The Compound and Friends - Episode 100 with Darren Rovell

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

On episode 100 of The Compound and Friends, Michael Batnick and Downtown Josh Brown are joined by Darren Rovell to discuss layoffs at ESPN, sports betting, the memorabilia market, Threads vs Twitter, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Public. Visit https://public.com/compound for more information on how to earn 5+% interest with a treasury account on public. Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Josh Brown are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Wealthcast Media, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I was in Amalfi Coast last summer, and I'm sitting on a lounge chair, that's what I do. And like downtown. Yeah, and then all of a sudden, it's a tiny hotel, there's probably 24 guests there, right? Yeah. It's Il San Pietro. Il San Pietro. So it's like a super nice, exclusive hotel, it's on the top of the mountain. You look out, it's all yachts, it's just incredible.

And all of a sudden, I hear my name. And it's Darren Revelle. Of course it is. Did you have a nice time? Yeah, it was great. I don't even think we talked about this. Did you love the Amalfi Coast? Yeah, it was great.

Sick, right? Yeah, so sick. I had never been there before. Was it your first time? Yeah. Okay. You going to go back? Wild.

I don't know. There's a lot of parts of Italy that I want to see. You guys use the same travel agent? No. It's the best of the best. Like, that's the best of the best hotel. That's the top hotel there is. We only stay there for two nights. So, I don't know.

I told you this this week, but this is our 100th show. Yeah, I was just told that. It's amazing. What an amazing guest for our 100th show. I'll try to make it great. I've got a lot to talk about. I'm not worried about it in the least. All right.

How are we looking, guys? You guys see the sphere light up? Yeah, pretty crazy. It's the first thing James Dolan's done right. Are you going to go? I mean, I'll be there. I'll be in Vegas, you mean? Yeah. I go to Vegas plenty of times, so I'll be in Vegas you mean? yeah

I go to Vegas plenty of times so I'll be in Vegas so there's a small they're having a betting hall of fame induction and Billy Walter

is like supposedly the best gambler of all time who's never had a public appearance is going to be there on a show up oh really?

what at the Sphere? or just at a thing in Vegas? at the Circa at the Stadium Swim. Okay. I'm going to the Giants game. Oh, nice. First time I've been there.

I saw the Sphere being built. It's just unbelievable. I might go for U2's residency. Oh, okay. To actually go to a- Well, so I have an event in October that I'm speaking at. It's like a Wednesday in October, random. But then one of those nights is one of the U2 dates. Right, so you should go. It's like a Wednesday in October, random.

But then one of those nights is one of the U2 dates. So you should go. I feel like I should go, right? Yeah, you should go. Yeah. Shari's going with you? No, solo. You're going to go to a concert by yourself?

What do you mean? No, I'll get Fahmy or something. What's your band or what's your show? Well, I went to the Heat game by myself. Heat, Boston game. Yeah, you do that shit all the time. I don't care. But I've never been to a sports game by myself. Heat, Boston game. Yeah, you do that shit all the time. I don't care. But I've never been to a sports game by myself.

I go to movies by myself all the time. But sports game, that's- Really? I feel like that's something that you would have done. Yeah, I mean- You don't care. But in New York, I go with friends. What's your band?

My band? Like classic rock. Okay. My first concert was Meatloaf, Bad Outta Hell, 1994 at the Garden. Yeah, Michael has speakers on his jet ski, and whenever he's driving by, he'll hear like Sweet Home Alabama. Oh, my God. It's a little before his time.

I have the earliest Bruce Springsteen ticket anyone's had. It's him performing in a parking garage in 1970 for $2.50. It's a great ticket. Perfect. All right, we actually have a birthday here, and I know it's tomorrow. It's a great ticket. Perfect. All right. We actually have a birthday here. And I know it's tomorrow. It's tomorrow. Okay.

Happy birthday. Are we celebrating now? You told us that you were looking for donuts last week. Oh, wow. Look at that. That's amazing. Can we sing a little? There's no candle.

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Nicole. Happy birthday to you. Wow, you really pulled this off. You can't open the box. I love Krispy Kreme. What are you doing here?

You okay? No, I think- He doesn't know how to open it. I don't think that's how you- It's going to fall all on the floor. Give me these donuts. Oh my God. Now that's serial killer. Wait, is that how you open it?

You can't do that. Yeah, it's not how you open it. That's not how you open it. You're gonna spill doughnuts on me. That's how John Wayne Gacy opens it. I want the first doughnut. You get whatever you want. This box is gonna be worth money someday.

For Nicole's... Nicole, are you 18? 25th birthday. Alright. Happy birth... Is it good? Mmm, yeah. I mean, these are... I love Krispy Kreme. Me too. Happy birthday. Is it good? Yeah. I mean, these are... Me too. You're a big Krispy Kreme?

Yeah. Everybody have a donut. I'm going to have one. I'm going to have one. I'm going to try to make one final phone call before we start. I'm most certainly having a pre-podcast donut. Is it good? I love a pre-podcast donut.

So good. Dude. We could do without the sound effects. No, I have this once a year. What? A donut? Krispy Kreme. Did you know that Krispy Kreme gives you-

This is like ASMR. A three dozen donuts on your birthday? Holy shit, this is so good. Is that right? Mm-hmm. You're not Krispy- Oh, you're vegan. I was going to go pick some up.

Duncan, you ever eat one of these? I grew up literally like three blocks from a Krispy Kreme. It's a North Carolina thing. Remember when the hot sauce was on? I blocks from a Krispy Kreme. It's a North Carolina thing. Remember when the hot sauce was on? Have you had a pop-up bagel yet? No. I saw you post about that. You're involved with that?

Oh, I own 15%. They said it's the best bagel store in the city. People go, let me see the business plan. I go, I don't need to see the business plan. This is the craziest thing I've ever seen. Every bagel before that is just a vessel to put your shit on. That in and of itself. Why is it so good?

I know a lot about bagels. I can't tell you really why it's so good. Like it's the formula. Don't give me the formula, but like it's something about the way the ingredients or the way they're made. It's the way it's crispy on the outside, doughy on the inside, and chewy. Perfect. Like when you go, and it will, when you see people eat it, you'll get what I'm saying with chewy. Hot and hot right out of the oven is the way to do it.

And you rip it and dip it. So they have artisan cream cheeses, and then you dip it in trout roe. Oh, so you're not like cream cheesing it with a knife. You're dipping it. You're ripping it and dipping it. I had six the first time I tried it. I saw what you posted. It's so covered with seeds.

It's covered, yes. There's no surface area. It's all seeds. I've never heard of this. And here's the other thing. Where it- Hold on. I am trying to find where my door is,

and I'm having a very hard time. Very seedy. Yeah, it's covered. Wait, where is it located? I'm getting it delivered to my house. I was told between 2 and 3, and it's 3, and it's not there. Thompson Street? Oh, it's in the village, I think, right?

Yeah. I need a napkin. We might have to do a field trip. And another donut. Hold on one second, guys. I'm sorry I'm doing this. I have to. What are you waiting for?

A door? A vault door. Who brings that Amazon Prime? Okay. Okay. A real freight company. So the Papa Bagel Stories is this guy who does municipal storm drains in Connecticut. And during COVID, Adam Goldberg.

Yeah, Joe. Wow. And during COVID Adam Goldberg. Yeah. Wow. And during COVID he's just around and he's like, let me, let me try to, I want to make the best bagel. And he does and people start stopping at his door. So it's during COVID he's opening up his kitchen door and handing bagels. Be like, you got to sell this. So I knew one, his cousin invests with me. So he's like, you got to try this. So I knew one, his cousin invests with me.

So he's like, you got to try this. I try it. I'm like, what's your funding situation? He's like, nothing. I'm like, well, let me just give you $10,000 just so that my foot is in the door here. No business plan, nothing. And then he won the Brooklyn Bagel Contest, which is where everyone goes. And then he won the Brooklyn Bagel Contest again.

And then I'm like, all right, let me get in. I go, here's the deal, though. It's going to be a franchise model, but you're going to get the 6% on the franchise model. But then you're going to get the 20% on actually sending the pucks of bagels. People aren't making their own bagels. You're actually going to, so you'll get 25% of the money because they're going to have to buy – They're selling the dough as a puck that you can make at home? As a frozen puck, yes.

And then I go – and we're going to get Blaze Pizza as the main investor here because guess whose ovens aren't being used from 6 to 11? I like this. And so – Is Blaze Lebron? Yes. So we're going to build like spokes of a bicycle. We're just going to keep building.

But the one thing is we needed virality. So my brother is in real estate and he got right next to Carbone. He got a small space right next to Carbone. And then all of a sudden over the last like- You can only order three, six or 12. Like you can only order three, six or 12. I mean, the average order is $112. Oh, my God.

And Jared Goff showed up there. It showed up at 650 in the morning with his model fiance just to beat the crowd is four to 600 deep on Saturday and Sunday. And then the other businesses are you order ahead of time. So for the Hamptons, it's sold out on Monday for Saturday. Oh my God. So people place an order. Yep. And then you show up, your name's on a bag, they hand you the bag. It tells you what time to show up.

They have people with iPads. It's not like a bagel. We wanted to make it like it's not like anything. It's not a bagel. If you walk in, they it's not like anything. So like it's not a bagel. If you walk in, they'll be like, you can't walk in, but here's a free bagel just to like extend the. Right. But they're selling three, six or 12. Yes.

Okay. And all those spreads. You get two of the spreads. And the spreads are like Utz cheese ball cream cheese, like David Chang's Momofuku chili crisp. but like each of them are things you've never tasted before. And then the trout roe was my idea. I just had a foodgasm. Yeah, exactly. The trout roe was my idea because I'm always like a bagel, cream cheese, and caviar guy, and that's done incredible. Okay.

So when is it open? I can't stand these people. All right. You're going to be okay? Yeah. If they – let me just – I just need to say it because we got to start. Okay. Can't on hold forever.

They say it's coming today. Darren's vault door. Okay. Let's go. This is the first time the guest has started the show. Darren says let's go. Let's start. It's the 100th show.

Let's go. All right. All right, John, what show is this? We've been waiting for this one for a little while. We'll go. Come on, friends. Episode 100. There we go.

Welcome to The Compound and Friends. All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael Batnick, and their castmates are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Redholz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Today's show is brought to you by Public Dunk, and I'm wearing a t-shirt, and I am staring down. I can't see what it says. What does it say? It says, stars, stripes, and yield.

There we go. Stars, stripes, and yield. Independence Day. Best holiday there is. It is my intention to buy treasuries, and I'm going to do it in public. There. I said it. I'm going to do it. Right now, it's Thursday, July 6th, and I've seen the two-year at 4.98%. Got as high as, I mean, it's high. That is a high rate of return. 4.98% for two year. If you want to learn more about how you can open up an account with public, buy treasuries issued from the great United States of America, do your part, be a patriot. It is public.com slash compound. There you have it. Public.com slash compound. Episode 100. Nicole's jumping.

Nicole's going nuts. Happy birthday, Nicole. She's on a sugar high. Dan Revell is here. So exciting. Who's in the house? Rob is here. Tucker is here.

Duncan and John are controlling the screen and the cameras and the audio. Michael Batnick, my co-host, as always. I am here. I'mnick, my co-host, as always. I am here. I'm your host, downtown Josh Brown. And we are here with our special 100th episode guest, Mr. Darren Revell. Darren, say hello to everyone. I'm honored.

All right. We're so happy to have you here today. It's a big show. I only told you the middle of the week. It's our 100th show. And you pulled out all the stops from what I saw in your bag of tricks. So I got a bag. All right.

Pretty excited to get into that stuff. Let me give you a proper introduction. Bear with me one moment. So most people in our audience probably know you from your days at CNBC. This is the official intro we have for you, but then you can elaborate. Darren Revelle is a sports business analyst for the Action Network. He currently focuses on the stories happening in the business of sports betting. Darren is also the author of First and Thirst, which won an Emmy, right?

Or did that win an Emmy? 30 Best Business Books of 2005. Is that right? And that's the Gatorade story. And then I did win an Emmy, but the Emmy Books of 2005. Is that right? And that's the Gatorade story. And then I did win an Emmy, but the Emmy was a little cheap. We'll talk about that. The Emmy was swoosh inside Nike. Okay.

All right. Welcome to the show, Dan. We're so happy to have you. Are you excited for this? Super excited. This is like all in your wheelhouse. I think this is my idea. This is all in your wheelhouse.

All right. So you and I first met. You were reporting for CNBC Sports Business. I was at ESPN from 2000 to 2006. ESPN hired me at 22. Dream job? Dream job. It was crazy.

How did you pull that off? So it started when I was 10, and I knew faster than all my friends that I sucked at sports but loved them so much. So I knew right away I wasn't going to be a pro player. So I started to do journalism. I had a magazine that I sold for a dollar at lunch and all the things going on. That's like Dave from Barstool. Yeah, and then by the time it got to like my bar mitzvah, I was the first person at someone else's bar mitzvah to take the fortune cover that all the dads posed with and posed with a bat because I love the business side of sports.

And if you look at Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, he talks about how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were born in the same year. And the reason why that's perfect is because computers were there for the first year in the library. That's the first year you could tinker with computers when they're first year in college. For me, the dream of covering sports business corresponds to that exact timeline. When I was 13, that's when anchors on- 1991.

Yeah, that's when anchors started to say what someone made when they reported who this player – this player was just signed. He made $1.7 million. Back then it was Dan Patrick and Berman and Oberman. And so all of a sudden people cared about money. And what was weird is fans took it as if it was their money, right? And so – and then I started to think about that and how no one covered it. And then by the time, you know, I got to college, there was Sports Business Daily, which was

like an inside trade publication and then Sports Business Journal. And I was thinking to myself, well, how do I not toil in the markets, in the small markets as a journalist and be relevant right away. So that was my plan. And I think like kind of through watching my dad, my dad was a niche guy. So he was one of the few guys who had a PhD in biophysics and biochemistry and had a marketing degree. Okay. That's got to be pretty rare. The medical degree and the marketing degree and everyone had to hire him. So like I understood there the importance of being the best in the world at something even so small. But then I realized like, oh, people want to hear about the business of sports. Like in the beginning, like maybe not.

Like what are you doing? I'm watching Tiger. I don't want to see like how much he makes when he sinks that putt. Yeah. And so I had a sports business radio show, the only one in the country when I was at Northwestern and I got everyone, like everyone, like the green Bay Packers fire railroads is African-American coach. I, the next day I'm on, I'm on the horn with Jesse Jackson. I'm getting team president CEOs. Why no one's talking to them. Yeah. Athletes don't want to talk to you. These guys want to talk. We take it for granted. My kid is 14 years old. He could tell you what everybody in the NBA makes. Of course. Their

contracts, how many years. Which is wild because in 90, you know, I, I've just seen this all go through and yeah, it's, it's wild. So, so, so, uh, I went to ESPN, ESPN came to Northwestern. They're looking to hire an intern. Uh, I said, I'm going to cover the business sports for you. Luckily it wasn't an eight. You talk about the moments of luck that you have in your life. Like it wasn't an HR person. If it were an HR person and it wasn't an executive, the HR person would say, we are not here to hire for that job. But it was a guy who said, okay. And I'm like, why do you guys allow AP and Reuters to write your stories on the front page when you don't allow anyone but Peter Gammons to write baseball. Why? Because you're the worldwide leader in sports, goddammit. And that

means you have to be the worldwide leader in sports business. And he's like, why you? I'm like, because I've read every book. I can tell you what happened in the 60s, 70s before I was born. You were ready for this moment. And I'm ready. And there was one more thing that made it the difference, which is in 2000, like that, you got to understand that's where like the internet's the hierarchy of young kids are cool. And so that allowed me also to get the job. So for six years, I am the, and it's a little bit longer than you wanted, but for six years, I am the geek at the sports network. When did they start putting you on the air? You're writing for them. I was writing for ESPN.com. I was on the air within a year. Dale Earnhardt died and how big NASCAR was. And I remember I'm sitting on SportsCenter set with Kenny Mayne and I'm like, God, this is crazy.

I'm 22. I'm like, God, this is crazy. Was your family or were your friends like, wait, Darren's on TV? Yeah. But they always thought I would be – they always thought I'd be at ESPN just because since I was 10, like that guy was networking when he was seven, you know? So like, I wouldn't say that people like didn't think, but yes, I mean, it was surreal for me and for them. And, uh, yeah, so I did that for six years. And then how did you get to CNBC? I got in a fight with, so, so Jonathan Wald, uh, on the money the money tonight uh dylan he had me on he had had me on a

show and i got in a fight with dylan radigan okay about how he was wrong and it was very very contentious over what you can't win you can't curl a fight with uh it was over i know it was a curling okay and uh what are you doing and um and so uh and that way and he's like man i love you he's like, man, I love you. He's like, we need to get the volume up on CNBC. Everyone's listening with the volume off. We got to have someone covering the business of sports. We want someone who'd be like, oh, let's get – let's turn it up. Let's turn it up. And credit to him.

I think it worked out well and it – luckily it was at the time where it could happen. If I was hired in 2016, where every time you have to have the president, every, anytime you have to take the press, I would have never been able to get the things I got done. The fun stuff I got done. It was the perfect time. Um, the Beijing Olympics, the Vancouver Olympics to like of the best. And you were sent to all of these events. I basically said, I want to go here. I want to go there, you know, and pretty much got on the air every time, except when we went to the masters, I said, let's rent out a master's house and show the business of what it's like to have the masters. Okay. So I'm in my pajamas. I'm a, you know, a jokester. I'm in my pajamas. I have

like the, the sleeping hat. Um, uh. I'm going to do like a hit while cooking an egg. And they say in my ear, they're like, yeah, I don't think you're going to be on air today. I'm like, what? They're like, yeah, Emil just announced the first losing quarter for GE in 15 years. And I'm like, oh my God. Mr. Ravel, enjoy your egg. I enjoy your place. They don't use the term bumped, but that's a bumping. So, Dan, you covered the business of sports, but the business of sports business is a business. And ESPN is the worldwide leader in sports still, but they're going through it right now. They have been for a while. I always wanted to be a reporter instead of being an anchor because once you're reading – if you're reading the prompter, you're just – it's very hard to have longevity if you're reading the prompter.

So I always thought those jobs were tough. But in the last five to six years, you have to be a personality. And I love the people who I worked with who got let go, but it's hard to argue. Potentially, Pat McAfee is worth 20 of them. That's how it works today. People go and invest and listen to personalities. So what about Van Gundy? Yeah, Jeff and Jalen Rose.

So is JJ coming to replace him? It's hard. It's really hard. I think it's really hard to think about that they have to cut those guys when it's Disney. Like, can't you cut, like, garbage cleaning for one day? Unless there's stuff behind the scenes that everyone is not aware of. And it allows you to do something. But that's a lot of people.

There is brand attrition when you do things. I mean, one of the weirdest things I think in business today is like people who make decisions or decisions that are made and they think that the brand, there's no impact on the brand. It's like White Claw all of a sudden is like, no, we don't have that malt stuff anymore. Now we have vodka. And they think that people are automatically going to buy the, no, you serve me crap. So how fast does like TNT call a Jeff Gundy aftery after something? Yeah, I mean, if – Because he's a known quantity for fans. He's a known quantity, and he's a curmudgeon. He needles into the side of the NBA, which as a fan is a fun thing to do, right?

He's not under the umbrella. He'll say something on fouls that he knows that Adam Silver is going to get pissed at him for. Disney stocks at a 52-week low right now. One of the key issues, there are many issues right now, but one of the key issues is what do you do with ESPN? Is it a standalone company? Can the app be a standalone app? Is that a business? What's your latest thinking on what they should do with that? If you're spinning it out, there's no debate that the brand, the tentacles that you can build are, it's not good. Like I remember, Hey, yeah, no brainer. ESPN, the phone ESPN, the ESPN zones. Like I think the brand is as bad as it's ever been. So it's harder than say, Oh, spin off. Cause once you say spin off,

you're like, Oh, look at all the things that we can build around it. You lose those ties with Disney at the same time. Like millions of other people, I grew up religiously watching SportsCenter, and it's probably been 20 years. Because I don't need to see the highlights at 11 o'clock. You see them on your phone, on Twitter. Someone, I will admit this, someone got fired last week,

and she said she was a SportsCenter anchor for four years, and I didn't know who she was. Yeah, that's probably common now is that your door take it take it take the call hello hey how are you can i call you back okay not my door i'm in the middle of a podcast sir all right uh i want to do a little bit of market stuff, Darren. Okay. And then we'll get into all things Darren Revell. But we just finished the first half of the year. How closely do you follow stocks or – In general, I have CNBC in the background every day.

I see a lot of me. Did you know it's been the best first half start for the S&P 500 since 2019? No. Four whole years ago. All right. So let's just go through this.

This is from Savita Subramanian from Bank of America. And she put out something this weekend just wrapping up what happened in the first half. Savita's like the Stephen A

for cell size. Well, she's more stout. No, she's not Stephen A at all. So she basically said everyone was bearish, everything rallied. And every major asset class went up this year except for commodities, which I actually didn't know. And I just want to pull a couple of things out of here. So the S&P 500 finished the first half up 6.6% in June total return.

Year-to-date up 16.9%. Again, best first half in four years. What's notable about that is this is a year where pretty much everyone went into it bearish. Like, how good could things possibly be because of this, because of this, because of this? And the standout thing that happened that drove that was the consumer. And I would imagine your businesses, you must see a lot of that consumer strength. Today, we got an ADP report saying in June alone, the US economy added 500,000 private sector jobs. Is that surprising to you? Yes, because there's so much, because the discourse

is so negative. Yes, absolutely. All over, absolutely. Negative, negative, negative, negative. That's why it's so shocking. People are complaining. The people who have the loudest voices are yelling. Yes, that's why it's shocking. Darren, if the only throughput you had to the broader economy was through your business, how would you describe the state of the world? Again, only through sports betting, collectibles, that stuff. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the right places, and that's why you have to invest in the right places, like anything. I mean, it's on fire. It's on fire.

Yeah. Anything that people can do in their free time is on fire. And I'll hit this, but collectibles especially, because if there is something you can make money in and enjoy it along the way, what's better than that? Yeah, and that economy you would have thought would have reversed itself after 2020 and 2021. People felt comfort in COVID. You can go back to – they had so much comfort. Maybe it was too much comfort. Yes, nostalgia is – I mean that was the – God, I had like 30 packages a day of eBay because it was the much nostalgia. Yes. Nostalgia is, I mean, that was the God,

I had like 30 packages a day of eBay because it was the only way I could keep myself. My wife's like, what are you doing? I'm like, please don't use the eBay tape on the packages. Right. Uh, this year. So if it, uh, one other thing worth pointing out, it's changed somewhat recently, but in the first half, the breadth, the amount of stocks working was relatively small. So even though you had a great return on the market, only 25% of stocks ended up outperforming the S&P 500, which is historic. It's never happened. And think about, like everyone knows which stocks those are. There's nobody that's like wondering, well, which would those be? It's Apple, Microsoft. It's the big guys. It's the big guys. There's nobody that's like wondering, well, which would those be?

It's Apple, Microsoft, big guys. It's the big guys. It's, it's everyone that you would expect. And from that standpoint, it's actually a pretty intuitive year where, you know, just in terms of like what's working. I have a question for you. Shoot. Okay. So I've been covering life wallet, which is that's like the name of the name, image, and likeness guy from Miami, who essentially, he's a Miami guy. He puts these kids on, they're endorsing life wallet. Right. So he's an entrepreneur and he's buying college athletes. Right, right, right. It hit an all-time low today. Basically, it's LIFW. Okay, let's take a look. It was a SPAC.

Proof. Hold on, hold on, hold on. It was a SPAC, $32 billion SPAC, based on- How much? $32 billion. It was the second largest SPAC. Holy shit. on the idea that there are these Medicaid and Medicare claims that they can make a lot of money through the law, through legally going back and clawing back money. And so that's what this was based on. And pretty early on the market said, no way, this cannot be that obvious, whatever. Okay. So they miss, so, so they, they they came out with a they said they were

going to do um two billion uh in 2022 they did nine million no yes okay oh everyone's gonna then they hold on then they said uh uh in march our second quarter 2022 our third quarter 2022, our third quarter 2022 are not accurate. Oh, the statement. Hold on, hold on, hold on. There was no fourth quarter or year-end earnings, and there was no first quarter of 2023. So my question is, it has been a year and five days since they've had any numbers. been a year and five days since they've had any numbers. How does the NASDAQ allow this to be traded with no information? LifeWallet receives NASDAQ notification of noncompliance. They did. They only get 120 days. I mean, it's like, you know, it's a penny stock now. It'll be zero.

It'll be. Yeah. I mean it, but it could be like a 3 cent stock for a really long time. Yeah, I mean, but it could be like a $0.03 stock for a really long time. But that story is more amazing. Who is the guy? John Ruiz is his name. Okay. And he's blocked me on Twitter. He says I'm a hater, you know, this and that.

I mean, he has a $0.30 stock price. It doesn't matter what you say. Right, right. Okay. But it's very interesting. Well, listen, this SPAC thing kind of went crazy a couple of years ago, and now is like the comeuppance. Of course.

From that moment. Because there are a lot of these. It all smelled. It's like, oh, yeah, we started at $10. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. It seemed too easy, right? Too easy. All right.

I want to talk to you about investing in sports betting. Because you are an investor. I think you probably these days introduce yourself as an investor more than journalist. I know you wear a lot of hats. But some of the parallels between investing in sports betting and then investing in sports betting as a growth market because there are a lot of publicly traded companies there too. So what's your overall view of that market right now and how people are participating in it? There's two things here so like the investment side the market side like you know everyone said in 2018 19 oh my god

this is only going up uh what sports betting yes it's just easy to say that right because the masses are talking about it it's on every bus anecd. Anecdotally, you see everything where it's going to go up. All your friends are betting on games. But then you don't realize, you have to realize that DraftKings is spending a billion dollars on marketings. The customer acquisition costs here are enormous. Yeah. And there's not really that much loyalty.

So someone's going to take, I mean, in New York here, Caesars was offering a thousand dollar match. Like, can you imagine that people talk about like, you know, those meal plans that cost like 75 bucks to nail a cost. Can you imagine any business come here for a thousand dollars and we're offering the same odds as anyone else. So what's interesting is like, if you look at the number of apps that people have on their phone, the average person has 1.7 gambling apps. So it's not like they're looking and seeing what the best value is. Loyalty is just out the window.

All the tools are roughly equal on these apps. Yeah, yeah. Now, there is the grand for me because 85% of my bet – so I bet about $750,000 a year. I'm live, 90% live. I mean that's the total value. That's how much – yes, that's what I bet. Okay? But I'm live.

I'm like a day trader. You're betting inside of the game. So if I have things spinning on me or sometimes it spins, it changes the odds and then goes. And I'm like, wait a second. So who's ever best at live betting, that's going to be it. Who's the best? I live bet too, but I only use FanDuel. It was points bet for last year.

It was, and then it did not. I mean, right now I like DraftKings a lot because I have systems. Like if a team goes up this a lot because I have systems. Like if a team goes up this much, I have systems of when I play things. And so live betting is important. What sports are you betting? I'm betting – I'm basically betting totals, so overs and unders, of college football and baseball. Why?

Why those two? Because, first of all, I bet live unders because the algorithm's too good for you to have any advantage unless you're betting an under because people generally want to bet overs because they're rooting for offense. It's the same thing in investing. People buy call options, not put options. Correct, correct, correct. Oh, that's interesting. So people are more bullish on scores. It's the same thing in investing. People buy call options, not put options. Correct. Correct. Correct. Oh, that's interesting. So people are more bullish on scores.

It's like the under heads watch. So if you ask, if you, if 52% of the time, but if you, if you, so, so, so in other words, it is not the, the computer is not, is not giving you the exact odds. It's skewing to the over because, because people are going to bet the over. So when you ask my nine-year-old sons, what has your dad been on? They say he roots for no offense. So I'm an unders guy. And I have various systems. If four runs are scored in the first three innings, and I bet par late, it's very complicated.

Okay. Do the algorithms bet against you personally as the user or is it not quite at that level yet? It's not at that level, but there's nothing illegal about that. That's where it's going, right? Yeah. I mean so that's the question because a lot of these sports books get crap for cutting off gamblers. Well, the next iteration is you got worse odds. How to screw you. Right. So per state, there's that.

So Tennessee is the only state that decided that they want to mandate the percentage hold. So they're mandating how much the sports book needs to make, which means that they need to screw with the odds. Tennessee, every sportsbook in Tennessee, if you're licensed, you have to win 10% of the overall money. Why? Because it gets to taxes. But it's stupid because the odds are like they'll screw around, especially with parlays. Like your odds are much worse if you play in Tennessee. Why don't they just tax the bet? Because they don't want to do that.

They don't want to stop the betting activity. But they're doing that in a way. But anyway, like, yes, so that could be a thing. How come there's still some states, big states that held out, that are still holding out, won't make it legal? Religion. Yeah, if you think about – Like Massachusetts? If you think about – Massachusetts is there now.

But it took them a long time. No, Massachusetts is just political pork. But it took them a long time. No, Massachusetts is just political pork. It's pretty much California, Florida, which is all – Florida is about sovereign, tribal gaming relationships where it's like you have to physically be on tribal land. And then if it's mobile, is the fact that the servers are on tribal land. That's going to go all the way up to the Supreme Court. Oh, really?

Yeah, that's a big issue. What about Texas? Texas is, I think, kind of a religion thing. Yeah. And they only meet every other year. So you're either going to get it or not. So Texas will be like 2025. One in five U.S. adults, about 19%, say they have personally bet money on sports in some way in the last 12 months, according to Pew. Americans wagered $31.11 billion on sports in the first quarter of this year,

which was a record. By the way, it'll be a new record every year. Generating an all-time high of $2.79 billion in quarterly revenue, which is up 70% year-over-year. We were talking about Vegas. I mean, Nevada, people thought Nevada would be screwed. And it's not. It's up. I still think people enjoy, by the way, sitting at a sportsbook. But now we have, I just went to Wrigley Field and saw the DraftKings sportsbook there.

It's amazing. We thought that there'd be windows and kiosks. And what happened was it's not that because people want – the DraftKings wants you to bet on your phone so that they know it's you. If you're punching into the kiosk and it's not through any sort of player card or – they want to get you when you're not there. And so the whole idea of kiosks and windows at sporting events went by the wayside. There was something nice about going to the ticket counter,

handing them cash, getting, like, it's just a different feel. John, throw this up, sports betting activity. So this is as of June 22nd, 2023. There are 34 states plus DC where it's live legal betting. Four states are legal, but not yet operational. Is that Massachusetts? No, Massachusetts is up.

It's up now. Okay. Active, zero states with active legislation or ballot initiative. No legislation is like Wisconsin, North Dakota,

those that are never in Utah. So that's five states. And what does that mean? It's just never going to happen? Yes. And then seven is dead, which means they've had legislation and they've decided. And they're just not going to do it.

Yeah. But, I mean, we're literally at 50% of the population right now. Obviously, the fact that you have California and Texas and Florida, that's huge. But, yeah, I mean, everyone's going to come along eventually. Minus, I think, Wisconsin tribes and Utah and a couple other states. Let's go to this next one. This is showing the handle and the gross revenue. Darren, what's the difference between – this is by year.

Right. So the handle is what people actually bet. So it's the whole – What's on the line? It's the whole bet. It's the whole bet. Like I said, I had $750,000 a year. It's the whole bet. That's what they actually bet. So it's the whole, it's the whole bet. It's the whole bet. Like I said, I had 750,000 a year. It's the whole bet. That's what they're betting. The gross revenue is actually the revenue from the operators. So if you could see the, the hold percentage there is

like nine, you know, that's actually, so in 2023, it's 20, is that $27 billion. Right. And that's the handle. Gross revenue was 2.4. Normally a whole percentage. So, and then you go the year before, you'll see it's- Well, we only have one quarter in that. Dan, are there a few events that swing that number? Like if the house has a bad beat in the Super Bowl or something? So what happens is now we see, now we see like in Pennsylvania, when the Eagles lost the Super Bowl, it was the highest hold percentage ever.

So the books took almost 40% of the money, right? Because you have your local fans. And so that's the most wild thing we've ever seen. Now, Nevada has only lost two Super Bowls where they actually were, where the sports books were in the negative. But for the most part, that's the, that's the craziest thing that we now see where you have a team that is a local, a local team. Yeah.

A local team. You don't need the Raiders to make the Super Bowl. Correct. You need, well, you, well, you, right. But, but you need, right. But I'm saying like, it could be either could be either colossally bad or colossally good if you're a sportsbook in a town where the team makes the Super Bowl. You think bettors understand at this point that there's a rake built in? Yes.

Minus 120 like they know? Yes. Put this chart up, John. These are the publicly traded gambling app companies. So none of them have done particularly well in the last couple of years. Penn is among the most surprising to me. All right, so let's go through these one by one.

The purple is DraftKings. It's up about 26% since it looks like it came public. And the one that you don't have there is Flutter because it's on the English market. Use market cap, please. It's the same thing, just cleaner. All right, fine. It's on the English market. Use market cap, please. It's the same thing, just cleaner. Yeah. All right.

So here, all right, fine. Here's market cap. So Penn is a $3.7 billion company now. It is, let's see what else we have. That's Barstool. Yeah, but at Pete, that's 22. Caesars is 10. MGM.

Draft Kings is 12. Right. And MGM is 15. Right. And some of these have much bigger casino operations than the others. Some of them are in Macau. Some of them are not. But basically FanDuel, which is Flutter, is one.

DraftKings is two in America. Flutter is British? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Ladd Brooks and a couple others. Paddy Power. So it's FanDuel is one.

They have about 48% of the market share. DraftKings is at like 30 and then bet MGM is number three. Let's look at these drawdowns. Last, last chart on these. Uh, so Penn is the worst down 82%. That's basically a pure play on gambling. So what happened with Penn is that they made the case that they acquired Barstool so that they didn't have to pay high consumer acquisition costs because they said, oh, we have we have, which is a real issue. The problem is the stoolie is 26 years old and has a net worth all in of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. That means that once you bleed that dry, the guy's gone. Like it's not like, and, and I don't think they have, uh, they have benefited as their philosophy was that they were going to benefit from the editor.

I thought that was a reasonable bet. Do you think, forget about reasonable bet. Listen, they could, I think they could sell barstool for a billion dollars as a reasonable bet. Do you think, forget about hindsight. Reasonable bet. Listen, I think they could sell Barstool for a billion dollars. As a media company, it's great. Reasonable bet. I just think it didn't work out. But I would ask the counterfactual, which is what happens if Penn never got together with Barstool? How much money would they have spent to get to where they are now? They probably never would have been able to.

I never heard of it. Were they even on the map? It's like- No, they were on the map, but they were very quiet. Small horse tracks with slots? Yeah, all those horse tracks, yes. Right, so in other words, I understand the stock's in a drawdown,

but what would they have done otherwise? They might not have even been in the race. That's actually a good point. So then DraftKings is in a 63% drawdown, Caesars 57, and MGM is only down 13%, because to Josh's point, it's also got a huge hotel business. Right.

So I think the hotel businesses have been helpful because that is the best business in the world right now is tourism. True. And you could run a true loyalty program, right? You have a physical location that people can go to. And you have something to give people, hotel room points. Darren, were you at Michael Rubin's birthday party? I was not.

I only have 1.9 million Twitter followers. I don't think that was – I made the cut. I didn't realize this. Fanatics is valued at $31 billion. So it's a sports brand media company. They bought Topps. They bought Mitchell & Ness. They've raised – they're going to go public soon.

They raised $4.7 billion. A lot of it from SoftBank. I'm not trying to discount that, but, you know, Matoshi's son's – It all matters. Matoshi wants to be at the white party. He wants to be at the white party, and sometimes – Everybody wants to be at the white party. From being in the investing world, I would say that sometimes you have to look at who –

on your way to that valuation, who put in and what did they value it as? So by comparison, so again, $31 billion in the last round, which was in 2022, there was $700 million. Adidas, $33 billion. Not a good comp here, but Dix is 11. Under Armour is $3 billion and Foot Locker, again, not a good comp. But Fanatics is worth 10x Under Armour? Does that sound right? No. When you say it out loud?

No. They're like, they basically have the licensing so that they can do the- They have exclusive commerce? No, listen. They are very vertically integrated. So you order. They're the only ones who could print a swoosh on a jersey. Okay. So they're literally making it.

So their margins are tremendous they have no waste right like and and they're sending it out they have major economies of scale like it's a big business i buy this shit all the time yeah they're they're yeah they and then and then through collectibles and other things i think they have to do a little bit better as a brand, because what happens is if you're just transactional, people only think of it. So Darren, if I'm a major league baseball team, I'm not operating my own e-commerce anymore. They're doing it for me. That's the business. And they're often doing the in-stadium store too. And they do a great job.

That's for all five major sports, right? Yes, almost everything. What was Michael Rubin's major insight that this was the business? So, okay. So Michael Rubin came up with GSI Commerce in 1999 or 2000. And basically, his zigzag was amazing.

He must have been like 20 years old. This is what he did. This is what he did. So what he did was, when everyone everyone was saying we have a virtual warehouse, right? Like, hey, we run a website and we have a virtual warehouse. He goes, I'll buy all your shit. I'm not going to have a virtual warehouse. I'll have all the stuff and I'll get it a day faster than everyone else.

And he won all the jobs. And then he said, you know why I'm a genius? Because yeah, I'll have waste, but I want all the jobs. So it doesn't matter. Like I once saw he had 5,000 Jeremy Lynn dolls in a room after the next, after he was done with the next, yeah, Linsanity. And it's like, okay, right? Like this is the write-off room, but I have every deal. And that was kind of the insight. And then he used that to say, what happens if I do the deals where I never have any waste, where I do the deals, where I make the thing? You order it.

I make it. I ship it. And I think that's what's led to the leanness that people like. It's not even just in time inventory. It's almost made to order. Yes. Somebody wants a dunk. All he needs is blanks.

And then the key was getting the permission to actually make the Nike things. And now they're making on-field jerseys too. Does he have every major sport? Yes. Okay. They're all running into fanatics. He now needs to get for collectibles. He needs to get basketball.

Okay. Is anybody seriously competing with them anymore or it's a wrap? No, it's a monopoly. It's a complete monopoly. Because he's doing – he does it really well and that's it. That's a complete monopoly. I mean that seems like genius to me. They just bought PWCC, which is kind of like an auction company.

Okay. I have to take this call. Hold on. Hello? Hello? Nope. Okay. I have to take this call. Go ahead. Hello? No. Nope. Okay.

I'll let you know. Bye. So Foot Locker is only valued at $2.5 billion and Fanatics is probably come public at what? $40? It's hard to believe. Yeah. Right. And then you have to figure out, you know, how bad is it?

Is it worth it? What are the financials? Do we know yet? No, I don i don't think so no we don't know any of the financials um tell us about the sports memorabilia business i know you have uh you have a fun is it a fund what's my own fund like i've been offered i've been offered to run big funds um like first for like states for like for like you know for for like, you know, for, for big names that, you know, and the problem is like, I don't want that pressure, but I love to be a arbitrageur of, this is a very inefficient market meeting. There are sports, sports memorabilia, collectibles, sports memorabilia, memorabilia in general. There's a lot of things that come to the market

and there's a lot of things that come to the market in the wrong way. It's in the wrong auction house, which means it has the wrong database of people who are going to buy it. The people who would buy it are not showing up. They're not, it's the wrong auction house. The person who owned the piece brought it to the nearest auction house, not the one that's going to get them the best price. And I find out about it. Uh, the description is wrong or the description. So I have a piece in my bag here where it was a 1961 cavern club membership card, and they didn't write that this got you into Beatles concert number one. Yeah. Okay. So I buy it for $500. Once I slab it, it's worth 50,000. So a lot of the things that I'm buying instantaneously are worth more because I know the story and I can get around it by like,

you think about like AI and AI learning, like this is something that like, I don't even think AI can get. Cause you have to know a little bit about everything. Uh, you're a generalist. Like most people don't know the cavern club was in Liverpool and it's where the Beatles got their start. And there's no short sellers in that market. Well, yeah. I mean,

not yet. Are there other guys, are there other guys like you that you bump into? Yeah, they do. Listen. So I, I identify markets and,

and kind of figure out. So tickets. So PSA, which grades cards all of a sudden said, we're grading tickets and i'm like wait a second cards are kind of like at least modern cards are false scarcity we're making 10 of these we're making 50s tickets it's like where were you going to put your ticket besides the fridge and the bulletin board they didn't have sheets to put them in so i over the course of uh

i put like 300 grand in the tickets and I shut up. I didn't say anything. I was like, okay, what's the top 100 tickets that I need to get? And I'm going to be very quiet. And then once I get 90 percent of them, I'm going to scream and I'm going to say – Tickets are the next big thing. Yeah, tickets are the next big thing. These are unbelievable.

Get Gary Vee excited about it. Yeah, but no, no, no, no, no. I really believe it because I've only sold 1 percent of my stuff. Like I'm, I'm not a pumper and then dumper. I'm a pumper. And I believe in my, in the markets that I go into. Okay. I, so I have a shoe box full of every concert ticket I've ever been to. I have no idea if they have any value, but to me, everyone's like once every three years, I'll like lift the top and say, so you should put them in slabs so you can send them to PSA. They'll slab them. I told a friend, he's like, listen, I have 300 fish tickets.

What should I do? I go, you should get them all graded. You should go to a fish concert. You should put them in shoeboxes. They'll be gone in two seconds. So I moved from sports tickets to political tickets to I'm at concert tickets. The problem is like for the concerts you went to, it's not always.

So I own the only ticket to the first time Michael Jackson did the moonwalk. Was that Motown? 1983 Motown 25. Good for you. Barry Gordy. I know a couple of things. What about movie tickets?

Like the first Godfather. Movie tickets, it needs to be either the premiere night. Like Wizard of Oz? The premiere. Yeah, like the premiere. Like I have a Top Gun premiere, like a special. So movie tickets, it has to be the premiere opening week. Because it's less scarcity, right?

You could sell five million movie tickets. You're not going to sell five million tickets to one Bruce Springsteen show. Right, right, right, right. Okay. So then I go and I think about people. So who do I want to collect? So it's – for me, it's – and it could be whoever you want, but like you just got to get the best of the best. So like if you collect Billy Joel, which I do, you have to find the ticket in Leningrad when he threw over the piano because he was so pissed because no – so I got a backstage pass from that.

It's – the keys to living this market are absolute obsession. Like I have a, like anyone in their space, who's good at what they're doing in terms of investing, you know, I'm obsessed with it. I have a sheet. I know when all the auctions are sometimes auctions are during the day, sometimes like, but, but there's enough things that happen where, and then you just have to decide when to make your massive, massive bets. So, like, I bought the rudder that Buzz Aldrin used to steer the command module to the moon. Oh, my God.

But it was in a Hollywood costume auction, and it was legit, and NASA had no rights to it, and I actually sold it 24 hours later to someone who didn't know was there it was there, made a quick buck. That's rare. So my biggest piece that I bet on was I bought the vest from Ferris Bueller. The leopard print vest? Yes.

Cheetah print? It's not leopard print. What is it? You think it is. It's just a – it's some lines and whatever. But this is the work I did. So let me give you a deep dive. Becomes available.

The auction house says this guy got it from John Hughes who is the director. He writes a letter. So that's good there. I called the prop master from Ferris Bueller. I got her number because I DMed her. She's 71. She's on Instagram. Her name is Marilyn Vance. I said, Marilyn, I DM'd her. She's 71. She's on Instagram. Her name's Marilyn Vance.

I said, Marilyn, I might bid on this. Can you look at this? What do I have to look for? She goes, there's only one, which to me is I'll only buy a movie costume, but there's only one. There's usually 15, which has ruined the movie costumes because you don't ever know if it's. She goes, there's only one. I bought a sweater and cut it as a vest. I bought it at marshall field she gave me all these specific things she goes if you want to win it win it and then show me a picture and i'll deny it if like if

it's not what it is so i win it it was 155 000 it was not cheap you it up, and it has all these Xs, which is where they're making sure that doesn't hem or where it doesn't fray because it's now become a vest. Yeah. And I FaceTimed her. She showed me, and I go, okay, now you write me a letter. So now I have the vest. It says this vest now owned by Darren Rebell. What's my cut? Is the only one.

Oh, I gave her $2,500. But the letter is worth another $150,000. Right. Right? Because that firms up that this is the one and only. So we were talking about that before. The provenance is the thing. Yeah.

The authenticity. The chain of custody. How do you – and now what's happening more is photo matching. So like on a game use thing, was there a threat? So there was – it is crazy the the the jersey that kobe where he popped the jersey yeah there was two threads on it that matched what someone had someone bought it as a kobe game use and then later found out that it was that pop bought it for you know 40 000 there were two threads one on threads, one on the four, one on the bottom

of the two that matches up to the high res pictures. And then you sell that for 3 million bucks and you have the picture with it. Yeah. And you say it is matched by photo is matched by my gray. And this is, you know, so hold on. So it's not just, so it's not just the authenticity. You're building in the story of the item. It's a story. And you have a level of pop culture awareness that maybe more nonchalant collectors would never have. But then you're also like hunting down supporting evidence that this thing is the thing. And then I'll wait till the anniversary to talk about it. So like I told the world I had Ferris Bueller's best on June 5th, 1985, which is Ferris's actual day off. Okay.

Which we know because Claude O. Washington had a pop-up in the 10th inning of a 4-3 game on June 5th, 1985. Is the amount of fake shit out there becoming a smaller percentage of the overall market or is it still bad? No, there's plenty of fake stuff. I mean, you have to do – You ever get scammed? Once in a ticket, actually. So the- You'll never see that guy again. I got, you know, a European ticket. He sold me a fake hand of God to a Maradona hand of God ticket. And what's great is the market, you know, flushed it out. I said, here's my hand of God ticket.

I got DMs saying, why are the numbers, you know, one, one of the numbers is darker than the other. That doesn't seem right. And you know, then I said, then I said to the guy, no, I didn't know what it is. What this is. So this is my obligation. So if I'm on eBay and I get you right, like you don't know what something is. The example is like the, uh, UCLA, uh, Washington football game on November 12th 12 1955 guy was selling all these ucla tickets from 1955 he must have wondered why the washington game went for 480 dollars and everyone else went for 10 that's the game in back to the future 2 where biff knew the ending okay in the car okay so so that's why i wanted it okay if I'm my eBay handle, which I'm not going to tell anyone,

but people know because they put it out, it's fair game. I could do whatever I want. If I'm Darren Revell and I'm buying something or selling something, I must give fair market value. It's now my brand. And so that's how it works. Once I say I have this ticket, I am as much of a buyer as I am a steward for the industry. So I now have to fix. So not only did I say to the guy, I, I, I need to return it. And he understood, like, I could really screw him if he said, no, I then say to PSA, you graded this it's fake. We have to take it out of the population. Yeah. And I've had that.

Because you benefit if there's trust in this space. Correct, correct. You lose if people say it's all fake shit. Yeah, it's all fake, yes. And I need to say this is fake, and I need to be, I need to say, hey, you know what? I'm really concerned about these 1958 World Cup tickets. How are they so perfect? There was a bunch of – that's Pele's first World Cup.

There was like 300 of them that were pristine. I need to say that. I need to tell the marketplace that because if I don't, someone else will. The sports memorabilia market was estimated at about $26 billion in 2022. Is that transactions or is that just what people are holding? That's probably transactions. Probably just what's changed. It's much bigger than that.

What are the commissions like in that market? So this is an interesting thing. So normally it's the buyer has to pay a buyer premium of in between 15% and 23%. Wow. Okay. And then the seller is usually at 10 so that they're if they're consigning it to the auction house it seems good but there's been so much competition it's almost

like the uh the sports agent industry where it's like yeah you got the number one player congratulations what do you get of his salary point right it's the same thing if golden auctions is competing with pwcc and they're competing with PWCC and they're competing with SCP and they're competing with Heritage, like eventually like when it gets to me, I say I'm going to market the hell out of this. I'm going to say it's in your auction, and I'm like – I'm getting less than zero. Like I'm getting a negative percentage. So like a lot of the great pieces, they write it off as a marketing thing. It's branding. It's branding. It's branding.

I was watching The King of Collectibles and Ken Golden said like, I'm not letting this guy leave without it. And even if he doesn't make a dollar, it's still good for his brand. Ken probably did, Golden probably did 450 million gross. And then I would say they got a blended average of commissions of about 7% or 8%. So $30 million. What do you think about the funds that are operating in the memorabilia market? Is it really early or are there some like established investment products in the space that you actually look at and say those guys –

I was an advisor for one of these funds and they didn't – they got so excited. They didn't want to listen to me. What do you mean by that? They wanted to buy a lot of stuff? I said don't go into baseball cards. Don't have – like you got to be really focused on these things. So what happened? They raised money.

They felt they had to buy everything? Yes, and they also felt that they needed to have a fund to buy individual pieces. The fractional business went down the drain. Killed. Special purpose vehicle to buy one thing. But the problem with that, and I've done some SPVs to buy one thing, but the part with the fractional-

You mean something like Rally Road? Yeah. Okay. Rally's the best of them, but collectible and a couple others, there's no liquidity. The market doesn't move. So if I want to the best of them, but collectible and a couple others, there's no liquidity. The market doesn't move. So if I want to get out of it, there's not a daily market that will let me

flush this thing out. And that became a massive problem. If I have a bid and an ask and they're sitting up there for days, that's not a market. It's not a liquid market. Is that dead forever? that you can't, that's not a market. It's not a liquid market. Is that, is that dead forever? I think so. People ask me, it's like, why do you go into these niches? You know, cards are so much better. Yes. Cards are more liquid, but I don't want to be in a market where yesterday something sold for $500. Cause I'm going to sell it for five Oh five. I want to be in a market where a ticket hasn't sold for three years. There's 11 guys who want it and name my price. Like I go to the national sports collectors convention. It'll be

in Chicago in July. And I basically have a sign saying nothing's for sale. And I I'm the King Puba. And if you want it, I had nine Disney signatures and a guy's like, I got to get it. He's like, I can't leave. He's like, would you do a deal? And I'm like, no get it he's like i can't leave he's like would you do a deal and i'm like no and he's like okay i'll buy it like that that's the position oh will you negotiate and you're like this is what i think it's worth or i'll just go home with it or i'll keep it or i'll keep it and because you don't need the liquidity correct hey how do taxes work with all this shit bad i mean you know there's there's a 21 collectible. Even if it's long-term? 21%. Well, the long-term, you do need to pay attention

to whether you're selling it long-term. And for me, most of the time, I am long-term because I'm not a flipper. That's the problem with flippers. That's not dissimilar from stocks. If you sell it internationally, is it the same? Do you owe a tax there?

I haven't really I'll let you call your accountant and get back to us you want to show us some stuff? sure too much stuff so this is if you're listening to the show you might want to visit YouTube

later and get your eyes on some of this stuff holy moly this is one of three tickets to Jackie Robinson stealing home in later and get your eyes on some of this stuff. Holy moly. Yeah. Okay. This is one of three tickets to Jackie Robinson stealing home in game one of the 1955 World Series. It's a kind of nice one. Sorry. Sorry.

One of three full tickets, a full ticket. And I just love this. This is like part of the story. Imagine it's game one of the World Series. You're in Yankee Stadium. It's enemy territory. And you steal home in the World Series. Who the does that yeah so i love that one uh this is kobe bryant's credential uh to uh the olympics in beijing what camera do you want him holding he's up to guys was that the

redeem team this one this one right no this is the i was 08 is 08 2012 yeah 2012 was yeah so this is this is 08 this is the one item I will not sell. Mike's a big Kobe guy. Yeah, I will not sell. Yeah, so the Kobe story with me was that Kobe. Darren, we have some pictures of this, which John is going to put on. Do you have this?

John's going to put these on screen while you tell this story. I love this. Yeah, so Kobe. This is from Darren Revell's Instagram. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Kobe, for a long time, I would interview him like once a year. And one time towards the end of his career, he said, hey, I'm looking to invest more.

What do you think? What should we go into? I gave him a specific – so I have a food and beverage VC called Tastemaker Capital. It's only food and beverage because that's what I know. I love being in supermarkets. Everything's before your eyes. Once you talk about tech with me, I don't know what you're doing in your basement. Supermarkets, pretty much what you see is what you get.

If you go to trade publications, you can get back six months. But for me, it's very transparent. So I told them, I go, I go, beef jerky is crazy. There's this artisan beef jerky called Crave. They're looking for the last $8 million. It's 10% valued at $80 million. Company's doing $29 million in revenue. It's less than a 3x multiple.

I think you should get in. He's like, what do I get? Because I'm Kobe. I said, well, they know you have $8 million cash. They're only looking for one person. So they're allowing you to get in. And I'm telling you, they're going to sell soon. We had a meeting in LA.

He had a financial advisor at the time. Guy didn't like the deal. It sold for five months later. It sold for $291 million to Hershey. And I'm like, you make $23 million in the NBA. You could have made like $23 million in six months on this. He's like, all right, next investment. I'm not listening to my financial guy anymore. Listen to you. Next investment. I'll put up to $10 million into whatever you say. And, uh, it was six months

later and Mike Rapoli had gone from vitamin water to start body armor. And I said, this doesn't taste this great right now you're going with the horse here you're gonna put money betting on mike micropoli yeah six million in return 444 million i put in slightly less unfortunately uh but but uh and and that and that was you know and and we did it and then from there i'm like got to do this myself too because it's just not – You probably had a moment there where you're like, wait a minute. This is the thing that I do. Yeah.

Yeah. So with Kobe, that's – He was – like obviously everyone understands, super smart guy. Very smart. Never went to sleep. I would say knew that he was going to die early. Really? He behaved like he was always running out of time.

Like he was in a rush to accomplish things? Okay. What was he concerned with when he looked at deals with you? He loves going. So Kobe and J.J. Watt, who is a partner of mine now, they're both the same. They like to shot. So when Magic Johnson went into a room, he would shake hands and people are like, oh, that's Magic Johnson. Both Colby and JJ want to shock you with how much they know about a company and how much they know about general business.

So they're the same way. Colby would ask questions where people would be like – they might not even be ready for a question if you're the founder or the CEO. Like as a basketball player, I think about this. How do you think about your competition? And it was – I kind of felt sorry for some of these guys because he came in and people thought he was going to sit there. People are like, oh, the athlete's here. So that was amazing.

Yeah. So that was really amazing. Okay. Yeah. So – And you work with JJ now? Yes. Is he much the same way?

Yeah, so. And you work with JJ now? Yes, yes. Is he much the same way? JJ's an investor in, I brought him into athletic brewing, which might be a better Xer than Body Armor. Okay. Which is, you know, just a crazy, again, contrarian things about, you know, 2018, I'm looking at non-alcoholic beer.

Yeah. And people automatically dismiss non-alcoholic beer because of O'Doul's. It sucks. It sucks. They don't bother to look at what's happening in Europe. In Ireland, 8% of beer volume is non-alcoholic beer. In Ireland, in Germany, 7%. How is that possible?

Because they have 50 to 100 craft non-alcoholic beers that taste good. They're making stuff that's good. So everyone's saying, well, it's all about the stigma. No, it's not. It's that there's not something that replaces what's in your hand. So and everything followed, like the behavior that made sense, which is like I'm a 45-year-old guy. It's Sunday.

It's 7 o'clock. I'm watching Sunday Night Football. I have two real beers, right? I have two full-strength beers. I know I got to wake up at 6am on Monday. Am I, am I going to have another six? No, I want something that feels the same. And like, I don't need another example though, of an arbitrage opportunity, where you see that there's quality coming into a market and people, people haven't thought through the fact that there will actually be demand for it. So they were raising it around $20 million. They were having trouble raising.

And what happened is they were a great non-alcoholic beer. And all of a sudden, people my age started doing it. And then people in their 30s started saying, we want less alcohol. And it wasn't just dry January know, dry January. And, you know, they're, I think they're going to sell for north of a billion dollars. It's also, it's, it's also an example of when you, when you invest in something, always think about who you're exiting to. I know it sounds like, of course, but like, that's why you don't start an ice cream business. It's going to be Unilever and one other. Well, no, the stock market, you're just thinking about the crowd. In a private business, you have to have some idea. If this is not going public, are there a lot of other companies that would take this off our hands?

And with non-alcoholic, you have to remember that Dr. Pepper, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, I mean PepsiCo, they could all invest in that. So anyway, so Colby, yeah. So I'm trying to think. Okay, so. Digging deep. He's at Carrot Top. He's got like all his props. He's got all his props.

So another, so I wanted to, so I loved checks. So checks to me, until I came along, sound like such a prick, until I came along, the only reason why people collected checks was because they felt really good about the signature. It's not fake. Who'd, who'd fake a check. But for me, I looked at a check and one time I looked at a check and it changed my, so, so at the national, like seven years ago, guys selling Bart Giamatti checks, the former commissioner of baseball.

I'm going through it. I'm going through it. And one says Chicago Cubs, eight, eight, 88. Now I'm a freak. And I know that eight, eight, 88 is the first night game. So this is Peter. You,

the memo said Peter you brought seats. So the four, this is, this is to pay the Chicago Cubs for the former commissioners, night game tickets. And I'm like, Oh my God, I should collect checks where there are stories.

Who would have bought those seats? What do you mean? Who like, oh my god, I should collect checks where there are stories. Who would have bought those seats? What do you mean? Baseball was paying to buy Peter Yubroff seats for Peter Yubroff from the Cubs. Oh, okay. It was like box seats for like $42.27. Okay. So then I'm like, okay, I'm going to try to collect checks that have stories. So this is Cole Porter paying for the penthouse at the Waldorf Astoria the year it opened.

Cole Porter stayed in the penthouse and went down to play. Show that check to that camera. Sorry, who was Cole Porter? I'll ask. Anything goes. A silly famous. Is this the 1930s? I wasn't born until the 1920s.

Can you hold it back a little closer to your eye? Yeah, Mike wasn't born yet in the 30s. In the 31. Right. Wow, that's incredible. Look at the handwriting on that, too. It's art. And it's for $2,175 monthly rent.

I mean, this is- He was living in the Waldorf. Yes. What's that today? A lot. $2,175. So the other ones that I have in here, it's going to take me forever to, but I have Denzel Washington paying for his Lakers courtside

seats. I have Joe Montana paying for his sophomore year apartment at Notre Dame. How'd you get the Denzel one? Like, how does that even, how does it not? Okay. So that, that, that's a question I always get. So for anyone listening to the show, who's under 30, the way it used to work with, with checks is that you'd write a check. It would go to that person's bank. That person would cash. It would be sent back to your bank and they'd send it back to you with a lot of these famous people. It's going into a big like envelope at their agents. And so I think most of these things got out because other people were holding it, should have been shredded, of course. Their business manager, their lawyer.

Maybe someone sold a boatload of them. So I have, so that's how I have the Denzel. Has anybody tried to buy their shit back from you? No. The only thing that's happened is once I say on eBay- OJ wants you to stop that. So I don't know. Once I say on eBay who I am, because you have to send it to me, they go, oh, did I screw up? Because they're selling something to you. Because they're selling something to him. They know that they sold something cheap and there's only one time where someone flaked on me. someone flaked on me i bought a 1948 1947 boston university uh press pass yeah uh for a football game and uh i thought i had it now i don't talk unless i get it i don't talk about it anymore

okay uh and i said i i bought it's ben scully's first broadcast ever talked about it someone i bought it for like $7. And then the person took it back and then sold it for $3,000 under Vin Scully's first game ever. Oh, man. So they didn't know what they had. Yes. Then you're the buyer.

And then they're like, oh, we have something here. So other checks, I have Amelia Earhart paying for nose surgery. I have Babe Ruth paying for the equivalent of $16,000 in alcohol. He used to drink a 750-milliliter bottle of vodka the night before every game. As one does. As one does. Yeah, when your body is – Well, Hernandez did that during the game.

Yeah, exactly. Maybe that's better. So I have that. I actually went back to the Park Avenue Circle Liquor Store on like 38th and Madison. And I was like, do you have records back to – I would like to see what he actually bought. Park Avenue Liquors? Uh-huh. Yeah.

It's on Madison now. Madison, yeah. 38th and Madison. Why? Was that where Babe Ruth was buying his – Yes, at Park Avenue Liquors. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Okay. I'm trying to think of – What's your favorite – I know it's hard to – So I sold my favorite check because I got offered 15X and I said, I got to let it go. Okay. My favorite check is a great money check. So there was a mobster in Boston, Charles Solomon, who was Al Capone's right-hand man in Boston.

was Al Capone's right-hand man in Boston. And on October 28th, 1929, the day before the main, there was a bunch of crashes, but the main crash, right? Yeah, the Stockbrook crash. He took $25,000 out of the bank. And as people know, there was runs on banks and they actually ran out of money. So the fact that you had a mobster who was taking physical money out of a bank the day before is just a great like at least it's like what did he know? Who wanted that so badly from you? So he was – so Rick Probstein is an Orthodox Jew and he's a collector. And Charles Solomon is a Jewish – one of the famous Jewish mobsters. I was going to say not Italian. Right. OK. And so that's a Jewish, one of the most famous Jewish mobsters. I was going to say, not Italian. Right.

Okay. And so he's like, I got to have that check. I'm like, not for sale, not for sale. Until the point where I was like 15x, and I was like, all right, I've told the story. I'll tell the story one more time, and then I'll let it go. But Darren, also, no one else is buying that but this guy. Right, that's true. And that had to have factored into your decision.

At least at that price. You have Warren Buffett's high school yearbook? I have Warren Buffett's high school yearbook. I also own the largest Warren Buffett signature in the world. Largest? Yes, I would bring it here, but I think it's worth,

I think someone will pay millions. Well, let me ask you. What are they signed? It's on a bed of 18 uncut, uncirculated dollar bills. Wow. It is. He signed a sheet of uncutut, uncirculated dollar bills. Wow. He signed a sheet of uncut dollar bills? It is two feet long.

That's millions. I have been offered $1.7 million. Now, I did turn it down. So let me just tell you the story of how this happened. Hopefully, Warren isn't listening and signed something bigger now. So like, I'm going to get Warren to sign it bigger. So it was in a sports auction. And I bought it for $ it bigger right uh so it was in a sports auction and i bought it for 7500 why was it in a sports auction this is why it was in a sports auction i believe the person who consigned it had 18 other things and said i just want to consign it

but at that point i said this is going to be the greatest arbitrage of my life and the reason why i said that was i thought about I thought about the movie Dodgeball where White Goodman says, that's me holding a bull by the horn. Literally. Literally. Literally. And so I thought about everyone in Wall Street and how many people who would say,

that's the largest Warren Buffett signature in the world. And for someone who had money, it would not matter. many people who would say that's the largest warren buffett signature in the world and for someone who had money it didn't matter it would not matter and so if it got into a competitive bidding situation it'd be millions and it's so it's it's two feet the signature is two feet long do you like a warehouse where he's 92 now so 93 on august 1st i don't think you sell i don't think you sell that right now. Right. Until he dies.

And, but then, okay. But then there's a thing. It's like, then you sell it when he dies. Then there's a negative to that. no later or later or later.

On his hundredth birthday. Yeah. You can't do it like a week later. Right. You know, you cannot do that. Warren Buffett's hundredth birthday. You ask where I keep things.

I have a series of places just like artwork. Um, the, the, I have a series of places just like artwork. The place where most of this stuff is is actually in Newark, New Jersey, believe it or not. There's billions and billions of dollars worth of art these things. So I have to have an Excel. I have to have insurance on all this. I have to have an Excel spreadsheet. I have to know what's where, when I want to physically have it, when I want to have pictures of it. Like it's, it's not a small operation and it is, and it's not just fun. You're like self-custodying to some extent. Like you're a clearing and custody operation. You diversify your custodians. He is the custodian. He was just saying that

just to... So do you ever think that you would do this professionally for other people? Is that like a frontier that you don't want to cross into? It depends on what the terms are. The people that offer...

The terms are they call people that offer them so they call you every day no no that's fine okay i got offered uh three million dollars to run a year to run a fund a sports memorabilia fund or a memorabilia fund that i could not talk about what i bought okay to me that was death yeah death. Yeah. Cause you, I'm out too excited about this. That's, that's the joy of it. So I'm out at some point, like I'm fine with the pressure of the doing the SPV and the food and beverage stuff. Um, I'm wondering if this, if I would take out, if we would take out the joy of, of this. Probably. Yeah. I feel like it's your hobby. And I can make enough money myself.

I don't need to be like, I can make, there's enough advantage for me in this myself. You know? But it's like the love of your life, though. I do do an SPV. So I did an SPV once, which was this ridiculous opportunity.

Totally wrong auction house. So I own the second most important Martin Luther King document that exists. The first is the, I have a dream speech, which is owned by George Raveling of Nike, who was a security guard, took it probably worth $35 million. Um, the warden at the Birmingham jail, when he wrote letter from a Birmingham jail, which is, if you read it, it is more poignant and more touching and insane than I Have a Dream, but it's not a speech. Most of the I Have a Dream speech was improvised anyway. Right. The I Have a Dream certainly was.

Yeah. Right. And – So the letter you have – He said I Have a Dream before that, a couple weeks before that. So I have him signing – so the Birmingham – the letter from the Birmingham jail was cobbled together. Him and Ralph Abernathy, his right-hand man, they were passing notes to the outside. And so when he left the Birmingham jail, he had this – they had this note.

So I have the warden's logbooks where he's signing in and out of his mail 12 times, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King. And it's just such a – it's just so mind-blowing. And because the in and out, the mail part of it – so I didn't know how much it was going to cost, but I knew I had to win it. It was a small auction house, and so I got a group of people together. And it's always hard because you're like, when are you going to sell it? There's a responsibility with all these people that you really, what's the vote? And so it's

hard to do that type of stuff. Can you buy them out? You just be like, look, I know you want to get out. I don't. I could. I think we share the similar, you know, like I convince people this is the best to get out. How'd you get into the cocktail game?

We gotta end with kickstand cocktails. Hey, guys, in the freezer, just bring the whole bin. So this is exciting. Grab me a funnel. And bring Michael his funnel. So this is exciting. The canned cocktail business is on fire, obviously. I would have thought it would have petered out

like a couple of summers ago. People just like the idea of people. It did just start. It's people just love the vessel that it's in. And the consistency. It's the same every time. Let me ask you a question. So I got pitched one of these recently,

and I just thought, first of all, I don't know anything about the space. It's just going to get dominated by the biggest players. Are there room for independent brands? Yes, if you have enough differentiation. So for me, I was never going to get into the cocktail space. I was at Beauty in Essex, New York City, and I had a jalapeno cucumber drink. Okay?

I think I had that drink. Yeah. Yeah. I loved it. The second one was no good. I went down to the bartender. I said, are you the same bartender who gave me this? Yes. I go, what's the problem? He goes, it's the jalapeno. I can't tell you whether it's spicy or not. I'm like, oh, different jalapenos

have different Scoville units. I get it. I'm like, you don't like cutting up jalapenos. So the first word, or you said consistency. Every woman is putting a jalapeno in their margarita, but they don't know whether it's a spicy one or not. It's roulette. Can I create a brand whose chief differentiator is spice, offering you mild, medium, and hot, and allow that to be the differentiator? And every time you click the can open,

you know what you're getting. But why vodka instead of tequila? So vodka is the start because vodka is the lower calorie. It's 105 calories. Tequila is like 135. And it enables me to – you don't taste the vodka. And I love doing that. We are doing tequila next.

But like vodka, I love. So how hot is hot? Hold on. Let's get into this. By the way, the cans are beautiful. Which one do you want me to drink? Black and a sea white. I'd like you to drink the pineapple, actually.

Okay, so this is called charred pineapple poblano. So I like to use, in order to be differentiated, I love the fact of using an adjective, right? Charred. Charred has never been on a can before. Cheers, bitch. Is Duncan, are you allowed to drink this? Probably, but I'd need to add it.

So you're going to get a real pineapple, not a fake pineapple, and then you're going to get a real pineapple, not a fake pineapple, and then you're going to get the spice on the back end that will hit you in the back. I feel the spice. That will cause this cycle of, ooh, now let me drink more spice. Wait, hold on, hold on. This is really good. It's not sweet at all, but I taste pineapple.

It's not sweet, but this is a complex cocktail that if Beauty in Essex poured this and put a little fruit on it, you'd be like, wow, this is a $15 cocktail at a bar. So I had a couple – I had to do – I had to make the spice what it was. But it also had to be – all these cocktails are overly sweetened. Do you know why the eight-pack has been like the prevalent – it's like you can only drink two black cherries and then you have to go on to two mangoes and then you have to go on. You can drink 11 of these because it gets you to a net zero. Once you swallow, you're, we're talking about like, there's no aftertaste. It's not lingering. I don't like, I don't taste what I take, like no disrespect to

any of the brands out there. High noon is a fake pineapple. I don't like White Claw because of what lingers after. Yeah, the malt. I love High Noon. The White Claws are undrinkable. White Claw is hard for me. And I know people love it. It's just like, I can't have more than one of those. So you said how hot is hot. Well, let me bring you

I'll bring you... So this is called the medium one. Yeah. Here's another medium. I only have one here. This is no big deal. not spicy okay it's great you wanted to you want to try wait what's the abv of this five and a half percent abv 105 calories three grams of carbs no added sugar gluten-free and kosher so perfect so what you're gonna get hold on what you're gonna get there is you're gonna get a dry peach not Snapple peach. It'll hit you in the tongue and then one, two, three, four, five, hit you in the back of the throat.

It's great. So it gives you a bourbon burn with a vodka. Sorry, do not cut that. Do not cut that separately. We're not cutting anything. And it's going to hit you in the back of the throat now.

I love it. Wait, so are they all five and a half? Yes. But even this, it's not just, I mean, it's drinkable. It's not spicy. It's not too spicy. It's not, I'm not, if I did a jack even this, it's not just – What is that comparable to? It's not spicy. It's not too spicy.

I'm not – Right, you're not trying to kill somebody. If I did a jackass cocktail, that's not in my best interest. No, what is five and a half comparable to? That's like a – Pineapple is about five, so it's a higher beer. It's like a little bit higher beer. Sort of like a high IPA.

No, high IPA is eight. Seven and a half. Yeah. Yeah, you have to stay under six because in order to get into supermarkets across the country in states that allow supermarkets, you got to hit it there. All right. What are the other flavors? So here, you should try it. You want to try a raspberry?

Let me have one of these. So again, that's really light. This is wonderful. You like it, right? I love it. Where do you sell these? So here's the strategy. You cannot go wide.

You have to go deep. So I picked the states I'm going into. I have always said that. Tell us why that's important with this. Because you're going up against all the big guys. So you got to build a fan base somewhere. If you do not have a market manager in that market, you're dead. I agree with that. If you do not have someone who is in a supermarket or who walks in, who talks to people, you actually will die and lose all your money. You don't have any people go into a market and then go, oh, just let the broker do it. No, no. You need an $80,000 employee who you give benefits to and has some equity.

So I went into Tennessee. I liked Nashville. We got a market manager there. I hired a guy from Red Bull. We went into Arizona. I loved Arizona. I knew I can. The raspberries. Raspberry. That's good. Okay, go on. So, so I got someone in Arizona.

So I only went into Tennessee, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and my investors are going to me, but, but we're in New York and New Jersey. I go, I'm sorry. I know part of it is like, you want to tell people, this is my drink. I got it. But my idea, yeah, my idea. And so we're DTC. So we're in 35 states direct to consumer on our website.

You can get it in New York. But are you DTF? No. What's that? It's kickstands, kickstandcocktails.com. Oh, I got it. Thank you. That wasn't part of my month.

Kickstandcocktails.com is the, okay. So you can sell it to anybody. If you're not, if you're not in New York physically, can I still order it? You can order it online. Yeah. So we can do it online. But in other words, you got to get into, you have to get deep into these markets. So we're entering, we'll be in Florida in January. We're going to enter Illinois, but we're going to do it. We're going to do it slow. And in some area, like in the biggest store in Nashville, we are going head to head with high noon. Yeah. Because, and you have to do that. You have to have wins and you have to be eventually say, we beat high noon in the biggest store in Nashville. Right. Otherwise you're just in no man's land. Is the spice is, so I love it. Is the spice element, the thing that's going

to enable you to beat high noon or hold you back because not everybody is into a spicy cocktail. So, so what, what, of course, what, what I would say is we have the highest try to buy ratio in the entire alcohol business, which means that 90% of my marketing is sampling. People get scared because all this, I'm like coconut water. You try a bad coconut water in Whole Foods, you're never going into that category. You will never drink another coconut water. A lot of people go, oh, spice.

I'm scared. I don't like spicy food. I don't like spicy drinks. And then the person's drinking the peach and she goes, that's my favorite. It's delicious. So the spice is really, I don't like to say this, but like the spice is really, I don't like to say this, but like the spices really,

it provides a complexity. When you drink other drinks, it starts out the same as it ends. Oh, this is a mango. It's flat. These actually like grow on you, right? Like it's a different experience if you're drinking the peach and the, so like, what's the biggest demograph? Like, what's the, who are the people? there's 62 million Hispanics in this country. That's growing. They're going to be 35%, 40% of this country. But we're about 60, 40 women to men. Holy shit.

Again, because – and people are like, oh, well, it looks a little bit masculine. That's kind of like for this, it's kind of like I need to be black in a sea of white. Everyone's white. Smart. You look at my like I need to be black in a sea of white. Everyone's white. Smart. You look at my – I need to be differentiated every single turn. It is crazy, as you said, to be in this business. You got to be crazy. I think I can win because I'm black in a sea of white.

I stand for spice. I'm giving it the best shot, and we're really doing well. Do you have any celebrities or people like that in mind? So our, our investors are JJ watt, TJ watt, um, Brad Keselowski,

Eddie George has been amazing for us in Ohio. Cause we're in Ohio, Ohio. And when we brought him to Ohio state, oh my God. And by the way, real time, big money investors,

they are not like, I'll throw it to you this way. How was raising money? It was easy to raise money the first time because I raised too little. What I didn't realize is some of these canned cocktails are raising $30 million, $40 million on $2.5 million, $3 million in revenue. Yeah. And it's like they're taking one – Oh, like honestly, like two months ago.

And it's like they're taking one – oh, like honestly, like two months ago. Like – and so I rate – our first raise was 2.3 million, and now we're getting orders of 250,000, 300,000. And so it's like – and in order to achieve – this is a volume business. You need to achieve economies of scale. So we need to order 500,000 boxes at one time. You know, so like I raised too little, but the fact that we have the trajectory that we do makes it easier as long as your valuation makes sense, right? Like that's the thing you can say like, oh, like it's, it's based on retail sales valuation. So like body armor gets 8 billion cause they're 1 billion in,

in retail sales. Okay. What are they like? Like it's not EBITDA. It's not like what, what, what are they? Their net profit is probably $175 million on that. But that's not what it is. So it's based on retail sales. You need to have, you know, realistic retail sales. And I think you can raise money if you make sense. Okay. That, that, that's, and I think a lot of people don't make sense. They, they are putting in their decks. Do you want money from like consumer product companies or, or so my first, so I put, so this is the way I did it. The first, the first time I put, so I put in all – it was only my money. So I put in only my money.

I built the product and I had it in a state before I said I want to just go to Friends. You funded it with that check you sold. I funded it by basically saying I'm not selling you an idea. I'm selling to Friends. So I got to say like this is good. I built this thing. Then I basically sold it to just friends. And, you know, I think there's obviously a greater, my wife is always like, why would you do the friends thing? Like, it seems like there's a

greater responsibility. It's like, well, because people know that I live this and like, it's going to be fun when we make it. You have to have the entrepreneurial. She's like, Darren, we're not going to be able to go out to dinner with them anymore. Exactly. This doesn't work. Well, that actually happened with Bitcoin people. I couldn't go out to dinner with people who are deep into Bitcoin because it was like – I still won't.

Your aunt who was selling Herbalife. I'm like, I can't go out with that guy. I can't listen to that shit anymore. Yeah, it's like you're telling me exactly when the halving cycles are. But if you know exactly when, everyone knows exactly when. And like where in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations did we say this is so – everything is predictable. But you got friends involved. I got friends involved.

And it's working. But now it's to the point where I probably would want – we are raising again. And I probably want either a little institutional money or someone who – like gallo who as long as i don't give up too much upside right that's that's the other issue now because then they come in and they they say if you're at this in sales it unlocks this option for us to buy it at x right okay and so that's that's always a consideration well dude i'm i'm proud of you yeah thank you this is the i haven't tasted it before i know you you sent a few to a friend of mine. Yeah.

And I've been looking forward to trying these. I absolutely love them. Thank you. When do you think you will be in New York? Five years or two years? No, no, no, no, no. Probably six to eight months. Okay.

All right. So it's in the works. Yeah. All right. Well done. Hey, we're going to wrap the show. Did you have fun today? Yeah, this was great.

Yeah? Yeah. All right. Love you guys. Happy to be 100. Thanks, man.? Yeah, this was great. Yeah? Yeah. All right. Love you guys. Happy to be 100. Thanks, man. Do I get a shirt or a certificate? 100% you do.

This is the part of the show where we leave people with a favorite, something you're watching, listening to, reading, anything that you think the audience should check out. And we'll start with you if you have something in mind. Threads? Let's get into it. How popular are you on Threads so far? Are you like –

No, I got like 8,000 followers. No, it's – Am I beating you? Probably. No, I don't think so. You're good at this stuff. No, no, no. I just – just don't dismiss it.

Just go into it for a couple days. I can't believe how many people are like doubt. I think Elon gave Zuckerberg the window to, to do things here. I think, you know, what they did with Instagram stories and how they shot down Snapchat, like immediately by copying them, killed them, killed them, killed them. Uh, I, I, I think you, hold on. You think that most people doubt this? Cause I'm having the right, right. Well, right now there's a lot, a lot of people who say, ah, there's no chronological time. My news people are saying no chronological timeline.

That's annoying. They'll have it. No, they'll have it in a second. There's not hundreds of people working on this. Journalists love Twitter, though, in general. Of course, they do. By the way, how many employees from Twitter did they poach over the last six months? Well, they didn't poach.

They were lying on the floor and they picked them up. But, yeah, like, you know, I think there's just what there was in the last 24 hours was just a lot of momentum on just people thinking that there's a nice platform that people are rooting for each other. I grabbed one of your threads. You threaded? Is that what we're calling it? He threaded? He stitched. So Darren stitched.

Time it took to reach 10 million users. Facebook, 852 days. reach 10 million users. Facebook, 852 days. Twitter, 780. Instagram, 355. Clubhouse,

347. Google Plus, 16. And Threads, seven hours. Seven hours to 10 million. And people go, well,

that's because they have the Instagram. I'm like, yeah, they do. That's what they do. Is that your best thread? Is that your best threaded? Oh,

he tweeted that too. I tweeted it too. Okay. I grabbed it from Threads. I was worried Elon was going to kick me off. So here's the smart things that Zuckerberg did. If you were verified on Instagram, you're automatically verified on Genius. Meanwhile, Elon went the other way, which said anyone could be verified as long as you're paid.

So now trolls are verified. So now it means nothing. It means nothing, and it actually means less. It's actually are verified. So now it means nothing. It means nothing and it actually means less. It's actually worse. It's a bigger red flag. Right. He turned the blue check

into like either this guy's a loser who's paying for Twitter or this guy's not who they say they are. It's crazy. Like either way, it's not good.

Okay, so I thought they did that really well. The other thing is, I mean, this could change. People are on their best behavior today on threads because like the first day of school.

Everyone's wearing their nicest shit. Right, right. That they're modeling out for them. I did block someone already. But also, your friends and family are there because they're there on Instagram. Right, right. So the built-in audience. Correct.

That social graph. It breeds what Instagram has bred, which is the feel good, we're all together, let's boost you up versus Twitter, which is let's punch you in the face. And no one knows who I am. I'm going to be the biggest fucking fire-breathing dragon I could be. Right. And nobody I know in the real world is going to see me behaving like this. This is not that. So it might become that.

I haven't said that's true. That's a good point. So those are the two things. But I'm into it. I haven't said that. That's true. That's a good point. So those are the two things. But I'm into it. I'm seeing what happens. It's been a while since I've been on one of these things, to be honest. I've been on Instagram the whole time, but I haven't tweeted in three years. But it's hard to recreate the magic.

I know that. It's hard to recreate the magic of social media. It's just – it's not the same. I found that out on vacation when I saw you. I didn't know you hadn't tweeted. Yeah, I just – I left Memorial Day weekend during COVID and I never came back.

I probably put up like 10 tweets since then. So, but I'll give this a shot. Michael, you got a favorite for us today? Yeah, King of Collectibles. It was fun. It's like, it's like a modern porn star.

It is fun. Yeah, and the guy who directed it, the producer, did porn stars. Oh, yeah? That's why it looked like it. Oh, you did a good job. It was fun.

I don't like saying pawn. Pawn Stars. As a Long Island guy, I do not like saying pawn because people think it's pawn. Pawn Stars. Dude, I f***ing said Pawn Stars. No, I know you said the right thing. Pawn Hub.

Pawn Hub. I wanted to give a shout out to that pizza place we went to last week. Was that last week or was it the week before? Oh, that was good. How good was that? Don McKellie? Oh. Am I saying it right?

Yeah, Don McKellie is the famous place in Naples. So they opened in Manhattan. I went to it in Naples. Horrible. Not good. Not good. Why? Too touristy?

No, Americans make better pizza. I don't like this non-sodium cheese. I like, you know, like... Bro, go to the one here. It's Liddy. And the pasta was good. The pasta was better than the pizza. So Dama Kelly in Naples,

you get five pizzas for $10. The $2 pizza. Oh my God. And you wait an hour and a half. And I went to Naples just for that. Oh, the $2 pizza. And you wait an hour and a half. And I went to Naples just for that. You must be disappointed. Anyway, the one in Manhattan I think opened in January.

We got over there last week for the first time. I thought it was really good. I want to go back already. Alright, Duncan, do we have anything we need to do for our 100th anniversary or are we good to roll out? I think we're good. Can you believe we've done this 100 times? Hard to believe. John? Just getting started. Huh?

So you guys have been here the entire time. Has Nicole been here for all hundred shows? Pretty close? I think she probably wandered. Probably right in the 20s. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, on behalf of the listeners and on behalf of Michael and I,

I just want to say thank you. John, Duncan, Nicole, recently Rob, Tucker, thanks for all your work this summer. Sean, I know you're out there listening. Thank you. Michael and I don't make the show by ourselves. I know you guys know that. All of you have done an amazing job bringing this thing to life and we're

crushing it and it's because of your hard work. So thank you so much. Darren Revell, ladies and gentlemen. Darren, thanks for coming in. Really appreciate it. And all right, guys, that's it for us this week. Hope everybody has a great weekend. Do the liking and the subscribing and all this stuff. Where do people get this?

Kickstandcocktails.com. Come on now. That was good. That was like acapella. Look at that. Kickstandcocktails.com. All right. Hey, that might be, you might have something there.

All right. Thanks, Darren. Talk to you guys soon. Bye. Oh, man. All right. So that was like a, you might have something there. All right. Thanks, Darren. Talk to you guys soon. Bye. All right. So that was like a little bit of a warmup. We just want to kind of get the cobwebs out. Wait, I got to show you all my shit now.