The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Hour 2: The Skipper & Samson Hour

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Meadowlark Media CEO John Skipper and Nothing Personal's David Samson are back with another episode! Let’s start things off gambling! The boom keeps booming. The NFL has laid down the law again about players getting caught gambling. Teams are adding sportsbooks to stadiums. The Chicago Cubs are opening a sportsbook right outside Wrigley Field. And things will not slow down. Is showing Red Sox vs Yankees on Sunday nights still good? Good for networks? Good for baseball? The Utah Jazz are starting its own media company with rights to all Jazz games. Is this the future of sports TV? Where is Utah going to get the lost revenue? F1 teams are now worth a whole lot of money. Or are they? Is Netflix Drive to Survive bump something real? Is Netflix ready for live events? Are sports coming to the king of the stream? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. This is the Dunlabel Tarshall with the Stugat's Podcast. You are all lucky enough to have another hour with John Skipper who is bringing me along for the ride We've got so many business sports business topics to get to John Skipper the chairman of Metalark media David Samson on the host of nothing personal with David Samson and John I don't want to waste a minute because we have a book show and I want to get right into gambling if you're even willing to talk about gambling. I bet I would be.

Did you rehearse that? That was not part of her. No, that was a, that was a, in Promptu, that was just a quick verbal parlay. I never dreamt that gambling would take over the way it has. When we were doing our projections and we were going out three, five, 10 years, it was basically told to us,

we're never gonna associate with online gambling, we're never gonna allow any association with anything other than Native American casinos, and that's only with a special meeting with Major League Baseball with permission, and there was a limit to the amount of money you could take from the casinos. And now it has gone haywire.

Gambling and fantasy have taken over sports. They're taking over TV to the point where now it can be argued that that stream of revenue is the biggest, there is in the entire sporting revenue landscape. And I wonder whether or not it concerns you, because I think about it every day, what is going to happen to the competitive integrity where there are rules about players and gambling,

but we're surrounded by it now. I too am startled by how quickly it's been taken up. I remember being at ESPN and we got criticized just for publishing the lines on the games. And now far from criticizing, publishing the lines on the games, you have multiple shows talking about what people think about those lines and what they would bet and what they would do.

So yeah, it's startling to me how fast it happened. I don't know that it gives me great pause that the integrity of the game is going to be at risk before it was legal and before it was widespread. There were instances of people who did gamble, who did, who did, uh, break the rules and did do things. Uh, there will be people who will break the rules, but I don't know that fear for the integrity of the games. The way we were taught is that we didn't want the players gambling because we felt

like the Black Sox scandal that if a player would start gambling, there would be a chance that the player would lose money. And then there'd be a chance that the player would owe money to someone who instead of breaking a kneecap would say, fix this game and then we'll call it even. And my view of the new way of gambling is you have to put money into an account to start with.

So it's almost guarantees that people don't go bankrupt. They may lose all their money, but they can't lose more than what they have. So I'm wondering whether or not that's why we're willing to embrace it, because it's not on credit with in theory the mafia it's with regular public companies

well we've normalized it right i mean people who said they wouldn't do it the commissioners of most of the major leagues said that uh... gambling would never be uh... you made legal or be allowed and they've embraced it braced it now because uh... it's money i I always love to startle you, David, with a with a half-aluten quote. So I'm going to tell you what Jonathan Swift said about rules, rules and pie crusts are made to be broken. And some people are going to break those rules no matter what rules they set up. And yes, I don't worry about

the integrity of the game. That doesn't mean that won't be some cheating. Right? We've had referee scandals. You mentioned the black socks. Pete Rose is still not in the Hall of Fame because he bet on his own team. So there are going to be people who break those rules. Well, the NFL right now, there is a rumor of a player who may have lost $8 million gambling. I'm not sure how it works with online. Can you put $8 million in your online account or keep replenishing it? I guess if it's attached to your checking account or savings account and you're making that kind of money, it reminds me when Michael Jordan

would gamble and people thought it was outrageous what he would bet per hole in golf and I would spend time talking to people about the math that him betting 25,000 dollars a hole with his net worth is the equivalent of you betting to not you John of course, but someone betting $2 a hole which no one would bet an eye. So it's all relative, but there are players who are gambling. The NFL is actually on a mission to reeducate their players on the rules, One of which is, don't give anyone inside information. One of which is, don't bet on the NFL.

Don't play dally fantasy. And they're re, and don't, you can't bet. This is so interesting to me. You're not allowed to bet when you're at work. Can you, can you think people at Metal Arc or Meteor are betting while they're at work? Are you talking about practice? You're not about practice.

It's not just a little. No, I'll ask you. You can't gamble while you're practicing. That is their rule. That if you're at your facility or you're traveling to a road game, you cannot bet. And I guess the theory is that you may have access

to information on injuries or on other things. But I think the first rule that you may have access to information on injuries or on other things. But I think the first rule is don't bet on the NFL. And the second rule is don't violate the first rule. I don't know why you need different locations. I don't know if Roger Gidell, can you ask him why that is a necessary rule that you can't bet at work. Look, I think of course they proverbially won't their cake and eat it too, right? They believe that betting is good for the sport.

It increases the amount of time spent on it and they're gonna try as hard as they can to prevent people from violating those policies, but we know how that works. There's sports books at stadiums now rigley field just opened it's beautiful looks like vegas and rigley and in in new york there's gonna be a sports book at met life the washington commanders have won the cardinals have one

i wonder whether players think that they can go to this their own sports book that's against the rules but with the proliferation of online gambling, can you imagine like a player in full padding going up right before the game and just placing a quick bet? It's funny. Well, it's funny.

I think it's funny. It sounds like a situation comedy, but clearly putting those sportsbooks in the stadiums is an endorsement that this is a good activity. It's a fun activity. It's entertaining. A few people will abuse it. And we hope that no one will walk up the staircase in their uniform and cleats and put a bed on the game at halftime. Do you think teams have a culpability in any way or leagues or broadcasters

in terms of the sickness. Do you think that the little lettering at the bottom of 1-800 gamblers is that enough to teams need to worry about it? I always felt when we sold a beer that I never really cared and I'm wondering if I regret how I acted by over serving people. People want to buy beer to ballgame. I want them to buy as much beer as possible. I wonder if there's a limit in the sports books

that teams need to do. I don't really sure I understand that. Things usually need to be somewhat self-regulated. I don't see how you would do that. A lot of it's cash. And yeah, there has to be some level of people understanding that some number of people are going to end up in trouble.

Somebody lost $8 million. Now, he probably can afford it. I'm assuming it's a man since it's in the NFL, but there will be people who lose $8 million and that's all they have. And are people responsible for it? I mean, no, the little wording at the bottom of a beer can or a cigarette pack or a gambling ad

is ultimately pretty meaningless. It seems like anything that's fun is gonna have a waiver. Even commercials, do you watch the pharmaceutical commercials now where the last 35 seconds of the commercials are all the things that can go wrong? If you take this medicine that all the happy people in the commercial are taking that has made their life so good, but you can die of maggots, you know, in your armpits or something. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Have you ever seen that? Yeah, I always wonder how much that guy makes who can speak that many words in that short period of time. Is that a good way to make a living? You know, it's regulated. There's actually a limit to how fast you can go through it. It has to be a certain percentage of the commercial

the caveats and the provisos. I learn something every time I do this show with you. I find it to be insane because if I want to cure my my eczema, I'm not as worried about the fact that I could get diarrhea, but we're going to hear about it. So all these gambling things are happening. They have not identified the player who lost 8 million. Before we leave this topic, does it matter to you if the guy who lost 8 million makes 8 million or makes 58 million? Do you feel a different responsibility

if a player goes bankrupt or an employee of yours would go bankrupt? Yes, you said it before. It's the same as Michael Jordan betting $25,000. I don't feel bad at Michael Jordan betting $25,000. I don't feel bad that Michael Jordan lost $25,000. If it's the guy from the convenience store, next to the golf course, who lost $25,000, which is what he makes a year, yeah,

I feel worse about that. But it's stewards of your company or of the game. How much responsibility do we have? I do think you ultimately have to let adults make their own decisions about what they do, and you do that to provide help for people who can't control their desires. But one of the things you did as Chairman and President

of ESPN is you would tell people what they wanted to see, and that is my way of telling you that I'm still angry over the fact that all you cared about was showing Red Sox Yankees. It's not exactly the perfect transition, Koka, I grant you. But here's how I want to do this. There is a Alex Korra as the manager for the Red Sox and he came out and finally said it's enough.

He's sick and tired of the Red Sox and Yankees playing on Sunday night baseball. And I've never heard a manager talk that way. If my manager did, I'd have to go down to the clubhouse and tell him to take it back because we don't want to upset big bad ESPN. But you didn't care about 28 teams. You only cared about the Red Sox and Yankees. Why is that?

Because when we put the Red Sox and Yankees on, more people watched than any other pairing. Almost no matter how good they were, whether they were in the pinnacle race or not, people care about the red socks in the Yankees, but it's not good. It doesn't grow the game. Didn't you care when you have a national deal? Don't you want other teams and other players to be highlighted? Yes. And in fact, of course, we're doing the same thing there that the teams are doing

with their putting sportsbooks in, right? We can't help ourselves at wanting to get bigger ratings and have more money. And very few people look beyond the current season. You don't see ratings estimates for the last five or 10 years. You see, was it up over last year, or down over last year? That's all people care about. But no, you're right, David. It would be better. There were teams that appeared in the world series, maybe yours, that had never been on national television before. That would be the Marlins. Yes, that would be the Marlins, which meant that nobody in certain parts of the country had even had a chance to memorize who was in the lineup of those teams. It never seen them play before. It's bad for the sport. Yeah, there should be,

and we did, in the contract we did with baseball, we did make the decision one year to put every team on at least once. How did that work out for you? Rating's probably went down and we probably didn't expect to put more Red Sox Yankees games on. You know, it's like everything. It's a very tough argument that happens in owner's meetings because the Red Sox and Yankees, they don't love it either. They don't want to be, the players don't want to plan Sunday nights because of travel. That's the night that they generally get to go home after an afternoon game, be with

their family for Sunday dinner. They don't like the idea of getting in late to the next city if there's a road team that's fine home or a home team that's going on the road for a Monday game. They don't like getting in late. The Red Soxie Yankees would often complain to baseball. And the irony is that we would complain also. So we were all aligned, big market, small market, and the only people who didn't agree with us were you. I think what we should have done

as we should have suggested that salaries were variable. If you played more on Sunday night baseball, you got your full salary. And if you did more play on Sunday night baseball, one to be home with your family, you would get fined. I mean, people liked the big checks, right? If you get players and said, okay, great.

You're going to make more money if you play on Sunday night. Do you want to go home now or do you want to stay in play? What would they do? So the irony is that baseball is the only sport where you can't make that argument because there's no salary cap that's tied to industry revenue. Easy to do that in football and in basketball. No, no, it's just a hypothetical example to suggest that when you get paid that much money,

it usually comes with some things you don't love. Yeah, we had players actually who disagree with you. They would, they would argue when we wanted to move, here's a funny one, you wouldn't ESPN and the broadcast partners, when we talked about making the season shorter You were very supportive didn't matter to you as long as the post season Stayed the way it was and maybe even grew but the players Would not agree to it because they wanted their 162 game paycheck for a hundred and fifty four games and the teams who were losing Four home games because when you go one sixty two to one fifty four eight fewer games. That the teams who were losing four home games, because when you go 162 to 154, eight fewer games, that's four fewer home games. Teams like the

Yankees or the San Francisco Giants would object during the meeting and say, no, unless you make us whole for four sellouts, where teams like the Marlins and the Guardians or whoever else would say, great, four fewer home games to be embarrassed with our attendance. But ESPN was always happy to accommodate except when it came to matchups. And you were unwavering. You were approached every year with games and with matchups.

And we had a beg you to show the World Series Champions the next year or to show an opening of a ballpark, like Marlon's Park. We begged the ESPN and do you do, I don't know if you remember what you did, where were you in 2012? 2012 on January 1st, I became the president of ESPN. So that means on April of 2012, do you think you may have been at Marlon's Park? Is that the first game? The first ever game. Yes, I was there. I love that.

Yes, you are. Absolutely. That's all the fountain go off. Yes, the home run sculpture. And we spoke, but back then you would sort of maybe like now barely want to acknowledge my existence because we were just an annoyance to you. However, what you did that night, we opened a ballpark against the Singles Cardinals and you had us on ESPN 2.

That's a fine place to be. ESPN 2 distributed at that point in 95 million homes and by the way, let me be clear that that night was the night that my admiration and respect for you began to grow. I can't even imagine how full of it you are, but the ESPN ESPN 2 I can't even imagine how full of it you are. But the ESPN ESPN too, your argument to baseball, he was, hey, it's 90 to 95 million homes. But within the meetings our argument back is, we will not be treated like a second class citizen.

And the commissioner's office would be instructed by owners to get the games on main ESPN. And then he'd have to report back to us that you wouldn't do it, and that we were, we were sacrificing the national deal and the distributions per team and then all of a sudden the owner said, all right, fine, ESPN 2. Look, it, it's, what is it the, it said in succession, money with ends, money with business. Yeah, money with that.

Yeah, money with that. Right. Because, Because you would look at the economics and economics were that if ESPN2 got to parity in terms of distribution, it would never get the same ratings. It just wouldn't. It was incomprehensible to me. It was channel 35, channel 36. A game on channel 35 would do a million. Yeah, a game on channel 36 would do 850,000.

So we looked at that calculation and thought we got to put better games on that channel. So we keep getting our distribution fees and that money was more important than the differential in ad revenue based on the ratings. So it was math money wins. Did that have to do? Do you think with people who program in favorite channels and they merely go up and down on their favorite channels and ESPN would be one, but ESPN too would not.

I think it's just habit, right? It's just habit and people sitting on a big lazy boy chair and they drank a slits beer and they cut it on to the, they cut it on to ESPN. That's what they did then. The world is very different now, but yeah, people had habits and you could move eight hundred and fifty thousand of the people over to the other channel, but for some reason,

150,000 people in this country couldn't figure out how to get from channel 35 to 36. There were no people who had ESPN2 without having ESPN, correct? Correct. Well, so Alex Cora is gonna get a speaking to. Would you call baseball about that quote? If Alex Cora said what he said, you just would ignore it. No, it's just, no, it's just, look,

it's just noise. The decisions aren't made by the managers of the league, as you know. And why would you waste good relationships and get unhappy? There are people who manage things that do that all the time, but it was not my habit to do that. Alex Korra has the right to his opinion. Let me ask you a question. He winner lose the game. He's mad about playing. That's a good question. I bet you don't know. By the way, to go back to our early, we're a sports book, but close by here, I would go get a parlay, manager complaints and wins and losses. I will put those two together and I bet you had win every time. You probably played it when you win, but you're forgetting logistics. If there

were plain delays or anything like that or whether, oh, the red socks, thank you, Koka. The red socks swept the Yankees. They won that Sunday night game. Good memory, Koka. A good, good job, Matt, and it proves me wrong. And it just proves he was gloating rather than complaining. I think you just lost your annual bonus, Coco. That said, I appreciate the fact that you just proved John wrong. Hello, someone, listen. I need help.

I'm in Barcelona, and the creatures are everywhere. If you listen to me, you'll see. Listen to what you hear. You're not going to be able a la ice. Escucheis lo que escuchéis, tapados los ojos. La calle llevamos todos a cieras, pero lo más aterradores no saberán que confiar. Uy de las personas que os piden que mireis. Si queréis seguir convido. Birdbox Barcelona. Estreno en Netflix el 14 de julio.

Te atreves a ver. Slicks the 14th of July. You dare to know. Don Lebatard! If I'm at the house with them and they're all rooting, I could just be like, yeah, rah, rah, rah, go Yankees. Stugats! You know, unsettling would be if I attended a live sporting event and someone behind me was just going, rah, rah! Roads! Browns!

Rah, he's... Rah, rah, rah! This is the Don Lebatard Show with the Stugat! So, trying to replace TV money is a obsession for the leagues right now. We've covered on previous episodes the end of the regional sports network model. We've covered the fact that subscribers are going down, people are wanting to pay for what they want to consume and What we're now seeing our teams who are trying to adjust to this new reality and it came out just this week that the Utah jazz and the new owner of the jazz

Is starting their own media company called scg media and this media company is going to have the rights to all jazz games And they're gonna give the rights to an over- over the air channel in Utah and they're going to start a paid streaming app for jazz games. This is the future happening right now. Are you concerned that not just cable TV is finished, but networks like ESPN are gonna have a hard time going forward because Teams are now going to be replacing revenue and realizing they can do it all on their own Well first I can't quite get past Seg media and just wondering whether they hired a branding agency to help them figure out S.E.G. Media is that somebody's initials? I would certainly assume so.

Okay, SIG media. I think they're in a bit of denial. The future is the streaming. The future is not local broadcast. And they have no way to make up that money on local broadcast that they were getting as a regional sports network. Eventually, I think that you will end up

with national streaming services, that make all games available to all people. It's the most natural thing to do I think that over time sports will figure out how to make their revenues keep going up. I do not think it is because of local broadcast right now I think there's a bit of a spin cycle going on where everybody wants to celebrate that now these games are once again free. They're only free because the people who are paying the big checks don't want to pay them. They're not free because suddenly everybody stopped and went, wait, what do we better for the fans?

We'd be better for the fans for the jazz to be on Fox mid, whatever it is, Fox Southwest, or will it be, or did they just decide since we didn't get our check We better free out a way to get the games on well Ryan Smith is the new owner of the jazz and he started this Smith Entertainment group for the purpose of and the major PR of it is that hey We had a problem here in Utah. We're not everybody had access to our games So look at us and and the new son's owner ishp try this, but isn't a lawsuit now with the cable company. But they're saying now everybody can have it. That's been their PR spin and my concern is that there's no path to profitability.

And profitability, to me, is defined as can we make more money by doing it this new way than we were the old way. And I do not understand how we are ever gonna get there. I think that something will be figured out, but I think this is a way station without any refreshment or gas or oil that the teams are stopping at on the way to trying to figure out a better way

to continue to drive up their revenues. And they don't really have a lot of choices yet. And I also think the splitting of, oh, you folks are gonna watch the game on linear TV, you folks are gonna watch it streaming, so we're gonna make it available on two different platforms. It needs to be easier than that. They just confuses people as to where the game is.

And by the way, you already answered my question about SAG. It's the Smith Entertainment Group. Yes, I actually worked it in, hoping that you would just see that I did that and not go back to the fact that neither one of us knew what it stood for. And we needed Coke at a say to my ear, but the way I worked it in, I thought was quite professional

until you just called it out. And I was thinking about SAG and about what they're doing. I was thinking about what they just announced in Washington, monumental sports network. This is what the owner of the Wizards is doing. He's trying to buy the nationals, would like to include the nationals, and he's got the capitals already,

and it's all going free and behind a paywall for streaming. So it sounds like the contradiction it is. It's going free and behind the paywall. There's nothing free. It's great PR to say it's free. It's like a buy one. Do you ever do a ever see a bogo buy one get one free? Everyone thinks they're getting a great deal. Or you go to the store in New York City which says going out of business sale, everything's 40% off. And you realize that that sign's been up there for four years, and what you do is you increase the price.

We would do that with tickets, is that we would do a buy one get one, but we would make sure that we price the tickets in a way that the average ticket price is where we needed it to be. So, Calvin Trill, that's what they're doing. Yeah. Calvin Trillin had this concept of what he called NAMM, NAMM. So I'll create an acronym which is now available money,

which is you know, I almost bought that $600 suit, but then I decided not to. So now I have $600 of money to spend on something else. It's the butt for money, the money with the hole, the hole in your pocket. It's what, it stores you, there's a whole science to this. It, the impulse buys when you're at stores. And now they're starting it online.

So this is a very, this is a side note that we didn't talk about, but I'm gonna mention it if you don't mind. It used to be when you went to brick and mortar stores, when you waited online to check out, you had a pass through a gauntlet of impulse buys. And they were high revenue, high margin items that you didn't know you needed, but you buy them anyway. Do you know what I'm referring to?

Yeah, I think it's called, in an airport, it's called duty free. Yes, where you have to walk through duty free on your way to the gate. What they're doing now with online shopping is before you check out, they actually say to you, what about this? People who buy that also buy this. Have you seen that if you do your online shopping? I have seen that.

It doesn't persuade me very much that other people say things me also about something outside I don't want, but maybe it works. I assume it does work. So you've never pressed the button. You've never, you've saying that you never do the impulse buy. Oh no, I do. Yes, I do. It is. I don't let my personal habits influence my opinions, my public opinions. I'm not asking you to tech tell me what you do in the privacy of your own online shopping.

I'm asking you to help me understand that what the online companies are doing to make money because it's not necessarily profitable, is they need people and that's what the teams are doing. They need people to buy the streaming service. The split now is what you think they're replacing 25% of their revenue? At most? With the local, yeah, it's at most at 25.

And I get your point, you're dead right. There's the other going to replace another 10 or 15 cents with the streaming service. And it's 40 cents instead of 25, and that's better. And that's how they're going to cobble it together. Yeah, and I think they will figure out how to cobble it together, but I do think ultimately it's the, the, Huzanas around all the games are now available for free. Maybe a lovely thing. I don't think it's going to replace their evidence. Well, it turns out that TV, online shopping, all the things we're talking about, an article came out this week about

F1 teams and F1 team valuations and the fact that valuations are skyrocketing. F1 was looking at the possibility of expanding the grid and having more than 10 teams and the expansion fee and F1 is almost MLB-like. They're looking for half a billion dollars to a billion dollars to have someone enter into the world of F1 is almost MLB like. They're looking for half a billion dollars to a billion dollars to have someone enter into the world of F1. And I was sort of interested to talk to you about this because I had a pretty strong opinion on whether or not the F1 valuations are fantasy and based on Netflix's drive to survive, which has been a huge impetus of the increased popularity of F1, but I assume that's going to level off and going to be stuck with the assets of F1, which are not, don't seem to me to be worth as much money as they're saying it is. I actually think F1 right now would be wise to continue to have a scarcity of teams, right? It's scarcity generally tends to drive up value.

I don't think that having more cars on the racetrack would make it a better sport, but it's gonna be exactly right back to what you talked about with G, you're not going to the game if you don't put all the team zone, you're taking the easy money now rather than trying to build harder money in the future. People almost always take the easy money now and try to figure out what is the right thing to do

for long term. I do think the F1 current owners are trying to think about, is it really a good idea? Because it will mean money in their pockets, right? When a new team comes in, they pay a big fee, it goes to them. So they're in exactly the same position. Do I want to get this money right now? So I try to make my cars a little better. So I have a better chance to win, but I may be stick with the formula we got to try to do better under this formula. And for the long term, good of the sport. I just don't know to be on the formula. I don't believe the formula they have is so great, but for Drive to survive F1 trailed NASCAR by a mile and I think they still trail NASCAR by a mile. So, trail NASCAR by a mile, the F1 races now do about 1.2 million, that's what they did last

year. They'll be up again this year. They have momentum, which of course is a good thing for racing momentum and the NASCAR on an average race does a little over three million. So NASCAR is two and a third times bigger the audience is two and third times bigger than F1 NASCAR's about got to be concerned. Was there an upstart sports network like an FS1? that was not really big, but it concerns you because it had a chance to be big or was your view, hey, we're the behemoth, and I'm

talking about comparing the SPAN to NASCAR here, actually, because I wonder how concerned NASCAR is about F1, because they certainly never used to be. No, I think they're probably quite concerned, right? I mean, F1 has a lot of buzz, has a lot of glamour. The events are huge. Though the NASCAR events are huge too. I think they had 300,000 people this year at one race. But F1 is big. I'm going to actually make a point that Matt made to us. So I think he deserves a little credit, which is you got to kind of look at, F1 is a bit of a social media phenomenon, right? It's a social media phenomenon. It's a phenomenon on the coast.

You know, it's a phenomenon in Miami. It's a phenomenon in Austin, Texas. And NASCAR is a phenomenon in, you know, in Florence, South Carolina, in Birmingham, Alabama, and I guess it's Telodega and Daytona, right? So you also have, you have this sort of funny thing where F1 gets all of the attention, succession gets all of the attention, but NASCAR and Yellowstone got a lot more people watching. We've just started doing these shows, John. So I'll do this a little off the record

and Koka, you can decide whether you want to keep this in the show, but one of my rules on nothing personal, Koka doesn't get credit for anything he gives to us, Prisha. That's an absolute violation. He and I prepare for nothing personal for hours every day and he's never gotten one ounce of credit for one thing that he's taught me. So what you just did is a total violation.

That was supposed to be your thought on this show that Yellowstone out draws succession and make the whole Red State Blue State. So I don't know if we can go back and do it. I want for the next time it to be your idea. Do you do your out for no? Okay. All right, I got it.

So succession, you brought up the succession Yellowstone concept. And the Red State state, NASCAR, we weren't prepared to talk about this, but it occurs to me and we're gonna be okay. NASCAR had to make some decisions that were anti-red state decisions. The Confederate flag, that issue from last year, or willing our companies to make decisions

that they know are not in the best interest of their business, but they need to do for PR purposes. Is there an example you can think of better than the NASCAR Confederate Flagship? Well, is it PR? Is it exactly doing what is good for the sport in the long run to try to move it to a broader audience and also to do the right thing. So, I think it requires a bit of courage and it also requires a little bit of, I'm prepared to take a little of a financial downfall off of this.

I don't know that they did, by the way. I think they have done a few very smart things like the bubble. While us coming in, they're trying to get more minority drivers, they're trying to get female drivers. They took the flag down. Less time, I checked, I didn't see any swastikers flying in Germany. So it seems like a pretty good idea. It took them a while. And so what happened to them a while because they're fan bases over, I mean, the Southern, right? The sport I grew up in North Carolina. That's where the sport started.

That's where Bill France consolidated all the tracks, the same with Vince McMahon, consolidated all the wrestling circuits into a single league cognizant scar and they were overwhelmingly in the South. They raced in Talladega in Daytona and Charlotte, most of the drivers grew up in North Carolina until very recently it was really who Jimmy Johnson? Or no, I'm trying to think.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no So Netflix does this drive to survive, which has changed the facts.

Drive to survive is meant for blue state people to engage with F1, to engage with even think about like in NASCAR. And do you think the copycat programming that we're seeing, you've got the tennis is doing it, golf is doing it, Coca told us that the PBR did a made for television series for Amazon. What was your view when people walked into your office with Copycat programming? How willing were you when something worked to just do it again and again, and how much did you have to be proven that it wasn't working for you to stop the Copycat? Well, it's a natural reaction, right, In any business, right? If McDonald's starts putting, you know,

French fries on the burger underneath the bun and McDonald's will probably come out with the same thing. So it's a common occurrence in business. The courage is to actually try the new thing. So it was courageous for Netflix to put a driver to survive on and courageous to put spend the money to make it. Doing the next one is easy decision, doing the third one's an easy decision. The hard decision is whether the seventh or eighth or the ninth is where you go too many, right? And so yeah, everybody, everybody's in the copycat business and it's

good business until it's not. But as you're, as a studio executive, you're making that decision, the way I would make it when we were looking at different business models or different revenue streams as an industry or a team, is we look to see whether on their own, not as an offshoot. So could this be a standalone business? And if the numbers were just the numbers for that business, would we keep supporting it? So we would have to compare, we wouldn't compare, what's it called, full swing?

Coke, I can't remember the tennis one, and I watched it. It's full metal racket. Whatever it is, it's about the tennis players. And we would look at that as a standalone TV show, not as an offshoot or a sequel to Drive to Survive. Is that how you did it, too? That you needed to show. Yeah, I think that's it.

Well, there's two ways to compare, right? One is you compare. I think it's full swing, but I'm not good to be wrong. Break points. Break points are tennis one. So break point, the, the issue is it's not going to be better than drive to survive, but is it better than the next program available that may not be a copycat, right? I mean, that's, that's the answer.

And I think the answer there, I think they made the right answer. The, I like the golf one a little bit better than the tennis one. I like the F one better than either of the other two, but it doesn't mean only they know because they don't release ratings, but it appears that at least two out of three work and probably the third one work better than something else. So you could about that would have done worse. They publicized the golf publicized that the cameras were rolling when the PGA live merger, maybe it's not a merger now, maybe it is a merger, we don't know what to call yet because no one has said it, go listen to our hour last week for an in-depth discussion on what happened with PGA and live, but they publicized the fact that the cameras were rolling for the season of whatever the golf f-, whatever that show is full swing. Yeah.

Which is unreal when that happens. But now it'll be a year. It's not gonna come out for a year. One of the issues I had with these shows like Drive to Survive. If you watch the race, why do you need to watch Drive to Survive because you know exactly what happened

because you watch the race? Well, it's not really about love sports. It's a script. It's a unscripted reality show, right? In which because they're doing it after the fact they can construct storylines. They can make heroes and villains and have cliffhangers and drama and it's a reality show. It's not a love sports show. And I think it's just starting as a matter of, because with the writer's strike that's going on, you're seeing more and more unscripted shows, more and more games shows and reality shows. And people are now sort of conflating

what is a unscripted reality show versus what is a live event. Netflix is doing this. They're coming out with this challenge. They're doing something with celebrities, and they get to say that they're doing live events now. And the leagues are loving it. Broadcast partners and networks must be despondent beyond repair. But leagues are loving that Netflix may be in the live event space. They are going to be a competitor to ESPN and to Disney. Do you not think? going to be a competitor to ESPN and to Disney. Do you not think?

I don't think only evidence of one stunt live of sports event that I don't think anybody thinks as much as it's steak and there's no season, there's no championship. They may do okay because it'll be cheap to do. It really is a marketing stunt, right, to promote their other programming. But we in one competition, you don't want competition. So of course that's gonna be your point of view, isn't it? No, no, I love competition. I'm a very competitive human being. And, um, You squash competition.

What are you talking about? You don't want any competition. That's a part of competition I enjoy. No, but you'll do anything to make sure that no one's bidding against you and that you get every right that you want it So you can't be happy that Netflix put on your SPN hat You can't be happy that Netflix is in this game now. That is correct and in your exactly right

I was having fun, but the leagues are thrilled because they would love to see Netflix come into live sports The other networks do not want is that the Traditional pay TV broadcast networks would prefer that it not happen. I got asked that question every day after January 1, 2012, are you worried about Amazon and Apple? And what I always said was, I'm not worried in the next round of negotiations because they're not coming in. I did not say because I was not pressing enough to say, but the one after that that we coming in. But no, of course you don't want deep pocketed highly profitable global technology companies to come in and bid because they can

out bid you on everything they want to out bid you own. You got to love the Netflix CEO, his quote from last year's one of my all time favorite quotes. He said, we're not anti sports, we're pro-profits. I love that. What were you? Was ESPN anti-profit or pro-profit? Well, we were all sports and I admire Ted Sarandas very much, but it will still be far into the future Well, we were all sports and I admire Ted Sarandas very much,

but it will still be far into the future when he makes more money than ESPN made. So it's a clever thing to say, but it doesn't quite work. It's not like sports is not profitable. Sports is really profitable. Are you feeling your competitive juices right now? Because you just got so much closer to the microphone and the camera as you were describing your view of ESPN standing like a giant over a fallen

sea of other services or competitors. That was the old John Skipper coming out. Well, it was fun, but again, it's pithy. It may not be profitable for Netflix right now, but the suggestion that there is some correlation between sports and losing money may be true for them. It's not overall true. So you made money on all of your rights deals? We made money. I never tried to figure out and it was a great source of consternation for my CFO at the time. I didn't because most of

our money came from the distributors and the the amount and money we got from distributors was not correlated to any particular rights deal, but to the aggregation of them, we made money overall. That's all we were supposed to care about was returning very valid shareholders and we made a lot of money. But you needed content. That was the whole game,

is that you promised hours and then we went out and bought rights and the profit is that you had your revenue stream from people paying for stuff they didn't want because you were getting rights to leagues that some people didn't care about while saying that you're fulfilling your contractual requirement of hours for a particular cable distributor. Yeah, and let me be clear because there's one exception. We did at one point have in the distributor agreements a specific amount for the NFL It's not in the agreement anymore, but it was there so I misspoke slightly on that and yes

We also did have agreements with distributors. It said you must have X out of the following lie you must have some motorsports you must have Was so much of the four leagues, but we didn't have any requirements for anything more specific than that. I feel really excited to end the show with this. Can I assume that when you were negotiating right steals and subscription amounts,

subscriber fees, that you have the marlins separately where they said, hey, you've got to have marlins on national television. Was that ever brought up to you in any negotiation ever? Yeah, it was brought up in the negotiation where we agreed. And baseball was carrying some of your water for you that we would put every team on, however well or poorly they did in the ratings. And I do have much affection for you, but I must tell you, the Marlins did not move the needle very much, despite how good they were. And

it is a tribute to a fine job that you and your colleagues did, that you won a world series down there, well at least a three-quarter empty stadium. I've got one more ring than you do. Yes, you do, and you always will have. I will see you next week if you have the time. John Skipper, chairman of Metal Arc Media. This is David Samson. That's it for now. Thank you, David.