The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Skipper & Samson: If You're In The ACC, Please Stand Up

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Meadowlark Media CEO John Skipper and Nothing Personal's David Samson are back with another episode and we’ve got Pablo Torre as host! The ACC is expanding! Welcome Stanford and Cal of the failing Pac-12... and SMU? Then, what is happening with Nielsen Ratings? Why should we care? Why is everyone so mad at Amazon? Plus, we are the streaming pirates and we are here! The NFL, NBA, and UFC have sent a joint letter asking the government to shut it down! They allege they have lost as much as $28B in potential revenue from pirated content. Also, the death of the regional sports networks may be here. What are leagues doing? What are teams doing? And finally, 92,003 people showed up to watch the Nebraska women’s volleyball matches. A world record for a women’s sporting event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. This is the Dunlabel Tarshou with the Stugat's Podcast. Okay, if you are watching on YouTube something very different, obviously different is happening. I am in a real studio. You should now see that by the way, Hi, it's me, Pablo Tore, host of Public Tore, I find out. I'm at a physical table with my boss, John Skipper, and over Zoom is your favorite sports business villain, David Samson.

Guys, thank you for joining us on a new iteration of a very special show that we do together. Thank you, Pablo. Nice to be here. Hello, Pablo. Hello, David. All right, let's get into this because there's a lot of **** that is sort of tied together

through a fascinating through line, I think. A through line that both of you guys are well versed in on both sides of this table, literal and figurative. We just meet your rights. I wanna start with the ACC because John, First in on both sides of this table, literal and figurative, we just meteorites. I wanna start with the ACC because John, again, the ACC deal is John Skipper's account, David. This was his map that he redrew at ESPN. This is the map that everybody now is looking at

and wondering, am I too good for this or am I desperate to get in. Right now, the latest is that Stanford and Cal, like lions of the Pac-12, once upon a time, are desperate to get in. And SMU, Southern Methodist University, also desperate to get in. But there's so desperate, Stanford and SMU specifically that Stanford will accept less money and meteorite's payouts on a tiered percentage basis than the other members. And SMU is saying, we won't even take any money for seven to nine years, just bring us

inside of your ACC deal, please. And so, John, when you see these headlines, what are you thinking? Well, one, I don't think SMU volunteered to take no payment. I don't think Stanford and Cal said, hey, it'd be a great idea. We don't need a full payment. They are simply trying to make the best of a difficult situation, right? Stanford and Cal are now in a conference with four teams. That's probably not going to work.

And they're probably not going to get a big media deal. So they are attaching themselves to one of the indisputably power, five power, four conferences, the ACC. The ACC is getting California in the network footprint. That often goes unnoticed in the reporting of this and they're taking SMU. SMU, prestigious school, good donor base, good school having the conference. Infamously good donor base. Infamously good donor base, once good at football,

our Dickers then, they assume they'll come back in the conference, why are they in? Because they're in Texas. They just, the ACC just added Texas and California to their television footprint. Now, a lot of times people think that means, oh, they can sell more advertising. They're in the metropolitan area of Dallas and San Francisco and and and San Francisco.co and but it's uh... so so they're going to get that money so the sys is going to get more money they're gonna give a little of it to

cal and san for the start with probably none of it that's in you s and u it's their only shot to get in a big conference well david john is describing accurately panhandling of a certain kind going on here from these programs once proud now had in hand saying please we are desperate bring us in does it make sense I get it I got the ACC is like this is a pretty good deal. Don's laid it out dials is the number five media market where SMU is.

Does it make sense for the schools to be like we'll take no money slash a severe reduction of money just to get in. Well, it seems to me that this was contemplated when the original deal was done with the SPN and the ACC, where there was a tiered system and there was a contemplation of if someone is added ever. So I assume the thought process for Stanford was, we know exactly what the benefit is for us joining the ACC.

We know what it triggers in the contract that we can't get out of as much as we want to, because we hate this contract. We can't get out of it, but we're all gonna get more money, but we're not gonna take our full share of that additional bump that ACC gets by adding the school, is that enough to make you love me?

So what they're negotiating to me is just the price of love. And I'm fascinated by it because it requires Stanford to put on this desperate smelling cologne, which they had no intent of ever doing. It stands till the Pac-12 fell apart. Yeah, you're reacting you gotta start from the idea

that the member schools of the a cc said we do not want any expansion which does not pay us more money pro rata which is p and has to pay to add stanford and cal to isp and does not provide more money for the other schools in the conference. Led by Florida State and Clemson, they've told the commissioner of the ACC, your job is

to get us more money. So he has gone mad. But you don't care about that, John, right? I'm sorry, I didn't interrupt you, but actually what the contract says is you will give the conference more money. How they distributed it is up to the conference. Correct. You're not willing to pay other than what you're contractually obligated to pay when they add a member. If they want to give it all to the new school, great. If they want to give the new school nothing and keep it all for the existing schools, you don't care, do you? No, though, I will tell you the contract was written with the contemplation that if you added a school, you get a pro-rata addition so you can

pay that school the same amount of money. What the ACC has done has satisfied it's more aggressive members, Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina, North state, Virginia, Virginia Tech. They've satisfied them by saying, oh, this while it gives us a pro-rata incremental payment, it doesn't require us to give it to the new member. So they said to the new members, we're not going to pay you the full pro-rata amount. The new members said, we don't have a good alternative.

I mean, you said desperate, but Stanford and Cal are just doing the best deal they can do. They can't do a better deal than this. But John, I just want to be clear about why I'm using the word desperate, because I think you're right. There's a financial incentive here that tracks with logic, but it also seems to me like this is like when a bunch of rich people have an apocalypse bunker and some other folks are knocking and they're like, we see the mushroom cloud.

Can we get into? Yes. And Florida State maybe is like, you can if. You bring your own food. Yes. Do you know what a hunting gather? Yeah. Yeah, and SMU is like, we have $200 million worth

of boosters who used to pay for running backs. Does that help? And the answer is yes. It helps more that they're in the state of Texas, which I think is the, what, the second or third most popular state, I think the second most popular state in this nation, with the second most cable television homes, they're going to get those payments as well, the ACC. So Florida State and company got what they wanted. Oh, we're going to decrease the delta between what

SEC schools and Big Ten schools are getting by adding some schools in California and Texas. Now, it also means one other thing. It means that the Big Ten had no interest in adding cow or Stanford, because they would have gone there if they had an interest in it. I was gonna ask, why is the AC, exactly. So is the ACC, John did an interesting thing, David,

where he said they're indisputably power, five or power four, whatever it is there, but they're just last. They're the ACC is the last rung of a ladder that still has structural integrity it sounds like. And that's because of their TV deal. They want to find a way to activate that additional payment from ESPN and go into the for renegotiation is not going to happen. So the way to do it is to add a team and getting access to at least some of that money.

I'm fascinated by the impact this has on players and on the competitiveness of SMU and their ability to ever compete again, because if dollars are fungible, so if SMU is not getting TV money, they need money to fund their department. They're going to boosters who can decide to use NIL, they have one pot of money boosters do. Either they do it through NILs to players, or they do it to the capital budget, if you will, for the running of the operation. And so if you have to get more money into the operation, then I think that impacts the

amount of money that's left to give to players. So I think we're only in the first inning of what's actually going to play out here, and Cal, as you know, runs at a huge deficit. Most programs do. And so. $450 million debt at Cal, the biggest foreign elected department in the country. That's insanity. I mean, just the debt service on that alone.

So I think they were only in the first wave of what happens here not just with the realignment but what what the impact is in how it relates to n i l that's why such a fascinating time in college sports for me right now you the other mistake people make is thinking that the television meteorites payments are the largest amount of money funding the athletic departments they They're not. In most cases, Texas is athletic budget, which I don't know exactly, but it's not far from the neighborhood of $200 million. They're going to the SEC, so they'll get what? $50,60 million, that means that the media rights are twenty five to thirty

percent of their overall athletic budget you just talked about the deficit that stand for the outside of cal runs but you know which university runs the biggest deficit in the country rudkers and they're in the conference that is paying at top dollar and they still... In the big 10. It's not a totally fair comparison.

Rutgers is a public university. There's a ton of issues at Rutgers, both that we can talk about that have manifested itself this off season with unions and all sorts of things, non-sports related. So they have budgets where you're taking Peter to pay Paul every which way but loose for a school like Rutgers But I but I don't think you're impugning Rutgers or it's president

But you're pointing out the reality that if you can't run a university as a business They're not profitable. But let me ask a follow-up question because I want to return I would love to make one of New Jersey at length, but I want to follow up on a different thing Which is I described a mushroom cloud that a lot of these lesser schools are seeing and they're fleeing. How many of them wish they could do what SMU is doing? Would all of them do what SMU is doing if they had the booster backing to the tune of $200 million?

The idea of, we'll take no money, just please let us in. Cause I feel like, John, the next domino is to figure out, like the power four to five conferences are gonna be pairing back to at some point, right? A super league will come, and everyone's trying to get on the last chopper out of side guys. If SMU gets in, because they're in the state of Texas, the ACC steel purports to care about academic standards. We're kind of the smarty pants,

conference here, Big Ten sort of tries to do the same thing, right, with sort of you've got to be a research university. Public research university. So ACC can hold their head high and say, we're taking in an academically prestigious school, but it's really about it's in the state of Texas. They don't want to take in Texas Tech.

I'm not imputing Texas Tech in any way, but that doesn't do them for them the same thing as SMU does. And SMU just wants to be in the club because everybody believes there is going to be more separation between the teams in these power for conferences and everybody else. So SMU is in the senior club, right? Whereas you might be a bigger university or your organ state right now. It's a bigger school, has more of an athletic presence right now than SMU, but they don't bring anything to the party. And they should be scared, David.

I guess is my point that like, there's a list of schools that when they see these headlines and they process them, they should be fucking terrified that Oregon State should be terrified, right? All of these schools in that class should be afraid. I think that reasonable CEOs can differ and reasonable boards of directors can differ on this. There are some people who love being a little fish in a big pond and some people would rather be a big fish in a small pond.

And there is no economic analysis that I've ever seen, which tells me for sure which is going to be better for the value of my asset. Because if you control a market, however small that market is, you can become very, very wealthy. And so, I wouldn't say that every university is looking at this realignment and saying, oh no, I gotta get up to the ACC. I will forego my revenue if I could just be called a member of the ACC. I think there's a few universities at least who would say, no, we're good in our, you know, mid-conference.

There's only one university that has resisted this consistently and managed to stay slightly outside the system and that's Notre Dame. Yeah. Yeah. Very hard otherwise. I mean again, if you're at Argon State, I don't mean to pick on them. No, but they're using them as an example. state, I don't mean to pick on them, but using them as an example. Classic example now. They worry that they will not be on Saturday night, only at SpN, or Fox, or NBC. They're going to be on some regional channel, or they'll be, who are they going to play? How are they going to...

Well, that... Just to clarify, David just said, how many p ponds are there even going to be? Well, the end, if they can't play Argonne and Stanford and Cal and Texas, if they can't play good schools, they're going to not be able to recruit the players. There's always a coach who figures out how to win at Boise State for a little while. But at some point, that coach ends up going to a bigger school and then that school struggles to figure out how to compete at the highest level. If you aren't on television, your boosters aren't happy. Your contributions go down because you're not seeing your school colors. It's just going to be hard. There's going to be more and more separation. If you're not in this senior club of power for conferences,

If you're not in this senior club of power for conferences, you're going to have some financial issues overall at the university, or you're going to have to decide you aren't prepared to field a competitive big time football team. It's all about the team who are all excited to be on one of the 96 bulls. There's now, I don't know how many bulls, 179 bull games, and you said in a previous show that from a broadcast standpoint, bring it on. We're happy to show a bull between two teams that no one's heard of because people watch college football, you put a name on it, a sponsor,

and you've got yourself a bull game, and we're gonna do better in that time slot. Guess what, the schools that you invite to those bowl games are damn happy to be a part of those bowl games because it increases their fundraising. Their development, people love it. Their school spirit is mathematically increased when they get to say we were in the, I can't think of the smallest possible bowl with the sponsor that I've never heard of. Do you find Raidle?

Is that a big one? Is the mayonnaise bowl a big one? The dukes mayo. It's the dukes mayo bowl. The Charlotte knows Caroline. It's a good Southern mayo of apologies to the printer optic. So you may be agreeing with my point though, John,

out of, I know not your favorite thing to do this early in a show, but I think that if you are understanding of the tier in which you live, you can be successful in that tier. And I worry that SMU is trying to play with the big boys and is giving up so much to do it that they're gonna end up being eaten on the Serengeti. I would bet that right now SMU alums and SNU students are very excited that they got

invited to the prom. They're going to get to play Florida State and Clemson and North Carolina and Virginia. It's a travel problem. It's not a travel problem for the football team. And this is all about football, including, and I've had a clarification in my ear, which I want to make. Notre Dame is a full voting member of the ACC, but they have resisted becoming a football member

of the ACC, they want to remain independent. And they're pushing for the editions of Stanford and Cal to the ACC as a related story, yeah. But I think that we have to remember that when teams make these decisions, they're doing it, it feels good. It's like winning the off season when you sign a big free agent and you get all excited.

And then all of a sudden you lose 100 games and your fans don't care that you sign the best free agent. They're pissed that you signed the wrong one. So while there may be excitement in the fan bases right now at SMU, if they don't perform and what we speculated or I speculated happens where there are performance on the field suffers, I'm not sure that they look at themselves in the mirror and say,

who cares that we're O and 12 or two and 10 were in the ACC. But we're going to find out. Let's speaking of winning press conferences of the optics of things really mattering, I want to get to a related story that has been fascinating to me as somebody who has not cared nearly as much about Nielsen ratings as either of you, I think. Because Nielsen, I want people to understand why this story is so important.

Like the Nielsen box, I feel like, is something that young people don't even know about anymore, but it's a physical box once upon a time that would relay data to Nielsen, a metrics company that said, this is how many people in America are watching this show for this long at this time. And obviously over time, that's changed, but Nielsen has remained.

Nielsen is the measurement company, and now Nielsen is saying, nothing very interesting. In these NFL rights deals, there's Amazon, ESPN, Fox, CBS, Amazon is a streamer. Amazon has complained about how their internal data is larger than what Nielsen's data on Amazon is. And so now Nielsen has finally said, we're going to use their data, Amazon's data, and conjunction with ours. And the other rights holders, John,

not thrilled about this, it turns out. Let's keep in mind that Mielsen, unless it is changed in a way which I don't understand, has forever used sampling technology. So when you say they tell you how many people watch the show, they don't know how many people watch the show. They don't know how many people watch the show. What they have is boxes in 20,000 at one point, it's 20,000, no idea now if it's 10 or 50,

but they have boxes or technology. Surveys. It's an X number of households. And they use that to impute how many people watch. And everyone does that. That's extrapolation. That's what every poll you ever see anywhere. And that is, but that, as you know,

from presidential elections, that polling can have a margin of three, four, five, six, seven, eight percent. And generally sampling polling is harder and harder to do, because you can't reach people anymore, right? People won't answer their phone. Do you know a Neelson family? Is a question I often ask myself, and the answer invariably is hell no.

And keep in mind that Neelson basically provides the networks with the numbers to go to sell advertising. This is much like many things like the bond rating services, which is where the actually Nielsen and the broadcasters have mutually aligned interest for those numbers to be good. Because if the numbers are bad, the network's always complain about the methodology. The fact that matters, Amazon will have better data. They know. Now, the question is, to what extent is Nielsen auditing that?

And ensuring that the data they're getting from Amazon, these companies are not well known for their releasing a lot of public data or being particularly transparent about what anybody actually does. So what's gonna happen there? But let's talk practically. Budwizer has a budget. They have a marketing budget of how much money they're gonna spend. They look at the NFL, they look at Fox, CBS, ESPN and Amazon. They split it and they do it based on ratings and that's how they explain it. That's how the marketing guy explains it to the CFO, explains it to the COO, to the CEO, to the board.

This is our allocation of our marketing money and dollars are fungible to them and that's why the networks are so pissed off because guess what? If Amazon all of a, is getting a bigger piece of the Budweiser pie, that means ESPN, Fox, and CBS are getting a smaller piece of the same pie. So the end advertiser says we're reaching the number

of people per dollar that we expected to reach. It's just that the distribution of our money is changing. So I think this is a far bigger story than people realize and it caused statements from the CEOs of these networks. And you in that position, I think, would have been pounding your chest furious reading this. What, first of all, there are 42,000 Nilsen black boxes currently, so we weren't far off,

somewhere between 2050. I blow finds out. But it still is a sample. What I would be doing, if I was at a network still, I would be pounding on the table to say, we have to have equally accurate information somehow or other. But this is what John, just on that,

because a key distinction to make it very clear is that Amazon doesn't need to sample. Amazon can track precisely how many people are watching. And so the question I have for all of these rights holders, the networks now, you're saying they also want precision, because they also benefited from the ambiguity of the sampling. This is gonna be the end of their benefiting

from the ambiguity of the sampling. This is going to be the end of their benefiting from the ambiguity of the sampling. And anybody's done research knows that nudging the numbers, and I'm not suggesting anybody's done anything illegal or even immoral, but there are ways to get the answers you want. If your business is contingent upon the networks doing well and continued to pay to measure. You pay a lot of attention when they come by and say, we're not happy because we know people in bars are watching. So Nilsson adds out of home viewing. They know that people are digitally streaming.

Also Nilsson does some sampling of digital streaming. Recently they changed all of this to your point because they got pressured. And they're going to have to what needs to happen now that the streamers are entering the sports right to business or the entertainment business, there has to be a third-party verification of the data and the data has to come from the same source. And I do believe there is the ability probably even even on broadcast television, to have a much more accurate measurement of who is actually watching. I was surprised that the NBA didn't file an AMICAS brief on this issue because they're

the ones with their network deal coming up for re-negotiations. So it is in their best interest for accuracy to be there and for Amazon to know what's happening because they're going to be a bitter in theory for the NBA and for TNT not to want this to happen because TNT is already on record, something that you and I have discussed on record that hey, we don't need to consign ourselves to losing money. But in this situation, according to the Wall Street Journal, it was only the NFL who filed the brief, who said that we are supporting this move, and they already have the deal.

So I was very surprised that Roger Gidele did that, and I was equally surprised that Adam Silver did not join the effort. Well, how much of that, John, if you're to psychoanalyze that, right? How much of that is because the NFL does not fear precision? And does the NBA actually like a status quo that prevents a further inspection

as to who's really watching and how many of them are there? It is interesting, and I don't know that I have an informed opinion. I think David's point is a very interesting one, and I'm not sure I have a thought on why the NFL would file that brief and the NBA would. And I think both parties would actually like to know.

For NFL, it may be a little bit of bragging rights, right? Because their numbers are the biggest. They want all the votes to be counted. Yes. I don't want to know. I just want to make sure that all the leagues are being reported the same way. Because I don't want to be left behind

in terms of how we're announcing our ratings for the World Series and how much criticism we get if it's being bolstered and buttressed for the NFL, thereby making the schism even bigger than the grand can in between the NFL and MLB. I'm not interested in that. So I'm not interested in anything from MLB standpoint that gives a bigger number to the NFL. But also, MLB has their deals already locked up. The NBA may think like MLB in this case,

but I would forego that thought. I'd push it back down into my belly, and I'd be supportive because I want more and more bitters, because I think I've a better chance of maximizing my rights to live sports by having streamers offering more. I would think that advertisers should insist on a single system that does count as accurately as possible. Though I will tell you, they also have a conflict of interest.

Explain, please. Which is, they make a lot more money on very expensive 30 and 60 second commercials that run on television, then those little crappy ads that run on Facebook and Google that have data attached to them. Stop, they're not little crappy ads, that's our business. These are amazing ads.

These are getting to our customers. This is driving revenue. I wasn't trying to characterize them personally. I was trying to suggest if I was running a big ad agency, I would go, boy do I like making those car commercials. David, David, we have to remember sometimes we're talking to the man who once pioneered the most profitable business in media history

and is now trafficking in traffic in web traffic. I love it. And there's a bit of a discussion every day. No, but by the way, the question of a measurement of a view of a statistic when it comes to content, what people don't realize, I think, is that we're comparing wildly different things. I see all the time Twitter X is now proclaiming

that 280 people watch Donald Trump talk to Tucker Carlson, right? Of course, it's not actually that. Of course, a deal. 280 million people was a statistic at one point, and that counter But it gets to the question of what is Neilson what qualifies John as a view To Neilson versus a view on YouTube or anything else

well What was supposed to qualify on nilson what you got as a nilson rating was an average what you got as a Nielsen rating was an average per minute rating. So when you read that there were 2.9 the rating was 2.9 million people that means at any point during the hour or two hours that's the average. It of course goes way up and way down. You might have four million people watching in the fourth quarter because it's close game. You might have one million people watching the fourth quarter because it's 56 to zero. But that have one million people watching the fourth quarter because it's 56 to zero. But that's what that meant.

The streamers tend to think about minutes watched and not average number of people own. And the way they often talk about views, when you return 80 million people watch Donald Trump on Tucker Carlson, probably 280 million people saw something on the internet. It's girl past it.

Go past it. You don't have to do very much. A lot of times it's one second. Well it's why businesses are very interested in what Musk is trying to do and I understand in terms of eliminating bots. It is a huge problem because when you go with a rate card to an advertiser and you want to show your downloads or your views and their answer is, but I have no proof. Are you telling, how are you extrapolating?

How are you getting to that number? And they had the ability to say, hey, it used to be bots, but we're getting rid of all the bots. So when we give you numbers now, this is real. And it's all done in an effort to get a bigger piece of the advertising dollar that we were talking about before. The dollar that Bud has to spend, people who are producing and creating content on TikTok or Twitter

or Instagram, wherever they're doing it, they want to get the money that has been given to the people who do content on NBC or CBS or ESPN. So I think that's where the fight is and that's why it's so fascinating and that's why the monetization of streaming is behind because we have not yet been able to convince advertisers. Here are the numbers, here's how real they are, pay up for it.

[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ I mean, this brings us directly to the next topic. And the next topic is another topic that I think a lot of young people have one view on and now all of us, I consider myself at age 37 to be on the other side of this thing, we will have a different view of streaming piracy of what it means to pirate a game. I mean, the NFL, the NBA and the UFC have sent a joint letter to the US Patent and Trademark Office in which they ask the government

to act against illegal streaming operations. And any young person knows that you go to Reddit, you go, you just troll the dark corners of the internet and you'll find one of these games that John Skipper once paid billions of dollars to air for the cost of a couple pop up windows and maybe a virus. And so this story, what is this feel like to you guys? Look, I've always been cynical about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act act which basically was the act that tried not to inhibit online growth because a government felt that internet growth was a good thing for our

country so they said it's okay if you're running a service and people put illegal stuff up you have to take it down if somebody tells you it's illegal but these guys have always hit these guys. These guys is Google and Facebook. They're hiding behind- They've been guys now. They're hiding behind that act to say, what's not up to us, if you'll tell us

that somebody is putting up a game illegally, we'll take it down. Reactive versus proactive. And I do know that the most aggressive broadcaster has always been NBC with the Olympics. And and they have I don't actually know this I'm making this is a fanciful a description they have a huge warehouse full of lawyers sitting there watching the internet and They're calling every minute and saying take this down and they do take it down But that is not practical for a college football,

for an SMU Stanford upcoming college football game. That's not practical. The technology is there to do this now, which is they can get all these illegal streams down now, but the big technology companies don't want that because they're earning advertising dollars on those illegal screens. Now, why would we think now is the time for leagues to send this letter to the US patent and trademark office? And it's not a coincidence. This is all because these leagues are in the process and this ties in with everything we've talked about today

of maximizing their worth. And if you have your stuff being stolen, then you can't get someone to pay. It's the old story. The reason why you don't give tickets away for free to your concert is then why would anyone want to buy them when they know they can just get them for free?

Why would anyone want to buy live sports if they know they can get it for free? If the only way to watch messy is through Apple. If I can easily watch DrivePink, you enter Miami Play and not have to buy a subscription through Apple, I'm gonna do it. So your damn right Apple wants to make sure an MLS would wanna make sure that no one's doing that.

So I don't view this as a coincidence, but this is a heavy lift for, because the act wasn't really meant for this, as you pointed out, there's been quite a few changes since the Clinton administration in internet, and the world of internet, the biggest one of which is how much money streaming services are paying for content. That is something that was not in, as far as I know,

when you look at 35 years ago, that was not something that was not in as far as I know, when you look at 35 years ago, that was not something that was happening. In 1998, when this act passed, we were afraid to give credit card information into people. 25 years, excuse me. Now credit card information to your point though, is it's everywhere. Yes, we're all assuming we're already hacked.

Do you remember when you wouldn't give people your cell phone number? Do you remember when you would have used a very big deal? David, I was afraid to use my real name online when I first logged in to the world of internet as you called it earlier like a real young person Hey listen, I'm trying so The what will be the result of this and this story interested me to talk about today, is that what is the object of the game for these leagues? They want some sort of legislation passed, and I love the fact when Republicans

are asking government for help. It makes me smile. But let's say that they get the help they want. Who exactly is going to pay for the assumption that this job will get done correctly, where there will be these pirate streams that are shut down enough that they can actually monetize their life sports more than they are now? Are the broadcasters going to pay for that, or are the leagues going to pay for that, because somebody is going to have to.

I think it ultimately is the large technology social media companies who have to put the same controls in place they have for pornography or other offensive content. They're going to have to act upon this. They're going to have to not be told that you cannot run an NBA game that is Illegally pirated on your service now What's the case at one point that then this may not be the case? And I will apologize in advance for bringing it up if they have corrected this but at one point you could go Into Amazon and buy a device which would allow you to capture signals

which you weren't paying for. I do not know if that can still be done, but that should not be allowed. They were selling a physical device on Amazon.com where you could order anything as per all the products we know, and you could basically steal cable, the equivalent, the modern equivalent. Right. And all this is the continued transition of video entertainment to streaming services. And in that transition, things are going to have to happen. You couldn't steal a signal from NBC when you had to have an antenna or a pay TV channel to get it. You can't, it didn't matter because the business model doesn't rely upon

You got cable TV Fees you got advertising you your stream losing your signal was not a big deal I'd tell you a funny story we had when I was at the zone and we were a pure Sport streaming service right and there was a moment in time where we took our service worldwide. Meaning anybody who wanted to get it to zone subscription anywhere in the world could order it. We did a fight with Anthony Joshua. He is the most popular athlete in the country of Nigeria. There's a hundred million plus people in Nigeria. We sold about 500 subscriptions. And about 12 million people in Nigeria watch the fight.

So to your point before David, if you can get it for free, and I can guarantee that the government of Nigeria was not doing a whole lot to protect that signal But that's what we got And it's not just offensive content because right now when we do nothing personal on YouTube You can't play a song They will stop it. They will flag it. You can't sample a song. Yes, so the technology exists and the people who do it right find a way to not violate any copyright infringements. And the leagues just want to make sure that they don't miss the bus because what they're claiming is there could be like 28 billion dollars in revenue that they're missing.

And if that, so if that is true, which I, I don't know how they'll prove it, but if they can, just like you said 12 million to 500, you can actually do the math and you can decide you're smiling. I don't know why, because it cost you money and made that business deal look worse than it actually was. I'm smiling because I'm assuming the calculation of $28 billion would come off of some data like, oh, 12 million people watched and we only got 500 subs. So we lost $11 million, 909,000, 500 subscription fees we could have gotten. So it's probably not $28 billion. But it probably is a lot of money. And forget whether it's a billion or 10 billion or 28 It's the right thing for these companies to do. They should not be allowing illegal content to be made for free

This reminds me of Napster a course in music which finally went away by the way not because the government made it go away But because Apple made because we all downloaded lime wire and then Apple came along and it was like you should just pay a 99 cents for this Exactly. Yeah, and then 299 for 12, you know, right But this but this speaks to I mean John It's just interesting to hear you say right because I know you mean right in the sense of like it is logical and legally justified to litigate this Because what this entire show has been about not a pursuit of truth and precision But a pursuit of profit and an incentive that

reveals what everyone's actual truth is. Now, of course, you do have a funny thing, which is as these big technology companies get into sports, they will have every incentive to actually do what they did not want to do when it was for the benefit of their competitors in traditional media. So this problem will get solved by which I don't mean that there will be no piracy, but they will figure out how to make piracy significantly more marginal than it is now. No doubt. You just have to diminish it.

It's like you can't take away people who are bad. You actually budget this when you're doing your ticket revenue or merch revenue, you budget, the sort of part of the cost to doing business is unpaid accounts. I used to just call it unpaid accounts. It's people who are not gonna pay for their season tickets or corporate sponsorships or whatever it is.

There's always gonna be some spillage. And I think what the leagues have said here is, it's enough. We can't, the numbers big enough that we want the government to get involved. But where this ends and what level of spillage that they will accept, I think that depends on what level of rights broadcasters are willing to pay. And when there's a meeting of the mind as we move forward, there will be an agreement as to what is the level of piracy

that they will accept. So the Premier League, just for reference here, what they've been doing in the UK, is assemble a legal team, a private prosecution force, that yeah, targets the people who are, in fact, pirating games. They have content protection analysis to help do this, and they've taken down over 600,000

illegal streams with what is called a super block, a phrase that I'm reading off of this Google Doc that makes me laugh because they love the word super in things that are trying to make money through soccer turns out overseas. But okay, so we're near the end here, guys. I wanna hear what you guys, in Pablo Tore, I find's out spirit.

I just wanna know what stories that we have not discussed so far. You guys have been burning on and David will start with you. I'm still burning on what I think is the biggest sports business story of the year. And that is the bankruptcy of diamond sports and Claire ballies, whatever, whatever level you want to put it at. And what's happened to the regional sports networks and how the how majorly baseball has had to take over the broadcast of two teams, Padres and Diamondbacks, how the NBA is now figuring out will we get paid, will our teams get paid because it's about to be paid

time in the NBA because you pay your right steels during the course of the season for the most part, it's not 12 month payment schedule, though you can negotiate that. And these regional sports networks are all failing. And Warner Bros. Discovery, they're trying to get out of the business. And what I've been following is they're not bankrupt. They just realize it's a crappy business, so they're trying to sell. And it was just announced, and it just sort of passed by people that Fenway sports group as in LeBron James and John Henry and those who own the Red Sox and Liverpool, etc

They are taking over the regional sports network in Pittsburgh so that's the penguins that is the pirates and What I love is what do they know that I don't? Why are they buyers of this? Why do the Astros and Rockets want to buy AT&T Sports in that Southwest? And I was thinking about why and my answer is I want to be able to control my streaming. And so that is what I believe Fenway Sports Group their play is. That's what I think the Astros and Rockets play is. And that's what MLB wants is for all teams to control the streaming.

And to do that, it's like taking on a bad contract to get a good contract. So you take on a crappy player because you want to get the good player. I think that these companies like Fenway Sports Group or like the owners of the Astros Rockets are willing to spend money on an asset that is devaluing in order to get an asset that they can't yet figure out how big it's going to be and that's streaming. And this is the natural next step

in what is happening in the way that we deliver content and the way we consume content. And this story, we're again, maybe, maybe the bottom of the second inning. I'm going to, in a show that's dealt with nothing but the complexity of the business and the difficulties and big transitions and secular changes was something very simple, which is the happiest sports moment I've had in a few weeks

is seeing the photograph of 92,000 people watching a women's volleyball game in Nebraska. And I think it's a wonderful punctuation mark on what it actually is turning out to be the move of women's sports to getting to major problems. I understand that they set out to do this, right? It's like trying to break a Guinness World record, but they did it. And in Lincoln, Nebraska, they got 92,000 people to come into a stadium to watch women play volleyball.

And I'm gonna tie it to one other wonderful thing, which is this year their celebrating Billie Jean King out of the US open here in town. Fiftyth anniversary of her crusade to get equal payments to women and men tennis players. And at the same time, we had 92,000 people show up to watch women's volleyball game. Women's sports is coming in a big way. Well, David, it speaks to this trend line, right? I mean, what's interesting is that there was,

seemingly the potential that this was stunt-like, not in the raw headline of like, women sports are more popular, but in the sheer number that they tried to get to to break the record. This trend line of women's sports will be more popular, aligning with our general theme of this show about how media is changing in sports.

Does the stunt matter to you, David? You're a cynical guy. What's your reaction to that part? I'm just trying to figure out how quickly I'll be canceled for, for not, I don't wanna say that you shouldn't be happy, John, because I want you to be happy, because when you're happy, I'm happy. And frankly, my happiness is only dependent on you.

But why did that make you happy? What exactly are you gonna give more money to Nebraska women's, do you want to show their whole season on ESPN or have a podcast on Metal Arc that is solely focused on the women's the rascal volleyball. I'm just a simpler guy which is I don't even want to break this down or figure out how it happened or what those 92,000 people had fun and they were happy and those women

playing volleyball must have felt great right because they Because they play their whole life, they get the opportunity to do that. I'm happy. I think that's a cool thing, and it's good enough for me. I'm not paying money for it or not paying money. We're doing a talk about business on this show and explaining the complexities.

For once, I'm just gonna enjoy a happy moment. Those players, their parents, everybody felt good about it. Who are you? That doesn't even compute to me. What you're saying. You're something that should compute to you, David, is that John has been underselling this record this entire time because their real number is 92,000 and three.

Yeah. Yeah, Three of us. We showed it in 2006. I just want to know, I want to end by wondering, why can't we start our own media measurement company? Why is Nielsen alone in this? Why is no one challenged them? I mean this semi-seriously. Why is there no challenger in that space? Can we do it?

Are we pivoting this company to being a Nielsen competitor? The Nielsen has successfully competed against a number of people who have tried to create alternative measurement services, and that's why. Well, what happened also, John, is that it was the advertisers who, when you went to them with other metrics, they would say, yeah, but what were the Nielsen ratings? Right.

It's like going to borrow money in the capital markets and saying, hey, we're AAA rated. Oh, by S&P, by Fitch. Oh, no, by MetalLark. Oh, that'll be 29% interest. So that's how Nielsen's done it is that they are, they literally are the company where rate cards are made. I now want to apologize to Nielsen solely based on how John described how they defeated their competitors.

I'm now worried that the Nielsen box company is going to put me personally in a box for even challenging them. So until that happens, that was John Skipper, that was David Sampson, that was me, Pablo Torrey. Thank you for joining me as I got smarter about a lot of stuff.