SBJ On Stage Revisited: Bob Iger & Jimmy Pitaro with New Context and Commentary

0:00I think technology is a sports fan's heaven in many respects. Agreed. Because, one, what it offers in terms of the ability to watch things, what it offers ESPN in terms of the ability to present things, as a for instance. And I think we're now entering a new age where the technology side of our business has actually risen to a level that is almost equal to the, I'll call it the entertainment side, but probably an unbelievable partner to entertainment more so than ever before. And that, to me, that's very exciting. Welcome to SBJ On Stage. I'm Dan Kaufman. In this episode, we reissue the first episode we did back in May 2025.

0:44It's a recording of a conversation at our CAA World Congress of Sports in Nashville in April 2025 between Bob Iger, at the time the CEO of Disney, and Jimmy Pataro, chairman of ESPN. And joining me to analyze and discuss the conversation between Iger and Pataro, now nearly a year and a half later, is Jordy Leeser, CEO and co-founder of Jump. Jordy, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Jordy, set the scene for us. You and I were there, shoulder to shoulder, standing in the back of the room when this conversation happened in Nashville. I remember every eye and every ear directed at the stage and like not a peep out of the audience except laughter, enjoyment, all the above.

1:25Take us back to what you remember from that time, what you found when you rewatched it and what the audience should be looking out for as they watch. Yeah, it was an incredible conversation with two guys that obviously know each other super well, have worked with each other forever. I have a ton of mutual respect and looking back on it and thinking about it now, just the conversation had this intensity of of the history and the passion of the intersection of the entertainment world and the technology world and you know fast forward today uh and to everything that espn has since launched and what's what's going on in the world of sports and technology it's no wonder why he credited a lot of that back to walt disney himself who recognized uh the importance of that of that connection between entertainment and technology yeah i'll add a few other things for the audience to look out for uh Iger talks about his decision to purchase Angel City FC obviously relevant in light of his uh the news about his potential purchase likely purchase of the Lakers um and then also Jimmy Pataro mentions the ESPN direct-to-consumer product he mentioned it I also just found like the leadership qualities of these two guys are just off the charts like their composure and their ability to to maintain an audience was incredible And then finally, Bob Iger is funny.

2:41And stay till the end, because at the end, there's just a really great segment where he gets the entire audience laughing. So thank you, Jordy. Stay tuned after listening to Bob Iger and Jimmy Pataro for more discussion with Jordy and me. But for now, let's go on stage. The first time you and I sat together for an interview was about 15 years ago in your living room in California. and we were talking about me potentially leaving Yahoo and joining the Walt Disney Company and you were grilling me on all things digital. And so now the shoe is on the other foot today. But this is not your first time.

3:17That was a good day for both of us. It was a better day for me, I will tell you that. But this is not your first time on this stage. About 10 years ago, Abe sat right here and interviewed you. and you made some pretty amazing predictions at that time. Do you recall what those were? I recall some of them, but what I recall the most is that the head of investor relations for Disney came up to me afterward and said, you just trashed our stock. I must have had some dire predictions. I think what I said at the time was 2015, and I was asked then about the expanded basic multi-channel bundle, which had gone, I think, at that point from about 100 million to about 70 million subscribers.

4:04And I predicted that it was going to continue to fall, that there would still be people left in our country, in the world, that would be interested in getting television that way, but fewer and fewer of them. I think I predicted that some people would want 20 channels. Some people might want just sports. Some people might not want sports. And I basically was, I think, predicting a future that was considered not necessarily healthy for ESPN. But I did it because I was convinced that given ESPN's brand strength, its commitment to quality, both in terms of sports that it licensed and how it covered those sports, that they would survive the disruptive forces of media at that time.

4:50And I think we sit here today, and we certainly both know that the disruptive forces have probably caused more disruption and quicker than we could have predicted back then. But I'm also confident that ESPN's ability to weather the storm and make it through this transition, and we'll certainly see in the coming months when you launch your direct-to-consumer product, I think will prove that I was right when I said that. Yeah, and we'll talk more about that in a second. But let's go back to you. So Lara hit on this. I'm assuming everyone in this room knows you as the CEO of the Walt Disney Company for the past two decades, but many people probably heard for the first time that you spent years working.

5:35Well, first off, you're a huge sports fan. Like, we speak, text seven days a week more so about what's happening with the Knicks and the Yankees than we do about business, or maybe it's 50-50, I don't know. but you're a huge sports fan, but you spent so many years working in sports. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. I started at ABC in 1974, over 50 years ago, which is kind of hard to believe. And soon after, I was fortunate to have worked on a, I was a production assistant on a live Frank Sinatra concert that ABC was covering from Madison Square Garden. And it was produced by a guy named Rune Arledge, who was head of ABC Sports.

6:15And when it finished, the folks at ABC Sports who worked on it asked me whether I'd be interested in working for them. And as it turns out, I had a testy relationship with a boss I was working for back then, mostly because I was trying to figure out how to turn him in for basically being corrupt. And he called me into his office when he heard that I was, quote-unquote, spreading rumors about him, and he said that I was unpromotable. And I only wished that he had lived long enough to see that he was wrong. but I then called the ABC Sports folks and I said I'm in trouble where I am are you really serious about taking me I went to work for ABC Sports I think it was 1975 and I stayed there through the Calgary Olympics which Lara mentioned and it's interesting I was thinking about this recently in many ways sports were the same in the sense that a huge fan base and commanded decent ratings but so much has also changed I think mostly for the good, but I was also looking at what sports looked like in 1975, 1976.

7:20First of all, the NBA had a team called the Bullets. We know baseball had a team called the Indians. The NFL had a team called the Redskins. Yes. By the way, the NHL had a team called the Barons. I didn't even remember that. I don't remember that. Bruce Jenner was still Bruce Jenner, by the way. And interestingly enough, I'm just thinking of all the changes, having seen Greg Senke earlier. there, the NCAA still had total command of NCAA college football to the extent that they were a bit of a monopoly. There were conferences, but they were far less important to us than they are today. It's just interesting to see that transition.

7:57But again, sports generated excitement. There's no other program on today or then that have the convening power of live sports that galvanize society in ways and get people together to enjoy or watch something all at once. And so while many things have changed, including the names of a lot of teams, a lot is the same and for good reason. So let's bring that back to Disney. So yes, incredible momentum around sports in general. Lara mentioned this. Can you talk about your vision behind sports and ESPN at the Walt Disney Company and the future of the Walt Disney Company? and what role ESPN plays in that future?

8:40Look, at its heart, the Walt Disney Company is an entertainment company. We're in the news business, of course, but 95 % of what we do is entertain people around the world. And when you think about it, what we were just talking about, is nothing as entertaining as sports. In fact, at ABC Sports, when I worked on a show called Wide World of Sports, we talked about, obviously, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition, we would call it. And it is incredibly entertaining, not just because it's fun to watch, but it's so unpredictable. It can be. And there's something for everybody in it, really.

9:22It could be one sport versus another, or one team versus another. But I focused on this a lot when I came back, because I had to really assess the asset mix of the company and in a new world, what would we be best keeping and should we actually consider divesting anything? And it was very, very clear to me from the start that sports and Disney were in so many ways perfect for one another, again, because the mission is to entertain. Yep. And so it's extremely valuable and particularly in this disrupted world. And of course, as we migrate to more direct-to-consumer means of basically bringing our entertainment to people, sports is really critical in that regard and differentiating.

10:07Correct. Sports, incredibly important to the Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Company is incredibly important to sports and to ESPN. So today, as we sit here right now, I think it's fair to say our, well, the foundation of ESPN is live events, live games, and our rights portfolio has never been better. Say that to Stephen A. Smith, by the way. Yeah. He knows I feel that way, but that's a good point. Duly noted. As we sit here right now, we're in really good shape. And that's in large part because of our amazing assets at the Walt Disney Company. So when we sit down, we bring ABC Broadcast, Hulu, Disney +, ESPN +, and we bring this amazing IP like Toy Story and The Simpsons on the NFL side.

10:55Can you speak a little bit about, from your perspective, why it is that the leagues and the rights holders so value our platforms and our brands? Well, obviously, I don't want to speak for them, but having spoken with many of them over the years, I know how important exposure is, distribution, access to consumers, and that doesn't come cheaply and it doesn't come easily. It's not always about if you build it, they will come. you have to build it and you have to figure out a means of delivering it to consumers that are both very pro-consumer and pro-sports, meaning the organization, and obviously pro the business that is covering those sports.

11:37And I think we offer, in part because of the range of product that we offer, the resources that we have, because we are a company that is on very solid footing from an economic perspective, the energy that we create just in terms of our support of and our excitement about being in the entertainment sports business. I think also we're a company that, and I give Walt Disney himself credit for this, that believed that the intersection between entertainment and technology was critical and valuable. And we've always been not necessarily a technology-first company, because we're an entertainment-first company, but we're a company that has always embraced technology and viewed it as a means of improving the quality of what we make, improving our distribution capabilities, and improving the efficiency or the finances of the company.

12:31And I actually think, and it's something we should probably talk about here, I think technology is a sports fan's heaven in many respects. Agreed. because of one, what it offers in terms of the ability to watch things, what it offers ESPN in terms of the ability to present things, for instance. And I think we're now entering a new age where the technology side of our business has actually risen to a level that is almost equal to the, I'll call it the entertainment side, but probably an unbelievable partner to entertainment, more so than ever before. And to me, that's very exciting. And also, I think the ability to package which we've done our entertainment offerings with our sports offerings, whether we were dealing with multi-channel operators or whether we're dealing with consumers that want to buy streaming services, I think has real value both for us as distributors and also for consumers.

13:34And in this new age of digital entertainment, I think that will serve us very well. It already is, and we're about to see when we launch your product how much more that will benefit us. I want to talk more about the product and the tech in a second, but just want to bounce to another topic that Lara mentioned. And I know there's some Angel City executives. I saw Julie in the gym this morning, bright and early. Let's talk about your motivation for buying the team with your wife, Willow. By the way, it's interesting because you were talking about my sports background, but I married a woman who worked for the NBA and was a host of NBA Inside Stuff for seven or eight years.

14:16She finally gave it up when she became pregnant with our son, Max, who's here, who happens to work for CAA Sports. Sorry to embarrass you, Max. And our other son is graduating from the University of Texas in a few weeks. What does he want to be? A sports broadcaster, which is kind of interesting. And he's quite good. Willow, well, thank you. Willow's convinced that we've got something, some DNA going on in our family. So there's a love of sports in our family. As it turns out, Willow really was the person behind the decision to acquire the controlling stake in Angel City. She met Julie along the way, Julie Ehrman, who was the founder and visionary behind the creation of the team and deserves all the credit for, in a very short period of time, breaking through the clutter of events and sports in Los Angeles and in the country in many ways and creating not just a brand but a value-based business that was something that I know Willow was just in awe of.

15:12And she would come home and talk to me constantly about Angel City, this and Angel City, that. We weren't really soccer fans, interestingly enough. And she finally convinced me to go to a game, and I saw firsthand what had been created. And then about the same time, there was the Caitlin Clark phenomenon, which is interesting because we know that Caitlin had many predecessors in women's basketball that were extraordinary in terms of their athletic prowess. But what Caitlin did, I think, was open up so many more people's eyes to the quality of women's sports, to the sheer athletic ability of women, and to the fact that they should and could be compared almost equally with men's sports.

15:51And as that was rising, and then Willow eventually came home and said, hey, the Angel City is basically looking to, reorganize its cap table, sort of, and to bring in a controlling shareholder that could be a benefit to the organization. And she said, what do you think? And it was kind of like that. I said, go for it. Yeah. You know, do it. And so we have. This is actually called our first full season. And it's really, it's been a joy. It's not without challenge, of course. Any business has that today. But the potential is enormous. This is a team and a league and a sport that's still in many respects nascent.

16:29although a lot has been accomplished. And if you look at the rise of women's sports, the rise of sports in general, Los Angeles, which, you know, coming up between the World Cup and the Olympics, I mean, Los Angeles is a great sports town. And our Super Bowl. And the Super Bowl, exactly, in 2027. Yep. So, and we play in a fantastic stadium, and it's been, I must say, it's been exhilarating. Now, I said to Julie earlier, now I'm suddenly a soccer fan, but also as an owner of the team, you get much more invested in it, so I've got anxiety issues already. Yeah, I got it. Owner anxiety. I saw that firsthand.

17:07I attended a game in LA with Bob last month, and I experienced some of that anxiety. But the energy... I can't sit down during games, and I have bad knees. I noticed. The energy in that stadium was incredible. It's a great experience. It's a great experience. All right, so back to ESPN. You know this. Most people, I think, know this. Our mission is to serve the sports fan. we have very clear business priorities. We talk about direct-to-consumer. We talk about quality storytelling, which I know is near and dear to your heart, innovation. But we pretty much always lead our list of priorities with audience expansion.

17:44And that means many things. But for me, first and foremost is speaking to attracting a younger demographic like Gen Alpha. Can you speak a little bit about why, and I know you and I are aligned on this, can you speak a little bit about why you think this is so critical for us? Interesting. I think I said 10 years ago when I appeared at this conference that major sports needed to be more in tune with younger audiences. And I was actually thinking at the time about the pace of games and that young audiences wouldn't be as tolerant about length and slowness. And some leagues have, I think, done a pretty good job of addressing that.

18:22I think that dynamic is even more acute today. Younger audiences today are gravitating to new platforms. One of the most successful and powerful is YouTube for instance. We know all about TikTok. We read about them constantly. Other social media, they like bite-sized entertainment, whether it's sports. We see what happens with ESPN whose presence on those platforms is enormous. Something, by the way, that you and I, I think initially were a little concerned about because we thought we were siphoning off audience to watch us, but on another platform, which didn't accrue in terms of its benefits to us as much as our own platform.

19:03And that's been an interesting balance. But I think it's a reality and it's something that we have to address. And one of the things I love about the product to come that you're developing is that we will build into that elements that will be tailor-made for young generations of sports fans. I also think they like multi-screen experiences. It's interesting because I was describing this to someone the other day. What linear cable and satellite was, was obviously a collection of channels. The problem was you couldn't really ever see them on one screen. And what streaming is, it's a collection in a way of all the programs those channels had, but in a way on one screen.

19:45Particularly when you get into obviously use of algorithms and customization and personalization. And for the young fan to be able to watch not one sport, but maybe multiple sports at a time, multiple camera angles of sports, which I think there's value to a director showing an audience what's most important and what they might want to watch. But young audiences want a little bit more control, and technology gives them a little bit more authority to exercise the control. and I think streaming and the technology behind it will enable that. And that's another way, I think, to engage more with young people.

20:20There's also a whole other element, which is, we'll call it the viral effect or the marketing effect, that both use of data and algorithms, but also just the marketing effect of a platform in general where there's an omnipresence to it, always on, and will be important and critical for sports to take advantage of. So I want to talk in a second about what's coming in terms of streaming and direct-to-consumer, both Disney and ESPN. But can we just spend a minute talking about how we got here? So you have prioritized digital streaming for many years, going back to when we launched ESPN Plus in April of 2018.

21:04But there were activities like BamTech that even predated that launch. Can you talk about all the steps that we've taken, the investments that we've made that have gotten us to where we are and set us up for this future? Well, it started with us deciding to license our movies to Netflix. Yep. And they were so new at the time that I think we wanted a bank letter of credit from them because we didn't trust that the license agreement that we'd enter into with them would ultimately be fulfillable by them. I remember. From an economic perspective. But we also did. and I think this was 2014, we built into that agreement an ability to get out of the deal if we went into streaming.

21:44Everybody thought I was crazy. Why would we ever go into streaming? But we ended up invoking that right and deciding to go into streaming, and I think we announced that first for ESPN, but I think 2015, 16, I don't remember the exact same thing. It was around, we launched in 18, but we announced it long before that. But what we didn't have was we didn't have the technology. We knew and we also needed to accrue rights because we had rights to obviously the linear services. And I think we started then to figure out what it is we could put on if we had a streaming service. And then we sent out an executive at Disney named Kevin Mayer who had been behind for me the acquisitions that Lara mentioned earlier.

22:26And I said, find us a technology solution. One option was to build. And I said, how long? He said, five years. I said, how much money? He said, half a billion dollars. I said, too expensive, too long. Come up with another solution. Just by happenstance, baseball, which did a really good job creating a digital experience initially on, I think it was on the Apple iPhone. Yep. They started something called BamTech, and we went to them and I think negotiated a minority stake with a path to control and use of their technology platform, but it gave us a look under their hood to see whether their technology platform was robust enough to ultimately handle the kind of volume we thought we'd create if we were to use it.

23:12And it turned out to be the case. We developed ESPN+. We started developing Disney+. We launched Disney +, in November of 2019, using BAMTECH as the technology. We signed up 10 million subscribers in one day, 24 hours. What was crazy is our plan had us getting to$4 million to$5 million in a year. We had$10 million a day. We were giddy with success. But we also knew, although we didn't appreciate it as much, that we would need a lot more than that. So we've spent time and money, and we continue to now, building out the technology platform that we need to compete on a much higher level with Netflix.

23:56And your approach from day one has been so thoughtful. It's really been crawl, walk, run. And so going back to April of 2018, when we launched ESPN +, you all know this, ESPN +, was not all of ESPN. In fact, it's a very narrow sliver of our live sports content. But in part, we did it that way to ease into it on the sports side, but also to make sure that we could handle this audience at scale on a direct-to-consumer platform, getting ready for the Disney Plus launch a year and a half later. It all worked. And look, we also, look, we have good news, good news and bad news to being in the legacy business, which is distributing through cable and satellite platforms.

24:42The good news is that it's still a business that generates a lot of revenue, actually profitability as well, and a lot of audience. And it's good for us and good for advertisers as well. the problem is that that platform as we said earlier doesn't work for everybody today, fewer and fewer particularly young people and the difficulty when you're in a legacy business and you have to innovate because that's the way the world is going is to figure out how to balance both because on one hand you're competing with yourself when you do that but on the other hand if you don't do it it's going to be done to you so I've always been a proponent of if you're going to be disrupted, disrupt yourself.

25:28And that's what we've done, but we know politically that's really difficult, really difficult, because you've got a lot of partners who don't want that to happen. And it's overcoming basically that resistance and also, I don't want to say cracking the whip because that's not quite what it is, but telling an organization who is deeply involved with keeping the legacy platform alive, that they can no longer worry about that as much and that they have to get comfortable disrupting too. By the way, it even results in changing compensation packages. You're compensated based on the economics of your traditional business.

26:08So if you disrupt that, how is that compensation going to change? You're, in effect, reducing your own compensation. So we had to do that as well, incentivize people at the company. It was one of my early lessons when we started getting into the streaming business, which is to figure out how people would be incentivized in terms of their own pocketbooks to be disruptors. And going back to my point about your thoughtfulness and easing into this on the sports side, we did not go too fast in terms of pulling so much content off of that traditional ecosystem such that it collapsed. Now, fast forward to today, and we all know we're going to be doing exactly that, but at the same time, we're staying invested in that traditional ecosystem.

26:56Again, to my point, serve the sports fan. If you want to access ESPN on a traditional platform, we're going to be there, but if you want to buy us direct, we're going to be there as well. We'll talk about that. So that's how we got to where we are today. Appreciate that. Can you talk a little bit about where we're going, both Disney and ESPN, and I'm happy to chime in on the ESPN. By the way, what I love about that, what you just described, is that we are doing this, meaning staying in the traditional side of the business, for sports fans. You can argue we're not really doing it for ourselves.

27:34There's value, as I said earlier, but it's much more driven by serving the sports fan that doesn't want to leave the bundle, that is going to stay there, either because it's comfortable for them, there's a habit, or they're just not interested in becoming streaming customers. And so I like the fact that we remain loyal to them. They can still watch their ESPN, 1, 2, 3, 4, and whatever, all the way to the Ocho, if that ever exists. By the same token, if we're not fishing where the younger fish are, we ultimately lose our business. And so leaning heavily now into the digital space where we know a lot more people are going is critical to serving those fans.

28:22It's critical to us business-wise. And I love, and you've been a real, I'll call it fan loyalist, which in your job is probably the most important thing for you to do. If you're not serving that sports fan, then what are you? And I know you're also serving your advertisers and obviously all the sports organizations that you do business with, but it starts with the fan. So how are you feeling about what's on the roadmap and what's coming for Disney and ESPN in the streaming world? Well, I'll let you answer the question on ESPN. What we've been doing is basically it's been two years since I've been back.

29:00I've been spending a lot of time and money and hiring critical talent to really shore up the technology side of our business. We know we have great content, but we do not have nearly the kind of technology that we need to serve fans better, but also serve us better, serve advertisers to lower churn, to obviously provide more customization and personalization, all of that. So that's been our priority. During this period of time, we've also managed to convert a business that was losing$4 billion the year before I came back to a business that's going to make over$1 billion this year. So we've had a$5 billion turnaround in two years.

29:42Amazing. Which is really important when it comes to investing in the future, including investing to take ESPN in the digital direction. So who better than you to give these people a status report on what you're up to? Yeah, so you and I spent a ton of time talking about this. And I think it starts with simplicity. We want to be clear in terms of what we're doing and what our messaging is. We start with serving the sports fan, but there are essentially two things that are happening this fall. The first is we will be making our channels, our content available direct to consumer for the first time.

30:20We've never done that before, and we're pretty excited about it. The second is we're going to be enhancing the current ESPN app. We are not launching a new app. There's some rumblings out there that there's a new flagship app. By the way, whatever we do is not going to be called Flagship. Flagship was an internal code name that I created in some random conference room in Bristol, Connecticut a couple of years ago. But whatever we do will not be called Flagship. But two things. Go direct to consumer this fall and significantly enhance the ESPN app with more personalization, more customization, fantasy integration, betting integration.

31:03We're going to launch a personalized sports center, more stats integration. We're pretty excited about it. We have all hands on deck on the product and tech side to get this right. Ultimately, full circle here, we're somewhat agnostic in terms of how you access ESPN. If you're my dad and you're very happy in that traditional ecosystem through DirecTV or Cox or Charter, great. If you want to buy us direct, we'll be there too. Ultimately, we want to drive everyone, all sports fans, to this enhanced ESPN app. And so we'll launch that this fall, and we are very excited about it. Jimmy's struggling not to give the name away, of course.

31:48So we have the name. We have the launch date. We have the standalone price. We will bundle with Disney Plus and Hulu. and we are working on the pricing of that bundled experience. But yes, we are very excited. Okay, I'm running out of time here. It is a very, it's not only necessary, but it's an extremely important and exciting time in the trajectory of ESPN. It started, I know, in 1979. This might be the biggest move since getting the full season of the NFL back in whenever that was. This could be the biggest move you're making. I think that's right. It's probably the biggest transition in our history, and it's great to have your support.

32:29And getting the SEC. We're in SEC territory. Yes. I should point that out, too. Yes, we are very grateful to Commissioner Sankey. Commissioner Sankey's here somewhere. All right, last one, and then I want to do a quick lightning round. Mentors. You've been my mentor. You've been my leader for 15 years. You've had your own mentors. Can you talk a little bit about them and lessons learned? I think almost any successful person has benefited from mentorship, and I urge everybody who works for me to do the same, to be a mentor. I was really fortunate. I worked for Rune Arledge for 10 years. He taught me an awful lot about being bold, the importance of storytelling, risk-taking, and also the relentless pursuit of perfection.

33:12Not easy to work for someone like that, but having that, basically the work ethic to not only work hard, but to pursue perfection at all times, tremendous. Tom Murphy, head of Capital Cities ABC, bought ABC in 1985, took me under his wing, promoted me ultimately out of sports to entertainment, all the way up to becoming president of the company. Just an unbelievable values-driven person who taught me that you could be good and successful at the same time, good as a person. Michael Eisner was a great mentor, too. He taught me a tremendous amount about businesses that I knew nothing about, like theme parks, for instance, which is very complex.

33:52So I was very fortunate in that regard. Okay. Quick lightning round. Go for it. So we are both huge Beatles fans and Yankees fans. So favorite Beatle and favorite Yankee of all time. Well, I grew up in the... I was born in 1951, so I grew up in the era of Mickey Mantle and ultimately Roger Maris. I know you're a Derek Jeter fan I was fortunate to have experienced that too I'd have to say Mickey Mantle but can I just do a very quick story because he was my idol I still have a signed Mickey Mantle bat in my office at home in LA I always thought if I ever have a son I'm going to name my son Mickey so I had two daughters by my prior wife Mickey didn't really fit suddenly Willow gets pregnant with a boy now I'm working for Disney if I name that I've never heard this before Max if I had named you Mickey you would be scarred for life so you should thank me that's fantastic anyway that's a true story I've never heard that before true story so by the way my dog happens to be named Jeter I guess I know alright best memory as a sports oh wait wait your favorite beetle oh I love the beetles I don't know.

35:17I'm lucky over time. I've gotten to know the two surviving Beatles well, and I can't pick a favorite. Okay. All right. Best memory as a sports fan? I've had some great ones. I was at the Miracle on Ice Lake Placid 1980 working for ABC Sports. That would have to be it. Okay. That's a good one. Although seeing Reggie Jackson hit three Rome runs against the Dodgers in the World Series in 1977, that was up there too as a Yankee fan. Top, we've never gotten you to Augusta, but I'm not leading the witness. Top of your sports bucket list. I've never been to Wimbledon, and I've never been to Augusta. So that would be it, those two.

35:59Okay. Last one. You started as a weatherman? Yeah. So favorite weather forecast as a weatherman? You don't get me started. I could probably give you the weather right here in Nashville. I think it's 72 degrees and sunny this morning. Temperatures are going to fall to the mid-50s tonight. There's a cloud cover coming in from the east. But don't worry, it's going to dissipate tomorrow morning. We're going to have clear skies and a great weekend ahead. There you go. Bob Iger. Dan Kaufman back with you. I'm joined by Jordy Leeser, CEO and co-founder of Jump. Jordy, you mentioned technology at the outset.

36:42that were you surprised by Iger's emphasis on technology during that conversation? He mentioned it a lot. It was crucial for him. He mentioned Walt Disney's emphasis on technology. Surprising, not surprising. Why? Well, no, thinking back now to his conversation there and all the work that he's done in the last many years, and then obviously now with his purchase with Josh Kushner of the Lakers, you can see that the thread of his personal life, even starting back at ABC Sports, there's this through there's this through line of his entire career that sort of merges this passion and emphasis of the value of sports and technology coming together and it strikes me as not a coincidence or a surprise at all as the relationship has obviously evolved with Josh and and Bob Iger Josh Kushner and Bob Iger about the two coming together to what's the greatest merger in the history of sports and technology than the LA Lakers, the Showtime Lakers, and Josh Kushner with everything that he's doing with Thrive and his investments in the world of VC and technology.

37:45So if you look back at the history, it just seems like a very obvious through line going all the way back 30 years in Iger's career. Yeah, there were some great quotes that Iger had in addition to the technology and the importance of technology, but also just about sports in general. And here are some of them that just stood out to me. You know, one, he says there's no other program on today or then. He was talking about the 70s to now. No other program on today or then that has the convening power of live sports that galvanize society in ways that get people together to enjoy or watch something all at once.

38:15He said there's nothing as entertaining as sports. And he said sports are extremely valuable, particularly in this disrupted world. And of course, as we migrate to more direct to consumer means of bringing our entertainment to people, sports is critical in that regard and differentiating. differentiating. Iger says to Patara at one point that the launch of ESPN's direct-to-consumer will be the biggest thing ESPN has done in over 40 years. Too soon to tell. Was he right? What are your thoughts there, Jordy? Yeah, I mean, I'd push it even further to say that the most important thing is that it's the direct-to-consumer.

38:49That's the profound change is going direct and not just knowing that you have an audience or knowing the audience. It's knowing the individual fan himself or herself. And so the streaming part of it is just the mechanism. It's just the distribution, but it's this broader narrative of going direct, which is actually happening, I would say wholesale across the sports industry. You used to think about all the intermediaries that have sat between a sports team or a league and the fan, and those things are all getting increasingly eliminated or removed or pushed aside in lieu of the team, the league, you know, the rights holder themselves trying to have a better understanding of the individual fan to make it ultimately a better experience for the fan.

39:33You're an entrepreneur, one of the most talented I've met, honestly. And Iger says in the context of speaking about a legacy player and having to like adapt or innovate, he says that if you're going to disrupt, be disruptive, disrupt yourself. What was your reaction to that? What was your take on it? Well, it's funny. I mean, I live in Los Angeles. And so as a person who's definitely going to be going to Lakers games, that's hopefully under the ownership of Bob Iger and Josh Kushner. All I can think about when I hear that is what's going to happen with the Lakers. I mean, this is a storied, history franchise.

40:07It's an impossible ticket in Los Angeles. And all of a sudden, You have this legacy, this heritage, which fits exactly under Josh Kushner's Thrive Eternal fund structure, which is supposed to be the anti-AI bet. Yet at the same time, they're perfectly meshed to say, hey, we're not just going to do things the old way. Like we're not going to be out innovated by somebody else or coming in or another club. Like what are they going to do with the Lakers? And so how are they going to bring technology, innovation, yet keep the heritage and what's great about what's made the Lakers such a great brand for so many decades?

40:44So I'm just I'm really excited about what the combination can bring with with the entertainment background, with the technology background. And then, of course, he mentioned his wife, obviously, Willow Bay owning Angel City FC. So just that you can't get much closer to being a passionate sports fan in Los Angeles than the two of them owning those two franchises. It was incredible to see Iger and Patara on the same stage. Really a treat. I'm curious from your perspective, you know, these are two people who arguably are among the most successful sports and entertainment executives over the past 30 to 40 years.

41:18What qualities do you see in them that you think has that you see in other leaders that has allowed them to achieve this level of success? I think it's vision, it's focus on people and talent, and it's getting to where the puck is going. You have to be able to be a very good and clear communicator. And it's very obvious and very clear how great of a communicator both of those guys are, both together and individually. And that's what's required to inspire, to mobilize, to get people moving in a direction. And you have to have the vision that people, it resonates, there's to be logic to it, right?

41:54And then when he talks about talent, that was one of the things that Iger talked about coming back. He needed to kind of rethink talent. Talent is everything. Like that's how the world and innovation is created. It's people with ideas that turn things into action. And so there's an appreciation for having the best people in the best roles. And then, yeah, making sure that you are intently focused on technology. I just don't think you can be a leader today and be able to execute at all well if you're not focused on how fast the world is changing in technology. And it is changing very, very, very fast, faster today than it was last year when the two of them recorded that.

42:30One overarching lesson, if you have to pick one, one overarching lesson you're taking away from the conversation. I would say, you know, going big. Like those guys are not sitting there trying to figure out, you know, how to incrementally improve things. It's very clear. And Iger didn't come back to sort of, you know, sort of marginally improve things. I mean, the two of them are thinking very big. They're thinking big picture, you know, standing still is falling behind in this world for sure in sports and technology. And as you think about those two things. So the big takeaway for me was, yeah, OK, going direct and rethinking the entire ESPN proposition as a direct proposition, as opposed to through intermediaries, was just the beginning.

43:12It's probably instead of it being the best move of of the last 40 years is probably the last move of that era. and the first move of this new era that everybody is, and of course, that's what we do at Jump. Everything is about how do we go direct and how do we think about what the next chapter and the evolution of this industry is. So that was my big takeaway. Thanks for listening to this episode of On Stage. Thank you to Jordi Leeser for joining me. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with colleagues. What do you think about the discussion between Bob Iger and Jimmy Pataro, especially in light of current events, both Iger's purchase of the Lakers and the one-year anniversary of ESPN's launch of its direct-to-consumer product.

43:50Send me a note at dkoffman at sportsbusinessjournal.com. We'll be back in two weeks with another conversation from the stage featuring leaders shaping the future of sports business. Until next time, stay tuned and stay ahead. This is On Stage.