The Startup Ideas Podcast - Special: State of the Union: DAOing the X Games

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

Are they really going to try to buy The X Games? On the last episode of Where It Happens, co-hosts Sahil Bloom (@sahilbloom) and Greg Isenberg (@gregisenberg) shared a plan to buy the X Games. Next thing you know, athletes and investors answered the call and wanted to bring the vision to life. In this special episode of Where It Happens, Sahil explores what’s next in order to turn this crazy idea into a reality. We also bring on a special guest, Sam Schwartzstein (@schwartzsteins) who helped reimagine the XFL to discuss further.Want more community? Learn more here: http://trwih.comSPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORSFOUR SIGMATIChttps://us.foursigmatic.com/roomWe do a lot of drinking on the show, and we need to balance it out with something a little healthier. That’s why we can’t get enough of [Four Sigmatic](https://us.foursigmatic.com/room). Our go tos are their Hot Cacao Mix with Reishi Mushroom and Sweet Vanilla Plant-Based Protein. The Hot Cacao is packed with 500mg of Reishi to help you relax before bed. And the plant-based protein is filled with 18g of protein per serving as well as 7 different functional mushrooms and adaptogens, making it the perfect post-workout recovery drink.They’re delicious and we can’t recommend them enough for your daily routine. And by the way, they’re a great holiday gift!As a subscriber to this newsletter, you can receive 15% off your order. Head to https://us.foursigmatic.com/room and enter the code “TheRoom” at checkout.EIGHT SLEEPhttps://www.eightsleep.com/whereithappensThere’s still time to get an incredible gift for yourself or a loved one this holiday season. One of our favorite products of this entire year is the Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover. We’ve both prioritized good sleep and haven’t found a better product on the market. The Pod Pro by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. With the Pod Pro Cover, you start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so you can have a completely different temperature than your partner.The result: Eight Sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster, reduce sleep interruptions by 40%, and get overall more restful sleep.As a subscriber, go to eightsleep.com/whereithappens to get up to $250 off. This deal will only be available for 2 weeks, so give the gift of better sleep today.

Special episode time, State of the Union buying the X games. A lot has happened since Friday. I want to bring everyone up to speed. We're doing this in public. What has happened? What are some of the challenges? And where do we go from here? It's going to be a great one.

I'm really excited to talk you all through it. So basically to bring everyone up to speed, Friday was a crazy day. Friday morning, we released the episode where I pitched Greg and Apollo Ono on my idea, buying the X games and reimagining it completely. And basically, to put it simply, all hell broke loose after that. I'm sitting here. I posted it starts to get a little bit of traction. All of a sudden, a couple of big athletes start reposting it.

The Domicong Sue jumps on it. Alexis O'Han jumps in there. And then all of a sudden, my phone just explodes. Lindsay Vaughn is in my DMs. I'm getting fucking texts from Des Bryant, who by the way, like, was on my fantasy team for years. Look up to that guy. Crazy athlete. Insane.

Salima Masakela, who I grew up watching. host the X Games is super excited about it. There's all these people going nuts. I'm getting messages from Red Bull, Rockstar, Monster Energy, all these big agencies, huge investor groups reaching out with interest. Basically, all hell broke loose, complete insanity, totally unexpected, but clearly the interest and the community was vibing on this idea of buying and completely reimagining the X games. I was overwhelmed by it. So basically had to spend the whole weekend diving into this, figuring out what's the path forward, what does it look like, and what is the real opportunity here? So I pitched an idea, basically, to web-3ify the X-games, to go and acquire it, form a Dow,

to go and buy the X-games, and then completely reimagine it, both in a Web 2 sense with more traditional media, cultural moments, creating the, like, drive to survive for the X-games, but then also bring these Web 3 components, NFTs, special access, Dow community, so that you're really involving the athletes, involving the community, this fervent community who has driven this culture of these sports for so long, involving them in the future of what the X games look like. It's such an amazing nostalgic set of events. One of the things I was really taken by when I posted this was all of the random people

reaching out who you might not consider extreme sports fans or skaters that were reaching out with all of these memories of having watched the X games as kids experienced it, these amazing memories they had of Tony Hawk or these other individuals, Sean White, whoever it might be, and these incredible moments that just rang true in their mind as memories. And that is so cool to me because it tells me that it extends so far beyond the cultural centers of these sports into broader society. I mean, candidly, what kid did not play Tony Hawk's pro skater as a kid?

every single fucking kid played that game because it was dope. It was amazing and it was very cool. And so there's an opportunity here. And I'm further entrenched in my belief now after seeing how this weekend went to go and rebuild this, to go and completely reimagine it. Four Sigma is the secret sauce behind the Where It Happens podcast. You know how much I've been talking about that hot cocoa, the one that's jam packed with the Rishi mushrooms. It absolutely has been transforming my mornings. I have it at night. completely chills me out, takes out all my stress, and allows me to have a good night's rest. After those long days of tequila on the set, I'm sure that's helpful. I mean, it does help.

The sweet vanilla plant-based protein is the one that I've been going to. After my workouts in the mornings, it's been a game-changer. 18 grams of plant-based protein, adaptogens, jam-packed with mushroom goodness. It's been a complete game-changer for me. So to go check it out, go to 4Sigmatic.com and use code the room at checkout. Greg, why do you look so tired? I look so tired because I did not sleep last night. Have you never slept well, or is this a new thing?

It's not that I can't fall asleep. I fall asleep like right away, but I wake up a couple hours later and I'm just sitting in my bed and I look at the ceiling and I can't fall back to sleep and I don't know what to do. So I was literally you. And for the longest time, I was this like hustle culture, bro, sleep when I'm dead, didn't want to sleep, didn't care about my sleep. And then I honestly, I started reading more of the research and realizing how impactful sleep is to your longevity, to your health, all of these other things. And as part of that, I found eight sleep, which has completely revolutionized the way I sleep. I've heard of eight sleep. Can you tell me more about it?

Think of it as like the future of sleep. All of these mattress companies have created these mattresses. they're just stock. They're stock mattresses. Eight sleep is technology plus sleep combined. So the whole product is built around optimizing the temperature that you sleep at. And so you've read about sleeping cold is the key to sleeping. And it's not quite true. Everyone has a different optimal sleep temperature and it changes throughout the night, which is the crazy part about it.

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completely change the way you sleep, rest, recover so that you're ready to take on all of life's challenges, check out eightsleep.com slash where it happens to get a discount on your first product. Here's a tip. Don't be like Greg Eisenberg. Be like Zahoe Bloom. So let's bring everyone up to speed on where we are, what's happening, and what are the next steps. So basically, there are unique challenges with buying the X games relative to, say, buying the Constitution. And I want to walk people through that because I've gotten a ton of excitement around the Dow idea.

People are like already clamoring to send Eath, contribute to it, get commitments going, get a discontinent. Chord channel going, all of that stuff. And I think that's great. The excitement's amazing. But there are some unique challenges here that we have to think through and we have to be cognizant of. Prior to this, prior to what I'm doing right now, I spent seven years working in the investment world doing deals, buying companies.

I'm on the board of a big company in the motocross space, Fox Racing, amazing company. And I know what it's like to actually go and buy a business. And it is messy. There are so many layers of complexity here that go beyond what. what anyone would really imagine when you think about just buying an asset. I mean, there's employees, employee contracts, pension liabilities, all the media contracts that they have, legacy contracts,

things that are screwed up. There's a bunch of liabilities that are sitting out there, I'm sure. So there are all of these layers of complexity that are so far beyond what, like, a constitution doubt would have had to deal with. We're not buying a piece of paper. We're buying IP and a business that is really meaningful and really needs both a capital structure to go and actually acquire it, but also an operating structure to go and do it. And that comes with a lot of complexity.

So when I was having conversations over the weekend, the biggest thing that jumped out to me was we need to be very, very deliberate about the strategy here. And what to me that means is that a hybrid approach to acquiring the X games is the smartest way to go about doing this. What do I mean by a hybrid approach? in a fully Dow approach, you raise $50 million or $100 million, whatever the number is, and you go and just buy the entirety of the X games. Why do I think that's challenging here?

As much as I love that as a cultural moment for the future of Web 3, I don't think it's a viable path forward to actually getting this done. Why? First off, this isn't like a Christie's auction of the X games. ESPN and Disney, Bob Iger is not going to be at a Christie's auction saying, oh, 50 million. I got, who got 50 million, 51 million, I got 52 million here, who going once? That is not how this deal gets done. ESPN and Disney believe in the legacy of this business. ESPN incubated this, started this.

It means something to them. They know it means something to the community. And so they're going to be very deliberate about who they sell to. Now, what does that mean? It means that the top dollar doesn't necessarily win. You might have a Dow bid at 75 million. And if someone comes in at 60, but they're a very credible investment. group, they have an operating team, and there's less kind of legal hoops to jump through because

it's not a Dow buying a company. ESPN and Disney are likely to go with that other bid. And what that means to me is that the best path forward is this hybrid approach, which is partner with a very credible investor group investment fund who has executed against reimagination strategies in the sports and media space. There are several of them out there. There are a bunch of funds that everyone would know. There's the churning groups of the world, the reins, the people that did UFC, sold it to WME. All of these groups have done a ton in this space and are excited, you know, would look at something like this, would be excited about it. And that is a really interesting thing.

Because if we can partner with a group like that and do something that looks more like a joint capital structure, maybe it's a Dow taking a minority, position in the future capital structure of this business, that is really interesting. And the reason I think that's interesting is because now you have an opportunity to actually go and get this done. I think it's great to go and get excited about the full kind of Dow bid to buy this. I don't think it's realistic that you could go get that done. And so if our interests are to go get this done and to go actually execute against the future of this and make it this amazing thing that we all think it can be, I believe that this is

the path forward to do it. And so what I've been doing over the last several days is having conversations with a variety of investment funds and investing groups who reached out. They saw this go out. It reached a ton of people. The thread did over two million impressions. A lot of people saw it. And I was contacted by a bunch of these groups. Why? I think a lot of these groups realized that there is a huge opportunity to bring in a community bid athlete and community group to partner with them on a transaction. There's a bunch of advantages to doing it that way. Beyond just the web threeification and people who really understand the web three angle of this, the earned media that would come from having the community involved in this is immense. You would have so much

excitement around going and executing this transaction if there's a Dow component, if there is a community component versus just another private equity fund going and buying a media asset. This becomes much more exciting for the media. It becomes much more exciting of a transaction. and the execution would generate a ton of interest and probably create a wave that you could really ride into the reimagination of all of this. So I think there's a really exciting opportunity to do something there. I'm having conversations with a bunch of these groups this week, seeing who is most viable, who's interested, who's far down the path. There are rumors swirling around in the space that somebody is getting close to a transaction here, need to understand that, figure out if there's an

opportunity to collaborate, to be involved, to get the community, to get the athletes to the table. So that's really a big next step here, is to figure that out and understand what is that path forward to getting something done. And then once we figure out what that path forward is, go out and actually execute. My future vision of it is still, I would say, a little bit amorphous. I think we need to figure it out. But having a Dow involved in the cap table in some way, shape, or form, I don't know what the legality is of it yet. I think we need to jump through the hoops on that front. but to figure that piece out, and maybe it's just that this Dow, the community, the athlete bid that comes in as part of the capital structure is in charge of the web threeification. Maybe that's kind of the core owned piece for this future. You allow the investor group to kind of run the broader strategy with an operating team that's executing against the cultural moment, the media side of it, all the contracts, all of the complexity there.

And the Dow is in charge of reimagining the web threeification. It could be a very, very real credible thing. to create. So as I'm looking at it today, that's how I'm thinking about it. To me, this is like a man on the moon moment for Web 3 if we can go out and execute this. And I don't really say that lightly. I really do think that Web 3 and having a Dow or something that looks like a Dow, acquiring a share of a large operating business with the potential to be a billion dollar plus IP franchise is a huge, huge step forward for the space. I mean, maybe man on the moon is dramatic. Call it the four minute mile moment. Maybe it's the four minute mile moment. Roger Bannister breaks the four minute mile. Suddenly everyone within, within six months, a bunch of other people did it.

Within a year, a bunch of other people did it because all of a sudden it was like, oh, the four minute mile is no longer this thing that holds you up. Maybe this is that moment for Web3. Maybe we can create that as a community. We can come together, go out and execute against something like this, and really create that special moment that vaults the entire space forward, that vaults the idea of community ownership, community governance forward, and participation from the athletes, from the community, from the fans, and allow the future athletes to participate in the value that they create for this as well. So I'm super excited about it.

I think there's a ton to do. There's a bunch of athletes we haven't heard from, a bunch of people I really want to get involved. I mean, Tony Hawk, if you're out there, if you're listening to this, you've got to get involved in this, man. This is a huge, huge moment for the space. You would be the perfect person to have involved. Arnold Schwarzenegger, I've heard you're interested. Would love to have those people involved.

Sean White, I mean, all of these athletes that are out in the space that have been driving these extreme sports forward for so many years, this is your opportunity to have more ownership for this and to create a legacy that extends well beyond yourself to allow the future athletes of your sport, the legacy you guys created to persist in a really meaningful and in a beautiful way. So I'm extremely excited about it. I hope we can continue to push this forward. I'm going to do this whole thing in public. I said that from the get-go. I'm going to add this episode to the tweet thread. I'm going to continue to provide updates there as I learn more.

Obviously, there's going to be certain things that are confidential in the process, who's involved. But I'm going to share absolutely as much as possible. And we're going to go do this thing. And I actually think there's a real path to going and getting this done. And I wouldn't have said that on Friday when I put out the idea. So it's pretty exciting that I'm sitting here on Monday recording this. And in the span of four days, three days, whatever it's been, we've completely flipped this entire thing on its head. And we have an opportunity to actually go and do something special here.

So stay with me, super excited about this. And to close out this episode, I want to bring in a good, good buddy of mine who is extremely credible to talk about this stuff. It's my buddy Sam Shortstein. He was in charge of the reimagination of the XFL. So prior to COVID, Vince McMahon over the WWE, I think he put 500 million of his stuff. his own dollars into restarting the XFL. It took off. It was totally insane.

If anyone watched it, it was awesome. The content coming out of it, the virality was fucking phenomenal. Unfortunately, they only got like three or four weeks of games in before COVID turned the world upside down. And because of the stock market crashing, Vince McMahon pulled the plug on the whole thing. So Sam was really in the trenches for a year and a half, two years. When I was starting to ideate on the X games idea, I called Sam and bounced it around. I was basically, he was the guy I called to say, tell me I'm an native.

yet. What am I missing here? So I want to pull them in. We're going to riff for a couple minutes on how you might actually reimagine this. And then we're going to put this out to the community. And we're going to get it out and let's keep this thing rolling forward. I will continue to provide updates as we push this thing. And let's go buy the X games. So I'm going to pull Sam in. Sam, welcome to the show. There he is. Sam Schwarzstein, the man, the myth, the legend. Sam, I just gave you an intro. I hyped you up. I gave you a good, good plug. I need you to tell the story very quickly of Bud Light Seltzer and

how you guys integrated that? Because I think it's a very unique story to think about as we think about reimagining the X games and the future of sports and media. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on Sawhill. You know, when we were at the XFL, we had to reimagine everything that we were doing and we were looking

at different spaces and how they do brand integrations, right? How do you mix the corporate with the culture? Right. And people can tell it's almost like the Uncanny Valley when you're not doing it the right way. So Seltzer, Bud Light Seltzer came to us. They just launched their competitor to the white claw business. And they're like, hey, we want to, we want to put the Seltzer, you know, we want, how do we get this in your player's hands, right? Because that's really what they care

about. They don't want signs. They want in the players' hands. So we said, we'll put in the locker room, right? I can't tell them to drink it, but, you know, I can't influence them to drink. So what I did is we just put it in the, in the locker room. And we've tried it out with the, hey, the winning team is going to get the seltzer, the sult separation or whatever. And this time the away team won in our facility at ballpark in Arlington that we had helped convert to a football stadium now. And the couple of guys are looking at the seltzer like, what is this? Like, what are we doing here?

Like, it's, you know, a beer drinker guys. Are you baiting me? You try to fuck me. You're trying to force me to drink this seltzer. They look at me like, what am I supposed to do with this? I'm like, do what you want with it. And because of the connection to WWE, it's funny. You know, Taylor Heineke, who's now the starting quarterback for the Washington football team, he starts doing the Stone Cold celebration.

He didn't play it down. He was the backup quarterback quarterback. You know, he starts Stone Cold celebration. The other backup quarterback's getting on it. The kickers getting in on it. And it was viral moment. Viral moment. We had a bunch of players commenting on it.

Former NFL players, Tori Smith, were commenting on it. And it kind of brought this new brand integration. You know, my buddy, Chris Seglia, he runs one of the largest e-sports. streaming companies, 10-owned media. And he was like, you've got to get it in their hands. Get it in their hands. Get it in their hands. And that was a unique way of us, like, how is Seltzer aligned with football?

Well, through that post-game celebration. Yeah, it's crazy to think about all the opportunities that exist like that. I love that story because it's basically just like, go do something different. And you create all these unique earned media moments that all of a sudden you're like replicating personality, right? Everyone wants personality around these things. That's what I said on the original episode when I released it was Drive to Survive was so great. Not because of the production value or anything they were doing.

It was because they put fucking faces behind these cars. It used to be a car driving around a track, which was great. Formula One was a great sport, but it was niche. All of a sudden, my wife is watching Drive to Survive, and she's like, oh, Lewis Hamilton versus this guy and that personality. And, oh, how's that guy doing? I want to watch him because now you have a face. Like, I've put a name to the face. It's no longer a car.

And for the X games, there's such a unique opportunity to do this exact thing. You put personalities behind this because you and I've talked about this. There has not been a really big face or name around extreme sports in a long time in the way that they're used to be. When we were growing up, the Tony Hawk, the Sean White, they were like cultural icons. And you can go and recreate that by doing something unique on the media side here. Yeah, you know, I look at Nigid Houston is probably better than some of, of the guys that we grew up watching, and his clothes are even better than what Tony Hawk had, but it's not the same type of getting people there. It's the street skating that it's not as

as, it's not as high flying as what we used to Travis Pastrana jumping over 50 monster trucks doing evil can evil stuff, you know, so. Yeah, that's another good point though. It's like the ESPN has focused so much. I think Disney and ESPN have focused so much on the like bigger, faster, higher, stronger of the X games, rather than on the personalities and the people and creating a face to it. And it's always been like, oh, this guy's going to do a, you know, 10, 80, you know, flip, McTwist, whatever, like, it's some insane jump. My eyes literally cannot process that number of spins.

Like, when I watched that, I remember when Tony Hawk did like the 900 and it was a huge moment. Beyond a 900, I literally can't process. And at some point, you can't spin. Like your body literally won't allow it to happen. And so the spins are, you can't keep getting. higher and higher on that. What you can do is create personalities around this, create a face to all of this, and basically create something unique that people want to engage with, that they want to go

spend money on in person, that they want to share on social, that they want to go put money behind merch, NFTs, all of the Web3 components of it, get access to these personalities. I mean, you can recreate cultural icons totally outside the context of the actual event. You know, and another thing about it is the age of the people. So Ryan Sheckler, at 13. Tony Hawk was a prodigy. It can steer younger. Traditional American sports, like even in my league, we had technically no restrictions. We didn't have a collective bargaining agreement,

but we still didn't go after players more than three years out of college, right? Ryan Schaeckler was 13 when he hit the scene and skateboarding. And there's a young guy just hit a 1080, right? And he's like 14 years old. It steals younger as we get younger, and you can create stars that way. Versus traditional sports, you have to go much older route. and there's people who I can identify.

You know, Ryan Schultner had a TV show. It's 16 years old. These types of things can be recreated through different mediums now distribution. The other thing that's come up to both of us is prize money. And I think it's a brilliant point that I hadn't thought of. But you can create this virtuous cycle. If we buy this, you know, if we partner with the right people and we can go start to reimagine it, you can create a virtuous cycle that makes it more and more relevant for the athletes, for the fans.

And that's around prize money, right? Like the prize winnings right now are like 25 grand, 30 grand, someone wins if they win the X games. And that's insane. That's like the Olympics, right? Like these guys are making no money for a lifetime's worth of work. And there's a real opportunity here because if you create more media around it, if you create these cultural icons, more revenue starts coming into the business, the IP is worth more. The athletes are generating more revenue because they can do these web three things.

They can sell NFTs for unique access. They're able to profit from their likeness more than just like the Instagram brand deals and the things they're doing now. All of a sudden, that prize money number goes way up. You have more revenue coming through this thing. It just creates an engine, right? All of a sudden, you start having a quarter million dollar prize winnings. You have a million dollar prize winnings. And that's a moment. Now all of a sudden, the athletes are like, this is my goddamn Super Bowl. I'm really going to focus on training for that because this is a huge moment. There's create much more culture around it. There's much more excitement around it. And you create this virtuous cycle that I think just

self-replicates. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy for a lot of people that that really cites me. You know, I'm in the same boat because of the XFL, we had a pay to play, pay more to win, right? And so I paid my guys a thousand bucks a week. And then every game they played and they got a thousand bucks, but then they got a bonus of $2,000 or $2,021. Why? Right? Because we're going to the 2021 season, right? Like, we're 2020 season, right? And pay more to win. And so that's why, you know, when there's a interview with Taylor Hineke, that's why he's celebrating so much is he just made $2,000, right? The grand skewing things is not the big, but when you add a prize money to the competition, it makes it different. The international for Dota 2, their big tournament, they do a really good job integrating units bought in the esports space in Dota gets revenue split with the championship, the winner.

So they're the largest prize pool in these sports, not even the biggest game, but they can get up to $11 million. Wow. And that's the attraction there versus I think legal legends might be $3 million for the team org. That doesn't cover one player's salary. But, you know, Dota 2, you're going really high up in that prize goal. That gives a lot of people, hey, this is why I should be watching. This is why I should be competing in this game versus another game. And it really gives that opportunity.

We all can rally around money. Now, yes, there's going to be exposure opportunities here. And, hey, you should compete in the X games versus other action sports competitions because we're on ESPN. That doesn't work anymore. You need to get people in, buy people in. And then, like you're saying, with community engagement, It makes even more money impactful for your fans when they can directly compensate the athlete instead of going through middleman.

Totally. It also just as the athletes have direct ownership in these things, as the community has direct ownership. And so they all have a vested interest in seeing it continue to accelerate and grow. That's so powerful. And it's what Web 3, I think, is figured out in a big way is just this idea of community ownership and, you know, the progressive decentralization, the progressive kind of communitization of a lot of these spaces. is really interesting because all of a sudden, not only current athletes, but future athletes have real skin in the game to see this continue to accelerate and grow. And I don't think it's a zero-sum game of like you play in the, you know, you participate

in the X games versus in something else. I want this to be like totally open source, you know, you know, like interoperable with other events, other series people are doing. They should, the athletes, they should really want to participate in this because it accelerates their value. They're given the resources. They're given the tools to go and execute against, you know, real brand building for them personally that they can extend anywhere. I think one of the things that's, you know, the biggest disservice to athletes broadly is that they have these short shelf lives as athletes and they haven't been given the tools and resources to really

capitalize on being top 0.01% in the world at something during that window. There's a couple athletes and it's like survivorship bias thing. You hear about the guys that make 50 million, 80 million, $100 million. You and I both have some friends that have done that. Not that they're happier than other friends who have made less money than that, but they were able to capitalize. Very few do that. And so I think if you can create a world where these athletes have the tools and resources

through the X games to brand build, to extend the lifetime of their value, and to really engage directly with the fan base and profit from that direct engagement with the fan base, there's something beautiful and really brilliant that can happen here. So I'm super fired up about this. I'm also just really excited by how much community engagement came in since posting about it. I'm excited about the athletes that want to get involved. I'm also excited about the athletes that haven't responded yet that we should be able to go out and get because they should be on board with something like this.

So I think there's a really, really interesting opportunity here. I want to, as I said earlier in the episode, I want to go run down the traps on the investor groups that are looking at this. I want to figure out who's most excited about the strategy. Who is most excited about, you know, having a Dow involved, having a Web 3 angle to doing this whole thing. Because if there's someone that's going in to do this and isn't thinking about it and, you know, the right way or in our view, thinking about it in a, you know, in a truly inclusive way for the community, I don't think that's an approach that we would want to take. So partnering with the right people and trying to go get this done and, you know, showing Disney, ESPN, etc., that there's a vision to make this a really, really bright future for the X games and for this Ivy. that they incubated is a key part of it. So I'm really excited about it. I think there's a really bright future here and looking forward to seeing next step. So I appreciate you joining.

Sam, you're the man. I'm going to continue riffing on this with you for sure because I think you're one of the brightest minds on reimagining the future of sports and media and going to be involved no matter what here when we go get this done. So let's let's keep plugging along and let's go buy the fucking X games. Also, man, let's arm the rebels as Greg says. Let's do it. The Rebels. I love it. I love it. All right, man. Well, thank you so much. As everyone who is tuning in will appreciate, this was a pretty unique and quick special episode. State of the Union on buying the episode on fuck. Now I'm getting too excited. I'm going to blow this. State of the union on buying the X games. Not buying the episode. Buying the X games. You were tuning in here today and appreciate all of you. And I will keep everyone posted. Let's go do it in public. Four-Sigmatic is the secret sauce behind the Where It Happens podcast. You know how much I've been talking about that hot cocoa, the one that's jam-packed with the Rishi mushrooms.

It absolutely has been transforming my mornings. I have it at night, completely chills me out, takes out all my stress, and allows me to have a good night's rest. After those long days of tequila on the set, I'm sure that's helpful. I mean, it does help. The sweet vanilla plant-based protein is the one that I've been going to. After my workouts in the mornings, it's been a game changer. 18 grams of plant-based protein, adaptogens, jam-packed with mushroom goodness.

It's been a complete game changer for me. So to go check it out, go to 4Sigmatic.com and use code the room at checkout. Greg, why do you look so tired? I look so tired because I did not sleep last night. Have you never slept well, or is this a new thing? It's not that I can't fall asleep. I fall asleep, like, right away. But I wake up a couple hours later, and I'm just sitting in my bed, and I look at the ceiling,

and I can't fall back to sleep, and I don't know what to do. So I was literally you. And for the longest time, I was this like hustle culture, bro, sleep when I'm dead, didn't want to sleep, didn't care about my sleep. And then I honestly, I started reading more of the research and realizing how impactful sleep is to your longevity, to your health. all of these other things. And as part of that, I found 8 Sleep, which has completely revolutionized the way I sleep.

I've heard of 8 Sleep. Can you tell me more about it? Think of it as like the future of sleep. All of these mattress companies have created these mattresses. They're just stock. They're stock mattresses. Eight Sleep is technology plus sleep combined. So the whole product is built around optimizing the temperature that you sleep at.

And so you've read about sleeping cold is the key to sleeping. And it's not quite true. everyone has a different optimal sleep temperature and it changes throughout the night, which is the crazy part about it. So you might need really cold to fall asleep and then you might need it to be a little bit warmer to keep you asleep. And the eight sleep actually transitions your temperature through the night to keep you at the optimal sleep temperature at any point during the night. It keeps you asleep. It helps you fall asleep faster. And I actually, since I started using it, have been sleeping better and feeling so much more energized during the day as a result. Sounds like I need an eight sleep.

I think everyone needs an eight sleep. So if you're tuning in right now and you want to try out the 8th Sleep to completely change the way you sleep, rest, recover so that you're ready to take on all of life's challenges. Check out 8Sleep.com slash where it happens to get a discount on your first product. Here's a tip. Don't be like Greg Eisenberg. Be like Sahel Bloom. Join our free community at TRWIH.com. Stick just