Why Live Streaming has Taken Over 2026

0:00This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. I'd love to see it. Well, we have Gary Vaynerchuk, creator of Vee Friends, back on the show. Third time. Love catching up with Gary Vee. We'll go all over the place. Creator economy, AI, open source, building stuff. How are you doing, Gary? What's up? There he is. Men. Men. Men? Men. I thought you said meh. You're doing meh. Meh. Meh. Meh. What's happening? Okay, I want to start with, unless you have something to kick right off with, I want to start with something. I've been seeing these videos of you from years and years ago with just these crazy, crazy accurate calls about the future.

0:46What victory lap do you like to take the most? What's the one call when you think back where you're like, damn, I really nailed that one? Social. Like if I'm being honest, like, no, it's like, it's crazy. Too bad I wasn't making the videos back then. Like just my complete conviction on Facebook and Twitter completely unearthing and changing the world. No, it's ironic timing. I met with someone today, I hadn't talked to like 12, 13 years, you know, retired gentleman. I met him early on. He's like, he's like, it's crazy how much you believed and that stuff and how dismissive we all were. But there's, you know, listen, one of the few things I really do well in business is I don't let my audacity or my current financial situation or what I would like to happen financially dictate my observations of the consumer.

1:50I don't think I'm smarter than anyone or have a bigger knack, I think you have, now let me give some flowers to you boys. You have some of the greatest people on here, right? You guys have crushed. You've also gotten much better at your actual job in interviewing, cause you know, I'm a day one with you guys. Like, so I just want to give you some flowers. You guys are getting better and better. All these brilliant people you have, it's not that I know it better, I don't know it better. It's that I'm willing to completely change course of what I think is working for me, or I'm willing to lose all my money to be historically correct.

2:27I'm not talking about things that I want to happen for my financial interest. I'm talking about what consumers are actually doing. Do you think you were more bullish on creators than the actual platforms? Because when I look back at some of those calls about the pivot away from the... There's this one where you're looking at the newspaper and you're like, nobody's going to use the newspaper. They're just going to get their news online from other people. and it's like a very accurate prediction. But it's like that distinctly wasn't coming from like Mark Zuckerberg in 2008. He was just saying like, I built this cool website.

3:03Like it's fun. Yeah, like I'm connecting the world. Yeah. It was connection. You know, I think that I, you know, when you go read Crush It, the first book I wrote, I wrote in 2008, also in that time. I am fully predicting, and you guys know this, we've talked off, like I predict, Like literally there's parts of the book that talk about what you guys are doing right now. Yeah. Yeah. No. We're super early to live streaming too. Yeah. And don't forget, we just came out of Friendster and MySpace failing. Yeah. So my thesis wasn't necessarily, now look, I thought Mark was generational because I'd spent some time with him and like I ended up being very right about that.

3:42And I thought Twitter was incredibly unique. So I was bullish on those platforms, but I was incredibly agnostic. To your point, I was, whether it was called Facebook or Twitter. Twitter or the many things that failed along the way, social cam, peach, vine, you know, like LinkedIn or YouTube or Twitch or Tik TOK. It didn't matter. Apps that connected people on top of the internet. I knew had to win because of the network effect of scale and no gatekeeper in between. You think you two handsome young bozos would have gotten on CMC? You would have had to wait. Yeah. but I knew that you could just do it.

4:24And then it's like sports. We love the term Bozo. It's like underrated. It's so good. It's not, it's not, it's like only slightly derogatory, but it's like not totally not a bad word. Yeah. It's a great word. You know, you guys have become very influential and definitely the people watching are very influential. Can we all collectively put our hands in the pot and all bring Bozo back? It would be really enjoyable. it's both no time golden retrievers are kind of bozos yeah lovable no no no we have we talk about golden retriever mode yeah yeah but yeah better installation jordy sorry i cut you off you're gonna ask well yeah i think i think what was interesting about your call is you were bullish on the platforms but the take wasn't just you should invest in facebook it was like you should just put stuff out every single day and you've been remarkably consistent with that yeah yeah and it was it was real for three guys like us that could go from zero notoriety to a lot and literally the most famous people in the world right now you know at least a third of them are either streamers or purely on social they have no television they have no you know theatrical they have no other platform yeah tv is now coming to them and saying hey could we work something out we you clearly have demand for your content we want to get it on our platform i started a company a couple years ago called VaynerWatt, W-A-T-T.

5:46It's a TV production company. And we are bombarded by the distributors for me to get access to the Stephen Bartlett's or the Hermoses or the Cody Sanchez's or the, like it's all here. And what's crazy is like YouTube, for example, right? There's 900 genres that should be doing what you're doing right now. Yeah, we just talked to some folks who are doing this show for Europe specifically. And there's one that's for car dealers and there's one for crypto and there's a whole bunch of different sort of like, and it's not even like we were the first live streamers, obviously. We just took them. Still, the funny, you know, the craziest, the craziest thing.

6:24No one has done TBPN for the market open. Like you're in New York. Yeah. You're in New York. You start at. I know someone that's working on it. Yeah, we know a couple people, but the fact that we're 18 months in and no one saw what we're doing, we go live at 11 Pacific, so we're going live at noon. The market has been open. Which is an indication of your laziness. You guys should wake up early. We do wake up early, but we do a team workout. And it's more an indication of our fascination with private markets versus public markets and longer term, less quarter by quarter, less day by day market moves and more 12 to 18 month fundraising cycles for private technology companies.

7:13And so I think that my natural interest is in the private markets and the earlier stage technology. So if I was trying to cover, you know, the day by day in the market, what oil is doing and how that's affecting, you know, GE and Boeing, I would just be a little bit less sharp than if I'm talking about, you know, private market numbers. And honestly, that's what, you know, back to Crush It, back to you guys, back to all of this, what you're already, like the whole theme of this interview. The fact that people that are watching that are deeply sports, like you, TVPN for sports with talent like you guys is ESPN's biggest nightmare.

7:52They already sort of have it, right? Isn't Pat? Yeah, they have it. Of course. Of course. I mean. But they have to pay him like 60 million a year. They do. And Pat had to be lucky enough of all the serendipity that led to that. There are 913 Pat McAfee's. And I mean, and Pat's incredibly charismatic and talented. You guys are as well. But the long tail of knowledgeable or charismatic individuals is quite long. Now, everyone has a different upside, right? Like, again, somebody could replicate this exact show. and if they're really just much sharper and more entertaining they will take market share like that's just how well the other the other thing about sports versus business that's interesting is like sports there's so many people that played sports whether it's college or professionally and then they stop being able to play at that level and they're like well what's the best thing i should do i should just talk about the game that i love yeah whereas in business you don't get to a point where you're better at talking about it necessarily than doing It's so well said.

8:56And there's another thing. I just turned 50 and literally this morning, no bullshit. I'm like, am I starting to enter my prime? This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales. Using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify.

9:40That's such a great philosophy. You're just like, I'm having whatever the inverse of a midlife crisis is, that's me. wait is the generational run just beginning i love it but then i really like and it's funny and i have a funny feeling especially given the incredible nature of your audience i think when that was just delivered a few minutes ago there's just a lot of people that really understand it because you know my whole life and probably many others watching you wish you were an athlete but if you were an entrepreneur you kind of realize at 30 you're like wait a minute if i was an athlete and i was great i'd be kind of wrapping it up or like thinking about post and i own a large sports agency my brother and i own a very large sports agency now called vayner sports you know i feel for these kids this is what they were meant to do they're 35 years old and they're like what do i do with my you know like just like really intense stuff i i truly i feel so blessed to have always been obsessed with business like i I never came close.

10:44I got very into surfing, but I never liked surfing as much as business. And having a love for something that you can do for a lifetime. Even more people say, like, oh, you should play tennis because you can play it basically indefinitely. But it's like, well, you can do deals truly for life. That's a good segue. This is what we always bring up. He's got a segue. Sorry. One thing. We always bring up Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. It's like the greatest run of that career happened from like 50 to 90. It's like that's so long. No, but wasn't it more like 70 to 90 or like 80? It was. It was like 60.

11:26That's right. So segue. We just brought up tennis. I've done incredibly well. I think this is important for a lot of people. Again, I'm always thinking about the audience. Alternative sports league investing. I think there's some more fun stuff. you guys could be doing about that. It's gotten really well for me. Yeah, Alexis, we had Alexis on. He has the running league, which is cool. We had the founder of Enhanced Games on. Yeah, there's some article in the journal today. Is Paddle the next pickleball? Right, so pickle was a huge win for me, right? I bought a team for$500 ,000 pre-COVID. They're trading at$16 million right now in our Major League Pickleball League.

12:06Wow. So do people watch pickleball? yes that's why that's why i invest so i have a little bit of a secret of why i think i'm doing well because i'm doing well with this wiffle ball league that is starting to get some juice we got some great owners in that let's go um i have one little advantage it's back to this and we've had some meetings off camera and you guys know i'm like pretty in the weeds with like how communication and marketing works the reason i invested in pickle is pickle highlights even seven years ago massively over-indexed on social oh sure yeah right like yeah but but the but the thing is i do wonder if that's so so dana white has uh the the slap fighting league forget what it's called and that's something that does incredibly well on social but i don't know anyone even hardcore mma fans it's like can't wait for the card this weekend i'm gonna watch live but two things one ish on incredibly well on social you have to you know when when you because i've looked at that as well and a lot of it is driven by the tko machine much more than you know the organic nature of what i'm seeing and and seeing somebody that's about to get hit in the face is like naturally scroll stopping even if it's not a good there's also something that people don't realize about sports that matters if you're going to watch it which is your capacity to participate in it yeah right like like like people a lot when people try to zing pickleball they're like yeah everyone's playing it but is it a business and i always like literally those are the articles that were written about tennis and golf 50 60 70 80 years ago it's like it's funny by the way back to your first question the other thing i do pretty well that i hope other people do so i'm saying it out loud is i really use history along with paying attention to people so for example the biggest sports in America in the 20s and 30s were horse racing, boxing, and baseball.

14:06Those sports were very good on radio, but football is not a great radio sport. Football exploded with the television. If you look at the explosion of the football, it came along with television. And so back to streaming, what you guys are doing right now, one of the reasons I'm invested in the sailing league, slam ball you know pickleball wiffle ball what's slam ball slam balls trampolines it's amazing you don't know about this dodgeball and trampoline no no basketball with trampolines so everyone can dunk and do like bath lifts and stuff it's crazy all right i gotta watch i knew i didn't need just like you guys didn't need cnbc to be like you're the right on your talent are all these alternative leagues do not need espn or you know fox sports to say yes people can see this stuff through these platforms and that's going to continue in an ar vr like we're going into an incredible era of opportunity and meritocracy yeah uh real quick hey everybody uh hope you're enjoying the podcast right now make sure you follow the podcast that's why i'm interrupting let's keep going on this show but follow the podcast it'll make my mom super happy what was your reaction to the world cup do you think that flopping will uh and flopping culture will will forever prevent america from actually getting into uh do you think that's a bottleneck no that's not a bottle what americans are hypocrites we love basketball sga is the greatest flopper of all time.

15:43I don't watch enough. I haven't watched enough basketball to have even seen SGA flop, but I feel like the I feel like in Europe they appreciate the drama and it's almost like the acting of it all. But then you watch the replay and it's like Americans that are used to watching some corn-fed linebacker run through a guy and the guy just gets up instantly. You know, it's hard to then go watch somebody flop and completely fake an injury. I think that soccer players at this point have this incredible four to seven percent Academy Award like acting capabilities that probably piss people off. But I agree with you.

16:24I'll use football because football is a sport that people hate when they first see it. And then they become infatuated with it because it stops and starts and stops and starts, especially the world. immigrants coming to the U.S. when they're used to soccer, which is flowing. They hate it. And then inevitably within a decade, they love it because you start falling in love with all the little nuances. And I would say for Americans, the nuance of flopping is annoying, especially with the NBA. It's been a big topic, by the way. So I think, especially this season. So I think some of that energy came to it.

16:58But look, I mean, I'm a little older than you guys. Everybody who's over 50 knows this the strides that america has made in its interest in football aka soccer over the last 30 years is profound fifa the video game had a huge impact being able to watch the premier league in america on saturday mornings had a huge impact and um and i'm it's a great sport and i i already am excited for the next one what about what about the intersection of technology and a game like soccer I grew up playing soccer, reffing soccer. I've reffed. That was like, you know, that was, I would spend my weekends when I was 12, I'd reff like 20 soccer games because they didn't cap it.

17:39Like there was no, like, you can only work eight hours. It was like, you can reff as many games as you want because there was a shortage. So I'd reff like insane number of games in a day and watching the world cup. And again, I'm a super casual viewer. I hadn't been watching soccer prior to the world cup, but it was fun to kind of catch up on it. Like, you know, there'd be an offside call and or maybe there wasn't a call and then they'd run the tape and they figured out that the guy's hand you know elbow was slightly over the line and they'd call it they'd take the goal back and that that to me like part of part of the part of like what makes the sport great is there's just players that can finesse the situation and just be right on that line so a ref couldn't possibly call it and then to have a machine being like you know no you can't you you could beat the ref but not the machine look i think of this like marketing because i'll make this valuable to the audience who does not like sports this is a slam ball by the way i thought those were the chinese robots first no these are now we're watching slam ball best hits look at this yeah look at this oh all right all right tell me this is an electric i can get behind this it's so insane is this made to look like it was shot on vhs what's going on here oh okay so it's been around for a while a little bit more um so i'll say i'll answer you like this to make it a little business terms hopefully help some people's marketing there's a lot of people watching right now that become two one-dimensional math performance marketers and i lose in fact you boys were one of my favorite executions to watch from afar because you guys played like me you sell more on brand than on math you guys were getting brand deals that were completely inappropriate because you sold on value not on metrics yeah i think that that's how i think about technology and sports if we get all the way to full ai robots and everything's 100 black and white i think the league's going to learn pretty quickly that we as humans need a little romance, need a little gray, not black and white, need a little of a balance.

19:49And so just like I wish in political terms that everyone was purple instead of this garbage red and blue we're in with the sports and technology and replay, if they can find purple, I think it's great. When they go too red or too blue, I think it's a problem. Yeah, even in Formula One, the drivers are having issues right now because AI is deciding how much fuel and how much power to, and they're all just getting angry because they're like, am I losing because I'm not as fast as my opponent or is the AI running on my car just not as dialed? It's all these analogies. It's like, is dinner fun without the side dish and the amuse-bouche and dessert?

20:36When we get so binary, we all want a little romance. We need a little romance. Okay, one more potential league. I want you to run this down and let us know next time you're on what you find. But I have a theory that when every car on the road is autonomous, that driving on the track is going to have a resurgence of popularity because people are going to be, you know, it's so romantic. It's so romantic. There's so much great history around racing. Every person, everyone I know. Yeah, hit me with the counter. But I have a theory that there's something like a slam ball or whatever it is for driving.

21:19And that's just like demolition derby. No, it's something like rally car. I was driving. Yesterday, I was driving a dude buggy. I was like with my buddy. And we were laughing. It was so much fun. We're drifting around. Yeah, it's more dynamic. Counter is, I don't know if you know this, but we used to ride horses before the cars. Yeah. And I don't know if you know, there's something called horse racing that is pretty out there. And so the counter would be that we kind of just lived it with horses and horse racing. But the counter to my counter is what you said, which is I actually think horse racing could be massive in this country if they put a contemporary flair on it.

22:01What UFC showed is like it was an evolution of boxing. Oh, interesting. Yeah. You want like rally horse racing. Sort of like UFC meets the Kentucky Derby. Like you can punch the other jockeys. Or what about none of that? And it's more about storytelling. What about... Yes, yes, yes. A drive to survive, that type of thing. Yeah, or even when we're watching an actual horse race on a Saturday that's not the Kentucky Derby. Like if you turned it on and the bottom of the screen was actually a mic version of every jockey and you're learning. We want layers. we want likes we want stories we want to get captivated everything is about that in every aspect of life but two jockeys getting up in each other's faces and throwing down after okay here's a here's a hard-hitting question all right do you think big boogie turned it down or was he capping that was a good question do you think he potentially because we were trying to do that john did the math and he said that if he was going to dental school for a decade and he had a bunch of dependents it's possible the total package could have been in the in the 10 million dollar range but you you cover nil stuff a lot more true you'll appreciate this this is one of the rare moments where i get to do this and i always look for it so thank you men i'm gonna clip this the answer is i don't know i've just not paid enough attention i've been a a little bit of a bubble.

23:34I'm very in, I'm in a very weird place right now. I've been in a seven to 10 week cocoon around the collectibles industry becoming, collecting becoming the next lifestyle genre. And so like my consumption of anything happening in pop culture is on an all time low the last two months. Cause I've been in the lab, like in the lab on this thesis that I've been on for about eight years that I think is about to completely blow the roofs off of. Like for example, let me give you a for instance to give you even more color. Again, always try to think about how to bring value to this smart show. We've started at VaynerMedia a collectibles marketing division.

24:13Just like there started, just like Coca-Cola started a sports marketing division when the Olympics were getting important as a driver to consumption. I believe in 10 years, every Fortune 500 consumable product, apparel, CPG, will have a collectibles marketing strategy. I don't know if you guys saw lines around the door at Popeye's chicken for the one piece collectible, people flooding to a Dodgers game to get the one piece collectible. I think that differentiation in an AEO, GEO, you know, agentic commerce world, differentiation around collectibles and community to get people to stop their normal pattern of what they're just reordering because they wanna buy a deodorant that has a collectible of their favorite.

24:59I just see collectibles eating up because of what it means for community and analog and value and investment. Yeah, and AI creates insane, is going to continue to create insane abundance. One example is everyone can have a SaaS product now. You can make it. Everyone will. Everyone will. What's the chain? Everyone who wants to. Go ahead, brother. What's the chain from people are playing a sport? is it watchable then it becomes a sport with teams professional uh you identified some of the translation effects like uh you know is anybody what is anybody gonna watch golf sure a lot of people play it but will people watch it obviously the answer was yes and that was true for football before there was a league and there was tv and the super bowl right people were just playing it by the way just for fun because i'm just learning out please like everyone said there would never be a professional football league that football was always going to college yep notre dame the 20s the 30s like yeah like smart people that come on every this one like those people back in the 40s and 50s like there will never be professional football yes but at the same time there are sports that are played by lots of people i'm thinking of like running and running is not a massive there's not the super bowl of running even though millions and millions of americans go jogging and they participate in the sport there's something special about competitive football that makes it the super bowl right the super bowl is very special but like you know the new york city marathon is a very cultural event with good ratings yeah you know i think we're in the era where an entrepreneur watching this show right now is like fuck it i'm making a running league and it might hit yeah so then talk to me about the translation layer from there there's a sport that a lot of people are playing if it's watchable it becomes a big national sport with professional teams that we're all watching uh at what point does it become is there a collectible culture around it because uh we're just in this early stages of like pickleball has been played by a lot of people it's now starting to be watched by people as you mentioned when will people be collecting pickleball cards yeah your production team seems really capable based on what i just saw can the production team before i leave in the next three or four minutes put up ebay type in anna lee waters lee is l-e-i-g-h anna a-n-n-a space lee l-e-i-e-h space waters then enter on ebay and then go to completed and sold items and then sorted by most valuable if the team could do this this is a great challenge for the team are you just trying to move some anna lee waters merch right now you're like and then click purchase and then click check i'm kidding she is the star of our team okay we do represent her sports she's my and there's my she was our joe namath she is our larry bird look at this we go now here on the left side on the left side hit completed and sold Yeah, real eBay ball knowers.

28:12No, there's Dylan on our team, big collector. Nope, no, no, all the way down. I'm very hardcore. I'm very in the dirt on collectible culture. The completed sold. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook.

28:57Where are we going? Hunting around for Anna Lee Waters. Oh, show us this, show us this. You gotta log in, show us the password. So Dylan on our team already got there. There we go. And he's seeing Anna Lee Waters' rookie autograph cards going for$8 ,000,$5 ,000. And I would argue we've done a very good job with Anna Lee. We've made her famous. She's on Fallon. She's on McAfee. She's the face of the sport. Ryan Harwood at VaynerSports deserves a lot of credit. We've crushed with her. She's the best player in the world. Pickleball is the only sport where a female can be the best. She's the best player in the sport, including the men.

29:42Wow. Because, you know, that's what's interesting about pickleball. 80-year-old grandmas are whipping 19-year-old grandsons in pickleball. It's a different kind of sport. There is another sport where women outperform men. Certain equestrian in the Olympics. Tristage. I'm sure there's others, but this is one that people know. So you can see eight to 5 ,000, and I will tell you 99 % of the audience, and everyone on Twitter right now, hit me up Gary Vee and answer this, 99 % of the audience right now has never heard of her in their lives. So it doesn't take a lot to get to collectible, because collectibles are niche, are tribals, right?

30:23Look what happened with Comic-Con, 50 guys in a weird hotel in San Diego, right? in 1976 to now this last weekend, millions of people go into San Diego and it's a cultural phenomenon. So collectibles is when it flips over to pop culture. I would argue that athletes that are the most valuable are more pop culture than people realize. They're more superheroes than people realize. And when you're building a league, whether it's Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey, whether it's Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Steph Curry today. Like, you need a superhero. Joe Namath was the superhero for the NFL early on.

31:02He became one of the most famous people in the world. Jets had a huge upset in Super Bowl III, and football was on its way.

31:12Business collectibles. Where do you think it's going? We saw Jensen Jack go for about a million. That was for charity for our friend Justin Mayer's, his grants that he does. I believe collectibles have eaten up the pop culture energy of what young 20-year-olds would do with public stocks. So instead of buying 50 shares of Nike like my generation did, they're going to go buy a collectible. I think it's completely eaten up the oxygen of contemporary art. So you guys, especially after your nice transaction, continue to hang around people of wealth at a young age. your contemporaries, people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, only 25 years ago, 30 years ago, are buying the hottest contemporary artists to put the art in the house.

31:56Much of that money is now going into $100 ,000, million dollar collectibles. Obviously, Michael Rubin, sitting on the top of the Topps empire with all his cultural relevance has brought an incredible amount of pop culture energy to it. And kids, people forget, trading cards are 100 years of collectability now. This has been a very long-term asset class, but the numbers are just out of control. You see O 'Leary wearing this, you know. You know this, even for you guys that are young, definitely people in my generation, people that collected cards as teenagers in the 80s and 90s were nerdy. People collecting cards are now cool.

32:39And once that switch happens, it gets really different really fast, and we're on that other side. And so you'll see, you know, watches, on your shirt i want to know what's on your shirt i wasn't even i was right there you go yeah hello where are you going to the national of course leaving tomorrow let me just make this so i can clip it nine years i am building the next disney pokemon marvel all in everyone's faces it's called be friends and because i have 13 different other jobs no one sees it and i don't speak about it that often but but you're building an i.e business during this ai era is going to end up being one of my savviest moves.

33:18Yeah. And the generational run is just beginning. I love it. Clip that. Clip that in a decade. Clip that in five decades. I mean, 99, 100. Thank you, man. Great to catch up. Always great to be the man. Let me know if I can help you. Good luck at the National. Hey, everybody. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention. and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.