How the Big 12, the Baltimore Ravens & Playfly See the Next Decade of Sports

23:09I was fortunate to be introduced to a gentleman by the name of Brett Yormark, who was the CEO of the Brooklyn Nets. They were transitioning from New Jersey to Brooklyn and thinking about my first change in my career. And I was really excited about the opportunity to build a brand and to be a part of this transition to a huge market in New York, to be a disruptor as you think about the next space within the market. And I gladly accepted that role. Learned a lot with Brett at the helm and all my peers that reimagined the Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets brand. I did that for six years. Then wanted to change.

23:44It felt that I needed to broaden my horizon. I had done it in New York market at the highest of levels. So I decided to take my talents across the country, bookends, do it on the West Coast in LA with the Rams who had recently moved back from St. Louis. They were playing at the Coliseum. They wanted to reimagine their brand positioning and how they showed up in Los Angeles with culture being at the center of what they do. And that was the step I needed in my career. It showed me a different side of things in a different market and that there isn't a one size fits all solution of building brands.

24:17And from there, you know, really being ingrained in the building of SoFi and the reimagining of the Rams brand. I was able to do that, obviously ran into the pandemic and needed to broaden my horizon. I was much focused on licensing, merchandising with a smattering of brand that was part of my day-to-day responsibility. But there was an opportunity within the Pistons that allowed me to oversee all of marketing, to understand how social, digital, and brand experience and all of the different pieces of the brand tree come together to truly elevate a brand. And for me, the Pistons were just that, you know, that the team wasn't playing very well, but I do believe that regardless of performance, you can impact the way a brand shows up.

25:03And I use that as a strategic transition in my career to go to a smaller market and provide meaningful impact. I thoroughly enjoyed my two years with the Pistons. I got a chance to reunite with a near and dear friend, Mike Zavatsky, who was the chief business officer at the time and then brett yormar called and when brett calls it's hard to tell him now he's a heck of a salesman and the same day that my wife and i found out we were pregnant he also offered me the gig and here we are chief business and the chief brand and business officer with the big 12 and loving every second of it awesome well look the intersection of brand and business i don't know if a role gets any more exciting than that and you're a brand guy at heart so we're going to talk about that a good amount but before we do let's hit the business Tell us how the Big 12 thinks about college sport now as business, because that's changed a lot in the last few years.

25:53Yeah. And I, you know, I never want to discount the traditions and pageantry that comes with collegiate athletics. It's the root of the sport. But, you know, it's incumbent upon all of us to look at it as a business. And Brett's opening remarks as commissioner of the conference, he said, we're open for business. And what did that mean at the time? you know, expansion, commercial opportunities, thinking about how we license our brand, thinking about how we build our brand. We thought about it as a 360 business that we need to prioritize and focus on given the media rights deals, the social engagement, the world is ever evolving.

26:28You know, we're now in a business where we're paying student athletes. And if you're not thinking about collegiate athletics as a business, you're most likely missing the mark. And fortunately enough, we have a very business-minded commissioner as well as a front office that thinks about maintaining the traditions, but how do we continue to plus up the opportunities to ensure that we're driving meaningful value for our institutions and membership as a whole, as well as the conference? I'm still coming up the curve on college sports. I can tell you now, if you came to a college game in the UK, you'd be hugely disappointed.

27:02It'd be about 15 people drinking warm beer in the rain. a very different experience. But as I was thinking about it, I was thinking about the long-term business thesis for the Big 12. I was like, is it about scale? Is it about brand power? Is it about digital reach? Is it about fan monetization? Is it just about the purity of letting the kids play sport? What is the long-term business thesis for the Big 12? Yeah, let me start with our mission. You know, we aim to be the most relevant and nationally recognized conference, competing at the highest level and creating value for our membership athletically, academically, commercially, and culturally.

27:41That's how, when you walk into our office, that's the first thing that you see. So for us, it's a combination. You know, I think it's brand power, digital reach, fan monetization, but it has to be done sequentially. So we are firm believers that you build your brand to drive your business. And every business decision we make is rooted in how does this impact our brand? And that is a strategic approach. We never veer from that philosophical guiding principle. And with that, it allows us to plus up and truly exponentially elevate all those things in far greater ways than it would if we tried to think about any one of them in isolation.

28:20And, you know, for us, not only just the conference, but imparting that same wisdom on our institutions as the world's changed, be given the drastic and quick nature in which the business has evolved, having a lot of professionals on our staff now who have worked in pro sports, equally as much as those who are institutional in nature that have worked in Cleveland Athletics for the larger part of their career. it has allowed us to have meaningful conversation as we think about hey here's how we're going to build our brand and in the process we can build a digital audience and here's how we're going to enhance that within our championships where we have people in person and how do you combine all these things together to unlock as much potential and as much value as possible i love that and let's double click on that specific bit for just just a moment you talked about the mission and hitting you in the face as you walk into the office you talked about how you're presenting online the big 12 has developed a really distinct voice online it was clear to me the second i began research for this podcast and that's all you i know that what's the business thinking behind that tone yeah listen first off it's a collective effort if if the world could see the big 12's internal group of chat that that could be its own content the things that didn't make the cutting in room floor that we've toyed around with responding to.

29:41But for us, you know, we're firm believers that if someone's not going to speak about us, we'll do the talking for ourselves, especially when it comes to ensuring that what's being said is factual. And oftentimes the responses that we've had on social have just been, in our opinion, facts. And we wanted to address that to our audiences and let them know that we're not just going to allow people to talk negatively about our conference. And it's important that we stand up for ourselves and stand up for our membership. This is a very proud conference. We're celebrating our 30th year. We're still the youngest P4, and we're proud to wear that badge, but we won't let anybody step on us in the process.

30:19And that's part of our very strategic and deliberate approach. And again, we don't want to respond to everything, but when we feel like it gets to a point where it meets the need and warrants a response, we're certainly going to do that. And again, it starts at the top. We have a commissioner that's on the offensive on a regular basis, and we just want to make sure that we follow suit. Let's talk a moment about the changing stakeholder landscape for you. As a brand guy and a business guy, you're constantly thinking about who are we actually talking to and what does it mean to them? You've got fans, which is a complex stakeholder group in itself.

31:00You've got alumni, a deeply passionate group of people. You've got the athletes who are now celebrities with name image likeness rules changing. How does that complexity change how you approach monetization? We have to be mindful of the entire ecosystem and it's not just the single serve solution. Everyone is a stakeholder and we have to think about it in that very light. For us, you know, student athletes, when we first got here, our agency of record translation, now we talked about the new frontier of winning. That was going to be our North Star. We understand we needed to win in the classroom.

31:41We needed to win on the field. We needed to win with our fans, win with our student athletes as we think about recruitment. And that guided us to think about how we service each of those buckets. And sometimes they're done in isolation. More often than not, we like to cross-pollinate and ensure that we're providing as much value for them. So if you're coming to our championship, here's how we're providing that value for our student athlete at world-class venues with world-class experiences. Our alumni base, this is a moment to come together and create lasting memories with the newer generation.

32:15You know, oftentimes you have cross multi-generational families that attended the same institution and we could provide a place for them to congregate and build lasting memories. You know, when we think about our current student body, you know, things like the student section of the week that we've introduced this year to celebrate all the pageantry and raucous environments that we've created within the Big 12 conference. Thinking about a global audience, right? The Big 12 is talking about global expansion. And, you know, we obviously played this year in Dublin with K-State and Iowa State. Next year, TCU was back in Dublin to play against UNC.

32:50We just had a women's basketball game, Duke versus Baylor played Duke and won earlier this week. And then next year on a big stage in London, where September 19th, we're going to have Kansas versus Arizona State playing on a big stage. New stakeholders, existing stakeholders coming together for the greater good of the Big 12 conference. And we want to continue to unlock as much of the value for all of those key stakeholders. and truly create our point of differentiation. And we call ourselves a different league. It's our tag for this year and hopefully for the foreseeable future. And that's something we celebrate.

33:24But that differentiation all has the same common denominator of the value for those respective constituents. I hear you. Well, you talk about the future. Let's look into the future for a moment. If we look at five years ahead, where do you, Tara, see the biggest untapped business opportunity in college athletes? Yeah, it's certainly the commercial side of the house. You know, there's a lot of fixed costs. You know, we're not changing our TV deals today. So how do you create incremental value in real time? You know, it's been widely rumored and reported. You know, the Big 12 talked about private equity.

34:00We talked about a conference naming rights. We've done the biggest deals with the likes of Allstate and Venmo, PayPal, and more to come in the near future. We look at the commercial business as our way forward, a strategic integration? How are we finding partners that create meaningful value to unlock? I'll give you the example of Venmo PayPal, the fact that we are utilizing that as a tool to pay our student athletes. That's a brand partnership, but also comes with built-in utility. There's going to be things that the Venmo platform offers beyond just an affinity credit card that is doing extremely well to date, but other utility that we can provide and other value that fans can unlock within their Venmo journey.

34:44And that's the type of philosophical approach that we have when it relates to the commercialization and strategic commercialization and not just grabbing a dollar to grab a dollar, but how is that dollar working for us? And we've got that reciprocity with respect to the partners that we're bringing in. The other piece of it is licensing. You know, there's broadcast licensing, there's digital networks. I firmly believe that where the world is heading, We all need to act as our own digital network, not just your social channels, but how can you have always on content 24 seven that keeps people coming back for more?

35:20And we started our own owned and operated platforms last year in partnership with Raycom. We have, you know, a studio shows, we have talent that we have on, on the payroll that is, you know, serve as our mouthpiece into the marketplace. But the evolution of that is 24-7 programming. Think about the success of YouTube and Twitch and all the Kai Sinats of the world that are dialed in and providing that value. That's the way forward. And we need to be on the forefront of capitalizing on all that momentum. I love it. I mean, what an exciting spot to be in. And you've definitely got the energy and the mind for it.

35:59But while we talk about capitalizing on change, and I'm a big believer in leaning into change, on the flip side, we're talking about college kids playing sport here. What's the one aspect of college sport you personally hope never changes, no matter how commercial that system does become? Yeah, for me, you know, and I've come up to the pro space. I went to a D3 school, so I didn't understand the sort of enormity of the college athletic space. And I've been blown away with, again, the pageantry and all the pomp circumstance around the games and how Saturdays are oftentimes bigger than Sundays. And I don't want to lose the essence of college athletics in its truest sense, right?

36:48Marching bands and flags being waved and great tailgates and that cross-generational love that I've alluded to earlier. I also, you know, at the end of the day, we're in the business of education and I still want that to be at the forefront, right? That shouldn't be athlete students, it should still be student athletes. And you're here to get a great education while also being afforded the opportunity to play the game that you love in this new day and age, also being afforded the opportunity to monetize off of that. And while it continues to evolve, I don't think we can remove the purity of what makes this special.

37:22And every time I show up on a campus, every time I attend one of our championships, every conversation I have with a student athlete, alumni, I'm reminded of where it's all rooted. And that keeps me focused and excited and continuing to provide value to keep what we all love and know afloat, despite sort of the changing current. Awesome. Tyrell, I know you're short on time. It's a busy day for you and leading into a big weekend, no doubt, but thank you for your insights. And I had this feeling, I don't know what it is about you, but I have this feeling that we're going to be seeing you go at the helm of big teams doing amazing things in the future.

38:03And I can't wait to see that. Much appreciated, Sam. Appreciate your time. Love your platform and excited to keep the dialogue going. This is certainly not the end and always here to support however I can. Next up, we've got Moon Jabead. Moon's the Chief Growth and Innovation Officer at the Baltimore Ravens. Juggernaut, behemoth, powerhouse are words that have been used for a long time to describe the National Football League in America. And it's not surprising why. Commercially speaking, they're the world's most lucrative sports league, and it's a genuine Goliath, a competition whose ability to make money is totally unmatched in the sporting world.

38:41Now, most people think of sports teams as a trophy asset, the sort of asset that was really only reserved for billionaires. But since 2019 in the US, when Major League Baseball changed the rules, now every league's followed suit. Now anyone can invest in those sports teams. It includes me, it includes you, it includes institutional investors, all the way through to individuals. As I was preparing to talk to Moon, I recently listened to a Tony Robbins podcast on sport, and he talked about it as being an uncorrelated investment, an investment that helped de-risk portfolios. But most importantly, he talked about sports teams being cultural assets.

39:23They've got legal monopolies in their cities. You think about it, there's only one Ravens in the whole city of Baltimore. And their customers, they don't call them customers, they call them fans. And that word derives from fanatics. So talk about product market effect. It creates a massive monetization opportunity. And that monetization has been seen year on year in the NFL. In 2024, the NFL generated$23 billion of revenue. by 2027 they're going to hit 25 billion and that's roger goodall the nfl's commissioners originally stated goal from 2010 that by 2027 that hit 25 billion and they're on the money literally moon you were introduced to me by our mutual good friend who needs to be mentioned because hopefully he'll be listening to this jake mccrump jake's had an incredible career already albeit only in his early 30s he was most recently for nearly eight years the CEO of the Rajasthan Royals when you think about a sports team that's had a wild trajectory from tens of millions into the billions of enterprise value Jake's been right at the heartbeat of that growth in the IPL but you've also had an incredible career so far formerly chief strategy officer at the San Francisco 49ers and co-founder of Elevate and now your role at the Ravens.

40:53Thank you for spending time with us. Talk to me a little bit about the thread that is weaved through everything you've done. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on the podcast. Super excited to be here and to chat with you about innovation and growth in the NFL. And really, as I look back at my career, one of the things that I think really sticks out is just a curiosity. And so I think I've always had a curiosity. I'd really love to read and really love to learn more. Reading through all the publications that we have on our side just helps keep me connected and up to date with what's going on.

41:25Staying abreast of all the technologies and vendors in our space. At the 49ers, at Elevate, at the Ravens, can keep track of what I call a vendor database, which is a repository of all the different vendors and all the different technologies categorized in our space so that we can keep a pulse of what's really going on. So I think it's that overall curiosity and that desire to learn that kind of is pervasive throughout. And then pairing that with an understanding that it's not just a technology or an idea or a strategy, but it's really the idea to work with people. And if you can't generate the buy-in for your idea, your idea will go nowhere.

42:02So there's a line that I think Scott O 'Neill has in his book, Be Where Your Feet Are, that he talks about, you can either be right or you can be effective. And so growing up as a, I would say, strategy consultant and then worked in private equity thereafter a lot of times i was focused on being right and getting to the right answer and i think as you progress your career and as i've learned in working within sports organizations it's just working with working with your colleagues working collaboratively and being effective is way more important than being right and you've only recently moved to to the ravens what was your journey to get to this iconic sports team absolutely so i guess as we had some time i'll give you a medium version instead of a short version.

42:45But I was born and raised in Cleveland, so I'm just a kid from Cleveland. And then I did work in strategy consulting and then flipped over to private equity, similar to what you're working through right now. While I was in private equity, I actually had a really important conversation with my head partner at the time where he wasn't so enthused that I didn't read Wall Street Journal every day. And it just wasn't a passion of mine. And he asked me what I read every day and it was ESPN.com. So he kind of made a flippant comment that I should work in sports then. I honestly took a talk to her and so I honestly picked up Moneyball like right then and read it and then decided to take a year off to travel and get my my thoughts together and then decided to pursue a career in sports.

43:25So I think aligning that passion and interest with with with my job and my career was a very important step and really that allowed me to push forward in my career. And so you know if I sort of do to go from there. I started at the 49ers back in 2013. So about 10, 12 years ago and worked in our strategy group. And I took a risk out of business school and started as an analyst. So where my peers were people that were coming straight out of my undergrad and was able to work through the department. And eventually, as you mentioned, I ended up as chief strategy officer where I got to lead several great initiatives and build out a great team there that's thriving right now.

44:04And I then kicked over to Elevate. And so Elevate is a sports agency and we win sports agency of the year, I think maybe in 22 or 23, but we represent hundreds of tools, leagues around the world and helping them out with a wide variety of challenges. It could be something related to ticket sales, partnership sales. You could be building a stadium or arena, but I'll leave the Elevate plug for a separate conversation. And while I was working at Elevate, one of my clients was the Ball Four Ravens. And as I started off my career in consulting, never thought I'd join a client that I was working with, but had some great conversations with our team president, Sashi, and had a moment of realization that the most important thing that you can have in your career is who you work for and that relationship that you have.

44:50And thought that, you know, there could be a lot worse things working for someone than working for Sashi. So I decided to join the Baltimore Ravens and came out as our chief earth and innovation officer earlier. to share. Amazing. Well, now you're back in the NFL. When you look under the hood of the growth that we mentioned earlier, what's structurally changed and how the league makes money? I don't know if so much has structurally changed. The bare basics are still there. Broadcast, partnership, ticket revenue are still the largest drivers of revenue for the NFL. And I think as I think about those major buckets, maybe the biggest difference is coming in broadcast and where we come online with streaming.

45:35And we've looked at or we've seen a number of recent deals, ESPN's deal, the NFL Sunday ticket deal that have come up in the last few years. We also see NFL now streaming on Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime. So I'd say broadcast has been one of the larger areas for growth and you're seeing that not just because of sport, but because of how the cable industry and how people view in patterns have been changing. So I'd say that's probably first and foremost. And then secondarily, you know, I think the second biggest piece, if you think about ticket revenues, it's not necessarily that we're increasing our ticket pricing so much, though ticket pricing tends to grow in around seven to eight percent annually at the NFL.

46:17I would say it's more that we're adding, we've added another game to the schedule and there could be contemplation of adding more games past that. And then it's a growth internationally. So we've done very well domestically within the United States. Where can the NFL go past that? I'm sure something that Roger Goodell is thinking about, though, you know, I'm not privy to those conversations. What does international look like for the Ravens? Have you done games on tour and started to build an international fan base? So the NFL has a program where teams can effectively look to enter into a market and they can market within those markets and they apply for those rights.

46:58And so right now, the Baltimore Ravens, amongst a dozen other teams, have rights in the United Kingdom. So right now we do go up to the United Kingdom from time to time and we will have things like away game watch parties. So that's pretty, I take common stuff that teams will make it, you know, internationally and even domestically. If you're traveling to a different city, you might want to post a way game, watch parties there, help build up your fan base in those respective cities. So we've done a number of fan activations in the UK and we are currently exploring, you know, other countries, other geographies, but haven't made any decisions on them yet.

47:36I was reading a stat the other day that, of course, the NFL national revenue now accounts for two thirds of the total. And that kind of shields teams from that local volatility. How's that shaped how individual franchises like the Ravens think? Yeah, great question. And I don't know how every other else team thing. I sort of have a view that I don't necessarily think about national revenue. I think about national revenue, maybe covering our football side of expenses. So when I think about our coaches and salary cap expenses, which are rising in the double digits every year, I think about our national broadcast revenue can control that.

48:16It's also something that I, in my seat, can't control. It's just something a number that's told to me by the NFL, and I'm sure they're doing a great job, and I'll gladly take that revenue. I think also, as I think about that from the NFL, from a perspective of a league setup, I think is intrinsically very smart. It really helps ensure that no team could fold. And so there's a variety of other provisions that the NFL has to really ensure that teams will be around and you won't have anyone go bankrupt or it really just protects the league in and of itself. From a local perspective, I'm always thinking about how we can, A, make our fans happier or B, how we can drive more local revenue.

48:56And so regardless of if we're making more money nationally, we still have our jobs to do on the team side. And thinking through, again, the biggest buckets there are partnership and ticketing. And then outside of that, you're really focused on your food and beverage or retail. Or you're trying to drive revenue non-game day. So there's another 350 days a year that we don't have games that we could potentially monetize. And that's where you're seeing probably the largest trend, not only in the NFL, but increasing local revenues is buying real estate or having adjacent sports properties and driving those ecosystems on more than just your game days.

49:36But in a previous life, I shared an office with a company called Revolut, British Financial Services Company. They had a meteoric rise. When we were sharing an office, neither of us were in a particularly meteoric place in our career. But Nick Staronsky talks about every year he has his product innovation group who come up with 20 to 40 ideas. And they put a fixed amount of money in and they have fixed gating items and benchmarks to achieve. and some of them win, some of them don't. And a couple of years ago, one of them that really took off was prepaid phone cards. They're now the world's largest prepaid phone card company.

50:16And so thinking through when you've got a captive audience like you guys do with your fanatics, your customers, how do you think about product innovation and monetization? And how are you building out that kind of almost accelerator model for products? Yeah, it's a great question. And I'm sure everything does it differently. I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation that I keep track of a vendor database. And we'll look at a vendor database where I think 200, 300 companies within the space that might allow us to innovate. I have a mindset that really came from private equity where in private equity, I remember that same partner really had a conversation with me was we look at 100 deals to buy one.

50:58And that's effectively like, and that's a great result. So you're going to spend time looking at 99 different companies that are going to say no to to work with one. I really have the same sort of mindset when it comes to adopting a new technology or driving innovation within a team. And we can look at 100 different ideas, but I'll probably only try and drive one forward each different year and focus on that one specific one. Now, which one that idea is will depend on a wide variety of factors. and larger that stems from the conversations that you have internally, the focus groups and fan surveys that you're running and seeing what the fans want and what they're looking for.

51:36And then you're really kind of driving that forward within the organization. As I think about some of the innovative pieces that we like to do, some of the things that make it a little bit more challenging, I think in the NFL that I talk about, though I still love to innovate and do things, if you think about launching an app or a technology, there's generally like a fail fast lean type of mentality and you can launch a product and then you learn and you iterate. When you launch a product at an NFL game, you have to be right for 65 ,000 people, attempt one. And that's what I think makes it challenging sometimes.

52:11And when I was at the 49ers, we launched an all-inclusive experience. So 65 ,000 people in our stadium had an all-inclusive experience. And you had to use the app in order to be able to work through the transaction. And so as you're building that app, it's the amount of testing that we had to do because day one that you launch, 65 ,000 people are all going to use it at the same time. And so that makes innovation pretty challenging. And then I think because we have such large brands like within the NFL, it makes it such that if you fail, it becomes not the best. And so I think that becomes a disincentive for a number of teams to innovate.

52:52but at the same time the NFL does have some financial incentives for teams to to pitch forward and innovate so I think leveraging and thinking through some of those financial benefits that you could have and then working with your teams and understanding what the fans want while keeping a pulse on what technologies are out there is is probably like a good basis for how you can develop your innovation strategy I guess what I'm hearing is discipline is key because you could have someone as creative as you, a million ideas a minute, and you're trying to launch the next iteration of the foam finger.

53:26It's not going to set the world on fire. So spend your energy wisely. Yes, and oftentimes it takes years. So it's like when we're thinking about an idea, we're talking about several ideas right now. And like we're talking about 26, we're talking about 2027, and we're talking about 2028, even on some of the ideas that we're working on because it takes that much time to really work through and cycle these pieces. And we only have an off-season. So it's unlike, you know, traditional business where it's like 365 smooth or maybe there was some seasonality. We have like one super intense pocket in the NFL.

53:59And then there's an off-season that we really have to get most of our development done on pieces. Let's talk about private equity. It's an area you've had some experience in and obviously access has played in the sports space through our ownership of Playfly for a while now. And it's a new component in the overarching sports equation for the first time. With that private equity ownership and new forms of capitalization, what kind of new possibilities or tensions does that open up for teams when it comes to balancing liquidity and long-term control and consistency and financing of initiatives? Yeah, great question.

54:42I think overall, when I worked in private equity, I did a study, actually, of all private equity firms and tried to understand why private equity had such strong returns. And there was like a meta study that talked through all the different reasons private equity and VC can add value. But the number one reason that that was determined was the board. And so it was because boards were present and they were driving the leadership teams and asking different, like a variety of questions and pushing them in different ways. So it wasn't necessarily that it was capital. It wasn't necessarily that it was a network introductions.

55:13It was really the value of having the board there. And so as I look at sports teams, I started in 2012, 2013. And when I started, less than a third of sports teams had business strategy departments. When I started, there weren't really many data warehouses, teams that ran a fully-fledged data warehouse and understood components about their customers like a Fortune 100 company could. The practices of sports teams still generally trail. the practices of what you might find in a 14-100 team. But sports brands have been successful in the past and they haven't quite needed to. As we've started to get the investment from private equity in DC and the valuations rise, I think we're going to need to see these businesses run a little bit more efficiently and drive some more revenue.

56:03And I think that value is going to come really from the boards pushing leadership teams and ownership teams to drive and adopt some of those practices. I did recently start a company a couple of years ago called Rise Sports Collective, which is focused on learning, training, and development within sports. I started because of my training within strategic consulting and private equity. I think the formalized training that's provided within those industries is really top notch. And I think leveraging some of those practices to help train and instill best practices across the industry is going to be another tangible good side effect of having a power-election VC investment into the NFL.

56:45I completely agree. And by the way, I spent some time after we last chatted looking into the program, education program, work you've done there. It's an amazing initiative, amazing company, and I think has a huge future as sports and in real life experiences become even more important in this AI-infused world that we have. let's talk about the franchise valuations for a moment you touched on it briefly there in the nfl they've saw to an average of i think seven billion a piece which is enormous compounded growth from a strategy standpoint what's actually driving that compounding value i think there's several different pieces and it's it's not generally like what when i was in fabric equity if you'd give me a blind company list and you showed me the exact financial profile of a sports steam, I probably would have passed on it.

57:38I don't understand where cash flow metal makes this pencil or what type of multiple you're using here. But I think there's two different pieces. And the first is that it's very limited supply. It's exceptionally limited supply. And so when you have such limited supply and it's not easy to break into it either. It's not necessarily an open market. So that can create an interesting supply and demand curve on what those valuations can be. I think the second piece is really what you chatted about in the beginning of the conversation. And it's around sports being like what I would call it like the last remaining community.

58:15You know, nowhere else in the world will you high five or hug a random stranger that you have just met. And nowhere will you like, will the energy of 60, 70 ,000 people at one place collectively be the same. Like one of the greatest days of my life was when I'm from Cleveland, when I went home for the Cleveland parade, when LeBron won the title in 2016, I should say the Cavs won the title, but LeBron really did in 2016. I flew home to Cleveland and just the pure joy in that city, like everywhere you went in that city was so, it was like the most uplifting, happiest day ever. And it's the impact that you can have on a city.

58:52So there's really not many assets that have that feel. and to me it's also like recession resistant in in ways as we've seen with the pandemic and it's sports is really i think what helps a lot of people through the pandemic and you see that happen in a wide variety of ways for the nfl in particular i think every every year they do a study where it's like the top 100 shows that are watched in the u.s every year and every year like 90 plus of them are nfl games like a thursday night football game will be in the top 100 shows washed in a given year. ESPN and Sky Sports are more viewed than CNN or BBC.

59:33And so sports is like really important in our pop culture, in our community fabrics. And I think that's a large reason why you see these valuations. You pair that with the fact that there's just very limited supply and you've got higher valuations. You almost touched on it, I mean, not quite, but I think the rise in sports documentaries and turning sports into entertainment as well so yeah you're right i have to survive's reinvention of formula one or the last dance bringing like the glory years of basketball back to the the table is is that something you've thought about at all with your your cmo and team at the ravens i think our team honestly does like an exceptional job with our with our content.

1:00:22I think we were one of the best and it makes me, well, it makes me so excited because it gets me excited for game days. And first and foremost, the reason I work in sports is because I love sports and, you know, I'm a huge fan. So getting to watch our content, I think is amazing. Working with a number of teams, I think focus on content is a prime importance. And it is like one of the, when I think about talking to, as I talk to other teams, like the production of a game and the content thereafter is what I'd say a pretty prototypical football operation. So that's been ongoing for the last 30 years.

1:00:57When we talk about like adding a data warehouse or CRM, that might just be the last couple of years that we're talking about, but we tend to focus on football. So if it's related to football and we can cut more highlights or cut more videos or have an idea for a long form content, I'm sure that we would dig into it. Final question, a little bit of a prediction time. If we look at the next decade of monetization, let's think how much looking back has changed. In the next decade of monetization, where do you think the real monetization frontier lies? Is it in re-engineering media rights? Is it building new ownership structures?

1:01:35Is it inventing entirely new products around fandom itself? What's exciting to you about the next decade of monetization? Well, I think exciting comes in two fashions. And so like what I think will be the most impactful is probably like digital streaming, like number one and where we go with like broadcast rights and like how the games are broken out. I'd probably say second to that might be international. So as we think about expanding into more and more international markets from a league perspective, I have to think that's pretty exciting. From a team perspective, I've had this like, Ryan, that I think that Freedom Breverage is the final frontier of hospitality.

1:02:15And I sort of noticed that in your question, you kind of use that same word, like the frontier. And I think that teams have not focused in general as much on hospitality as we potentially can drive his experiences more. I heard a recent talk, which was super interesting, which talked about AI and how we're getting so efficient with everything. And that he talked about a bifurcation that either, like there's going to be two super successful companies in the future. there's the one that's like just like the hyper efficient like leverages ai and you know that's a company that could succeed and then the second is going to be like a highly based like experience or personalized or a premium type of experience and so i think like the the guy i forgot what baggies it was some person you mentioned that always made like by hands and it's like they'll never it might have been like a gurg and dagger i don't know what they're called but what are those And it's like they could make more supply, but they won't because, you know, making it by hand is that the quality that's within that.

1:03:18And so as I think about sports in general, how I apply that to like even NFL teams is how can I get most efficient with my tickets and my food and beverage within my building, but still provide a personalized super premium experience and a hospitality experience for some of our premium fans. and as we think about ticket pricing products within a stadium and that experience and that's what gets me excited like locally is making sure that our fans are super excited and then they continue to come to our buildings is having those premium products for the fans that really want it and figure out all the different types of products that could exist within your within your market so as i look at new premium products of you know do you want to add in a suite to your building or club or might you want to add in like in LA, they added in a standing room only section called the wall that's kind of intriguing for the everyday fan.

1:04:06Do you want to add in communal experiences that are adjacent to your stadium, like adding in bars or activation areas that A, simultaneously help to monetize, but then B, help to build the energy and the footprint around your building? So I think you're going to see a lot more of the adjacent spaces. I think over the last 10 years, we've seen really, if I think about the 80-20 principle, we've seen a really great increase in like ticket pricing and I'd say like maxing out on what teams could potentially get on ticket pricing. So I don't think there's going to be so much innovation there. I think we've sort of maxed out like on where you could potentially go from there.

1:04:45So then I think it's non-game day or thinking about hospitality. And hospitality is just probably a little bit more fun for me to think through. So I tend to gravitate in that area. it's funny you talk about that the ultra premium experience i was at the f1 in abu dabi last year and i went to this they turned one of the pits the last pit into something called the f1 garage which is like a mini restaurant well it's like a place it's like a mini box and and it's instead of being a pit where the cars change the tires there's a michelin star chef an incredible bar and you're as close to the action as you can possibly get and it was 25 grand a ticket it's like hyper high high end hyper premium i'm glad to say i didn't pay for a ticket i thankfully owned a restaurant with a formula one driver so it was it was a gift but that's a whole other story but the the idea of having this this ladder of different experiences for people that are willing to invest different at different levels if you don't sell it at that level no one can buy it so i guess creating that that tiering is very important if you have an extra a ticket next time.

1:05:55Feel free to give me a buzz. I'll join you. No problem. And you do see these types of experience popping up. And I think there's some markets feel like, hey, that there might not be a market for the super premium products and people won't buy the 25 ,000. But there are buyers for that 25 ,000. Now, the everyday fan might look at that and say, well, that's absurd. Well, that's why you have to keep a price point at F1 for the everyday fan. And so something I focus about and think about, I think a lot about prices under$100. So every time I'm looking at ticket pricing, I'm looking at how many seats are available under$100, how many seats are available for a family.

1:06:33And then, you know, you bifurcate and then on the premium side, you might charge, a premium fan can pay a little bit more and you can see products like$25 ,000 because there is that market. I saw an article last week on, I think Sports Business Journal put out an article on maybe some of the smaller, smaller market cities. I remember in Thielen, so I'll call it out. And so Thielen just built a new club for a hundred people that's supposed to be like a super, super high-end club that maybe all reminds of what you're talking about. And so smaller cities, there are affluent pockets in every city you go to that there is a basis for those products.

1:07:08So, and they're fun to build. So, yeah. I mean, I've got a million more areas I want to dive into. And concepts and thoughts and fun stuff to talk about. Good news for me is we're having dinner in a couple weeks' time. So we could do that then. But from our listeners and from me, just a massive thank you for spending the time. And we look forward to seeing your journey at the Ravens and in sport generally. It's been meteoric and you're in an exciting space at the right time. Awesome. Well, I appreciate the time, Sam, and enjoy the conversation. I look forward to connecting with you soon. Thanks for joining Why We Like It.

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