Inside Ratner and Rubin’s Fanatics Content Factory

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1:34Congratulations, you made the varsity, the podcast. My name is John O 'Ran and I am Puck's sports correspondent and the host of this pod. And today, I am pleased to be joined by Michael Ratner. Michael's been in the sports media headlines all week, or rather, his company, OBB Media, has. Ratner's production company, OBB, set up a joint venture with Fanatics to launch what's called Fanatics Studios. It's Fanatics's entry into the sports production business. Yes, Fanatics, the company best known for selling apparel, trading cards, sports betting. With Michael Ratner at the helm, it's now going to be a big player in the sports production business.

2:17It already has deals lined up with ESPN, Fox, Baseball, WWE, LA28, to create all kinds of content from feature films to live event specials like the ESPYs. So we're going to talk a lot about this deal, of course. But I'm most interested in getting Michael Ratner to talk about the state of the sports content business and have him drop a few breadcrumbs about where it's all going to head. But before we get to OBB Media's Michael Radner, today is Wednesday, January 14th, and here's what I'm watching. First, a prediction. Ticket prices for Monday's Miami-Indiana National Championship game are going to come down.

3:00People got sticker shock about those prices,$3 ,500 for the nosebleeds. Well, the word on the street on Tuesday is that a lot of ticket brokers ended up with Miami's allocation of tickets, which means that the secondary market is soon going to see a lot more inventory, which means that prices should drop. Anyway, that's my guess. Another topic of interest is golf. Brooks Koepka is back on the PGA Tour. So congrats to CEO Brian Rolap, the former NFL executive. This is a huge win for Brian. Koepka officially rejoins the tour in less than two weeks, and it's part of what Rolap calls the returning member program.

3:48That's set up to give some of the golfers who defected to Live Golf a pathway back home. So what does this mean for Live? The honest answer is that we don't know yet. It will be a disaster if another U.S. golfer follows suit. So keep your eyes on Jon Rahm or Bryson DeChambeau or Cam Smith. But here's what's going on. The PGA Tour's media rights are up in 2030, and Rollap's job is to make the tour as attractive as possible over the next 18 to 24 months. He can do that by getting as many big names as possible, and Koepka is certainly a big name, at least in the U.S. market. A final topic of interest, it's the run-up to this summer's World Cup, which of course is going to be held in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

4:35I had a fun story in my private email on Monday about some of the sponsor-style confusion between FIFA, TikTok, and Fox Sports. I love these kinds of stories, I have to admit. We see them all the time in the months before big events like the Olympics or the World Cup. A lot of confusion always plays out in the lead-up to these events. Every single Summer Olympics that I've covered has been filled with stories just weeks before the event questioning whether the home city is ready for it. And guess what? They always are. In this story, FIFA named TikTok what it called a preferred platform for the World Cup.

5:12By becoming a preferred platform, TikTok is going to be able to live stream part of the World Cup matches. FIFA said so in its release. The only problem? Fox owns those rights in the U.S. not just TV, but for streaming, for social, you name it. In fact, the only company that can carry any part of the match live is Fox or a company that doesn't deal with Fox and TikTok hasn't done that deal. As you all know, Fox picked up the World Cup rights in 2011. It extended that deal four years later. It is without question that Fox holds those rights. There's no carve out for FIFA to sell live look-ins during games carried in the United States.

5:56So let's say TikTok does that deal with Fox. It's not likely to be an exclusive one. I'm told Fox is negotiating another deal with a rival social media platform. It could be YouTube. It could be Meta. It could be X. During previous World Cups, Fox forged deals with X, then called Twitter, to broadcast match highlights in almost real time. It also produced a studio show exclusively for Twitter. Now, generally speaking, TikTok hasn't done much in sports, at least not compared with other social media platforms. Soccer, though, is a notable exception. TikTok signed a similar style deal with FIFA for the Women's World Cup in 2023.

6:36And it also did a deal with Major League Soccer to live stream some of Messi's games. Now, it's too early to handicap what could happen between Fox and TikTok. But believe me, this is a story that bears watching. Now, let's get to Michael Radner. So, Michael, thank you for joining today. The big headline out of this deal, like OBB did the deal where partnered with Fanatics, going to do feature films, documentaries, live events. For me, the headline out of this deal is Fanatics, which is, you know, it sells apparel, sells tickets, it's into sports betting. is now sort of getting into the content business.

7:21Walk us through what this deal means or what's in this deal as it pertains to you. The power of storytelling, I mean, one is a huge passion of mine and creating content as a platform to not only reach audiences and tell great stories and get billions of views and impact culture and get into the conversation, that's all incredible in of itself. But the idea of creating a 360 flywheel and partnering with a business in a genre where you can see, touch, feel, and create the surround sound accordingly and have ancillary businesses and connect content and commerce and community is wildly attractive to us.

8:06We wanted something that could supercharge our sports business specifically. Sports, we're no stranger to sports. We won the Peabody last year with Mountain Queen. We've got Cold as balls. It's done over a hundred episodes, billions of views. It's entering its 13th season with Kevin Hart. We've got the Kevin Durant multi-part Netflix doc, Speed Goes Pro, which is the internet darling right now. But when you really think about if you want to go and break through that barrier to entry and meaningfully have a sports business, who better than Fanatics, arguably the most important company in sports.

8:39And with their deals across all of the leagues and with their athlete relationships, we have the ability to really disrupt here and do something very special. So I liked the idea of finding a like-minded partner, an entrepreneurial partner, who better than Ruben and the Fanatics team. So more specifically, walk me through what it means to have those added businesses that Fanatics has. How does that help what you do, speaking as specifically as you can? Well, I think let's take the collectibles business, take tops, take trading cards. There are such fascinating stories around trading cards. You know, then you could use analogies of things like the Barbie movie, or you can use analogies of so many different examples of brands and businesses that use storytelling as a platform.

9:23But specific to Fanatics, I think that there's a lot of attractive storytelling around FBG, the Fanatics Betting and Gaming Platform. And we could do scripted work there, and we could do things that elevate the sector. I think on the commerce business, whether it comes to merch or tops, like I mentioned, there's a lot of stuff that we can do and put those items and those athletes into positions where we could tell better stories around products that we're trying to sell. And ultimately, we learned a lot from being partners. We did a walk, jog, run with Fanatics. We are partners on Fanatics Fest.

9:55Seeing the fan experience at Fanatics Fest and realizing the potential, not only to affect the 150 ,000 people going into the Javits Center and seeing the moments when they meet their idol or they get a signature. And then thinking about how do we actually extend that beyond those walls, that in real life experience and doing content that can be seen globally. And then ultimately people could go and buy something. Again, this blurred line between audience and customer is really fascinating to me. And I think now more than ever with new media and technology and the convergence of sports and entertainment, there's something really exciting to get at the heart of, and that's what we plan to do.

10:33I feel like we're in the conference room coming up with story ideas here, but the Fanatics Fest, I find to be fascinating. Sports comic. Yeah, when it was first described to me, I thought it was going to be a colossal failure. Who's kind of like, how many people are you going to get out to this? You produced the show that was on ESPN. What beyond that? Because that, to me, is sort of like an old school way of thinking. right? That's the content that comes out of something like Fanatics Fest. You just do a, I don't know if you even call it a documentary, but you do a show that describes what's going on at Fanatics Fest.

11:11How are you viewing this? How do you grow that? What's different? What can you bring to it that will be a little bit different? The less it feels like a trade show and the more it feels like a variety show and it's got something for everybody. I don't know if you saw, there's lots of organic magic that happens in those walls, stunts that take place. So take Brady tossing the Lombardi to Gronk or take the segment, the other segment we did with Gronk where, and again, that was viral. It was everywhere. You couldn't miss it. I mean, there was a full-blown algorithm aside. I don't care where you were in the world.

11:45You could not avoid Fanatics Fest last year. That was really thought through. And how do we do effective marketing to bring excitement for the fans into what was taking place in the Javits Center. Depending on where you are in the world, you could or could not be there. But we wanted to figure out how do we take advantage of the new media, social media landscape, and then ultimately also put out a polished, I'd call it a one-hour special that comes out on ESPN. And now you have all of these different pieces that ultimately share with people the excitement of what was taking place there. Some of it best for real time, right?

12:15So literally you're seeing things as they're breaking, as they're happening. And you have Kevin Durant on stage finding out he's being traded. That's the magic that happens when you put 400 of the greatest athletes in the world and celebrities and talent into one place. I think that there's few and far between. I'll go further. There's no other company outside of Fanatics that could put that combination of people together at the Javits Center. There was a moment I was in the 4040 and I looked up and you see Jay-Z and Kevin Hart and Michael Rubin and I just went, this is magic. This is normally an auto trade show.

12:45And what our job is as storytellers is to make it super dynamic. It's not just panel to panel and you learn something about the intersection of sports and business. How can you find things that are exciting? How can we do? We had our cold as ball show there. Kevin Hart in cold tubs with Victor Wiminyama and Tom Brady. I think that's the excitement. You walk that floor and if you're a sports fan, you're in heaven. You just identified like three or four viral clips that hit my social feeds. Everybody pretty much knows what you're talking about. You referenced Michael Rubin. I know you have a close relationship with him.

13:22How did this relationship start? Take me to the very first germ of how this deal came about. I met him at a business conference and I wanted to sort of just throw a bunch of questions at him and learn. And, you know, he's the OG and I think he's built such an incredible business. And at that time, we were six years into building OBB and creating a vertically integrated content studio. I was fascinated with his vertical integration, albeit in a slightly different space. And then, of course, our other venture with Rode really is at the intersection of content, community, and commerce and was heavily predicated on YouTube content, obviously selling skincare products.

14:04and that's the Haley Bieber beauty business. And, you know, we just got into this philosophical conversation about business and the state of the world, how we approach things and quickly sort of stared at each other. I like to talk about how much older Michael is than I. And we just started talking about the way we see the world and that entrepreneurial killer instinct when you just sort of know somebody else has that passion for what we do and wake up, it doesn't feel like work. And we started talking, all right, well, let's collab a little bit. We started creating some content for fanatics. So we did a few pieces of content on a one-off basis.

14:36Then we ended up doing fanatics fest. Then there was this epiphany idea of how dangerous would this be with us together? So it was really organic and we really tried it out. So this is no shotgun marriage. We've, you know, Ruben and I've had too many 4.30 AM conversations and, you know, round the clock working and we just, we, we hustle the same way. When did you realize that you were going to be working together in, in, in a, in a way like, like this deal that was just announced this week? Well, it took a better part of a year to get a deal done that we were both comfortable with. I wouldn't say we're both the easiest going.

15:10So we negotiated the deal over some time to get a joint venture we're both happy with, and we've landed it. Couldn't be more excited. We are true partners on this venture, going exclusive in sports, OBB sports with Fanatics and Fanatics going exclusive with OBB for all sports content is obviously just, it's a really big deal, especially with our lofty ambitions of creating franchisable annuity value tentpole projects. So I'd say that we started talking about the socializing it early 25 and then it took place. And we started again, if you look at this announcement, this is no thin announcement, the LA 28 partnership, strategic content partnership, WWE, MLB, world baseball classic, co-producing the ESPYs.

15:52I mean, the list goes on and on. This is a pretty dialed, detailed, robust offering. So while we were negotiating that in parallel, having faith we're going to work it out, we're out of market. Pre-launch, we're going to do nine figures of revenue in year one. I don't know many new media content businesses that can say that. so that the um i was fascinated so la 28 uh is one fox espn like you said uh mlb wwe what type of programming like as as a consumer what what and where will i see some of this programming that comes out like what's it going to look like most importantly we didn't want to do an overall deal this is about the fan at the end of the day it all comes back the fan the espies belong on espn Of course, the WWE show that we're doing with the Usos belongs on the WWE network on YouTube.

16:45They've got the 11th most followed YouTube channel in the world, over 110 million subs. They've done over 100 billion views. That is a digital show that deserves to be on that channel. Something like the flag football classic with Tom Brady belongs on Fox Sports. So I think making no grand statements about all content universally should live on our O &Os or all content should live on Netflix. What is the best home for this project? Where is the audience and let's go meet them where they are. I think that's a great way to sort of dovetail into my next list of questions here is, you know, these are my state of the market type of questions.

17:26But what are what like as you look at like Netflix, like what's what's a piece of content that would work on on Netflix? And also, would you ever call it piece of content? What a terrible turn of the phrase that is. What, what, what, what, what. I'm going to steal it if it's okay with you. Yeah. That's way too corporatized. Well, I think that the, there's, there's tons of work that could belong on, on Netflix. I think, you know, what do you go on to Netflix to watch? I mean, you've watched probably tons of unscripted programming, docu-series. You watch these big live eventized projects. We're just having a conversation with Brandon Reed yesterday about the Jake Paul fight.

18:10You know, those big moments and their push into live and their willingness to take risks is something that we're excited about when it makes sense for a project. You know, I think you go and you think about something like we made Mountain Queen for Netflix last year, right? It's the Everest climbing movie. That is a Netflix feeling movie. What does that mean? I don't know. Maybe it's an intangible, but you want to think about what do you do and where are you going to be and what's right for mobile, what's right for a computer, what's right for your TV, what's right for a tablet. And think about that.

18:38I think YouTube content has a certain feel to it. That doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be UGC feeling, but you think about Speed Goes Pro, it still feels like a YouTube show. So I do think that just back to your question on Netflix specifically, a feature doc makes sense. I mean, it could be a scripted series. It could be a one-off live event that's live live. So I think that it really just depends. And some of that we inherently produce to feel true and native to the platform that we're creating it for. Do you, is there a difference in your mind to a streaming platform like a Netflix or an Amazon Prime and a, you know, a Fox and an ESPN?

19:20Because when I'm, when I'm watching, I'm an old guy, But when I'm watching Netflix or Amazon Prime, I'm watching it all via TV. But as you produce or as you pitch things out, is there a difference to you? Yeah, I think, again, as far as the sorts of content we're creating, I think that we frequently are mandate people. So what are you looking for exactly? And the mandate's always been, well, what would we ourselves watch? Which I think is the best arbiter for taking something on. It's an intangible, it's a taste thing. I do believe that certain content feels like it belongs to certain places. And I do think that, I'll give you an example.

20:02We do Jingle Ball for ABC and Hulu. Creating a show for ABC and Hulu is quite a unique riddle because they're two totally different demos, right? You have called 62 and a half for ABC. You've got Hulu, which is far younger than that. How do you go and figure out how to be cross-generational and have something for both? And I think that there's a craft to that. And I think, you know, I gave an example once of you need to have Olivia Rodrigo and you need to have Cher. And then maybe the magic is the moment of the two of them together. So I do think that we constantly are thinking about how do we go and create stuff for the audience that is true and going to show up for that piece of content.

20:44and we need to be honest with ourselves about that and tweak accordingly. You know, the other thing is playing with duration. You know, we are a platform duration agnostic business. So depending on where we show up, what's the length, you know, we're not strained to the same rules and regulations of broadcast for the most part, right? If we're making some for Netflix or for YouTube, I mean, all bets are off and we can go eight minutes if that feels right and go 30 minutes if that feels right. I don't even know what long form and short form means anymore. How long is a piece of short form content?

21:09You know, how long is a piece of long form content? But we should do a poll. And I promise you, Gen Z, Gen A, they're going to say something very different. They're probably very fatigued by minute 15. Yeah, somebody, my long form content is certainly over an hour, right? But I guess getting my kids to sit for something more than five minutes is an impossibility, it seems. You referenced Jingle Ball. You referenced Hailey Bieber, Kevin Hart. you've done so much outside of sports. What's different about hitting sports fans or hitting sports content? I think that there is something ubiquitous, undeniably ubiquitous about sports.

21:58I think there's something so global, something so unifying, and that's really exciting. You're creating something for a mass audience. And that to me is riveting. I think the also connectivity and the universal nature of some of these athletes. And now more so than ever before, there is a desire to do stuff off the court, off the field, and we're going to be their partner to tell those stories in great ways. And I think there's a big difference. There's a valley between just telling subjective puff piece commercials, glorified puff pieces, and doing something that is we're inherently on the same page with the talent.

22:35We know what they're looking to get out of it, but then doing something from a really objective, true storytelling lens. And that's what we're looking to do. And I think that could be a doc, doc series, video podcast. It could be a feature film. It could be a scripted show. It could be one of these live events. I think if you're sort of scratching your head thinking, well, what are we going to see more from them? What's going to be the great differentiator in what this group is doing? You know, OB being fanatics together, it's culture and it's sports. And I think that when you look at the fanatics flag football class with Tom Brady, that is a great example of what you expect to see more from more of us from.

23:09And so that's an example, because when you say we want to be on the same page, but we're not going to do puff, it's hard to envision what that line is. But that's what the line is. You're doing a flag. You're not doing a Tom Brady puff piece. you're doing, okay, let's just go to the flag football that Tom Brady would be involved in. Yeah, I think, again, that is alignment. The fastest growing sport in the world is flag. And you have Tom Brady, who seven rings and was excited about being a global ambassador for flag and says to us, you know, I want to go create this thing and who would be the right partner to actually bring it to life.

23:48And then we started working on it. And it's no easy task to start something up brand new, think through teams and jerseys and how it's going to work and creating the gameplay. That is a big, big, big property and a big temple for us to navigate. And I think that's an example of something where there was perfect alignment. I mean, who better to create a new football property than Tom Brady? And we infiltrated some of the culture and how do we think about how this thing's going to be marketed? You have Kevin Hart hosting it. We've got a really exciting performer that's going to be announced later today.

24:19So I just think that that's an example of one where you think about what does this game look like? Who's in it? How do you make it hyper competitive and how do you make it something that fans are going to be excited about year over year?

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