UEFA Pursues Infantino Criminal Case, Unrivaled, the Laver Cup

25:41So, you know, New York has always been a number one market for us. So going to Barclays in Brooklyn was an easy decision. Philly, we had no idea. You know, Philly was like a number 14 or 15 market for us when you factor in social media, merchandise, ticket sales, audience on television. And after that one night, it's now jumped to a top five market for us across the board. So I think that's a testament to when the fans can see it and feel it in person, it leads to that digital and linear support as the season goes on. So we want to go to WNBA cities, of course, because those are the same cities that support these players when they're not with us.

26:16But we also want to go to new cities. I think we have an opportunity and an obligation to grow the sport here domestically and hopefully at some point internationally. So it's a fine balance between the two. But I think the easiest way to sum it up is you also go where you wanted, you know, and the people that really want to roll out the red carpet. You know, the mayor of Mayor Parker in Philadelphia was behind the entire movement to get us to Philly. And now we have other leadership groups in different cities that are really pushing us and behind us and supporting us when we do show up. So that also makes our decision very easy.

26:49Women's sports is a big business. Alex Bazell, co-founder and CEO of Unrivaled. Alex, I want to ask you, you know, other than obviously, you know, adding more tour stops and seeing the success you had there, what else are you looking to do in these upcoming seasons that you think will elevate Unrivaled? Like, what did you learn from the first couple of years? Yeah, I think what we've learned is from day one, our mantra has been we have the best talent in the world, the biggest names. then inevitably it affects every single vertical of revenue. And it leads for you to have the ability to expand and be aggressive, which is leading to the investment that you see, right?

27:25Like it all comes back to results. But for me, it's always about the best possible product on the court, but it's also about marketable stars off the court. And that's the balance that we've struck really well. As we think about the future, we don't think about expansion maybe the way most leagues do. You know, if you look at even the WNBA, their expansion is different because they have a traditional model. So that means adding more teams, getting to new markets, which I think is right. That's the way you expand. For us, we like the scarcity model, number one, because we're additive to the overall calendar of these WNBA players playing in the WNBA and with us.

28:01But two, our ability to be unique and move in different ways because we own all of our teams. We have not sold our teams. Doesn't mean we won't in the future, but we think about college as an opportunity. You know, NIL has been big for us. We've signed 14 or 15 of the top women's college athletes the last two years, and we've kept slowly scaling that. What that looks like remains to be seen, but I think it's a huge opportunity for us as we think about ushering in the new talent. We've done it the last two years with, you know, Paige was signed with us before she was drafted with the Wings, and then Olivia Miles was signed with us before she was drafted by Minnie.

28:36And I think we want to continue that flywheel of new, great young talent coming in that also supports the pre-existing talent today. That was CEO and co-founder of Unrivaled, Alex Bazel. Up next, we will move to the world of tennis as one of the Grand Slams gets going in New York. That is straight ahead on the Bloomberg Business of Sports. I'm Michael Barr with Vanessa Pernumbo-Maglione and Randall Williams. You are listening to the Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio around the world.

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31:00I'm Michael Bar. I'm Vanessa Perdomo-Magbam. And I'm Miranda Williams. The U.S. Open is upon us. The signals, the last major of the year for tennis. However, it doesn't mean the season is actually over. Just after the U.S. Open wraps in New York, the world of tennis will turn its sights to London for the annual men's international tournament, the Laver Cup, which sees Team Europe play against Team World. A few weeks ago, we got the chance to sit down with Tony Gatsik. He is the co-founder of the Laver Cup and longtime agent of legendary tennis player Roger Federer. Now let's take a listen to our conversation with Tony Gatsik, co-founder, chairman of the Labor Cup and CEO of Team 8.

31:37Tony, the Labor Cup just announced that next year the tournament or the event will be held in Los Angeles, which is quite a perfect time for the city. You're going to be right in the sandwich between the 2027 Super Bowl, that will be in L.A., and the 2028 Olympics. Tell me about, you know, choosing L.A. amidst all of that's going to be held there. Yeah, no, look, we're really excited announcing that the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles will be the host of our 10th edition of the Labor Cup. I can't believe it's been 10 years already, but obviously Los Angeles is the epicenter of sports now. We've got the World Cup playing some games there.

32:21We've got L.A. Olympics in 28. We've got the All-Star Game with the NBA. We've got the Super Bowl. And so we're very excited about the city. There's going to be a huge wave created for sports and culture and entertainment. And we're just going to hop on that wave. Tennis has not sort of been in Los Angeles for quite some time. I think since 2012, the men had an event at UCLA and the women had the World Tour finals at the Staples Center, I guess, years ago. So so so that part of the USTA, the Southern California Tennis Association is a very active area. So we're very excited. This is the most modern building we will have been in.

33:02Steve Ballmer built the most incredible facility and we're very excited to to bring the Labor Cup there. Yeah, I want to talk about that. I want to step back for a second. I definitely want to talk about being in the Intuit Dome and how that works for you guys. But let's take a step back for our listeners who don't exactly know what the Labor Cup is. and how you got started 10 years ago, almost 10 years ago, like you said. Yeah, so Roger, Federer, and I, he's been my client now for over 20 years. We were driving back from a Rolex event called Meet the Masters in Shanghai, China. It was light at night, and Rod Laver was there.

33:40And Roger leaned over and said to me, do you know that I make more money in a one-night exhibition than Rod made his entire career? and he and his fellow barnstormers actually created the open era. And so we need to do something for him. And I don't think he was thinking the time and event, but he was thinking let's, you know, not that he needed money, but let's, I don't know, do a commercial together with him or come up with some business endeavor to do with him. So shortly thereafter, I had just started Team 8 and I really, one of my partners really loves golf. And we started talking about how could we create something like the Ryder Cup has in golf.

34:17And right away I said, well, we have a name. It's the Laver Cup. Roger would love to do something for Rod Laver. So that sort of began the, you know, the march to create an event that the tennis hadn't had before where rivals would become teammates. And we sketched it out on a white canvas and came up with an event that pitted six men from Europe versus six men from rest of the world that would play over a three-day period, five sessions. And the points on Friday would be worth one point, on Saturday two points, and on Sunday three points. So, you know, every match would mean something. And we sort of sketched it out.

34:55We put a format together that we had no idea whether or not it was going to be successful. and that's one of the things after 10 years looking back that I'm the most proud of is that we created a format that we have not had to tinker with and it's been very exciting so it moves and rotates between a European city and a rest of the world city we've been in some wonderful markets and great buildings over the years we started in Prague and then went to the United Center in Chicago and we've been in Boston at the Boston Garden we obviously last year we were at the Chase Center, which was our best year yet.

35:32We've been at the O2 Arena in London for Roger's big farewell in 2022, and we'll be back there again this year. We've been in Geneva. And so that's how it got started. It's been very successful. In the beginning, we were very lucky to start this event when Roger Federer was still playing. He was obviously the biggest draw in the sport. And the fact that we had such a big player conceptualizing an event was very helpful. And we got a lot of the partners that Roger and I knew very well from his personal endorsement deals. We've got we got Rolex to to jump in right from the beginning as a founding sponsor.

36:12And that was very important for us because they're obviously they're the most important and the biggest sponsor in the sport of tennis, but also in sports of golf and they're in the arts and culture and they really know how to tell stories. And so having them on board in the beginning and then getting Credit Suisse and UBS became UBS and getting Mercedes-Benz. And so we got great sponsors from the beginning. This year in our ninth year at the O2 Arena, we'll have over 20 sponsors. And it's just, it's been great. It's exceeded my wildest expectations from when we created it. Yeah. It's really interesting because when you think about, you know, like you said, Roger didn't know at the time how he wanted to honor Rod Laver, and it became this event.

37:00And that must be very different than any other kind of venture you guys have done together. I mean, events are a completely different sort of business. How did that go for you in the beginning, like trying to understand how to run it? But obviously you're around events all the time, but creating one from scratch. How did that go? Yeah, well, look, we, Roger specifically, and me, I'd been in the business for over 25 years at the time and had been to the best tennis events around the world and some of the best sporting events. So, you know, I did work on some events and had promoted some, you know, one-off exhibitions and had learned, you know, best practice, you know, what other events were doing really well.

37:41And obviously Roger played in some of the greatest events in the world. He knew what he liked and he didn't like and stuff. So it was certainly a different business endeavor for us. But one of the things that I always do from the beginning is you put together the best team possible. And I did that from from the onset is to get people who knew how to build a brand because we were a luxury brand that hadn't been built yet. So I needed someone to do that. I found a person I had worked with at NetJets, Steve Zacks, who was the CMO at NetJets at the time. Obviously, NetJets back then was a brand that he helped build.

38:12And and at the same time, it was a luxury brand. So I had to put a great team together. And we were lucky in the sense that we were not a two week event. We had one court and we had a practice court, but we could focus on one court. We only had 12 players to look after and two coaches and two co-captains. So we had it, you know, it was a little bit easier than just starting a big Masters 1000 or a major for that matter. And so we just want to invest. We wanted to build the brand from the beginning. And we partnered with the USTA in Tennis Australia, as well as Georgia Palo-Lehman and my partners at Team 8, Dirk Ziff and Ian McKinnon and Roger.

38:51And we just said, let's build it and let's invest, invest, invest. And there was a question right from the beginning about whether or not we needed to invest in digital boards, sponsor boards around the court. Because at that time, some of the majors actually, the slams didn't have digital boards. And right from the beginning, I said, we need to. Let's invest because we want to be premium. And we want to, if we're going to have these great sponsors, you know, we need to have sort of a technologically savvy event. And, you know, most people have had, you know, events. A lot of these great sports properties have been around for 50, in some cases, 100 years.

39:29And so, you know, they have to adapt to modern times. We actually built this in modern times. So we had a little bit of luck from that standpoint. And then every year we learn something and it is a challenge moving around to these different buildings around the world. So we have to adapt and be malleable. But it's been a lot of fun. And, you know, we're bringing different experiences. And these days, as you know, people aren't just buying tickets. They're buying experiences. And we take that very seriously when we sort of promote these events. I love what you said there about having built this in the modern era.

40:03So you kind of already knew what, like you were saying, the tech that you wanted to involve. And obviously you're from there able to adapt and innovate over time. So tell me about being in the Intuit Dome. Like you were saying, it's so highly technological. Steve Ballmer did so much with it to make it such a high level arena. Tell me what you're thinking about when you're going into that arena and trying to play with the innovation that they have there. listen the you know they've got the the best technology of any building in the world steve balmer um was a visionary he went in and built a facility for the fan experience you know everything from the bathrooms to the sight lines to the digital board i mean everything was thought about for the actual fan and that's amazing um we are we're gonna have a we're gonna have a lot of fun with it.

40:56It's going to be a great show. We can learn from them too. It's very rare that we can go into a building, in some of these older buildings, and they can say, hey, you should do this, and we maybe haven't heard of it. There are going to be things that Steve Ballmer's team is going to show us that's going to make the Labor Cup better for future years. So we obviously are full-on promoting our ninth event at the O2 Arena in London, But as soon as that's over, we will I mean, we're planning now, but we will jump in to make sure because, again, Los Angeles is going to be, you know, everything is taking place in Los Angeles, you know, from a sports standpoint in the next few years.

41:36And so we really got to put on a good show here. And I I always joke. I was at a party up in or an event with Joe Lacob up at the Chase Center before our event last year. And he said, you know, we were really excited. The Bay Area is going to be the, you know, very important for sports coming up. We've got the NBA All-Star Game. We've got the Labor Cup and then we have the Super Bowl. And I said to Steve, you know, my partner and the CEO of Labor Cup, I said, he just sandwiched us in between the NBA and the Super Bowl. That's amazing. What great company. And obviously we have that, you know, maybe even on steroids here in Los Angeles because, you know, you have the All-Star Game and you have the Super Bowl and everything else.

42:15So we will we will definitely put on a show. There might be a little bit more music involved and some other things we're thinking of. But we're very excited about the opportunity of being in a building like that where we can do things maybe that we've we've never done before. We're speaking with Tony Godzik, co-founder and chairman of the Labor Cup and CEO of Team 8. Tony when you were talking earlier about you know getting Rogers you know brands that you guys have worked together they signed on pretty quickly and easily when you guys were starting this now that Rogers retired how has that conversation shifted a little bit and were sponsors a little weary at first or how is it going now oh it's going great I mean one of the things that we heard from the naysayers you know in the sport of tennis there's plenty of those types.

43:01And they say, oh, as soon as Roger retires, you know, that'll be it. And, you know, all our sponsors in the beginning were, you know, Roger sponsors, his personal sponsors. Well, over 50%, we have 20 sponsors now and over 50 % actually have no affiliation with Roger per se. So I'm certainly very proud of that. I think for Roger sponsors, it might sound crazy, but Roger sponsors, some of them are actually not happy that he's not playing, but they have a better, they have more of an opportunity to collaborate with him at the labor cup. So when he was playing, he wasn't able to sort of come away from the team and do appearances for the biggest retailers that Rolex might be entertaining, or, you know, they might've brought all the dealers from around the world or a lot of the major dealers at Mercedes Benz.

43:48He wouldn't have time to do an activation with them, um, or whatever, whatever it might be. So he does have a little bit more time. I like it because he can do some more interviews, um, uh, you know, and, and promote the event. And so what's his, what's his role now at the labor cup? Well, he's the founder, one of the founders of the labor cup. Um, he always reminds me he's a fan. So he always says, make sure that you and the team carve out enough time for me actually to sit and watch some matches, um, which, uh, he, he loves to do. He can't get enough of tennis today. Men's tennis, women's tennis is always on his house.

44:21So, uh, so he loves that. Um, he does go around and support his own sponsors and some labor cup sponsors as well, that might not have anything to do with them in the form of appearances or, or interviews, uh, whatever it might be. And he's also got a notepad in his back pocket and he's taking notes. And, and at the end of every session, you know, he's like, okay, I need five minutes of your time. You know, this is what I saw. This is what we need years ago. He said to me, you know what? There's no snacks from the hospitality areas. There's no snacks to bring out to the rocket club. I need snacks.

44:54I go, what do you mean? He goes, I want a Haribo house there. I want gummy bears next year. And so I went to Haribo. So we need you guys, they need to partner with us. We need to create a Haribo house. And in a few of our hospitality areas where people can go by with their people, Roger could go by with his, with his bag. And, you know, and everyone loved it. And I, you know, I also, I was an investor in Levene Bakery, just a pet project, a great bakery in New York. And for years, we've been saying, you guys got to come and be part of our labor cup. And people love these Levin cookies and stuff.

45:26And we got that there as well. And so these little things, these details, Roger thinks of all the time and he's giving us ideas and we're sort of implementing them. But that's what makes it fun. To be honest, it's what gives, I know what gives him a lot of passion. He's super proud of creating this event. It's not the Federer Cup, it's the Laver Cup. It's named after Rod Laver. And one of the things that the team and I, we speak about all the time is a lot of the, from a hospitality standpoint to the couches, how we lay out the format of the court, the black court, others are actually utilizing now in the sport of tennis.

46:02So when people start imitating some of the, some of the cool initiatives that you're doing, that's, that's kind of fun. You know, you're doing something right then, I guess, right? If so, if you start. Yeah. And we do things wrong and we learn from others. I mean, we, we do spend a lot of time looking at what other people are doing in other sports as well to try to put the best event together. And it's a work in progress. Tony, before we wrap up here, one of the things that you had just said, Roger loves watching all the different kinds of tennis, men's tennis and women's tennis. Is that a women's event do you think we'll see for the Labor Cup in the future?

46:41Well, you won't see. We will not. The plan is not to put women in the Labor Cup because those events already exist. You have combined events, men and women already. You have the United Cup, which is promoted by the the WTA and the ATP tour. You have the Hotman Cup, which the ITF owns, which is men and women from countries together on the same team. I saw that team tennis is is coming back. That's a men and women's team event as well. So there's already three of them. So we won't we wouldn't mix them up. But what we would maybe do at some point or certainly support someone who wanted to do it is is a women's event.

47:19I don't know if we'd call it the Labor Cup. It might have to be named something else of a female superstar or someone who contributed a lot to the sport. But maybe we would do that in the future. You know, who knows? We spent a lot of time on this event. You know, people we like to sort of compare ourselves in a small way. They have a hundred year head start to us and that being the Ryder Cup. But, you know, there's no women at the Ryder Cup. I mean, they have the Solheim Cup, I think. And in tennis, we have the Billie Jean King Cup and the Davis Cup and stuff. So who knows in the future? I'm a women's tennis person at heart.

47:55I married a WTA player, Mary Jo Fernandez. My kids played tennis. I managed Lindsay Davenport, Monica Sellis, and Anna Kornikova, and Daniela Hantakova, and a lot of female tennis players. So not only am I a girl dad, you know, with my daughter, Isabella, but also in women's tennis. That's how I got started. So we would look at something in the future, but we wouldn't combine the current labor cup with women because that already exists. Right. Absolutely. So where does, you know, the overall landscape of tennis stand right now? Obviously, there's a lot of really great, you know, people coming up, starting to get into their prime.

48:33Can you just give us a little bit of overview of what you think of the landscape of tennis right now? Tennis is in amazing shape. It's always so cyclical. There's always new stars coming, holding up the big trophies. We saw it at the French Open. You know, there's a new wave of kids coming both on the men's and women's tour. The majors are getting bigger. The tour events are getting bigger. You saw the valuation of some of these. Well, you see the valuations of these, you know, NFL franchises and stuff going up, and that's happening with live sports and events everywhere. So when I look around the world, I mean, the most valuable sports assets are those that have scarcity, which obviously the Labor Cup has, and tennis does.

49:19You've got this global reach. Tennis is so global, which is amazing. Premium brands are finding their way into the sport of tennis. Not just, I mean, you see the Louis Vuittons, the Gucci's, the really high-end luxury brands. You see, I mean, one of the things I find very exciting about the sport of tennis, it used to just be Nike and Adidas and a couple other brands that are really dominating the sport. And now that's there's competition. You have New Balance is doing extremely well. Wilson Racket Sports is coming in and doing incredibly well, not just with the rackets, but also with the textiles and with the soft goods.

50:01You've got On, which is just doing an incredible job. They've done such a good job of picking, you know, superstars with Ben Shelton and Kobeli and Iga Shvantec and Zhao Fonseca. So they're doing great. So when you see these brands starting to invest in tennis, you know it's healthy. You see special events popping up all over the place. And so, look, I see it with the Labor Cup. In the beginning, people really were scratching their heads. They didn't know sort of what it was. And now we've got people who are calling and wanting to invest in the event or buy the event and and things like that. And I just find live sports.

50:37There's there's no comparing. You know, we fight for everybody's attention these days. And live sports seems to be the one where people are putting down their their devices and and and actually paying attention. We saw it with what happened with the NBA finals in New York. and I think the U.S. Open, well, with the championships, Wimbledon coming up now, there's a lot of discussion. I mean, I think that's one of the greatest events in the world. It's, you know, it's going from strength to strength. So that's very exciting. And I'm bullish. If it was a stock, I'd be, I would be buying it, large chunks of it.

51:17And I would, I mean, look, if there's any opportunities in tennis that makes sense, My partners and I are always looking for things. And I just think it's a really good, great sport. It brings all the things that you need together. And, you know, as you see some of the other franchises become so expensive and stuff, this might be one of those that you might be able to get in and do something. But I just, it's a global sport, a lot of great brands, a lot of people sort of love it. And you've got these four, let's call them Super Bowls every year in the majors. and then you've got the Masters 1000s that are doing well.

51:53So it's exciting. I'm going long on tennis, if that's okay. Yeah, of course. And I'm interested in, you know, when you're looking at future ways to invest, what do those things look like for you that would interest you to get in even deeper? I'd love to sort of work on one of the big premium events out there. You know, I want to make sure that with the Labor Cup, we continue to innovate. I mean, we've got to do a better job with digital expansion. I want to make the premium experiences. Our Rocket Club and Chairman Reserve experience at Labor Cup, I think, is probably one of the best experiences or one of the top sort of five experiences in sport.

52:35I'd love to, you know, find a way to include fashion and music and different entertainment collaborations, you know, different ways of storytelling and stuff like that. But I, you know, continue. There's a lot of stuff I'm doing with Roger Federer. So there's a lot of things we're focusing on and some investments we're working on and making sure we lean into the current investments that we are with. But I think there's a few other things in tennis that we would like to do in the coming years. And we're actively working on that now. Our thanks to Tony Godzik, co-founder, chairman of the Labor Cup and CEO of Team 8 for joining us.

53:15That's it for today. Thanks for joining us. Tune in again next week for the latest on the stories moving big money in the world of sports. And don't forget to catch our podcast on all your podcast platforms and go to Bloomberg.com to subscribe to the Bloomberg Business of Sports newsletter to stay up to date on all our juicy insights. Juicy. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business of Sports Bloomberg Radio around the world.

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