The Pomp Podcast - #893 How FTX Marketing Is Taking Over Culture w/ Avinash Dabir

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Avi DeBeer is the Vice President of Business Development at FTX. In this conversation, we talk about the various sponsorships that FTX has been doing across sports and many other industries. I did this interview along with my brothers, Joe and John, and we had a great time talking with Avi. I hope that you enjoy it. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by BetOnline.ag. BetOnline.ag is the top spot for all of your sports betting, casino, and poker needs. It's

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Starting point is 00:02:51 out at bullish.com or follow at bullish on Twitter. All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. We got a special treat today. Avi from FTX has joined us. Avi, how are you? Doing well, guys. Thanks for having me here. Nice to meet you. Anthony, Joe, John, right? I got that

Starting point is 00:03:29 right? Yeah, that's pretty good. You're good to go. So what is your exact role at FTX? I'm vice president of business development at FTX. So I handle a lot of our sports partnerships, but as well as doing some interesting things in real estate as well. But the end goal is really just how do we take this great platform we have at FTX and, you know, acquire more users and also provide more benefits to businesses, whoever that might be. All right. So the real estate part sounds interesting. Let's start with sports maybe first. Sure, sure. So in my mind, you guys have been like the leaders in this category right everyone laughs now crypto is all over the sports industry whether it's leagues teams individuals whatever but you guys really started this it

Starting point is 00:04:12 started with uh the miami heat arena here and you've done a bunch of other deals since what is the thought process originally behind your involvement within sports specifically yeah i i mean so much of what happens at ftx is just you know sam creates like such an open and brett are the president of our u.s business just create such an open environment for people to just throw out like crazy ideas. Right. And I think you want that at any company, especially when it's young and it's growing. And, you know, the way it really started for us is we were on a company all hands call and a bunch of people just thrown out ideas and someone threw out the idea of, oh, we should do like an arena. And, you know, I had previously worked at the NBA and so I kind of raised my

Starting point is 00:04:53 And I was like, oh, yeah, cool. Like I can I can look into this. And this was in January 2020. And then like, you know, I started looking into it, starting getting some more momentum just internally as well. People like, oh, OK, this is cool. Let's do this. Talking to a handful of teams in cities. Right. Because the governments, local governments are involved as well. And we kind of identified Miami is like, oh, this is really interesting. you know great market um super like multicultural uh great team um you know and this was also around the time where like crypto buzz was like growing here in miami um and then you know honestly three months later things just kind of snowballed and we had this arena like it happened so fast

Starting point is 00:05:37 tons of credit to uh miami-dade county and mayor kava and her staff like to get comfortable with crypto like it wasn't easy no one had really done crypto deals so so so let's stop there for a second like how does this deal actually work my the heat deal specifically right because i think that the arena i don't know if it had been no like a vacant name sponsor for a couple years i believe right but like how does this work how do you approach them how does it get negotiated all that type yeah you know you know that you know your history so um american airlines i think was a vacant partner for the last two years right and what does that mean vacant so so their deal ended And for two years, they technically didn't have a naming rights partner, but they left the signage up, right?

Starting point is 00:06:17 Because it costs money to take it all down, too, right? And they hadn't sold the name yet. They hadn't sold the name, so they didn't have a new partner. And I think this is public, but I think there's the county also, there's some stipulation in their agreement with the heat where they may owe some funds or some services in exchange if there's no naming rights partner, right? So, you know, they really wanted to get a new partner. And we kind of came in at the right time. And, you know, you kind of add on the fact that this was during COVID where, you know, a decent amount of, you know, live event businesses were short on revenue. I think kind of opened up the door. Right. And that sort of opened up the door where we could have the conversation with Mayor Cava and Miami-Dade County, as well as the heat. and then they spent a lot of time getting comfortable with our business you know it

Starting point is 00:07:10 required a lot of just financial due diligence a lot of education and they took the time to learn honestly that's why i give them a ton of credit for that and to get approval from a local government plus the heat and the nba who had their own diligence teams looking into this really sort of validated not only just ftx but the cryptocurrency industry in general and things kind of just snowballed from there right and on the due diligence piece i think i remember seeing a quote from sam that was like you know they questioned if uh crypto was going to be around in years and if he was going to be able to pay for these things and he was like not to sound completely absurd but we could pay for it today if we needed to is that part of the process you're

Starting point is 00:07:51 like just look how much money we have on our balance sheet like it's not a problem i mean i mean they they have our financials right and we did disclose that and share that confidentially um you know and there are ways to structure these deals in a way where you know you can front load some of the funds, right. To, to provide some more comfort, um, you know, and, and the deal is public, right. So, so you, it's, anyone can really go and look up, um, what the, what the deal terms are with the, with the County. And why do you think that, uh, they sat for two years without a sponsor? Uh, that's a good question. Um, you know, sort of all that predates really my involvement and really, I don't even know if FTX was really in a position where we could

Starting point is 00:08:32 acquire an arena at that point um but i think it could be a multitude of reasons you know american airlines airline businesses took probably took a little bit of a hit during during covid that could be one reason um i'm just purely speculating here i have no what is the like once you go ahead and you get the naming rights what else comes with it because i i see that there's usually people ftx related uh court side i see i went to the game on monday night and uh all of a sudden they have like 16 kids basically like run out they're doing the half court shot crypto chaos yeah kid hits it goes wild i'm like what just happened and all of a sudden it pops up like five thousand dollars in crypto like oh damn that kid about to go party his face off well we went to the season

Starting point is 00:09:13 opener too and i think you guys gave it was like five hundred dollars to every person in a specific section if they downloaded the app right so i'm assuming there's a bunch of yeah it's like how does this work or like what are some of the things you guys are doing inside of the stadium other than just the naming rights yeah uh great question so so there's really just really two deals like There's one with the county, which is the naming rights, and then there's a marketing partnership with the Heat who help activate the arena space. So the Heat are responsible for what happens in-game?

Starting point is 00:09:38 Related to the Miami Heat, yes, correct. So yeah, I mean, part of it is hospitality, right? Where you entertain guests, you know, we can do giveaways and whatnot for win a ticket to a Heat game, things of that nature. Every game, we have a lucky seat and lucky row where we give away cryptocurrency for downloading the app to the people in those spaces uh and now we've recently added crypto

Starting point is 00:10:01 chaos which is like i don't know if you guys remember that game like knockout it's kind of knockout yes they're playing yeah like everyone's just heaving half it was chaos like five grand five grand it's so it's so fun i mean it's one of the most like i i love that part of the game right because the whole arena is cheering for these people to up to bank to make this shot um so we've added that element to it um you know we also have a partnership where we're able to sort of leverage heat assets and whether that be like in social media promotions um we did an nft drop recently with the miami heat around the mashup jersey so really excited about that uh there's a space called the ftx token lounge which we've actually created and

Starting point is 00:10:43 turned it into an nft gallery um it's a way for people to enter into the arena we just launched that like a week ago would love to have you guys come by at some point um you know we got led screens you know we got some printouts on the on the hallway entering in but really just trying to meet the fans where they're kind of already at through you know cryptocurrency nfts and blockchain technology rather than try and like force it on them how do you measure success like all right so you guys go spend this money it's obviously cool people see it you know on the screens, whatever. Do you guys measure like, hey, how much do we get from downloads or volume? Or is it just like, we think it works and let's figure it out? Like, what do you do?

Starting point is 00:11:26 Yeah, I think there's multiple pieces to like how you measure success here. You know, one, like the obvious one is straight up, you know, conversion, right? How many people in Florida download the app or around the Miami area, download the app, register, deposit, trade, you know there's that standard sort of funnel that's very easily to track but there's this intangible element that's a little bit harder to to quantify and right and that's just generally like you know when when i go have a conversation with with a real estate developer and they're like that conversation is easier because they've seen ftx at the arena it's legitimacy yeah it's trust it's it's you know legitimacy um you know same thing when it comes to any of our our team's

Starting point is 00:12:10 business development endeavors. Right. If you're a trader that's, you know, at an institution and like, oh, cool, like I've already heard of FTX because of FTX Arena or I saw your Super Bowl spot with with Tom or sorry, Larry David or the MLB umpire patch. Like it's just building trust and value through brand association. But we have to deliver on that trust and value like that opens up the door. But, you know, we need to help them step through that door and then make sure they have a good time when they're in the room i'm assuming that's more off of feel than it is actual numbers right that's probably pretty difficult to quantify totally it's and you know we see it because you know we hear people be like oh i love your super bowl commercial or you know i

Starting point is 00:12:52 had a great time at the heat game you know last night or um i i can't help but see the ftx on the mlb patch like every time every pitch um how did the larry david uh commercial come together like obviously i have a theory but i want to hear kind of how you guys came up with that and uh how that came together yeah i mean um so there's a really good article written i can't remember the publication it might be the times but it's probably the best business show yeah that's right uh the best business show i think i think they had the best theory on it uh but you know we we we have some really good agency partners that are super creative and you know we also have um some great folks internally on the marketing side they're just great at like

Starting point is 00:13:39 you know explaining what ftx wants and what ftx really wants is like we're trying to just be some like playful inviting and just like hey like we're here when you're ready like that is that's that is our very much our approach um to to sort of doing our marketing and advertising and you know nathaniel on our marketing team is is a super key component of our brand messaging and another colleague of mine cena uh both fantastic yeah both both great guys super smart um and just really get our brand and you know they really spearheaded that and pulling the right people and teams together you know and then when we when we saw the script we're like this script is awesome um you know and then then we're like we have to get larry david right and then you know

Starting point is 00:14:28 the teams went to work to try and I don't know if that commercial works if it's not Larry David right yeah um and just small sort of teaser Sam's dad is is also in that commercial really yeah yeah it's a little a little that's amazing I don't know that yeah well Sam's dad uh is very involved with uh uh I think it's a foundation right there's a pretty big philanthropic effort that's going on 100 percent uh we recently had just had a FTX foundation hackathon at the FTX arena um you know where we gave away, well, we awarded a million dollars in prizing for high school students that were building businesses in sort of like the tech space. So we're really excited about that.

Starting point is 00:15:08 And, you know, Joe Bankman leads a lot of that for us, as well as we have a lot of other initiatives around climate and that the foundation is super focused on, on just the whole idea of effective altruism and making the world a better place. What's going on with F1? mercedes you guys i know sponsored oh man uh i love f1 right like you know drive to survive has gotten so many of us americans like pulled into the sport and it really is a team sport all the way from like engineering these cars to executing on on race day um so we are mercedes formula one

Starting point is 00:15:44 partner uh they've been awesome um you know this this year has been pretty interesting so far last year was you know i'm biased but you know i didn't agree with the results um lewis hamilton did either yeah but the guy's a true professional man like the fact that he's back and in that seat and ready to go again is super impressive uh but we're planning to have a pretty big event here in miami uh for the miami grand prix that's uh may 6th through 8th we'll be announcing that pretty shortly but uh expecting a lot of people to come through doing a lot of activations um around just other mercedes partners our partners involved like just trying to bring together a whole community uh of of people building cool things together to to celebrate that all and it's

Starting point is 00:16:32 going to be big i wish i could share more details how much money have you guys spent on marketing oh that's a good question like just ballpark are we talking 500 million a billion well well some of these deal like let's do committed right because yeah they're multi-year deals right Right, right. I'd say over 500, yeah. Over 500 million. Have you crossed over a billion, you think? I don't know.

Starting point is 00:16:55 I don't think so. Yeah. Because what, the arena deal is how much? In total, like if you consider the heat and the arena portion of it, like close to 200. Yeah, so it's 200 of at least 500. And that's a 19-year deal, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:17:14 Part of this is when you do the committed, you could look at this it could be over 20 years literally right um so but so 500 million dollars is a huge commitment what was the major league baseball is the umps a one-off or is it part of a bigger deal uh it's part of a bigger deal so we have a lot of other components that you know the the patch is so visible right which we love but there's so many other components to it um you know last season we had this campaign called moon blasts so every time someone hit a home run over certain um i think it was 400 or 425 uh feet then it was considered a moon blast and so that was branded on social media ftx moon blast like so there's that entire element of it um you know

Starting point is 00:17:59 we have some additional very ftx type thing yeah and you had the guy at the playoff yeah we had the moon uh the moon man they really had someone show up with like a costume at the games and he was the moon man planted him behind uh the umpire in the stands and with this giant head you can see him right in the screen every game it was amazing there's moon boys on twitter and then there's moon blasts on in baseball so how did the uh individual deals work right because you've done a bunch of those also with tom someone in the chat asked if you personally know tom brady i personally do not i've met him a great guy like um excellent smile um great hair great face yeah it's like some of these people you meet and they just have this like gravitas to them

Starting point is 00:18:41 Right. And, and he is that he's a bonafide superstar. Um, you know, that really came through. So, you know, Sina is a big, um, he works on a lot of our, our, our partnerships with, with the athletes. Uh, and he's, he's done a great job with, with really not just, you know, working with Tom, but Giselle too, is also a partner of ours. And so we're looking to do more things with her. Um, if you're going to work with the family, you better work with the richer of the two. Totally. And like, you know, you keep them both involved together. Right. And I think that makes the partnership stronger. And, you know, again, credit to them. They're open about learning. Like they will say, hey, I'm comfortable with this. I'm not comfortable with

Starting point is 00:19:21 this. Help me learn about this. And in our team who handles those relationships have done a great job. Is Brady a Bitcoiner? He is. Yeah. I mean, you've seen like those videos he's thrown. Like there's there's one uh video that he made on his own i mean his teammate where he throws a football like into the sky and he's got like laser eyes on it and the bitcoin like comes down so he's but it's amazing you guys had nothing to do with that video because i think that that's what those are the partnerships we love where like you get them excited about crypto and then they kind of authentically take it in the direction that they want to take it uh has been the most successful stuff that we've done how do you guys think about like you added i believe equity part of tom brady's

Starting point is 00:20:06 deal like how important is that to align incentives with these individual athletes for these marketing deals yeah great question like these guys have money right like like you kind of kind of figure out like what gets them excited about partnering with you and and i think that there's you know he doesn't need another x millions of dollars more but if he's got an investment in something um you these guys and they're competitors right so like like in a way business is competition right and he's kind of aligning himself with ftx which we love right and he he thinks and backs us that we're strong competitors so i think that validates ftx but also gives him um some access to be competitive in in this world that he wants to learn more about and compete what about this uh

Starting point is 00:20:53 stephan curry i saw that there's a brand new i guess commercial or video that you guys put out and he's like chiseling the ice and uh i think shack does the voiceover and he's like tell shack stop playing right uh but like when you guys do that type of stuff how much of that is like they have ideas for the creative versus you guys are like okay we're gonna do you know abc here's the scenes you know you just gotta do your kind of acting role yeah i mean they're generally so busy like so it's when it's hard to get their time so when you have it like you want to have a plan as to what you want to do um so so we we have a plan right we have a script we're like hey here's the theme you know we keep them steph and his team um involved throughout the entire process

Starting point is 00:21:35 because they got to be comfortable doing it if it's not authentic to your brand like they're not going to do it and this i think this last spot the not an expert um spot is really authentic to him because like he's interested in crypto but doesn't know a ton about it but wants to right and that makes it approachable and i think that aligns with what ftx is sort of ethos is it's like hey like we're here when you're ready or like come to us to like learn um and you know you're not alone in this process right like you know staff like arguably you know the best basketball uh player on the planet um you know is successful at so many things but here's something that he is not the best at but he is willing to admit that and say he wants to learn and come

Starting point is 00:22:19 with us on that journey is really david schwab did that deal uh i'm not sure he works at octagon so maybe yeah yeah he did yeah all right yeah look he'd be happy we gave a little shout out here we go what else i was just gonna ask about the real estate stuff what do you do on the real estate side oh yeah this this is my this is my new sort of like uh excitement and passion right now we're in yeah if you need partners we're in let's talk fellas so we are um so we're helping a lot of condo developments specifically here in Miami except cryptocurrency payments

Starting point is 00:22:52 for purchases. The first couple that we did is with 11 Residences which is a PMG property and then also with the Waldorf Astoria I'm actually going to a real estate event tonight

Starting point is 00:23:08 with Diesel Wynwood condominiums in Wynwood so they're now a partner we've done a partnership with Paramount as well. And I got off the call before here with another big real estate firm. The interesting thing about right now, it's like, hey, let's accept payments for real estate. And what that really does is, you guys know, if you transact in crypto, you're in control. You could do it anytime. You don't have to wait for a wire transfer cutoff. You're in control. And it's

Starting point is 00:23:40 just infinitely more seamless. And then plus, a lot of people in crypto have made money. So if you give them a way to sort of diversify their assets into a asset class like real estate, there's value there. And then sort of the third point is like a lot of international buyers really prefer it. It's just easier to move the money. Do you wear a suit and tie when you go to these events or you show up in the FTX t-shirt? I'm a t-shirt guy. I did bring a blazer. I'm not sure if I'm going to wear it. To be honest, like I brought a blazer to work. I'm not sure if I'm going to wear it or not, but I just brought it just in case. I feel like that's an insurance policy like that may be one of the industries that and like lawyers yeah those two together

Starting point is 00:24:16 so i'm feeling it out like i'm definitely wearing sneakers like forget the dress shoes what's the process like when a company a traditional like mortgage company or whatever for loans uh is like hey we want to start accepting payments in crypto like do you guys just go in and help them set it all up like what's the process like yeah totally um it's actually fairly easy like we have an agreement um that you know we've sort of templatized at this point we're just essentially accepting funds crypto and then converting it in real time to dollars and putting those dollars wherever it needs to go whether that's uh to the seller or to the title company right like they don't really want to hold crypto um so it's really the benefit is more so

Starting point is 00:24:59 for the buyer so ease of transaction for the buyer um how many people actually want to buy using crypto versus the buildings or the building managers want to say they accept it, but they don't actually have an anticipation of people actually buying? Like, it's like, I'd seem cool because I accept it, but no one's going to do it because of the tax ramifications, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:25:20 Well, you have to pay taxes regardless, right? So I don't think that's really a deterrent. Well, no, but if I buy the building, let's say I buy a condo and I buy it in cash, I just pay the sales tax or whatever. But if I buy it in crypto, Do I have to pay the capital gains on top of the sales tax? That's why I always wonder.

Starting point is 00:25:39 I've seen a couple of announcements in Miami, which I'm assuming you guys were involved in, where people bought, some are $5 million, some are $20 million type condo purchases in crypto. I'm like, man, are they really paying capital gains tax on doing it? But I guess if you have 100% of your assets in crypto, you have no other choice. That's what I'm saying.

Starting point is 00:25:58 Most of them, I think some people are, some are international buyers, so it was just easier to transfer. Some people might even just be YOLO buying condos, right? Because they can, you know, which is a piece of it. You know, I think today it just starts with cryptocurrency payments, but to your point, right? Like, you know, we'd love to get to a point where,

Starting point is 00:26:19 okay, you know, if I have a million dollars in Bitcoin, like, can I take out a mortgage against that, right? So then I don't have to sell my Bitcoin or can I borrow against it in some particular way and, you know, tie that closer to real estate? I think we're going to get there it's just a matter of when right the products just aren't sophisticated like technically i think we can get there like tomorrow but like but like regulatory wise and just like you know smoothing

Starting point is 00:26:45 all that stuff over i think that's that's really sort of where the hurdle is and that's a big thing that we're we're doing at ftx right like sam and brett um spend a ton of time uh in dc working with the regulators like educating them like we make sure we have all of our licenses so it's just super important for us to, to, to, to be up to speed and do things the right way. So when we want to offer these cool, fun products, um, that people are kind of used to already, but now put a crypto spin on it, I think is going to be really interesting. How have those conversations, um, with DC and everything changed over the last year? Uh, you know, I'm not personally involved in them, but like just from like the outside, uh, I think they've gone really, really well. And so much of

Starting point is 00:27:30 that is just cause like you guys know, right? Like when, okay, you hear about Bitcoin or you hear about any cryptocurrency, but then you like put a little skin in the game, whether it's like a hundred bucks, a thousand bucks or whatever, then you start like paying attention to it more and you learn more and you see the use cases. And I think it's just the time and the effort that's been spent has really moved things forward. And I only see like, it's just going to trend upward. Well, it sounds too, like when you guys first started doing these partnerships, take the miami heat for example they were questioning maybe is not the right word but interested to see if this industry was going to be here in a decade right and asking the right

Starting point is 00:28:04 questions and now it's people are coming to you guys to do partnerships i'm sure right yeah 100 like you know our inboxes are flooded like you know people know um you know we've spent a little bit of money on some sponsorships so you know we see a lot of interesting things what's the craziest thing someone's asked you guys to do um i saw like like a canadian like curling team um was like super just like wacky and just like out there um one of my favorite ones that we've done is uh we've we've uh we wrote the fortunes for um fortune cookies so if you and i forget how many we but they're all over the u.s so if you go like you know you get a fortune cookie from one of these restaurants uh it'll say ftx on the back and uh alec um the guy who runs

Starting point is 00:28:50 a lot he runs our fortune cookie business how much does a fortune cookie cost he's our he's our he runs our twitter handles he wrote all the fortune like he wrote most of the fortunes no way so like you shot on alex that's amazing and they're really they're really witty he did he did a great job so like take that for example right because i think a lot of people like what do you mean whatever is it just a branding exercise or like is there like a qr code that people can scan and yeah it's just a branding i said you know you you have this you know you you ordered a, like an Asian meal and you know, you're done with the meal. You, you crack open the fortune cookie and you know, you see an FTX logo and it's like some witty, uh, just like

Starting point is 00:29:29 fortune around. It's, it's all crypto related. Got it. Got it. Like blockchain and crypto related fortunes. And so when you do that, uh, I'm assuming that there's some kind of analysis. I'm like, Hey, we're arbing the potential eyeballs that are going to look at this versus like what it cost and i always wonder um if you were to unleash you know like intelligent quantitative people on marketing which i'll put ftx as you know a leader here it seems like that's really what you guys are doing right you're trying to figure out like what are all the mispriced marketing opportunities in the market and then you go and you just attack those uh and you're not scared to kind of do it with conviction for sure that that's like at a high level that is

Starting point is 00:30:09 what it is like what's sort of like mispriced i mean maybe things i think sports partnerships now are less mispriced for crypto because everything's been bid up. But when we got into it, I think it was mispriced. Not mispriced, it was just like there was value there. Yeah, I just got a text from someone that said, hey man, I'm watching the show and I can say that I've had a few of those FTX fortune cookies from our favorite Chinese place in Chicago. Exactly, right?

Starting point is 00:30:37 And people tweet them out. so there's like this just natural like good vibe feeling that comes with that right and some of that's not quantifiable right but someone cracks that open sees ftx feels good about it like maybe they think differently about if i got that you know what i would think i'm like damn these guys are everywhere they're literally infiltrating the fortune cookie industry uh i saw sam at one point was like uh i think he was joking but he was like ah maybe at some point we should like start doing things because like the rest of the industry will do it as well and like throw them off our scent uh yeah he's like i'm gonna lose money on purpose i think is what he said

Starting point is 00:31:11 one of the fortune cookies up right now it says in retrospect it was inevitable when you guys think about like have you guys ever actually considered like trying to fake out everyone else and like do something that would uh you guys put a little bit of money lose it on purpose and then let everyone else go spend all their money i mean there's definitely some some games gamesmanship there's a smirk with that there's some gamesmanship that goes along with with you know anytime there's a counterparty involved right so so the fortune cookies are the money losing one no i mean it's it's it's hard to like i wouldn't honestly i think that's that one's been like you know i actually think that was a really smart yeah actually that

Starting point is 00:31:49 was smart so like what what would be i want to like just sit here and brainstorm for a second what would be something that you guys could do that would throw everyone else off like i feel like the sports stuff well we can't reveal it on air trust me you could definitely say a lot of stuff people still follow they're they're trying to trick us into thinking that it wouldn't work but it really would work but it feels like like i saw uh in miami right there was just ultra there was a whole bunch of stuff and one day i uh i was walking and i just saw like 17 planes all pulling like the banners behind them and i was like what are the odds that i can one even see any of those but also too like i i understand what it means i remember it and i go and it converts and it's like

Starting point is 00:32:29 it's probably not that much there's also like uh the screen that floats in the water i see those all the time from yeah and it's like i've seen it over and over and over again i probably could remember maybe two of the ads i've seen but then i went and i looked like how much does this cost it's like nothing yeah right it's it's so inexpensive that i feel like some teams are just like we might as well do it and it's just a pure branding exercise has nothing to do with conversion but the cost to the impression number is so skewed that you're just like screw it whatever and for those people they're making money and so they keep the cost low without you know really worrying about trying to price it at the high price point totally and it's that's an

Starting point is 00:33:05 awareness play right like we're just trying to get people aware of ftx so then okay they see you know that boat go by and it's a ftx logo or some quick hit about it they see the plane go by oh ftx but then when they get to ftx arena and there's an opportunity to i don't know check out with FTX pay or something of that nature. Think, oh, cool. Like I've seen that brand twice already. Here's for the third time. And this is kind of what they do.

Starting point is 00:33:30 Let me now convert, right? So- You want to know what I think you guys should do? Yeah. I think you guys should open a bar. If you open a bar in Miami, because there's a ton of young people who have started to move here, right?

Starting point is 00:33:41 There's a lot of crypto folks who have moved here, et cetera. But if you make it a fun bar, it then infiltrates into the conversations. And what ends up happening is, it's kind of like a club or some of this other stuff right it becomes the center of people's social life right and once you do that like you win well you could probably make money doing it too in the grand scheme of things but even if you did things like you know hey if uh uh certain times there's like ftx you know uh specific events but if it literally was just like the ftx bar and

Starting point is 00:34:16 it was just fun it was like genuinely fun to go to and people would go there regardless of what the name was right you just infiltrate into the social life and like a bunch of 25 year old kids like where we're going to go to tonight like oh every friday we go to ftx bar yeah you just immediately become part of the conversation and it feels like those are the types of things where like the arena when people they're not thinking hey i'm marketing ftx but like hey i'm going to ftx arena correct going to the game there's other things that you could do that are like that and i don't know what the uh legal risks are yeah well you guys want to open that bar up with us sure like let's let's do it sure i'm being dead serious no i'm not i've been i'm not gonna

Starting point is 00:34:50 run it yeah we'll find someone to operate it but i've been complaining about the bars in miami i think we may not make money i know you you and all your friends will be there all the time I mean, we won't make any money. Yeah, my friends will be paying covers to get rid of it. And they'll be downloading the FTX app as well. I love it. I love it. Have you guys sponsored college athletes?

Starting point is 00:35:24 We have, yes. So we did, we've done a couple of teams and a couple of players. I think we've done the UCLA women's basketball team, a softball team in Florida, the Kentucky men's basketball team. So we experimented in the NIL space. uh i like i think it's interesting and there's definitely value in there especially because so many of these athletes want to uh you know build their brand and like they also learn about it and they're also really good at it right they're natively just good at social media um but there are some challenges and those challenges are just like you know they're still they're still college

Starting point is 00:36:03 students right their their main focus is you know going to club well playing basketball like playing sports yeah like it's still hard like i remember when i was like you know 19 20 when it's hard hard to get people to do things um but some of them are great and totally get it i think there needs to be a little bit more structure in that space and it's going to come and these there's some platforms out there that have been really helpful in helping sort of put the plan out there but i think there's a lot of value there once that gets sorted out and figured out yeah if you really think about if you're like an enterprising you know 18 to 22 year old and you're good at your sport you could make an absolute bag right now because there's so much capital that everyone

Starting point is 00:36:46 it feels like everyone's like that market's going to be big and i need to get there early yeah and they don't know really kind of what the cost should be they don't know how effective it is like there's a lot of uh kind of fragmentation uh and so if you actually have a big following if you're well known and you understand business like you you probably most people don't have uh agents either right which is one piece of it yeah but they have like somebody looking after their life they got their brother or their mom but the deal is my point is they're much less structured right they're not they're not nearly as is it worse to call up a college athlete and him be like okay i've got an agent that works at you know caa or whatever or to be like yeah my mom

Starting point is 00:37:25 handles my deals which one which which one are you like damn i i feel like i'd rather deal with the agent right yeah like even if i gotta pay extra it's like just like imagine if our mom was like our agent and she'd be like my boys are worth so much more right like every mom would be that one needed to post this yesterday why didn't he post he'll post it when he wants that's literally what would happen that's great yeah it's like i i don't know it just feels like when there is fragmentation sometimes actually the fragmentation is bad right because actually that you want the kind of uh we talk all the time about the miami uh apartment uh uh scene yep is completely different than new york like in new york the landlords are on it they know

Starting point is 00:38:07 exactly what the deal is there's laws there's regulations you can't raise rent too much like all this stuff in miami you know there are multiple friends we know where they're like we're raising rents 30 and you're like you can't do that like we do whatever we want i want to go back to the structure it's free it's a free-for-all yeah they show you comps you're like that's from two towns over that has nothing to do with my apartment the uh the one that uh i keep seeing on instagram there's an apartment uh in one of the buildings on uh i guess uh what it is brickle avenue uh and it's like a 50 million dollar apartment and all these like real estate instagram accounts went and took a tour there's a video that they all keep using

Starting point is 00:38:47 and uh it's got an indoor pool it's got all this stuff and everything and i always just think of like the landlord sitting there being like well if they're selling 50 million dollar apartments down the street and my thing is worth you know at least a million that's not how this works they have an indoor pool you have a pool on the roof that sometimes is open 100 it's it's a little wacky out there for sure in the real estate market and you know i think doing stuff with crypto and maybe bringing a little bit more transparency through that um can be really beneficial um how long have you lived in miami eight months eight months okay cool where did you come from um so i'm kind of all around from upstate new york uh school in boston uh then san francisco

Starting point is 00:39:26 los angeles and then now here oh smart move yeah yeah you like it yeah yeah we love we love it we just bought a house so yeah it's it's the it's a good place things are things are things we went to uh we went to la for the super bowl and we were trying to figure out where the 52 percent of your income was going we thought they'd be flying cars we thought you know the weather's great don't get me wrong but for sure it's a nice place to visit now yeah the the the part that cracks me up when people come to uh miami is like it's one thing when people from miami go somewhere else like oh this is like a little off for whatever reason uh but when people come here now i feel like they're just like damn this is what freedom looks like yeah right and

Starting point is 00:40:07 like they're talking about everything from you know pandemic related stuff to the economy to just the way that the local government feels to be encouraging local business like all the stuff and uh it makes you actually thankful like grateful like you know most people didn't move here with their eyes wide open like that's why they were moving but once you get here and you get into it then you're like oh okay like this is uh this is where i want to be totally i feel like in in miami there's it's not really rules they're like guidelines you know you know you can follow them you're just like shit you know follow them or or not but like i feel like most people you know if you treat them like adults they'll behave like yeah yeah you know like and that's there's

Starting point is 00:40:47 like this general mutual respect so yeah i think that's been really i completely agree with that uh before we let you go where can uh people go like what what would be helpful to fdx like how are you guys want to help people that are watching this yeah i mean thanks for that i would say you know follow us on twitter uh on instagram um you know ftx.us if you want to open an account um you know you know come if you're in miami you know come to our event which we'll we'll be announcing for for the miami grand prix uh i think we'll be announcing next week but you know excited to and opening that up to anyone and everyone somebody suggested also you should do ftx barf bags on the on the airplanes i was like i don't know if that's good or bad but

Starting point is 00:41:30 probably cheap relative impressions i mean i i don't think i've ever thrown up on a plate like yeah i don't think those get used that much to be honest actually the now that i'm thinking about it is i bet you no one's ever done an advertising deal inside of the plane but like you're just sitting there staring right right well you can do that airbag comes down you're like oh let me check out the x first well michael saylor did say bitcoin was oxygen so like you know what i always see the marriott bonvoy commercial play before like every movie that i try and watch well the credit card ads i mean they literally go down the aisle trying to sell you a credit card and it's only rewards

Starting point is 00:42:13 they talk about it's not like what the apr and stuff it's 27 apr but don't listen to that you get 500 airline you can go to cancun for one night yeah it's crazy thank you so much for coming on hey thank you guys so much for having me this is this is fun it was really fun we're gonna bring you back after you guys uh do something else crazy sure when we open that bar like let's let's uh we could do this live we're gonna message you afterwards how to do the bar john is gonna find the gm and uh we'll be in business sounds great guys thank you thanks so much all right thank you buddy thanks so much for listening to today's episode i really hope you guys enjoyed this one make sure you're subscribed on apple spotify or your favorite podcast player and if

Starting point is 00:42:51 you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the bitcoin or crypto industry we've got you covered. Head over to palmscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to palmscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.

The Pomp Podcast - #893 How FTX Marketing Is Taking Over Culture w/ Avinash Dabir

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