Direct from Cannes: Harnessing the energy around women’s sport with LOVB and Unrivaled

0:03Hello and welcome to another episode of the leaders sport business podcast the podcast about leaders in sport from leaders in sport for leaders in sport, sometimes with leaders in sport too. My name is James Emmett. I'm the editorial director here at Leaders and with me, as ever, is my great good colleague, David Cushman. David, how are you? I'm very well, James. And I should say, welcome back to the United Kingdom, because just minutes ago, you landed here fresh off the plane. Yes, that's right, Dave. I've got a bit of a croak in the old throat. because I've done three days of being in Cannes, at Cannes Lions, the Festival of Marketing and Creativity.

0:47And I'm just, I'm just, I'm literally just off the plane from Nice. You fly from Nice, of course. And David, you will have noted that people like to complain about flights, don't they? People sometimes need to check their privilege and realise that it's a nice thing to do, to go somewhere nice for a work event. You were delayed a bit on the way out, weren't you? Yeah, but I didn't post about it. no you did no you didn't how was it what was the vibe what was the feeling out in can on the beach in and around it was really good yeah really busy vibrant dynamic it's absolutely massive can it's gigantic and obviously the uh you know the basis of it is a celebration of work in the advertising industry and it sort of grew up from an awards show that celebrated creativity in advertising and creatives in advertising it's now something completely different and there are all sorts of adjacent industries that are there in force it is massive there is a massive amount of money that's being spent there and increasingly we're finding that it's a bit of a nexus for the sports industry or at least a certain section of the sports industry that is positioning itself for brand investment, basically.

2:10And it's this huge thing. There's obviously the traditional conference program at Cannes Lions in the traditional conference center. And then there are all these beaches, beach activation areas along the Quazette. There are multiple, multiple essentially conference programs going on across the week. and yeah it was busy and good fun it's good fun but yes a few themes that I picked up on from the bits and pieces that I went to and it's worth saying that it's one of these events where it's almost impossible to actually watch content partly because it's all about meeting people and partly because even when you are wanting to watch content nothing is quite set up for that to be the primary focus of whatever auditorium you're in unless you're in the actual can lions conference center women's sport very much front and center as far as the sports bits and pieces on stage at least took place lots of platforms and programming across multiple beaches and suites and yachts very much a theme continuing on from last year I do think that's partly you know snap analysis but I do think it's partly because there is there is a lot of exciting and often new things happening in women's sport there are new startup or refreshed women's sports properties and propositions.

3:45There's lots of exciting commercial momentum behind women's sport. But I also think that there is an element of it being a worthy thing to talk about in terms of, obviously not on the sports properties themselves behalf, but in terms of these adjacent industries, sort of the marketing industry folk enjoy being positioned as supportive of women's sport, I think. And is it still being positioned as new in the way that at a leaders week, for example, we were talking about women's sport and its commercial development as being something new, maybe might be sort of five or six years ago, really, in terms of it becoming a real theme.

4:31Is it still being seen as the new fresh thing? Or is the conversation a little bit more mature than that i think because we talk about it all the time and we recognize that a lot of these properties aren't new in the strictest terms i think ultimately most of what being in can is about is positioning yourself to brand spenders and be positioning yourself as something new exciting and fresh is always appealing so yes there's a lot of talk about you know a new property a new way to appeal to a new set of people a new way to spend on sport new demographics that you can hit through new types of campaigns new types of storytelling yeah new is definitely a feature of the discussion on a different note it struck me and i'm sure there are all sorts of different themes across all the different beaches that didn't have anything to do with sport but AI predictably a focal point for a lot of the discussions it's interesting what's going on in we think about AI in sport and in sort of business terms but in terms of the advertising industry a lot of nervousness obviously about it and excitement as elsewhere but the whole creative and distribution process in advertising across the whole chain how how brand how brand messaging is made from the outset to how it's distributed where it's distributed how it's paid for there's ai automation for all of that now and lots of people wanting to use it but also lots of worrying and a lot of bs being talked about it as well i had one really interesting interaction at one of these happy hour events with a lady who's it's her first time in can she works for an ai company that predominantly works in hollywood in kind of the movie business looking to branch out and this company has its own ai engine develops its own ai and she was saying it's it's so weird coming here because everyone's talking about ai but they don't know what they're talking about everybody has it's like you have to say that you're using ai for something and you're just selling the fact that you're using ai and she said i guarantee you nobody knows how to talk about it at all i guarantee you the next person who comes over here and i tell them that i do ai they are then going to ask me the most inane stupid question who wandered over lo and behold someone from a sports organization wandered over i introduced this lady to him and just waited for the moment where he had the good grace to ask a question and the question was so with ai then what's what's ultimately what's the difference between ai and computers disgust well no she had a really nice answer for that anyway but um she was bang on there and uh I chuckled quietly to myself.

7:45Crossed that one off the list for a Leaders' Week panel session. Yes. It's a real smorgasbord of people in Cannes. Yes. Scandinavians, a lot of Scandinavians. It's a lot of herring. No, but there's all sorts of people. I mean, just to reel off a few people that I had sort of varying degrees of unusual and weird interaction with. Sir John Hegarty, the advertising behemoth. Perhaps not surprising. It's absolutely the forum for him. Reese Witherspoon. Meredith Coppett-Levin, the CEO of the New York Times. Megan Rapinoe. Will.I.Am. Oh, the black eyed pea. Yeah, one of the black eyed peas. And I guess it's a sort of professional celeb now, isn't it?

8:34He had a large retinue, David. And can I just say quite a lot of fuss made about him. Well, quite right too, actually. And also Matt Hancock. Oh, the former health minister, health secretary in the UK during the pandemic, quite infamously. Do you know what Matt Hancock's doing now? Tell me. He runs a direct mail marketing firm. Does he? A.K.A. Leaflets through your letterbox. And apparently it's a damn good one. Is that right? Is that right? I think it's called BBS or something like that. Yeah, that sounds about right. Entertaining, yeah. So yes, and so many organizations, not just talking about sports for the S's and G's of it, but actually at the heart of sport and rights holders from across the world.

9:25There are plenty of folks from the NBA, the NHL, NWSL, IOC, ICC, SailGP were out in force, Wimbledon, FIFA, Manchester United, WSL, WTA and plenty more besides big broadcasters there taking over huge hotels and big suites to run various meet and greets with sponsors, I guess, Disney, ESPN, NBC, all sorts. You're obviously coming at this from a sports perspective. You're meeting sports folk, people who you know out there. Music industry wise, do you have a sense, would the music industry also be saying there's so much music industry stuff happening at Cannes as much more than sport? I don't know, to be honest.

10:14I didn't sort of dig into that side too. Spotify has a big presence there and Spotify does a lot of advertising business there. Essentially, it's anyone that's sort of focused on monetizing brands through advertising. and there is a sort of grotesque aspect to the entertainment that happens at Cannes in the evenings where people are you know entities are outdoing each other with performances and musical artists and things like that so there's lots of talent agency representatives out there as well on the music side but I don't know in terms of like universal music or the you know the labels I'm not sure about that side.

10:55Perhaps we should ask them. Perhaps we should ask them. You did speak to some people on the record, though, as well. And we're going to hear from a trio of those. Yeah, I did. And actually, across the next few weeks, we'll be playing in sort of slightly longer form interviews that I did while I was out there. I spoke to the likes of Noah Lyles, the 100-meter Olympic champ, Gerard Piquet, Mark Armstrong at Manchester United, Michael Johnson, and a few more besides that. And over the next few weeks, we'll be playing in those interviews, fascinating a lot of them. But today, we're going to get a bit of texture from on the ground in Cannes.

11:36And bear in mind, that texture, if it was a substance, it would be sweat, mainly. but yeah i'm gonna hear from i mentioned all the rights holders there that i encountered whilst i was out there they're the sizable sort of delegations from i would say new market entrants in the sports property world we mentioned sale gp they were out in force but i spoke with a few a clutch of other ones so we're going to hear later from deirdre lester She's not at Sports Property, but she is the CEO of Teton Ridge, which is a cowboy culture focused specialist media entity in the US, capitalizing on this surge in popularity for all things country and Western.

12:21And yeah, she came from Barstool Sports, actually. And there is, yeah, if you want to bet on something doing well over the next couple of years, I would say it's cowboy culture. and this is a not unreasonable place to look. So we'll hear from Deirdre Lester. Before that, we'll hear from Alex Bazell, who is the CEO of Unrivaled, the three-on-three basketball league, women's basketball league, that has had its first season, put together some very eye-catching commercial deals, broadcast deals, sponsorship deals. But first of all, to kick things off, we will hear an interview that I did with Love, co-founder and founding CEO, Love, spelled L-O-V-B, League One Volleyball, Caitlin Gao.

13:09So I spoke to Caitlin Gao in the lobby of the JW Marriott this week at Cannes. Here's Caitlin Gao. Okay, I'm here in a slightly air-conditioned building just off the closet in Cannes with Caitlin Gao, the co-founder and the founding CEO of Love, the upstart new volleyball league out of the US. Caitlin, how are you doing? I'm great. I'm fully air-conditioned. You look significantly less sweaty than me, which I applaud you for, but I have just walked some distance in the sun, so forgive me. Caitlin, this is your second can, is that right? It is. This is our second can. And how are you finding it this year?

13:54I love it. Even the energy from last year to this year, you can just see how much more sports and in particular women-led sports is part of all of this. Yeah. And tell us about love. Where are you in the journey? Well, first of all, tell us, because I wouldn't ordinarily pronounce L-O-V-B as love. So how consistently are you managing to get that through? That's right. And Nike took decades for people to not call it Nike. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, we have had pretty good luck, actually. Yeah. I've also heard some great variations with the B pronounced or League One. Yeah. Ultimately, it's love and it's okay.

14:32I think all the variations, as long as it points to us. Yeah. We're in a really exciting and competitive era, I would say, for new sports properties coming onto the market with a new energy and a new format, usually. new approaches to reaching people and doing pro sports, basically. You're six years into the journey, I think, at Love, and one year into having operated a league. Yes, at the pro level. At the pro level. How's it going? It's been what you'd expect of anything where you create from nothing, which is a ton of hard work. But I'd say the most gratifying part, as we had talked about a little bit earlier, is how much of the original vision has already come to fruition.

15:21Yep. And just how many people now part of the working team, including the athletes, both at the pro level and at the amateur youth level, are so embracive of the essence of the brand love and what that means in terms of how they show up and the amount of success that we've had, both commercially as well as competition-wise, being essentially the top three volleyball leagues internationally. Yeah. Probably just behind Italy and Turkey. Yeah. I spoke with Michael Johnson earlier, who obviously decorated athlete in his own right, but he is going through a similar journey in terms of founding a startup sports property with Grand Slam Track.

16:07And he was telling me about the roller coaster ride that it is, the ups and the downs. Can you tell us, give us maybe two wins and a loss or a challenge for you from this first year of the pro season? That is hard to pick. Tell us some of the highs and the lows that you've had to go through. Sure, sure. A few highs, even just in the last year. The number one highs, of course, coming to fruition are vision for the highest level of play in volleyball, headlined by 10 of the 12 Olympians that just won in Paris and many of the gold medalists that had won before in Japan, headlining our pro league and attracting their friends and their teammates that they used to play with abroad to come to the U.S.

16:54to create the next NBA volleyball. So just even that first serve around our six teams and around six cities was such a huge highlight. Even better, though, is seeing who else is alongside with us. We're talking about families from our 80 club locations across now 28 states right that's covering more than half of the US who are showing up with their favorite their favorite placards that they have you know decorated themselves cheering on a player that they've been waiting to come home from from abroad and to see that community being built from the youth all the way to the pro and the pro embracing these youth players who are coming and looking up to them, that was very much a full circle moment of, right, we said we were going to build a community from youth to pro, and we did it.

17:49You know, it'll certainly get even bigger from this point forward, but sometimes when you're doing an upstart, even though it's a six-year-old business, you hope that some of that original intention really resonate, and we have really seen that. We've seen that really come to life, in a way that doesn't feel forced, that's really authentic, and that connection is real. It's not manufactured. And not to mention the amazing brands who have come on board, despite by the time we were pitching them, we had only the youth business and these amazing athletes, but they haven't played on the court yet at the pro level.

18:26So to see Revolve, to see Spanx, to see Adidas embracing the full community, Not just the pros at the Olympic level, but also these 20 ,000 under 18-year-old girls who are looking up to these pros and really wanting to establish that relationship, an authentic relationship with them. And I see you're wearing, you're very much wearing the brand today. You've got your love logo on your very light and breezy linen shirt there. You're just jealous. I am really jealous. I am sweating, as discussed. you've got some gorgeous actually mentioning Michael Johnson these are not too dissimilar to the the gold spikes that he wore at the Atlanta games yeah you're decked out in love much thank you yeah you gotta rep the brand you've got to rep the brand exactly um what are you doing here at Cannes then what what are your objectives with this week I think number one it's to continue to immerse ourselves in this ecosystem of where culture, sports converge.

19:31There's no breakthrough and no achievement of the NBA volleyball without getting the right partners on board and breaking through and cultural relevance. One of the things that we're doing, which is so important, and we started this last year and we have continued it this year is to be able to come with our athletes because these are athletes who have captured the attention especially in the U.S. the U.S. audience every four years at the Olympics women's volleyball is one of the most popular watched I think in Rio it's actually the number one indoor volleyball was the number one sport watched period not just women's sports.

20:16And so for us now to have established at that Olympic player level, a yearly full season league, again, playing at the highest level, you know, we really want to continue to make sure that their faces are recognized, their abilities are recognized, who they are as humans are being recognized. And I just think when you get to know them, when you get to see them, when you hear them speak, and that's more important than me talking, even right like because it's really important for them to say now after the first season you know what do you think of love yeah and they feel like builders with us right they're not just the stars and the athletes they're not just the star of the product but they actually feel like founders with us in this movement to take what's a completely the number one girl team sport to actually be an nba sport nba level sport yeah and so to see them to get them in front of the right folks that should get to know them so that they can tell their stories.

21:15That's really the number one priority. And I know you're doing something at SportsBeach just later today. In fact, I was chatting with one of your athletes last night with Rochelle, your chief of staff. I can't remember the name of one of the athletes. Was it Lauren or JT? They're both really tall. They're both really tall, athletic women. She was lovely. She's a setter. She's the setter. Yes, so that's Lauren Carlini. She plays on Love Madison. Yeah, and she was talking about doing the exhibition later. Yes, you should come. Talking about her dicky back, though, and how this is going to be a walk in the park because she's not going to be playing properly, which is amusing.

21:54Who have you seen? What have you seen? Talks that you've been to or people that you've met or people that you want to see and meet here that have particularly impressed or surprised you? I am so impressed. one, hearing these really innovative types of leagues that are emerging. You know, you're saying that we're kind of sitting the golden era of innovation, even in not just the type of sports, but how sports is being brought to people. Both the leagues as well as hearing about how, from a media perspective, how are you able to use AI and other technologies and just learnings in general in this ever-changing landscape to pinpoint who the customers can be, who the fan base can be.

22:44And that's something we're super interested in. We have some really early readings on who's really resonating with us, but we know we're still at the very beginning stages of expanding that fan base with a really strong foundation of our own clubs, of course. But that's really interesting because you can even tell when they're talking, whether it's the TikToks of the world or Google, this is unprecedented level of change in the media space. And I just think that the desegregation of media, of where everything about sports is being consumed and everything around sports is being consumed, especially for emerging leagues like ours that have a really strong intention of going beyond the court in the commercialization of the sport.

23:29There's a ton of opportunities to co-create together. Yeah. And what's your story, Caitlin? How did you how did you come to this? Were you a volleyball player? No, I was just thinking while you were talking to Michael Johnson, now you're talking to me and those are very different Right, different backgrounds. Where were your gold medals, Caitlin? I was an athlete. No, I don't even think I got gold in an athlete. So I grew up actually in China. I was not gifted with D1 jeans, but I was gifted with being completely immersed in women's volleyball growing up in China. there's actually a phrase called , which is actually being the spirit of the women's volleyball team that we were taught in terms of bringing in resilience into your life at an age, you know, like when you're a seventh eighth graders.

24:16How do you even know what's being fed to you? But I just remember that it was a cultural phenomenon how well that team was doing when I was growing up and then my mother who is a physicist came to the US when I was in fifth grade after she had been to Germany and brought me back my first Adidas track suit which we were chatting earlier as being such a full circle moment again with adidas being a founding partner of ours and when she took the whole family to the u.s when i was in fifth grade i spoke zero english okay and imagine being you know we were outside of a big city but where we were in the far western suburbs uh it was hard not speaking the language but it was also really fun to one, enter right into the 90s dynasty of the Chicago Bulls, which is why all of my comparisons with sports is related to the Bulls.

25:07And I think trying all these different sports, even though I was good at none of them, but you didn't have to actually speak the language and you could still feel the teamwork, feeling something like belonging and being able to really build community even with the language barrier. So I just, that and the identity of being a Bulls fan, right? You can be halfway around the world and you identify with someone who shares that same passion. And so I think that's always left a really strong impression on me, but I had no idea that after 20 years of working in strategy consulting briefly and then going into some of the household retail and consumer brands like a Lululemon, like a Sephora, like a Walgreens even, right?

25:55of what that has meant for me to translate that knowledge and translate brand building and translate consumer and fan base building into a sports context. So I don't know that I would have ever expected to be a sports legacy creation process. Yeah. And final question, and it's one sort of an open-ended one, I guess. and it strikes me that lots of people in the sports industry or people who want to get into the sports industry have ideas, right? And it's a fertile environment at the moment for new ideas and new startups. It wasn't always. It wasn't always, but as we said earlier, we are living in this era now where people are willing to embrace the new, but you need money, right?

26:44Fundraising is such an important aspect of getting anything off the ground. And I wonder what you could say for our listeners about your kind of fundraising journey and how you navigated it, basically, or how you continue to navigate it. Well, I would say that when we started in 2019, we were not expecting this tailwind momentum in women's sports, even though obviously it's been decades in the making. but I would say that it has been a tremendous amount of learning for us, and we really benefited from a couple of things. Number one, our model is so unique that when you have a huge addressable market like volleyball, that is already the number one girl team sport in the U.S., and then you see this contrast of that size of addressable market, but lack of brands and lack of commercialization, it became a really obvious approach for us to say we can actually, with intention and purpose and profit and driving better life outcomes in our hearts, commercialize the sport that is unencumbered by a traditional model.

27:59And so also when you're raising money, they look at their risk profile. And for us to say our first step is not to go after a spectator sport at the pro league level where there are certain cost infrastructure that's involved. We're actually building this foundational business first. And that's enabled us to really, I think, grab people's attention to really pay a lot more focus on this very uniquely executed model. And as you know, with fundraising, it's also momentum. Right. Certainly we have the macro momentum. But the momentum of these amazing youth clubs that have come on board, that they themselves have trained Olympian level founding athletes who are already saying yes to us, even though they weren't going to they knew they weren't going to play for another four years.

28:47I think all of that, the proof was so obvious that not only have we started this, that our approach is unique, our approach is right for this sport. And we have this growth opportunity well beyond a pure sports and pro league business really helped us. and here we are sitting with three rounds oversubscribed,$160 million raised. That's not lost on me, certainly. And as much as it's been a very popular thing to invest in sports, it doesn't mean that they always get to your property. Yeah. Caitlin Gow, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Alex Bizel, co-founder Unrivaled here in Cannes at Sport Beach.

29:30How are you doing? I'm doing great. Great. You were up on stage earlier, weren't you? Yes. What was the session about? It was about how we're building what we feel is going to be the next billion-dollar franchise and league in sports. Yes. So, Unrivaled, that's three-on-three, all-female, short-format, broadcast specialist, digital-first, explosion of a new sports property. Landed your first year, this year just gone. That's right. amazing figures, a lot of hype, a lot of momentum. You must be stoked, right? You must be really pleased with how it's gone. We are. I think our thesis came true, which is obviously important with any new startup and league that you launch.

30:12But I think it was about, we knew that the best players in the world were going to bring a lot of interest. And by leading with the stars of women's basketball in a different format, it gave us a lot of room to succeed. Yeah, okay. And what are you doing here in Cannes? Obviously talking on stage, but what do you want to get out of the week? Apart from maybe a talent. Yeah, well, I think it's important for us to continue to have presence as we try to build awareness and growth of our league, connect with new audience, connect with new partners potentially. So I think it's just an important touch point that we weren't able to do last year as we were building, but we were able to take some time out and actually be here and be present.

30:46Yeah. What surprised you the most about this first year of operation? Or challenged you the most? What challenged us is we had to stand up a league and also six teams that are all under the league umbrella. You had to build different identities. You have to orchestrate the teams. You have to figure out how those teams can keep the product at a high level so that they're evenly split. Those are all the challenges for the focus on the product that you have to deliver. And then on the flip side, it's how do you pull fans in without city affiliations? We didn't have any city affiliations with our teams.

31:15We're based on Miami. But we had clubs. So we had Lunar Owls Club, the Vinyl Basketball Club, no cities attached. But what it led to is people choosing their favorite player and following them kind of from start to end. Yeah. and a personal highlight of what you guys have done is basically put on a sports show in a broadcast studio. Forget the idea of a stadium, let's make it broadcast first. Everyone can go in there. It's really innovative and obviously you're onto something there. Whilst you've been out here, I appreciate it's only been two days, but who have you seen, what have you heard, anything that's really sort of pricked your ears up, anything of interest?

32:00Well, I think it's, you always try to learn and pick from things that are working. You know, when we first launched, it was looking at everything across the ecosystem from, you know, the lacrosse league with Paul Rabel to overtime elite to WNBA. Like you have to pull from all these collectives that are working and try to pick and choose what you want to kind of follow. And then what, which of that blueprint do you want to iterate as your own? Yeah. So I think for us, we have to continue to try to educate ourselves, even though we had a great year one we still have a lot of room to grow and learn and I think we just kind of come in with that mindset and that's always been it so it's not been a singular thing it's just even the NHL who's on who's been around for decades right like I'm sure there's something we can learn from them yeah so that's kind of how we approach and final question is this your first is this your first can this is so if you were going to sort of go back in time and give yourself a tip for can before coming out here, what one tip would you give yourself?

32:57Bring more sunscreen. It's hot. It's hot, man. Alex Buzell, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay, Deirdre Lester, CEO of Teton Ridge. Thanks for having me at your table here at Sport Beach. You're welcome. I looked for you for about five minutes before I found you, and I was expecting you to be wearing a cowboy hat, Deirdre. so yeah tomorrow I'll bring it tomorrow disappointment first off um what is Teton Ridge tell us quickly what is it sure Teton Ridge is a western sports media and entertainment company um we celebrate all things western meaning Americana American lifestyle western sport predominantly rodeo we talked a little bit about PBR um so really all things western yeah um and And it strikes me that cowboy culture in Americana is really having a moment, an extended moment, both within the US and also internationally.

34:05For those of you involved in the kind of marketing and commercialization of it, how are you sort of capitalizing on that momentum? Sure. Well, first and foremost, I agree with you that there's a moment happening, but I like to describe it as more of a movement because I don't think it's fleeting. I think it's always been there and there's an increasing attention on Americana, Western lifestyle, a simpler life, being outside. Sort of was reignited during the pandemic, but for a lot of people it's always been there. And I love hearing that it's expanding now to international markets, particularly like you know what we talked about the UK and Europe I think that you know that speaks volumes to how much of a movement this really is there's also a big crossover into the country music which is also having a massive movement right now I mean Lainey Wilson who were actually in production on a docuseries docu follow with Lainey she's selling out her tour in Europe right now and like she already did her whole American tour so you know you just see this like crossover happening between the music side of things, the Western lifestyle and sports side of things, and it's currently the zeitgeist.

35:25Yeah. I do think there's an element of, and I appreciate that to hardcore sort of country and Western folks, Beyonce isn't necessarily going to be their cup of tea music-wise, but Beyonce doing a Western album is a huge moment internationally for the idea of cowboy. Yeah, I mean, I think it's good for the industry. You know, she just came through New York And so I didn't personally go, but a lot of people I know did. And it's definitely a different audience. And, you know, if they want to come in and really embrace Western sports and culture and lifestyle, great. If not, if that's more of a moment, there's other artists like that, too.