and there are men
in the stands who are hanging on every single play
as this is the greatest thing that ever happened, and
they're not thinking for a moment, I don't think this
team could beat an NFL team, So they're shifting the
criteria when women are suddenly on the field.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
The professor of economics at Southern Utah University, David Berry,
co author of the book Slay the Trolls, thank you
again for talking with us on the Bloomberg Business of Sports.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Thanks for having me up.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Next, we talk more about the Money behind sports with
Playfly CEO Michael Schreiber. For my colleagues Damien Sassauer and
Vanessa Bernomo, I'm Michael Barr. You're listening to the Bloomberg
Business of Sports Bloomberg Radio. Around the world, You're listening
(26:01):
to Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks for
joining us on the Bloomberg Business of Sports show, where
we explored the big money issues in the world of sports.
I'm Michael Barr, along with my colleagues Damian Sasur and
Vanessa Bernomo Scarlett foo is on assignment. Playfly is a
sports media, marketing and tech business that is positioning itself
(26:23):
in the center of the relationship between sports and their fans.
Here to talk to us about the business, the state
of private equity in sports, and more is play Fly
Founder CEO Michael Schreiber. Michael, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business
of Sports.
Speaker 6 (26:39):
Thank you, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Well, let's talk about Playfly is a business that you
have created. Tell us about it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
We actually just had our four year anniversary in the
past seven days, so hit four years old.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Congratulations, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 6 (26:55):
So it's exciting and we're a newish brand in the
world of sports, but we're not pretty big. We've got
about a thousand people. We work for most of the
pro teams in the US and some respect and a
big swath of the college athletic departments. And what we
do is we're the gateway that sits between the brands
and the teams. So our core business is driving sports
marketing activity between the teams and the brands. Whether we
(27:18):
do it through media, whether we do it through in
stadium or through digital and tech platforms, it doesn't matter.
We do that connection. We build that relationship. So whether
it's sales on the side of the selling for the team,
or whether it's consulting for the brand to make sure
they get into the right categories to connect to fans,
we sit in the middle and we use tech, We
use content, we use data to be able to connect
(27:43):
both the brands to the teams a little differently than
the rest of the competitors. So the cool thing about
Playfly is we get to sit in the center of
the ecosystem. You don't see our brand on TV when
you're watching the game, but the ads that are there,
we're sold.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Out your content right exactly. You control that content, and.
Speaker 6 (27:57):
Not only that, we produce a lot of it. So
we actually have a whole production company that produces a
lot of the commercials you'll see on TV whether you're
watching the Knicks or the Lakers or the Bulls or
any baseball team, hockey team, et cetera. But so the
exciting part for us is even though no one knows
our name when you think about it from a consumer perspective,
if you think about it from a B to B perspective,
(28:19):
most people know our name now after four years.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
So then you have to answer this with me. If
you're in the Nexus, you're touching a lot of different
players in the world of sports, right You're touching the teams,
you're touching networks, you're touching everything. So who are your clients, like,
who do you spend the majority of your time servicing?
Speaker 6 (28:34):
Sure, So what we end up doing is most of
our service is to the sports ecosystem because the currency
is fandom, and when you think about what drives the business,
it's fandom. But fandom is increasing, your currency is increasing,
you can sell more at a higher rate traditional currency
type model that investors speak would under a fast service. Yeah, exactly,
(28:57):
Fandom as a service is our mantra. So ultimately what
that means is the people who own the fan are
the teams. So the teams, the leagues, the conferences, the
athletic departments, and they're harvesting and harnessing those fans in
different ways. So that's what we spend the most of
our time with because if we do a good job there,
the brands will come, and then ultimately we match the
(29:19):
right brands with the right fans to get them activated
and their products bought. But first to your questions, always
starts with the teams and their fandom.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And I see you have a huge footprint, right, major
League Baseball, the NBA, WNBA, the NCAA, right, So you know,
I didn't see the NFL there. But I would love
to hear your opinion on the role private equities playing
in the NFL, Like what does that mean to the
valuation of these franchises? Number one? But more importantly, what
is the value proposition from the perspective of a private
(29:48):
equity investor. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 6 (29:50):
Yeah, it's a really interesting time. We do work with
the NFL directly and a number of teams as well.
It's a category that has changed, first the the other
Big four, right, it went through them, and now we're
getting to the final frontier with the NFL. But what
it's done is is actually created a mindset from a
team owner and even a league perspective to think about
(30:11):
their teams as media companies, as businesses, which is totally different.
They're ultimately going after more cash flow, more ways to
make money, more ways to slice the onion, and ultimately
they support and partners and consultants, and that's what we bring.
We bring those expertise, whether it's coming in with sales expertise, data,
whether it's coming in with technology. We're thinking about new
(30:32):
commercial strategies to optimize, whether it's putting a new sign
in the stadium, whether it's creating a new real estate
experience outside of your venue. All those elements are optimizations
of your existing business. There's always growth and when you
look at the pendulum of that, the NFL tends to
be at the forward end of the growth spectrum because
of their size and their fandom. But when you look
(30:52):
at someone like the NHL, they tend to be at
the forward side of the innovation spectrum. And that's really
interesting and to speak and from an investor standpoint. Sticking
with the NHL for a second, the NHL actually, and
these are our we come out with fandom based reports
using all of our proprietary data called the play Flag
Fan Score. We showed the NHL actually has the highest
level of CEOs and c level fans, which is really
(31:16):
interesting when you're thinking about advertising and marketing and especially
investors as to your question, but ultimately, all that comes
back down to, Okay, how do you create more cash flow?
Because that's what the pe investors are going to look for.
They're going to look for cash flow, they're going to
look for growth. If you're not providing that, you're not
going to provide the return because the evaluations are high
enough at the moment that you've got to actually show
(31:37):
financial success, not just excitement and scarcity.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
You just brought up a good point, which sport. I
guess one hand has got to watch the other. You
need the NHL. The NHL needs you now as you progress,
you know, because the NFL, you know, they're just noxiously
like can. But it does come back to the question
(32:05):
is like we're in an era now where one hand
washes the other.
Speaker 6 (32:09):
That's right, that's right. So ultimately, all boats are rising.
And if you think about it from a perspective, and
not only a perspective of the leagues and the teams,
but you're seeing multi team ownership across the leagues and
that's only going to continue to expand. So that combination
is not only just because those owners want to be
(32:30):
bigger owners. That's not the reason. It's because it provides
business opportunities, economies of scale, opportunities to use services like
the playfly Sports services across all of your teams, not
just one of your teams. It allows your head of
HR to be used across all of your teams. It's
business operations. That's the biggest change that we're seeing, not
only when you look at all the new money coming
(32:52):
into franchise ownership, but now the PE money coming into
franchise ownership. NFL being that last frontier, you're going to
see more and more business optimism and that's going to
be an interesting wave. I think that's going to continue
for the next ten plus fifteen years, and that's going
to be investible. Whoever's working on those elements for business
optimization is going to be a really interesting investable category.
In addition to the teams themselves.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Mike, I'd like to tap into your experience, you know
at Hulu. You know, you're a founder there, all the
stuff you did with you know, regional sports networks, a
model that is you know, arguably broken right now. What
does the future of a content consumption look like.
Speaker 6 (33:29):
That's a great one. I love this one because we
tend to talk to in most of the conversations about
some of the struggles with debt or some of the
struggles with bankruptcy that we're hearing in this space in
the regional sports network space. But the actual most interesting
thing I think is, if you think about it from
the future perspective, what's actually the consumer experiencing now? What
(33:49):
does it look like? And it breaks down into seven
different local media categories, because if you think about it,
local media is really the driving force of most impressions
in the ecosystem. Most people are watching their local tea.
That's the experience in the US. That's experience really in
sports globally is local fans. Local fandom drives it. So
when you think about what's happening now, when you break
(34:09):
down the RSN ecosystem, like you mentioned, there's still plenty
of very successful rsns and really amazing businesses like Nessen
in Boston and others. But now you have seven different models.
So let's move the existing RSN. That's leaves six. The
next is team owned networks. The teams are buying their
networks back. They want to have control they want to
(34:30):
be in the operating seat. Great example Monumental Sports in DC.
Third strategy is direct consumer. The newest example that has
just came out as the Dallas Stars just decided no TV,
just direct consumer only major relevant you know, revolution in
the in the in what we're looking at from local
(34:51):
media at number three, number four which is actually the
fastest growing and the biggest is broadcast stations. So taking
it out of the cable model and going back to
the rabbit ears right, going back to the or just
reach from a TV perspective and putting it back on
the station like it's nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
You know, I just I almost want to jump in here.
You know, we did a piece just the other day.
We were talking about Nike and Jim Donno, and we
were talking about some of the moves he made his
next being you know, obviously cost cutting. The type of
guy and one of the things that worked early on
was you know, going in house, you know, like the
Utah Jazz for example, you know, controlling everything that is
to do about how you reach your consumer. But when
(35:24):
you do that, if you run into some trouble later
on down the road, you don't have other avenues. You
have no other distribution mechanism to talk to us about that.
Is that happening in your neck of the woods? Is
that happening in the world of sports?
Speaker 6 (35:35):
Yeah, so definitely. So what you're seeing in all this fragmentation, right,
if you went through the rest of them, you'd see
differing models for the fan, for the businesses. What ends
up happening, and I call this the grand rebundling. What
you're gonna see is it breaks down. It breaks down
right into all these fragments, and then everybody looks at
each other and says, it wasn't the bigger package better
(35:55):
for everybody?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Right? Right?
Speaker 6 (35:57):
Wait, it was better for the consumer.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
They get over there, and then let's go back there
and you're like an.
Speaker 6 (36:01):
And you ask some key learnings from the Hulu experience
and the founding of that business. Right, the grand rebundling, Right,
you're seeing it. Now you're seeing TV. Hulu has a
TV service that looks like cable. Right, it's the grand rebunding.
Everything's coming back because that's the most efficient way to
drive the most value in sports media, period. So the
breakdown is always going to happen, and then the rebundle
is always going to happen. It's just how long in
(36:23):
between those two things.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
The secrets out of THEMBA by the way, that eventually,
I know, you guys are going to have to let
me put it this way, there's a lot of money
to be made in the WUNBA.
Speaker 6 (36:35):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. And fandom again, as I said,
the currency fandom is increasing. The largest growth categories of
fandom is in women's sports right now. Now they're still small,
but that the highest growth percentages. So you're one hundred
percent right that if you follow the currency of fandom.
As I mentioned, play Flag sports uses fandom as a service.
The currency of fandom, women's sports is a place to
(36:56):
invest at the moment.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Interesting. Interesting, So you know, I'll take it to the
next level. You know, the wild wild West where you
know there's tons of fans but they can't figure anything out.
Is the world of college sports. You do a lot
with the NCAA and il is real and what's going
on across the whole of commune. You've got you know
Nick Saban, you know he left his role as coach
of the of the Alabama Crimson Tide because he's like
(37:18):
everybody just wants money now, it's all about the money.
It's not about any fan, that's any loyalty to your
fan base. Talked to us a little bit about the
challenges that lie ahead for the NCAA and college sports.
Speaker 6 (37:27):
Yeah, it's the greatest turnover of atletic directors in the
history of college sports. It's gotten so much more complicated
than obviously an impetus for our business to be a
service provider at play fly Sports. But you're right, it's
it's a money game now. And the interesting thing is,
we talked about the dominance of the NFL earlier. The
largest attended sports category in the US is college football.
(37:48):
It is not there, and it's local, it is right,
it is not the NFL. So the NFL dominates TV
still college second by the way, ahead of MLB.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Right, NBA.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
But it's the largest attended event category in the country.
So when you think about that, it is not fully
harvested for its value. It has not created a national
model that is yet as big as the NFL has,
and a lot of jockeying between conferences, a lot of
elements are still too evolve. We're probably i would say,
(38:17):
forty percent done the evolution of college sports and Wow,
look at the last five years.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Our thanks to Michael Schreiber for joining us. He is
the founder and CEO A Playfly, and thank you most
of all for joining us on the Bloomberg Business of Sports.
We hear each and every week at the same time
for my colleagues Damien Sasaur and Branessa Brnomo. I'm Michael Barr.
Tune in next week for the latest on the stories
moving big old money in the world of sports. You're
(38:44):
listening to The Bloomberg Business of Sports Bloomberg Radio around
the world.
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