WNBA's New Season Begins; Ted Leonsis on Capital One Arena Renovations

0:01Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcast Radio News. This is the business of sports. The business of sports can be intimidating or hard for a startup to break into. We really appreciate when our owners are actually there, you know, with us through the journey. Teams, ours especially, have been very intentional to diversify at all levels of the company. I think we're in the golden years for the NFL and college football. Our demographic reach has continued to expand. This is going to be really unlocking the streaming platform for sports fans. Sports valuations are rising. We'll see when they peak. You don't have to be the best in your sport to make a whole ton of money.

0:42Bloomberg 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 Berdomo. Coming up, we'll hear from Monumental Sports and Entertainment CEO Ted Leonsis. We'll get his thoughts on the growth of women's sports and progress on renovating Capital One Arena in the heart of D.C. We're bringing almost 3 million people a year into our building. We have one of the busiest buildings in the country. And we have to make sure that people have kind of wow factor, that they feel really, really good about that experience.

1:21We'll also learn about NOAA Basketball. It's a data company that uses advanced technology to get real-time feedback to players. All that and more is on the way, but first, the new WNBA season is just getting underway, and it's starting, coming out of one of the most successful years of all time. Here to talk about what's next for the WNBA and the recent rise in popularity of women's sports is Thayer Laviel. She is the managing director of The Collective. It's part of sports marketing agency Wasserman and focused on women's sports. Thayer, welcome to the Bloomberg Business of Sports. Thanks for having me.

2:03Pleasure to be here. Well, let's start because we are just now into a very young WNBA season. Hooray! Last year was one whale of a year for the league. How can they build up on this success? I think they already are building up on this success. They have a new franchise, the Golden State Valkyries. They have Toronto Tempo coming up shortly behind them next year. And there's a lot of great news coming out of the league. I think they could not have ended on a higher note with the championship that they had, the parade in New York. 28 years in the making, the New York Liberty are WNBA champions. Ellie the elephant, always a fan favorite and just so much innovation coming out of the league.

2:53The Collective worked on a study with Deloitte on bridging the gap in investing in women's sports. And it pointed out that 80 % of decision makers have increased their investment in women's sports over the past five years. And the Collective started in 2019. I'm curious how you've seen those conversations change over time with brands and sponsorships. How much easier was it to sell things for the Golden State Valkyries than, say, Angel City was five years ago? Well, to be fair, we weren't the ones selling four Golden State Valkyries. But I will say that we've seen a huge influx of brands coming into women's sports full stop.

3:30And the WNBA has certainly proven, and the Golden State Valkyries have certainly proven to be an incredible investment for any brands coming in. What we've seen, though, is what's been interesting is not only that you've had these non-endemic brands coming into sports. So for the first time ever, you're seeing, you know, cosmetics and beauty care products coming in, which seems like a natural. But for many years in the past, they've never entered into the sports space. So this is an exciting time to be in women's sports. It's also a time when women's sports is really galvanizing new methods of marketing, new methods of finding and loving up their fan bases, if you will, on the early stages.

4:14And so it's been an exciting moment to witness all of these brands and all of this new investment coming in. And there's obviously still lots of room. So for all those brands out there listening, we welcome all of your investment into the into the league. All this new investment, all these new brands, yet the average WNBA salary for the 2024 season was just one hundred and forty seven thousand seven hundred and forty five dollars. Your average player makes less than a woman's pickleball player at two hundred sixty thousand per year. I mean, Thayer, what is up with the disconnect and what is going to change it?

4:46Well, I mean, it's still a business. And I think the WNBA has, you know, they're in the middle of a collective bargaining year and they have an incredible commissioner who are working hard along with the team at the WNBA to be able to achieve more for all of the players and the teams and leagues themselves. This has been a long, steady climb for this league and for, you know, the players coming up. I think it's still a business and I'm not sure I'm not an expert in the pickleball league or what their salaries are. But I trust in the leadership that we have within the existing sports space to really deliver more and more as this league continues to grow.

5:26Well, you're right. It is a business. And so then I have to ask you this question. Why is the Connecticut Sun selling at this point? Because the business of the business of women's basketball seems to be just, you know, at the precipice of blowing out. You know what I mean? And, you know, with the new media deal that's going to get struck in the next year or so, I mean, you would hope that, you know, there'd be a lot more revenue to go around. So I'm just curious. I mean, without speaking about the Connecticut Sun specifically, because you're not close to that situation, you know, you know, what is it going to take here?

5:52Is it going to be striking new deals with the Amazon Primes and the apples of the world? Is it going to be something bigger than that? I mean, you know, what do you think is going to move the needle here for women's sports and the Women's National Basketball Association in specific? Well, I would say that the women's sports as a whole has really found its footing over the last five, six years in terms of viewership, attendance, merchandise sales, sponsorship on the rise. All of that has been positive markers. Media rights have gone up significantly across WNBA and WSL, which in this country are, as we would call them, the more mature leagues, even though they're far, far behind their male counterparts.

6:33which I do think needs to be continued, continue to be pointed out because it's not necessarily a fair comparison to say, well, you're not necessarily where men should be. There's no comparison that should be made there. There, you know, the WNBA has or the NBA has 50 years on the WNBA. So we need to look at the, the leagues in and of themselves and what needs to, to be able to help them grow as bits and parts. It's not one fell swoop is going to come in and one TB deal is going to fix all the things or one sponsorship deal is going to fix all the things. There are many different ways that women's sports are different than men's sports.

7:08And those ways need to be articulated and also need to be invested into. It's everything from innovating around women's health, which, you know, there are owners that are really leaning into that, like Michelle King. It's everything from investing in the fan experience and driving forward on getting people into the building from like Claire Sy and Liberty to the Valkyries. And there are many other teams, obviously the Aces, et cetera, that are doing that. And then there are, you know, ways to look at how to engage in, you know, viewership to social media, to pushing forward and advocating for the women as players and as individuals.

7:45And women as players and individuals need as much support as, you know, as their men counterparts, but a little bit differently because they actually can also give birth to humans. And so they need to make sure that they're, you know, supported to that end in a different way. And so that all of that leads to a little bit of a different lens on it, but also one that is a great opportunity for brands and and companies to come in and be in a support mechanism to this, you know, industry in these leagues. I used to be from the old school from if you were in the owner of a team and someone says, well, when do you make money as an owner.

8:25And I used to say, well, when you sell it, but now with private equity, that's kind of changed the whole landscape. How does it affect women's sports today with private equity? Well, I mean, that's such a great sign. It's fantastic that private equity is coming to the sport. I think it's a great nod to the fact that this, that women's sports are being seen as really viable businesses that will deliver great returns on investment. So I think that's a positive, you know, but it is a business. And so there are differences, I believe, in investing in a women's sports team than investing in a men's team today.

9:06We did a report last year with RBC that really dove into this, particularly in the NWSL and the WNBA and looked at specifically the types of things that these teams really need, which are, you know, when you're investing in women's teams, you might need to over rotate as a as an owner to be looking at this more as a startup in some ways. So how can you lend more of your contacts? How can you lend more of your connections and technology? How can you look at delivering on different, you know, facilities or different programs that may not, that may already be accepted within the men's space, but because women's sports is not as far as advanced in some ways, that these owners oftentimes, and these ownership groups oftentimes can come in and be real partners in growth, which is an exciting opportunity.

9:53On that same pathway, when we're talking about, you know, ownership and private equity and ROI, things like that in the study, you know, there's an argument that brands should use different metrics for evaluating women's sports sponsorship ROI. What are those different metrics and why do you think that these properties need to be treated differently than men's properties? I think for now, what we're looking at is, and the way that we think about this is, and not going into the details of all of the ways that we at Wasserman will value and look at, you know, property valuations and the different elements that go into it, but, you know, it's largely based on impressions and engagement.

10:29And what we really feel like is that in the women's game, there are other metrics that can be considered, which will help up value those teams to be able to give them more of a leg up and provide more backup to charge more for those sponsorship assets. And so that might be looking at things like, in the case of the team report that we did with RBC, we looked at 40 different variables that went into what made up revenue. And that was everything from how you look at things across operations, how you look at across the market itself, how do you look at things across team performance. And once you're able to go into those 40 different variables, you're able to really analyze those in and of themselves, which then become levers that you can plus up.

11:14Obviously, we want to make sure that those are defensible, that's defensible math, but that you're able to start to plus those things up. And so that these teams can start to build on themselves without having to just rely on viewership numbers or attendance numbers, which may not be where, where they need to be in order to charge more. So we start to look at how do you actually, what are the other assets that you can start to value and how do you do that? Thayer, you've worked with, among others, Pepsi, Microsoft, Diageo, American Express. You've seen it all. And, you know, putting yourself in their shoes, right?

11:46I mean, you've been in their shoes before, right? What data points do you believe they haven't seen yet that makes the case for women's sports? I mean, it's playing off of what, you know, Vanessa asked you earlier, you know, is there anything that they haven't seen that they're asking you for that can help them make more informed decisions about where to invest along the vertical? I think where what we see to be unique to women's sports today is the loyalty of women's sports fans. So we are just breaking news. We're just about to come out with another report. And one of the key findings of those reports is around looking at women's sports fandom.

12:27And one of these key stats is that 50 % of women's sports fans first identify as women's sports fans before a team, before a league, before a player, before an app. Yeah. Before any of it, I would say truly that the women's sports fan base is one to not being messed with or, or under value in any way. In fact, I think there's more value put on that. Our thanks to Thayer Laviel for joining us. She's the managing director of the collective with the firm Wasserman. Up next, we turn to a company that's harnessing data to help basketball players improve their shooting for my colleagues, Damien Sassauer, and Vanessa Perdomo.

13:03I'm Michael Barr. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio around the world.

13:11This 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 along with my colleagues Damian Sassauer and Vanessa Perdomo. Noah Basketball is a data service provider that uses machine learning to give real-time data and feedback to basketball players. Here to talk to us about the tech and how it could help basketball players improve their shooting is Noah Basketball CEO John Carter. John, welcome to the Bloomberg Business of Sports. Thank you. Excited to be here. Well, you've got a product out there, and it's ahead of its time when you first introduced it about NOAA basketball.

13:58Tell us all about it, please. Well, that's an understatement. We started over 20 years ago, and it was an interesting run. I tell people all the time, I'm not sure people cared that much about what we were doing until around 2017. But we went around. We did barnstorm gyms, basically, to sell enough systems to keep the lights on, if you want to think about it that way. And the tech got better, and there was a generational change in players and coaches. If you go back to 2005, when we sold our first commercial product, there was no cloud. There wasn't very limited as far as cell phones and smartphones and those type things.

14:43And the old school coaches weren't big fans of tech, especially when it comes to shooting. Shooting is they generally don't like to have their players messed with, so to speak, or things like that. But fast forward 20 years and we have 28 NBA customers and most all of your major brands in college basketball use our tech now and thousands of high schools. And today's generation of players, they grew up with tech in their pocket, and we've made it really easy for them. And we have the data to back up what we're doing and why it works and how it works. So explain to us a little bit about how it works, what it does for player shots, and why they finally were bought into the idea of no basketball.

15:30Yeah, so our system basically tracks the basketball, and we collect and give feedback on three particular high-definition metrics that you can't see with the naked eye. The first thing is trajectory or the arc of the shot, as most people in basketball refer to it. And we measure that as the entry angle coming into the rim. We have found through collecting 700 million basketball shots that the perfect entry angle is 45 degrees. That's where all the physics lines up in your favor. And so if you think about trajectory, that's one of the biggest issues we see, especially at the youth and high school level, as players are all over the place on trajectory.

16:12And so what our system does when the ball gets to the rim, it'll verbally tell you, it'll say 39, 38, 52, whatever. And so the beauty of that is that players aren't really changing anything with their shot other than the release point of the basketball shot. So just think about their arm angle. They're perfecting the release high, the release angle and perfect perfecting the which allows them to protect perfect the entry angle, which gets them to line up the physics in their favor. And you absolutely will see more shots drop if you're shooting in the mid 40s. And we have proven this every way possible.

16:53And it just absolutely makes a difference. And so the biggest thing I found, whether it's with NBA, college, you know, high school, wherever, once they have some success with it, then everybody buys in. And it starts spreading throughout the team. Damien, I guess Shaquille O 'Neal could have used this. Because when he was on the free throw line, it was like a straight arrow going in. I'm surprised you didn't say Mitch Robinson. Michael Barlow, here's the reality, John Carter. You need to take me back to 2011. You need to take me back to LeBron James. You need to take me back to Dwayne Wade. That statue would not be in front of Miami's arena were it not for you and your, you know, Noah basketball program fixing him on the free throw lines.

17:40Talk to us a little bit about how you started, how you got NBA, these NBA players to even find you, figure out that you're, you had this product that worked and then obviously take you forward to today's success. Yeah. Well, obviously you read some of the D Wade stories way back when from the heat or you found that somewhere, but basically that up, John, I did my homework. That's impressive, Damien. But you know, the, the biggest thing was, you know, we didn't, you know, I'm no former NBA player or anything crazy like that. We just did it through hard work, you know, and just building relationships.

18:16We build a relationship with this high school coach, which introduces us to this college coach. And then this college coach introduces us to this MBA assistant coach and and just work that for a number of years to get in those doors. Those doors don't swing open easily, as you can imagine. Yeah, no. And the product, if I'm not mistaken, it's somewhere in the order of, let's say, I don't know, at the low end, four thousand to what, six thousand dollars. So, yeah, I mean, it's a it's a product, right? I mean, you've got to be out there, guerrilla marketing and getting in people's faces, getting in coaches' faces, players' faces.

18:46I mean, do you have a staff? How do you do that? Yeah. So, so today, you know, back then in the early days, we did not have a staff. It was primarily me. You know, today, you know, we, we have a reasonable size staff and, you know, we have six full-time salespeople, I think it is. And, and, you know, we, we make our rounds. We, you know, we do a lot of marketing that we have not done in the past. When we were just focused on college and NBA teams, we didn't do any marketing. It was all personal relationships, you know, feet on the street and reaching out to people, making our way into doors, doing demos and, you know, begging coaches to bring players in so that we could demonstrate the product to the players.

19:30And, you know, and it took some time and it was several, it was a little bit of a perfect storm. So number one, the tech got better. You know, the product, the things that we do today compared to what we did in 2011, totally different. And that's because sensor tech has gotten better. A lot of that's been driven by driverless cars and robotics and animation or automation and things like that. So that was a big piece of it. Also, along the way, as you guys well know, the game has become about shooting threes. The game has become about shooting. And so that that really helped us in a big way. And then, as I mentioned earlier, having the next generation of players that really grew up with tech and believe in tech, all those things together.

20:13And we look up and suddenly we've got, you know, almost the entire NBA and WNBA, for that matter, using our tech. I mean, where does it end, John? I mean, this technology, can it be used in volleyball? Can it be used in golf? I mean, my golf game needs some work. Michael Barr knows this. I mean, talk to us a little bit about what comes next for you, for the company. Well, so we're still a basketball only company today. We have done some things in volleyball and there's certainly some other applications. But our focus right now is on, you know, we've been focused on the MBA and college market the last few years.

20:43And we've been waiting for tech to get a little bit better and a little bit cheaper so that we could really go after the high school and middle school market in a significant way. And so and we introduced that product this time last year, last summer, and that product is flying off the shelf. This is a product that you can start with as little as$1 ,500. You can install it in 30 to 45 minutes, and your high school team is up and running. So that's been a huge breakthrough for us. And again, it was about waiting for the sensor technology to get to a point that we could do the things we wanted to do easier and cheaper.

21:20And so we have those. So we're really focused on the high school market right now in a significant way. We are also, since this product is so easy to install and has so little bit of a very small support piece, we're now starting to explore international sales. With your technology, you're basically proving, right, the things that we've heard a bunch of times that sports and basketball is really just math and geometry. Is that right? Like, could you hear a player shooting a ball and be like, oh, I was three degrees off there? There's so much math going on in an athlete's head and they don't even know it.

21:51You know, for example, when do I accelerate? How do I stop? They do all of those things. There's math going on at all times about taking that risk to try to get that steal. You know, you're exactly right. Math is all around us. And, you know, I'm an engineer, so I love it. But you can scare people away if you go in and lead with, this is all about math. And people will say, well, there's the door. Because it can be a little bit intimidating to people. And so we've actually spent a lot of time simplifying our message, simplifying our product. You know, we use something called splash in a significant way.

22:30And so we tell people when they're in the splash zone, something that even NBA players love. We have this when you get your arc, your depth, shot depth in the basket is a big deal. And then we also measure left, right consistency and where a player shoots the ball straight and not. And when they get all those things in a particular zone, we give them a cha-ching. and that seems like such a silly thing but nba players love the cha-ching college players love the cha-ching and so it just lets them know that they had everything in the right spot and it gamifies shooting a bit for them and uh and we've also another thing that was a it was a big deal is that you know we've now added in our latest product where you can have your music playing in your earbuds and getting the noah feedback all at the same time and that makes it makes a difference as well well john you know i find it so interesting that you mentioned that start stop that suddenness because that really measuring that has become like the new thing i think in in sports if you're reading the same stuff i'm reading right i mean it used to be can you run the fastest 40 can you bench press 200 times i don't know but now it's it's measuring a lot of these you know these these these characteristics that you could never measure before right until the technology was there so i'm just curious to hear your thoughts like what comes next in sports measurement and athlete measurement like what are you hearing out there Sure.

23:46Well, I can tell you, let me tell you what we're doing now, which is exactly going down the path you're mentioning here. So we're a shooting company. We focus on shooting. We don't focus on defense and all the other things. We focus on making more shots and winning more games, as it's kind of our slogan. But something just like you've seen, you've all seen this with golf or baseball, where they're doing motion capture analysis to understand all the body joint angles and understanding that fully. That's an easy thing to do in baseball, as an example. You get a bunch of cameras pointed at the mound.

24:20You get a bunch of cameras pointed at home plate. And you analyze this data. You find all these things out. And you find things that are good or bad. In basketball, other than the free throw, there's no two shots that are the same. And so we have now built a fully automated motion capture system so that we can look at all the joint angles, all the inverse kinematics, all the velocities, everything throughout the shot motion. And we can collect that data in practice gyms. We already have this installed at two MBA facilities, and we'll install probably another eight or ten this year. and so we will start understanding everybody wants to know what's the perfect shot we know the physics of the perfect shot now with great certainty uh but i even though i feel like i'm a pretty good shooting guy none of us really know the things from a body mechanic standpoint that will kill your shot or the things that if you do this this and this you've got a much greater chance of success you talk about golf um you know there's some of that type tech that's already out there where you can turn your phone or whatever, and you can use AI to determine what you need to change from a golf swing standpoint.

25:30And we're going down a similar path from a basketball standpoint. And because of our tracking engine and all that, we can automate it where other companies can. Our thanks to NOAA Basketball CEO John Carter for joining us today. Up next, we hear from Monumental Sports CEO Ted Leonsis. From my colleagues Damien Sassauer and Vanessa Perdomo, I'm Michael Barr. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio around the world.

26:02This 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. Recently, Bloomberg original chief correspondent Jason Kelly and our own Vanessa Perdomo had an opportunity to catch up with monumental sports and entertainment CEO and Washington Capitals and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis. They covered a variety of topics, including progress on renovating Capital One Arena in D.C. Let's take a listen to that conversation, starting with his thoughts on the growth of women's sports as the WNBA season gets underway.