How Laura Correnti is Selling Women’s Sports

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25:13Laura, I love the space that you're navigating. And as a father to two teenage daughters, it really excites me that people like you that are so capable are really expanding the footprint of women's sports. A question about Deep Blue. You founded it two years ago. Have you thought about your five-year plan? And inside that five-year plan, can you see Deep Blue being an NLP or a GP owner to a sports franchise? So it's so funny, Alex. When we started the company, we had a five-year plan, which went from 23 to LA28. We were going to look at that five-year window up until the Olympics in the U.S. I think within the first six months, I probably ripped that plan up two or three times because the market was just electric.

25:57and the opportunities that were presenting itself were coming at a rate where like no plan on paper made sense because you're just constantly having to hit the edit button. But the true nature of it two years in is recognizing that, first of all, sports is not the output for me, it's the vehicle. And how do you thread and take this deep subject matter expertise at the intersection of media marketing, advertising, and women's sports to move horizontally, not just vertically? So agency services, so to speak, was our Trojan horse and our primary customer was to work with brands to make them smarter, help them understand the space, right-size the investments that they were making and help extrapolate incremental value.

26:34We've done that, as Jason alluded to, for some world-class blue chip brands who are early and then some who have been net new. For example, I just brokered a deal just within the last few months between Vagisil and the New York Liberty talking about body confidence. They had never invested in the world of women's sports before. So a lot of net new comers as well. But as you pick your head up, I'd be remiss not to say like, that's just the entry point. Things like IP development, this is something we're very excited about. We saw an opening for the lack of content creation. You know, less than 15 percent of coverage today still in the world of sports goes to women's sports.

27:07And that's where you start to sacrifice the storytelling that is missing. And so we decided to go all in with iHeart to develop iHeart Women Sports, which in less than two years has over 16 original pods in the space covering a variety of sports from both former athletes, broadcasters, talent, etc. It's still to this day containing the only official women's daily podcast called Good Game with Sarah Spain with a former ESPN broadcaster slash journalist. And so we started looking at the IP creation. OK, what comes off of this? You start thinking about the world of commerce. You know, you start thinking about live events.

27:43For three years running now, we've hosted the Business Women's Sports Summit in New York City in the spring. And an initiative that first started as like, if they build it, will they come? But it is a convening ground where it is the only space in the world, as far as we're aware, where the intersection of business and women's sports comes together. So you start creating all of these products and assets. So IP, live events, definitely interesting to us. Getting in and around the world of commerce, interesting to us. And then the last frontier is venture. We are learning so much in real time. I see a world where Deep Blue owns teams.

28:16I see a world where Deep Blue starts collecting assets and ultimately being the grounding center all through the lens of that subject matter expertise. I want to go a little deeper on this ownership piece, Laura, because obviously very interesting to my partner here, this notion of ownership. And I do wonder how you see that developing, not just from the Deep Blue perspective, but in these conversations that you have with partners like Sue Bird. because ownership, and again, I'm sitting beside an example of it, that the athlete to owner transition is becoming much better trod, for lack of a better term.

28:56How do you see that developing and how does that play into your business model? Sure. I mean, I think, again, it goes to a yes and. The strategic value of an Alex Rodriguez or a Sue Bird sitting in an ownership position to be able to provide a point of view that reflects the players, that reflects the training facilities, resource needs to develop on-field excellence is paramount. There's no doubt about it. And I don't know how you can actually replicate that if you hadn't played it at that level. And also, one of the things that I'm seeing, especially in the world of women's sports, is it is a gold rush.

29:32And there are a number of, you know, investors of all kinds, family offices all the way through to PE, venture, et cetera, coming in and around the space. We cannot apply the men's playbook to women's sports. Full stop. And I think there is, and Alex, I appreciate you saying this, a real need for education on who the audience is, really understanding the fan experience. Alex, I don't know if you've had a chance to go see a New York Liberty game. I haven't been to see the Lynx live. I've only seen them in Liberty. But this game day experience and the audience that it is super serving, there is nothing like it in sports period.

30:08And if you can't understand the distinctions around that, I think you've really handicapped growth, a small microcosm and thinking about facilities and stadium development. This is an area I'm fascinated by. I was at a Washington Spirit match against Gotham in Washington, D.C. at Audi Field. I actually took a picture of this moment. I was going up the escalator and there was a whole section of strollers, stroller parking. It wasn't a formal official place. Now, there was a third party vendor that was supporting that, you know, know, sort of park and go. But when you start thinking about, you know, mother rooms, having espresso martinis on tap, I mean, I could go down the list of things that when you start really thinking about the nuances and experience, how owners can get in and around the world of branding, media, marketing, influencers, creators, game day experience through experiential activation.

30:57We're no longer talking about a playbook we all know and grew up on. This is developing for a modern audience and a modern experience. And so I would encourage owners coming into the space to not be presumptive and really get in and under the hood, because I think the ability to derive incremental value by getting outside of the box of the thing we all know and love is only going to increase the valuations. Laura, this reminds me a little bit, when you think about Deep Blue, it reminds me a little bit of, you know, Bain Consulting and Mitt Rodney. And Mitt was going to leave to start his own private equity group.

31:30And what they realized was, wait a minute, we're consulting. We have all the data. We bring all the value. We understand where the puck is going. Why are we going to let such a great talent like Mid-Robney go? Why not start Bain Capital? And then the birth of basically Bain private equity started. I mean, you're collecting all the data. You're in a position of strength. I can't think of anyone who could be a dial or an Markdos, and you're well positioned in women's sports to bring tremendous amount of value. Thank you. Appreciate it. I actually was reading about your new venture in Jump and the amount of capital that you've obviously raised there.

32:04Congratulations. And, you know, what I'm so enamored by is this full 360 where you own the data. This is another area when you get into the world of women's sports that has been such an impediment to growth. So just as a microcosm example, you look at I'm a Gotham season ticket holder. Now, outside of the Kansas City current, every women's sports team in the United States, regardless of sport, is renting or leasing their facility from a men's team or some other provider, right? They do not own the space. And I always think about it going through the turnstiles at Red Bull Arena, now Sports Illustrated Arena, how the trickle effect and what delays that can create for an organization when you don't have real-time access to who's coming through the turnstile, what they're buying at concessions, what the merchandise flow is, and not having that as a collective to then turn around.

32:54Alex, you're talking about as an owner and going out to advertisers. Advertisers want the data and they don't want yesterday's, they want today's. They want to be able to have real-time informed decision-making. And so by creating a platform like Jump, from my understanding, it will have everything from ticket sales all the way through merchandising in one platform. This will help, in my opinion, to not only expedite deal flow, but also increase it. And I think that's something, Again, as a media buyer for 20 years, I look at clients want data. Brand marketers want data when I say clients. The women's sports industry largely has not had it.

33:26And I think that has been a tremendous disservice and why we're seeing$170 ,000 deals because you really have nothing to bet on. And everybody reports to somebody, right? And so at the end of the day, to make these decisions, you have to be able to justify this. And like I said, we're not in the checkbox era anymore. We need real tangible results. You know, one of the areas, Laura, that, you know, you and I have talked about this. I think we actually talked about it on our panel at the Business Women's Sports Summit. The media deal side, you know, media rights, etc. I know you've looked at this intensely.

33:59And obviously, a lot of that plays directly into what your clients want and expect and what the leagues want, what the teams want. It plays into valuations, as Alex well knows. What happens next when it comes to media rights for the big women's sports? This will be a hot take. I care less about the total number, more about the experience today. And what I mean by that is seeing a number of leagues chase very, very high numbers, which, again, I understand the reason the business case, board of directors, you know, needs for the leagues, etc. But in doing so, and often cases, we're fragmenting games across four or five plus networks.

34:38And you're taking audiences that are already nascent and still in their formative years. And I'm talking, you know, high six figures, low seven at best. And now you're splintering them across five networks. Women's sports suffers from two main issues. They're hard to find and they're hard to buy. We talked about the buying piece. I'll talk about the finding piece. it's been fascinating to see this moment play out because everybody's so excited by the multiples, but people not recognizing you're disrupting the audience experience. People don't know where to find half of these games. I mean, you need a master calendar that would stretch my dining room table just to understand what to do this weekend.

35:13I don't think that's a good service model for your fans. They're frustrated. You see them take it out in real time on social media. They're often helping each other figure out how to find it. And two, if you really think about it, in some instances, there are leagues with five distribution partners, which means you're creating five different rate cards for advertising, five different commercial products, five different game day experiences. And you're going to the same five advertisers asking them for the same five deals. Right. It doesn't work. And so this is a part where, you know, I can understand why the MLB, the NFL, they have the luxury, right?

35:49You're talking tens of millions of people tuning in over how many decades. It's a fine-tuned machine. Women's sports is not there yet. And so when I look at those deals, I'm like, how do we streamline both the efficacy of finding it, but then you have to think about making it more efficient for advertisers to participate in it. This is not a struggle or a challenge that is exclusively for WNBA or women's sports. I recently got a call from my mother, who's 89. Okay, that's a different demographic. but she still watches the Yankees game every night. I mean, that kind of puts her in bed. And she loves her Yankees.

36:24She's very frustrated right now. They're hard to love right now. She wants me to answer other questions. I said, Mom, I don't have other questions. I'm not watching as closely as I am the Timberwolves and the Lynx. I'm sorry. But in one week, Laura, there was six different telecasts. We had a Yes Network. We had Apple TV. We had Gotham. We had Fox. We had Roku. And then we had ESPN Sunday Night Baseball. And Fox, of course, was Saturday. And my mom's like, where in the world do I find these apps? Can we go back to the old days and just turn on the Yes Network? And I said, no, mom, those days are over.

36:54But that just gives you a little example of it's hard to find and hard to buy. Right. And, you know, it's interesting. I just saw literally a report that came out around if you want to be an NFL fan this year and watch the entire season. I forget how many there were. I believe it was something like$1 ,000 to$1 ,100 worth of subscriptions just to be able to watch the full season as a fan. Wow. Right. Now, I love football, but I'm a Jets fan. So that's a big commitment when you've been on the losing side for a long time. Sounds like you love football and hate yourself if you're a Jets fan. So Laura, are you a Jets and Mets?

37:25Is that usually how it works? Jets, Yankees. This is unconventional. I know. I know. I know. I blame my husband, but he converted me to the Jets. It's painful all the way around for you. No, I mean, you know, New Yorker fans are ride or die. But, you know, when you start talking about for, you know, the average consumer,$1 ,100 worth of subscriptions. Come on. It's untenable. And then you look at the women's sports space, it's not much far behind in terms of the amount of, you know, if you want to be a W fan and an NWSL fan, I mean, how many platforms do you need? And so I think this is where we're at, at a very interesting inflection point in media.

37:58The streamers are running up the scoreboard in terms of price and having the disposable cash to be able to put up these types of deals. But at some point, there has to be a convening of the powers that be that recognize you are fragmenting and diluting the value of your league. I did mention something earlier that I wanted to sort of circle back on, which is the deal that you did with Always Alpha and Allison Felix, Always Alpha being the talent management company that she started. Help us understand sort of what you're doing there, because this notion of managing talent is a fascinating one. It's one you have a lot of windows into.

38:33It goes back to something, you know, you've been talking about when it comes to, you know, athletes like Alex, like Sue and others who just have so much to offer. Tell us about that deal and sort of how it came about it and what the vision is there. I very vividly remember one of my colleagues calling me saying that they had heard some rumblings that another women's sports firm was coming into the space. Now, at this point in the early 2024, we were still the only. I mean, obviously, the big talent agencies had women's sports services, but in terms of dedicated, no. And it was going to focus on talent.

39:04And there was this immediate rush of those inside the women's sports business bubble, which wasn't is still relatively niche, who immediately want to pit you against each other. Right. They're like there can only be one. But what's interesting was the skill set that we had and the business model we were running was complementary to what Allison and her business partners, Cassette and Wes, were after in that they were going to focus, hyper focus on managing the careers of female athletes exclusively. I was not in the business of managing anyone. We were in the business of managing deal flow. And so when you looked at the opportunity, you know, there are a couple of things that I started thinking about.

39:39You control the money, you control the market, you have input and partnership with the athletes, you have the influence. So this became a really interesting proposition to me to say, hey, wait a minute, we already have a great vantage point into where all the money is flowing. But if we can now bolt on the influence and the incremental earned value of what these athletes can generate and how they are dictating the marketplace, you've cornered the market. It's lights out. And a series of conversations and meetings ensued and got to talking about the unique nature of bringing these two and at that point only focus companies in the world of women's sports.

40:16And it was as simple as a handshake. And the value exchange there in the joint venture that we created between Deep Blue and Always Alpha was Always Alpha was going to manage the talent all the ways that you would anticipate talent management firms supporting its clients. And we were going to bring this added layer of strategic expertise and industry knowledge to help shape an athlete's platform to think about brand strategy. You can't just, I mean, Alex, I'd be curious to get your perspective on this. Like, we are no longer in the day of just playing the sport. I mean, there's very few people you're talking about just playing the sport.

40:47You have to be able to dimensionize this female athletes times 10. And so to be able to provide that level of insight, knowledge, expertise of what we were seeing in the market while also developing that as athletes as IP, now all of a sudden you have a tremendous competitive advantage because it's not about transaction anymore. It's about transformation. And we were very focused on working with the athletes to say, this moment that you're in in your playing career, because they're predominantly working with a lot of active athletes, let this be the vehicle. This is not the end game. And so as early as we can start getting in and thinking about, yes, you may be a Peloton instructor crushing the leaderboard or, you know, world class runner who's out there breaking records.

41:28How are we using this moment and this platform, both the world and what it's providing us in coverage, also your social channels, how you're showing up in the market, etc. to start to build the tentacles and what will become your multi-hyphenate business. So that added component helps to supercharge and I think pay off on, you know, what you even asked earlier on what owners can do. It's bringing that level of strategy well beyond the transactional nature of it. It is funny, Alex, to think about this idea that you were following in the footsteps of like Magic Johnson, but there weren't a lot of people that emulated.

42:03Now, it feels like, especially in the age of NIL and everything else, if you're not thinking about your brand, if you're not thinking about yourself as a multi-hyphenate, you're actually the outlier versus when it was when you were coming up. Do you think that's true? Oh, yeah. I mean, look, just 25 years ago, I signed, at that point, the largest contract in the history of sports for 10 years,$252 million. Tom Hicks, the owner of the Texas Rangers. And before that, I had been in the league for six years. I was 24 years old. I'd entered as an 18-year-old teenager. And I became immediately public enemy number one because of that contract.

42:38And when you fast forward 25 years and you see Shohei Ohtani at 700 and he becomes literally a hero and an icon, that brings a smile to my face. Because there's an amazing shift that's gone on. At that point in 2021, the team had all the power. They controlled the media. They controlled the narrative. We didn't have social media. 2001, you mean. 2001, sorry, 24 years ago. And today that shifted. Whether you talk about Nafisha Collier or you're talking about Anthony Edwards or Aaron Judge or Shohei Otani, the player has as much influence as the team. And they have become truly our partners. And we work very well with them together.

43:16It's my hope and dream that Major League Baseball gets their act together and they can work more collectively as a unit. If not more. If not more. I mean, we're a big believer in individuals over institutions. And this is not unique to sport. This is just the way modern media is moving. And so I think, Alex, you asked the question earlier about Nafisa as a standalone versus Nafisa as a bolt-on. And I think the answer is yes. You know, I think allowing her to develop that platform and also figuring out how it develops the brand that is the links, these two things in tandem are the superpower. Not to take over your show.

43:49No. But actually, I have a question and a final thought. Alex, a question. As somebody who signed the largest deal in the history of baseball in your prime, when you look at the world of women's sports today, what has been the absolute head scratcher? And how are you thinking about things differently from that person you were in that deal 25 years ago to now applying those principles to a market that, yes, 50 plus years old, but still relatively junior with its professionalization? Wow, that's a great question. I'd love some time to think on that a little bit more. I'm a novice in this space and I'm really enjoying it.

44:25And I'm really collecting a lot of data and talking to a lot of smart people. But I do think that the opportunity is endless. Totally. And I'd love to just leave you with a final thought because you did allude to your daughters. And I think, you know, it's easy to get caught up in the short-termism of the moment that we're living in in women's sports. Although I like to play the long game. I'm not just in this because it's fun and it's exciting. It's all of those things and it's a net new industry to chase. What I really want to leave your listeners with are the stakes of what we're talking about.

44:5445 % of girls are dropping out of sport in the United States by the age of 14, nearly one out of two, largely due to body confidence issues. What influences body confidence issues? The media, marketing, and advertising industries, of which I'm a part of. And so when you start to think about girls who play becoming women who lead, 94 % of women in the C-suite have played sports at some point, at any point in their lives, and over 50 % of those collegiately. When you think about that drop off, nearly one out of two, and the social and economic impact of what is lost and potentially what could be gained as a result of keeping girls in sport and what it does for their development, that is why we're in this game.

45:34And I think one of the things that I am so impressed by and continue to be inspired by on a daily basis is to leave it better than we found it mentality of the entire women's sports community. And I think that that is something that cannot be lost. Yes, the numbers will prove themselves out. yes, there will be a lot of people who make a lot of money in this industry. But when you really think about the long tail impact of what we're talking about, we're talking GDPs. It's far greater than the short term valuations of meteorite sales we're seeing today.

46:12All right, we're gonna do a lightning round, and then we'll let you get on with the rest of your day. Laura, you've been very generous with your time. All right. Five questions. We'll bounce it back and forth. First thing that comes to your mind. You ready? Go for it. All right. What's the best piece of advice you've received on dealmaking or business? If you see a better way, you have an obligation to do it. And that advice came from former General Electric Vice Chair Beth Comstock, who is a longtime client and mentor of mine. Who's your dream dealmaking partner? You. Ooh, wow. Deal's happening on the deal.

46:44My favorite thing. Which team do you want to see win a championship more than any? I mean, I'd love to see the Liberty go back to back. Come on. Oh, boy. Wow. One great answer, one not so great answer. This is the deal. Here we go. What is your hype song before you go into a big meeting or negotiation? Oh, my gosh. This probably won't surprise anyone who knows me as the Jersey girl. but anything from Bruce Springsteen gets me like, you know, there's something about, you know, baby, we were born to run. We're on the move here. Yeah. All right. That's a good one. All right. What's your advice for someone listening who wants a career like yours?

47:21Do the work. You know, I think it's easy to pull up chat GPT and, you know, streamline the information, but I think truly getting in the mix and cutting your teeth are what develops some of the most competitive players I've worked with. And I think until you've lived it and you've experienced it, it's really hard to be able to navigate this industry. So do the work. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

47:50The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me, Jason Kelly. This episode was made by Anna Mazarakis, Stacey Wong, and Lizzie Phillip. Amy Keen is our editor, and Will Connolly is our video editor. Our theme music is made by Blake Maples. Our executive producers are Kelly LaFerriere, Ashley Honig, and Brendan Noonan. Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Additional support from Rachel Carnevale and Elena Sos Angeles. Thanks so much for listening to The Deal. If you have a minute, subscribe, rate, and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us. I'm Jason Kelly. See you next week.

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