May 18, 2019 • 32 mins
Colin talks with Fox Sports CEO and Executive Producer Eric Shanks about the XFL coming to FOX, the decision to start FS1 and what it was like to be a part of the NFL coming to FOX in 1994 in this exclusive podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, everybody, Welcome to our Saturday morning podcast. Award winning
all right, not really, but it sounds big and got
your right through the door. This time we have a
real guest. Eric Shank's my boss, Fox Sports CEO and
executive producer Beyond the multiple Emmy's Sports Business Journal forty
under forty Hall of Fame, he directs all aspects of
Fox Sports TV, investments, partnerships, programming, and production, and in
(00:25):
my career of doing this, has probably the best instincts
of anybody I've ever met, which is remarkable because I
don't know if you started in programming, but you have
very good for a boss. You have very good TV instincts.
And most bosses either come from sales and their instincts stink,
(00:46):
but they're smart. So where did you get your instincts
for the business? You know what works quick and I
lean on you. And where does that come from? Well, first, Colin,
thanks for having me. Great to finally be on your podcast.
Thank you, Long line exactly exactly I grew up. I
grew up literally right here at Fox Sports, just by
(01:07):
having great, great producers that I work for, great talent um,
you know, great storytellers in live television, and I just,
you know, I've just always been curious about it, even
since I was in high school working in radio stations
and writing every day in a newspaper. The idea of
you know, I love television, right, and I love I
(01:30):
love live television and the fact that you know, you
learn how to plan for every eventuality and then it
never goes as planned and you learn to just shake
it off and you know, throw an interception and go
back and know that you got to drive down the
field again. And so learning from guys like Bob Stinner,
(01:52):
Richie's Science, David Hill, John Madden, Matt Millen, Dick Stockton,
all those guys are just kind of each bit of them,
you know, has a little something to do with me.
Let's talk. I want to talk because you are investments
in partnerships and I you know, I like business. So
I'll come up once a month and just I always say,
(02:15):
do you give me something? What's happening in the world.
XFL debuts next year in February. I'm a believer in
spring football for a lot of reasons. The convergence of
legalized sports gambling, the appetite for sports on TV, with
the emergence of the Netflix Sports now is the thing
that works. And frankly half the NFL is undrafted. There
(02:35):
is a surplus of talent, So I want to start
with that that. I think one of the breaks that
spring football, why it may not have worked twenty years ago,
is this teams don't carry a third quarterback. So again
the convergence of more college offense into the NFL, more
(02:57):
of the college kids are working in the NFL, and
now nobody keeps a third quarterback in the NFL. So
to me, can you guys find in the XFL ten quarterbacks?
I mean that to me, ensures it works. If the
quarterback play is good, it works. Talk a little bit
about the personnel available to you. Yeah, I think a
couple of things there besides the things that you mentioned.
(03:21):
If you talk to guys like Coach Madden or Jimmy Johnson,
they'll tell you that twenty years ago, when you had
to get your roster down to fifty three, it actually
was pretty easy. Like guy number fifty four, john would
call him just a guy like you knew that guy
number fifty four was not as good as guy number
(03:41):
fifty three. Yeah, I think today they'll tell you, it's
harder than ever. The quality of athleticism, the quality of
talent coming out of college makes it hard. That there's
not much difference between probably number sixty and number fifty today.
So the quality of players and how they're being coached
(04:02):
in college just means that the overall quality is up
and that you know, seven hundred of them go undrafted
every year coming out of Division one football. And so
I think there's an enormous talent pool available to Oliver
Luck and the coaching staffs at the XFL. But you're right,
(04:23):
it has to be about quarterbacks. Got to hit on
a few of those. You got to hit on a
few quarterbacks, right. And I think they'll come from both
ends of the spectrum. I think they'll come from guys
who don't get drafted. I think it'll come from guys
who are really questioning whether they want to play the
last two years of college, right, and they could still
(04:45):
play a couple of years of the XFL and have
the potential to go really high in the draft. Now,
let's create clarity for our listeners here. The XFL does
not have to wait three years. Yes, how does our
partnership with the NFL. How do they view that, you know,
I think it's it's it's tough for me to speculate
(05:06):
on that, so I don't think I understand their point
of view or if if they have formulated, you know,
a point of view on that. And then I think
players will come from the other end of the spectrum,
like Mark Sanchez, Right, you don't think Mark can still
play and probably play well in the XFLU, So I
(05:27):
think they'll come from both sides the quarterback selections. It's interesting.
There always has been a little bit of a reluctance
to go play in Canada. It's seen as second tier football.
But my feeling in Mark Sanchez is I think a
really good example the USFL, Jim Kelly, Steve Young. Yeah
it was I mean Warren Moon and Vince Ferragamo, or
(05:49):
about the CFL guys that that slipped through, right, But
I go back to the USFL. I watched it. There
were a lot of good players in that league. Yeah,
I think the original incarnation of the xflum it really
uh says a lot about what this XFL is going
(06:10):
to be or not be, right, and it's going to
be more about real football right at a high level
and probably strives to be more like what the USFL
was at the beginning, which is it was a great
talent pool that was coming out. You go back, somebody
(06:31):
wrote a book about it. It's remarkable how many pro
bowlers came out of that. Yeah. Um, now I want
to talk about something that I've never understood. My first
job out of college was Vegas. I had friends who
were odd maker oddsmakers, like Wall Street guys. They were analysts.
They weren't guys that were in trench coats at night.
They were like numbers guys. Did you ever think you
(06:52):
could be one of them? Well, first of all, everyone
I knew that did it was really smart, right, So
I looked at Wall Street guys and I looked at
Vegas oddsmakers, and I was like, I don't see the difference.
So there was this stigma that you had to be
in the marketing or you were a dope. But if
you had listened to a bookie or an oddsmaker, you
are a creep. And I never bought it. And so
(07:14):
the legalization of gambling to me is Europe's way ahead
of us on this. Is you know, you can go
into an EPL stadium and bet it I don't get it. Finally,
I think, like a lot of things legalize marijuana, it
just takes a while for the country to get comfortable
with it. You've spent a lot of time in Europe,
so I think you were probably more comfortable with it.
So Fox comes out. We have a new online betting
(07:36):
app called the Fox Bet. Right before the football season,
it'll be introduced. This is a bank where I can
put my money and trust it. Let's talk about this group.
First of all, we have partnered with Let's start with that,
and then I'll move to a second question, the Stars Group. Right,
So the Stars Group has been operating sports books and
(07:56):
eye gaming right all around the world for fifteen years.
So they're a leader in technology, and what we liked
about them was, you know, they're a leader in knowing
how to work with media brands in the sports wagering space,
are right. So they they run skybet in the UK
(08:20):
and sky Bet is a tremendously successful sports wagering platform
in the UK that takes the power of Sky and
what it can do with integrating waging. What sky is
Oh so sky Sky actually in the UK and all
around Europe now is a combination of uh, say a
(08:42):
Direct TV and Fox. Yes, so they are the distributor
and the content owner of the channels. So imagine you know,
uh if well, it's a lot like Comcast actually, right,
So Comcast is a distributor and owns NBC at the
same time. Right. So there's a platform in the UK
(09:04):
called Skybet and tremendously successful, and the integration around the
Premier League especially but other sports is very tightly integrated
with the wagering platform, so their talent on Saturdays and
Sundays will be very open talking about the favorites and
(09:28):
who are the odds to win, and that you can
go place a bet on sky Bet. And for us
here we take a little bit of a different tact,
right because it's not legal in every stage, that's all.
We will still be tightly integrated from a marketing standpoint.
But the thing that we're gonna fans will see mostly
(09:50):
at home this fall is us talking about a free
to play game, so people will be able to download
an app. We don't have a name for it yet
what this product is, but no matter what state you're in,
mostly you'll be able to just pick the outcome of
six different things that we will be pushing that week
(10:15):
whatever games we pick, and if you pick the outcome
of that, you're going to win a prize correctly. It's
like picking a perfect bracket right for the week. Yeah.
And if you live in a state where sports wagering
is legal, when you are in the free to play game,
you'll actually probably get a link to take you to
be able to place a wager. Yeah. So it's a
(10:37):
proposition of free to play for everybody wagering where it's legal,
and you know, like poker. I think most states it's
rolling pretty fast now. I think over the course of
the next two or three years, it's probably gonna be
legal in forty seven forty eight states. Some conservative states.
I don't know where. Utah may push back on it,
but I think most There are some Southern states that
(10:57):
are conservative, but they like their gambling. That's already there. Yeah,
so Tennessee's already all in on this, Eric Shanks. The
second question I have on this is not the obvious one,
because I think the NFL may not be as talkative
about it as the NBA right now, but everybody knows
you'll be able to bet NFL games. The college situation's
(11:18):
interesting because college is amateurism, and I remember being at
other companies where they didn't even like you to talk
about betting if you talked about college football college basketball.
Is there a pushback? Is there a sense will college
embrace it like I know all the pro leagues will.
I think there's a there's definitely a higher sensitivity in
the college space where whether you talk to commissioners or ads,
(11:43):
and there should be, right, I mean, it's a different thing.
It's these are not professional athletes and it's not a
professional game, right, So there's definitely a higher sensitivity to it.
I don't think anybody sits around and puts their head
in the sand and says, oh, well, nobody bets on
college football. Yeah, so let's not let's not talk about it. Yeah.
Um so we do. We will treat college uh differently,
(12:07):
especially when it comes to editorial and how much editorial
you you integrate into it. Um. But you know, at
the end of the day, college is is probably going
to be the number you know, the number three, number
four most wagered on thing in the country. And you know,
no matter what sport you are and what your view
(12:29):
is at the moment towards wagering, there is no question
that you absolutely know that because of wagering, you're going
to have higher engagement from your fans. So, whether you
endorse wagering or not, more people are going to watch
your game longer than they have before waging. Yeah, that's
absolutely And so you know, even in the first few
(12:52):
years of Fox Beat, you know, if if there's enough
wagering or free to play games going on, and we
can raise the naw National ratings of an NFL regular
season by a tenth or even two tenths of a
rating point, that's probably going to be you know, as valuable,
if not more of a valuable than the wagering itself
because it is rolling out so slow. Eric Shanks is
(13:16):
joining us Fox Sports CEO, executive producer. He kind of
controls our investments, partnerships, everything. It's been a frenetic last
year for you, as TV is changing the business models
of TV. There was just something in New York called
Upfronts for the uninitiated, that is basically, we go to
New York, we bring our heads of States and the
Joe Bucks and Eric and all that, and we sell
(13:38):
our future. Obviously we are a different company today, but
from what I heard yesterday from my age, and he said,
Fox really presented a smart, swift, heavy sports model, and
that's what we are. It's the new Fox. I kind
of believe that's what you have to be going forward.
I don't think there's any dispute on that either. Ww's interesting.
(14:00):
So for years I used to just make fun of
it's wrestling. I watched it as a kid. And then
about five years ago at the other place, I said
on the air, I said, listen, we got we got
thirty sports networks. These guys are all dying. They're all
dying for content. And I said at the time, I
think it's time to put WWE on a big sports network.
(14:20):
And I remember saying that and beople like, whoa, whoa, Colin.
I'm like, the world's changed. So take your worldview of
WWE ten years ago. And then the moment you decided, hey,
I want to do business with these people. Yeah, We've
at Fox been close to doing business with the WWE,
(14:42):
you know, a couple of times in the past when
and I you know, I think I probably ended up
having kind of the same view as some of the
people you were talking about with. You know, if you're
if you're in a sport, a true sports meeting a company.
(15:02):
We were probably a little precious a decade ago about
our product and the sanctity of real sports because your
view from the outside, you seem like the Fun Network,
but you were inside the walls, yeah, because you just
don't know what, um, how people are going to react
to it, right, and what's it going to do to
your brand? But what they've done the last ten years
(15:25):
with the WWE has totally you know, blown any doubts
out of the water. What vents, what Stephanie, what Paul
Triple h you know how they've managed that brand and
really brought the storytelling and the rise of you know,
(15:46):
women into the league and really kind of just broadened
it and made it so much more accessible and really
embraced who they are. That it was a no brainer
for us, especially on the broadcast network, right. The broadcast
network for WWE was a fantastic opportunity because a broadcast
(16:08):
network is exactly that, it's broad right, and it reaches
a lot of people. So we're you know, look, the
stars aligned and we were able to do it, and
we're going to, uh, we're gonna make the absolute most
of us. I think We're probably going to have more
fun integrating the WWE into all of our sports and
(16:30):
entertainment assets than any other network could. Eric Shanks joining
me Fox Sports CEO and executive producer. He's never joined
us on the Saturday podcast because he has high standards
and sometimes we don't. Well, it's tough for me to
get up earlier on a Saturday like this. Yeah, no kidding.
I'm exhausted barely getting through this, so it kind of
a macro question. I think it's a great time. I
(16:53):
tell my friends this. Our company got rid of the
movie stars. Now sports matters more. I tell my wife this.
I'm like, I'm the soap opera guy now. Like I
used to be at Fox. There was movie stars, and
there was midday stars, and then there were sports stars,
and then I was a I think it's a great
time to be in sports. I say this all the time.
Is I've never seen a more passionate group of people.
(17:14):
There's networks fighting over it. This has been in the
last two years. Take me back to the beginning of
your career. Cable TV changed the whole game, and then
net Netflix feels like they're changing the game. Take me
back to the beginning. And now, has this been the
(17:34):
craziest two to three years or is it? Or am
I missing something that every five years AT told was
like this. No, it's been the craziest that I can remember,
because there's not just one thing happening right if there was,
if you go back, you know, twenty five years ago,
(17:57):
there was no cable competition. Direct he was just starting.
Direct V disrupted the world by getting Sunday ticket and
now all of a sudden, oh yeah, I'll put a
dish on my house right if I can get Sunday ticket.
And there was disruption happening there, but it was just
one thing disrupting the traditional model. And you know, over time, Yeah,
(18:23):
the landline business got disrupted by cell phones. And I
remember there was a business case study about how everybody
at AT and T thought their world was over right
and what am I going to do if I can't
bill you two dollars a minute for long distance and
you're not going to have a landline in your house anymore?
And they thought their business was going to come to
an end. And then somebody said, well, you know what,
(18:46):
why don't we why don't we charge per megabit for
this thing called the Internet over wireless, and well, I
think maybe rather than have one phone in the house,
we might actually have four or five phone bills in
the house. Att's big or bigger than it ever was
right now. Um, you fast forward to where we are today,
there's multiple multiple things happening right now. It's it's not
(19:10):
just uh, this division of netflixes of the world and
Amazon and Hulu disrupting the scripted entertainment space, but they're
also disrupting the distributors who were distributing that as well.
So they're they're competing with the movie studios and the
(19:33):
TV studios. They're also competing and disrupting the Comcast and
the Charters and the Dish and the direct TVs of
the world. There's so many things happening all at once
that that's kind of what makes it the craziest time
that at least, you know, I can remember and have
had to kind of deal with a lot of you know,
(19:55):
a lot of what you know we deal with is
the here and the now, which is great. What game
are we going to produce this weekend? What story are
we going to talk about? But what the heck does
this business look like in five years? And like how
do you set your plan for it in five years
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You know one of the things I feel strongly about
is sports networks need identities? And I don't count HBO
(21:22):
as a sports network, but HBO Boxing was a real thing.
If you said HBO Sports, I was like, oh boxing,
it would have been very easy for you to not
create FS one, right. I mean Fox stood out of
that for a while. CBS, I still think was way
too late to the party. NBC has not gone with
on air personalities. But you made a decision at this
(21:42):
company whenever it was you know what, we're gonna go
with individuals who have shows six A to six p.
And we're gonna go up against the Titan, right, the
industry leader. Take me back to when you and the
Murdoch said, Okay, let's go for it, let's go after
(22:03):
you know, it's probably the same meeting Southwest Herb had
at Southwest Airlines fifty years ago, United Delta and somebody
said we're gonna go We're gonna try and take on
the Titans. Now look at Southwest dinner moment epiphany when
you decided we're gonna go after those guys with this
cable sports network with opinion shows. Well, I do think
(22:25):
it's an amazing point in the Fox Sports history. It
clearly wasn't just me. You know, we have we have
bosses here, especially you know Rupert Lachlan at the time,
Chase Carry was here, David Hill was still here, always
(22:45):
being able to kind of look ahead and make sure
that you are you're seeing what you need to be
and not reacting, being proactive rather than reactive. And what
they saw at the time was the fact that this
bundle was going to go through a tremendous amount of pressure.
(23:11):
People had everybody had ridden the gravy train of just
launching a new linear cable network and charging a dime
or a quarter for it and making a ton of
money that it seemed like it was it was endless,
the amount of money that was going to come in
through the PayTV system and that people were just going
to continue to subscribe to your traditional PayTV. They looked
(23:34):
out and said, my gosh, we've got I think eleven
brands that we need to have carried on a PayTV
system that's not sustainable. And that was seven or eight
years ago, right we had everything from Fox Movie Channel
to Speed and Fuel and Fox Soccer Channel, and so
(23:59):
they said, what we need to do, We need to
have fewer brands in the Fox portfolio. But those brands
really have to be meaningful and valuable in people's lives
that they do want to have a bundle of channels
that has us in it. It's so we had to
be bigger and powerful. Smaller brands, but bigger and powerful.
(24:22):
And that's when we decided to call down some of
the some of the single purpose brands like a motorsports
or a soccer or whatever, and you know, call it
down into a more powerful national sports networks of FS
one and FS two. And that decision was, I mean,
could you imagine if we were sitting here today and
(24:44):
we had a singular motorsports channel and we had a
singular soccer channel and a singular it would be on
We wouldn't be we wouldn't be sitting here today, would
be our hair would be on fire. Figuring out what
we're going to do. And then once we launched FS one,
as you know, we didn't start off with the idea
(25:05):
of having six A to six P personality based sports
opinion and talk. We started out with a lot of news.
We thought we could we could make a go of it,
and it was at the exact same time that sports
news was being disrupted by phones and YouTube and Twitter,
and you've face pivoted very quickly. And that's one thing
(25:27):
I do take pride in is at this place, if
something's not working, we'll pivot quickly. And we pivoted. We
pivoted from our first brand campaign really quickly. We pivoted
from news really quickly. And I tell you, I just
couldn't be happier with where we are today because when
you look at where we are today, it's what this
place was based on. You know, this place was based
on Fox, NFL Sunday, Terry Howie, Jimmy and we should
(25:51):
have seen it from the very beginning that that's what
we should have done, is base FS one around really
strong personalities that have big FO followings like you and
Skip Um and so we uh, I feel really good
about where we are today. Yeah, Eric Shanks is joining me.
The the NFL is just to me so much fun.
(26:17):
When you look you joined this company. I believe the
first year that we Fox got the NFL, didn't you? Yeah?
Ninety four? Yeah, just take me back, what was it like?
What was the NFL? Now? Again, A lot of the
people listen to my podcast are twenty eight years old
nineteen ninety four NFL, So that's twenty five years ago.
(26:38):
How is it different? Yeah? There, yeah, there were huddles. Uh.
You know, look I was in nineteen ninety four, what
was I was twenty three years old, right, and so
I almost I don't really remember a lot of the
(26:59):
eighties in the NFL, right, I think we came out
of the greatest heroes of the NFL at the time.
We're still from the seventies. I mean it was Terry right,
it was Roger Staubach. It was that golden era of
the seventies, and so you know, for me, it was like,
you know, the the NFL in the eighties for me
(27:21):
as a fan is a little bit of a blur,
Like I just don't think it was a great era
for them. Yeah, And all of a sudden, you get
a couple of new owners. You get Robert Kraft coming
in as an owner, You get Jerry Jones coming in
as an owner, very close to one another, and you
get Fox coming into the NFL all at the same time, basically,
(27:43):
and you get David Hill who is coming from London
and Australia never produced an NFL game before, and he
introduced so many new things, music, graphics, personalities. The on
screen presentation of the NFL just took massive leaps and
bounds in nineteen ninety four. And if you if you
(28:04):
are not old enough to remember it, it was night
and day. Uh and it was something that you The
play on the field just got better and better and better.
There were more there was more money going into the
league because it felt bigger on TV and it felt
the Cowboys and Jimmy Johnson ye were a rock tour. Yeah, well,
(28:28):
I mean I'm like like the Jordan's Bulls. Yeah, Like
I loved football in the seventies and eighties. But when
I think of the explosion of the NFL, I think
of Jimmy Johnson and the Dallas Cowboy. The owner was
a personality, the coach was a personality, the quarterback looked
like a model. It was. They were controversial. Like I
agree with you the nineties, like the NBA was largely
(28:49):
dead before Magic and Bird. It was. It was really
in trouble. Magic and Bird not saved it, but certainly
elevated it. I feel like the Cowboys Fox gave it
use Yeah, and don't forget there was it was the
first time like it was people thought that Rupert was
(29:10):
crazy for paying what he paid four hundred million dollars.
So think about this. You know, we alone today we
pay what a billion two for our Sunday package. Back then,
Rupert paid four hundred million. It was the first time
that these owners were probably like I can actually start
to really spend money, you know, and play. It filtered
(29:32):
down to the players and it created those stars. Let's
not forget it's money makes stars, right and so um,
you know it just it ushered in a whole new
era right of the the NFL, you know before I
remember when we it was David Hill that wanted to
put the score and the clock up in the corner
of the screen. That had never been done before, never
(29:54):
been done before, And when we did it, people at
other networks said that they would never or do it,
that it would get in the way of the game,
or or they even wanted to hide the score of
the game if it was a blowout. They wanted you
to have to watch maybe until it went to commercial
to figure out what the score of the game was,
so that you didn't turn away and imagine where we are,
(30:15):
you know then to where we are today. Fantasy stuff
up there now used to fantasy stuff up there. Eric
Shanks thirty great minutes, CEO executive producer. We Got XFL
debuting in twenty twenty, The Fox bat app debuting probably
close to football August, Yeah, close to football, and WWE
(30:35):
begins October fourth, right here in Los Angeles at the
Staples Center. By the way, I went to my first
event with you and Larry Jones. I had no idea
if fifty two weeks so the thing ends. For those listening,
they usher them out to a limo to an airport,
and the next night they're somewhere else, or the next
week they have It's a remarkable production. Not only does
(30:58):
Charlotte Flair love you, oh Lord absolutely loves you. Oh
if you go backstage and you see the tremendous amount
of effort that this traveling you know, village puts on.
They're making a they're making a feature film. Every Monday
(31:18):
and Tuesday night. They have wardrobe they're making you know,
they have people that are actually sowing the costumes from
scratch back there. The lighting, the pyro, the signage, the
rehearsals that they have to do, the athleticism, the camera blocking.
They're making a live feature film every Monday and Tuesday night.
(31:43):
I was blown away by it. Behind the scenes, I
was absolutely blown away by it. I mean they're just
Limos Airport. Here it goes, trucks rolling out eighteen wheelers
onto Atlanta, going to the next one. I mean it's
just an half hour after match. Boom, here we go. Eric, Great,
seeing you all right, Eric Shanks said More podcast
Hi, everybody, Welcome to our Saturday morning podcast. Award winning
all right, not really, but it sounds big and got
your right through the door. This time we have a
real guest. Eric Shank's my boss, Fox Sports CEO and
executive producer Beyond the multiple Emmy's Sports Business Journal forty
under forty Hall of Fame, he directs all aspects of
Fox Sports TV, investments, partnerships, programming, and production, and in
(00:25):
my career of doing this, has probably the best instincts
of anybody I've ever met, which is remarkable because I
don't know if you started in programming, but you have
very good for a boss. You have very good TV instincts.
And most bosses either come from sales and their instincts stink,
(00:46):
but they're smart. So where did you get your instincts
for the business? You know what works quick and I
lean on you. And where does that come from? Well, first, Colin,
thanks for having me. Great to finally be on your podcast.
Thank you, Long line exactly exactly I grew up. I
grew up literally right here at Fox Sports, just by
(01:07):
having great, great producers that I work for, great talent um,
you know, great storytellers in live television, and I just,
you know, I've just always been curious about it, even
since I was in high school working in radio stations
and writing every day in a newspaper. The idea of
you know, I love television, right, and I love I
(01:30):
love live television and the fact that you know, you
learn how to plan for every eventuality and then it
never goes as planned and you learn to just shake
it off and you know, throw an interception and go
back and know that you got to drive down the
field again. And so learning from guys like Bob Stinner,
(01:52):
Richie's Science, David Hill, John Madden, Matt Millen, Dick Stockton,
all those guys are just kind of each bit of them,
you know, has a little something to do with me.
Let's talk. I want to talk because you are investments
in partnerships and I you know, I like business. So
I'll come up once a month and just I always say,
(02:15):
do you give me something? What's happening in the world.
XFL debuts next year in February. I'm a believer in
spring football for a lot of reasons. The convergence of
legalized sports gambling, the appetite for sports on TV, with
the emergence of the Netflix Sports now is the thing
that works. And frankly half the NFL is undrafted. There
(02:35):
is a surplus of talent, So I want to start
with that that. I think one of the breaks that
spring football, why it may not have worked twenty years ago,
is this teams don't carry a third quarterback. So again
the convergence of more college offense into the NFL, more
(02:57):
of the college kids are working in the NFL, and
now nobody keeps a third quarterback in the NFL. So
to me, can you guys find in the XFL ten quarterbacks?
I mean that to me, ensures it works. If the
quarterback play is good, it works. Talk a little bit
about the personnel available to you. Yeah, I think a
couple of things there besides the things that you mentioned.
(03:21):
If you talk to guys like Coach Madden or Jimmy Johnson,
they'll tell you that twenty years ago, when you had
to get your roster down to fifty three, it actually
was pretty easy. Like guy number fifty four, john would
call him just a guy like you knew that guy
number fifty four was not as good as guy number
(03:41):
fifty three. Yeah, I think today they'll tell you, it's
harder than ever. The quality of athleticism, the quality of
talent coming out of college makes it hard. That there's
not much difference between probably number sixty and number fifty today.
So the quality of players and how they're being coached
(04:02):
in college just means that the overall quality is up
and that you know, seven hundred of them go undrafted
every year coming out of Division one football. And so
I think there's an enormous talent pool available to Oliver
Luck and the coaching staffs at the XFL. But you're right,
(04:23):
it has to be about quarterbacks. Got to hit on
a few of those. You got to hit on a
few quarterbacks, right. And I think they'll come from both
ends of the spectrum. I think they'll come from guys
who don't get drafted. I think it'll come from guys
who are really questioning whether they want to play the
last two years of college, right, and they could still
(04:45):
play a couple of years of the XFL and have
the potential to go really high in the draft. Now,
let's create clarity for our listeners here. The XFL does
not have to wait three years. Yes, how does our
partnership with the NFL. How do they view that, you know,
I think it's it's it's tough for me to speculate
(05:06):
on that, so I don't think I understand their point
of view or if if they have formulated, you know,
a point of view on that. And then I think
players will come from the other end of the spectrum,
like Mark Sanchez, Right, you don't think Mark can still
play and probably play well in the XFLU, So I
(05:27):
think they'll come from both sides the quarterback selections. It's interesting.
There always has been a little bit of a reluctance
to go play in Canada. It's seen as second tier football.
But my feeling in Mark Sanchez is I think a
really good example the USFL, Jim Kelly, Steve Young. Yeah
it was I mean Warren Moon and Vince Ferragamo, or
(05:49):
about the CFL guys that that slipped through, right, But
I go back to the USFL. I watched it. There
were a lot of good players in that league. Yeah,
I think the original incarnation of the xflum it really
uh says a lot about what this XFL is going
(06:10):
to be or not be, right, and it's going to
be more about real football right at a high level
and probably strives to be more like what the USFL
was at the beginning, which is it was a great
talent pool that was coming out. You go back, somebody
(06:31):
wrote a book about it. It's remarkable how many pro
bowlers came out of that. Yeah. Um, now I want
to talk about something that I've never understood. My first
job out of college was Vegas. I had friends who
were odd maker oddsmakers, like Wall Street guys. They were analysts.
They weren't guys that were in trench coats at night.
They were like numbers guys. Did you ever think you
(06:52):
could be one of them? Well, first of all, everyone
I knew that did it was really smart, right, So
I looked at Wall Street guys and I looked at
Vegas oddsmakers, and I was like, I don't see the difference.
So there was this stigma that you had to be
in the marketing or you were a dope. But if
you had listened to a bookie or an oddsmaker, you
are a creep. And I never bought it. And so
(07:14):
the legalization of gambling to me is Europe's way ahead
of us on this. Is you know, you can go
into an EPL stadium and bet it I don't get it. Finally,
I think, like a lot of things legalize marijuana, it
just takes a while for the country to get comfortable
with it. You've spent a lot of time in Europe,
so I think you were probably more comfortable with it.
So Fox comes out. We have a new online betting
(07:36):
app called the Fox Bet. Right before the football season,
it'll be introduced. This is a bank where I can
put my money and trust it. Let's talk about this group.
First of all, we have partnered with Let's start with that,
and then I'll move to a second question, the Stars Group. Right,
So the Stars Group has been operating sports books and
(07:56):
eye gaming right all around the world for fifteen years.
So they're a leader in technology, and what we liked
about them was, you know, they're a leader in knowing
how to work with media brands in the sports wagering space,
are right. So they they run skybet in the UK
(08:20):
and sky Bet is a tremendously successful sports wagering platform
in the UK that takes the power of Sky and
what it can do with integrating waging. What sky is
Oh so sky Sky actually in the UK and all
around Europe now is a combination of uh, say a
(08:42):
Direct TV and Fox. Yes, so they are the distributor
and the content owner of the channels. So imagine you know,
uh if well, it's a lot like Comcast actually, right,
So Comcast is a distributor and owns NBC at the
same time. Right. So there's a platform in the UK
(09:04):
called Skybet and tremendously successful, and the integration around the
Premier League especially but other sports is very tightly integrated
with the wagering platform, so their talent on Saturdays and
Sundays will be very open talking about the favorites and
(09:28):
who are the odds to win, and that you can
go place a bet on sky Bet. And for us
here we take a little bit of a different tact,
right because it's not legal in every stage, that's all.
We will still be tightly integrated from a marketing standpoint.
But the thing that we're gonna fans will see mostly
(09:50):
at home this fall is us talking about a free
to play game, so people will be able to download
an app. We don't have a name for it yet
what this product is, but no matter what state you're in,
mostly you'll be able to just pick the outcome of
six different things that we will be pushing that week
(10:15):
whatever games we pick, and if you pick the outcome
of that, you're going to win a prize correctly. It's
like picking a perfect bracket right for the week. Yeah.
And if you live in a state where sports wagering
is legal, when you are in the free to play game,
you'll actually probably get a link to take you to
be able to place a wager. Yeah. So it's a
(10:37):
proposition of free to play for everybody wagering where it's legal,
and you know, like poker. I think most states it's
rolling pretty fast now. I think over the course of
the next two or three years, it's probably gonna be
legal in forty seven forty eight states. Some conservative states.
I don't know where. Utah may push back on it,
but I think most There are some Southern states that
(10:57):
are conservative, but they like their gambling. That's already there. Yeah,
so Tennessee's already all in on this, Eric Shanks. The
second question I have on this is not the obvious one,
because I think the NFL may not be as talkative
about it as the NBA right now, but everybody knows
you'll be able to bet NFL games. The college situation's
(11:18):
interesting because college is amateurism, and I remember being at
other companies where they didn't even like you to talk
about betting if you talked about college football college basketball.
Is there a pushback? Is there a sense will college
embrace it like I know all the pro leagues will.
I think there's a there's definitely a higher sensitivity in
the college space where whether you talk to commissioners or ads,
(11:43):
and there should be, right, I mean, it's a different thing.
It's these are not professional athletes and it's not a
professional game, right, So there's definitely a higher sensitivity to it.
I don't think anybody sits around and puts their head
in the sand and says, oh, well, nobody bets on
college football. Yeah, so let's not let's not talk about it. Yeah.
Um so we do. We will treat college uh differently,
(12:07):
especially when it comes to editorial and how much editorial
you you integrate into it. Um. But you know, at
the end of the day, college is is probably going
to be the number you know, the number three, number
four most wagered on thing in the country. And you know,
no matter what sport you are and what your view
(12:29):
is at the moment towards wagering, there is no question
that you absolutely know that because of wagering, you're going
to have higher engagement from your fans. So, whether you
endorse wagering or not, more people are going to watch
your game longer than they have before waging. Yeah, that's
absolutely And so you know, even in the first few
(12:52):
years of Fox Beat, you know, if if there's enough
wagering or free to play games going on, and we
can raise the naw National ratings of an NFL regular
season by a tenth or even two tenths of a
rating point, that's probably going to be you know, as valuable,
if not more of a valuable than the wagering itself
because it is rolling out so slow. Eric Shanks is
(13:16):
joining us Fox Sports CEO, executive producer. He kind of
controls our investments, partnerships, everything. It's been a frenetic last
year for you, as TV is changing the business models
of TV. There was just something in New York called
Upfronts for the uninitiated, that is basically, we go to
New York, we bring our heads of States and the
Joe Bucks and Eric and all that, and we sell
(13:38):
our future. Obviously we are a different company today, but
from what I heard yesterday from my age, and he said,
Fox really presented a smart, swift, heavy sports model, and
that's what we are. It's the new Fox. I kind
of believe that's what you have to be going forward.
I don't think there's any dispute on that either. Ww's interesting.
(14:00):
So for years I used to just make fun of
it's wrestling. I watched it as a kid. And then
about five years ago at the other place, I said
on the air, I said, listen, we got we got
thirty sports networks. These guys are all dying. They're all
dying for content. And I said at the time, I
think it's time to put WWE on a big sports network.
(14:20):
And I remember saying that and beople like, whoa, whoa, Colin.
I'm like, the world's changed. So take your worldview of
WWE ten years ago. And then the moment you decided, hey,
I want to do business with these people. Yeah, We've
at Fox been close to doing business with the WWE,
(14:42):
you know, a couple of times in the past when
and I you know, I think I probably ended up
having kind of the same view as some of the
people you were talking about with. You know, if you're
if you're in a sport, a true sports meeting a company.
(15:02):
We were probably a little precious a decade ago about
our product and the sanctity of real sports because your
view from the outside, you seem like the Fun Network,
but you were inside the walls, yeah, because you just
don't know what, um, how people are going to react
to it, right, and what's it going to do to
your brand? But what they've done the last ten years
(15:25):
with the WWE has totally you know, blown any doubts
out of the water. What vents, what Stephanie, what Paul
Triple h you know how they've managed that brand and
really brought the storytelling and the rise of you know,
(15:46):
women into the league and really kind of just broadened
it and made it so much more accessible and really
embraced who they are. That it was a no brainer
for us, especially on the broadcast network, right. The broadcast
network for WWE was a fantastic opportunity because a broadcast
(16:08):
network is exactly that, it's broad right, and it reaches
a lot of people. So we're you know, look, the
stars aligned and we were able to do it, and
we're going to, uh, we're gonna make the absolute most
of us. I think We're probably going to have more
fun integrating the WWE into all of our sports and
(16:30):
entertainment assets than any other network could. Eric Shanks joining
me Fox Sports CEO and executive producer. He's never joined
us on the Saturday podcast because he has high standards
and sometimes we don't. Well, it's tough for me to
get up earlier on a Saturday like this. Yeah, no kidding.
I'm exhausted barely getting through this, so it kind of
a macro question. I think it's a great time. I
(16:53):
tell my friends this. Our company got rid of the
movie stars. Now sports matters more. I tell my wife this.
I'm like, I'm the soap opera guy now. Like I
used to be at Fox. There was movie stars, and
there was midday stars, and then there were sports stars,
and then I was a I think it's a great
time to be in sports. I say this all the time.
Is I've never seen a more passionate group of people.
(17:14):
There's networks fighting over it. This has been in the
last two years. Take me back to the beginning of
your career. Cable TV changed the whole game, and then
net Netflix feels like they're changing the game. Take me
back to the beginning. And now, has this been the
(17:34):
craziest two to three years or is it? Or am
I missing something that every five years AT told was
like this. No, it's been the craziest that I can remember,
because there's not just one thing happening right if there was,
if you go back, you know, twenty five years ago,
(17:57):
there was no cable competition. Direct he was just starting.
Direct V disrupted the world by getting Sunday ticket and
now all of a sudden, oh yeah, I'll put a
dish on my house right if I can get Sunday ticket.
And there was disruption happening there, but it was just
one thing disrupting the traditional model. And you know, over time, Yeah,
(18:23):
the landline business got disrupted by cell phones. And I
remember there was a business case study about how everybody
at AT and T thought their world was over right
and what am I going to do if I can't
bill you two dollars a minute for long distance and
you're not going to have a landline in your house anymore?
And they thought their business was going to come to
an end. And then somebody said, well, you know what,
(18:46):
why don't we why don't we charge per megabit for
this thing called the Internet over wireless, and well, I
think maybe rather than have one phone in the house,
we might actually have four or five phone bills in
the house. Att's big or bigger than it ever was
right now. Um, you fast forward to where we are today,
there's multiple multiple things happening right now. It's it's not
(19:10):
just uh, this division of netflixes of the world and
Amazon and Hulu disrupting the scripted entertainment space, but they're
also disrupting the distributors who were distributing that as well.
So they're they're competing with the movie studios and the
(19:33):
TV studios. They're also competing and disrupting the Comcast and
the Charters and the Dish and the direct TVs of
the world. There's so many things happening all at once
that that's kind of what makes it the craziest time
that at least, you know, I can remember and have
had to kind of deal with a lot of you know,
(19:55):
a lot of what you know we deal with is
the here and the now, which is great. What game
are we going to produce this weekend? What story are
we going to talk about? But what the heck does
this business look like in five years? And like how
do you set your plan for it in five years
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You know one of the things I feel strongly about
is sports networks need identities? And I don't count HBO
(21:22):
as a sports network, but HBO Boxing was a real thing.
If you said HBO Sports, I was like, oh boxing,
it would have been very easy for you to not
create FS one, right. I mean Fox stood out of
that for a while. CBS, I still think was way
too late to the party. NBC has not gone with
on air personalities. But you made a decision at this
(21:42):
company whenever it was you know what, we're gonna go
with individuals who have shows six A to six p.
And we're gonna go up against the Titan, right, the
industry leader. Take me back to when you and the
Murdoch said, Okay, let's go for it, let's go after
(22:03):
you know, it's probably the same meeting Southwest Herb had
at Southwest Airlines fifty years ago, United Delta and somebody
said we're gonna go We're gonna try and take on
the Titans. Now look at Southwest dinner moment epiphany when
you decided we're gonna go after those guys with this
cable sports network with opinion shows. Well, I do think
(22:25):
it's an amazing point in the Fox Sports history. It
clearly wasn't just me. You know, we have we have
bosses here, especially you know Rupert Lachlan at the time,
Chase Carry was here, David Hill was still here, always
(22:45):
being able to kind of look ahead and make sure
that you are you're seeing what you need to be
and not reacting, being proactive rather than reactive. And what
they saw at the time was the fact that this
bundle was going to go through a tremendous amount of pressure.
(23:11):
People had everybody had ridden the gravy train of just
launching a new linear cable network and charging a dime
or a quarter for it and making a ton of
money that it seemed like it was it was endless,
the amount of money that was going to come in
through the PayTV system and that people were just going
to continue to subscribe to your traditional PayTV. They looked
(23:34):
out and said, my gosh, we've got I think eleven
brands that we need to have carried on a PayTV
system that's not sustainable. And that was seven or eight
years ago, right we had everything from Fox Movie Channel
to Speed and Fuel and Fox Soccer Channel, and so
(23:59):
they said, what we need to do, We need to
have fewer brands in the Fox portfolio. But those brands
really have to be meaningful and valuable in people's lives
that they do want to have a bundle of channels
that has us in it. It's so we had to
be bigger and powerful. Smaller brands, but bigger and powerful.
(24:22):
And that's when we decided to call down some of
the some of the single purpose brands like a motorsports
or a soccer or whatever, and you know, call it
down into a more powerful national sports networks of FS
one and FS two. And that decision was, I mean,
could you imagine if we were sitting here today and
(24:44):
we had a singular motorsports channel and we had a
singular soccer channel and a singular it would be on
We wouldn't be we wouldn't be sitting here today, would
be our hair would be on fire. Figuring out what
we're going to do. And then once we launched FS one,
as you know, we didn't start off with the idea
(25:05):
of having six A to six P personality based sports
opinion and talk. We started out with a lot of news.
We thought we could we could make a go of it,
and it was at the exact same time that sports
news was being disrupted by phones and YouTube and Twitter,
and you've face pivoted very quickly. And that's one thing
(25:27):
I do take pride in is at this place, if
something's not working, we'll pivot quickly. And we pivoted. We
pivoted from our first brand campaign really quickly. We pivoted
from news really quickly. And I tell you, I just
couldn't be happier with where we are today because when
you look at where we are today, it's what this
place was based on. You know, this place was based
on Fox, NFL Sunday, Terry Howie, Jimmy and we should
(25:51):
have seen it from the very beginning that that's what
we should have done, is base FS one around really
strong personalities that have big FO followings like you and
Skip Um and so we uh, I feel really good
about where we are today. Yeah, Eric Shanks is joining me.
The the NFL is just to me so much fun.
(26:17):
When you look you joined this company. I believe the
first year that we Fox got the NFL, didn't you? Yeah?
Ninety four? Yeah, just take me back, what was it like?
What was the NFL? Now? Again, A lot of the
people listen to my podcast are twenty eight years old
nineteen ninety four NFL, So that's twenty five years ago.
(26:38):
How is it different? Yeah? There, yeah, there were huddles. Uh.
You know, look I was in nineteen ninety four, what
was I was twenty three years old, right, and so
I almost I don't really remember a lot of the
(26:59):
eighties in the NFL, right, I think we came out
of the greatest heroes of the NFL at the time.
We're still from the seventies. I mean it was Terry right,
it was Roger Staubach. It was that golden era of
the seventies, and so you know, for me, it was like,
you know, the the NFL in the eighties for me
(27:21):
as a fan is a little bit of a blur,
Like I just don't think it was a great era
for them. Yeah, And all of a sudden, you get
a couple of new owners. You get Robert Kraft coming
in as an owner, You get Jerry Jones coming in
as an owner, very close to one another, and you
get Fox coming into the NFL all at the same time, basically,
(27:43):
and you get David Hill who is coming from London
and Australia never produced an NFL game before, and he
introduced so many new things, music, graphics, personalities. The on
screen presentation of the NFL just took massive leaps and
bounds in nineteen ninety four. And if you if you
(28:04):
are not old enough to remember it, it was night
and day. Uh and it was something that you The
play on the field just got better and better and better.
There were more there was more money going into the
league because it felt bigger on TV and it felt
the Cowboys and Jimmy Johnson ye were a rock tour. Yeah, well,
(28:28):
I mean I'm like like the Jordan's Bulls. Yeah, Like
I loved football in the seventies and eighties. But when
I think of the explosion of the NFL, I think
of Jimmy Johnson and the Dallas Cowboy. The owner was
a personality, the coach was a personality, the quarterback looked
like a model. It was. They were controversial. Like I
agree with you the nineties, like the NBA was largely
(28:49):
dead before Magic and Bird. It was. It was really
in trouble. Magic and Bird not saved it, but certainly
elevated it. I feel like the Cowboys Fox gave it
use Yeah, and don't forget there was it was the
first time like it was people thought that Rupert was
(29:10):
crazy for paying what he paid four hundred million dollars.
So think about this. You know, we alone today we
pay what a billion two for our Sunday package. Back then,
Rupert paid four hundred million. It was the first time
that these owners were probably like I can actually start
to really spend money, you know, and play. It filtered
(29:32):
down to the players and it created those stars. Let's
not forget it's money makes stars, right and so um,
you know it just it ushered in a whole new
era right of the the NFL, you know before I
remember when we it was David Hill that wanted to
put the score and the clock up in the corner
of the screen. That had never been done before, never
(29:54):
been done before, And when we did it, people at
other networks said that they would never or do it,
that it would get in the way of the game,
or or they even wanted to hide the score of
the game if it was a blowout. They wanted you
to have to watch maybe until it went to commercial
to figure out what the score of the game was,
so that you didn't turn away and imagine where we are,
(30:15):
you know then to where we are today. Fantasy stuff
up there now used to fantasy stuff up there. Eric
Shanks thirty great minutes, CEO executive producer. We Got XFL
debuting in twenty twenty, The Fox bat app debuting probably
close to football August, Yeah, close to football, and WWE
(30:35):
begins October fourth, right here in Los Angeles at the
Staples Center. By the way, I went to my first
event with you and Larry Jones. I had no idea
if fifty two weeks so the thing ends. For those listening,
they usher them out to a limo to an airport,
and the next night they're somewhere else, or the next
week they have It's a remarkable production. Not only does
(30:58):
Charlotte Flair love you, oh Lord absolutely loves you. Oh
if you go backstage and you see the tremendous amount
of effort that this traveling you know, village puts on.
They're making a they're making a feature film. Every Monday
(31:18):
and Tuesday night. They have wardrobe they're making you know,
they have people that are actually sowing the costumes from
scratch back there. The lighting, the pyro, the signage, the
rehearsals that they have to do, the athleticism, the camera blocking.
They're making a live feature film every Monday and Tuesday night.
(31:43):
I was blown away by it. Behind the scenes, I
was absolutely blown away by it. I mean they're just
Limos Airport. Here it goes, trucks rolling out eighteen wheelers
onto Atlanta, going to the next one. I mean it's
just an half hour after match. Boom, here we go. Eric, Great,
seeing you all right, Eric Shanks said More podcast
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Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.