Masai Ujiri's Giants of Africa, US Soccer President JT Batson

0:28This is the business of sports. to be the best in your sport to make a whole ton of money. Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio. This is the Bloomberg Business of Sports where we explore the big money issues in the world of sports. I'm Michael Barr along with my colleagues Damian Sassauer and Vanessa Bernomo. Coming up on the show we'll hear from Masai Ujiri. He is vice chairman and president of the NBA's Toronto Raptors. He's also co-founder of Giants of Africa. We'll talk to him about that initiative and how he's using the game of basketball to empower young people in Africa. We started a basketball camp 22 years ago, and it was started just from the basic teaching of kids, basic fundamentals of the game.

1:1150 kids in Nigeria. I modeled it out of a basketball without borders. All that and more is on the way on the Bloomberg business of sports. But first, we wanted to check in on some of the legal headlines in the world of sports lately. Congress is still mulling over compensation for college players, and in the pros, we saw the MLB make the choice to make Pete Rose and several others eligible for the Hall of Fame. Here to go over that and more is friend of the show, Martin Needle. He's co-chair of Goulston & Stewart Sports Law Practice and adjunct professor of law at Columbia University. Marty, welcome to the Bloomberg Business of Sports.

1:52Oh my goodness, he's even more handsome in person than he is on the phone. Marty, welcome to the Bloomberg Business of Sports, my friend. Michael, so nice for you to have me here. Damian, it's good to associate a face with a voice. You might have regrets after you've seen his face that I got. Yeah, be careful, be careful. Well, we've got a lot to talk about. There is a prospective House settlement. The House and the NCAA settlement, it hangs in the balance. They've extended a deadline. It was supposed to be June 6th, and it is now June 27th. Now, that's important, Marty, as you mentioned, for two reasons.

2:34One, it gives more time for an appeal, but more importantly, it pushes the timeline for a potential resolution even closer to July 1st. So you're absolutely right, Michael. The House settlement is far from clear at this point. There are a number of wild cards going on, in particular the roster size of college teams. The judge has expressed concern about what will happen if the NCAA and the various conferences fix the rosters at a particular size. What will that mean for some members of the class? Will they be thrown off the team? Will they have the ability to be guaranteed a roster spot? And there are lots of ideas coming up to deal with that.

3:23What's really important to note about the House settlement is what it does not cover. It does not cover Title VII concerns or Title IX concerns. It does not cover prospective antitrust claims. Let me give you an example. Prospectively, the House settlement provides that conferences will pay up to 20 % of revenues to student-athletes. Why 20 %? Why not 22 percent, 25 percent? This is an antitrust lawsuit waiting to happen. It restrains competition for those dollars. And the third area that it does not cover is something that we have talked about repeatedly before, which is our student athletes' employees.

4:13They're going to be paid a percentage of revenues. They're going to get their scholarships. They're going to get their NIL dollars. sort of looks like, smells like, feels like an employee, and what will happen then? Settlements, touchstones, they remain unchanged, right? Starting the 1st of July, I believe NCAA schools can share as much as$20.5 million in revenue with their athletes. And former athletes who played between 2016 and 24 will be paid, what,$2.8 billion with a B in back payments if the settlement is actually approved. But it's this roster limit that I'm struggling with. I mean, talk to us a little bit about how they put the toothpaste back in the bottle, as it were, you know?

4:50So I think you hit the nail on the head here, Damien. You can't go backwards, plain and simple. What do you do with rosters? Well, now there's no longer a cap on the number of scholarships, for example, to be awarded. So if schools can continue to award scholarships, will they have the money for more than, let's say, 105? Maybe not. So maybe that's how they're trying to link rosters with scholarships. But ultimately, this should be a resolvable problem. And both the players and the NCAA have proposed various solutions for the roster situation. Keep all members of the class, for example, guarantee them a roster spot is one.

5:32Second is create a wild card number of roster entries on a going forward basis. One of the things like on the roster limit thing that I'm that I'm really struggling with as well as a former athlete myself and someone who plays a sport that really feels like it was going to be affected by this as a women's soccer player. You know, our scholarships were divvied up in between, you know, each other. And we didn't really not a lot of people have full rides. So in a sport like football, where they can afford one hundred and five scholarships, feels like maybe they don't get affected. But what about the non-revenue generating sports like women's soccer, baseball, track and field?

6:12So if I can expand your question a little bit and then take it apart. So we have the non-roster sports, the non-revenue sports. And then we also have the dichotomy between men's and women's sports, which we also can touch on if you'd like. So, for example, in the difference between revenue and non-revenue sports, schools can continue to have rosters. They can continue to award scholarships now without limit. They still have to find some money, according to this, to pay athletes for the use of the athletes' time and energy in even these non-roster sports. How this is going to come about is far from clear.

6:57There's some talk that Judge Wilkins will appoint a magistrate judge to oversee enforcement. Maybe she appoints instead a tribunal to look at this. There are lots of ways of looking at it. But they haven't dug into the details on the non-revenue because the revenue sports take such a high precedence for most colleges and universities. I want to open up a whole brand new jar here. It goes something to what you wrote about, by the way, in Sportico about gambling. But it goes to the MLB decided, hey, you know what? Pete Rose, 15 others, including Shoeless Joe Jackson. You know what? Okay, we'll make him eligible for the Hall of Fame posthumously.

7:42And I know there are purists out there that are saying, well, this should never happen because Pete Rose gambled on this and that, whatever. Others are saying just the opposite. Can you break it down for us? I can try at least. So we have a really interesting situation. If you go back to 1919 and the Black Sox, and now that you can see me, you know I was around then. I was the Bat Boy for you back then. Now I remember how I know you. So with the Black Sox came the start of having a commissioner for sports. Kennesaw Mountain Landis was the first commissioner in any sport, and he became the first commissioner in baseball.

8:27He promptly threw out eight players from the Chicago White Sox team for baseball for life, including Shoeless Joe Jackson. Baseball then had this epiphany. Gee, if somebody bets, we're going to throw them out for life. The reasons are pretty clear. We don't want players to game what's there. We want fans to think that this is not, for instance, like WWE. We want to have a clean contest to attract fans. And with the nascent media attention coming on, they wanted media dollars. Why would media pay huge dollars if they knew the outcome before it started? So baseball was in the forefront and said, you're out.

9:11This coincided, of course, with the feeling in the country where most states had laws which prohibited gambling. Not so in the other leagues, though. So you look at football. I'll jump forward to about 1961. Paul Horning, a star running back for the Green Bay Packers. Alex Karras, a star defensive tackle for the Detroit Lions. Court gambling, tossed out initially for life and then later changed to a single year. Hockey, same thing, one year. Right. Back then, the amount of revenue that's generated from legalized sports gambling wasn't 100.9 billion dollars per year. So this is a big money issue.

9:55And, you know, my curiosity, Marty, and I wonder if you could opine on this is some of the people out there, the ones who are physically enhancing drugs and PD, all that kind of stuff. This opens the door for, you know, some of that to get challenged as well. But, you know, I believe sports betting is a different animal than PEDs. What's the precedent that's being set here, in your opinion? Again, two tracks going. So one is sports gambling. Sports gambling is now legal in 38 states plus the District of Columbia. Stokes fan engagement. It's good for the game. How many people engage in fan duels or draft kings?

10:32I used to tell my class, you know, by show of hands, how many of you are participating in that? They raised their hand. And I said, well, I guess I have to report you to the authorities because it's illegal after they got over the shock of that. But now you're right. We're spending as a nation well over$100 billion annually in sports gambling. People can bet on if someone gets a touchdown, they can bet on specific players. Right. So how come they can't get a piece of that pie? Obviously not betting on themselves, but shouldn't they get something from other people trying to bet on them? Well, again, if you come to the conclusion that these are not outcome determinative and won't affect, therefore, the way fans and the media look at sports, maybe you can permit something like that.

11:21I think it makes sense as a rule, at least right now, to say you cannot bet on a sport in which you can bet on sports in which you do not participate, but not on sports in which you participate. Is this really any different, though, than your old-time gamblers who told players, we'll break your kneecaps unless you throw the game? That's not what we want as fans viewing it or as the media broadcasting sports. You want a free and open game. And the more you get away from that, the more problems you have there. It's a constantly evolving problem. By the way, you all missed the biggest prop bet was on Alex Karras that he was going to star in Webster years down the road.

12:11I came through on that.

12:16Marty Eadl. I love that show. Our thanks to Marty Eadl for joining us. He's co-chair of Goulston and Storrs Sports Law Practice and adjunct professor of law at Columbia University. Up next, our very own Vanessa Perdomo speaks with the CEO and Secretary General of the U.S. Soccer Federation, J.T. Batson. For my colleagues, Damian Sassauer and Vanessa Perdomo, I'm Michael Barr. You are listening to the Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio around the world.

12:50This is Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio. This is the Bloomberg Business of Sports, where we explore the big money issues in the world of sports. I'm Michael Barr. Our very own Vanessa Perdomo is our resident soccer expert. She's launching a new series focused on some of the big names in the sport in the run-up to the U.S. hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2026. In her latest conversation, she spoke with J.T. Batson. He's CEO and Secretary General of the U.S. Soccer Federation. Let's listen in on that conversation as they look ahead to the World Cup and to next weekend's CONCACAF Gold Cup.

13:31So we are one year out from the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. I am so excited. You know, how quickly has this come for you? Is it right around the corner for you, do you feel? Or is it still a long ways away? The way the soccer calendar works, there's always something right on your doorstep. And of course, the Men's World Cup being here in 2026 is a huge moment. We're all incredibly excited about it. You know, we joke a lot that the soccer calendar never sleeps. And so, you know, the team's up for it. Our organization's up for it. Our fans are up for it. And we're certainly excited. It definitely is constantly populating the soccer calendar for sure.

14:13So, JT, you came to the Federation just a few months ahead of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. And that must have been quite a busy first few months. But now you're in it, you know, you're in tune with the job and everything. So how is this year going to be for you, different for you in going into 2026 than it was in 2022? Well, going into the 2022 World Cup, you know, I joined in September. Obviously, the World Cup was a few months after that. Those plans are long baked before two months out. And so, you know, as you think about the prep for next summer, you know, Matt Crocker, our sporting director, working with Mauricio Pochettino and staff planning out everything going into next summer.

14:57So that work is very actively going on and everything from where's the team based during the World Cup to what are the games you're playing to prepare to all of the sort of logistics and everything we're doing off the field as well to take full advantage of this unique moment. So, you know, I was in Qatar, I was able to benefit from all of that work, whereas in this instance, obviously, we're all knee deep in it. And with the World Cup being here presents all sorts of new opportunities for us to really seize the moment and help transform what soccer looks like in this country. Right, exactly. I mean, there are so much this.

15:39This is going to be the biggest moment for soccer really in the U.S. ever, right? Because the last time we hosted a World Cup, 1994, we hosted a World Cup. The MLS was on the cusp of being created because of that World Cup, right? So how is this going to be different because of everything that's on the line, MLS, NWSL, everything that can benefit from this time? You know, in 94, we had aspirations of being a soccer country. You know, you mentioned Major League Soccer was sort of born out of the 94 World Cup. The 1994 World Cup is still the most attended World Cup in history, even though it was only 24 teams.

16:16So, you know, imagine 48 teams in next summer is going to shatter that record. But I think as you think about where we are now, we are a soccer country. There are over 100 million fans of the men's and women's national team. There are more soccer games available to watch on television in the U.S. than any other country in the world. You've got tens of millions of people playing. You've got an incredible amount of commercial investment, success of Major League Soccer, NWSL, USL, and sort of all forms of soccer in this country. So, you know, conceivably, maybe 2026 is when the rest of the world learns that we're a soccer country.

16:54And so, you know, for us, you know, the journey from 94 to 2026 has been one of incredible growth and real maturity of the soccer market. And, you know, it's around how do we take that to the next level? In your opinion, how do we show the rest of the world that we are a soccer country since we are one of the hosts of the 2026 World Cup? Well, first and foremost, we have to have a team that everyone believes in. And we have to have a team that after every game, you're proud of their fight. You're proud of their performance and you're excited about the next opportunity for them to go win. You know, the one of the things that was very true in Qatar was colleagues from around the world kept coming up to me and some of my colleagues at U.S.

17:44soccer saying, wow, this U.S. team, look at, you know, look at, you know, look at you guys. And they weren't expecting that. I think what, of course, we've got to perform on the field, but I think where our big opportunity is, is for the millions of people that come to America to experience the tens of millions of fans here in America and their passion, their love, their knowledge for the game, and helping them really appreciate how deep and broad the sort of love of soccer is in this country. And, of course, benefiting from the amazing facilities and infrastructure and restaurants and hotels and everything we have in the U.S.

18:22that makes it such an amazing place to witness a global sporting spectacle. Are there any metrics in terms of, you know, growing the game percentage wise by fans or viewership or in terms of youth participation that you're looking at that it stands now to where you want it to grow over the next year? So overall, U.S. soccer believes that we exist in service to soccer. Our job is to support those who are bringing soccer to life in communities all across the country. And those folks have three shared ambitions. They want soccer everywhere. So they want everyone in the country to be able to experience the joy of soccer.

19:00They want our teams to win. So they, of course, want our national teams. They want our pro clubs to win on the world stage. And they want to maximize investment in the sport at all levels. So that's commercial investment, philanthropic investment, government support, private capital coming in. And so as we think about the opportunity of Club World Cup in 25, Men's World Cup in 26, Olympics in 28, and us being the sole bidders for the Women's World Cup in 2031, there's a really unique opportunity for us to move the needle across all three of those shared ambitions. And as we think about what that means, we launched the Soccer Forward Foundation to drive more access to soccer, to make it to where everyone in this country can walk, ride their bike or take public transit to a safe place to play soccer, to make it to where soccer is in every school in this country.

19:53we've launched the US way, which is our comprehensive strategy to ensure our teams win, to focus on all levels of the game, to set our teams up for success in these big moments. And of course, from an investment standpoint, think about the investment that's going on at all levels of our game, whether it's infrastructure, building facilities, our new Arthur M. Blank US Soccer National Training Center in Atlanta, almost a 200 acre project, first ever national Training Center and headquarters for U.S. soccer. It'll be the best in the world when it opens next year to the investments in the professional leagues, the investments in all of the infrastructure, the digital infrastructure that U.S.

20:35soccer is doing around supporting the rest of the soccer ecosystem. So this is a very, very, very important time for us to take advantage of the growth of our sport, the momentum, and the focus. And if anything, we are thinking about using 26, 28, 31, sort of forcing functions to get people to take big, bold steps forward around transforming what this sport can look like. And is that looking to get investors and the stakeholders in leagues and things like that? Those are those the people you're looking at to take big, big swings and big, you know, things like you just said, like, I mean, you guys obviously had a lot of investment this year.

21:12the Ken Griffin donation made a lot of headlines this year and helping with Marciu Pochettino getting hired as the U.S. men's national team coach. And then obviously, like you mentioned, Arthur Blank in that training facility, Michelle Kang, big donations. Talk to us a little bit about those specific people and investors that you're looking at to help grow and the role that philanthropy plays for U.S. soccer? So when you think about U.S. soccer, one, you know, analogy for folks who are listening in terms of our sort of businesses, we've got almost like a pro sports part of our business. Those are our national teams.

21:50We have 27 national teams, most known for our men's and women's national teams, but those sort of resemble a pro sports organization. We have a trade association type of business. Think of coaching education, referee certification and licensing, sort of promoting a health and safe and positive ecosystem type of work. And we have the Impact Arm Soccer Forward Foundation, which is around accessibility and ensuring our game can be everywhere for everyone. And so as you think about investment, those come in different forms depending on which of those businesses, your business lines you're talking about.

22:25And as you think about U.S. soccer, the organization, we've had incredible success over the last two years launching our commercial rights business. We have been able to partner with some of the great brands in the world from Nike to Bank of America to Coca-Cola to Visa to, you know, and, and, and to where we have grown revenue at a really impressive clip over the last couple of years from people who believe in our vision, believe in our mission, and believe in the opportunity to use soccer as a force for good in their relationship with U.S. soccer to bring that to life. We also have had incredible success from a philanthropic standpoint.

23:12You mentioned the support from Arthur M. Blank, from Michelle Kang, from Ken Griffin and others who believe that U.S. soccer can go do big things. Unlike our peers, U.S. soccer around the world, U.S. soccer receives no government support directly. And so philanthropic support is a unique American thing. And it's something that we want to embrace as we are trying to go be best in the world. And so why not use what America's great at? And so we've been very fortunate to have people who believe in our overall mission and believe in our ability to go do big things and being great stewards of their money.

23:53And so we're excited about what that looks like. Then more broadly, we care about what's the health of the soccer ecosystem in this country? Are investors stepping up to invest in professional teams? Absolutely. You're seeing that every day on the MLS, NWSL and USL side. Are governments investing in making soccer more accessible in their communities? Every week, new communities across the country are opening up new soccer facilities, whether they're big soccer complexes or sort of small fields or spaces to play in denser areas. soccer and schools are expanding rapidly, you know, thanks to school districts investing in soccer as an incredibly accessible sport, very high ROI to achieve health outcomes and positive community outcomes.

24:42So as we think about sort of investment, you know, we take a very broad lens on that. And it's something that, you know, across the board, we're seeing, you know, growth, and more growth. That's U.S. Soccer Federation CEO and Secretary General J.T. Batson speaking with our own Vanessa Perdomo. Soccer fans, make sure you subscribe now to the Bloomberg Business of Sports on your favorite podcast platform. Vanessa will be having conversations with some of the biggest names in soccer as we anticipate the U.S. hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Never miss a conversation with an athlete who would take the field or an executive or stakeholder helping to make it happen behind the scenes.

25:22Up next, we turn to the world of basketball and how Toronto Raptors vice chairman and president Masai Ujiri put it all together. I'm Michael Barr, and you are listening to the Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio around the world.

25:41This is Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks for joining us on the Bloomberg Business of Sports, where we explore the big money issues in the world of sports. I'm Michael Barr. Joined now by Bloomberg Originals chief correspondent, Jason Kelly. Masai Ujiri is vice chairman and president of the NBA's Toronto Raptors, but basketball runs even deeper for him than that. He's co-founder of Giants of Africa, an initiative that uses the sport to empower young people in Africa. Here now to talk with us about Giants of Africa, the state of the sport, the NBA, and more, is Mr. Ujiri.

26:22Masai, welcome to the Bloomberg Business of Sports. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Jason. Thank you guys for having me. Well, Michael, I'm so excited that Masai is here. I mean, this is a guy I've gotten to know over the last couple of years. And, you know, his impact on the sport of basketball globally is massive. As you know, you and I have talked about this. And, you know, Masai, we're so happy to have you here. We're on the eve of the finals as we talk. How do you sum up this season in terms of the business of the NBA? I think it might have started slow, but I think Adam Silver has done an incredible job in creating parity in this league.

26:57We see what the finals is, and we saw our competitive playoffs. Very fun to watch, and now we have two small market teams playing in the finals. I think it's interesting. You've got a busy schedule coming up because you've got to get ready for the NBA draft. Now, you don't have to tell anybody, man. In fact, you can just tell us keeping in here. Are you guys looking at LJ Cryer, man? Because he looks good. You don't have to say anything. Just give me that wink. That's all I know. I'll get you to scout him. This goes to sort of the broader question, too, of sort of the talent in the NBA right now.