ESPN Digital's Chris Jason Sees Growth in ESPN Fantasy Football Space

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2:09Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio. This is the Bloomberg Business of Sports. We explore the big money issues in the world of sports. I'm Vanessa Perdomo-Maglione. And I'm Randall Williams. Michael Barr is out this week, but coming up today, we know it's everyone's favorite time of year. It's time to draft your fantasy football team. We will be speaking with Chris Jason, who oversees ESPN Fantasy at the Walt Disney Company, about how they continue to see growth in the space. And of course, we had to ask him how he drafted his fantasy team. Then later, we are speaking with Amna Alcubezi, who is a female race car driver continuing to break boundaries in motorsport.

2:46But first, let's run through some of the headlines taking over the world of sports this week, starting with the ongoing investigation into billionaire Mark Walter. Randall, what's the latest there? So Mark Walter, of course, sold the Los Angeles Lakers to Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner. And it remains to be seen what else he's going to sell. We've reported that he is selling his stake in Chelsea. There's just been all sorts of reports that he has been trying to find money to cover some of this these loans that, of course, are under investigation by the Department of Justice. And at this point, I do think that there are sharks circling the Mark Walter empire, just trying to see what else is for sale.

3:25Of course, he has the Cadillac F1 team and the Dodgers. And I wonder what the Dodgers would sell for. And if there is anybody out there who is like,$12.5 billion, I'll pay you$14 billion for the Dodgers. I don't know if that's going to happen, but it could. So you think the Dodgers could potentially sell for more than the Lakers? Do you think they're actually more valuable or that's just because of the latest transaction? I'm not sure. I think that the Dodgers, of course, are coming off two championships. They have an incredible roster. Their brand presence, I would argue, has never been higher.

4:02And so you factor all of that in. They have the biggest stadium in the MLB. All of that, and it does lead me to believe that they would go for at least$10 billion. And you have to remember that, of course, the Lakers were valued at$10 billion last year until Josh Kushner and Bob Iger added another$2.5 billion to that. I don't know if they would go for more or less, but I think it would be a staggering number. It's definitely going to be over$10 billion, right? But the thing that would interest me and interest me in the Dodgers potential sale of it or someone looking at it is, would you buy it knowing there's a potential lockout looming?

4:38I think so. And I think that's an interesting question. You think about the Yankees and Apollo deal that just happened. And one of the things it said in a press release is that some of that money is going to go to debt. And if there's no season, a good portion of these teams are going to be absorbing some impact from not being able to fill seats. And I wonder from a Dodgers perspective, my question is, do you keep the payroll? Like Mark Walter has been willing to pay an absorbent amount of money to players. And I wonder whoever, if there was going to be another owner, would that owner keep the same strategy?

5:15or they start making cuts because Mark Walter is, he is a privileged owner that I think is willing to shell out crazy boatloads of cash to players in order so that they can win a championship. But if you don't keep the payroll, then you don't win the championships. Exactly. That they specifically have won. I'm not, you know, in the money ball conversation of it all, but like you can win without it, but they have won because of the money they spent. It's true, but at the same time, if you look at the MLB season currently, the Dodgers are sort of, they're not performing as best as they possibly could.

5:46And they're entering into this fall season. And as we inch closer to the playoffs, and there's a lot of questions around whether they can turn it on, if they're bored, when the playoffs come around, are the Dodgers going to be the Dodgers of the previous two years? And if they don't win the World Series, then it sort of seems like all the pocketbook conversations come to a close because of the fact that they wouldn't have to repeat it. They will have been defeated. And if you can defeat the pocketbooks and I wonder from an MLB owner's perspective how do you even argue that you should have a salary cap if a team that has spent less just defeated the Dodgers who I believe have a top three spending overall this year I think the Dodgers are sitting back they're gonna turn it on because so the playoffs is the game for them if you can't tell Vanessa is a Yankees fan yeah very heated about the 2024 World Series yeah I I can't get into them right now Okay, but staying on the Lakers a little bit because not just the sale has happened and not just what happened, you know, we're paying attention to what Mark Walter also might still have to sell.

6:48The sale of the Lakers is also in contention because Jeannie Buss doesn't want to give up the rest of the controlling ownership of the Lakers. Yeah. So I'll break this down, which is when Jeannie Buss and the Buss family sold the stake, the majority stake to Mark Walter last year, Buss or Jeannie Buss struck an agreement so that she could remain the team governor through 2030. What happened earlier this week was that her siblings voted to sell the remaining stake. It's around an 18 % stake that the family owns left, 17.8 to be exact. And in order to be a team governor or a controlling owner of the Lakers, you have to have at minimum 15%.

7:31But with her siblings deciding to sell, she can no longer remain the team governor if the sale is approved. Now, Jeannie has since come out and said she has a lawyer that is saying that this is in contention. They are going to challenge this because, of course, she would like to stay on with the team until 2030 and sort of sail off into the sunset. I think Josh Kushner and Bob Iger are going to just let this play out because of the fact that whether or not they have that 18 percent or whether they have Mark Walter 65 percent, they will still be in control. So Bob Iger told the California Post, he also told Bloomberg News, that there were no decisions made on whether they would remove Jeannie Buss and that they would actually keep her.

8:13But if they sell the stake, Josh Kushner would take over that role as the governor of the team. So I think this is going to play out in court. This sibling fighting is not the first of its kind. We've seen this happen with the Padres. We've seen this happen with the Broncos. And this is just the latest stage. Do you imagine this goes into next season or longer than that? That's a good question. I think that this is going to play out over the next six to nine months. I think that Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger's sale of or purchase of the Lakers will play out and close within the next six months. I would be surprised if it didn't close before the end of the year.

8:54Now, whether or not that includes the bus families, 18 percent, that remains to be seen based on how things play out in court. One of the other things that happened this week that we saw was Roger Goodell came out and he did an interview and he had said that at some point there will definitely be an NFL team outside the U.S. We've done a lot of reporting. You've done a lot of reporting on this, on potential expansions. Where would they most likely put a team? I don't even want to get into that, to be honest with you. I think that and I believe he said multiple teams. I believe he said that there would be multiple teams in Europe someday.

9:30And this is something that happens every single year for anybody who is around the NFL, who covers the NFL, who watches or reads the NFL. Anytime Roger Goodell goes overseas or he starts talking about international, something that comes up is an international Super Bowl or the opportunity for an NFL team to be placed in Europe. And I think it's sort of funny at this point because we are a far ways away from that. I have wondered if London could host the Super Bowl. That feels like the right spot to do it, but we're years away. And I don't know if the fan presence is there. And if the fan presence isn't there for a Super Bowl, then how can you have teams there?

10:05It's a good talking point to get fans rallied around the NFL and the overseas games and the international slate that the NFL rolls out every single year. But I just sort of laugh because it's not even something that's in discussion right now, in large part, because of the fact that every single, it feels like every single NFL team is either renovating their stadium or upgrading one and building a new one so that they can hope to host a Super Bowl as well. And if they don't get a Super Bowl, how can London get a Super Bowl? Right, I was just going to ask, do you think owners would be mad if London got one before they did after doing renovations to their stadium?

10:38I think so. You think about, let's just say, Jacksonville is building a new stadium. And they are. I don't know if Jacksonville has the hotels and sort of the capabilities down there to host one. But if they were to build them and then the NFL takes the Super Bowl to London as opposed to Jacksonville, I'd be surprised if Shad Khan didn't have an issue. And he's not the only one. Kansas City is building a new stadium. And the NFL just likes to roll out these new stadiums in some sort of format so that it showcases to the world. There will never be a Super Bowl in Buffalo for obvious reasons. Okay, well, but that's interesting because there's never been a Super Bowl in Buffalo, but it's not warm in London in February.

11:22That's true. But if you're trying to expand the game of football internationally, there's an argument to be made that, oh, let's play in the elements. And I don't think that Buffalo has the hotel rooms and would be an enjoyable experience for all parties. So I see what you're saying. It's because you don't want to go to Buffalo. Do you want to go to Buffalo for a Super Bowl week? Would you like to spend seven to nine days in Buffalo as opposed to London? Absolutely not. I would never go to London. OK, then I'd stay in Toronto. Point being, I think that the NFL has bigger fish to fry in what those fish are to expand the international slate of games.

11:58I believe it's nine to 16. There's a lot of different things that have to happen in order for that, including ripping up the CBA, including negotiating a new media rights deal. And then there can be a conversation about an international Super Bowl or international teams. And I even wonder if the NFL someday has an international clubs in Europe. Will Roger Goodell be the commissioner when that time comes around? We don't know. We don't know. And also they'd have to put two teams over. It's just a logistical nightmare to have one team. I think they would have to do eight. The reason I think they would have to do eight is because.

12:37At one time. No, no. I don't know. I don't know how the structure would be. But the reason I think they would have to do eight is because of the fact that 32 is a very, very divisible number. You can have 16 teams in two conferences. You can have eight divisions and you can have four teams in those eight divisions. If you do 40, it's very divisible. You can have 20 teams in two conferences and so on and so forth. My math is going to get bad. Yeah, let's. Yeah. But on the conversation before we get off of NFL, you know, international, we have to talk about the biggest thing that's happening is that the Jones brothers are playing.

13:10the NFL Australia Halftime Show. Anyways, coming up, we get ready for the start of the NFL season and talk about fantasy football. That's straight ahead on the Bloomberg Business of Sports for Randall Williams. I'm Vanessa Perdomo-Maglione. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio around the world.

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14:10So while entrepreneurs may be on a firmer footing, there may be a hiccup on the hiring front. The NFIB survey also found that 36 percent of small business owners couldn't fill open jobs in July. That was the most in more than a year, suggesting that labor quality and availability could get in the way. And that's the Bloomberg Small Business Report. The world first experienced football through sound. A crackle, a voice from afar, carrying the hopes of millions. Football traveled by frequency, and imagination did the rest. But technology never stood still. It evolved, frame by frame. With Hisense, the game steps into a new light.

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17:13He is the executive director of product management at the Walt Disney Company. Chris, thanks so much for joining the Bloomberg Business of Sports. We're so excited to have you on. We're so excited to talk fantasy football. It's that time of year. Everyone gets really excited about it. ESPN Fantasy Football is now official fantasy game of the NFL. Tell us about that. Tell us about how it enhances your platform and a new strategy. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, ESPN's been great partners with the NFL for a really long time, obviously on the broadcast side, Monday Night Football, etc. So this is really exciting for us at ESPN, but also as a product manager on the ESPN fantasy football side of things.

17:57So this year, the NFL fantasy platform will be moving over to ESPN fantasy. Our team's done a lot of great work to try and make it easy for NFL fantasy players to move their leagues over to ESPN. And we've been monitoring that closely. And many, many, many thousands of folks have already done that. And so the goal is for the people who loved NFL fantasy before, keep all the feature set, keep all the settings and all the things they loved alive on the ESPN fantasy side of things. And then for the players who were already on our platform, we started deepening that relationship with the NFL last year.

18:39So we started to add things like game highlights and top plays into the product. We're going to be expanding that this year with new entry points throughout the ESPN Fantasy app for people that are playing. One of the other exciting things that we've been doing as well is bringing the fantasy gameplay outside the ESPN Fantasy app. So we've been building integrations into the ESPN mobile app, as well as the ESPN app on living room devices so that people that are playing ESPN fantasy can follow their fantasy matchups on whatever device they're on and whatever ESPN app they're in. And so that's something that, you know, people who have been playing NFL fantasy in previous years and then our loyal ESPN fantasy players are going to be able to take advantage of starting this season.

19:28Chris, I was doing a bit of Googling while you were talking, and I just learned something new, which is that fantasy football has been around since 1962. That's incredible. And so I wonder from your perspective, as it pertains to innovation, how are you thinking about that? It feels like the systems are already set. We know a touchdown is six points. We know that a catch or reception is one point and sometimes 0.5, depending on the system that you're playing. What sort of innovations are you looking at that is going to enhance fantasy football on ESPN? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think and I think most of the folks that have been involved in the digital fantasy space, you know, when this started, you had to, you know, send in your draft picks through like a magazine mail-in form and stuff like that.

20:17people have been playing that long, believe it or not. I think it's a couple of things. I think one, we're realizing that you can't really control the way that people play. And so one of the things that's really important is just making sure that your platform allows people to customize the league settings and scoring types in the way that they want. And then a lot of these sort of customizations end up catching on more broadly and become game formats that people are really excited about. So I'll give an example. This year, we're launching knockout leagues. Knockout leagues are a really fun way to play that people have been doing for many, many years, but just keeps building momentum where the team that scores the lowest amount of points that week in the league is effectively eliminated from the league and all of the players on their roster.

21:09I know it's All the players on their roster go for a waiver. Is that what you're about to say next? You got it. You got it. That's right. Yeah. This is like this is this is fun. And I think that's a good segue into kind of my second point, which is the stereotype of fantasy players are really stat heavy, you know, spreadsheets, all these sorts of things. So one of the things that one of the areas that we've been focused on for many years now is trying to make it truly feel like a game, you know, like borrowing concepts from free to play mobile social games. How do you create these moments of delight?

21:45How do you create these moments where the users want to share with their friends what's going on? For many years, I feel like that was an element of fantasy that was lacking. And so we've been we've been spending a lot of time there. One of the features that I love that we launched, I think it was two seasons ago, is touchdown celebrations. So we've got these fantastic, very authentic player animations that you can see in our fantasy product for when players score touchdowns. You know, we've got many iterations for every player. So you might see Travis Kelsey throw up the Taylor Swift heart, or you might see him do one of his dances that he does.

22:27and you can share those with your friends. You control your friends with these. And that's just one example of sort of trying to bring the fun into the game. Another thing that we're introducing this year is achievements. So we've got these really high quality, premium looking, almost 3D digital collectibles that you can earn throughout the season as you play the game. You could actually manipulate them with your hands on your phone and kind of turn them around and see the back, the front, the side. You can share them with the people in your league and you can kind of flex on how well you're doing.

23:02So winning streaks, being the high scorer in your league, having the best fantasy player on your team for that week are all sort of different achievements that you can win. And I think that's a big thing that gets us excited is how do we really make it feel like a game and kind of bring those moments of delight into the product. Quick follow up to that is I wonder how AI is changing things for your setup. Is it making things easier? Is it being implemented in the system in any way? Yeah, I think there's two elements to this. I think there's the consumer facing AI. You know, we've had tools for many years now that have been AI enhanced tools.

23:42So, you know, we've had this partnership with IBM in past years around doing, you know, boom and bust projections for players. That was an AI enhanced feature. And then I think also behind the scenes, like every company right now, including you guys, everybody is learning ways that they can become more productive, more efficient in how they do their work and how we ship products. And so, you know, we're no different here. We're trying to figure out how can we get more features out to fans at a faster pace to just keep making the product better and doing it more rapidly than we ever have before.

24:19So we're definitely looking at it from both lenses. We have some ideas for AI features beyond the ones that I've mentioned that we may introduce this year, possibly. I don't think we're ready to say that yet. But there's lots of cool applications to this, whether it's, you know, customizing your team logos. You know, we launched a product earlier this or I should say last year in the ESPN app called Sports Center for You, which was an extremely groundbreaking product, you know, basically giving fans a fully personalized Sports Center episode. and that would be a really cool feature to have in fantasy as well to sort of follow your team and track your player performances so these are all things that we're we're working on we're speaking with chris jason executive director of product management at the walt disney company chris one of the things i'm interested in in the entire fantasy space is you know the growth aspect to it how does it get bigger because it feels like everyone who wants to play fantasy is playing fantasy, right?

25:23People, like you said, have been playing since Randall said the 1962, they had to send in their magazine picks and all of this stuff. So people who want to play it are doing it. How do you get more people using the ESPN app? Yeah, that's a great question. I think the thing that's great about fantasy, in some ways, fantasy football is almost a perfect product. I mean, if you go back to the early days of the internet, you could say that fantasy was one of the first, if not the first social network. This was a way that people were staying connected to friends and relatives across geography, over the internet, long before Facebook and TikTok and all these other apps that we use today even existed.

26:05And so this idea of playing a game with your friends, with your family, bringing them all together, forming a tradition, something that you can look forward to every year is just it transcends generations. It transcends technology. And I think that's why fantasy football has continued to be successful. And I think every year as more and more people play, I think it's benefiting from this FOMO element, this cultural FOMO element of, well, everybody seems like they're playing fantasy football. Maybe I should play as well. And so I think for us on the product side, we're trying to figure out always how do we enable these fans to get involved in the easiest way possible.

26:52So making it easier for our league commissioners, the people who are already running leagues to invite their friends, making it easier and not intimidating for people who have never played to give it a shot and get involved. And so I think it's really just the game is a fun game to play. And it kind of transcends the technologies and all the things that are happening at any given time. And what does change is the technology and our capabilities and how we can simplify that process for fans to get involved and enjoy the game. And so I think we're really excited about the growth of fantasy football.