The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Ja Experience in Memphis With Chris Vernon, MLB’s Future With Joe House, and Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin on Changing Sports Fans

Episode Date: March 3, 2022

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Chris Vernon and Joe House to discuss Ja Morant, what his development has done for the Grizzlies and the Memphis area, looking ahead to the Grizzlies in the playoffs, and more (3:40). Then Bill and House talk about the MLB lockout, the current lockout compared to the 1994 MLB lockout, some long overdue baseball fixes, and more (54:01). Finally Bill talks with CEO of Fanatics, Michael Rubin, about the rise of Fanatics, handling logistics for the merchandise giant, the sports cards market, the future of sports fandom, and more (1:39:59). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Chris Vernon, Joe House, and Michael Rubin Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, we have the mogul of Memphis, the mogul of golf, and the mogul of merchandise. Yeah, it's a big pot. It's all next. It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. Football is in full action. FanDuel's highest rated sports book is the best place to bet it all. We've been doing pretty well on million dollar picks this year. I love the first month of the season because you have to go into the season thinking, I think Pittsburgh's going to be good. I think the Chargers are going to be good. I think Seattle's going to be good. And then trying to back what you think in those first few weeks and then zag the other way. If you were wrong, you could bet on new and fun markets on FanDuel, like to catch a pass, same game parlays, highest scoring game

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Sportsbook. Check it out. All right. So we're going to do the podcast in one second. We have Chris Vernon and Joe House. Joe House is here in LA with me. Chris Vernon is in Memphis. He's going to explain to us what it's like when somebody like John Morant just blows up in your town. And we're going to talk about that. LeBron and the Lakers, a whole bunch more. House and I are going to talk about the MLB

lockout. Just what is the outcome that we want here? Is there a chance to kind of blow up baseball and change it and make it better? And then last but not least, Michael Rubin, who is the CEO of Fanatics. He's a part owner of the Sixers and he's up to a whole bunch of stuff. I interviewed him over Super Bowl week, had been saving it for the right time to run it. I think he is an absolutely fascinating guy for a lot of reasons. I think he holds the keys to a lot of what being a sports fan in the 2020s and 2030s is going to be. You'll hear it when we do the interview. Some of the stuff that he's up to, I think is going to affect everybody who loves sports and seems like for the better, but that's one of the things we'll talk about with him. So

that is all. Next, before I get to the podcast though, Jonathan Charks, who writes for TheRinger.com and has been on this podcast a bunch of times, he wrote a beautiful piece for us today about all the struggles that he's been having the last couple of years. He's been diagnosed with cancer and he's been battling it. He's been working almost the entire time. It's been one of the most amazing things that I've seen just professionally, the resilience of him. But he wrote a piece today that I think is one of the most special pieces we've had, not just at the Ringer, but dating back to the Grantland days too. And I would encourage you to go to the website and to check it out. And you can hear Charks on the Ringer NBA show as well.

But man, that guy's really something. The piece is really something. Go check it out. It's on the ringer.com. Anyway. Um, let's do the podcast. Here's Pearl Jam. All right, Joe House is here. Our friend Chris Vernon is here live from Memphis. He's riding a high. I heard you on the Misfatch the other day talking about what it was like to be at that Spurs game in person. I wanted to even go bigger picture than this because what's going on with Ja right now is so special. And it's so much fun when it organically just happens. When everybody kind of looks around and goes, oh my God, we have not just a star, but this is like a generation altering person potentially.

And this guy's young and he's going to be in my life for the next 10 to 15 years. Potentially this happened to me when I was living in Boston in the, uh, in 1979, 1980, Larry Bird showed up. And at some point during his rookie year, we all realized like, oh my God, like this is, I can't believe this. We won the lottery. This has never happened to you house. You never had this for basketball. No, I'm serious. Like how we talked about it house. You've, you've not, not even really come close in basketball, right? I mean, for a minute, it felt like we might have that with a little John wall, but, but not really hockey is the, probably the closest with Ovechkin.

Oh, Ovi. All right. So, Chris, when did you know? Because we would argue about this, and you were telling us even last year, Jaws special, Jaws special. I'm telling you, Jaws special. And we were like, whatever. He can't shoot threes yet.

We don't see it. So I've got a weird deal. And my wife will attest to this. So when he was in college, we used to watch the games on ESPN Plus, my son and I, because my wife went to Murray State. And I'm actually going to give you credit for this. And I don't know if you will even remember it. But in the first podcast that you did with Durant, you asked him, you were like, you're a big hoops head. You like college basketball.

He is the first person I ever heard talk about John Moran. Wow. He brought it up on your podcast. And he said, there's a kid at Murray State. I can't remember which camp he had seen him at. I don't think it was Kevin's camp, but one of those camps, right? They do all those Nike camps. And he's like, the one I love is the kid at Murray State, John Moran. And I perked up when

he said that. I'm like, Murray State? I was like, hold on a second now. And so then I start looking the kid up. He had a pretty good freshman year. And then he starts taking off that sophomore year. And we start watching him. I'm seeking him out and I'm watching him. And then he starts taking off that sophomore year and we start watching him. Like I'm seeking him out and I'm watching him. And of course I totally fell in love. I mean, you could even go back in when he was in college. I was, I was tweeting about this kid. I loved him. And you knew, you knew at that point you had a chance to get a top three pick and it was Zion and it was John and it was our, no, we didn't. We tried to give the pick away to you guys. Oh, my God, you're right.

He tried to give away the pick. It was protected. It was a protected pick, and they acquired Avery Bradley and Jonas Valanciunas and all these guys. That's why everybody, like every once in a while, people will be like, oh, yeah, Vernon, you're against tanking, but look at what tanking got you. And I'm like, you got this all wrong. They won 30-something games

because they wanted it to be the worst possible pick because they were having to convey it. And so they tried to win every game down the stretch. Then it gets to the lottery and they get second. And this is what my wife will attest to. I walked into the other room and I told her everything just changed everything because I knew that it's Zion and Moran. And if you got one of those, I loved Moran coming out. And I must tell you this, though.

He is. So much better than I could have ever expected. In terms of... Wait, hold that thought, because I just want to point out, House walked into his wife's office. Oh, no. The day the Wizards signed Gilbert Arenas. And he was like, honey, everything has changed. We have stolen Gilbert Arenas from the Warriors.

And you weren't wrong, House. Things changed. Well have stolen Gilbert Arenas from the Warriors. And you weren't wrong, House. Things changed. You know what? Honestly, the most scintillating moment in the D.C. sports scene history over the last decade was drafting RG3. Trading all those draft picks, moving up in the draft. He really was a transcendent

talent. He just couldn't. He only survived one season. That's all. Alright. Very nice. Jaws survived one season. That's all. Yeah. All right. Burn us. So Jaws in, you know, he's good. What was was there a moment before he wins? He wins rookie of the year. Yeah. I mean, a lot of guys have done that, though.

This is what's going on this year is different. Like I. Oh, no. I personally didn't see this. You could tell his rookie year that he was really special. And I think when the big turning point was the 47 on the road against Utah in the playoffs last year, that was when it was like, oh my God. This is when the stakes are highest. And if you go back and look, the stakes were highest when he played an amazing game at Golden State.

They knocked Golden State out. Golden State was supposed to be in the playoffs, and they had to beat them at Golden State. And so he stepped up there, and then they got to the playoffs, and it was too much. I mean, they were overpowered by that Utah team. But he had 47 points against, you know, the greatest defender in the history of the game and a Utah defense, the number one seed. They were the number one seed last year. And so I think that was like the turning point.

And so it was very hopeful. Like once you score 47 in the playoffs and then you're very hopeful that you come back the next season and that he can be even better. And they try to make some moves. But not. Come on. It was also the turning point for Verno's marriage

because he has like a hundred John Morant rookie cards. He did the thing where he's like, I don't have enough at stake professionally already with this guy. I'm also going to buy 100 of his rookie cards. You have no idea how many Marant rookie cards I have.

It is extreme. It's extreme. Paraphernalia too. I got two kids and I bet there are at least 12 Marant jerseys or shirt jerseys in my house.

At least. At least. I mean, they come out, now the NBA, they come out five different versions and an all-star one and a rising stars one and every kind of jersey you could imagine. My son wants all of them. So House, I said on the podcast, like four weeks

ago, I was talking about job and the stuff he was doing when he was going to the basket and the stuff in the air and double clutch stuff and his ability to just over and over again, surprisingly dunk on people or get layups. And, and I was really careful about it. Cause I was scared because he, you know, MJ is like the third rail, which is comparing anyone to MJ or Magic or Bird. It's just, you're just terrified the whole time. Social media, things get thrown. But I was just like, look, we were there. We were in high school and college for the early MJ

when he was just over and over again, just going to the basket and doing crazy shit. And we were just like, I've never seen anything like this before. This is amazing. And I did feel like he had a piece of that. That Spurs game he played on Monday night, which I know all three of us saw,

that was what it was like to watch young MJ. Because at some point during that game, the Spurs were like, fuck this, you're not getting 50. You're just not. You're not doing this. They have DeJounte Murray, who's I think one of the better defensive guards in the league. And Jazz said, no, I'm actually going to get 50. And the Spurs said, no, you're not doing this. They have DeJounte Murray, who's I think one of the better defensive guards in the league. And John's like,

no, I'm actually going to get 50. And this person said, no, you're really not. We're going to double team you over mid court. You're just not getting it. He said,

no, no, I'm, I'm, I'm going to get it. I'm still going to go in. I'm going to go all these different ways on top of all the stuff he did in the first half with the,

the full court play that the, the dunk, like house, this was what it was like for us in the late 80s with mj am i am i crazy saying that no because i understand the point you're making which is that body control that levitation now to me my mind's eye conjures up other guards other guys that are like stature wise, closer to jaw. And my mind's eye sees a little Allen Iverson, uh, both in terms of the fearlessness in going to the, to the rack. Um, and also that body control and also, um, some Derek Rose, the explosiveness of Derek

Rose in, in his, you know, that his MVP year before the injury. Both of those guys, I kind of see Ja channeling the Jaws, the evolutionary, like a combo of all those guys. But I understand the point you're making with MJ, and it's undeniable that Ja possesses whatever that thing is, that ability to contort himself in ways to protect the ball in ways to protect the ball in ways that keeps the defense completely off guards.

He's unstoppable in that way. And surprisingly, just the game-to-game, play-to-play, there's this surprising athletic stuff that he does that brings me back to... Also, young Kobe was like this too. Yeah, it was a great call. Before his body filled out and the whole thing. It's degree of stuff that he does that brings me back to also young Kobe was like this too he'd like yeah it's

a great call but before he his body filled out and the whole thing it's degree of difficulty yes that's what it is right there's a lot of guys that score a lot of points but the way in which he scores those points it's just it's not what everybody else is doing it's not the way anybody else is getting their point. All right. So, Verno, I know you did this on the mismatch, but not all my listeners listen to the mismatch. How dare they? I'm sure there's a ton of overlap.

But that experience Monday night, I mean, that was the most special part of this whole journey. But at some point, it's like, all right, this is actually like I'm going to be telling my grandkids that I was at this game kind of shit going on at some point and you could feel it though like what was the electricity like just what was it like i mean so there's a couple things that go into it one is because of the way the schedule broke this season the grizzlies have been outstanding they just ended up eight and two in the month of February. They only played three home games the entire month of February. So all this is going on to everybody's watching on TV. It's water cooler stuff.

He's going and starting the all-star game, the whole nine. But there haven't been many home games. There was one that they actually dropped, which was the night before they went to the All-Star break Portland game. And then that one that was the other night against San Antonio. And so you had this buildup where they hadn't been around. It was the first one since the All-Star break when they had been back at home. And I mean, look, i've been to all of them for virtually 21 years a monday night san antonio right about as big a dud as you could get and the crowd was wild like immediately like you could just tell it's like you know it's it's just a different vibe it's like you know the closest thing is like

the playoffs um but years ago there there were guys that would come into town and I remember telling people there's only two where like very early I guess three now um if you want to add in Curry where I'm talking a monstrous amount of fans get there early. They're there to watch the warm-ups. And then when the guy comes out of the tunnel, I mean, even for warm-ups, it's like a rock star. Kobe was like that. Iverson was like that in Memphis.

And then Curry, obviously. People show up to watch Curry in a way. But now that there's like this rock star kind of guy that's on the team, now you start to see a lot of people are there a lot earlier. The parking lots fill up earlier. And so that's all like kind of happened in the last couple of months.

I will tell you this. And so it's a wave. My son's birthday was going to be on Martin Luther King day. They play a game. They played against a game against the Bulls. I bought 10 tickets for him and his little buddies to go to the game. That's what he wanted to do for his birthday. So I did that.

He got COVID. It ruined it. Now I was able to get the tickets back, and they resold it, whatever. I have tried to reschedule that thing since and cannot. Oh, it's a wrap. It's like the hottest. Bro, and I'm here every day. I can't get them.

I can't get them. I asked them, how about this? I went down to our ticket guy and I said look Dennis I said you know that I said I need to do William's birthday at some point I was like it doesn't matter the game it doesn't have to be a big game let's just do Orlando Orlando is this Saturday they play against the Orlando Magic and he's like no chance chance. And I was like, what are you talking about? And I said, okay, what is the most I could get together? And he said, two. Two?

They're playing the frigging magic. And so going back to your original question, the San Antonio thing, it was a madhouse already. And then the performance. By the way, he's coming off of 46. Right. At Chicago. So he's, by the way, he's coming off of 46. Right. At Chicago. So he's just broke the franchise scoring record.

So that now they show up for that. And there's a 52. It was pandemonium, absolute pandemonium. And it appears as if it's just going to be like that. The rest of the stretch run. It was, there was something going on in the venue that monday night also there was an hbcu

yeah i watched the feed i watched the memphis feed of that game that's right it was all the local colleges came and there was a hbcu night yeah and jackson state brought their marching band i saw that yeah and there was also Some step competition There was all kinds of stuff It was It was nuts Not all by itself When he had that dunk I was watching

The reactions Of some of the people Around the basket And there was this one guy Shout out to the guy Wearing the light blue sweater Who jumped up And then did a full 180

With his hands Behind his back And just stared At all the other people Like he had just seen A car crash. It was so cool. And the reason,

actually, let's take a break because there's a reason that I want to do this and the reason why I think it's so important, but we'll take a quick break here. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring,

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There's, like, obviously, we're doing pods, right? We're looking for angles, and it's like, oh, what's your best Ben Simmons trade? Should we be worried about the like, Oh, let's, when's, what's your best Ben Simmons trade? Um, or should we, we'd be worried about the warriors. Like everybody's doing kind of the same angles on things. And I think we get caught in the kind of the smaller picture things that we're going to do. You lead the pod, talk about segments, the job what's happening with job really reminds me of what happened with Curry. That first Curry season when they was with David Lee and Clay and you could

feel the momentum happening. But then we went to the second one and Mahoney and I talked about this a little bit where, um, that second Warriors season when they end up, they, they have the big battle with the Clippers and all that, but it's set, it basically set the battle with the Clippers and all that, but

it set, it basically set the stage for the title of the year later. But it was the year that Curry started to resonate with kids and Curry was becoming this star that he was a little different than the stars. Cause he was so different and so unique as a player. And I feel that way with job because, you know, we have these different type of guys that come in and you have like the perimeter shooter guy. You have the traditional point guard who has the ball all the time guy. You have the big men. And then you have the most interesting guys

in the league have been the Europeans, right? Giannis and Jokic and Embiid, these guys that are just like, what are these? The unicorns. Ja's not a unicorn, but he's so night-to-night different and unique to watch play-to to play that in his own way,

it's like a Curry thing where with Curry, the whole thing was when's Curry getting hot. When's he going to go on it? Oh, oh boy. Oh, he's starting to feel it. Oh, he just made a third three and you're just kind of waiting for it. And with the job thing, I think it's the same thing. House Berno's obviously biased on this, but how house do you feel like do you feel like we're moving that way where john's just not like a young star but i actually think he has a chance to resonate like curry did i think he could become one of the faces of the league it's possible but i i want to ask you guys i i'm constantly you know trying to be careful about you know the the um enthusiasm of the moment right the hyperbole thing i get it yeah and and and recency bias and all of that and i just think

you know it was nine months ago ten months ago think about the collective um exhilaration all of us other than fans of of the knicks and the Sixers, experienced watching Trey Young kind of take those playoffs over in a way that we didn't see coming and with a style of play that, you know, it was kind of a one-of-a-kind kind of style of play. Now, they got the league outlawed one aspect of it in the offseason but uh i understand jaw's different he's a different kind of player a different kind of attacker a different physical specimen but we did have a lot of enthusiasm we wondered about you know what does this mean for trey young what does this mean for the hawks? And here we are. But here's the thing.

This is why I'm asking it. You can call me biased or you can say that I'm just being truthful. Trey Young is not cool. That's the thing. He was cool. No, he's not cool. He's a different cool. All the rappers were on

the sidelines. He owns Atlanta. Trey Young is not cool. Quavo rappers were on the sidelines. He owns Atlanta. Trae Young is not cool. Quavo, Amigos, all of them right there. He just brought out Vernos Homer. People,

no, no, people have always, we were all annoyed by him. Yes, we liked that he turned into the wrestling heel and he was,

you know, bowing in New York and he was doing great. But prior to that, he was a mini Harden who annoyed all of us. It was playing for fouls instead of playing for makes. And that was so irritating. That's not cool. And kids don't like that.

Kids sit there. Kids feel the same way when they're watching it. They sit there and they go, oh, that's bullshit. You know, I mean, I've got a kid. Guess who? Outside of Morant, Curry is like, look, even in a small market like this, if you were to say, okay, Morant, they all love Morant. Morant's the king of the world to them now, right? But set him aside. Easily, amongst all of his friends and who's on his teams, I would say

in terms of jerseys they own, one would be Curry or some paraphernalia. One would be Curry and two would be Mahomes. And whoever is three is so far down the list, it's astonishing.

They don't give a crap about LeBron. And that's what's at stake for this job, whatever happens over these next few weeks and months. Because the last time we really saw this happen was with Curry. And we've had a lot, I think we have more great young players than we've had probably since the early

90s. It's a lot like Iverson in that sense. Iverson was when I was getting out of college, and he was cool. He was really cool. He was cool. Everybody liked Allen Iverson. Jokic, who's been amazing, is just never going to resonate in this way. And neither is Giannis.

I don't think Luka will either. And Bede, I think all those guys resonate with their fan bases and their cities. Right. But the difference with Jaws, what you just said, like the, it's the Mahomes thing. It's the Curry thing. It's just, there's something slightly different. He seems like, it seems like it could be semi attainable to be him, except that's not. Cause then he does all the superhero stuff, but it's not like he's this big dude. Like you watched Zion last year and zion was incredible like for what half of that season last year oh yeah but you can't like identify with zion like the guys like he seems like he was dropped from a different planet you know and he's doing stuff and you're like jesus this guy's overpowering

the jaw thing like if i'm a 10 year old kid i would be in the backyard who would you be pretending to be you would pretend to be curry or jaw, I would be in the backyard. Who would you be pretending to be? You would pretend to be Curry or Ja. Those would be the two guys. And I think that's what's at stake for them. We've been here before we were here with the 2013, 14 Warriors stretch and people forget, but that early Durant, Westbrook, Curry, and then adding hard on those teams, those early OKC teams, same thing, right? Small market. Everyone's like, ah, you can never keep a guy in a small market because LeBron had just left. Then the OKC guys, it seemed realistic.

Now, I know with the small market thing, obviously Memphis is one of the smallest, but probably they feel in the... You guys all feel in the safest possible hands with Ja. He's from the South. Wants to be there. Loves it. very similar to the honest

thing right where it's just like oh we probably don't have to worry about this guy bolting in two years well and the other thing is and this is most important you guys know every job everything that you're involved with is about people and you watch that team and and that's not fake. They are not just teammates. They are legitimately friends. They're friends' friends. They hang out. They know each other's families.

They really root for each other, love each other, and so that's just so important. You know what I'm saying? Guys, when is the last time you saw a guy walk away from something he loved or a group of guys that he loved? Yeah. It just doesn't happen. It's usually there's some level of discontent that's gone on. And so you've got a bunch of these guys that all kind of their personalities fit together

and they're friends and so that goes a long long way um you never know you know it's just like marriages i mean things at one point kevin durant and russell westbrook didn't have any problem with each other and then it probably got annoying at the end right he said one of them starts looking elsewhere and wants to do something different house had the same special thing with chris we, Juwan Howard, Rod Strickland, and George Mirosan. I remember there was a year there where you're like, this is special. We're really building something. George took them all out for hot dogs and movies.

How are you doing, House? I mean, it was the best start in 40 years. Wes Unseld Jr., you know, taking over, you know, it was like they were doing the thing where they were saying, well, look at all these parallels. Wes Unseld, it was his team that was the last one that had this kind of a start. And now here we are 40 years later, and it's Wes Unseld Jr. leading the way. And we're like 20, 30 games into this season season and we were like, finally, House has got a team.

No, he doesn't. But he has guys he likes. I was at dinner with House last night and he was bragging about Kyle Kuzma and Danny Abdiah. Abdiah. Have you seen House? Abdiah.

Abdiah. He's talking about how Rui was looking better lately. Abdi Abdi Abdi Abdi Abdi Abdi yeah and he he's talking about how Rui was looking better lately and then how about the white guy from

Gonzaga Kisper Corey Kisper is good no there was there was there was a

finish line he admitted he was kind of excited for Porzingis there were witnesses yeah how soon seems like

why not stretch five now you know you know what's gonna happen is they're gonna assign Beal to the Supermax and then I'm just gonna have to write the team off for the next five years because I mean I've been through that I know exactly what that means that is like a 36 win team if

they do that that's the ceiling but yeah they should be signing and trading him this turn on Beal has been stunning he's been there the whole time. House has never wavered on... He probably peaked with Beal in 2017, and then it's been a slow, steady de-evolution of his feelings for Beal, I would say.

Is that fair, House? Yeah, I mean, Beal has always had more leadership qualities than John Wall, and for a moment there, it was whose team is this? There was kind of a wrestling match. And then Wall got hurt and didn't play for two years. And then they decided to tank in that same time span. So then Beal became the best player on a tanking team.

And as they kind of rebuild and got the miracle of Russell Westbrook for a year and made a miracle playoff run in last season, you know, lost in the first round, but still exceeded all expectations to get to the playoffs. All of that could have translated into Beal as a guy that you might think is the number one guy on a team that can compete, but he's just not. That's the thing. He's just not. He's not the number one guy. He can't be the number one guy. Maybe you'd trade him to Memphis for a bunch of stuff. Oh, you know,

we do have right behind me, in fact, this is real quick, we do have Beale Street. It could work. Triple J. I'll take Triple J and

I don't know. Verno. If you're the league right now, I mentioned this to Mahoney the other day. If you're the league right now, are you mobilized behind job? Are you like we Curry is our most famous under 35 star. Yes.

Yes. You mobilize by job. He's got more views than you. They put out that memo yesterday. So most viewed Instagram video ever. He, I think he was 10 of 13 of their Instagram posts like two days ago. It's crazy.

But I got to talk to you about that Mahoney thing. It's the first time that I have felt wildly uncomfortable through this entire deal. Because this has all been a dream for everybody in Memphis. Yeah. Him picking the Grizzlies to make the West finals made me so squeamish. I like, this has all been so unexpected.

And I have long thought that every team, you know, all these teams, they need to, you know, you get playoff scars and they got some last year, you know, got some reps by playing against Utah. But now when it turns to, I don't know, it's like the first time somebody has talked like that. Like, hey, I think I'd have to take Memphis.

And I love Rob Mahoney. And I've been reading him forever. And so that was tough to hear because I don't want them to be the one that people are picking. I don't want them. I don't want them to be in a position where this can be a disappointment. Because this is so far from a disappointment. But that's when it crosses the line, right? It's like that they underwhelmed or something. But they're all under 25 years old

outside of Steven Adams, who is somehow 28. Is that true? I feel like he's been in the league for 20 years. Yes. That's like how me and Catherine Zeta-Jones are somehow the exact same age and the same birthday. And it doesn't make sense to me.

Who do you think's older? I just feel like she's been around longer than I have. No comment. No comment. We're taping this on a Thursday at, it's like noon right now. And Memphis is a half game back. And,

you know, not breaking news that you'd rather be the two seed than the three seed here, but especially this year because, and this is what Mahoney and I did on Tuesday, the two seed means you avoid Dallas and Denver. Maybe Utah. And, yeah, and you move into that whole, all right, Minnesota, Clipper, Lakers, bring it on.

The Lakers, which, you know, we were talking when I had Jacoby and Wilds on last week, we were talking puncher's chance with the Lakers, which, um, you know, we were talking when I had Jacoby and wilds on last week, we're talking punchers chance with the Lakers. I saw them in person last, uh, Tuesday night. I don't see them in person again tonight with house. They're bad.

And it, I actually don't think they have a punchers chance. And then people be like, well, you can't judge until Davis is back. But the body language, some of the stuff I saw, like just the chemistry that they don be like, well, you can't judge until Davis is back. But the body language, some of the stuff I saw, like just the chemistry that they don't have, um, the lack of defense and Chris Ryan made this point. Cause we were watching LeBron. He was like,

LeBron for like seven minutes can be LeBron. And he knows like when to kind of use those seven minutes. It's like his cheat code. He slaps it in. He has these awesome seven minutes, but he can't do it for four quarters anymore. And he can't do it in the defense anymore. I don't know if you guys saw that game. Luca kind of tortured him in the fourth quarter in that game for like three, four possessions. He was trying to get LeBron in these switches.

I don't know if they were talking about it in the announcer or not, but he was trying to get him. And then LeBron's like, oh, you want to go mano a mano? And Luca's like, yeah, I actually do. I would love to go mano a mano with you and torched him. And then LeBron ended up moving away from him. I don't think the miles that LeBron's playing combined with who knows when Davis comes back, combined with that supporting cast,

I actually don't think they have a puncher's chance. I would be more nervous about whatever the ceiling of the Clippers with whoever comes back. But with all that said, let's say Memphis is two-seeded. Now you have the Lakers in the series. Are you scared? Do you want to bulletin board them right now? Oh, yes, I would be concerned.

Not because I don't think that they could win the series or would win the series. It's simply because you're having to go up against if you're saying that Anthony Davis is healthy yeah because it's different when he's healthy and I just cannot get out of my mind when they first came to town somebody with the Lakers because I they I mean they suck then too um I was like what the hell's going on and I remember they said this to me. They said, it's very frustrating because, you know, they got tons of veterans on that team.

And they were like, and even with LeBron, they are going to every night give out the absolute minimum amount of energy it takes to win. Now what's ended up happening is they give the minimum amount of energy and they can't even win right they can't they can't just turn it on and that's what they've realized they can't just turn on but i also think in those when it gets to the playoffs and he'll turn it into a total half-court game. You're not going to get calls.

They're getting the calls. I just, no. I'd rather play somebody else that that's not the issue. Well, you're probably not playing them because it looks like they're stuck in the 9-10 range. Probably. But, House, would you want to see the Lakers in the playoffs? Or do you want to watch them tonight before you answer this or where do you stand? No, I'm fine because I don't

think tonight is probative of what the playoff version of the Lakers could consist of. You need to see them with Davis. That's it. That's the answer. Verno knows. For all the reasons Verno just said, they're formidable i mean they will

f you up uh lebron and and ad and you know who knows maybe over this next little bit um they will have figured out a second unit role for westbrook so that at least the second unit isn't getting well i'm just saying like you know it's just not out there getting you know the on off numbers with with lebron are insane right now because the whole rest of the team is, you know, junk. But playoff time is different. New Orleans is coming for them. I mentioned in a pod, I can't remember if it was Sunday or Tuesday, how I'd heard that the Lakers kind of stood up to LeBron last week because they did all the stuff. They, you know, whatever.

You could see what their agenda was. What night did you say you were there? You say you were there Tuesday night? Yeah. Okay, so was that the night? Was it Monk or who was the young player that jumped up this spectacular block where he grabbed the ball right above,

way above the rim? There was a play like that. I mean, it was right in front of their bench. Yeah. And I saw a guy like on, uh, some,

one of the social media sites posted this video. It was one of those like bitching about the Lakers videos. I love clicking on those. And, and the guy was like, look at this bullshit. Like, look at this play. And then look at the bench.

He's like, this shit is spectacular. And the bench didn't even get up. Nobody even, like, blinked. Well, we were laughing, because we were sitting across from the benches on Tuesday. We were laughing, because the whole fourth quarter, Dallas' whole bench is standing, right? They're really into it.

They're coming on the court. Crazy. The whole Lakers bench is sitting and occasionally Davis would stand up and sit down. Everything about it said to me this team is heading the wrong direction. What's interesting, because I was talking to a couple people this week,

LeBron's never been in this situation before. What about the ink from here? No, no. This situation where he's trying to do like, hey, if we don't do this, we got to change the team and you got to...

And they're kind of like, we're the Lakers. You're going to come and go. You're going to retire at some point. We're still the Lakers. We're still one of the league's signature franchises. If you don't like it here,

we'll trade you this summer. He doesn't have the same kind of, I don't know if he's ever been at this point in his career where he doesn't have the juice because ultimately they could just trade him. He's under contract next year, right? He wants to be here next year. His son's going to be a senior at Sierra Canyon.

He doesn't want to leave LA. This is the first time he kind of had to back off, which is why I think we got those stories last week where the was like, whoa, she was like, rich Paul, rich Paul's like, no,

no, no, actually we didn't try. Dude, you're bringing up Sam Presti and press conferences. Why the fuck are you doing that? I haven't even thought about this because obviously infinitely bigger than Cleveland, infinitely bigger than Miami.

But your argument would be that he ain't bigger than the Laker brand. He's not bigger than the Laker brand. And he's also not in the prime of his career anymore. Right. And you're just not going to mortgage the future, which they've already done with the Davis trade and the Westbrook trade. They don't have any more assets. House, the guy's going to be in year 20 next year. which they've already done with the Davis trade and the Westbrook trade. They don't have any more assets house.

The guy, the guy's going to be in year 20 next year. At some point you got to look at it and go, Hey man, like we already did all the stuff you asked. We got a title out of you. And if you don't want to be here, we'll trade your ass this summer. And they stood up to Kobe years ago too.

You remember? I mean, they did in the mid two thousands. They did, but they never traded him and then they took care of him down the stretch because he was as big as the lakers he had two generations of fans lebron doesn't have the same hold over laker fans i'm telling you what were you saying house just that uh you know we talked about this at dinner last night um the lebron and his uh camp engineered westbrook's uh you know arrival in los angeles

and they affirmatively chose westbrook over derosen because derosen by all accounts going back was very close and and wanted to play with the lakers and you know there there is now because of the stage of his career and because of you you know, the investment that the Lakers have already made, he doesn't have that sway any longer. I mean, he made the mistake and he's got to live with the mistake now. That accountability is there. So with all this talk of dinner and dinner and we were together, we're going to get. Are you guys like in the same house in different rooms right now? Yeah, we're in different rooms right now? Yeah. Are you really? Yeah.

Yeah. We want a good experience for our fans. Hey, Virgo, we had to get back together because the last time the three of us were all on a pod, we had to go through the whole breakdown. You know, uh, Ben Simmons is a diminishing asset. Verno was on Verno Island. Yeah, Darryl Morris botching the whole Ben Simmons thing. Remember that, Hal? I remember. We ganged up on Verno, and he made an impassioned argument

for why it was a mistake for the Sixers and that Simmons was never going to get any kind of return. Darryl was... And all we said was, you can't predict the future. You can't control how guys might change their minds, what circumstances might change. Lo and behold,

because Kyrie Irving refused to get a vaccination, James Harden is on the Philadelphia 76ers. Who could have seen that coming? And, Bruno, on top of that, Daryl Jedi Mind Trick, 90% of the media,

who thought, it was like, oh, Brooklyn, Ben Simmons. He's going to be, this is it. This is perfect guy, perfect fit for Kyrie and KD. It's like, is Ben Simmons going to fucking play? Can we talk about that part? Last time we saw him, last time we saw him,

the last time we saw him, he was completely checked out of every fourth quarter of an entire playoff series. He was completely terrified. That never happened now? I think he needs, doesn't he,

he has to at least sit out until after they play the Philly game, right? Oh, and the Knicks game. Yeah, we, we had to, Russell and I figured this out. It's going to be Orlando.

House, on your DeRozan point, so, ultimately, the Bulls get DeRozan. They trade Thaddeus Young, expiring contract, who was in that buyout trade the Spurs made in February. Al-Faruq Aminu, who I think was just a contract,

a protected first and two second round picks. So, the Lakers, I'm pretty sure that could have just been, what, Kuzma, Harrell, and the first they gave to Washington in the Westbrook trade for DeRozan at a cheaper number. That's the other piece. DeRozan's making, I think, $27, $28 million for Chicago and Westbrook's making $47. And we were saying this last summer like the reason I hated the trade was I was like, they have no outs. If this doesn't work, you can't get out of this. There are no outs. And now they're saying that, well, it's like, he's an expiring contract this summer. So what? He makes $47 million. Go look at, go, go on spot track and look at all the salaries

lined up. What giant contract? So they'll get Tobias Harris for Russell Westbrook's expiring. By the way, why would Philly do that? Like go through all the contracts. Poor Zingas. Who are they? Who are they getting for Russell Westbrook? It's not like somebody's like,

cool, here's our max salary guy. You take him. It's going to be John Wall. We'll get Westbrook. It was. I mean, that was the answer.

It's going to be Wall. It's been the answer all along. They'll revisit that. It'll be Wall. We'll get Westbrook. It was. I mean, that was the answer. It's going to be Wall. But the answer all along. They'll revisit that. It'll be Wall. But think about DeRozan for Kuzma, Harrell, and a protected first. And then they still could have kept KCP or maybe KCP's in that trade instead of Harrell. But man, DeRozan wanted to go there. And now, I mean, on top of it, how amazing Theroux's been.

Yeah, Verno, you were wrong about Darryl. You should apologize. Apologize to Darryl. Hold on a second. Apologize to Darryl. Alright. Congratulations to Darryl for trading for a guy that has absolutely embarrassed himself by quitting

on two teams in 13 months. Congrats. Congrats. Congrats. You got a hell of a guy. And when he vomits all over himself in the playoffs, I'll be right there. I might have to get front row tickets. No, that's not fair because he's never had a coach

with the proven playoff success in Doc Rivers. It's fine. The Philly fans are like, they're like Rocky too. They're all chasing Stallone down the street, ready to run on the steps and jump around them. No, no. And I'm going to be, let me, hold on. Let me give a true moment of seriousness.

Yeah, true. All right. In all seriousness, I do want to apologize to Daryl. I never thought that after a guy had gotten wildly out of shape and sabotaged two different teams that you would end up having to trade more for him than you would have originally when you were just getting him out of Houston the first time around. But you did it. So congrats. You pulled that off. The waiting really paid off.

I would like to apologize to Darrell because when the stories first trickled out, I refused to believe them because it seemed impossible to me that James Harden was going to quit on two teams in a year. My brain could not wrap around it, but I underestimated the NBA, which brings us full circle back to our guy Ja.

This is another Curry thing, right? It feels like, you know, drafted by the team. They built the team the old-fashioned way. The guys have been playing together for a while. This is the kind of basketball team I want in the NBA. Well, think about the top. Let's put him in the MVP race and say he's four or five, along with DeRozan, right?

You got those top three, those big guys, right? The three big guys, then the next two. And what do those three big guys all have in common? All drafted by the team, all stayed with the team. The biggest stars in the NBA, this is becoming more commonplace. Your guy Tatum has been with the team now. Like, you know, it's years and years of these guys now with these teams and are staying with these teams.

It's true of Giannis, no matter the market. Giannis is in Milwaukee. Jokic is in Denver. Yeah. You know? NBA's obviously in the bigger market in Philly. Denver, where their fans can't even watch the local games in Denver. Yeah. That's tough.

By the way, have you noticed, you know the Grizzlies are, I don't know when this comes out, but the Grizzlies are playing the Celtics tonight. I really thought I was going to be walking into the Lions then. The defensive juggernaut that is the Celtics, the Grizzlies, it's all been a real nice story, but they got ahead to Boston tonight. I see the line has flipped completely. So people are betting on the Celtics,

even despite Jalen Brown being out. And I feel like you don't believe that to be so, or no? I don't like the Jalen Brown being out part. No, but I do like this team. And I was telling house, I, this team does at least have an identity now, the Celtics team. And two things have happened. The white trade, they used to lose like the last, you know, three, three minutes of the first and third quarters. And the first couple of minutes next, because their bench was never good enough, right? White comes in and he's just he's so much better than I just didn't watch a ton of the Spurs. I got to be honest.

In all fairness, the Celtics have beaten the shit out of the Grizzlies over and over again over the last couple of years. Brad Stevens did. Right. Like those teams. Right. But but you're going to find out about your defense. That's what I'll tell you. They're number two right now because I went back and look. Only twice have the Grizzlies scored less than 114. And I'm talking like since like the beginning of the year, like they scored 114 or more only twice. And it was Dallas both times. One time they scored like 91, the other one like 84. Dallas was just a different deal, and they just totally wrecked them.

Every other time they have scored 114 or more points, nobody scores 114 against Boston. Nobody. Well, no Jalen, I think it's going to matter at least a little bit. But I'll say the other thing, the white shade and the fact that they have these eight guys locked in, but Tatum's been really good.

Tatum, I think he took some of the criticism from the first month to heart and he's really trying to be more of a facilitator and less of a just get out of my way, ISO 25 foot stuff. There's extra passes. I think he's more of a leader. There was of a just get out of my way. I saw 25 foot stuff. There's extra passes.

I think he's more of a leader. Like there was a play in the game the other night. Horford made a big three and you could just see Tatum in the corner, like really cheering him on. It feels like they've become more of a team. So we'll, and the other thing is they did this. They did the thing that if you watch Toronto,

Toronto does it too. They just stopped playing, guys. Right. That eight-man rotation. Yeah. Who are our best eight? Just don't play anybody that could possibly screw this up. And if we got to play seven or eight, we'll play seven or eight.

But that's it. That's what we're doing. House, we've been on this since the 80s. Pick your best seven or eight. That's it. It's hard to do for a whole regular season. No, I get it. But at some point,

by the 55 game mark, you better know who your best fucking eight guys are. Hey, I'll tell you, you would love this guy that coaches in New York because that joker will find his best five. He'll just play 48 minutes. The problem in New York is it's not a very good five. I'm fine with, you know, how long it took Boston to come up with this identity.

Brand new coach, this guy, you know, kind of an unknown commodity to these guys, right? He didn't show up with a relationship, pre-existing relationship with these guys. There was a feeling out process and they found that identity after Christmas, right around the beginning of the year. They've been on the tear since the beginning of the year. So that seems pretty reasonable to me. This is the first almost normal

regular season in three seasons. So you just have to remember the tempo of this. That all makes sense to me. Three guys have changed how they played at least a little bit. That's up. Tatum, I mentioned. Smart has really tried to

phase out some of the dumb Marcus smart shot stuff and really been more of unselfish, facilitate. He'll never be a true point guard, but between him and Wade, it kind of adds up. And then Rob Williams has just been able to stay on the floor. I think Mannix was saying that MA's know, MA has just been challenging Williams

the whole season. Like, you're one of the most dangerous guys in the league. We need you out there. Come on, man. And, you know, they moved him around a little on D. So I think those were three things. We will see tonight. Berno, congrats to you and your son and your 120 John Morant rookie cards that are probably in a safety deposit box at, uh, one of the banks of Memphis. We're proud of you house someday.

Someday it's going to happen for you with a, with a, with a bullet slash wizard. It's going to happen. I'm not worried about that. I just want to, we're 37 days out, Verno.

You know what? We're 37 days out from. Oh yeah. Do I ever? Oh yeah. Yeah. No, I hope you got your notes no are you ready for the worst story ever and i'll make it quick go ahead the night after john

moran scores 52 points i wake up the next morning and of course i got a million texts from people about that like all my friends in the media everything. But I wake up and there's a text and it's from one of my buddies, Jay. And he says, do you want to go to the masters on Sunday? And I said, you have got to be kidding me. Now, my whole life I've never been, I've done a song about it, but I've never been, I've never been there. I said, oh my, I responded. Are you serious? So he has a company. He does business with another company. The other company, right, hooked up the other company with tickets. He said, me and my business partner, we've got an extra.

We know you've never gone. Do you want to go? And I said, absolutely, I want to go. Grizzlies game? There I am. Huh? Grizzlies game? Sunday?

Against the Celtics, the last game of the season oh and you're fighting for the two spot you can't miss that and I have to work so I was like of all things really look really all I really care about are the Thursday Friday updates all

due respect I mean I want you to go to the Masters we'll get you there we can get you to the Masters buddy yeah don't worry want you to go to the Masters. We'll get you there. We can get you to the Masters, buddy. Yeah, don't worry. We'll get you to the Masters, but the Thursday and Friday updates especially. Now, I hope you've been writing a special section for Phil Mickelson. I hope you have a

special Phil section. Do you think I should risk talking about Saudi Arabia or just leave that out? Well, you don't need Saudi Arabia in it. I mean, you know, Phil took a dump all by himself.

His pants are full right now. You don't even have to mention Saudi Arabia for it. Does he have like a derisive nickname from that whole thing? Like, can we call him the Sultan? What can we do? Oh, I love it. Well, it's inspired.

There you go, Berno. You got one. Work the Sultan into it. All right. Well, you can hear Berno on the Fairway Rolling Pod. You can hear him on the mismatch as well. He's been with us really since basically the start of the early Rigger days. You're one of our first people we brought in.

Doing a great job with KOC. And congrats on all the JASTA. Thanks, guys. Grow your business with up to 55 interest-free days and the ability to reach further with access to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. House and I are by ourselves now.

We're going to talk about the baseball lockout, which seems like it's going to last at least through April the indications are from what I've heard it's better for the baseball owners just not to have baseball in April which is why they've approached this whole thing the way they have but that that that seems like something that's true in just in general we've learned this right why can't they just start the season in in may i mean i understand when you cram in 162 games into a regular season and you have your postseason that starts getting into october everybody's wearing winter coats to uh the games in october which is ridiculous so i guess like let's try to figure i can go through some of the issues because i tried to learn as much as I possibly could about what are they actually arguing about?

The big thing is the industry revenue for the last 17 years has risen every year. The amount of money they have brought into baseball, which peaked in 2019, $10.7 billion. There's a 43% increase in revenue just over the last two CBAs the luxury tax has only increased by 16% and the median salary of the players has dropped by 30% so in 2015 it was 1.65 2019 it was 1.15

so the players are basically just fundamentally this is about there's more money coming in the franchises are worth more Fox is paying $5.1 billion for their new extension that starts this year. And yet all of these things are broken and you owners don't seem like you want to fix it. You don't want to fix the luxury tax threshold. You don't want to fix the salary floor. You guys are making all this money and you don't seem to care about some level of fairness

that has now reached the point that we're just rather, you know, we're not going to move into fuck you mode unless you fix this. And the owners are like, cool, well, fuck you too. How about this? No games in April. Nobody gets paid. We don't care. Like our TV contract doesn't really kick into the summer anyway. Nobody's even really focused on baseball in April. Masters, end of the NBA season, NHL playoff starts, basketball playoff starts, football draft. Baseball has become an afterthought in March and April, which was never the case before. So if we unwrap all of this fundamentally, what is the perfect baseball season for you? Oh, that's interesting.

Like what would the cycle be? Would it start in May and go, would you start it in March? No, because it can still snow in many cities on the East Coast in March. And it could definitely snow in, in, you know, like Denver, uh, in the Midwest. Would you go May to like mid September playoffs right away? And it goes to like October 20th. I mean, isn't that kind of how it is now? September, uh, October 20th is kind of the end of the season, isn't it? Basically. Right. Well, the season now that we go to October, then we have playoffs and sometimes that's now stretching into like november 1st 2nd 3rd and you have these your biggest games of the year and it's fucking freezing yeah it's 30 degrees well i mean let's i want to do like a super big picture kind of thing because part of the thing that's informing the leverage that the owners seem to possess here

they clearly think that they have leverage over the players. They've had a great run of having their way with the players for what feels like a full decade, probably longer. The players are realizing that in 2016 when they got worked. And I think part of what informs that is baseball's lost some of its prominence in our sports consciousness. It doesn't play as, as big a role when we were young, when we were coming up. Yeah.

I remember the, you know, we, how outraged we were about the 94 lockout about, you know, it was, it was, uh,

it blew our minds that they canceled the world series that Ken Griffey's MVP season and home run chase got, you know, sort of taken away from the one good expose here. The one good expose year got wiped out good expose year got basically wiped away. We were like, basically, we're done. We're out. That's right.

Yeah. Exactly. And then when you got your- Then steroids brought us back. Well, it brought everybody back. We had a home run chase. We had Cal Ripken and steroids. We had Cal Ripken.

And we were like, we're back. And then the Mark McGuire- Randy Anderson's going to get 50 homers. I'm back. My God, Albert Bell. Look at 50 overs. I'm back. My God, Albert Bell. Look at this guy. We're back.

You caught a great, you know, uh, Yankees, uh, Red Sox rivalry in the early 2000s. Yankees win in 96.

That brings back the biggest franchise. Yeah. McGuire. So said 98 Yankees, Red Sox all the way through Cubs, Bartman,

2003 of these 2003 playoffs the Cubs on one end choking the Red Sox on the other end choking and then everything leads to 2004 and that decade was really good looking back and that was going through at least the first Giants World Series but I remember

when we started Grantland we didn't have a baseball writer right away and it was like a real hole, you know, it's like, Holy, like we got to get a baseball writer. This is baseball. So huge. What are we doing? And now it's, you know, you think like in 2022, we're at this stage where there's going

to be a lockout. There's no spring. There is a lockout. But a lockout of the actual season. There's no spring training. Yeah. And how many conversations have you had about it? This is the first. This is the first time you and I have talked about it. We talk all the time. You're sharing me these

details. I haven't bothered getting that invested in it. Part of why that is, though, is because the industry was forecasting that this labor, this lockout was going to be coming down the pike, that they worked their way through their own version of the bubble season that they had, that they were going to just get through this most recent season. Yeah, it was like hearing about your friend's

going to get separated in April. He's moving out. So it's like that even news that it's happening. The only noteworthy thing to me that's happened in baseball, I mean, the nats won the world series in 2019 and i went to to many game those world series games playoff games and world series games it was incredible in washington and then covet hit and really just decimated like

we missed out on all of the juicy uh astros stuff right Like that whole season of the whole, every fan base having the opportunity to punish Houston. We were deprived of that. And it really hasn't, you know, picked back up in terms of just,

you know, what's the, Shohei Otani was the story for baseball last season. He was, but I also wasn't watching Angels games.

Like I watched John Moran on Monday night as we discussed. Yeah. And I didn't care if I saw Otani. And if he did anything, I would just see it on Twitter. It's like, oh, he hit a homer. I'll watch it on a Twitter post.

That's the leverage that the owners clearly think they possess, right? Well, what they really possess is the chance to completely reinvent the sport, which I think we're at the point. They've been doing it. You talked about 94. What did we really have going on in 94?

We had four sports. We had boxing. The internet was barely getting started. We had video games. We had music and movies and TV and all that stuff to keep us interested. Now there's... The NBA and the NFL were huge parts of our lives,

but baseball was right there with them. Easily. I think really right there all the way to probably the mid 2000s. Yeah. And then it started to shift. But man, now you think like, and it's not just like, I'm not going to do the thing where it's like young people in baseball because I've done it a million times. There's so many different ways you have to capture people under 25 and baseball is not

doing any of them. But even like if you just look at sports, like we have the UFC. Now we have two, we have the WWE and a W, um, golf. I feel like has kind of made a comeback.

You fucking F one, which the Netflix show I'm by the way, plowing through that Netflix show. Yeah. I'm a season F and it's great. I'm going to get into the season. There's just sports that have either reinvented themselves or come out

of the scene or figured out whatever whereas baseball hasn't done anything. And some of the stuff that's on the table like they're talking about Universal DH 14 team playoffs which year four I think is ridiculous. I don't have any problem with it. More games. Banning the shift.

How to fix extra innings. The pitch clock. To me, it's like, if they come out of this with a pitch clock, then the lockout's a huge win. Just like it's 17 seconds to throw a pitch. Then now I'm like, this was all worth it. We saved baseball.

I don't understand though because you're i think at the guts of of that and i don't disagree with the notion of reinventing the product but you have competing interests part of the attraction of baseball to to me i love going to games you love that lady there i guess yes you still need a pitch clock i don't go watch the old games where it's like the guy gets the ball back. Yeah. That's it. He throws again.

Like I, to me, fundamentally, if they can just do that and have more action and less guy grabbing his crotch. Okay. Right. Okay.

Okay. I was going to try and make an argument to the contrary, but you're right. You can't, you can't. And you think about like just the NBA, some of the stuff the NBA did that they really needed to do. That seems so obvious now, but in retrospect, weren't obvious at all. Like, um, you have to get the ball over the half court in eight seconds instead of 10.

Yeah. Well, why is that a big deal? Well, watch basketball. Watch how these guys have to move up the court to get the ball over for eight seconds. You get an offensive rebound. It's 14 seconds, not 24. It doesn't seem like a big deal. It's a huge deal.

It's a huge deal. It speeds up the game. It gives it a different pace. Well, and, you know, some of the subtle things, like the game clock running, even though the shot clock might not start, right?

Like the game clock just keeps rolling. You know, you have that thing where guys will roll the ball in because they want to maximize the 24 seconds. Game clock's 24 seconds. Game clock's rolling. That's exactly right. Yeah. So they've done these subtle things that I think really helped the sport and they changed some of the hand check rules and you know, on the flip side that now the challenges are in and that's going to be something they have to fix, but whatever. If you have pitch clock, I would have, the other thing I would do,

I would eliminate throws to the bases to keep the runners on the base. Oh. I would just have a line. The guy can take the lead to the line and that's it. Wow. I feel like you're getting rid of four minutes. Like what,

Nate, what are your favorite pickoff throws in your life? Honestly, just why do we need these? The only one? These are ideas from 1880. Just get rid of this. Alan Wiggins was

a Baltimore Oriole who was the only one who ever got fooled by the ball in the glove trick that I'm aware of. Just get rid of it. Maybe bring it back for the playoffs or say you can only do two pickoff throws, but just move. Keep the game moving. Keep the game moving. Keep the game moving. I

agree with that. I don't want to see somebody throw to first. I don't want to see them grab their crotch. The other thing, extra innings. So they have the zombie runner now at second base, which I just thought was the dumbest thing. But let me start from the beginning. Did you think that it was necessary to modify the rules as far as extra innings go? I would have just said 12 innings and it's a tie if nobody wins. That sounds reasonable to me. What's wrong with ties? I don't know.

Hockey has ties. We're okay. It hasn't ruined our life. I agree. It's way better than zombie runner. Zombie runner is like my team just won and I don't even know what just happened because the zombie from the last inning.

The biggest problem I have with zombie runner and this will be, you know, hey, this is everything having to do with baseball is old guy corner, but this is really going to be old guy corner. The one thing that baseball in my life had an advantage over the other sports that I care about is the ability to

relate different eras and then go back and compare statistics and really feel like it could be an apples to apples kind of comparison. I know the athletes are different. I know the medicine's different. I know travel's different. I know the steroids are different. The PDs are different. All of those things. And yet we still have a number of fundamental categories where you can year over year compare how things have gone. You put a guy on second base to start the 10th inning

it's all done. That's it. You're done. You're sports now drunk. I have a suggestion. Kyle, turn the camera. To fix that turning. Turn the camera on. This is stolen from a football idea about

how overtime should be. How many plays did it take to score a touchdown? Okay. Where if you have the ball on your first drive, if you score a touchdown in like seven plays, the other team gets the ball, but they have to score a touchdown in six plays or less. I do like it. Which would be the same seven. Why would they have to be less than It's got to be less than seven.

Why? Less than seven. All right, whatever. We can argue about it. Okay. Extra innings. You have your whole order of your nine guys. All nine guys bat in the 10th inning.

How many runs can you score with those nine guys? Outs are irrelevant. What if the answer is... All nine guys are up. Oh, wait, guys? Outs are irrelevant. What if the answer is... If all nine guys are up. Oh, wait, wait. Outs are irrelevant. Well, no, outs aren't irrelevant because every one of those guys

could get out. But I'm saying you could have seven outs. Yeah, right. You would expect that. Yeah, that's what I would expect. So, the Red Sox are up top of the ninth. They have their nine guys

and they get two runs out of it. And now we go to the bottom of the ninth. So, they have to nine guys and they get they get two runs out of it and now we go to the bottom of the night so they have to get either two runs in like eight eight at bats or whatever it's it becomes like name that tune i like the concept of it very much it's better than zombie runner the problem i have is it requires it puts a lot of of um tax on the pitchers and it would mean that you have to expand the pitcher, expand the rosters. And based on what you've just told me about what the owners are willing to do

in terms of paying guys, they ain't expanding the roster to put more pitchers on to accommodate the extra innings thing. Okay, so what if we did, just it's a normal 10th inning, what was your best outcome in the inning and the other team has to somehow surpass it and they win the game? So you're in the inning? And the other team has to somehow surpass it and they win the game.

So you're in the top of the 10th. You get a single guy stranded on first base. That's as far as you went. So you got a base. The other team bottom of the inning. All they have to do is get a guy to second base. They win the game. Yeah, that's great.

I support that. I think that's fine. I think that's better than zombie runner. Now you got to be something where the bot, the team in the bottom half of the inning has the top, whatever happened in the bottom half of the inning has the top, whatever happened in the top half. That's pretty good.

I like that a lot. I mean, it, it, it does still permit the possibility of like a 14 inning game. Cause you got to have three up, three down, three up,

three down, three down. Now I guess a walk would be the same way. Cause it counts as a base, right? So you're basically counting basis. I like that. And if you score a run plus another guys on second base, now the other team has to

top that. I'm still 12 innings. And if nobody wins, it's a tie. I'm fine with that. And everybody walks home. I am fine with that. Why are we so afraid of ties? I don't know.

We have them in soccer. Everybody loves soccer. Yeah. I don't. I don't. You know, the hockey, hockey's produced ties my whole life. So I'm fine with it. Because in playoffs, it's just the games are as long as they're going to be.

And that's it. Yeah. Which is fair. Yes. So we're pro-ties. We're pro-kissing our sister. Except for hockey got rid of ties. They have the shootout now.

So there are no ties. Yeah, but not in the playoffs, though. I know. You just play it out. And we used to have ties in hockey. And I was fine with the fact that the shootout was fun. Shift banning. I was fine with the fact that the shootout was fun, but... Shift banning. I'm fine with that.

I am pro get rid of the shift. Yes. I think the shift has caused some of the issues that we hate about baseball, specifically,

like, you're basically better off having this 220 guy, 220 hitter who comes up who takes a lot of walks and just swings for the fences every time because

if he just swings normally, there's three guys on the side where he's swinging. Just get rid of it. It sucks. It does suck. Don't do stuff that sucks. We agree. It's like the same thing with the NBA

where they have this problem now, this rule where there's about to be a fast break and they hold the rule. Yes, the take foul. And we watch international basketball and international basketball has this, this ref has this autonomy and he's like, I didn't like what you did.

That's a technical foul. Make it a tech. You buy it under the spirit of the game, it's a technical. Love it. Everybody's like, okay, so that's how we're playing these rules. And you know what? To baseball's credit, as it relates to the shift, they have, they let it go for long enough. We, you know, we have a good sample size, a decent sample size.

We've all watched it, and we all agree that we don't like it. So go ahead and eliminate it. If it's like family softball game, and your aunt and your uncle and your cousin, everybody's on third base, so Cousin Bobby can't get a hit, and Redfield's wide open. Why are you calling Kyle Cousin Bobby? That's not nice to Kyle. Kyle wouldn't be in this softball game.

Why wouldn't Kyle be in the softball game? He'd be at whatever the downtown bar was. No, Kyle, you could smoke butts and have a nice tall boy. Kyle, would you be in the softball game? He would, 100%. I need to be invited first, so just think about that. Well, we don't have a softball game, so it's a moot point. So you're pro-shift or anti-shift?

I want them to eliminate it. think that's a good good idea are you pro dh or anti g i like the dh i universal dh you'd be in yes i've wondered all these years all these years why they haven't gone to it i don't like seeing pictures hit 180 dumb so if they did dh universal d, they banned the shift, pitch clock. Those are all improvements. 18 seconds for the pitch clock? Whatever they want, it's fine. Extra innings after 12 innings,

it's a tie everyone's on. That would work for me. And then I would still do 12 playoff teams. Now you could say 14. The three division people cannot be in the playoffs at that point. So you win your three divisions. You're not in any sort of danger at that point. And if we're going to have 14 teams,

then the other four in each league have like a, have like a fucking fast. That's fine. Somebody emerges and now they have to play the three division winners. I support expanding the playoffs because it brings more cities in. It's more relevant. It will catch my attention. If you call it playoff baseball and it's on TV at prime time, it increases the chances that I'm going to sit down and watch. With division and then it's using the NL East? Yes. time. It increases the chances that I'm going to sit down and watch.

So you have to win the NL East or else you go into this play-in tournament. That sounds fun. Yeah. That sounds fun. Working team seems like a lot, but I think if the division winners aren't fucked with in any way, I'm okay with it. Okay. Great. Is that what's on the board? I don't

know. I don't know what's on the board, but none of this is going to matter because they're going to take April off and probably May. Poor Jeff Passon. Does he get to go home ever? I don't... I mean, I would say he's been in our lives more in the last week and a half

than he has in a while, right? This is weirdly good for Jeff Passon. Oh, okay. Well, I'm saying this is the start of baseball, but as long as this drags out, he has to be wherever these stupid meetings are happening. I'm going to miss watching the Red Sox.

I understand. I liked having them on. I don't want to have to drift to Formula One, but it seems like that's what's going to happen. I'm going to be getting up like Cerruti and Rosillo and Kevin Clark at five in the morning, West Coast time. Cerruti gets up later. I only keep one eye on baseball until

June anyway, like May, June. Keep one eye on it. Is my team good? How are the Nets doing? I like it too. I had a huge comeback with it last year. Well, because your Red Sox exceeded expectations. I just had a good time. I just liked having it on. Sure. Before we go, we should just

tell Rob Manfred. Nobody likes you. Nobody. Haven't heard the tell Rob Manfred. Nobody likes you. Nobody. I haven't heard the positive Rob Manfred opinion. It's important. He's the commissioner villain. Here's the question to you. Best commissioner villain we've had?

Yes. Did he surpass? No. Goodell is still the ultimate. Wait, wait. Oh, I was going to say the hockey guy. Oh, Bettman? Yeah.

Boo! He really invented the entire arena boo of the commissioner. Gary Bettman invented that. Yeah, that's a great point. He became like a wrestling heel. Yes. Yes. I mean, he did cancel an entire season. He ran into hockey for

it was like a year and a half. I mean this respectfully. Did we miss it? Well, I did. I like it. You like hockey more than just about anybody I know. You didn't it? Well, I did. I like it. You like hockey more than just about anybody I know. You didn't miss it earlier? I did miss it, yes. We may end up missing baseball.

All right, House, it was good to see you. We're going to be doing Winning Time on the Prestige TV podcast. People can hear that Sunday night after the first episode.

We're going to be doing the first, at least first couple together. Great. We're going to tape that right now. I'm excited. Let's take a break. All right. You're about to hear an interview I taped with Michael Rubin, CEO of Fanatics.

We taped it during Superbowl week cause he was in town and I think he's really interesting. We had him on a few years ago and at that point he was just trying to grow Fanatics and potentially on a team someday. I think he has readjusted that vision. I think he trying to grow Fanatics and potentially own a team someday. I think he has readjusted that vision. I think he wants to make Fanatics the most dominant force for anybody who's a sports fan in all of these different ways. And that was why I asked to talk to him because the stuff that he's up to with collecting and with potentially streaming and gambling, there's a world in which the same way Amazon Prime has been in our lives in a bunch of different ways, that fanatics will just be that for anybody who likes sports.

So I want to see what his vision was for all this stuff. He's a good guy to check in with. I think you can make a case he's the most powerful person in sports. If he's not, he's definitely in the top five, but he is the one person that I think everybody in all the leagues are afraid of for a variety of reasons that we'll get into in a roundabout way in this interview. But I think you should

listen to this one. So here it is, Michael Rubin. All right, Michael Rubin is here. We are taping this. It is Super Bowl week. It's not going to run until after Super Bowl week. Hectic time. You have a party coming up. You're a part owner of the Sixers. There's NBA trade stuff, but that's not what we're here to talk about. You did something, you were on three years ago. So I don't want to do the whole thing where you tell the whole story about Fanatics,

how it started, everything. You are now looking at Fanatics as like a gateway to all these other things. So when you bought Tops and you did your, I'm going to call it a card coup d'etat. When you did that, I was like was like oh he's up to stuff so can walk me through the card thing first and then we can talk about what you see in the future you just basically took the card industry by storm yeah so maybe

i'll bring it up a level first then come down to cards to make it make sense so look we started in the merchandise business with finatics really about 10 years ago. I'd sold my old company to GSI. And if there's one thing I've learned from my old business, GSI, is you want to be number one in everything that you do. And being number one and being highly differentiated and thinking about how to make something great for the fan every day, that's a winning combination. And so we spent the first eight or nine years, like a hundred percent locked in on growing what we call Fanatics Commerce, which is our merchandise business. That's operating the NBA store, the NFL shop, the flagship Fanatics store. And that business has grown tremendously. We have a million and a half SKUs that we make available to fans. And we're always

thinking about how to really improve the fan experience. And so about two years ago, I started thinking about where could we go next? And what I realized was the most valuable part of Fanatics wasn't actually the commerce business that we built. It was really that we had built this, leveraging our brand and our really large database. The most people in North America that are sports fans have bought from Fanatics. And we knew a lot about these customers and we could really create a great digital sports experience for them. It was a big opportunity.

And so trading cards was one of the first categories that I looked at beyond merchandise. Actually two categories, to be honest. I looked at video games and trading cards. I'm looking at video games. I'm like, okay, EA, Take-Two, Activision. I'm like, yeah, I don't want to mess with these. I'm not playing with these guys.

They know what they're doing. Yeah, they've been in there 20, 25, 30 years. And they're giant companies, $50, $100 billion market cap companies. And then I looked at trading cards and I realized that here was this really actually pretty big business that was like, you know, had a lot of opportunity to make a much better experience for the collector. So you had, you know, multiple trading card companies that manufacture trading cards. They sell them to distributors, not to retailers.

Those distributors sell them to retailers. The retailers sell them to resellers, put the cards on eBay, who sell them to resellers. Put the cards on eBay. We sell them to a collector. And we're like, wait a second. There's 19 middlemen. Yeah, there's so many people in the middle

and we kind of, in the merchandise business that we started, we kind of went more direct-to-consumer and that built a better business. Here there's an opportunity to really continue

to push the direct-to-consumer business and really improve the collector experience by giving the collector other services they'd want. So, you know, for us... So you're looking at it like, here's this business that has a lot of potential,

but it's cluttered and there's lots of middlemen. And you're in this, you have fanatics where you're like, you just go, I want a Mac Jones jersey and I go to you and it's at my door a couple days later. By the way, we make that Mac Jones jersey. Right. We sell that jersey's at my door a couple of days later. By the way, we make that Mac Jones jersey. We sell that jersey. We put them in the Patriot store. We put them at the NFL shop. We put them at Fanatics. We put them at Dick's Sporting Goods. And so when we saw the trading

card business, what we realized was that first, this is an industry that had so much opportunity to really grow, even though there's been great growth in the last couple of years. Realistically, this is like a financial asset that young people are really getting into. It's like an alternative investment class. And it's also something that's just, it's really something that could be so much bigger. So I looked and said, could we grow this industry 10 times,

20 times, 30 times? I thought, yes. And we could build a more direct-to-consumer business. Well, having the hobby shop still be a vital part of what we're doing, but build so many other services the collector wants. Today, it's pretty hard to be a collector. You go out, you buy trading cards,

and you buy them from one place, then you got to get them shipped to you, then send them to get graded somewhere else, and then where do you store them? And then you got to then list them on eBay, then you ship them to somebody else. The idea of creating one kind of integrated end-to-end collector's experience is a major unlock. And at the same time, you know, I think fanatics,

you know, it's kind of this, you know, I look at ourselves as a steward for the industry. We have a massive opportunity to really grow this industry exponentially. So my goal for trading cards would be like, how do we make this industry 10 times, 20 times, 30 times bigger in a decade from now than it is? And this is an industry, there's really been no marketing of trading cards. I said to somebody the other day, it's a really big business. There's no marketing. We're going to get in here and figure out how do we really market? It's all underground shit and friends telling friends and eBay.

I used to go to the collector's convention every year. I haven't gone since COVID, but I was going. I used to write about it for ESPN and for Grantland and stuff like that. But it was the only one every year. So all these people would come because it was the one time. And you would just think, why aren't they doing these all over the place in the biggest way? But it was so uncool and poorly thought out. We look at that and we're like,

wait a second, they do this once a year. It looks like something from 50 years ago. Then you go to Comic-Con. It's the same place every year. It doesn't matter where it is. Cleveland, Chicago, it's the exact same thing. And then you look at Comic-Con and you're like, wow, they do something great.

How do we invent something like that and put it in 50 great cities throughout the world? I think there's so much opportunity to grow this industry. And, you know, we think, you know, we set up a really, a much better model. We've got the rights owners that are, you know, kind of our partners in this business. And that allows us to, to, you know, you know, think about how do we like everything we do. And by the way, we're going to get better every day. It's about how do we improve the fan experience? How do we improve the collector experience? So when we think about our original business, Fanatics Commerce, right now we've got a massive focus on how do we get packaged customers more quickly? So we're building

regional distribution centers all throughout the world to get packaged customers more quickly. Well, when you think about the trading card business, you think about how do I make a better collector's experience? You talked about the show. You walk into that show, you're like, how is this such a big industry with a show it seems so backwards and yeah there's lots of things we want to take and learn from that but like we're thinking about do we build museums do we you know what what are you know do we like reinvent like comic-con and make it you know you know a great thing that we do in many different places um in the world so there there is a ton of marketing opportunities one of the things is amazing i've just met in the past month So there is a ton of marketing opportunities. One of the things that's amazing,

I've just met in the past month or two, there's probably only been five or six influencers behind trading cards. You talk about like Gary Vee, Mark Wahlberg, Steve Aoki, Rob Kardashian, Logan Paul. I think that's really like only like people that have been like publicly willing to trade cards. We're going to get all, you know,

we're going to bring everyone into trading cards. Like it's so easy to, you know, get people excited about this when you show them the investment opportunity, you know, how interesting it is. So, you know, I think we're like, we're not even in the start of the game of trading cards for us.

I've been in it since the 80s. It was really never cool at any point. The pandemic changed it in a lot of ways because I think people were bored. And there was like this whole eBay run with the cards and then it drifted to NFTs and all these other things. But for the most part, the last 10 years, and I was on the top sport at the end of the 2000s.

And it was always about like what a limited ceiling this was, you know? And I think one of the things that really happened with sports in general, the last 12 years is just the individual brands blossoming, right? You know, like when I was in the top sport, Panini took basketball from them and they didn't know whether they wanted to try to match the offer or not. And in the boardroom, we're talking, we're like, well, these guys are going to be like the next guys. But it was, it's hard for some people to see that. But now it's like how many individual brands, everybody's got a card.

People know who Mbappé is when he's 20. The guys coming into the league, even this year, or like somebody like John Morant and people just click and then they want their cards and want their jerseys. And you're kind of at the forefront of that now. And here's the most interesting thing. Whether it was when you were on the board, you know, 10, 15 years ago, or today, this is a big business. There's no marketing.

There is no, like, I don't think, I asked somebody yesterday, I'm like, what percent is your revenue do you think is spent on marketing and trading cards? And it was somebody who was a smart marketing person. They're like, 10 to 15%. I said, how's less than one? There's less than 1%. Okay. And by the way, I didn't feel like they needed to because the card collectors were going to find the cards. They didn't think that

way. And I'm thinking about like, how do I demonstrably grow the industry? How do I, you know, how do I connect, um, trading cards to all the, you know, people that matter in the, in the world? And so I think our overall mentality is going to be to invest in growth and to grow the industry. And so this business has grown a lot in the last three or four years, certainly. It was growing like crazy before the pandemic. The pandemic was good. But by the way, it's been good for art.

It's been good for NFTs. Anything that involves real estate, anything where people are bored looking at websites. Yeah. i i i'm sure it's been good for fanatics too in a weird way no no it's first of all let's keep this real when the pandemic happened i remember um like the week early march 2020 i had so many friends who said to me like you know hey is this pandemic gonna affect you know fanatics like oh we couldn't be in a better situation you know you know hey is this pandemic gonna affect you know finax i'm like oh we couldn't be in a better situation you know you know if they don't have fans in the stadiums you know everyone's gonna buy everything online and that's you know you know we obviously you know you know that that's kind of where we started so that'd be amazing never thinking sports would be canceled i

remember driving home on on march whatever it was the 11th or 12th and i remember i just got into a game with guy ferrari to to a Sixers game. And the season got paused, as we all remember, that night. And we had a quarterly board meeting the next day. And I had all of my big investors there invested billions of dollars in Fanatics. I said, hey guys, I've been through work stoppages before. And with the work stoppages, we're generally down like 50% or 75%. So I'm expecting sales to be down 75%. So between Silver Lake, SoftBank, and myself, we may need to do a rescue package for the company.

I thought the world was coming in. Oh, Jesus. I thought the world was coming in and we weren't going to be here. It only took about six weeks until I realized, well, there were no sports. The internet was the primary place to buy licensed sports merchandise, and it ended up being a real accelerant for our business overall. It's been great, and it let us really think bigger.

We're one of the few companies, so many companies let employees go during the pandemic, cut back. We actually invested more, grew more, saw more opportunities. I think the pandemic's been an accelerant for Fanatics. I think overall- It's like what I told told you about sometimes when you have a traumatic thing like that you still have to figure out how to do your business and sometimes you learn things

about your business that you didn't know right yeah traumatic things are amazing like for me um you know we were just talking about this a little bit before we started here like yeah because i love casting yeah like i love failing, you know, like failing's great. You learn from every failure. Like, how do you turn a failure into a positive? And, you know, I screw things up every day, every week, every month. Like, I give you a long list

of what I've already fucked up in 2022, and there's a long list in 21. And so, you know, for us, you know, we're just, look, we have an aggressive, you know, kind of personality as a company we're always thinking about like what's the sports fan want digitally how can we give them more and so today what's so fun for me is you know starting the merchandise business uh continuing to have tremendous growth in the business and also ability to to grow the overall category and you always

start that through like how do you make things better for the fan but everything we're thinking about now whether it's trading cards whether it's nfts whether it's online sports betting whether it's you know over time potentially media we're thinking about what can we do to to really advantage the sports fan and i think you know i look at our company people like wow you know fanatics is kind of growing it's getting to be a bigger company like bigger company like i feel like we're a baby company like we're just starting yeah well. Well, I think fanatics ties into whatever has changed. I think this decade is the ultimate example of it. People just want everything right away.

And the pandemic tapped into that more than anything. I want pizza. I'm going to do Postmates. I want this jersey. Oh, it's going to be here tomorrow. And everything, we're all like the little kids in some ways where it's like, I want this. And then you get it.

And fanatics, I think the Mac Jones thing is a perfect example. I got excited about Mac Jones in August. I'm like, I'm getting a t-shirt Jersey. I'm gonna wear it on a podcast. And I ordered it and it showed up a day later. And I'm like, what the hell? What is, what is there like a fanatics warehouse making this stuff like outside my house? But you're ready for that. You're ready for the impulse, whatever. Yeah. the whole business was created around demand and sports change so much, because a guy like Mac Jones, no one really paid attention to,

no one had the expectations he'd come in and play as well as he did in his first season. He comes out, he does well, and he became the top-selling jersey for several weeks during the NFL season. So you're ready to audible the moment that flips. That's right, so what we'll do is, and we make a lot of merchandise on demand, we keep a lot of we'll do is, and we make a lot of merchandise on demand.

We keep a lot of blank jerseys. And we have a lot of just-in-time manufacturing. That allows us to better service the fan. But by the way, we have to keep getting better. I think today, in our original business, which is our biggest business, the commerce business, which is merchandise, I still think there's so much growth ahead.

There's so much innovation for the fan. There's so many opportunities to continue to bring broader assortments. Even though we sell a million and a half SKUs today, we're just getting started. So it's like we have this gigantic assortment. We're going to keep broadening the assortment. We're going to keep getting into new categories. We're going to keep figuring out how to get things to you faster. I can't wait till we integrate all the venues that we operate throughout the world to be able to leverage that inventory. Today, we operate 50 venues globally. We've got probably 10 warehouses,

but we're going to continue to add dozens of warehouses. We're starting to duplicate inventory for the first time so we can get it to the fan more quickly. We're always saying, whatever we do, it's not good enough. How do we do it a lot better? So one of the challenges that it seems like you solved is, oh, I want a Mac Jones jersey and you just hastened the ability for me to get that. But the other thing is like Joe Burrow, who I don't think people are clamoring for Joe Burrow jerseys around the world. But now the last three weeks, Joe Burrow becomes Joey Burr. Somebody like my son, I'm taking to the Super Bowl on Sunday.

He's like, I'm rooting for the Bengals. I love Joe Burrow. It's like, you barely knew who Joe Burrow was three weeks ago, but all those people are buying Joe Burrow stuff, and you just kind of have to be ready for that moment, right? Whoever it is.

You don't know who it is. Yeah, so I'll tell you something crazy, and I'll probably get in trouble for telling you this, although I'm telling you, and I've asked him when this will run, so when it runs, it'll be a little past, although I'm telling you in advance when this will run, so when it runs, it'll be a little past, but I

just looked. If the Bengals win the Super Bowl, we have it projected to be the biggest Super Bowl in the history of fanatics. Bigger than the Eagles, bigger than the Patriots, bigger than any team that ever won. The reason is because they've never won a Super Bowl before and the team's been Cincinnati for so

long with so much heritage, and the fans are just clamoring for Bengals merchandise. Now think about this. Well, that's the first title purchases. Everybody who wins their first title, you have to buy everything. Everything, for sure. That's probably a rule.

If you live in Cincinnati, you grew up in Cincinnati. That was me in my first Patsy ball. I'm like, what can I get? It's a law, you have to spend at least $300. At the Nats, of course. But the interesting thing is that I bet you two years ago, they were probably a bottom three team.

They were probably team number 28, 29, 30. I think they were probably last. They could have been 32. They got a couple other guys they compete with there. But here's my point. It was like, they were like a half a percent

of the total NFL business. And now they could be the number one Super Bowl ever. And that's what makes our business so interesting yet so complicated. Because we need to be able to take a team that could be in last place and people have no interest in.

And then a year later, they could win the Super Bowl and it could be the number one team. And we have that just-in-time manufacturing to capitalize on that. But we got to keep making it better. We got to keep figuring out, you know, how can we be faster? How can we keep making more products?

How can we create better quality? Like you're never good. What about like the push? Somebody who's there already like John Morant, right? Popular star, not really a superstar by any means. And now he's having like his year. He's becoming a thing. So it's like you already have some John Morant stuff,

but how do you identify the moment of, oh, this guy's actually becoming a thing now. Is it demand? Like, how do you assess it? Yeah. So we're really out of the business of predicting what's going to happen and really build the capabilities to be able to take the changes in demand. To move immediately. Yeah.

So for us, you know, blank jerseys in every team. Certainly when someone plays for Memphis a little bit harder because that's going to be one of the least desired teams. You know, much easier when someone emerges on the Lakers or the Knicks or the Nets or the Sixers than it is on, you know, on, on, on the Grizzlies.

But, you know, none, nonetheless, you know, we've built a whole business to capitalize on kind of the changes that happen to me. And it's interesting.

I mean, every year there's giant changes that happen. I would imagine the trade deadline, you have to be ready for that too. sports. I would imagine the trade deadline, you have to be ready for that too. Definitely. The Sixers trade for Russell Westbrook. I know you can talk about Chris.

I just smiled when you said that. But whoever, you don't know what the trades are. Tyrese Halliburton, as we're taping this, is suddenly on the Indiana Pacers. Yeah, and that's our business and that's what creates demand because sports is the most important thing to so many people. You live in India and something happens you like,

you want to go out and you want to celebrate your team and celebrate your new player. There's no better way to do it than to wear their merchandise, buy their trading card, trade an NFT from them, play some sports bets on them. And we want all that to happen to Fanatics and we're working to really integrate that.

And one of the things we're thinking about now which is really interesting is how do we take each thing that we do and then find a way to make it better when fans do everything with us. You think about what a great product Amazon Prime is. You think about how can we create our version of Prime. Basically it's like sports Amazon Prime

crossed with fandom that isn't just merchandise anymore because and going back to the cards you have this huge database you have this ability to react fast um two things that the card industry just does not have so then how do you leverage that and put that back so that if i love panini prisms and i can't wait for the new boxes because i love evamovie which is true by the way i want to get evamovy rookie cards. I actually love this draft class. I'm ready to buy boxes. The boxes aren't out yet. I don't even know when they're coming out.

You know, like, so if you can fix that and solve that, and it's like, I'm ready in limited edition, how do you worry about, like, the limited edition piece? Because that's such a big part of cards. So scarcity in trading cards is a core part of cards so scarcity and trading cards is right you know a core part of what they're about the interesting thing right now is there's so much more demand than supply and trading cards today but that's how it has to stay that's the point and that's what we think about long term and that's what i'll tell you i don't think um to be

honest the trading card companies have really thought that much about that you know they think about it in the near term what's's happening this year, what's happening next year. I'm thinking about like five years from now, 10 years ago, what's that car going to be worth in the secondary market? Because ultimately that's an indication of, is this a good alternative investment for an investor to make? How do you control the secondary market or is it even possible?

I think we have a lot of influence in the secondary market based on building great products, innovating products. Okay. And by the way, as we went out to, you know, get in the trading card business, our plans became public last August. You know,

so many people wrote to me and said, here are the things you should do to make the product better. And so we're always thinking about better product, better marketing. What did they say? Give me a couple. I mean, you always hear about,

you know, how autographs are signed is obviously something I'm sure you know about. I stay away. I don't trust them. Yeah. You get that. You get that feedback all the time. Scarcity is really important. People want to make sure they can buy things that are truly special. Did they tell you about the upper deck Ken Griffey season, 1989?

No. Tell me. Ken Griffey, you know, the Willie Mays of his generation at the time, everyone wanted the Ken Griffey card. And at the same time, it's like, I think Shaq was 91, like that whole era. It was the, uh, it's, it's called basically the everybody got screwed era because they just made way more product than we realized. So we're like, Oh, I got to get a Ken Griffey card. There's like, um, you know, Upper Deck made a million baseball boxes. So basically the cards aren't worth anything that we thought. Yeah, so that makes so much sense.

I mean, I'll tell you, the thing that's very different with Fanatics, we only think long-term. Like, look, I'm the founder of this business. It's become a decent-sized business. It's got huge growth ahead of it. We're just starting so many different businesses we're in. But we think super long-term about everything we do.

So training cards the whole day is kind of like a mom and pop business yeah whether you talk about the trading card shows or you talk about this hey upper deck just making however many cards were um you know they could sell but that's why this is so interesting because you're basically taking this old rundown house and you're like i'm gonna turn this into a mansion people like what right i still have the same oven from 1952 yeah i think people really realize like i because i see the feedback on social media all the time people realize in trading cards that having the right kind of vision in this industry will exponentially grow and figure out how to build a much better collective experience like could you think about

you know in a few years from now if you could go to one place and you could buy those basketball cards that you just talked about in a direct-to-consumer format? And again, hobby shops are always going to be really important to us. But think about you could buy more of a direct-to-consumer. You're going to decide you want it shipped to you. Do you want to grade it? Do you want it stored? Do you want it insured?

Do you want it financed? Do you want to put it in the secondary marketplace? Think about doing all of that in one place, how good the experience can be. But there's a couple people doing that right now. Yeah, but there's no one that's doing, integrating the primary cards with the secondary. It all starts with the primary cards.

So there's no one who's really thinking about doing it with the primary cards and then integrating the whole thing through. Like somebody might say, I want to buy the box, Don't even mail it to me. Store it in some location and you guys are in charge of it. How about I want to buy the box and I want to put it into a break-in? Yeah.

So there's so many different things you can do right now. So I'm a believer that this industry got to where it is today more on being in the right place at the right time. And I don't want this to come across wrong because we have 350 great associates at Topps who work their asses off every day. We're so fortunate to have them part of our company. But there wasn't like a strategic plan that said,

hey, here's how we're going to get trading cards. We're going to create it. We're going to have great growth and we're going to have a pandemic come. A lot of what happened was by good fortune. I don't believe in good fortune as a recipe for the future. I believe in like building a great product and being a great marketing company. And so we're going to really push the limits on, you know, innovating from a product perspective.

And we're going to start marketing for the first time. There's no, there is not a marketing function within the trading card industry. Like I can't wait to take some of the profits and invest back in marketing to get more collectors into this. There's only probably five million collectors of trading cards in the world. I want there to be 50 million collectors or 500 million collectors. And so that's what we're thinking about.

Are you the only person who could have pulled this off? I don't say that in a kiss ass way because I think it had to be somebody who had the relationships with the leagues that made the leagues willing to basically turn, I don't want to say turn their backs on people they worked with forever, but that's kind of what happened.

Yeah, so let me answer both of those questions. So as you get to know me better, I'm actually pretty humble. I can tell you all the things I've screwed up in my life and I can give you a list of things that I suck at doing. Yeah, but you're a huge partner for all these different people. So, the answer to your question is realistically, yes.

We're probably the only company, I may be the only person who could have pulled it off. Because they need you for other stuff. Well, we need each other, but here's what really happened. No one, trading cards was so small to the sports properties.

And so when we, they didn't want to turn their back on their existing partners. We brought them a completely different model. Here's what we said to the sports properties. Look, there's so much money being made in this business and you're not making any

from it. We. Well, like, Hey, this is a 10 or $15 billion industry today. It's growing like crazy. By the way, you guys make a few hundred million dollars in roaches. So you get, you're capturing like 2% of the, yeah. Congratulations. The business, you guys are the other 98% out the window. Yeah. You're not so smart. And so once we explained to him that, you know, a trading card got made, went to a, got sold to a distributor who made a lot of money selling to a retailer who made a lot of money selling to a reseller who then put it on eBay to then sell it to a collector.

And by the way, all those people in the ecosystem, they all matter, they're all important, but there wasn't like a strategic person thinking about, okay, how do I build a better business? So when you say, okay, number one, what's the first thing I want to do? I want to demonstrably grow this business. Like, I want to think about how do I market this industry for the first time?

Like, wait a second, no one's marketing trading cards? Yeah, no, nothing's happened today. It's all been by, you know, good fortune. Okay, now let me show you how experience works. You tell them, go out and figure out how to buy a trading card. And you look at these companies and, you know,

there's no capital invested in the companies. There's, you know, they've just been trying to kind of, you trying to milk the profits of lately. So you walk them with a plan to a sports company and say, look, we can build this business with more direct-to-consumer while still really having the hobby shops be a big part of it. We can build a much better collective experience. You can make money on sales that go directly to the consumer. You give the consumer more value. We can invest in better product. We can invest in marketing. We can integrate and experience together.

Like, wow, this is awesome. And then they're like, but wait a second, Finax, you've got close to 100 million customers. So you know who most of these customers are. You can backstop this financially. So it took our size and scale and relationships and also our entrepreneurial vision. I don't think there was realistically,

I'm not sure that somebody else could have done that. People would have trusted to do it. What was the moment that you saw it? Was it somebody that worked for you or were you just sitting around one day and like there had to be some light bulb moment? It's actually a great story. So I, in the middle of 19,

started for the first time thinking about how do I really grow Fanatics beyond our first business, the commerce business or the merchandise business. And I thought about, okay, what businesses, in the consumer products world that I live in, what do we not sell? There are only two categories. It was video games and trading cards.

Like I said, video games was like, I'm out in 10 seconds, okay? That didn't take long to figure out. So that was it. So then you started fixating on it. No, so then I started studying, because that's always what I did. You gotta remember, I legitimately didn't take long to figure out so that was it so that's so then you started fixating on no so then i started studying because that's always what i do remember you guys remember i legitimately didn't go to college yeah barely made it high school so like my way of learning is like i just meet people i ask questions like a sponge and so i went out first to um tops and panini to meet them

to hear their pitches i went out to um the leagues the players associations all right gary v had been beating on me for like five years saying michael you gotta get in the trading cards business you gotta get the trading cards business all right he actually sent me a video one of these days when i posted it was like him like beludgeoning me like 2016 or 17 about getting the trading card business so so i kept realizing there was a lot of opportunity. And then I went to meet Josh Lew with the founder of StockX. And Josh said to me, let me explain to you exactly how this works. He said, look, the trading card manufacturer sold them to the distributors.

The distributors sold them to the retailers. The retailers sold them to resellers. But we had a StockX who then put them on eBay. We then sold them to the collector. And all I had to doX, we then put them on eBay. We then sell them to the collector. And all I had to do was say that sentence to me and it clicked in my head. And then I finally got the opportunity. But at the end of the day, it's all about the IP.

Like our whole business, and we get this. We're humble about this, man. Our whole business is about the incredible IP that we work with from the professional collegiate sports properties, the players, the players associations. And so we always think about how to build a better business for them.

And so we knew that if we could create a better business, there was a much better experience for the collector, and we could have these organizations be part of it, it was kind of a pretty easy sale. So you kind of talk about, hey, they were in business with Upper you know, Upper Deck, Topps, Panini, some of the other trading card companies. You explain this to somebody once, their immediate reaction was, yeah, we're in. It was like, it was actually the easiest sale in the world. Like I went and I pitched this to, you know, DeMarie Smith, who runs the Players Association for the NFL, or I

pitched it to, you know, Tony Clark, who runs the Major League Baseball Players Association, or to Rob Manford or to Adam Silver. People got this in one second because they understood they don't make a lot of money from this today. By the way, you want to connect with your fans. Think about how important trading cards are to connect with your fans. I love the passion you're talking about with me for trading cards. That's amazing.

There's so much opportunity. And they could integrate it in the broadcast. There's all kinds of ways. But we haven't even started. Like I'm telling you. And you're thinking about auctions and NFTs and all kinds of stuff, right? We're already one of the big three players in the NFT business today with Candy, a business that we started a year ago. But it's like, and these things all integrate together too.

So for us, when you think about Fanatics in a couple of years from now, you're going to have the Fanatics super app and you'll be able to go there to get your merchandise or buy your trading cards or trade them in the marketplace or buy NFTs and trade them there. You'll be able to get from us over time. You'll be able to place your online sports bets, do other gambling. Over time, probably have some type of ticketing offering. Wait a second. Let's talk about the super app. Because I was at ESPN and it's weird, even though you guys have two different businesses, but I do think you're in a very similar spot to where ESPN was around 03, 04, where they were the dominant entity in this one thing, right? And if you remember, they started thinking about

what else can we do? Can we open sports bars? Can we do Gatorade? Can we start making original films? And they just started, we have a website, and we have this magazine, and they just tried to do all these things, honestly, to mix results. Some of the stuff worked. Some of the other stuff didn't work.

But in that case, probably a lot didn't work realistically. A lot, yeah, but I think they were always worried about how do we grow? How do we grow? How do we grow? They did the ESPN international stuff. And again, some of it worked. It seems like you're in a similar thing where you're like, I know this is now everything I've just built is now the home base for now this other stuff that I have to do for us

to continue to grow. Is that fair? So first off, I think it's really important to figure out when you get into a new business, why are you getting in it? How is it going to be better for the sport fan? And if it's not, if you can't answer that question, quit before you start. So you don't think ESPN is in the zone?

You don't think they've thought about that? Look, I'm a huge fan of ESPN overall, but when I think about opening restaurants, how many Fanatics restaurants have you seen so far? Zero. Right. And don't plan on seeing any. Fanatics Gatorade, not going to happen.

Yeah, not going to happen. Because it's like when I think about video games, I was like, hey, you know what? By the way, EA's got a pretty good business in sports video games, as does Take-Two. Okay? Don't see me playing with those guys. So you're only going in if you can be

one of the dominant people in whatever it is. Look, if we can't be the number one player in the space long-term, I don't think that's interesting to us. But to be the number one player, what do you have to do? You have to make it much better for the fan. Again, I don't look at where we are today. I look at where we're going. There's so many things today I think we suck at.

Just being honest. How many years are you now? 9, 10, 12? Yeah, 9, 10 years. But guess what? I'll be doing this another 30, 40 years. I'll still be having a blast. So. And I'm always, but, but how many years are you now? Like nine, 10, 12 years. But guess what? I'll be doing this in another 30, 40 years. I'll still be having a blast. So long as I'm on this planet,

I'm going to be doing this and I'm going to be keep pushing the envelope for everything we do. So when I think about things we're going to get into, I think about how do we make it better for the fan? How do we make it better for the collector and the trade cards? I get a trading cards. I think there's so much to do. Like if you think about the trading card industry,

you think about us getting into it. Could you think about a better company to, um, you know, have a lot of vision for that industry. That's going to think longterm. This is going to be for the first time. It's going to be a database and immediacy or like the two things I would

have. Yeah. Vision, you know, like, and so, and how bad did the trading card business need that yet? It was pretty big business.

Right. Okay. All right. Think about sports gambling today. Yes. I was going to ask, so how bad did the trading card business need that? Yeah, it was pretty big business. Right. Okay. All right. Think about sports gambling today. Yes. I was going to ask. So how does gambling fit into that? Because everyone's trying to get in that space though.

Yeah. And, and I think, you know, we think long-term, we think strategically. First thing, I think we have real structural advantages. We have, you know, Fanatics, I think is the most, you know, digitally oriented transactional brand, sports brand. And I think, you know, we have this huge advantage in our database.

I mean, I have on average 50 attributes, you know, from each, you know, fan, which that means I can better personalize the experience for them. I can, you know, make sure that, you know, I'm giving the sports fan really what they want.

By the way, that gets better every day. And, you know, long-term, look, I think we're going to have billions. Look, my goal for FNAX is very simple. I want to have billions of sports fans globally that look at FNAX's beloved brand and use us to do most things digitally. That's like the long-term vision.

So you want to watch a game with them. Yeah, I want some of them. They can gamble with you. They can buy a card from you. They can, right after the game, I didn't realize I liked this guy so much I'm buying his jersey. Or his NFT.

Or his NFT, whatever. You just want to be there with the person. That's right. That's right. And for us, but we're not going to get into anything. If I don't think it can be big, and if I don't think we can make it much better for the fan or collector, we're out. So there are a lot of business.

People pitch me on stuff all the time. I'm like, yeah, great business. Not for me. No. We say no 99% of the time. And so we got to think about how can we, like trading, if you really think about it, merchandise, we've built a nice foundation. We're building a nice business in merchandise. You agree with that, correct?

Yes. Okay, trading cards. When you think about it now, were we the perfect company to get into that business? I would say yes. That's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you today. NFTs, candy, what we're doing now, same thing. Leveraging the database, leveraging the brand.

By the way, we're going to, I mean, leveraging the database, leveraging the brand. By the way, we're going to, I mean, we're building a big business now. We're, by the way, we started the business a year ago. I didn't,

to be clear, I'll say this right here clearly. I did not know what an NFT was 15 months ago. Okay. Are we, are we, NFT is the only one

I'm a little dubious of. By the way. It feels like the wild, wild west. Hold on. And I don't trust it. Hold on, hold on.

I'm not in yet. So am I. Yeah. So am I, but let me tell you this. Do I believe it's going to be a. I'm not in yet. So am I. Yeah. So am I, but let me tell you this. Do I believe it's going to be a big business long-term? Absolutely. Do I think there could be major crashes along the way?

Definitely. Is it going to be incredibly hard to regulate and is there going to be a ton of fraud? Probably. And there's going to be lots of issues, but here's the thing. Here's what I'm trying to do. Build a great long-term product for the sports fan that billions of sports fans

are using and so what if you get into business and it crashes and it cracks and it gets better that's opportunities for us then we bring in more capabilities

we buy things so like you know our best periods of time COVID was great for us the financial collapse 2008 was great for us the internet bust of 2001

was great for us I love those times like those times you know those are my glory days baby the trauma yeah we love drama drama's good for us. I love those times. Those are my glory days, baby. The trauma. Yeah, we love drama.

Drama's good for us. The ESPN piece, do you see a world where you could be potentially like a network or... Look, I think... A place that resembles ESPN, Fox, some of these other places? Look, I think more about streaming media. Yeah, yeah, obviously.

Like the 2020s version of it. Yeah, definitely. Like, do I think live sports fits into what Yeah, yeah, obviously. Like the 2020s version of it. Yeah, definitely. Like, do I think live sports fits into what we're doing long term? Absolutely. I mean, are we, do you see us running out to do it tomorrow morning? No, but I mean, do I believe- Do you have to merge with somebody to get that done? Or could you do it yourself? Look, look, there were rumors that we were evaluating the regional sports business as an example.

You know, we think that's a business that needs a lot of innovation. There's nothing that we're doing imminently in that business. But do I think, what would I hope what we look like in five years? I hope you can watch a reasonable amount of live sports with us. I hope that when you're watching live sports, we figure out how to personalize a great experience where one person bats, another person's trading training guards, another person's buying their merchandise, somebody else is getting tickets to an event. I mean, I think we can do something pretty special for the customer. And look, at our core, we're a direct-to-consumer company. We have a lot of good DNA around it.

We have 9,000 people that go to bed and wake up every day just in the commerce business, okay? We now have 350 people, 400 people in the trading card business, 100 people in the NFT business. We're ramping very quickly in the online sports betting business. So there's, you know, and these businesses, we will not get into something again if it's not really big, if we don't think we can really differentiate long-term for the fan.

But you wanted to be an owner. I don't know how you're an owner of one of these teams while doing all the stuff you're trying to do at the same time. Yeah, so I'll tell you. Unless you just aren't going to sleep. Well, first of all, I don't sleep. And my sleeping is like, if you want to talk about one of the many really screwed up things about me,

my sleep is really, really bad. Like, I've been going to bed now and you can test this if you want. I go to bed at like 11 o'clock. I generally wake up around 2 or 2.30 and I have this worse habit. I didn't get on my phone. I never go back to bed.

Then I just give up at 5 o'clock and get out of bed. So I'm now like, my sleep is the worst ever. But I'm actually- That sounds terrible. That's unhealthy. My girlfriend's been complaining to me that even though we have a one daughter, another daughter

coming that, that, that, that we're not married. And so I told her I was going to get an oral ring as a commitment last night at dinner. And so I thought that was going to be, we'd start with these oral rings, which, um, everyone's looking at me like I'm nuts. So we're going to start measuring my, uh, my, my, my, my, my sleep. Uh, but it's bad. It's very bad. So you're, you're just ready to go. So do you still want to own a team or no? No, I don't, honestly. Because you were there with the Panthers. Yeah, look, I got

really deep on the Panthers and I think the Panthers, had I wanted to own a team, would have been the right situation for me. Here's the bottom line. Had I bought the Panthers, I would have become obsessed with that and we would have never grown beyond. That's what I was going to say. I don't see how you do that half-assed. You can't.

Let me tell you something. To own a sports team and to be a good sports team owner, you need to be completely obsessed with winning championships for your city. And each year you don't win a championship for your city, you have failed. Right. Okay?

And by the way, I've been a 10% owner of the Sixers. Yeah. You know, we've been in the Sixers for 10 years. We haven't won a championship yet, so we failed. Good purchase, though. Yeah. But I don't care. People don't buy sports teams to make.

Like, honestly, the people that buy sports teams. You made money on that one though. You did, but like. That was a steal. All those teams in that range when all those NBA teams were going for. Of course, anyone who bought a sports team from 2008 to 2012. Yeah, you could, but we didn't like. The Warriors was the most egregious.

I agree, but let's keep this real. If you own a sports team, you could, but we didn't like... The Warriors was the most egregious. I agree, but let's keep this real. If you own a sports team, you have one responsibility. It's to win a championship each year. And when that year ends and you haven't won a championship, you failed. You don't say like,

hey, we made it to the second round of the playoffs. We're proud of ourselves. Oh, no. You're here to win championships. From my perspective, and anyone who tells you anything differently, they shouldn't be an owner, okay? Yeah. So from my perspective. Um, and anyone who tells you anything differently that they shouldn't be an owner. Okay.

Yeah. Um, so from my perspective, I went hard after the Panthers at a time when I was only in the merchandise business. And had I bought the Panthers, I would have never obsessed with growing fanatics the way that I have and really built the business into what it is today. But more importantly,

set the foundation to build it into what I can in the future. I get phone calls every day about, do I want to buy a sports team? Two people reached out to me yesterday and Bob in the Broncos process said, hey, do you have any interest in the Broncos? I am not making any further investments in sports teams for decades. It's just not- Broncos. It's not where I am in my life.

Broncos is an amazing purchase. It's a great franchise. Don't you think that should be like $5 billion? Whatever they think it is, I think it's like a billion more. Well, I think your neighborhood is probably what it will be. It's going to get a big price tag, and it's a great franchise. I was the only one telling people the Clippers were going to go for $2 billion. I was on TV, and I was like, this is how it's going to go.

People are like, that's crazy. I'm like, all right, you wait. But I got to tell you something. You've got to, like, one of the things we need in sports are great owners. What makes a great owner? Someone who's going to ingratiate themselves in the market. Who's going to, like, wake up and go to bed obsessed with winning championships.

Spend some money. Don't try to cut costs. And for me, I don't have that time or that interest today. Like, look, I own 10% of the Sixers. I grew up in Philadelphia. You know, Josh Harris and David Blitzer are the two main owners you know I support them where I can I spend very little time on it and you know what you know in a little bit of time

I could probably add you know some value to that team and that's it I have no interest in doing anything else whatsoever like there is no situation in any sport anywhere in the world that has me want to do anything other than make fanatics you know this beloved brand by billions of sports fans so that's what i'm focused on and so no you will not see me make invest another dollar in anything from a sports ownership perspective what was the moment

you realized like what year was it was it during the pandemic or before when you were like all right fanatics was phase one what's phase two and what is fate like when did you start mapping out in your head yeah because the last time we talked it wasn't mapped out in your head it definitely not so i'd say from 2000 so ebay bought gsi in june of 2011 and um i'd say it wasn't until summer of 19 so it was eight years of like just complete and utter focus where I didn't look up. Yeah. Um, that we only thought about the merchandise business. And then I think we realized, wait a second, we built this, you know, pretty big digitally oriented transactional sports brand, but we've got close to a hundred million customers.

And, um, we have a pretty big opportunity here and where could we go with it? And I think different than when you talk about ESPN who you talk about kind of all the different things they tried and we'll try things that fail like for sure. But

and we'll fail many things but I think when we get into a business we're pretty sure that we've got a way to make it much better for the fan and that we can be number one and that it's a big business

and if it's not we're not messing around with it. You know what ESPN's we can be number one and that it's a big business. And if it's not, we're not messing around with it. You know what his biggest problem was? They didn't really have a true competitor. When you don't have a competitor, you can kind of... You need people to keep you sharp. Yeah, you can kind of coast. And it was really, especially being there in the moment, it was... They pushed a couple times, but sometimes you feel like you don't have to because you're

winning. You're the 27 Yankees. Yeah, I always say feel like you don't have to because you're winning. You're the 27 Yankees. You don't know when it's going to flip. For them, it flipped because of the cable subscribers. Yeah, what I always say is I'd rather disrupt myself than have someone else disrupt me. And so people would say, hey, NFTs could disrupt trading cards.

And I think both are going to grow each other. But for me, and by the way, I have lots of questions. You talk to me, I'll keep it real and honest here. I was, you know, I had, um, lunch with Scooter Braun yesterday and Scooter said to me, like, I think this is going to be really big NFTs. So I think there's going to be a huge crash in it. It could go to, you know, down, you know, most of it in between. I said, I think you'd be right. He's like, you know, you put you on one of these big NFT companies. And I said, but Hey, look, and the way I think about it is do sports fans want these long-term?

Yes. Should I be in the business? Yes. Do we know exactly how it's going to go? Absolutely not. If I told you I did, I'd be full of it. Well, that was like Spotify's strategy with live audio. It's like Daniel basically said,

I don't know if this is going to be a thing or not, but if it becomes a thing and we're not there, how are we the leader in audio? Like we have to be there. And I think about business the same exact way. I think about things like that was a business we had to be in. And, you know. And if it's not a thing, then at least you did it and it's a write-off.

I'm pretty confident that NFTs are going to be really big long-term, but I'm thinking about NFTs for the sports fans. And today a lot of people think about NFTs as kind of like for the crypto community. I think both are important, but I'm really thinking about more for the sports fan. Like I'd rather sell a $50 NFT to billions of sports fans than sell a $500,000 or a billion dollar, you know, like I'm not trying to sell million dollar individual NFTs today as the primary thing. I'm thinking about how do I do something that's going to get more engaged with sports? Like everything we do should engage fans more with sports. And, you know, by the way, I think like, you know,

whether it's online sports betting, whether it's trading cards, whether it's NFTs, these are getting more engagement in sports for your favorite team, your favorite player. It's great. It's unbelievable. Think about all the ways we can integrate these businesses too. Like you could, you know, long-term you could watch, you know, a live game with us. You like a play, like I said, you get an NFT of that play. Do you worry about attendance at all

going forward with this stuff? Look, you have to worry about attendance. Like, you know, at the end of the day. I'm super worried about it. Yeah,

like, but, but, but, you know, look, at the end of the day, I'm not worried about

engagement in sports. That I'm not. That's the thing. Yeah, I think we've made it. So it's just people shift how they do things. We've made it so much more fun

to just stay home and watch sports that there's just less of a need to actually go to a sporting event. Like Giannis was in town on Sunday. Ten years ago, I'm like, I'm not missing Giannis. And this time I was like, eh. Look, look, I still love going to Sixers games live. But what I tell you, you know, I consume my media much different.

I get a lot of clips, you know, a lot. Right. The biggest place I consume my sports media is on Instagram watching highlights. And for my son, it's TikTok. He feels like he knew what happened this whole football season and probably watched 10% of it with me.

But he knew what was going on. And so my job as a digital sports company is to figure out as these new things keep emerging, where can we do something that's differentiated, better and big? And by the way, you don't see us trying to own social media because there's a few companies like this thing called Instagram or Facebook or TikTok.

They're pretty big companies. So I don't think we could add a lot of value there and that's why we're not trying to compete with them. The flip side is we see other things where we're like, yeah, we can, look, online sports betting, I think long-term, this is a business, I think it's going to be a big business. I think it's one where we're like, yeah, we can, you know, look, online sports betting, I think, you know, long-term, this is a business, I think it's going to be a big business. I think it's one where we have a lot of competitive advantages, and

you know, I think we'll be in California. Who are you jealous of? When you look around, who are you like, oh, that so-and-so, I like what they're doing there. Who am I jealous of? This is a great question. This is always a good question.

Yeah, it's a great question. They never know if they actually want to answer it. No, I'll answer anything. I'll answer any question. You know, I'd say, if I'd say who am I jealous of, you know, he's just top of my mind because I just, you know,

I was just texting with him a couple hours ago. It was probably Tom Brady. You look at Tom Brady, you're like this guy, he's the nicest guy on the planet. He wins in everything he's doing. But actually, it's not, jealousy sucks at the wrong work. I was thinking more like a business.

Because I try, what I was trying to say is, here's someone who's winning in so many places. It's not jealous. I'm more respect and I'm inspired. I was thinking more like a business. I'm more inspired by. Like a business that you're like, oh, look at those guys. What a great idea. I wish I had thought of that. Yeah, by. Like a business that you're like, oh, look at those guys.

What a great idea. I wish I had thought of that. Yeah. So, I mean, businesses you're jealous of. Amazon. I mean, they're a beast. Yeah.

Nike. They're a beast. You know, Apple. Like, I'm jealous of the best companies. But those are like 25, 30, 50 year companies. Great. And so, I'm 49 and I've been at this for 10 years and I want to be bigger and better than they are one day.

You have a chance. Yeah. So for me, look, I think we can create one of the most valuable companies in technology and maybe the most valuable company in sports. Do tickets factor into that? I think tickets do. I'd say a couple things. One, we want to make sure we can do something that's better for the fan.

I don't know that we have the answer to that yet. Right now when I hear about tickets, it's like, I hate the company I buy my tickets from. That's not something that gets me excited. So I think we've got to figure out how we can do it better. But I would think that would be the opportunity. Right. That's what I'm saying. We've got to figure out how to do it better and different. I don't have the answer yet. And so, here's what I tell you.

Should tickets be part of our platform? Absolutely yes. Should tickets be done the way they are today, part of our platform? I don't think so. I think we need to find a way to do better for the fan. Alright. Well, you're planning a Super Bowl party. By the time people hear this, it will happen. How many Super Bowl parties have you had?

Well, it started for us when I used to... This is at least like 5th or 6th, right? Well, the real origin of this, I'd say probably like 2012 or 13. We start with a little dinner with like 100 people. Yeah. It's turned into, I think we have- The Wasserman Playbook. Yeah, well, today we have unquestionably

the best party of Super Bowl weekend, always. And we don't sell tickets. It's only for our important business partners, the athletes, celebrities, artists that kind of make Fanatics what it is. It's fun to see what it's developed into we'll have you know our closest 800 friends there um i think if i i think i'd say this year for the first time if i let let everybody in that i know who's hit me it's probably 5 000 people this year i've like

i'm gonna actually turn my phone off maybe tonight and just not respond to anyone and say, oh, I didn't get your message. So if I didn't respond to you, I probably just didn't see your message, and that's where we stand. But the party's great. I know the last year we did it in Miami, so many great people came. It was a blast.

Obviously, having the Super Bowl in LA is amazing. So many great people. We got incredible weather. You should be doing your podcast live from our party. Are you coming to our party on Saturday? I'm coming to your party. I'm not doing a podcast. You're going to like our party. I'm excited to come to your party. I'm not doing a podcast. You're going to like our party.

I'm excited to come to your party. You're going to have a lot of fun. All right. Well, we should do this every year, I think. I look forward to it. I like how you think about stuff. I say that in the least kiss-sassy way possible. Well, I appreciate it.

I think a lot of people just, they achieve stuff, and then they think, I'm good. I don't have to keep thinking about what's next. I'm never good. I'm never good. A small group of people are like, what's next, what's next, what's next? You know, it's funny. I'm never good. I'm never good. There's that small group of people who are like, what's next, what's next, what's next? You know, it's funny.

I see now, because I am, I hate to admit this, at 49, I'm not a kid anymore, even though I like to still act like a kid sometimes, but I now see people, and I see people, so many people have been so successful financially, and it's like two-thirds of the people,

like, they're good. They've, you know, they've made a a ton of money and they're kind of like, they don't have the killer instincts anymore. For me, I don't give a shit about money. I care about winning. I care about building something massive. When I say money does not factor into my, whatever. Do I live a good life?

Of course. But money is not a driver in this slice, but I am completely driven by wanting to compete, wanting to win. And look, here's the reality. I say this all the time. I was the world's worst student. I was a horrible athlete. I was pretty good at working.

And so this is my way of competing. So I'm never satisfied. No matter how good the results I put up, I'm like, okay, that sucked. What's next? How do we do it better? And so if we have a record year, I'm like, okay, well, here are all the things we didn't do.

How do we do that better? So I'm always pushing. To me, if I actually had athletic skills, which I like, okay, well, here are all the things we didn't do. How do we do that better? So I'm always pushing. That's like, to me, if I actually had athletic skills, which I have none of, I'd be a pretty good athlete because I would never quit. I'd be unrelenting. Maybe there's a sport for you, like racquetball. I don't know. I'm just not athletic. Golf?

Nothing? No. Hold on. You have to be patient for golf. Golf, I'd be like, I played. You played some poker in your life? I've never played poker. I played guts

for the first time this past Sunday night. I didn't do well, but I actually liked the game and learned. All right. Congrats on everything. Good to see you.

Appreciate it. Back at you, brother. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Verno and House and Michael Rubin. Don't forget to go check out the great piece, Jonathan. Charks wrote for theringer.com. Don't forget to go check out the great piece.

Jonathan sharks wrote for the ringer.com. Don't forget to, um, to go to the ringer.com. Don't forget to check out the ringer podcast network. And, there's a chance house that I are going to pop on the gambling feed tomorrow to talk some bets and things like that.

But, uh, I will be there. Prestige TV podcast, Sunday night, right after winning time. And then Rassel and I on Sunday night as well. So that is the schedule.

Enjoy the weekend. And I'll see you on Sunday. I don't have.