Andy Campion’s Unrivaled Approach to Youth Sports

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0:43Welcome back to The Deal. I'm Jason Kelly alongside Alex Rodriguez. Coming up on the show, Andy Campion. He's the chairman and CEO of Unrivaled Sports. And of course, this is not to be confused with Unrivaled, the women's basketball league that we know well. Alex, this is all about youth sports, something you and I feel very passionately about, something we've been engaged in at various parts of our lives as a player you. And I guess I was a player in youth sports at some point, not at your level, but I've experienced it as a parent. What's your take on youth sports at this moment? Well, I think you said it.

1:18Unlike golf, we can't all be pros. I think all my friends, almost unanimous, all of them played Little League sports, and especially baseball, right? It is a sport that has no prejudice. It doesn't worry if you're tall, short. Everyone can play Little League Baseball, which is really great. With that said, it's an enormous business and a huge TAM. And of course, you know, it's a big TAM if you have two of the greatest investors in David Blitzer and Josh Harris entering years ago. So I'm very interested to see from Andy how he talks about leaving Nike for so many years and joining them. What was the pitch?

1:51Why did he get in? How's the business going? I have so many questions. I cannot wait to hear what he has to say. Yeah, and this is an area where, as you say, investment has poured in some of the smartest money in the world. And there's obviously a huge growth trajectory that they see. There are also real questions around accessibility. There are real questions about specialization. You know, again, as someone who spent untold amounts of money bringing one kid along into the college ranks of sports and specifically lacrosse, you know, this is an area that I'm literally and figuratively invested in.

2:32But I also do, you know, know, and I think you're a great example of the power of sports, not just because you went on to make a living at it, but also how it shaped you as a person. You know, it certainly shaped me as a kid and influenced me coming along. So super interested to hear what Andy has to say about the business of Unrivaled. Coming up, Andy Campion, the chairman and CEO of Unrivaled Sports. And Alex, you may hear some very familiar ambient noise because we understand that Andy's going to be joining us from Cooperstown All-Star Village, where there's a big tournament going on. So bats and balls flying behind him for this upcoming conversation.

3:21Welcome back to The DL. I'm Jason Kelly alongside Alex Rodriguez. So happy to have with us Andy Campion. He is the CEO and chairman of Unrivaled Sports. Andy, great to have you with us. We have both been chomping at the bit for this conversation, so I'm going to defer to my partner for the first question. Well, thank you, Jason. Andy, great to have you, and you've had an extraordinary career. I mean, going back to UCLA days when you got your undergrad degree and then you got your law degree. And, of course, spent over 10 years at Disney before you joined our company, Nike. My question is, I'm going to start in the now and then we can work backwards.

3:56David Blitzer and Josh Harris, they come to you. Take us in the room. How do they make the pitch for get a talent like you to say, hey, we have this idea. Take us in that room and why did you make that move? So I will rewind a little bit from that David Blitzer conversation. And David, I will say, is why I'm here at Unrivaled Sports. From how did it start, now why did I do it, is a much broader story. You started with our company, Nike. I'm not there. I left Nike in 2023, but I still love it. We had this amazing, unrivaled team there that was inspired to change the world through sport. and you know from 2007 when I was there to 2023 that team that I was just a part of did some pretty epic things and the company 12x etc so I still rep it I know you can see the Under Armour logo here they're an amazing partner of ours with Unrivaled Sports and we'll talk about that but I still do have some Nike footwear on and I'm always going to love it and I'm rooting for my buddies up there what happened is in 2020 my family left Portland before I left Nike and I continued to commute to Nike for about two and a half years.

5:02And I still loved it. But what I realized was like my family was moving forward and I was going backwards every week. And somebody earlier in my life said to me, it's one of the best pieces of advice I got was treat every one of your kids games as more important than a meeting with the CEO or your boss or the board or whoever, whatever stakeholder you come up, a client. And that was hard to do commuting to Portland five days a week. And I was the chief operating officer. And so at some point you realize like that's not right for anybody. I can't be the Zoom chief operating officer, but family and friends over everything, over institution.

5:38And so I decided there was a day where we had a three-day strategy session. I was a chief operating officer, but I left at lunch, flew to LA, watched my son Lou play in a water polo game. Fortunately, I did that. He scored four goals. It was his last game of that season. It was in playoffs, but one of his best games ever. I flew back that night and went to the session. And friends of mine, our chief marketing officer, were like, that's when we knew it was inevitable you were going to leave. You know, my son Miles and Lou play water polo in college together at Penn. My daughter's about to go to UCLA and play water polo.

6:08I've been to a ton of awesome sporting events, three World Cup games already. But those were the best sporting events of my life. And frankly, that's what bonded my family personally when I was young. And we didn't have much, but that was the inspiration for us as a family of sports. And it bonds my family to this day. And so privately, some friends started to realize, like, I know Andy. He loves his kids. He loves sports. He loves L.A. and Utah and otherwise. And he's not going to be there forever. It's inevitable. There's a saying like, what must be done inevitably should probably be done immediately.

6:40I did not adhere to that. Maybe I should have. It's all worked out just fine. But I kept thinking, OK, what can we do? And at one point, I locked onto this strategic idea, which was Nike. You'll get this, Alex. Nike was the leading brand in sports, but it just made shoes and clothes. And all of a sudden, athletes were looking at their shoe deals as like a 401k match. It just didn't matter to them. They might have liked the brand, but it was a tiny amount of compensation, and they were just getting put in ads maybe. I mean, we had so many athletes, some of them weren't even getting put in ads. But all of a sudden, they're building their own audience.

7:17They're getting paid a lot to play, like they should, because they're sharing in the economics in ways they hadn't in the past. They're smart. They're dedicated to sports. It's why I started the sports leadership and management program at UCLA. I had this notion that like, you know who knows sports better than anyone? Athletes. And they're getting an education. We should give them more of an education in sports business. so I agreed to stay on at Nike and start looking into how we could get into the broader ecosystem of sport business-wise and that led to some really fascinating conversations think video games content you know other products and some conversations with friends and one of them was Blitzer and he was like you know we're thinking about kind of building on this little thing we've started to use sports meanwhile that little thing if you can see it is behind me they had acquired Cooperstown All-Star Village.

8:05And he said, would you want to help out in some way? I know you're going to leave Nike at some point. And this sounds cheesy, but you know, I love the sports references. I was like, you said you sports, you had me at hello. Kobe once said to me, do epic things always. And I was like, do epic things with people you love and for people you care about. So let's figure this out. And so that and the program at UCLA became the two things where I went, that's the epic next era. So I do miss my friends at Nike and I'm rooting for them, but But this U Sports thing has been, I mean, you may know I'm also on some boards, Paramount, Starbucks, Viori, LA28.

8:40There's other stuff. But the thing that's been just really fulfilling because of the impact you can have has been U Sports. And I attribute it to Blitzer. They've been investing in sports for a couple decades, long-term permanent capital in sports. And then I met Josh. And Josh also, you know, had the same passion. And so, Andy, at that point, it's a fairly nascent idea. These are personal investments that I believe, keep me honest here, that Josh Harris and David Blitzer did, almost like a venture investment into youth sports. What was the state of it then and what was the vision and where does that sit now in terms of the growth of the Unrivaled platform?

9:19So at that time, David and Josh had acquired Cooperstown All-Star Village. Someone had brought the idea to them. They explored it with their team and decided to buy it. And then they said, well, this is pretty fascinating. And sorry to interrupt you, but so Cooperstown All-Star Village, it's a host for youth baseball tournaments, right? Yes. Is that a good program? Yeah, I would say, you know, Bob Iger at one point in a meeting to me when I was at Disney said something like, you know, Disneyland is where the Disney brand exists in its most sublime state. Cooperstown All-Star Village is where Unrivaled Sports exists in its most sublime state for sure.

9:54And I might go so far as to say where youth sports exist in its most sublime state. So I'm sitting here right now. You see all the fields behind me. The fields are themed and inspired by big league fields. We're hosting a new event and experience we just launched called the Ripken Nationals. Think there's the Little League World Series for Little League for club travel baseball at 12U. There wasn't anything like that. And we've now created it with tournaments around the country where you qualify to come here this week and compete for a national championship. Now, every week during the summer, roughly 100 teams come here.

10:30They stay in the player's village in bunks with their teammates and their coaches. No parents. I can't even get in there unless somebody sneaks me a wristband. Three meals a day. They're playing a couple games a week. It's basically camp meets baseball and baseball tournament. And we look at it as if we can inspire the kids and make it amazing, it's also memory-making for the families that are here watching. That's Cooperstown All-Star Village. So David and Josh bought that. When I joined, basically what David and Josh are so good at is private equity investors. But this isn't private equity, to your point.

11:07This is their personal passion and investment is sports. So it's in their family offices. But they're still good at, hey, we identify good ideas and good opportunities. And then we need people, you know, experience can be underrated. We need people with experience building experiences and brands, etc. And so when they talked to me, the idea was we'll name it. We named it Unrivaled Sports. At the time, it was just a word. But the inspiration was create these experiences that are inclusive and premium, competitive and developmental, unrivaled experiences that we can bring to young athletes everywhere and do it across sports.

11:44So we've done it across the country now in baseball. We have over 15 destinations. And the destinations plus controlling the programming makes it an experience. So that's kind of a little bit of how it started and where we are. We've expanded into flag football. We just had the unrivaled flag high school girls national championship at our property in Canton, Ohio. Not coincidentally next to the Hall of Fame there. We thought that's kind of a cool way to bring the inspiration of what, you know, everyone before them has done to them. We're in fast pitch softball. We're a little bit in soccer and lacrosse.

12:15You know, we know some basketball people haven't been a Nike guy and Josh and David. So, you know, dot, dot, dot. It's inevitable, but we'll be in basketball as well.

12:50sports and supporting sponsors IDA Ireland and Schneider Electric. Learn more at bloomberglive.com slash techlondon.

13:06All right. So, so Alex, question for you. Like using the player lens and also the investor lens, like how do you look at youth sports? Yeah, it's, Andy, Jason and I were talking a little bit offline before you got on. And the one common denominator is all my friends, almost 100%, played Little League baseball. Maybe they didn't play football or basketball. Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? I mean, it is America's sport. The family sport, right, where everybody comes on Saturdays and you have a lawn chair and you can, you know, all that. I always put myself in the position of Alex, myself, the kid when I was 10, where my mother had two jobs.

13:46My father left us. And if they said you got to pay$100 to play this tournament, I'm out. I got to go play basketball, football. So that's the prism I look at it from. How do you solve for an investment in the space where possibly you can discriminate against someone like me versus the social duty and also trying to run the responsibility of a profit business? How do you put your head around that? it's an awesome question and to be honest like where you start because you lived it you start with like i have empathy and i wanted i want to have positive impact you know i was born in ingwood raised in whittier so east la we were broke a couple times over but sports was the thing that bonded us so for me you know i looked at it as when david talked i was like listen i if i'm going to get into youth sports people like to deal in absolutes right they like to go well, shouldn't it all be free?

14:39Or why is it all so expensive? Or, you know, people like to go like, well, are you guys just focused on recruiting and talent scouting and pipelines and this, that, and the other? Or are you about access? And, you know, you don't build sustainable brands like Disney or Nike, but there's no like, you're often not making a choice between A or B. You're saying, I need to do A and B, and I need to create something that doesn't exist. Just like you, Alex, not every kid on the team is rich. In fact, almost every kid on the team is not. And so what we always pushed ourselves to be was let's be premium at every price point.

15:15Let's get more people playing sports and more people having the product they need to play it or the inspiration they need. So that's what we're pushing for at Unrivaled. We have some leagues like Unrivaled Flag has leagues that are literally like league programs. You're signing up for your Friday Night Flag Football League. We have Cooperstown All-Star Village, which to me, some people may say, well, that seems like very premium. I look at it as compared to what? Compared to Disneyland for a week or compared to sending your kid off to camp? Like, Alex, did you come through Cooperstown as a kid or have you been up to these experiences?

15:51I have as an adult, but not as a kid. But I went to similar experiences like Cooper's. Yeah, so our hope is that we're making it like so amazing that you go, that's the best deal. One of the concepts we have is a spring break concept. We own this thing, Rocker B Ranch in Texas. I know you're with the Rangers for a while too, right? So Texas likes baseball. It's 325 acres. We've built out 80. It's baseball meets country with lodging. And it's actually really low cost of participation to play there. and the way we sustain the business is we have all of these other things that you can choose. You're not forced into.

16:27There's philanthropy too and I think we all like to those who much is given much is expected. So that's another dimension but that's more personal than a company objective. Andy, I just want to make sure that I understand it because I approach this as Alex knows from the parents perspective. I was, this may come as a surprise to you, I was not a professional athlete But, you know, I did raise a kid who played college sports. He played lacrosse in college. And so, like, I wrote those checks. You know, I did all that stuff. And it cost a lot of money. So I do wonder, like, walk us through, if you can, just a little bit more of the mechanics of how it can be, like, truly affordable to an Alex Rodriguez.

17:10I love the question. So let me put this out there, which is the other thing we're doing at Unrivaled Sports. We start with the main thing, the experience for the kid. So here's the business model vision I have for us. And I think hopefully if we lead, it can be for youth sports. The pressure on kids in terms of cost to participate is a challenge. And it's a challenge we should try to beat. Because the more kids playing sports, the better. I mean, you can almost extrapolate that to like in the world. So we need to be focused on like, how can we, you know, manage that cost down? Well, just like in business, you go, well, it's an ecosystem.

17:53Are there things we can do to take pressure off of that? So here are our sponsors this week. Under Armour, Dick's Sporting Goods. Dick's Sporting Goods invested in a rival sports, by the way, too. Game Changer, Fanatics, Yeti. Fanatics basically is giving card books. All these kids trade pins here. Card books and cards for free to the kids. Rawlings is here with an amazing tent with colored gloves, etc. They're a sponsor. And what I realized was, yeah, at Nike, we wanted to connect with these kids authentically, not just kind of market to them, but be part of the culture of sports. But use Sports to So Fragment.

18:30It's really hard to do that. As we create this platform, think about you guys are in media now. Broadcast TV. Nobody pays for it. Everyone gets to watch this amazing content for free because the sponsors and the advertisers go, you have an audience and I'd like to connect with that audience. What we're focused on in Arrival is get those sponsors who are endemic to sport, who share our mission like dicks. And so that's one aspect. Food and beverage, lodging, the amenities, those things allow people to kind of opt into things that can fund the economics of youth sports. And then our job is not to be greedy about it, is to basically look at those economics and say, can we put them back into the fields?

19:11Like, we've got these amazing turf fields. Can we put an athlete's lounge together? We are actually working with CBS Sports because they are broadcasting the Ripken Nationals this week. That's a joint venture with us. We're putting economics and skin into the game for that. And if we think about it dynamically, you can create a business model where all the weight isn't on cost to participate. Right, right. Right. What I hear you saying is that the sponsorship and maybe some of the ancillary revenue effectively, either directly or indirectly, allows you to in some ways offset or subsidize the cost to participate.

19:51Is that a fair way of saying it? Yeah. And so those folks that are saying, like, we think we can do it in a way where, you know, we're not just marketing to kids. I was at Disney. There are plenty of rules and regulations and laws around marketing to kids. Sure. My hope is that's never even a consideration because these are folks that actually want to connect with the kids and inspire them and provide them the opportunity to have great products. Yeah.

20:35And Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels, yes. Are those still a thing? I've stepped on many of those with my children when they were young. Yeah, slavers in those are not awesome. They hurt very much on bare feet. Yeah. The Bloomberg This Weekend Podcast. Subscribe today on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

20:58So, Alex, we're going to wrap in a second, but I sort of want to put you on the spot a little bit because you're both a product of youth sports, but you also have a very vested interest in the development of talent. You know, you're the owner of two very high-profile sports teams and obviously care a lot about baseball as well. And also you've been involved in youth sports and very recently in the last month or so have hosted your own tournament in Texas. Like, what's your prediction slash advice about what needs to happen in youth sports for Andy's benefit and for the benefit of our listeners?

21:40Yeah, it's a great question. That's a hell of a spot to put me in. But I just, I'm fresh off our tournament where we had 40 teams. Andy, we only had like three months to prep for it. So we had a great attendance. The energy was incredible. I ended up giving one-on-one lessons to about a dozen kids. And we had, I don't know, 800, 1 ,000 people there. And every parent was like, are you going to spend 15 minutes with my kid too? I'm like, well, there's 1 ,000 of you guys. I can't do all of them. But I think it's a few things. Number one is you got to have fun. And you got to remember if the main thing is the main thing, to keep it the main thing, it has to be fun.

22:14There has to be an educational process. And my fear is there's a big disconnect between, like I'm not going to go into the Disney boardroom and tell Andy and Bob Iger how to run their team. And at the same time, you shouldn't have like hedge fund people or just business people teaching the true fundamentals of baseball to our kids and the next generation of kids. So there's a big gap. I wish it was almost like a certification of coaches that you can rank them, right? Just like you went to Equinox or if you go to 24-Hour Fitness as a gym. And then I would say the third part is make sure that they can play as many sports as possible and you don't over-specialize where they're feeling pressure at the age of 12 that if they don't play baseball, they're going to miss the train.

22:54So I would say those three things, fun, education, and play as many sports as possible. And of course, the fourth component is like we had about three dozen kids that went to the clinic for free. I'm sure Andy does that too with his unrivaled. But also to keep up, there's a social responsibility and a fiduciary to the sport and to youth sports and to parents to make it applicable and for everybody. Totally. I should say there's a league in baseball you may be familiar with. It's called the Miracle League. It's a league for kids that have some ability challenges. And so we've created the Miracle game and invited those kids, hosted them to come and play.

23:34and it's interesting, that accessibility part you're talking about and inclusivity, we asked the other kids who are here who wants to volunteer to work at that game, and it was like there were no spots left for volunteers within minutes. It was like sold out. So I love that. I wrote them down, have fun, the educational process, and play as many sports as possible. There you go. But no, I appreciate it, Alex, and I do think that story is awesome because to the point of to those who much is given, much is expected, you, you both, and you in particular, Alex, have reinvented yourself in a lot of ways, right?

24:13But thanks, you guys, for having us. Well, thank you. I love what we're doing. And, again, I credit my buddy Blitzer for coming up with the initial idea and then, you know, for supporting us building it for there. And I know he's a friend of your guys and was on your show as well. Yeah, great guy. And yeah, we watch what he does very closely. Andy Campion, really good to spend some time with you. Best of luck out there with some high-quality baseball, it sounds like.