Barbell Shrugged - 117- Tony Budding Founder of the NPFL National Pro Fitness League

Episode Date: May 14, 2014

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview Tony Budding, CEO and founder of the NPFL. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe. With Doug Larson and CTP. We have traveled to Atlanta for the NPFL Combine. We are standing here with Tony Budding, CEO and founder of the NPFL, and we are going to get the down and dirty on everything. Hopefully we don't make him just walk off and throw a microphone. I don't think that will happen. Hard to do.

I heard you're a pretty chill dude. We'll find out, right? We'll test and see. No, I'm just kidding. Make sure you go to barbellstroke.com, sign up for the newsletter, and we'll update you anytime we post these podcasts and these awesome interviews that we've been getting lately. Tony. Hello. You were with CrossFit Headquarters. I was. Ten years. Ten years. Long time in charge of media and a lot of different things over there. I'm assuming you wore a lot of hats. I did. I ended up in media and focusing last year mostly on games and games media,

but ran media for five years, and before that I was the first affiliate director. I was on the seminar team. One of my proudest moments was giving the first What is CrossFit lecture besides Greg. Ooh, that's pretty cool. So I remember I was on LinkedIn, which I don't hang out on much, but it was back in a few months ago and I saw that you had changed. Somehow we were connected on LinkedIn and I saw that you had changed. You know, you left HQ and started NPFL and that's when I started screwing around on your website and like looking at the the text only yeah website I was like I was like man he did come from CrossFit yeah he's got a he's got a simple uh you know website going on uh but I started reading about it and getting

interested uh and uh can you tell us about your transition from CrossFit to starting the NPFL and how that all went down? Sure. So in 2012, there was a court case, and Greg was battling for the ownership of the company, and he won. Who was he battling with? His ex-wife, Lauren. It's actually a very interesting legal corporate component, but probably outside the scope of this conversation. But it was a fierce battle and and you know Greg deserved to keep the company is what he had created and and he bought out his ex-wife and and

and once he got that company he made some changes that he had been trying to make for a while but having been consumed with the company and a number of those changes really didn't work very well for me. And so, um, I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to leave. And so then came the question, well, if I'm going to leave, what am I going to do? And I have a job, got to have a job. And, uh, I'm also like, there's a lot to do, right? There's a lot of opportunities, a lot of different ways to go and, uh, be in media. Um, there's some great storytelling on all fronts around the people of in functional fitness and the transformations and the lifestyle and obviously there's also sport opportunities yeah and so I was playing with a bunch of these different different options in fact when I when I left CrossFit I formed a company

called stalwart sports and entertainment thinking that I was going to be more of these different options. In fact, when I left CrossFit, I formed a company called Stallward Sports and Entertainment, thinking that I was going to be more of like a reality TV show. And then I thought, you know, this league thing could be one of the projects of Stallward. Very quickly, I realized that that was not at all the direction that I should go because the league itself has so much potential and was such a massive project that it just didn't make sense to try to diversify in any way.

Spread too thin too early. Not at all. I mean, this is more than a full-time job. Yeah, as we're looking at it now, and we talked to Jim Keen earlier and kind of like seeing the entire scope of what this could be, it's like this, I mean, yeah, I couldn't imagine this as being a project. No, it's massive. When I left, it goes back.

The first idea came from the original CrossFit Invitational in London. And I ended up sitting in the truck. When was that? October 2012. Okay. And I was sitting in the truck in Eurosport. Eurosport actually produced that. Reebok had done a big sponsorship with Eurosport.

And as part of that, Eurosport was going to produce some content for Reebok had done a big sponsorship with Eurosport. And as part of that, Eurosport was going to produce some content for Reebok, included the box show that you may have seen. And then it ended up with this Ryder's Cup of CrossFit, is what they were trying to call it, to pitch it as. And so we weren't sure how that was going to go. And I ended up being in the truck with them. And it was, it was a challenging environment because none of the crew had looked across it before. And, and yet it was

in the midst of all that chaos, this head to head team thing was an amazing concept. And literally the next morning, less than 12 hours from that point, I was driving to the airport and I couldn't stop talking about this is the future. We can do this. Head-to-head teams is so much better, so much easier to follow. We could do a pro league. I mean, it'd be awesome. And then obviously, you know, this league is super complex and it's not CrossFit's business model. So there was no way that CrossFit was going to be producing a pro league in this arena.

It just didn't make sense for them financially or business model-wise. And so we just kind of dropped it. And then as I fast forward now to 2013, and I'm figuring out what I'm going to do, and this idea of the league just wouldn't go away. And so when I left, I was thinking about two things. One, the head-to-head competition of sport was just going to be really cool, and that also being able to do amazing storytelling around the sport,

being able to control the window of time and then weave in really great storytelling both visually and personality-wise. When you're testing fitness, that fitness competition has to be primary. And so we was always, we were always working the media around the primary goal of making sure that the competition

was exactly what it needed to be. In this environment, I could simplify the competition in a lot of ways. The rules here are simpler. The races are simpler. The scoring's more straightforward. Scoring's more straightforward and it's all contained.

I don't have to bring in unusual elements. I can just keep things relatively straightforward. My favorite race in track and field is a 400-meter run. It's the simplest race there is. It's a circular track. Go once, right? As fast as you can. But it's really exciting, and it doesn't need to change.

It's the same 400 meters that it's been for decades hundreds of years right so um here we're trying not we're not necessarily trying to make a really crazy uh complicated uh race or competition we're trying to keep it relatively straightforward but then the athletes come on and they differentiate themselves on the field of play then you throw in this substitution rule and then it changes everything. And I was saying this morning to the athletes, when I first conceived of this, I thought, it's going to change it. There's no doubt. It is changing. It is so different.

It is more different than I could have imagined. It's not just that you have fitness athletes going sort of for a while and then at some point kind of going, all right, I guess I'm done and I'm going to sub out. It's much more like hockey where you have these shifts on the fly. And because you have more people and different rules within the races, you can approach each race differently. So it's going to be a huge mental game game huge mental game in terms of both the coach of how do I get my athletes through this race the fastest and knowing what they're capable of but then it's also from the athletes

we saw two stacked teams in Dallas going head-to-head and they by the end of the by the end of the 11 races we I think was race 8 or race 7. They were flying and at one point, one rep one rep a no rep got called and it changed the race. Now you talk about the mental game of the athletes. Every athlete's got to be super focused.

Getting no rep can also be detrimental to your mental state when competing. You get no rep and you're like, oh shit my slant just fell apart. That's right. So then in their sense, they have to keep their head in the game, but they have to even avoid that mistake at this point because the races are going to be so fast, so quick, so close

that that one rep could actually cost your entire team the race. It's more of a sprint, maybe like a Formula 1 race versus an endurance event. It is, and so the fans are going to be on the edges of their seat because it's so close and it's rep for rep. And we're developing all this custom scoring to be able to show visually how close the race is. So, for example, we've got a vertical line.

We're going to have a ribbon board across the top of the rig. Aleko is designing us a custom rig. And that ribbon board, so all four directions you're going to be able to see and on that ribbon board there's going to be a progress bar and that progress is going to show you which team's in the lead and by how much and every rep it's going to it's going to grow or shrink by what that lead is and so you can imagine one team gets gets pretty far ahead all of a sudden you get a couple faults and then they start losing and then all of a sudden it's coming back coming down and the fans can see that lead shrinking visually visually and then they start losing it, and then all of a sudden it's coming back, coming down, and the fans can see that lead shrinking visually, visually, and then it pops over.

You can just imagine how crazy that's going to get in terms of, you know, you've seen those get loud things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like a scoring get loud thing. Yeah. Yeah, Jim King described it as the beer test. Right. Can you get up from your seat, go get a beer, come back, and know who's ahead.

Right, absolutely. And so you see the grid here. Well, you don't see the grid. You might see the grid. Hey, guys. If you're listening to this through iTunes or Stitcher or something like that, go to the YouTube video, and you can actually watch what Tony's talking about here. Well, what we have going on here is the individual competition.

They're doing a five-round workout of power cleans and push presses. This is today's Friday, so on Sunday we'll do the team races. But right here next to me is the finish line. You've got four quadrants, and then on the far side you've got the start line. Literally every race you start at the start and you move your way across the grid. And because the grid has lines all the way across, you can look across and see the other team and know exactly which team's ahead and by how much.

Plus, of course, we'll have the live scoring on the grid. But that's a big part of the development. You had asked me a question. I don't think I fully answered it. I got digressed on this scoring. It happens on this show all the time. No problem, right? We'll just roll with it.

Yeah, yeah. So one of the biggest questions people have asked us, and we've had conversations amongst ourselves, is what kind of kickback did you get from HQ, from CrossFit HQ, putting on this new spin to something that is CrossFit, but it's not technically CrossFit? Are they pissed off about it?

Were they like, well, okay, that's just the way it is, and they kind of gave you their blessing? Or did you part ways and muddy the waters a little bit? Like, what happened there? When I departed, there was no drama whatsoever. It was a totally amicable situation. I have a ton of respect for CrossFit HQ, for the people there,

and for Greg and for Dave and all the others. And, you know, and I told them what I was going to do. And there was, you know, really very positive interaction, and there was no issue. How they feel now, I can't speak to that. You'll have to ask them.

I've seen some stuff on social media that's not too friendly. Especially with signing the higher level athletes, like the people that are placing at the games are signing on to teams now. I wonder if they view that as you stealing their athletes or if that gives those high level athletes more experience in the offseason or I'm not they view that as you stealing their athletes or if that gives those high level athletes more experience in the off season, or I'm not sure how that plays out. Yeah. I'm not

sure either. I mean, in some ways, like almost every high level athlete competes in other competitions, right? So now what, what, you know, now they're getting paid. They always should have gotten paid. You know, it's, it's an interesting challenge, right? So it's a new sport. There's not been decades of, you know, high output fitness athletes performing for, you know, for large prize money. The questions come up for years, you know, how do these athletes get paid? How does this become sustainable? And there's a lot of different answers. You look at the different existing sports out there. You've got cycling, you've got golf. You've got tennis. These are all individual sports where people compete. You've got surfing.

How much of the sponsor is going to play a role in the income of the athletes? Yeah, and if a sport's not exciting and it's not spectator-friendly, it may not be sponsor-friendly either. So sometimes you have to change the model of the competition or the business model of the competition. Well, as a TV guy and as a storyteller, I can tell you how frustrating it was constantly dealing with large heats of athletes, especially the teams, and just how do you tell that story?

You've got 12 lanes, especially if you have 12 lanes of teams. Now you've got 60 potential athletes on the field to play at a given time. It's just a huge challenge of how do you cover that? How do you follow that? Most of the passionate fans understand the sport well enough to be able to really see and look at the TV and figure it out. But the casual fans

nothing. Not even close. You're right about that. With the games we would take the 60 hours of live coverage that we did that week and boil it down into six hours of post-production 30-minute shows for ESPN. And those shows, I think, are very accessible for the casual fan or even someone who didn't even realize they were a fan of Functional Fitness.

Yeah, they reminded me of Strongman competitions. Yeah, in fact, that was the original reason for signing with CrossFit. The Strongman was leaving ESPN after 30 years and going to CBS, and they were just feeling it was played out after 30 years. And so here was an opportunity to kind of create the same. This is the modern version of the Strongman, except it's the fitness man or the fitness woman. Right.

And so we actually used the, uh, the old strongman videos, um, to structure our pitch. We had to create a pitch video. It's actually still on, on, uh, on YouTube. It's pretty funny. Um, yeah, I have to look that up. Yeah, it's funny. It's, uh, uh, let's just say, uh, there's a lot of improvements been since then. So now that there might be some more, some more specialists rather than generalists on each team, are we going to see more advanced gymnastics? Is there going to be like backup rises and iron crosses and kind of all these things that are like the next level in the world of gymnastics since we can have specialists now? Yes, there'll be some of that and how quickly and how fast that'll be. So the races that you're going to see on Sunday and that we've done in we've done in the previous two combines are in fact, actual races that will be in the season.

There are versions of these races that include more specialized movements. Backup rises a, an overhead barbell, like a 95 pound overhead barbell pistol. Oh, that is specialized. Yeah. I don't know a lot of people that can do that. Oh, that is specialized. Yeah. I don't know a lot of people that can do that.

No, but, but if you, if you're on a team, you're a pro athlete, right. And you've got six months cause, cause you know that that's not going to happen until August at the

earliest. And in fact, it'll be published exactly what date is going to be. You got six months to be able to train that skill. And, uh, so yeah, there it is.

Right. I mean, it's, uh, it's on. I feel like as far as the general public's concerned, like the iron cross is like the thing that everyone refers to when they talk about gymnastics or the Olympics. I feel like putting that in a competition somehow from the view of the general public is like, oh, shit, they're doing Iron Crosses. That's legit. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good point. I'll look and see.

I heard Sam Briggs is working on it. She really I bet. I bet. I mean, that's, yeah, require the female to do an Iron Cross. Rumor has it. All right, so you talked a little bit about monetizing, you know, allowing athletes to make money. How does the NPFL plan to make money? That's one of the big questions, because this is obviously not a cheap undertaking. I'm guessing it's fairly expensive.

It's fairly expensive for the teams to get in on it. So the teams are going to be hiring the athletes, essentially. The athletes, from what I heard, are going to be getting paid per match from the NPFL. Is that correct? No. So the way we've got it structured is that we have a minimum that the athletes need to get paid. The league itself does not pay any of the athletes. The athletes are employees of the teams. But what we're just saying is whatever the annual

compensation is or compensation method that you have with your athletes, and they are given latitude on how they do that. But whatever that is, their total compensation has to be at least $2,500 per match that they played in. Okay. That's the number I heard. Yeah. And so-

So if they don't participate, they don't get paid if this hit the bench? Well, no. What we're saying is, so if you played in three matches, you have to have your compensation for that season has to be at least $7,500. As a minimum. As a minimum. I see. And so obviously, the more sought out you are as an athlete, the more that other

teams are going to be competing for you and the more that salary is going to go up. Right. And these, you know, we're going to look back in a few years and chuckle at $2,500. You're like $2,500. $2,500. Oh my God, that was chump change. Right. But at this time, it's not.

You know, and it's actually, you know, you look at that across, there's eight and potentially 10 athletes will dress for each match. We are looking at bumping that up. That's one of the items we're discussing. You know, you're looking at $20,000 to $30,000 per match as a cost for the team just for the salaries minimum. That's minimum. And that doesn't include travel. It doesn't include any of the other components of that.

So it is not a cheap venture at all. So how are the teams going to make money? So we have spent a lot of time creating a very complex operating agreement. And what this is, is it's a contract that defines the relationship between the teams and the league. And there are a large number of revenue streams available to us collectively. And we have a fairly complex arrangement of how that revenue gets acquired and distributed and who has rights to which revenue. And that's, I mean, I'm fascinated by it and I'd be happy if this was

a law-oriented podcast, I'd be happy to go into it. It's really, I find it fascinating. And we borrowed a lot of these practices from the best sports and we had no legacy infrastructure. So we could create, you know, we could borrow this from Major League Soccer. We could borrow this from the NFL. We could borrow this from the NBA and we could borrow this from the nba and we did yeah and so so these different components are there so what are the categories obviously you have uh the long term categories are a tv rights deal you have sponsorships of of many kinds so uh inside of a tv show you've got obviously the ad inventory you've got in-show elements you know you could have like the bud light instant replay or the right you know, the barbell shrugged athlete profile. Exactly.

And that'll only be on our Super Bowl-like event that's on network, of course. Absolutely. And so, and then you've got on the grid, you can see that there's, right now, these are tied down with the water ballasts, but there's a gap right here in between the two lanes. That can have sponsor logos on it permanently, and so that can be very, very valuable real estate. The ribbon board will have opportunities for sponsor logos. We're actually looking at virtual displays, which is a really cool concept.

It's the guys that did um the original uh first down marker for the nfl you know how that plays down in the yellow line yeah you know how the guys run over it and it doesn't look like the the line doesn't yeah it comes across them right well we do the same thing they're now doing the same thing with sponsor logos on the field of play during during downtime And so it's really interesting. I'm really excited about that possibility. Very, very cool technology. On top of that, you have, you know, obviously banners, billboards and the like. We also on the website, we have lots of opportunities with web content. We have, you know, within the, we have, I don't know how much Jim talked to you about our, uh, fan engagement opportunities. We're talking about the possibility of,

um, like games that you play that are sort of virtual versions of this. And, uh, we're talking about, you know, be your own, uh, you know, you can be your own coach, be like a fantasy, right. And you could do, yeah. You know how the driving games you have easy, medium and hard, right? Like are you shifting or is it automatic shifting? Can you actually bump in? Can you crash or do you just bounce off things, right? So we'll have versions like that. And at the highest level, it's like you're your own GM and you've got a certain budget and you've got to find your own sponsors and pick the sponsors and sell the jersey rights

and pay the athletes and negotiate with the agents and all that kind of stuff. Sounds fun to me. So then you can integrate sponsors into that kind of stuff too. And have that really, you know, be, be really fun, um, for that. Uh, so those are, those are primary. Now then of course you have merchandise sales, right? So the jerseys, um, you know, you want to, you want to buy your favorite Jersey from your, from your team, you know, that official merchandise jackets, hats, the like, um, you also have, uh, the events, um the events, vendors at the events. You have seats selling tickets, premium services, that kind of stuff. Do you have any concerns about that,

about ticket sales? CrossFit Games sells out every year, obviously, or they have plenty of people that attend to make it look like it's a real thing, obviously. But consistent week by week by week, multiple competitions per week. Do you feel like you're going to have consistent, like sold out venues? I do. Yeah. You know, am I concerned about it? I am concerned about pretty much everything in the league, you know, but, but, you know, the very cool thing is that it's a new sport. And so we don't have to make huge commitments to venues. We don't have to say, all right, look, we're going to go find Madison Square Garden

or the Staples Center or anything like that. We are going to have, let's start in a small venue and we can build and different teams, right? So we've got some of the largest metropolitan areas have teams. So how many people are going to go to a venue in New York City or Boston or Philadelphia, Phoenix, LA? I mean, these are major metropolitan areas. Are they going to be easy to fill?

Year one, each team only has one or two home games. So we're going to be able to get a very good sense and we're not going to saturate any market with, you know, at most two home games, right? So I'm confident for year one, and we're going to learn a lot. Once this is on TV, and it should be on TV this year, at least a portion of it, it looks like the tournament, the postseason is going to be on a network, that's going to change a lot. You know, so to be able to see the sport live on TV, that's going to bring a level of attention and a level of excitement. And that will carry over into the next season.

Will you guys have free or paid online streaming live during events? Yeah. It would take a lot for someone to talk me into paid online streaming. It's a different business model. It's not likely to be what we're going to do. I don't see this as a pay-per-view kind of league. There's a possibility we could do maybe special events or maybe some special TV shows or maybe some documentaries that might be like a download,

you know, for a, for a rental fee or something like that, or a purchase. There's all sorts of opportunities for the documentary side of, I mean, you have the sport, but now you're, you can follow teams and, and you look at ESPN, those guys, you know, they fill up an entire 24 hour cycle with, you know, uh, sports stories. They're not, they're not playing games the whole time. You know, they're doing documentaries about an athlete or a team or a coach or something like that. Absolutely. And, you know, I know one of the teams is actually going to have the athletes live in the same area together. I don't know if they're actually going to be in the same house, but they're going to be living in the same geographical area and training together for the entire season.

And so, you know, there's obviously opportunities there for, you know, kind of reality TV show about what that looks like, what that dynamic is, especially early on. Yeah. Copy what the UFC did. Do the ultimate fighter. Right. Get a bunch of content. Like right now I have the UFC fight pass where you just pay 10 bucks a month and you can watch like anything the UFC has ever done, which is fantastic for 10 bucks a month because I watch it every day. Right, right. That's cool. Yeah, I mean, we could go that direction. Again, my focus right now is on presenting the sport to the world. The athletes are getting their first chances to race.

The fans are getting their first chance to see it. We're getting our first chance to video it and we're putting that out and growing that fan base is obviously essential in the early days. Getting people to connect to the athletes, to the teams. The teams are just starting to solidify their identities, getting their logos done, getting their names solidified. Once we get through this first set of combines, we're going to be rolling that out more aggressively. And then when the draft happens, which will be in early July, the teams will have their full rosters. Then we're going to release the whole full-blown website, which gives you, okay, what team am I interested in? Who are the athletes? Are they going to be,

you know, there will be sort of positions that evolve a little bit, which is really interesting, you know, how they push. You know, as the races are known, does somebody become a closer? Does someone become a starter? You know, what does that look like? So we'll be covering all that and teaching fans and the athletes and the coaches too what the sport's really

about and then what it takes to win. Let's take a break real quick. When we come back, I'd like to talk about what the first season might look like. And we're back here at the Atlanta NPFL Combine with Tony Budding. And we took a break. And now we're going to be talking about just kind of what the season this year is going to look

like. From what I heard, it's going to be an abbreviated season. So it's going to be shorter than what you plan on it being in the future. Can you tell us about it? Yeah, absolutely. This is an abbreviated season. We are increasingly identifying ourselves as a lean company. So if you've read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, you'll know exactly what that means.

And the idea is you release a minimum viable product, get it out in front of the community, get your feedback from your end users about what works, what doesn't work. And so we put together a season that's really a minimum viable season, just the smallest nugget out there to get everybody's appetite whetted before we start with a full season. And actually next year is not going to be quite a full season. It'll be 2016 will be the first full season. But I'll go into that. So this year there will be 12 regular season matches in total. There will be eight teams. We have five signs.

We have two approved and that will sign probably within the next four days. And then I'm hearing rumors that there's actually a final team. There's been an application that was missing some components that has resolved those missing components, and I haven't seen it yet. But literally by the end of this weekend, we could have all eight teams. Should we call somebody out, put the pressure on them? I'd rather not at this point, but, you know, it's looking good. So, you know, I was saying June 1st was kind of our drop-dead deadline for this year, and we could do the abbreviated season with six teams.

So I knew we were going to get six strong teams. I wanted eight strong teams for this first year, and it looks like we're going to get that. So you don't have the teams officially yet and the combines have already begun. Absolutely. And so, again, those three teams are going to be able to sign four men officially yet and the combines have already begun so absolutely and and uh so again so we have uh those three teams are going to be able to sign um four men and four women outside the draft um uh so there's you know 24 athletes that that will now get signed some of them could be combine

athletes just because they're in the combine doesn't mean they can't get signed by a team the team just has has to take the remaining 10 athletes beyond the 10, at least that, from the draft process. Again, this is to create parity. The worst thing that you can have in a league is a team that is just utterly dominant. So if you had a billionaire backer, we don't at this point, but if we did, one of the teams could just buy up all the best athletes. You don't want to do that. You can also have – we will implement a salary cap at some point in the near future. It's not appropriate yet, and I could go into that if it's interesting to you.

But we are trying to – we are having things already in place to create that parity, that they're competing for the same athletes through the draft process, again, borrowing best practices from other sports. Right. So eight teams, each with seven active men and seven active women. One of them each has to be over 40. In fact, you have to dress an over 40 male and female each match. And they'll compete head-to-head.

In season, each team will have one or two home games and one or two away games. And then that'll take place most likely between, say, August 21st and September 15th. I don't know the exact dates, but that's probably where those 12 matches will occur. And then we're looking at a single elimination bracketed tournament as the playoffs for this year. And so there's three rounds of that. So there's the quarter semis and finals. And those will be late September and the first weekend in October. What's the championship going to be called?

That's a great question. We actually brought that up with the teams yesterday. We're discussing a variety of things. It's an exhibition season, so I've got mixed feelings about this year. Do we call it a true championship, or is it kind of a great job this year kind of thing? Give out ribbons? Yeah.

Everyone gets a participatory ribbon and a check, right? That's the ribbon that they'll get. So that's an active topic. The Lombardi Trophy wasn't called the Lombardi Trophy before when he was coaching. So I don't want to necessarily commit to something that doesn't allow some major event in the league to happen that becomes the Memorial Cup or whatever we do.

So we're actively looking at it and talking about it. So next year, we're going to have, it's not quite a full season, so we're going to actually do 12 weeks, and each team will play every week. Yeah. So we're going from three matches per team. You're looking for that to start around August as well, or is it a different time of year?

We are negotiating with a TV network right now, and their window is not actually in August. Gotcha. Well, some of the season will be in August. So I don't want to throw too much out there until it's a fact. Sure. You know, it's an interesting thing with our business is obviously TV time and presence is a huge part of it. And obviously to be able to get a substantial TV deal, we're going to be willing to kind of move the season around for that

because it's better for everybody, better for all of our athletes, fans, to be able to see if you can get five hours of TV in the fall or 50 hours another time. Go for the other time. Yeah, for sure. I mean, and it is that dramatic. Our opportunity is that dramatically better in other times of the year. So, again, I don't want to say too much because it's not there,

and I don't want to start rumor mills that then have to be undone, but it is being addressed. So what kind of plans do you guys have for the offseason? If you're only doing roughly three months, 12 weeks, and they've got nine months of offseason, what's the offseason look like? It's a good question. So starting in 2016, it'll be a 16-week season, so it goes to four months. And that's the regular season.

Then you have probably another month of playoffs. So now we're into five months. Then you've got combines happening. You've got the draft happening in that offseason as well. It would be nice to have a little downtime. So there you maybe only have like three months of downtime at that point. But during that time, the athletes are still training to be professional athletes. The teams still have a lot of work to do.

That might be one of the opportunities for us to do one of those reality TV shows. We're certainly going to be keeping up with the teams and the athletes and following up. It's also a time for us to do some post-production work from footage captured during the season, put together some documentaries, as we talked about. And as this all evolves, I mean, right now we'll have eight teams this year. My prediction is at least 12 teams next year. And the way people are coming and just unsolicited requests

for information and applications for teams, I'm guessing we're going to have 16 teams next year. So we'll double. That'd be awesome. What's that off-season look like for me? It looks like a lot of signing up teams and working on getting them on board. And we also have a tremendous amount of development

that we're doing in terms of improving the fan experience, developing web-related content and engagement infrastructure. Like we were talking about those games. There's just a lot of development there. Improving the infrastructure. So each of these teams is their own business. And so one of the things we're doing,

in fact, I'm going to St. Louis on Monday between here and Boston to meet with our accountants who are a sports accounting firm and to talk about many things in terms of our own business, but also we're creating infrastructure that will allow each of these new teams

to sort of get up to speed running. They don't have to reinvent the wheel they don't have to go find they don't have to go find their own accounting firm they can follow our lead and follow this and just kind of plug and play for a lot of those components so oh sorry go ahead no just added value for for for the team as we get you know economies of scale i was gonna say if this goes really well it sounds like it's going to is there thoughts on doing like a european league and an australian league and spreading out internationally my favorite facebook comment uh yet is now that the u.s league is fully up and established let's talk about europe oh my god all the work is done yeah exactly now we're fully established right so just just go count your money and it is funny how people they make

assumptions about things they see on youtube or on a website and they're like where did that what that thought even how that that story got made i don't even think we're started yet yeah exactly exactly right we've done no race there's not been a single race yet. I mean, like official competition. Right, right. So, you know, probably once a week I get a European, Australian, Latin American inquiry saying we'd love to bring this to there. So, you know, obviously it's on my mind. I'm not in a hurry to do that. I definitely want to make sure that this league is as good as it can be. I'd rather do fewer things better than more things

barely. I'm on board with that philosophy. Yeah, exactly. We've got four combines. This is the third one. We had the one in LA. Dallas. Dallas. Boston is next week. We're obviously in Atlanta right now.

So we've got four combines, and then there's another combine in Vegas. Yes. So people get to a certain level in the combines here, and then they can be invited to that combine. How does that work? Sure. So the first day is Friday and Saturday. Friday is the women, Saturday is the men, is individual performances.

And then at the end of that day, the teams invite a subset of those athletes, probably 40 men and 40 women, onto Sunday. And then Sunday's racing. So we have a limited number of men and women going in each combine. And the teams are watching and evaluating. And I have to say,

it's been very cool to listen to the teams evaluate athletes. And it is not simple at all. They are not just going, oh, that person's got a bigger number therefore they're better yeah i was over there at the table and everyone's got their laptops open they've got sheets of paper profiles on each athlete they're running stats they got excel spreadsheets open but not only that but i don't even know what they're doing right no and so not

only that but they're also talking about okay what was the attitude like how did they respond and so then they got all the coaches that are that are running the teams in the races on Sunday then report back, you know, how the athletes responded and who stepped up and who didn't, who had a bad attitude, who didn't. And so it's really quite sophisticated because they're really looking at building. I mean, the team is so much more than just the sum of its parts. Well, I know some people are going, well, I'm an awesome athlete. I probably don't need a combine.

I'm probably going to get picked up anyway. That's a poor attitude to have if they're not just looking at your numbers. If they're just looking at your numbers and you're a fantastic athlete, then sure. But what you were just talking about, you know, they're looking for people being able to work together. What was their attitude when they failed or something like that? I was like, well, that's something that the coaches and managers and owners are only going to see at the combine more than likely. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, a lot of these top athletes in the existing competition,

you've seen them perform, you see what they do as individuals. I'm of the opinion that it's a little bit of a risk to make the assumption that even though there's no doubt about the pure capacity of these athletes is unprecedented. There's no doubt about that. I do have doubts about how well that's going to translate into a team environment. And I have a feeling that there are athletes out there that nobody really knows about except their families and friends who have enormous capacities in limited areas or or at least they have uh big gaps in their game yeah that could be hidden by a good coach that could end up you know look at tom brady as a favorite example right went 199 in the draft or whatever the number was right you know and turned out to

be one of the best quarterbacks in history i think there's a lot of people out there like that so that's what i'm really excited about with the Combines. And I keep emphasizing to the teams, you know, don't underestimate this. Now, I think that, you know, if you look at this raw capacity and you look at someone, especially who might be mature in the other competitions and who's kind of been through the rigor and the challenge of all of those year after year of that, now has the opportunity to kind of specialize in a shorter domain. You know, it's a two-hour match shared with your teammates once a week, paid. Sounds a little more sustainable.

Not just from a monetary standpoint and financial, but like from, you know, just health. Right. And so I think that could be very appealing. So now you take somebody with this enormous capacity and they focus on this domain because this is a specialty sport to a degree. You could end up with really a world class, I mean, in our sport, the top athletes in our sport. Even if you do the whole thing, it's still only two hours.

Right. Even if you don't get subbed out, which is a lot shorter than a lot of other events. That's right. But I do think that that's not going to be possible in this league. No, it doesn't sound like it. It sounds like you have to be subbing in and out because of the high speed. It is.

And I think that's been my big realization is that the subbing is going to be more frequent, more important, more critical. And the timing of it and the speed of it, it's going to be big. So it's 80 feet from start line to finish line. Yeah. And that's just under 30 yards. Right. So if you're doing a substitution toward the end of that, you know, you got a you got a 40 yard sprint, 20 there and 20 back, you know, between the two athletes. That's not nothing. Right. And so, you know, you go that you go that fast once. No big

deal. But, you know, if you're subbing super fast and super frequently, it starts to add up. So then you're going to have coaches going to have to build that component into the mentality. So it's going to be really interesting. Do you think any teams have made mistakes by signing early? I mean, I know some teams were, you know, a month ago where, you know, I'm watching my

Twitter feed and it's like, oh, they signed that person and it's like, man, they haven't even seen the combine yet. Like, do you think some teams have jumped the gun and they're going to go, oh, shit, a year from now they're going to regret it? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a possibility of that. I can't think of an example. I think of the athletes that have signed and haven't gone with it.

And I haven't gone, really? That hasn't happened yet. And I think that a lot of these athletes, too, are the kinds of athletes, having signed that early, they're already probably orienting a little bit of their training, a little bit of mentality. They're watching, paying attention. So I don't think anyone has made a mistake. Do I think it's possible that we're going to look back and go, oh, wow, that really didn't work out?

Right. Of course. I think that's... So how do people make it from one of these four combines and get invited to the Vegas combine? Was it July 10th? No, July 10th is the draft. Sorry. Yep.

Oh, yeah. June 21st is... Yeah, June 20 to 22nd is our current date. It turns out there's an electronic dance festival, EDM festival that weekend in Vegas. Oh, that's where I'll be, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm just kidding.

Well, I knew I was already going to be there, but yeah. So it's a challenge to find a venue. So those dates might change a little bit or I hope they do Tony. Cause I won't be able to make it right. Yeah. It's going to be torn. Well, no, what you do is you come to the combine during the day and then the EDM festival all night, you just got to write, write drugs, keep them going. You have the right drugs in line, you know, line that up. Then you can just go the whole 72 hours, no problem. Right, right. And then you sit and take a nap afterwards. So the way you get from here to there is at, you know,

excuse me, the races are not, the people are racing, of course, but the competition itself, even though there's a lot of mistakes being made in terms of, because the strategies are new, you're able to see very easily when you watch these, which athletes are really made for this sport

and which ones are not. And so, that is just a tryout. And so, the coaches are being able to make notes throughout these races of really, like, which athletes belong in the sport and which ones, you know, either need more training or just not the right sport. So is that combine going to look different than this one? Yes. Sort of. I mean, yes, it will as an overall. So it's still a three

day combine, but it's all racing. So there's none of the individual performances because now. Oh, yeah, that'll be fun. Yeah, it's going to be great. And so we've got the first portion of that, it's all 100 men and 100 women going through heats, and we haven't figured out exactly the order of that, but after some period of time when everyone's been through and done several races, then the teams are going to pick a subset of that, probably about half of those

athletes, and those athletes will then keep racing over the three days. And then another half will be selected to come forward, and then by the end of the third day, it will come down to two teams of five men and five women going head-to-head. And they will do a complete match. And the athletes on the winning team are guaranteed a spot on a team. So they are competing at that point for the league. You know, everybody else then who made it to the Vegas combine will be eligible for the draft. And so there's about 200

athletes invited to Vegas and there'll be about 80 athletes signed in the draft. So you're looking at about 40% of those athletes. So that's a pretty substantial number. The draft is in July 10th in Miami. In Miami, yeah. I'll make that. Yeah, that'll be fun. That'll be really fun. And, you know, we've got with eight teams and the number of great athletes out there,

I don't, you know, it's going to be interesting to see who goes where, but it's not going to be the same drama as when they're next year. There's going to be 16 teams. And there'll be more people training and more people coming out and more people focusing on this and then it's gonna be you know they'll be more sophisticated in terms of understanding what worked on their team what didn't well you have established athletes you know you already have athletes there and now athletes might be getting dropped and picking up new athletes in the combine it's gonna get uh

it'll be fun it is is going to be fun. Awesome. Thanks for joining us, Tony. My pleasure. It was really enjoying. Anything we left off, you want to tell the folks about? Searching. What I would say, yeah, you're right.

Sorry. Dead air on the radio is a problem. I would say I can't wait to dig into the strategies. I mean, it's a physical game for sure, but there's a strategic element to it. I think we're going to call our show the trials. And, you know, you've got time trials, which is racing. Right. But there's a court trial component to this where this isn't just a battle of physicality or capacity. It's a battle of will. And it's a battle of strategy. And it's a battle of, there's a mental component that's going to be really

fierce. And so once we start getting some stats on how athletes move through these races, the, the statistician nerds, propeller heads are all going to come out and they're going to start analyzing what's going on. And we're going to have a new layer upon layer of interest in this. The casual fan, yeah, you have no idea what's going on, right? Like it's just, I mean, of those strategies, right? You just know there's a race across the court and you'll be able to follow it. But the passionate fans and the ones who are just like, how do you win here? How do you really make this work? We're going to, we're already looking for our statistician to start running the numbers for us. Yeah. And you know, we're, we're looking at how we're going to collect all this data. And you know, so there's,

there's a manual process, but, but we're going to have to get to some kind of automated collection of data very rapidly. So we're going to invest a lot into that. And it's got the potential to be a game changer. If you can really do electronic capture of rep velocity, you could literally check the micro discrepancies in rate of reps as you're going through. And then you use algorithms to assess, you know, can you predict when an athlete's going to start to fall off their pace? Yeah.

By looking at this data. It's going to be epic. Yeah. Man, that sounds exciting. All right, Tony, thanks for joining us. If you want to read more about the NPFL, just go to NPFL.com or ProFitnessLeague.com and check that out. Make sure you go to BarbellShrug.com and

sign up for the newsletter and we'll inform you anytime we post one of these podcasts. Thanks, Tony. Thank you.