Why Emmanuel Acho Left the NFL to Create a New Kind of Platform

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0:40Welcome back to The Deal. I'm Jason Kelly. I'm Alex Rodriguez. And coming up, Emmanuel Acho. He played in the NFL. He knows a lot about the business of big football. He is a media personality. He's got a new show called Speakeasy. We're going to get into all of it. He is the perfect guest. I'm so excited. Jason, when we came up with this show a couple years ago, He is the epitome of what we're thinking about. Sports, media, culture. He speaks at a very high level. He's also going to tell us why the NFL is king and getting bigger and bigger. He brings a lot of energy, so get ready. Coming up, Emmanuel Acho.

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1:53we're here in los angeles with emmanuel ocho someone alex who when we think about this show is just right there right at this intersection we love a business uh sports and culture in part because of the nfl so first of all welcome thank you we're so happy to have you here glad to be here. Yeah. So great to have you on the show. My first question right off the top has to be the NFL. Now I'm coming from the lens of, I'm right in the midst of my October media with Fox and doing my coverage for the playoffs and World Series. And everything the NFL does, it works big. Now I remember in 2004, when we played the Red Sox, we were getting 25, 30, 35 million people watching.

2:36Today's a fraction of that. The NFL keeps getting bigger. So you're like 10X bigger than us. What is the secret sauce of the NFL magic? What is it? I think the biggest thing is the NFL never overextended. The NFL made sure like as the viewers grew, it extended the games in parallel to the viewers growing. I think the NFL probably better than any other sports industry has matched demand with supply. Whereas you could suggest the MLB, you could suggest the NBA, so much supply, but not necessarily that much demand like 82 NBA games. We don't watch all of them anymore baseball now we obviously care in october but the dilemma is there's so much supply it doesn't directly correlate to the demand whereas the nfl bro when you only have 16 of them and now there's 17 of them as of the last four years everyone matters and i think what's missed and not talked about enough is fans are a reflection of the players if the players care the fans care if the players don't care the fans don't care in the nfl all of the players care about every single game in part because our contracts aren't guaranteed in secondary part there's only so many games the fan is simply a mirror and whatever the player does the fan reflects back onto the player and that's i would suggest the secret sauce of the nfl to that point about scarcity the the fascinating thing about the nfl is it still finds all these ways to be in our lives all the time so you're right you're totally right 17 games and yet the nfl draft the nfl combat like it has become like all the all this like yeah really really rich content so how are they doing that right the nfl has done a great job making everything feel big the nfl draft it used to be in what radio city music hall that felt big and then when the deal with radio city music hall fell apart they were like you know what we're going to make it a spectacle we're going to move from one city to another and they've done a great job of not going to cities with a lot of distractions make them feel iconic super bowl you're going to have a mega star celebrity performing there we joke half the time that it's a beyonce concert at a football game right you know what i mean like i think the nfl does such a good job making it feel big but then again when you have less events you can make them feel big.

4:58You can't make every baseball game feel big. It's too many of them. It's such an interesting point about the halftime show. It's like, you know, Bad Bunny being announced to perform dominated the news cycle for like three days. It's crazy. And bro, think about for a second, last year's Super Bowl, it leveraged a cultural beef that had nothing to do with the sport of football. Right. It had nothing to do. Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Exactly right. It leveraged a completely different entity than the actual game itself, which we don't see that often enough in other sports. Well, I'll give you the best one.

5:33That's been the biggest number we've done over the last 50 years. It's been World Series 09, Game 2. Right before the game, here comes Alicia Keys and Jay-Z, Empire State of Mind. That song was very much synonymous with our season and that team, but it was a magical moment. and we've never done it again since last year with I I think it was a was it a Fadjo and yes yeah but that's a really good point I think if you can find a way to leverage another industry or to leverage somebody else's success that I think is how you can create more success there's not enough like discussion outside of the games there's the sports shows that are going on daily that are driving people because of storylines yeah Caitlin Clark Angel Reese is you have heroes you have villains you have villains to some you have heroes to other that drives viewership caitlin's a great basketball player it's not that alone it's the story lines yeah and i think in baseball last year it was popping because we had or we had yankees dodgers if not mistaken you have storylines you had iconic franchises iconic brands you had shohei you had judge you had storylines i don't think we have that enough in baseball and i don't think we have that enough in basketball either because everybody's also all buddy buddy in basketball yeah before we move on from the NFL, I have to ask you about sort of one of the mega sort of deal points, which is new money coming in, private equity ownership.

6:54You know, this is Bloomberg after all. We look so much at that, the valuation sort of just climbing and climbing and climbing. What do you make of money coming in as a former player, as someone who watches this game so closely? What's the net effect that it's having? I'm looking at everything from a player standpoint, first and foremost. And so one, the contracts are going crazy. You know what I mean? Like back in the day when I was leaving the NFL in 2015, highest paid players were probably making 25, 26 million dollars a year. Jimmy Garoppolo went to the 49ers and was the highest paid quarterback, I believe, at 28 million dollars a year.

7:28Now Dak Prescott's making 60 million dollars a year. You know what I mean? So the very first thing I'm taking a look at is just the number in the contracts. The second thing is eventually there's going to be a rub. and there's going to be a rub because at the point in time you have that new cba and players are going to start to look around and say hold on a second now all these billions of dollars in tv revenue i want mine yeah and so that's the second thing always looking from a player's perspective at the rub but i think lastly it's cool to see the nfl continuing to grow at such an exponential rate yeah and now i just want to see like how can we get more diversity and ownership and what do you suggest for that man the first thing is i love how people are pulling together it's no longer We're just like one family and y 'all are exclusively owning it.

8:13I love how it's like, hey, no, we're going to bring in this office. And this office might have a couple different names on it. I mean, one of my great mentors is Jerry Reisdorf. The days of him buying the Bulls for$16 million and the White Sox for$19 are long gone. I mean, these numbers are gotten so big that you need groups to come together. And I also think now athletes can know it's possible. You know what I mean? What you've done with Minnesota. Now athletes can know it's possible. Before you can ever be something, you got to see something. you feel me like thinking about owning a team was what yeah how but now that we've seen different athletes do it even you know i'm trying to do different things by owning different what wnba teams and and getting in different um uh groups to own wnba teams because i'm like now that i've seen different individuals do it all right like it's possible go make it possible for you so ownership is on your wish list absolutely but it has to be intelligent ownership okay to your point I mean, the reason why I'm an owner today is because of Magic Johnson.

9:09I grew up in an environment where it was men of color were either street or they were athletes, and I wanted to be an athlete. Magic was the first one that I said, oh, wow, here's a man of color who is where little short shorts in the court and then wears a pinstripe suit in the boardroom and is a Hall of Famer in both. If he can do it, why not me? And that woke me up for that. That's beautiful because I think especially people of color and all people, but speaking me individually, I've seen different things. The reason my first email, no longer active, so I can't get spammed was Nigerian nightmare.

9:42Oh wait, at yahoo.com. Because Christian Okoye running back for the chiefs went by the Nigerian nightmare. And my parents are Nigerian, I'm Nigerian. And so like, I saw that and I said, okay, I want to be that. And the same, I believe can be applied in business. The same has been applied in TV and everything I'm doing now is like, wait, once you see it, you can be it. Now the trick is you don't just have to see it in one specific industry. Like you didn't say, I'm going to go own an NFL team. Hell, you went to basketball, went to the, you know what I mean? You went to all these different things.

10:10So seeing it is so, so, so important. Yeah. So I want to go back to football for a second if we can. And speaking of money, University of Texas, college football. We are, I think it's fair to say, Alex, obsessed with college football. Help us understand this. I mean, you're watching this so closely. You're watching it through your alma mater, especially Texas, Arch Manning, that whole scene. How do you start to unpack the business that is big time college football at this point? I remember being in high school and my senior year in high school, somebody that was in the NFL walked up to me and he said, enjoy this last game because this is the last time you'll get to play for fun.

10:49He said, once you leave here, it's a business. And that was before NIL was even involved. Now I will say this, NIL without the restrictions of the transfer portal in my mind of ruin college football. I do believe college football was always an unofficial business. So make it official so the players can get paid. I went back to university of Texas two years after I graduated. I walked into the co-op. That's where they sell different gear and jerseys. And I saw an 18 Jersey by 81 Jersey. Why the hell you see an 18 by an 81 Jersey in the co-op. Oh, Emmanuel Ochoa number 18 and Sam Ochoa number 81.

11:23They were selling our jerseys without selling our Jersey. Yeah. I'm not getting no profit from it. My brother and I took a picture by it. I still have it to the stand case and you'd file a lawsuit so like i'm not getting no money from that and so i love now that players can actually be compensated for their name for their image for their likeness because people don't realize i couldn't work in college because if you work in college you could end up getting sued in the event you get paid and they start to look into where you're getting paid more than what you're working for so now athletes aren't even allowed to work period whether you're working right or working unjustly.

11:55So I like what the NIL is doing. However, NIL without restrictions in the transfer portal have completely perverted college football. Because essentially it's unlimited free agency and you're just getting bid up and you see, I mean, you watch a game, even the broadcasters, they're like, this guy started here, then he went here, then he went I mean, it's often two, three, four teams that a player has played for. Is the solution to restrict the portal? How do you fix this? You restrict the portal, you fix everything. Because once you restrict the portal, once you go somewhere, you need to stay at that place at least for a year.

12:34And if you transfer, there has to be some restrictions as you sit out a year, you sit out two years. That's how it was when I was in college. If you transfer within the conference, you got to sit two years. If you transfer out of conference, you got to sit a year. You ain't going nowhere, A-Rod. You ain't going nowhere, JK. You sit in your butt at Texas and you better learn how to get on the field. And so that's what I think needs to happen because the dilemma right now is I don't think you can serve both. I don't think you can have a ton of fun in college and make a lot of money. What I've heard of players at Texas is, and the coaches has talked about, the players aren't having fun anymore.

13:04I said, I don't pity them. They're getting paper. I had more fun, but I wasn't getting broke off. You know what I mean? If you are playing for money, it's very hard to have fun. because the second you start sucking, you know you're losing money. Hard to do both. I don't know that you can serve money and serve fun. Yeah. So let's talk about having less fun. Jason just mentioned private equity in the NFL and in sports broadly across the globe. But specifically to the NCAA, you went to Texas. Is it a matter of time so Blackstone and John Gray owns the Texas football team? And how far are we from that?

13:40I don't know if that would ever happen because of the boards of regents. I don't know if I don't know if that would ever happen that anybody would come in and own one of those big time college programs. Now. Own, you could unofficially do it. You know what I mean? If you're one of the biggest donors, if you're one of the biggest investors, there were people at Texas when I went there and they were always at practice. And I'm like, who the hell is this dude? And then my friends will text me, oh, yeah, this dude, oil and gas from way back when. Like, yo, who the hell is it? Why are they on a bus?

14:15Why are they on a team plane? They not a coach. You know what I mean? Them big old Texans walking around with a toothpick, a little straw cowboy hat. And I'm like, who is this guy? Unofficially owned? Sure. Officially? No. Or maybe a minority. You see a Blackstone or KKR owning 20, 30 percent, but the board still runs it. But the finances, what they do is bring that infrastructure, back office sophistication. sophistication because as you mentioned as the business keeps growing are the universities as today are they currently built to you know understand what the money's coming in money's coming out now you have payroll it's an incredible trends transition i think that could happen at the lower scale that wouldn't happen at texas because at texas is too many elbows to grease you know what i mean like at texas we not let nobody just walk in here and oh no not at texas you know i I mean, like a point not a Texas, not to mention.

15:09Texas and those big time programs like the U, they're so traditional. We don't like nothing change. We wanted black jerseys when I was in college and the amount of pushback we got just to change our jerseys was a hell no. This is the way we do things where we're always going to do. Yeah. So it's somewhere like Texas. I don't see it happening at a smaller school, maybe even a private school. Yeah. Then I could see it happening. And yet you do see the money coming in because of the TV contracts. So knowing what you know about media, where do you think NFL games should play? Like network. Yeah. Network, streamer, anything.

15:48Streamers. I think one big bank takes little bank. You know what I mean? A streamer's got big, big bank. And the reason I would say streamers is the games and Netflix can be watched all over the world. You know what I mean? if you got a game on fox you got a game on abc you had a game on cbs to some degree that's limiting in nigeria when i go back during christmas i can't necessarily watch that i believe the streamers have more reach i also believe the streamers have easier barriers to entry oh i just need the ad yeah you know what i mean there's just an easier barrier to entry so i think the streamers the problem is the streamers do not currently have the infrastructure y 'all saw netflix tried to do a couple live sporting events things are freezing they don't have the right host to do it they don't have the people to call the right games they don't have the right production quality i mean they're outsourcing everything not realizing to put on a good product you have to have be a team you have to be molded together you have to like like like we've talked about in sports like you have to have camaraderie but i do think streamers would be ideal just because it has the biggest reach.

16:52So to that point, I mean, let's talk about as we shift from sort of NFL and football to the media world, talk about your transition. Talk about, you know, that moment where you're like, okay, I'm done. You know, as so many athletes in the, in football are, you're done at a young age. How'd you decide what to do next? So this might be my favorite part of the conversation. sitting across from one of the greatest at what he ever did athletically. I was not. Humble enough to acknowledge, I was not. I looked myself in the league, JK. I looked myself in the eyes in the league, A-Rod, and I said, okay, Acho, you're not going to be a pro bowler.

17:30You're not going to be a Hall of Famer. You're not going to be an all-pro. You've played four years in the NFL, vested pension annuity. Leave while you still have your health. Now, what I did, the oldest text message in my phone to this date, 2016, August 23rd, it's a text from the Buffalo Bills. And the Buffalo Bills were like, hey, Emmanuel, we want to bring you in for a workout. Send us your social security number and your license. I never responded. Why did I save that text message? Because I wanted to remind myself I walked away from the NFL. The NFL didn't walk away from me. Whether that's true or not, at least you have a text message of an NFL team asking you to come in for a workout of which you rejected and you declined.

18:06Who knows if they would have signed you, but psychologically that helped me move forward. Now, after moving forward, where the hell are you going to go? How old were you? 25 at the time. 25 at the time. I had been cut five times by the age of 25. So been cut five times in the NFL by the age of 25. It's time to move on. Okay, I go back to Austin, Texas. That was home. I send an email to every news director at every local station in Austin. The news director is essentially the owner, if you will. They make the decisions. CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, local stations in Austin. I say, hey, I would love to come on your network following Texas football games and do a show.

18:44You know, maybe Mondays with Manny, we can call it. Emmanuel Manny. Mondays with Manny. One news director bit. Pam Vought, local station in Austin, Texas, Fox 7. So I start doing Mondays with Manny. Simultaneously, I'm born and raised in Dallas, Texas. Huge Rangers fan when A-Rod was who I vividly remember. I'm born and raised in Austin, Texas. The Cowboys were creating a Twitter show. I get an email from the head of social for the Dallas Cowboys. Hey, we're creating this show on Twitter. Do you want to come do it? I'm like, well, I need the money. I got the opportunity. Okay, cool. So now we're doing Fox 7 Austin.

19:14We're doing a show for the Dallas Cowboys on Twitter. Longhorn Network is University of Texas' own subsidiary. So they were like, yo, hey, can you do Longhorn Network games? I said, why not? And I just did that over, over, over, over, over. Finally, I get recognized after two years. I get a call. They want to promote me nationally to ESPN. So now I'm going to ESPN on Mondays and Tuesdays to do Get Up. Now I've made it to big time ESPN. ESPN, all the execs to get an email. Hey, we love this dude in the pink suit. Who is he? I'm the dude in the pink suit. The email came from a guy named Bob Iger.

19:51Heard of him. Iger sends an email to all the execs. I love that guy in the pink suit. Happens to be me. CEO of Disney. And that is how my sports media career began. Wow. I leave ESPN after two years because Fox recruits me. Hey, we want you to essentially come host a show. And I was like, I could stay at ESPN and be a guy or I could go to Fox and be the guy. I'd rather be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond, leave, go to Fox to become the guy. But interestingly enough, my sports career, actually sports TV career paled in comparison to my cultural TV career. Right. So we're going to get to that in a second.

20:27But I want to go back just to the very beginning of that, which was sort of what inspired you that it's like, I want to be on TV. What was that? Was it something you had done, something you had studied in high school, in college? What was it that attracted that? But if I was good at math, I would have been an accountant. You know what I mean? But I was good at television. So I went on TV. Grew up in my dad's a pastor. Yeah. So I grew up going to first service, second service. And that third service was the longest. But I grew up going all three services in a church. And so I heard speaking for a living.

20:59Yeah. And so I knew how to put words together. And all television is, is for those that are actually good at it, is just figuring out how to put words together. Analogies. You know what I mean? similes like can you tell stories anecdotally and so because i grew up just capturing that through osmosis i said let's go into tv yeah and then a rod jk it's just sharpening your sword yeah now it's just sharpening your sword and so on television i do two things i watch oprah winfrey and i watch battle rap watch those two things oprah and battle rap oprah teaches me how to be an interviewer battle rap teaches me how to present and so that was kind of like my hidden secrets to the sauce of television.

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22:21So, E, one of the things that I always talk to young kids about, and even as I go to universities, people always talk about math and I have to be great at math. And I actually say, ironically, one of the best things you can do in business is be a great communicator. So you have to be able to articulate so you're halfway home, but you talked about you specifically your father was a preacher Can you tell me specific things that you learned about him? About what made him such a gifted speaker and are you more like him or you're more like mom or you're a hybrid? A thousand percent like dad dad came from Nigeria to America with nothing in the late 1970s He was working at Taco Bell and was working at a janitor And then he got his undergrad degree and then he got his doctorate degree after getting his master's degree So he has his own private practice in psychology.

23:03And so that started his own private practice in Dallas. And then remember, he's a black man with an accent that's about five, nine talking like this now. So he's a black man with an accent in the late 80s with a doctorate degree. You know what I mean? And so then in Dallas, Texas, importantly. And so really what I learned from dad was a couple of things. One, a work ethic that is unparalleled. Two is how can you communicate in a manner that makes someone able to understand? I think one of our biggest problems in society is we have too many people that are receiver oriented as opposed to speaker oriented.

23:40Speaker oriented. It's my job to make sure A-Rod and Jason know what I'm saying. Receiver oriented. Hey, we're putting the onus on them to understand what the speaker is saying. I'm a speaker oriented person at all times. So it is my job to make sure I dumb something down as simple as possible to make sure the receiver can hear what I'm saying. And so that's what I try to do as a communicator. It's like, OK, what's my avenue in? And so like I have to figure out and I feel like we are all charged to figure out what's the best way to speak to make sure the receiver can understand. And that's also what I learned from watching pops in the pulpit.

24:14You know what I mean? Depending upon the sermon, I'm going to change my energy to make sure you can receive it. If I'm preaching about tithing, I might be a little bit more gentle. If I'm preaching about, you know, changing your life radically, I might be a little more passionate. So learning how to change the way you speak and communicate so people can receive. And so how does that translate to talking about sports? Because I will say, I've been watching you for years and, you know, you clearly have a different approach. I mean, it is the thing that Bob Iger saw with the guy in the pink suit.

24:47You know, you pop differently, not just because of the suit, but because your presentation, the way that you present is very, it's the pulpit. How do you translate that to sports and how do you translate it specifically to Speakeasy, which is your new show? Man, Speakeasy, a different entity. So I'll get to that. Yeah. Translating it in a sports, man, it's sports is almost like catching the wind. Which way do you need to speak to make sure like you're hitting people where you need to hit them? Everybody says, we don't like debate. We don't like debate. That's a lie. Debate rates. Yeah. So you do like debate.

25:21Now, you might not like the certain debater, but you like debate because debate rates. In sport, you have to learn how to be like more explosive. You have to learn how to be a little bit more inflammatory. But on social media in sport, everybody thinks they know everything. You can find somebody that thinks they know more about baseball than A-Rod on social media right now. Yes. You know what I mean? like at EA22999 underscore. Like they right now, they think they know more about baseball than this. Alex is very familiar with this. Right? So on social media, I don't try to teach. On social media, I try to say, hey, here's what I found.

25:57What do you think? Oh, interesting. If I try to say, this is what they're doing, they'll be like, well, no, it's not what they're doing because my high school coach told, nah, social media is different. Social media is like, hey, I'm going to show y 'all this and what do y 'all think? And that's how you try to manipulate that algorithm. Also realizing though, Instagram, X and TikTok are also all different. So you can't just think you can communicate even in sports in one, one size fits all way. The only way is being true to you and figuring out how do you manipulate what's true to you into that platform or that network or that device.

26:38And so tell us about Speakeasy. How does this come about? I mean, the origin story, we know enough to be dangerous about it that your gig ends at FS1 24 hours later? Bro, I haven't shared the details of this story, but it's a safe space. Okay. So let's buckle up. Let's do it. I am in Paris on vacation. I get a call from my agent and my agent says, hey, Fox is canceling all LA based sports shows, daily shows. I'm like, wait, what the hell? Yeah, Fox is canceling all of them. So now I'm shocked. I'm literally like in Paris chilling. While in Paris, two interesting things happened. One person came up to me because I used to be on a show called Speak for Yourself.