The IPL at another turning point as RCB is sold; engineering atmosphere at sports events; and celebrating the crowds at LIV

0:04James Emmett:Hello and welcome to Worth Knowing, the sports industry podcast from Leaders, where we talk about what's worth knowing in the business of sport this week. I'm Leaders Editorial Director James Emmett.

0:15David Cushnan:And I'm David Cushnan, Content Director. On the show this week, stoking atmosphere, then selling souvenirs, the unusual world of sports entrepreneur DJ Ski.

0:25James Emmett:The IPL returns for 19th edition and defending champions RCB are sold.

0:31David Cushnan:And is Live Golf finding its fan-friendly niche? This is Leaders Worth Knowing.

0:39James Emmett:Hello, David. You are remote. Are you over there in Atlanta? I think I can see Atlanta there in the background. James, you're looking at a small bit of Atlanta in the background.

0:47David Cushnan:Yes, I'm here in Georgia, in the great southeast of the United States, and here for a busy couple of days at our Business of Soccer conference, Business of Soccer event that we're running with Sports Business Journal and Major League Soccer and CONCACAF and US Soccer and a host, hundreds and hundreds of soccer slash football luminaries as well.

1:10James Emmett:We're recording this. It's slightly inopportune timing because... But nothing's happened. Nothing's happened. No, nothing. Nothing's happened. You're in prep time. Can give you a big lowdown on the prep if you want. No, thank you. Conference coming up over the next couple of days and we'll no doubt get the debriefs and the intel from that event in the days following. You're there with all sorts of recording devices and we'll work out whether you can work out how to use them over the coming days. You've not been to Atlanta before, have you? This is another Olympic city ticked off your list.

1:43David Cushnan:Yes.

1:44James Emmett:No and yes or yes and yes. You have been to Atlanta before.

1:48David Cushnan:No, I haven't been to Atlanta. And yes, you are correct. Another Olympic city ticked off. In fact, the event is at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which people who know Atlanta will know is a stone's throw from State Farm Arena, the home of the NBA's Hawks, which itself is a stone's throw from the enormous cavernous Congress Center, which is a stone's throw from Centennial Park, the centerpiece of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. 30 years ago, James, since Atlanta hosted the Olympics, the centennial Olympic Games. And the park is full of Olympic flags, Olympic memorabilia.

2:25James Emmett:No, I think that's actually one of the best Olympics, I think, in the 96.

2:28David Cushnan:Well, one of the best Olympics that I've certainly watched as an impressionable youngster who loved the Olympics. I think derided by some at the time as a very over-commercialized Olympics, which is something, I guess, to be borne in mind as LA prepares to become the next American city to host the summer games. But the park is great and by all accounts was built in an area that wasn't a particularly appetizing part of Atlanta previously, but was really the starting point for everything that has followed. And I know you've been to Mercedes-Benz Stadium where the Falcons play, of course, and Atlanta United play.

3:06David Cushnan:Arthur Blank's dream project. Arthur Blank, one of the speakers at Business for Soccer over the next couple of days. And I was somewhat taken aback to find out yesterday as we were having a look around that stadium is 10 years old next year. So it's still, in my mind, feels like one of the newer NFL stadiums, and I suppose it is. But yeah, it's approaching a big birthday.

3:30James Emmett:Do you know what? Time, time, Dave. Dot, dot, dot. It's just time. It's just time. Yes, I'm recalling my trip to Atlanta now. And I urge you to look out for something that they're very proud of at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which is the Southern hospitality. So they're all trained in how to be good hosts, but there is something that they absolutely buy into this theory of Southern hospitality and embodying what that is at the Mercedes-Benz Arena. You know, all staff members from security through to kind of suite hosts and hostesses all buy into this sort of as an English person, slightly over the top hosting style.

4:09James Emmett:But it's definitely noticeable. And I urge you to look out for it, David. Quick question before we move on. Are they football fever now? We're obviously doing a couple of days of soccer flavored content at the Business of Soccer event. can you feel the pulse of the World Cup from a day and a half on the ground there?

4:28David Cushnan:No, but there's still a bit of time. If you look carefully and you know what you're looking for, you can see a little bit of branding starting to creep up, but it's certainly not the dominant branding. Very little sign of it at the airport on the way in. I was wandering around a few of the shops yesterday and certainly in some of the sort of sportswear memorabilia shops, you see a little FIFA spot, but dwarfed by any of the Atlanta teams and all of the major leagues. So a little bit of a slow burn in that regard, certainly from a branding standpoint. But there's still plenty of time, of course, before things kick off.

5:04James Emmett:We're in March Madness time, of course, now. The TVs will be dominated by that, where you are. You mentioned memorabilia, David. Shall we talk a little bit about our guest on the interview show this week, which was DJ Ski, aka Scott Keeney, the weird and wonderful world of DJ Ski. So Ski came into the studio a few weeks ago to talk ostensibly about The Realist, which is a sports memorabilia authentication service and site that he founded and runs. but he's got such an eclectic background. He is, as his name suggests, a DJ. And he started off in radio in the US. And he's actually responsible for supercharging the careers of some of the biggest stars in music and entertainment right now, including Kendrick Lamar.

6:01James Emmett:Look on his Wikipedia page, you'll find a roll call of people who he has broken into the industry. He's the first DJ, live DJ at multiple sports events. So the first DJ at an NFL game, the first DJ at a NASCAR race, the first DJ at the amazing University of Michigan stadium. And he knows a thing or two about game day experience, manipulating an atmosphere and an energy. And he's sort of moved now into this memorabilia world where he's authenticator. So the service he provides is aimed at rights holder organizations in the sports industry where the realist will authenticate match worn, match used, player worn items.

6:47James Emmett:And then if you want to go down this route, also sell and market them. He has sold everything from match worn jerseys to little bottles of snow collected from the field of play at Philadelphia Eagles game, the famous snow game. He's an entrepreneur to his core. Yes, it's a good listen. Have you listened to this one, Dave?

7:09David Cushnan:Yes, I have. It's a good, it's free flowing and wide ranging as a conversation, but Ski's career, by the sound of it, has been a little bit that way as well. But I think what Sean threw was, he seems to have a knack for spotting a moment or spotting a trend, maybe before it's a trend, or just being slightly ahead of the curve on some of these things. I thought the section around him DJing at all sorts of sports events, but being the first to really do so was fascinating. And this idea of, as you say, changing, manipulating the energy of a crowd, because it struck me that's an incredibly tricky thing to do, because the brief, I imagine, for lots of these things for a DJ, whether it's an event owner or a stadium manager, is get the crowd going, you know, get the crowd up for it, which is very straightforward as a brief, but actually ignores the sort of complexity of crowds and a crowd of 70 ,000 people are one and the same thing, but they are also makeup of an incredibly, you know, sort of different group of people, different demographics, different levels of avidity, of interest, of knowledge about what they're about to watch.

8:26David Cushnan:A lot of them are paying different prices, as we've discussed on recent podcasts as well. So there is such different expectations within your average crowd of 70 ,000 people, it must be an incredibly tricky thing to pitch correctly. I thought your point around getting the athletes on board was fascinating because if you can win them over, the athletes more than any music in the world will be the thing that energizes a crowd of supporters. And it actually struck me, and we'll come on to talk about Live Golf a little bit later, but one of the things that Live has done is injected forced live music into play.

9:03David Cushnan:You know, live golfers tee off to music now. So actually what live has done has forced a change in athlete behavior, whether they actually like it or not, but they all seem to buy into it or accept that this is the new way of doing things. And actually that's quite a rare thing where you, as a sport, as an event, you are able to sort of actively change athlete behavior. so it chimes better with what you want your product to be and what you want your fan experience to be.

9:32James Emmett:Yeah, it's interesting. And as you say, we will get to live. We'll also talk about the IPL, another sort of sports property that has an incredible emotional human backdrop to it that's so core to the product. But yeah, this idea of DJ Ski, obviously DJing at these sports events, this idea of music at sports events is similar to the idea of booze at sports events like so fundamental to so many sports events and there are lots of different strands of conversation that you can have around the concept of music at sports events where it should and shouldn't be how it should and shouldn't be what and it should and shouldn't be same with booze and i recall talking to another, I tend to interview one DJ a year in the sports space.

10:25David Cushnan:Yeah, we leave the DJs to you generally.

10:27James Emmett:I remember speaking to DJ Tony Perry, who's a UK DJ, does a lot of sports events over here and in Europe. He does a lot of the UEFA competitions. And he was talking to me about the assiduous research that he does in the lead up to big DJ events. And it's all about connecting with the players. So he scours all of their social media output to try to glean a musical palette for particular athletes that are going to be there on the field so that he knows or he's got an inkling that he could play something and that particular player is going to connect with it. And that is going to be a conduit of energy to the crowd because it's actually a very peculiar a gig doing music at a sports event.

11:13James Emmett:I think it's kind of like doing comedy at a music festival. The crowd isn't there for you. They're there for something else. And on that point, I saw a clip of a musical act who was doing something at one of the hundred cricket games, playing to ostensibly a big crowd, but the crowd is just absolutely not there for that musical performance. It's a background too, rather than feature of the game. So it's a weird gig for a musician. And you've got to find way, you've got to recognize that you're there as an atmosphere engineer rather than a kind of musical act and centerpiece yourself.

11:51David Cushnan:Yeah, I think with football, soccer in particular, it's particularly challenging because you You have, certainly in Europe and lots of parts of the world, you have this history of chants and songs and the tribal nature of football stadiums. You have the sort of call and reply, home fans, away fans. and actually when you plug either a music act or a DJ or some sort of playlist into that, you've got to, really your primary job is to stay out of the way of the sort of natural atmosphere that football fans love creating and is part of the sort of, you know, the sort of traditional match day experience.

12:38David Cushnan:I think in the US, maybe a slightly different approach. Obviously, the sports tend to be a bit more stop-start, particularly the NFL, which creates the opening for more music and more festivity around the actual sport. And I think it's going to be quite interesting, and I suspect I know which way they're going to go with this, how FIFA runs the sort of match day presentation inside stadiums for the World Cup here in Mexico, in Canada in the summer. Because you've got a largely American event, American stadiums, a lot of American fans very used to music festivities, the entertainment aspect and completely at ease with that and comfortable with that.

13:23David Cushnan:But you have all sorts of, you know, 48 bunches of international fans potentially coming into that environment who want to make their own noise, who want to, as a group, as a traveling quote army of fans, want to almost create their own entertainment and how FIFA sort of marries that up to create something that works for everybody and doesn't feel on the one hand too much entertainment, too sanitized in a way, but at the same time gives enough entertainment to create a really memorable experience for a more casual fan, I think is going to be yet another thing to watch as this World Cup plays out.

14:03James Emmett:The other thing that Ski and I talked about is obviously the collectibles market and his play in this space. The reason he was over in Europe is to talk to rights holder organizations over here about the opportunity in collectibles. And it does seem to me that at a broad level, sports organizations are into collectibles here. They would have a sticker deals with Panini, various agreements with fanatics, probably on sort of league-wide basis rather than individual clubs. But it feels to me that collectibles in the sports space, the market's really in the US and not really in Europe in a big way in terms of that secondary market.

14:45James Emmett:But he was adamant, Ski was adamant that this is a huge market for it. He estimated that Premier League teams could be looking at multiple millions of pounds in revenue just from doing a collectibles line, a memorabilia line on any given season. Just looking at a report from this month, in fact, by Market Decipher, the collectibles market worldwide set to be worth$602.4 billion this year, which is incredible, I think. Obviously, that includes lots of categories that would fall outside of the sports space. Also some luxury kind of vintage watches, the type of thing that would sell at Sotheby's included in that.

15:32James Emmett:Some other places on the internet suggesting that you would half that if you were taking out the luxury element from that. The sports bit could be worth up to 300 billion, which in itself is gigantic. But it got me thinking and the way that Ski talks about it is very similar to the way that our good friend Darren Revell talks about collectibles in terms of they're the physical manifestation of what you should be selling if you're into sort of storytelling. If you're journalistic in your approach to sort of talking about sports history, sports and entertainment history, you tell a story and at the end of it, there's a thing, a physical manifestation of that story that people can buy.

16:15James Emmett:And Ski was talking about in general, there's two types of collectibles. There are these talking points, things that people might want to buy to put on their wall display in their house, in their office, which are conversation starters. Here's some snow that I bought from the internet from the Eagles game. You're into a conversation around that, one in which you come off as a madman, probably. But then there are the more expensive items, probably the ones where there is a secondary market that evolves all the time. So Michael Jordan's Game Worn, blah, blah, blah. These things that have cultural significance well beyond the moment that they were brought into existence and their value increases usually over time and with scarcity of other things.

17:08James Emmett:And as the kind of legend around them increases, it did get me sort of thinking a storytelling aspect around collectibles. when are we going to get to that point that much sort of fabled point in the evolution of tech around sports broadcast where you're watching something and you can immediately click on everything on the screen and buy exactly that you know we've always talked about this as

17:30David Cushnan:like the next generation so you're watching an arsenal game and i want to buy the ball it's drizzling and you want to you want to bottle that yeah i'll have a cup of that rain please well we can't be too far away it makes a good deal of sense these things and this is what ski was talking about there's a real niche factor to this stuff as well though you are not looking at in a lot of cases you know these are not sort of mass market sales there is a very limited number even within a crowd of however many thousand people were at the famous snow game there is a limited number of those who would ever be interested in then buying up i don't know david i don't know

18:04James Emmett:whether it's national but you know i feel that's my mindset and thought and i would describe that's quite a British mindset. Flip that and you've got the US mindset, which is there must be plenty of people who'd be willing to pay something for some snow. Let's sell it at$40 a pop. And then you've got yourself a business, a high margin business. I don't know. Some people will sell slash buy anything.

18:28David Cushnan:Well, it's like people who buy moon dust, isn't it?

18:30James Emmett:Who buys moon dust?

18:31David Cushnan:Is it like people who buy... Luna dust or Luna rock?

18:34James Emmett:Is it like buying a star, naming it after your sweetheart?