Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: I'm Jason Kelly, I'm Alex Rodriguez, and today on the Deal,
Speaker 2: Carolyn Tish blodget. She is a fascinating figure, Alex right
Speaker 2: at the white Hot center of sports ownership. Her family
Speaker 2: has co owned the New York Giants for about thirty years.
Speaker 2: She is now the lead owner of Gotham FC. That's
Speaker 2: the NWSL franchise here in the New York, New Jersey area.
Speaker 2: They have been wildly successful and she.
Speaker 3: Is very successful. Yeah, and she has a great background.
Speaker 4: I mean, she was global head of marketing at Peloton
Speaker 4: where she helped grow that market capture over thirty billion dollars.
Speaker 4: And I actually think the set of skills that she
Speaker 4: used there are going to really impact the way she
Speaker 4: runs Gotham today.
Speaker 2: Knows a lot about growing businesses and growing them fast.
Speaker 2: All right, here's Carolyn Tish Blodget, So please introduce yourself.
Speaker 5: I'm Carolyn Tish Blodgett, CEO and founder of Next Three,
Speaker 5: governor of Gotham FC, and strategic advisor to the Tish
Speaker 5: family at the Giants.
Speaker 3: So, Carolyn, your signature deal.
Speaker 2: I think it's buying Gotham FC, would you agree and
Speaker 2: tell us about the decision to do that.
Speaker 3: We're jumping right in.
Speaker 5: We are jumping right in exactly. I thought we were
Speaker 5: in a little warm up. No, we are jumping right in. Okay, well,
Speaker 5: I am going to take us back for a minute
Speaker 5: to put the Gotham deal in perspective, although I agree
Speaker 5: it has been our signature deal so far. So my
Speaker 5: background's in operating. I ran marketing at Pelton for four years.
Speaker 5: My family has co owned the New York Giants for
Speaker 5: the last thirty seven years, and so I started working
Speaker 5: with my family a few years ago at the Giants.
Speaker 5: And the idea was really to bring a lot of
Speaker 5: the innovative things thinking that I learned from Peloton, and
Speaker 5: bring it to a legacy organization like the Giants. And
Speaker 5: I realized pretty quickly that obviously not news to either
Speaker 5: of you, that sports was changing, and we as legacy owners,
Speaker 5: had an opportunity either to kind of lean back and
Speaker 5: continue to watch it, or we could lean in and
Speaker 5: really help drive some of that innovation. And so I
Speaker 5: brought this idea to my family of starting a sports
Speaker 5: investment firm. It's now called Next three. To your question
Speaker 5: on you know is Gotham the signature of it. I
Speaker 5: would say I started next three really with the agenda
Speaker 5: only being where do we what do we think sports
Speaker 5: will look like in the next thirty years? You know,
Speaker 5: we've been in sports for thirty years, what will the
Speaker 5: next thirty look like? There was not a thesis or
Speaker 5: you know, I often now get questions around women's sports
Speaker 5: and you know, did you start this because you played
Speaker 5: soccer growing up or you know you have a passion
Speaker 5: for women's sports, and obviously I now do. But it
Speaker 5: was really just meant to be what do we think
Speaker 5: sports will look like in the future, And there was
Speaker 5: just sign after sign that pointed to the growth of
Speaker 5: women's and in particular the growth of the NWSL.
Speaker 2: What was that moment like where you decided to make
Speaker 2: the investment and then essentially you got it, like you're
Speaker 2: in charge. Tell us about sort of what it felt
Speaker 2: like in that moment and what you were thinking.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, you know, deals always take longer than you
Speaker 5: think they're going to. So we had actually planned to
Speaker 5: announce around the World Cup. We had planned to announce
Speaker 5: when we were going to the playoffs. There were kind
Speaker 5: of all these moments and then the deal didn't get finished.
Speaker 5: It didn't get finished, so it ends up closing on
Speaker 5: a Tuesday, or re anounced it on a Tuesday. We
Speaker 5: wire the check on Wednesday. On Thursday, I get on
Speaker 5: a plane to fly out. They were in the championship
Speaker 5: in San Diego on Thursday. I get off the plane.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm like still wearing my glasses, can like
Speaker 5: barely see. I like where my one Gotham sweatshirt I have?
Speaker 5: And we land and I get to the team hotel
Speaker 5: and the media person pulls me aside and she's like, great,
Speaker 5: now you're going to address the team. And I was
Speaker 5: like wait, need and they're like, yeah, the team's having lunch,
Speaker 5: you know, stand up and tell them why you're here.
Speaker 5: And I was so nervous. I was so intimidated, Like
Speaker 5: I'm looking at this room full of people that are on,
Speaker 5: you know, two days away from playing in a championship game,
Speaker 5: completely intimidated. And god knows what I said, but many
Speaker 5: of the players came up to me after and they
Speaker 5: all said thank you for being here. And it was
Speaker 5: this moment where I realized we had so many months
Speaker 5: to prepare for this moment, and it's going to be
Speaker 5: so different than we thought it is. This is not,
Speaker 5: you know, an investment in an ad tech company. This
Speaker 5: is not even Peloton, which I did feel like I
Speaker 5: personally threw myself into. This was so personal and I
Speaker 5: know that you know, most of what we're gonna talk
Speaker 5: about today is probably you know, how we look at
Speaker 5: it as an investment. But I think that was the
Speaker 5: first moment that it was so clear to me that
Speaker 5: even just showing up and showing our commitment and the
Speaker 5: idea that an NFL legacy family would make their first
Speaker 5: ever next investment a sports team, in a women's soccer team,
Speaker 5: that really said a lot.
Speaker 4: So walk us through how that opportunity comes does Obviously
Speaker 4: you guys have great relationships in the investment bank community.
Speaker 4: There's a banker just call you and say, hey, Carolyn,
Speaker 4: there's an opportunity.
Speaker 3: Walk us through that.
Speaker 1: Yees.
Speaker 5: So it actually came about there were a bunch of
Speaker 5: other teams that had been raising money around the same time,
Speaker 5: and so we actually looked at one of the other
Speaker 5: teams first and then of yoursell Yeah, and we looked
Speaker 5: at it and it was the first time we even
Speaker 5: had We didn't even go when we started next three.
Speaker 5: It wasn't clear to me that we were going to
Speaker 5: invest in another team. That was not the idea. The
Speaker 5: idea was again more kind of supporting companies around what
Speaker 5: would make us better owners, you know, at the Giants,
Speaker 5: and so we didn't even think about investing a team.
Speaker 5: But this, this deal came across our desk and we
Speaker 5: started looking at it, and then we started getting into
Speaker 5: like we realized quickly, wow, there's a lot there's a
Speaker 5: lot of exciting momentum and women's sports they're sort of
Speaker 5: on the cusp of really you know, if a few
Speaker 5: things could go differently, like this league could really be
Speaker 5: onto something. So we started kind of going down the
Speaker 5: path of looking at the league and we ended up
Speaker 5: actually looking at a few different teams in the league.
Speaker 5: Then we put our New York hat on and said,
Speaker 5: wait a second, we are legacy New York owners. There's
Speaker 5: a great story in our family that people often say,
Speaker 5: when my grandfather ended up buying fifty percent of the Giants,
Speaker 5: he actually had an opportunity to buy one hundred percent
Speaker 5: of a few other teams in which would have been
Speaker 5: a much less complicated deal. And he always said, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm a poor kid from Brooklyn to be able to
Speaker 5: buy fifty percent of the New York Giants. I would
Speaker 5: take that any day over one hundred percent of you.
Speaker 3: Know, any other team.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Great vision.
Speaker 5: So that was really in my head and so we
Speaker 5: so we said, you know what if we could could
Speaker 5: come in with to the New York team with Gotham.
Speaker 5: And so I approached the governor's wife, Tammy Murphy, who
Speaker 5: is the governor at the time.
Speaker 2: I will never Phil Murphy, the New Jersey governor, and
Speaker 2: Tammy Murphy has one Yes, Sorry.
Speaker 5: I should have cleared that up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So the Murphy started Gotham. They are the original founders
Speaker 5: and so and there are partners. And so I went
Speaker 5: out to New Jersey and told them why we should
Speaker 5: be their partners. Wow, very intimidating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what did they say? And what was your pitch?
Speaker 3: Good question.
Speaker 5: So I talked about you know, our obviously our our
Speaker 5: legacy as Giants co owners. But then I mostly actually
Speaker 5: talked about Pelton and I talked about my experience there
Speaker 5: and how I felt like this team was on the
Speaker 5: precipice of being great, but it needed you know, stronger
Speaker 5: marketing support and stronger you know, needed to be more
Speaker 5: part of culture, and that was something that I could
Speaker 5: uniquely bring. And Jammy's incredible. She gets more done in
Speaker 5: a day than any human being.
Speaker 3: I believe exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and she just you know, she like cuts
Speaker 5: to the chase. This seems like it could work. Brought
Speaker 5: me over to Phil. We talked to Phil and that
Speaker 5: started the conversations.
Speaker 2: What was the pitch back to your family? Like, what
Speaker 2: was that process?
Speaker 5: Justek I made sure my family was okay with them
Speaker 5: before she sure went to the Murphys and asked for that.
Speaker 5: So the pitch to them, I would say. The three
Speaker 5: kind of markers that showed us that this could be
Speaker 5: an interesting investment were The first was around this lack
Speaker 5: of visibility historically women's soccer. Even if there has always
Speaker 5: been a core women's soccer fan base, small but strong,
Speaker 5: but you couldn't find it on TV. So you were
Speaker 5: never even if you were a strong, really strong fan,
Speaker 5: you were you could either show up to a game
Speaker 5: in person if you lived in that market, or you know,
Speaker 5: sometimes I think they were on Lifetime in the past,
Speaker 5: not exactly like where you're finding your average casual sports fan.
Speaker 5: So there was no opportunity for casual sports fans to
Speaker 5: come in. So we knew that the nwslth through a research,
Speaker 5: was about to sign a new media deal. We didn't
Speaker 5: know what it was going to look like, but we knew, okay,
Speaker 5: what that new media deal will probably open the door
Speaker 5: to more casual fans. The second piece was around a
Speaker 5: lack of investment in women's sports. As you know, ninety
Speaker 5: nine percent of investments historically in sports have gone to
Speaker 5: the men's game. At this point, because we had looked
Speaker 5: at a few other teams, we knew that was starting
Speaker 5: to change. Legacy owners and other leagues were starting to
Speaker 5: come into this league. There were starting to be you know,
Speaker 5: it was starting to be better capitalized. And then the
Speaker 5: last piece, which was a bit more of a risk
Speaker 5: at the time and now seems kind of laughable looking back,
Speaker 5: was this kind of lack of being in culture. So
Speaker 5: for a long time, women's sports were just not a
Speaker 5: part of culture. It was not something people talked about.
Speaker 5: And now again, you know, a year later, I feel
Speaker 5: like all anyone talks about is Kaitlyn Clark and that
Speaker 5: everyone watches women's sports shirt is like the hot shirt
Speaker 5: to be wearing around New York now, So obviously that's changed.
Speaker 5: But that was another one where we said, Okay, is
Speaker 5: this something that could change in the future in a
Speaker 5: world where we're in an athlete driven world and people
Speaker 5: and their star power and there's all these great players
Speaker 5: within the league. Could that translate into growth and teams?
Speaker 5: And so those were the three vectors that we looked
Speaker 5: at the deal at and I brought that to my
Speaker 5: family and they were I have to say, they again
Speaker 5: didn't wake up thinking like I wonder if we'll buy
Speaker 5: a women's soccer team one day, but they were incredibly
Speaker 5: supportive from day one.
Speaker 3: So let's talk a little bit about the market of
Speaker 3: New York. There's a gift in a curse.
Speaker 4: I was fortunate enough in two thousand and nine to
Speaker 4: be part of a world championship team with the Yankees.
Speaker 4: And you've experienced over the last thirty years multiple titles,
Speaker 4: and you've tasted the glory of being a champion. However,
Speaker 4: there's ten or eleven other teams here. How do you
Speaker 4: think about cutting through the noise of winning a title
Speaker 4: and not being in the front pages like the Giant
Speaker 4: or the Yankees.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the way you said it is exactly right.
Speaker 5: It's a gift in a curse. So in some ways
Speaker 5: it's the number one media market, you know, the incredible
Speaker 5: fandom here, but it's really crowded, as you said. So again,
Speaker 5: two days into our ownership, we win the championship where
Speaker 5: all I'm flying back with my family and I'm like,
Speaker 5: it's so excited to read about it in the newspaper,
Speaker 5: like everyone in the world must be talking about the
Speaker 5: fact that Gotham just won. And we open the sports
Speaker 5: pages and we're like, okay, it's not on the cover. Understandable, Fine,
Speaker 5: you know, women's source is still growing, and we're like, okay,
Speaker 5: it's not on page two. Okay, it's not a page three,
Speaker 5: And we keep going and going, going, and there's literally
Speaker 5: not covered. And then we open our news feeds, like
Speaker 5: on our phones, is it on social media?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 5: And it's just no one was talking about it. And
Speaker 5: I think that, really, I think crystallized that moment of Okay,
Speaker 5: we're not in culture right now, and that is on
Speaker 5: us to go build. So, first of all, I should
Speaker 5: say that since then, the two winning sports teams in
Speaker 5: New York are the women's sports teams, right sure, and
Speaker 5: they obviously you know very much are part of culture
Speaker 5: here now. But that has been part of the work
Speaker 5: we've done in the last year is building those relationships
Speaker 5: with the local newspapers, with people that kind of build
Speaker 5: New York culture. We had our players drop the ball
Speaker 5: at Times Square, we had a big media event. I
Speaker 5: can't remember you hear that. I was at the Rainbow
Speaker 5: Room when we introduced our free agents. So we have
Speaker 5: been kind of brick by brick building our story in
Speaker 5: New York because as hard as it is to break
Speaker 5: into the New York sports scene, once you're in, there's
Speaker 5: nowhere better to win a championship than New York.
Speaker 2: And let's talk about that because you know you mentioned
Speaker 2: the Liberty, which you know when the twenty four finals,
Speaker 2: Sorry too soon, No, I mean, thank you Jack. Amazing
Speaker 2: series at the distance and you know, but one of
Speaker 2: the things that I think was very notable, and Alex
Speaker 2: and I have talked a lot about this is how
Speaker 2: well curated the court side seats are. You know, I
Speaker 2: went to your first ever playoff game. You go through
Speaker 2: that suite, there are there's Eli Manning, there's Justin Tuck,
Speaker 2: there's Rich Climan, there's Megan Rappino, Sue Bert, you know
Speaker 2: all of these luminaries it is in the culture.
Speaker 3: It feels like it's suddenly in the culture. So what happened?
Speaker 2: I mean, Caitlin Clark not with standing for the WNBA,
Speaker 2: there's something bigger going on.
Speaker 3: How do you respond to that? But also how do
Speaker 3: you help create it?
Speaker 5: I'm so glad you brought that up, because that was
Speaker 5: very deliberate. We really studied. I think in the past
Speaker 5: year when I've thought about, you know, who do we
Speaker 5: bring in to help run this team On the business side,
Speaker 5: it's been a real mix of in and out of sports.
Speaker 5: And part of why we did that is because we
Speaker 5: didn't want to just say, like, what is the typical
Speaker 5: NWSL playbook and let's go run it back. We wanted
Speaker 5: to look across all of sports outside of sports, like
Speaker 5: who does it well in culture more broadly, and so
Speaker 5: the person who now runs marketing for us, she looked
Speaker 5: very closely at what does court side at the Knicks
Speaker 5: look like? What does it mean when you go to
Speaker 5: a Yankees or a Yankees World Series game? Who's there,
Speaker 5: what types of people are there, what is the fan
Speaker 5: experience like? And so that that was It's been a
Speaker 5: very deliberate build. So part of it is just having
Speaker 5: the vision to do it. The other part is the execution.
Speaker 5: And the reason I think we've been able to execute
Speaker 5: it well is because it all starts with having the
Speaker 5: best product on the field and kind of putting my
Speaker 5: marketing head on. You can't market a bad product like
Speaker 5: you have to have the right product first. And we
Speaker 5: knew we had that. We have some of the best
Speaker 5: players in the world. We had all these Olympians that
Speaker 5: are you know, on our team at Awtham, so we
Speaker 5: know we have a great product. Now the job was
Speaker 5: to go build a great fan experience around that product.
Speaker 5: So it wasn't just ninety minutes of soccer. It was
Speaker 5: you know, the hour before at FanFest, it was who
Speaker 5: was in the suite, as you said, and so that
Speaker 5: was kind of the second part was like building that
Speaker 5: great experience so that when people come, whether it's your
Speaker 5: average fan who plays local soccer or it's Eli Manning
Speaker 5: or Superbird, that you want to be there and you
Speaker 5: want to tell all your friends about it and you
Speaker 5: want to come back.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a bit about the Giants if we can.
Speaker 2: It's probably worth about seven billion dollars. You know, if
Speaker 2: you look at the estimates Gotham maybe less than one
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars. They would seem incompatible from a scale perspective.
Speaker 2: Clearly their learnings back and forth. You're spending time at both.
Speaker 2: What are the most obvious connections that you take back
Speaker 2: and forth and what are some that you know maybe
Speaker 2: we wouldn't think of.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when you put it like that, they do something
Speaker 5: pretty far apart. They don't feel like it in the
Speaker 5: day to day.
Speaker 3: So don't that's interesting? So it feels similar?
Speaker 5: Well, I would say the challenges feel different, but maybe
Speaker 5: like my personal passion for both feel similar. Maybe we'll
Speaker 5: say that. So I would say that probably the most
Speaker 5: clear synergies are just the learning sharing going on between
Speaker 5: the two. So as we're building up the business staff
Speaker 5: at Gotham for them to be able to call people
Speaker 5: at the Giants and say like, hey, how do you
Speaker 5: think about, you know, selling sponsorships, how we're thinking about
Speaker 5: putting in like a new CRM system, How did you
Speaker 5: guys think about that? Even on the soccer side, we
Speaker 5: are GM and I spoke to Aaron Wellman, who's the
Speaker 5: head of performance at the Giants, just about like, how
Speaker 5: do you put a medical staff together. So the idea
Speaker 5: that you can at any point when you have a question,
Speaker 5: you can pick up the phone and have a resource
Speaker 5: there to call is really fantastic and.
Speaker 3: They know that, they just know that that's available to them.
Speaker 2: You just you created that so that you say, do
Speaker 2: you need something at the Giants, just I'll connect to you.
Speaker 3: Like, how does that work in practice?
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, that's a good question. Yes, So I created
Speaker 5: that from the beginning, and part of it I think
Speaker 5: was built allowing the Gotham team to build the respect
Speaker 5: with the Giants organization so that they didn't feel like, oh,
Speaker 5: who is this person calling me? It's like they have
Speaker 5: they feel vested in it. And it's actually been amazing
Speaker 5: to see how many Giants employees have become Gotham fans.
Speaker 5: And every time about the Giants' offices for work, often
Speaker 5: people came running over to me and I think they're
Speaker 5: there to talk to me about something about the Giants,
Speaker 5: and they really just want to talk about Gotham. So
Speaker 5: that's really hap.
Speaker 3: They're probably talking to you about them fair fair.
Speaker 5: Too soon, I think, but yes, you're probably right. Yes,
Speaker 5: So there is this sort of you know, great syndergies.
Speaker 5: I would say, kind of behind the scenes on the
Speaker 5: business side, the things that I think that I hadn't
Speaker 5: really because to your point, you know, the valuations are
Speaker 5: very different. The tenure the Giants are celebrating their hundredth anniversary.
Speaker 5: Gotham is, you know, a couple of years in. Is
Speaker 5: the way that we think about fandom is so different.
Speaker 5: Yet I think there's really great learnings across them. So,
Speaker 5: for example, in the NFL, fandom is often generational. You know,
Speaker 5: you're a Giants fan because your father was a Giants
Speaker 5: fan and your grandfather was a Giants fan, and maybe
Speaker 5: there was a female fan in there, but it was
Speaker 5: probably your father and your grandfather. So it's very you know,
Speaker 5: it's passed down. It's very geographic. It's like you're a
Speaker 5: Giants fan because that's who you could watch on TV
Speaker 5: because you lived in New York or you still live
Speaker 5: in New York. At Gotham, we're really building fandom from
Speaker 5: the ground up. Soccer is the number one sport played
Speaker 5: amongst youth in this country. So often parents are learning
Speaker 5: about soccer through their kids, and their kids play soccer
Speaker 5: and then they don't. Actually, that doesn't just because you
Speaker 5: play in your local soccer team doesn't necessarily translate to
Speaker 5: oh and then I go watch my favorite soccer team
Speaker 5: on TV or I go to a game. And so
Speaker 5: that's what we're trying to do at Gotham is build
Speaker 5: that kind of ground up fandom. However, there's actually a
Speaker 5: lot to be you know, both teams could benefit from
Speaker 5: the other and so there are families where Soccer's is generational,
Speaker 5: So how do we bring that fandom to Gotham and
Speaker 5: then at the Giants figuring out how do you get
Speaker 5: you know, a next generation of fans that may not
Speaker 5: have that in their blood. It might not be passed down,
Speaker 5: but needs to be built from the ground up. There's
Speaker 5: a lot of great lessons in there.
Speaker 4: Talk about fandom. Staying on that subject, over the last
Speaker 4: thirty years, your family have caned the Giants and we
Speaker 4: understand very clearly how fans consume content. How do you
Speaker 4: think about it with your Peloton background, the next five
Speaker 4: to ten, even thirty years, how does that look and
Speaker 4: how different is it than the past thirty?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think this is actually one of the things
Speaker 5: we were really excited about in our Gotham investment was
Speaker 5: the way that people are consuming sports is so different now.
Speaker 5: The avidity is still there, but it might not be
Speaker 5: that you sit and watch a whole four hour game.
Speaker 5: You're probably connecting through social media. You're probably connecting through athletes.
Speaker 5: There is this sort of athlete driven I don't need
Speaker 5: to tell you this, there's this you know, athlete driven
Speaker 5: culture now. And so that if you think about that
Speaker 5: from a giant's perspective, that is leaning into digital, that
Speaker 5: is leaning into social, that really sets us up well
Speaker 5: at Gotham. There's when I was at Peloton, that was
Speaker 5: one of the early insights we realized as people would
Speaker 5: walk around saying like, I love Pelton, I love Peloton,
Speaker 5: and then when you ask them a follow up question,
Speaker 5: it always gets to I love Ali love or I
Speaker 5: love Robin. I can't end my day without Cody. And
Speaker 5: so we saw an opportunity to build the Peloton brand,
Speaker 5: but to build it via our stars, via our instructors.
Speaker 5: And that's very much something we're thinking about at Gotham
Speaker 5: is we want to continue to build love for the
Speaker 5: Gossam brand. One of the ways we can do that
Speaker 5: is to help tell the stories of our incredible players
Speaker 5: both on and off the field, and use and take
Speaker 5: the love for Rose Level and bring that to Gotham
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 2: And so let's talk about Peloton, because it's clearly formative
Speaker 2: for you. And I would love to go back sort
Speaker 2: of to the beginning, because you know, you go to Yale,
Speaker 2: then you go to Harvard Business School, you come out,
Speaker 2: you work for PepsiCo, you don't go into the family business,
Speaker 2: and then you go to what's then a relatively unknown
Speaker 2: startup called Peloton. Tell us about that decision and what
Speaker 2: did you experience when.
Speaker 3: You got there.
Speaker 5: So I might just take us back from one moment
Speaker 5: because I actually thought that I wanted I was going
Speaker 5: to go work at the Giants. I did some I
Speaker 5: just had a baby, and I left PEPs and I
Speaker 5: started doing a little consulting work for the Giants, and
Speaker 5: it didn't It was what I always thought I wanted
Speaker 5: to do, and it, for variety of reasons, just didn't
Speaker 5: feel right at that moment. They were very focused on
Speaker 5: what was happening on the football side, and I was
Speaker 5: kind of bringing these like new innovative ideas and it
Speaker 5: just it didn't feel right. And the reason I bring
Speaker 5: that up is because I probably would have never landed
Speaker 5: at Peloton had that experience not happened because I had
Speaker 5: really built my entire career wanting to go work at
Speaker 5: the team, and then I got there and it didn't
Speaker 5: really work right. So then I was very open to
Speaker 5: sort of like, all right, I'll try anything because I
Speaker 5: don't really know what my path looks like now. And
Speaker 5: so I go to Peloton. And I had always been
Speaker 5: sort of personally passionate about fitness, but didn't really see
Speaker 5: that as a career necessarily. And I had so many
Speaker 5: friends from business school in particular at the time being like,
Speaker 5: what are you doing? Why are you doing that? Like
Speaker 5: or have you gotten crazy? Is this like an early
Speaker 5: mid life crisis? And the early days I just I'd
Speaker 5: never worked at a startup, and so the early days,
Speaker 5: you know, I came in under a brand marketing title,
Speaker 5: under a CMO who then left pretty quickly after I started.
Speaker 5: So then was given a much larger set of responsibilities
Speaker 5: and it was just to roll up your sleeves and
Speaker 5: figure it out as you go.
Speaker 4: And the founder and CEO, John Foley, what was it
Speaker 4: in that first meeting? What did he say that you said, Okay,
Speaker 4: I gotta come work here.
Speaker 5: So John, in the first meeting, he said, We're going
Speaker 5: to go build one of the best brands in the world.
Speaker 5: And I'm sitting there in this we work on twenty
Speaker 5: ninth in Madison, when no one had ever heard of them,
Speaker 5: and at the time it was you know, this was
Speaker 5: like the Soul cycle, Flywheel, heyday. So Pelton was this
Speaker 5: like distant third And I left and I called my
Speaker 5: husband and I was like, Okay, he might be crazy,
Speaker 5: but he also might be right.
Speaker 3: And I think it's a yes, and it's a.
Speaker 5: Yes, Yes, that's probably right. That's probably true.
Speaker 3: And I love Dolly and I would say yes, day, Yes,
Speaker 3: that's a.
Speaker 5: Lot of every founders a lot crazy. Yeah, feel might
Speaker 5: say that about me too. So anyway, it just the
Speaker 5: opportunity to have that vision of we're literally in a
Speaker 5: startup where thousands of investors have told you, no, we're
Speaker 5: selling you know, at that point, we'd sold maybe one
Speaker 5: hundred bikes. I mean, this was nothing. And he's sitting
Speaker 5: there saying we're going to We're not just like we're
Speaker 5: going to be a successful company, but we're going to
Speaker 5: be one of the most I think he actually didn't
Speaker 5: just say best, he said one of the most important
Speaker 5: brands in the world, and I thought, wow, I don't
Speaker 5: know how we're going to do that, but I love
Speaker 5: to be a part of it.
Speaker 4: So Jase, I do have a quick follow up on that,
Speaker 4: because I remember in the Covid days the stock market
Speaker 4: cap went up to like thirty five billion or so
Speaker 4: plus or minus. Looking back in retrospect, for our viewers,
Speaker 4: what is the lesson What could John and your team
Speaker 4: have done to keep it at that level or keep
Speaker 4: it like a really strong business.
Speaker 5: So I left in twenty twenty, so I just mindful
Speaker 5: I was not there in those moments. I was there
Speaker 5: in the peak and then not in the bull. I
Speaker 5: think one of the challenges I think for a peloton
Speaker 5: is there was there were always a lot of questions
Speaker 5: around what our TAM was, So what was our total
Speaker 5: addressable market? How big could this thing get? What Covid
Speaker 5: did was accelerate the growth so fast that I think
Speaker 5: it questioned what that TAM was. And so there were
Speaker 5: people buying bikes that would have never thought about buying
Speaker 5: a bike before, but it was Covid. You couldn't leave,
Speaker 5: you couldn't go to the gym, and so I think
Speaker 5: one of the lessons was, you know, being really thoughtful
Speaker 5: around what the sustainable tam was. Like we always knew
Speaker 5: at some points the pandemic would end, So like what
Speaker 5: is the addressable market outside of a pandemic and really
Speaker 5: anchor the business in That would be my lesson.
Speaker 2: And so as you look back on the you know,
Speaker 2: you talked about sort of the star instructors, but there's
Speaker 2: also this this moment of fast growth and you know,
Speaker 2: seizing the moment as it were, which does lead to
Speaker 2: this question of sustainability for the growth of women's sports
Speaker 2: and women's soccer. How do you think about that? What
Speaker 2: worries you? Like, what are the things that could get
Speaker 2: in the way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we talk a lot at ARCHAEMC Gotham now about
Speaker 5: sustainable growth and what does that look like? I think
Speaker 5: I go back to something I said earlier about like
Speaker 5: making sure you're the best product first, because the only
Speaker 5: way that a marketing funnel that is built on word
Speaker 5: of mouth works is when there's no leak in the bucket, right,
Speaker 5: So like if you think of a marketing funnel of like, oh,
Speaker 5: where you know, I find out about it, I consider it,
Speaker 5: I try it, and then ideally, which I think is
Speaker 5: what's happening with us at Gotham and happened with us
Speaker 5: A Peltin is like, oh, and then I love it
Speaker 5: so much, I'm going to come back and I'm going
Speaker 5: to tell all my friends if people are churning at
Speaker 5: the bottom. If people come to a game, they buy
Speaker 5: a Pelton bike and they don't like it, they stop
Speaker 5: using it so they stop paying. Or if people come
Speaker 5: to a Gotham game and don't have a good experience
Speaker 5: and don't come back, that whole model breaks down. And
Speaker 5: so when I think about sustainability, I think about ensuring
Speaker 5: that that product is great first. And I don't just
Speaker 5: mean we're winning games, although obviously that helps. I mean
Speaker 5: the fan experience, the way we show up, you know,
Speaker 5: how people interact with our players on social media, and like,
Speaker 5: it's kind of the whole product. I would call it.
Speaker 5: That has to be right first for the rest of
Speaker 5: it to follow.
Speaker 3: And I wonder if you think about this too, Alex,
Speaker 3: this notion of.
Speaker 2: You know, you control your team, and you know when
Speaker 2: you have ultimate decision making authority when it comes to
Speaker 2: that you and your team, and yet you're also part
Speaker 2: of a collective group of people who are making decisions
Speaker 2: on behalf of the league, and you know you've been
Speaker 2: a part of this, Alex and obviously you're experiencing this
Speaker 2: now with the NWSL. What is that like to try
Speaker 2: and get everybody and to be an influential voice in
Speaker 2: a room of governors, which you are.
Speaker 5: So that's been something that's been so interesting about this league.
Speaker 5: And I had heard it coming in and I very
Speaker 5: much seen it and feel it for myself too. Is
Speaker 5: there's the owners around the tables. Many own other teams
Speaker 5: in other leagues as well, and or have other big businesses.
Speaker 5: Many spend a disproportionate amount of their time on their
Speaker 5: NWSL team than they do on other things. Interesting kind
Speaker 5: of to your point on like the seven billion versus
Speaker 5: one hundred million of like, yes, in theory that would
Speaker 5: mean you shouldn't spend time on one hundred million, and
Speaker 5: I'd probably spend more time on that than anything else.
Speaker 5: So there's this feeling of you know, people are spending
Speaker 5: a disproportion amount of time on it. The question is why,
Speaker 5: I think there's a general feeling of we all see
Speaker 5: what this can be. We're all here for a reason,
Speaker 5: we all believe in what this league can look like. However,
Speaker 5: that is not going to happen by any of us
Speaker 5: leaning back. We all need to Everybody needs to do
Speaker 5: their part, and whether that's you know, put on the
Speaker 5: being on the commercial committee and pushing on that, whether
Speaker 5: it's on the sporting committee and thinking about how do
Speaker 5: you keep having a competitive product on the field. Whatever,
Speaker 5: those decisions are that you're kind of leading as a
Speaker 5: governor for the league are so critical because we are
Speaker 5: quite literally creating the future of the league with the
Speaker 5: decisions we're making now, are dictating what the future of
Speaker 5: the league is going to look like. So I think
Speaker 5: all of us feel this responsibility to really lean in
Speaker 5: and engage in the league and think about and make
Speaker 5: decisions that are not just right for our teams, but
Speaker 5: right for the better the you know, the entire group.
Speaker 4: What's been something as now a governor, a recent governor
Speaker 4: that has surprised you on the good side and some
Speaker 4: things that are a little bit more challenging than you
Speaker 4: even expected.
Speaker 5: I think one thing that has really surprised me is
Speaker 5: this collaboration across owners. I think ironically now I'm kind
Speaker 5: of one of like the more tenured owners, even though
Speaker 5: I have been there for a year because there's been
Speaker 5: so much ownership. But there's been this feeling, I think
Speaker 5: from day one, of we will all win when the
Speaker 5: other teams win too. And so when Willow Bay just
Speaker 5: came in an Angel City a few wants to go,
Speaker 5: you know, I immediately reached out to her and said, like,
Speaker 5: here's my phone number, call me anytime I want to
Speaker 5: help you. I want Angel City to succeed because Gotham
Speaker 5: will succeed when Angel Cities, just using them as an example,
Speaker 5: will succeed. And I had other owners do the same
Speaker 5: for me, and so there is this, you know, collective
Speaker 5: feeling we have. All the CBOs spend a lot of
Speaker 5: time together, the chief business officers, and they'll even on
Speaker 5: things like sponsorship, which in theory you're kind of competing
Speaker 5: with each other. They'll discuss the deal with each other
Speaker 5: because we know that if Bay is out there, not
Speaker 5: that they would be doing this, but like selling at
Speaker 5: a lower price than we're selling it that hurts each other.
Speaker 5: And so we all are in this together, and so
Speaker 5: there's been this real kind of we're all better when,
Speaker 5: you know, when we're all helping each other feeling that
Speaker 5: I surprised me. I thought of it as a more like, oh,
Speaker 5: we're competitors on the field, so we're competitors always, and
Speaker 5: it is very much not felt that way.
Speaker 2: You know, sort of going back to this sort of
Speaker 2: synergies for a second between Gotham and the Giants. I mean,
Speaker 2: I wonder, as you're going through some of these decisions
Speaker 2: or decision making processes at Gotham, are you calling your
Speaker 2: uncle and being like, hey, I'm running into this. Have
Speaker 2: you run into this over the past thirty years? Like
Speaker 2: what are some inflection points that you think might be similar?
Speaker 2: Because NFL thirty years ago it was big, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't anything like it is now.
Speaker 5: Right right, Yeah, I think there's been this very open
Speaker 5: you know, across there's also a fair amount of NFL
Speaker 5: owners within the league as well. Mark Wilf and I
Speaker 5: both sit on the executive committee at the end of
Speaker 5: us OLT together. And what's actually interesting is that then
Speaker 5: there's also owners from NBA teams, so David Blitzer is
Speaker 5: also on the executive committees. There's MLB owners with the Ricketts.
Speaker 5: So there's been this great ability, I think for everyone
Speaker 5: to come with their individual their like other league perspective,
Speaker 5: but also with a feeling of we don't have to follow, like,
Speaker 5: let's go take the best of what everyone else does
Speaker 5: and also chart our own path. And so there's this
Speaker 5: really you know, interesting shared learning happening where for any
Speaker 5: given question, it's okay, well Mark's going to tell you
Speaker 5: how it's done at the NFL, and David's going to
Speaker 5: tell you how it's done the NBA, and but let's
Speaker 5: actually pause and think do we want to do it
Speaker 5: any of those ways or do we want to do
Speaker 5: it differently? And that's been a really productive conversation.
Speaker 3: And so your work with the Giants is interesting too.
Speaker 2: You know, the day that that got them hosted its
Speaker 2: first ever home playoff game, you were meant to be
Speaker 2: in Germany with the Giants because they were playing I
Speaker 2: believe their first international game.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 5: They played in London in Germany.
Speaker 3: First in Germany. Excuse me.
Speaker 2: You have been a huge proponent of that inside the
Speaker 2: Giants organization.
Speaker 3: Talk to us.
Speaker 2: About that, especially as it feels like it illustrates part
Speaker 2: of what your role.
Speaker 3: Is within the Giants.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that day gave new meaning to trying to be
Speaker 5: in two places at once. It did not work, but
Speaker 5: I had been in Germany and then I left to
Speaker 5: come home for the Golfen game. So yeah, one of
Speaker 5: the things that I've tried to bring to the Giants
Speaker 5: is again this sort of like how do you build
Speaker 5: a modern brand perspective that I gained a Peloton and
Speaker 5: so international is a big piece of that. Fandom in
Speaker 5: the NFL again has been generational, as I said, but
Speaker 5: it's also been very geographically defined. You were a Giants
Speaker 5: fan because you live in New York and there's really
Speaker 5: only the just you know, to compete with now as
Speaker 5: you think about you and be a fan from anywhere.
Speaker 5: If you're a fan because you're a fan of a player,
Speaker 5: if Patrick Mahomes is your favorite player, doesn't matter that
Speaker 5: you don't live in Kansas City. You're a Kansas City Chiefs.
Speaker 3: Fan and may never go to a Kansas City Chiefs
Speaker 3: game and may.
Speaker 5: Never go to a game. That's a really important point too.
Speaker 5: You could be the most dedicated fan on Earth and
Speaker 5: never go to a game. So how do you build
Speaker 5: that relationship with fans that are never going to walk
Speaker 5: into your stadium. That's really different, and I do think
Speaker 5: actually there are a lot of lessons from Peloton in
Speaker 5: that we had. You know, in our early days of Peloton,
Speaker 5: everyone knew the instructors, you know personally, they would give
Speaker 5: them a hug after the game. The instructors were giving
Speaker 5: them shout outs in class. As we scaled, we had
Speaker 5: to professionalize it. Instructors were kind of cordoned off from
Speaker 5: the members and so that kind of like the growing
Speaker 5: pains of that, you know, changed over time. So anyway
Speaker 5: back to the Giants being in Germany, so building a
Speaker 5: global brand that is where the NFL is going, and
Speaker 5: how the Giants show up and do that. I think
Speaker 5: there are a lot of lessons from the Peloton. There's
Speaker 5: a lot of lessons even from Gotham of how do
Speaker 5: you go build old fandom when you don't have the
Speaker 5: geographic roots. Because we are in Germany, we are competing.
Speaker 5: Kansas City is a good example. They have the rights
Speaker 5: to Germany as well. We're as much competing with Kansas
Speaker 5: City as we are you know in New York with
Speaker 5: the Jets.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: You know what's interesting about the way that male and
Speaker 4: female consume content and get really excited about it. I
Speaker 4: find that some of my boys are only about wins
Speaker 4: and losses, right, They don't care about you know sports radio,
Speaker 4: and when I talk to my daughters about the Links
Speaker 4: or Gotham or any team, what gets them excited is
Speaker 4: a storytelling and that's a way to connect. What ways
Speaker 4: are you thinking about from your players to connect to
Speaker 4: your fan base to help grow their brand.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think you bring up such a good point around
Speaker 5: storytelling and content that is increasingly I think we see
Speaker 5: for all of our fans that telling those stories they
Speaker 5: are players have such interesting stories to tell. I read
Speaker 5: something interesting recently around actually female athletes are so much
Speaker 5: better at story telling then male athletes. So you do
Speaker 5: again back to the kind of the investment thesis around
Speaker 5: like we're in an athlete driven world, We're in a
Speaker 5: content driven world. You have female athletes like you could
Speaker 5: you know the writings on the wall of where that
Speaker 5: could go. So content is is a really big piece
Speaker 5: of it. And telling those stories, you know, to your point,
Speaker 5: not just who they are on the field, but who
Speaker 5: they are off the field. We have one of our
Speaker 5: players as a cancer survivor, we need to tell that story.
Speaker 5: We have players who are incredibly into fashion and they
Speaker 5: were at the front row of fashion weeks, so we
Speaker 5: need to tell that story. Rose level. One of our
Speaker 5: players has this dog who has sort of like gone viral.
Speaker 5: The dog sort of has its own personality and Instagram.
Speaker 5: So being able to tell those stories and really kind
Speaker 5: of explain who our players are in the rest of
Speaker 5: their lives is really key to our growth story.
Speaker 2: So, speaking of content, you know, one of the interesting
Speaker 2: decisions the Giants made, and I know you're very involved
Speaker 2: in sort of the marketing side, in the brand side,
Speaker 2: was Hard Knocks off season, which went viral in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways. Really truly behind the scenes on some
Speaker 2: very big decisions, including Saquon.
Speaker 3: Barkley going to the Eagles.
Speaker 2: Talk about that strategy, how it works for the Giants,
Speaker 2: and then what you take away for something like Gotham.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so that doing more kind of what I would
Speaker 5: call like off helmet content is something that I've been
Speaker 5: really passionate about it and talking to the Giants about
Speaker 5: for a long time. If you look at shows like
Speaker 5: Drive to Survive, they were really the first to do it.
Speaker 5: It introduced a new audience into a sport that might
Speaker 5: have not been appealing for a lot of people. There
Speaker 5: are the number of people who texted me after Hard
Speaker 5: Knocks and said like Wow, I never thought I would
Speaker 5: ever watch the NFL before, and it's just a way
Speaker 5: to bring in a new audience, introduce the players, and
Speaker 5: introduce the brand in a really different way. And so
Speaker 5: that is something that I think the NFL will continue
Speaker 5: to do and we absolutely look at it Gotham as
Speaker 5: well as and how do we tell those stories in
Speaker 5: a different way so that you bring in a casual fan.
Speaker 5: The NFL is always going to have their hardcore at
Speaker 5: football fans, but there is a whole world of casual
Speaker 5: sports fans that you can bring in by doing this
Speaker 5: type of content.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think about you know, Midge Purse, who is
Speaker 2: you know, like Forgotham was a guest on this show
Speaker 2: and her show off season, you know, was a completely
Speaker 2: different view of the NWSL and female soccer players, which
Speaker 2: I think literally had never happened to that totoint.
Speaker 3: There was there was not a show like that before that.
Speaker 3: There was there was no model out there.
Speaker 2: So I do want to go back to this idea
Speaker 2: of what happens next for the for the NWSL, because
Speaker 2: you know, we've talked a lot about the the WNBA.
Speaker 2: We've had kandas Parker super Bird on this show, you know,
Speaker 2: the overnight sensation of the WNBA after twenty eight years,
Speaker 2: you know, everybody really coming on to it. NWSL is
Speaker 2: a little bit not as far along in its journey,
Speaker 2: a couple failed leagues, you know, on the way here.
Speaker 2: What is the next thing that has to happen and
Speaker 2: what do you worry about?
Speaker 5: So we talked to you know, a lot about you know,
Speaker 5: starting with the product. I think that next step then
Speaker 5: is the fan. So how do you get fans to
Speaker 5: show up to games? Yeah, and I think about my
Speaker 5: time again kind of going back to my peloton days.
Speaker 5: Is we had to create a category. No one was
Speaker 5: sitting around thinking like I wish I could go buy
Speaker 5: a bike that streamed my favorite spin class in my
Speaker 5: living room. We literally wrote the term connected fitness, which
Speaker 5: is now you know, a term.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Not that we are inventing women's soccer at Gotham obvious
Speaker 5: at the league obviously that has existed for a long time,
Speaker 5: but we are this kind of the point of breaking
Speaker 5: into culture. We have to go create this category. We
Speaker 5: have to go create the demand for people to come.
Speaker 5: There are the core fans, but to break out and
Speaker 5: get and fill stadiums and sell out over and over.
Speaker 5: We have to go create that demand. So again I
Speaker 5: go back to this idea of like, we have a
Speaker 5: great product, now we have to go create a great
Speaker 5: fan experience around it in game. Then we have to
Speaker 5: think about the three hundred and sixty five days a year,
Speaker 5: how do we build that, you know, fandom and that
Speaker 5: relationship with fans. I think consumers come first, and you're
Speaker 5: starting to see that we had record breaking attendance at
Speaker 5: our first ever playoff game. I know the Washington Spirits
Speaker 5: sold out. I think Kansas City has sold out all
Speaker 5: of their games this year, So you are starting to
Speaker 5: see the fandom there. That is kind of I would
Speaker 5: say step one and how we think about it at Gotham.
Speaker 5: I think then sponsorship and partnerships like those come later. Typically,
Speaker 5: I think you do see brands kind of follow like
Speaker 5: consumers always go first. But I would say in terms
Speaker 5: of like what are the risks, what are the opportunities,
Speaker 5: I think that is like the next step to come.
Speaker 3: So the risk is people just stop showing up.
Speaker 5: Well, yes, I mean in theory, of course, there is.
Speaker 5: We look at a metric called net promoter score. It's
Speaker 5: again a tech metric that we brought into women's soccer
Speaker 5: and our NPS score. So NPS has measured one hundred
Speaker 5: to negative one hundred, So a score of zero is
Speaker 5: actually not that bad. Our scores are typically in the
Speaker 5: high eighties. That isn't a believable score. Apple, I think
Speaker 5: is like sixty. I want to say Starbucks is in
Speaker 5: the seventies. And these are really high numbers. So people
Speaker 5: want when they come to the game, they want to
Speaker 5: come back. Yes, in theory, it could all fall apart
Speaker 5: and people could stop showing up.
Speaker 3: You've got to get them there.
Speaker 5: We have to get them there, and I think that
Speaker 5: has been probably the biggest challenge from the beginning and
Speaker 5: why we've been so deliberate about, you know, finding new
Speaker 5: ways to get people there. There's always been this debate
Speaker 5: within the league of like do you do comps do
Speaker 5: not do comps. I've been a big believer in comps because, again,
Speaker 5: if you go back to.
Speaker 2: The meaning complimentary tickets, giving out complimentary tickets Storr delivery, yes, sorry.
Speaker 5: Complimentary tickets because it is not on people's radar on
Speaker 5: day one. So if you get them there and you
Speaker 5: kind of bring them into that marketing funnel, they will
Speaker 5: come back.
Speaker 2: I do want to talk a little bit about what's
Speaker 2: next for next three?
Speaker 3: First of all, is next three? Next three? Decades? Is that?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: What is it? Next three? People? What is next three?
Speaker 5: So next three? My husband actually came up with the name.
Speaker 5: When you play pick up basketball, which I don't frequently
Speaker 5: but he does, I guess are used to when you
Speaker 5: win a game, then the person will say like, all right,
Speaker 5: next three up. And it's this idea of like, all right,
Speaker 5: you one. Now you're thinking about like what's the next
Speaker 5: who are the next three? You're playing like we're leaning
Speaker 5: into the future. It is clever. I wish I could
Speaker 5: say it more concisely.
Speaker 4: Talk to me a little bit about you know some
Speaker 4: of your ops, how do you think about pitching it,
Speaker 4: you know, outside of your family? And also how do
Speaker 4: you deal with being a control partner? And most funds
Speaker 4: have the burden investment and exit? How do you know
Speaker 4: go through those challenges?
Speaker 5: Yes, so I'm definitely I'm not an investor. I'm now
Speaker 5: sitting here today, I'm like, I wish I had taken
Speaker 5: those classes in business school. I did not. So it
Speaker 5: is just our family. So the LP so it's my mom,
Speaker 5: Laurie Tish, her two brothers, John and Steve, who are
Speaker 5: the three owners of the Giants, and then everyone in
Speaker 5: my generation, all my cousins, my sister and my cousins.
Speaker 5: So I think we have the benefit of really running
Speaker 5: it more like a family office than a fund, which means,
Speaker 5: to your point, we're not necessarily thinking about the exit.
Speaker 5: We're not even obviously we are returns driven, but we're
Speaker 5: not just returns driven. And I think that's been really
Speaker 5: important in how we've looked at investments, because every investment
Speaker 5: we look at, we ask ourselves the question, why are
Speaker 5: we on the cap table? Why are we the ones
Speaker 5: sitting here today? And if the answer is they just
Speaker 5: want capital, then we're probably we're not going to do
Speaker 5: the deal because there are plenty of people that are
Speaker 5: better investors probably then have a larger team to invest
Speaker 5: than we do. The reason where they are often is
Speaker 5: because of my experience at Peloton and or our legacy
Speaker 5: co ownership of the Giants, and now increasingly because of
Speaker 5: our role at Gotham. And so the reason I say
Speaker 5: all that is because we look at investments sometimes because
Speaker 5: we think it will make us better at the rest
Speaker 5: of our jobs, and so We've looked at investments that
Speaker 5: will potentially make us better NFL owners will teach us
Speaker 5: about what One of our investments is this company called
Speaker 5: transmit Live, which they help kind of run the back
Speaker 5: end of ad tech as sports move to streaming. They
Speaker 5: run a lot of the ad tech in advertising for streaming. Anyway,
Speaker 5: the reason I bring that up is I hope it
Speaker 5: does well, and it actually is doing very well. We
Speaker 5: also did that investment because sports will continue to move
Speaker 5: to streaming and media deals are an increasingly important part
Speaker 5: of the valuations around owning teams, and so for us
Speaker 5: to get smart on what that looks like makes us
Speaker 5: better owners and makes us be able to have more
Speaker 5: intelligent conversations, you know, sitting around boardroom. So a lot
Speaker 5: of the deals we look at, we are there again
Speaker 5: for the returns, but we're also there because of what
Speaker 5: we're learning.
Speaker 3: So Karena, stayin on next three.
Speaker 4: What do you see in the future, I mean, can
Speaker 4: you see another team, can you see your show of minustake,
Speaker 4: WNBA team or anything else.
Speaker 5: We're still actively looking at investments. I think the past
Speaker 5: year has been a bit of a heads down, Like
Speaker 5: we got to get Gotham to where it needs to be.
Speaker 5: But we're I say to my team every day, we
Speaker 5: were very deliberately. We didn't start Next three to buy Gotham,
Speaker 5: and we're we started Next three because we want to
Speaker 5: be at the forefront of where sports is going. Women's
Speaker 5: sports and women's soccer is very much a part of that,
Speaker 5: but it's not the only place sports are going. So
Speaker 5: we are still actively looking at other things. I don't
Speaker 5: know what those will be yet, but we continue to
Speaker 5: believe that there is more happening in sports that we
Speaker 5: want to be a part of.
Speaker 2: You know, obviously both of you have this shared experience
Speaker 2: of you know, getting into ownership. Has going into Gotham
Speaker 2: like changed your personal visibility?
Speaker 3: Like do you feel like you're sort of out there more?
Speaker 2: Because I don't know if I'm asking this well, but
Speaker 2: you know, with the Giants, it's like it's your family,
Speaker 2: but for Gotham, like you're you're the face, Like you know,
Speaker 2: you're the you're the person like on the JumboTron when
Speaker 2: they cut to the owner's box.
Speaker 3: To see to see the reaction. What's that been like
Speaker 3: for you?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't think I realized that was going to
Speaker 5: be that it was going to be that. I think
Speaker 5: when we decided again, I thought it was a good deal.
Speaker 5: I thought it was you know, I thought it was
Speaker 5: a good thing for our family to be in. I
Speaker 5: don't think I realized how much it was personally going
Speaker 5: it was going to be tied to my personal identity.
Speaker 5: The number of messages I get from you know, old
Speaker 5: friends in college or business school that will just kind
Speaker 5: of randomly reach out to me and say like, thank
Speaker 5: you for what you're doing for women's sports. And I
Speaker 5: now take that really seriously. And I didn't. You know, again,
Speaker 5: we we bought got them because we thought it was
Speaker 5: a good investment. I don't think I appreciated how much
Speaker 5: I now feel trum. I've always felt tremendous well, I've
Speaker 5: always felt tremendous pressure. It's probably why I'm so type A,
Speaker 5: but I've always felt tremendous pressure since starting Next three
Speaker 5: to deliver the returns to my family, to you know,
Speaker 5: to make good investments. I now feel a tremendous pressure
Speaker 5: to help grow women's sports. And that's a different level
Speaker 5: of pressure. Is I now feel like this kind of
Speaker 5: societal pressure and cultural pressure to realize, like I think
Speaker 5: we all are clear on what the dream is for
Speaker 5: women's sports, and I feel very responsible for the execution
Speaker 5: of that. So it is a different you know, it
Speaker 5: was not. It was not what I thought would be.
Speaker 3: All Right, we're going to move to our rapid fire segment.
Speaker 2: This is fun, We're going to keep it tight and
Speaker 2: we'll just bounce back and forth and you know, answer
Speaker 2: however you see fit?
Speaker 3: All right? What's one word to describe your deal making style?
Speaker 5: Unconventional?
Speaker 3: What's more important your gut, instinct or data?
Speaker 5: Well, I'm the most indecisive person on earth, so I
Speaker 5: would say both.
Speaker 3: Okay, perfect.
Speaker 4: What's your best piece of advice you've ever received on
Speaker 4: deal making or business?
Speaker 5: Create a culture where you would want to work.
Speaker 3: What's the worst advice you've ever been given that.
Speaker 5: This was going to be easy?
Speaker 3: What's your hype song before a big meeting or big negotiation.
Speaker 5: Well, I mostly only listen to my kids like Taylor
Speaker 5: Swift albums, so probably so Taylor Swift version.
Speaker 3: That's fair. Do you have a go to peloton instructor?
Speaker 5: I did go on the Peloton today with Robin Love
Speaker 5: Robin Robin Arzon.
Speaker 4: If you can only watch one sport for the rest
Speaker 4: of your life, Which one is it?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: My kids always ask me football or soccer. It's so stressful.
Speaker 5: Probably football.
Speaker 2: Still, what team do you want to see win a
Speaker 2: championship more than any is a tough one for gotam.
Speaker 4: Do you have a fun fact about yourself that your
Speaker 4: colleagues would be surprised to hear?
Speaker 5: I am a vegetarian because my sister used to moo
Speaker 5: at me at the table because she was a vegetarian
Speaker 5: and she believed me into be hamming one too.
Speaker 3: Perfect, That's true.
Speaker 5: I'm here.
Speaker 3: Ye, Well, this was really fun. Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 3: thank you.
Speaker 1: The Deal is a production from Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals.
Speaker 1: The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Anamazarakus, Stacey Wong, and Lizzie Phillip. Original
Speaker 1: music and engineering by Blake Maples. Our managing editor is
Speaker 1: David E. Ravella. Our executive producers are Jason Kelly, Brendan Francis, Neonham,
Speaker 1: Jordan Opplinger, Trey Shallowhorn, Kyle Kramer, Andrew Barden, Kelly Laferrier,
Speaker 1: and Ashley Hoenig. Sage Bauman is our head of Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Additional support from Rachel Carnivali and Elena sos Angeles. Joshua
Speaker 1: Devaux is our director of photography. Rubob Shakir is our
Speaker 1: creative director. Art direction is from Jacqueline Kessler, Casting by
Speaker 1: Julia Mann, Camera operation by Crystal Jefferson, Holly Fisher and
Speaker 1: Gaby Demotase. Alex Brown is our gaffer, and Max Garstak
Speaker 1: and Maximo Maluso are our grips. Our production assistant is
Speaker 1: Gabriella Demotase. Alex Diaconus is our video editor. Listen to
Speaker 1: the Deal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. You can also tune into the video Companion
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Originals and on Bloomberg TV. Thanks for listening.