Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Jason Kelly and I'm Alex Rodriguez on this
Speaker 2: episode of The Deal.
Speaker 1: Paul Rabel. All right, Paul Rabel, Alex.
Speaker 2: Is I dare say an a Rod or the a
Speaker 2: Rod of the lacrosse world.
Speaker 1: I mean this guy.
Speaker 2: You talk to anyone in the lacrosse world, they know
Speaker 2: who he is. But here's the next step that he took.
Speaker 2: He not only played the game, then he created his
Speaker 2: own league when there was another league in existence. Can
Speaker 2: you even imagine that?
Speaker 1: Hell? No, he is so impressive.
Speaker 3: But Jason, when you and I co founded this program
Speaker 3: to Deal right this podcast a couple of years ago, and.
Speaker 1: You said, what is the perfect guest look like?
Speaker 3: Yes, Paul, and I don't think I would ever say
Speaker 3: this about anyone else but Paul. He reminds me of
Speaker 3: a combination of these three folks, Adam Silver, Roger Goodell,
Speaker 3: and Tom Brady.
Speaker 1: He's an athlete, He's a champion. It's awesome. He's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting is he's done some really big deals
Speaker 2: over the course of his career. One of the things
Speaker 2: that's also really interesting about him is he knows that
Speaker 2: even six years in, this is a nascent league. It's
Speaker 2: got to make big moves, bold moves in order to
Speaker 2: secure the media rights, in order to grow the audience,
Speaker 2: in order to grow the game. They're looking ahead to
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty eight Olympics when lacrosse is going to
Speaker 2: be a part of it. So a lot of runway
Speaker 2: for lacrosse as a game. And I mean, you can't
Speaker 2: bet against Paul Rabel.
Speaker 1: You definitely can't. I would never do that either, would you.
Speaker 3: So here's a guy that has big belief, big ambitions,
Speaker 3: and the tireless work ethic and surrounding himself with great people.
Speaker 1: I think he's gonna win big here on this episode
Speaker 1: of the Deal.
Speaker 2: Paul Rabel, all right, we like to start the show
Speaker 2: by having the guests introduce themselves and what they do,
Speaker 2: So go ahead.
Speaker 1: First of all, I love your show. Thank you.
Speaker 4: I am co founder and president of the Premier Lacrosse League,
Speaker 4: former professional athlete. I'm a writer, I'm a producer, and
Speaker 4: I'm an investor.
Speaker 2: And did you come to all of those just organically
Speaker 2: or is this what you set out to do?
Speaker 1: Is this what you imagined you'd be doing? No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: I Actually, most of my.
Speaker 4: Adolescence into adulthood, I've just been hyper focused on the
Speaker 4: task at hand and trying to be the best at that.
Speaker 4: So for most of my life it was lacrosse so
Speaker 4: much that I didn't even realize that the professional league
Speaker 4: while I was playing in high school in college was
Speaker 4: dying on a vine. I just wanted to win a
Speaker 4: high school championship, and then in college just win a
Speaker 4: college championship. I wanted to win four of them, and
Speaker 4: I came up short. Most of the time, you come
Speaker 4: up short on those big goals that you set for yourself,
Speaker 4: but there's no way of getting those big goals if
Speaker 4: you don't set them. I would consider myself project based.
Speaker 4: As a worker, I like to think that I can
Speaker 4: drive pound for pound a lot of value, intellectual curiosity
Speaker 4: and focus at any moment on any side screen. So
Speaker 4: if that's the movie business, I want to first understand
Speaker 4: its history. If that's being a great writer, I know
Speaker 4: it comes down to practice and reading other great writers business,
Speaker 4: same thing. So no long goal of saying, hey, I
Speaker 4: want to do a bunch of stuff, because most people
Speaker 4: would say, hey, if you're gonna do a bunch of
Speaker 4: things you're not gonna be good at anyone.
Speaker 3: Right, this whole concept about not whine and shallow but
Speaker 3: narrown deep, it sounds like you do it very well.
Speaker 3: My question is, when you were in high square, college
Speaker 3: or even in the pros, when was that moment that
Speaker 3: you said, uh, huh, this is what I want to
Speaker 3: do next.
Speaker 4: Well, it came at an inflection point where I was
Speaker 4: just about to bail on pro lacrosse because my rookie
Speaker 4: wage was sixty five hundred dollars. I was drafted number
Speaker 4: one to the Boston Cannons in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 4: I had just played in front of fifty five thousand
Speaker 4: fans at Chollette Stadium in a National Championship game against Syracuse,
Speaker 4: and my first game into the pros was in front
Speaker 4: of about four hundred fans at a backfield at Rutgers University.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that was sort of That was the little
Speaker 4: did I know business reaction like, huh, that doesn't seem
Speaker 4: to work out. But my immediate reaction, as any twenty
Speaker 4: two year old who's looking to advance their lives and
Speaker 4: careers are now on their own without the support of
Speaker 4: the university of parents, I had to get a job.
Speaker 4: So I get a job as an analyst for a
Speaker 4: real estate firm called Cassidy and pinkered. I did that
Speaker 4: for seven months, and then I left because I realized
Speaker 4: that I wasn't and finished with pro lacrosse. And I
Speaker 4: knew in my heart of hearts that if I wanted
Speaker 4: to be the greatest lacrosse player ever, which was just
Speaker 4: my goal, I don't believe I am that that I
Speaker 4: needed to go all in and not be distracted by
Speaker 4: wages or income and that type of stuff. If you
Speaker 4: go all in and anything, I believe figures itself out.
Speaker 2: So I want to pick up on something you said
Speaker 2: because I'm seeing a little some parallels here. It's my
Speaker 2: job to sort of do a little pattern recognition as
Speaker 2: a journalist. And you know, I have two people who were,
Speaker 2: you know, widely considered the best at the game that
Speaker 2: they've ever played, certainly among the best of the game
Speaker 2: that they ever played.
Speaker 1: And so Alex talks a lot.
Speaker 2: About, you know, these moments where you realized, oh, I
Speaker 2: can only be a professional athlete.
Speaker 1: I could be a top tier professional athlete. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: obviously had that.
Speaker 2: I mean, you had that moment what with your high
Speaker 2: school coach or was it before.
Speaker 3: Probably fifteen sixteen, I thought I saw a real vision.
Speaker 3: Always say back the future, you see that blurry picture.
Speaker 3: The picture started getting more clear once I went back
Speaker 3: to back years to play in the US Olympic team
Speaker 3: and playing for the US Olympic team, it wasn't just Miami.
Speaker 3: It was the greatest players across the whole US. And
Speaker 3: I looked around as a rising junior, I was like, hey,
Speaker 3: I can hold my own. And then when I went
Speaker 3: back as the only you know, those only rising junior,
Speaker 3: everybody else was rising seniors.
Speaker 1: The following year I came.
Speaker 3: Back, I said, holy smokes, like these guys that are
Speaker 3: my age, they look like kids because I was so
Speaker 3: used to playing with kids older than me. That's the
Speaker 3: moment ago, I have a real path to the big leagues. Yeause,
Speaker 3: when was that moment for you?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: There was a midfielder at Landon, which is sort of
Speaker 4: the one of the top perennial high schools in Maryland,
Speaker 4: and they ranked number one in the country and lacrosse.
Speaker 4: For you know, as long as I was playing, and
Speaker 4: his name is Peter Lammitdy, and I would study the
Speaker 4: way that he played, even the way that he cradled,
Speaker 4: the way that he'd run and shoot on the run,
Speaker 4: and when I was out practicing on my own, I
Speaker 4: wanted to not only.
Speaker 1: Get his skill set, but beat him.
Speaker 4: And there we used to have this base state tournament,
Speaker 4: which sounds similar to what Alex was referring to. If
Speaker 4: you made the base state team, you were among the
Speaker 4: best high school lacrosse players in Maryland. And then there
Speaker 4: was another one in New York and the two would play.
Speaker 4: It was called Empires in New York. So I was
Speaker 4: on the field with Peter and then him and I
Speaker 4: essentially going back and forth. I came home that day
Speaker 4: going all right, I'm here, I've got a chance to
Speaker 4: be the best midfielder in the state. That mindset carried
Speaker 4: me all the way through my career. When I was
Speaker 4: signed to go play at Johns Hopkins and I was
Speaker 4: a freshman, I would look at Kyle Harrison, Greg Pizer,
Speaker 4: and Matt Rakowski, the top three midfielders on the team,
Speaker 4: and I would just practice every single day to acquire
Speaker 4: what I saw them doing and ultimately beat them. You know,
Speaker 4: I grew up playing Rex sports. We don't see much
Speaker 4: Rex sports today, right, And I'm sure, we'll get to
Speaker 4: that in a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean because just to be I mean, I think
Speaker 2: it is interesting for you to hear this as a
Speaker 2: lax dad, which.
Speaker 1: You know that I am.
Speaker 2: I mean, the infrastructure that exists today did not exist
Speaker 2: when you were coming.
Speaker 1: You weren't playing travel pros and cons of both.
Speaker 4: It's incumbent on leaders at the premier lacrosse league to
Speaker 4: what I would say, revitalize REX Sports. So that means privately,
Speaker 4: out of our balance sheet, invest in it. You create
Speaker 4: a shift in momentum by making something that you're investing
Speaker 4: in cool, which I think is part of the challenge
Speaker 4: you're talking about eleven, twelve, and.
Speaker 1: Thirteen year olds.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and what I learned in the business world is
Speaker 4: most people aren't like Alex and I that want to
Speaker 4: be the best of the best.
Speaker 1: That's like sort of one percent. A lot of people
Speaker 1: just love to play sports.
Speaker 4: It's fun, it's competitive, you learn, you interact with your friends,
Speaker 4: there's social status.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of peer pressure on young boys and
Speaker 1: girls right now, and.
Speaker 4: So REX sports is the lowest barrier opportunity to learn
Speaker 4: all these skills. So that has been impinged by you know,
Speaker 4: privatized sports over the last ten to fifteen years.
Speaker 2: You know, from our history together, I'm an existing fan,
Speaker 2: I'm a lacrosse dad, I'm a collegiate lacrosse player in
Speaker 2: my household.
Speaker 1: And so we crowdsourced, like what do these guys want
Speaker 1: to know?
Speaker 2: And interestingly enough, one of the questions that kept coming
Speaker 2: back was this idea of accessibility to the game. And interestingly,
Speaker 2: these are you know, these are college players who you know,
Speaker 2: we're fortunate to play the game growing up, but they're
Speaker 2: also really smart future business people and they see that
Speaker 2: for the game to grow, you've got to grow the
Speaker 2: top of the funnel too, in terms of the players
Speaker 2: and the fans.
Speaker 1: So how do you do that?
Speaker 4: Well, Kevin Durant, Rich Climb and our investors out of
Speaker 4: thirty five V and when they came in, they said,
Speaker 4: let's build a property together, just solve this problem. So
Speaker 4: we launched Street Lacrosse. And Kevin and I both grew
Speaker 4: up in the DMV playing hoops. Because you have the
Speaker 4: access to a court outside of every neighborhood like you
Speaker 4: do a baseball diamond, and I believe that you're going
Speaker 4: to get more participants and you also get more fans
Speaker 4: because through osmosis, you see a baseball diamond, you go cool,
Speaker 4: I know what that is when I just see it
Speaker 4: on TV. How many people still in the grand scheme
Speaker 4: of things around the world know what lacrosse is and
Speaker 4: looks like. So Street Lacrosse said, let's take what we
Speaker 4: have and make something out of it. So we built
Speaker 4: a version of the game with just a stick and
Speaker 4: a tennis ball can be played on any surface, but
Speaker 4: we focus on basketball courts, and we want to invite
Speaker 4: communities of all shapes and sizes in any look from
Speaker 4: around the country because we're good at promoting and capturing
Speaker 4: that media to say, oh, I don't have to have
Speaker 4: a helmet, gloves, elbow pads, cleats and sign up for
Speaker 4: my club team to play this game, and I want
Speaker 4: more sticks and hands. Top of funnel is like is everything,
Speaker 4: and lacrosse stereotypically has this image as if it's this
Speaker 4: Northeast private school sport. Ironically, it is the first team
Speaker 4: sport of North America, indigenous game and it was played
Speaker 4: without pads and the sticks were shaped from hickory tree.
Speaker 4: So what happened along the way is I think what
Speaker 4: you've seen America evolve into from class to race to accessibility,
Speaker 4: and we are not different than hockey or golf. In fact,
Speaker 4: we have more black and indigenous players in our league
Speaker 4: than both of those pro leagues. However, we have reputational challenges.
Speaker 4: The sport that I left out is actually American football.
Speaker 4: It's an expensive sport to play, but in the early
Speaker 4: nineteen hundreds a couple presidents really liked it, so they
Speaker 4: went the path of working with local government to subsidize
Speaker 4: our equipment. So when we played pee wee football, we
Speaker 4: didn't have to play for a helmet. If you have
Speaker 4: to pay for pads to play football, you're going to
Speaker 4: see participation or what we have today, the NFL won't
Speaker 4: be what it is today. And so understanding the participation
Speaker 4: game is important. And then the last thing is understanding
Speaker 4: the entertainment game. Because none of us sit around and
Speaker 4: talk with Dana White about mixed martial arts participation. They've
Speaker 4: bought an entertaining product. They're a gladiator sport, and so
Speaker 4: you can't draw a business model, which is I think
Speaker 4: what our processors did wrong in MLL around number of
Speaker 4: participants to number of attendants and viewers on screen you've
Speaker 4: got to work both angles right, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So let's pivot to arguably the biggest deal that
Speaker 2: you do, which is you decide which I can't even
Speaker 2: describe to you, but because you're going to get the
Speaker 2: magnitude of it wild, the idea of starting an entirely
Speaker 2: new league, win a league exists. So it's literally a
Speaker 2: Rod saying, Hey, Steinbrenner's this has been great. I'm going
Speaker 2: to go start my own league, though, and we'll see
Speaker 2: you down the line. Tell us about that moment when
Speaker 2: you and your brother Mike decide to do that.
Speaker 4: Well, it was about ten years into my professional across careers,
Speaker 4: so I'd been learning about the business of sport along
Speaker 4: the way in the business media because I didn't want
Speaker 4: to be arrant in the approach. My brother is a
Speaker 4: serial entrepreneur, so we had the chops between the two
Speaker 4: of us and the diversity around what we had learned,
Speaker 4: his on the management and financial structuring side and me
Speaker 4: on the media, marketing and athletics side. So I say
Speaker 4: that because if pro lacrosse was working, I would have
Speaker 4: built a strategy much like we see a lot of
Speaker 4: professional athletes doing in the Big four sports of owning
Speaker 4: a team one day. It's far more difficult and challenging
Speaker 4: and a lot of easier ways to make money than
Speaker 4: starting a new league, especially in the face of an
Speaker 4: existing one.
Speaker 1: So we study it. We studied it, study.
Speaker 4: We actually first went the private equity route to get
Speaker 4: a bunch of overhead capital to acquire the existing league.
Speaker 4: Because sports are full of context, we knew that lacrosse
Speaker 4: not just in its twenty years prior to pro history,
Speaker 4: but at thousands of years of history. Starting from scratch
Speaker 4: was going to be really difficult to capture that narrative.
Speaker 4: But I wanted to own twenty years of pro lacrosse history,
Speaker 4: even if the wages were low and there wasn't a
Speaker 4: lot of network games. We ended up putting together an
Speaker 4: offer for about thirty five million dollars, which was a mixture.
Speaker 1: Of cash and stock. And this is for Major League lacrosse.
Speaker 4: Every team was losing money, the league was losing money
Speaker 4: at the top co. This was in twenty seventeen, so
Speaker 4: it was before like the real craze that we see
Speaker 4: here today around pro sports. And I'm not sure whether
Speaker 4: they were trying to negotiate or if they were really
Speaker 4: like and some of this is my stuff that I've
Speaker 4: learned to unpack in therapy and sports psychology as a
Speaker 4: as an athlete grown up, you're told that you're dumb,
Speaker 4: dumb jock, And I think if I put on my
Speaker 4: empathetic hat, you walk into a room with a bunch
Speaker 4: of seasoned business executives. Right, Jim Davis bought New Balance
Speaker 4: for fifty grand has built it into a multi billion
Speaker 4: dollar empire. He owned four of the teams.
Speaker 1: What is this athlete doing walking in here? What does
Speaker 1: he know? He hasn't own abilities? Now hard, this is
Speaker 1: I can feel the nodding by the way hunting event.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, And so however that process, they didn't say shoo.
Speaker 4: They said, okay, let's go into what the entrepreneurs listening
Speaker 4: is a data room. So we went into diligence, and
Speaker 4: we learned about the business, and we learned more about
Speaker 4: what didn't work and why because there wasn't a lot
Speaker 4: that was working. We had a few more attempts at
Speaker 4: striking a deal. The Achilles heel of Major League lacrosse
Speaker 4: myself included. Of the two hundred and fifty players or so,
Speaker 4: ninety five percent of us were under a one year deals,
Speaker 4: so sort of like you know, a team getting picked
Speaker 4: up overnight out of Baltimore moved Indianapolis. There was a
Speaker 4: moment in time where we knew, oh, we could actually
Speaker 4: start a new league and sign all the players overnight,
Speaker 4: and our investment strategy had to shift from private equitya
Speaker 4: comes in and buys a distressed asset and fixes it
Speaker 4: to venture. So then we rent a whole new fundraising
Speaker 4: path to start what now is the poll And we
Speaker 4: struggled because how can you value something doesn't exist? So
Speaker 4: we at first put together a safe note, which is
Speaker 4: essentially a simpler version of convertible note.
Speaker 1: We went out to market and people are like, I
Speaker 1: get it.
Speaker 4: But since nineteen ninety, about two hundred pro sports leagues
Speaker 4: have started with a one percent success rate, and that's
Speaker 4: based on making it.
Speaker 1: Beyond three years. So I know. We've talked a lot
Speaker 1: about spring football.
Speaker 4: It's a decent business, but it turns over because the
Speaker 4: cost structures too heavy. They get a million people watching
Speaker 4: a game. You can figure that out, but it's just hard.
Speaker 4: There's been a huge moat around pro sports for decades
Speaker 4: because of broadcast cable, and then once that gets democratized
Speaker 4: through streaming in the Internet and social media, the attention
Speaker 4: economy opens up to nascent stage sports like the UFC,
Speaker 4: MLS and WSLWNBA. All this over the last thirty years.
Speaker 4: So we couldn't get the term sheet signed. We decided
Speaker 4: to go a price round, went to rain Ventures. I
Speaker 4: want to give a shout to Colin Neville was on
Speaker 4: our board. Now, Colin played lacrosse at Yale. That's why
Speaker 4: he took the meeting, but he will admit he had
Speaker 4: the same thought like, we'll see anyway. That meeting was
Speaker 4: scheduled for thirty minutes whent about two and a half hours.
Speaker 4: They were still hesitant. Incomes Drew McKnight, who now runs
Speaker 4: Fortress Investment Group, and he played lacrosse at EVA and
Speaker 4: he loved it.
Speaker 1: He saw the same thing like, hey, if this is.
Speaker 4: Working at the high school level, college level was once
Speaker 4: an Olympic sport, it's the fastest growing on the participatory side,
Speaker 4: ages nine to eighteen boys and girls.
Speaker 1: Why can't we figure this out the pro level.
Speaker 4: So he actually wrote our first term sheet personally, not
Speaker 4: out of Fortress, knowing that hey, this might help get
Speaker 4: as you know, an actual term shoot over the goal
Speaker 4: line we brought it to Rain, Rain said.
Speaker 1: We'll do it.
Speaker 4: Drew came on as a personal investor. That was our
Speaker 4: first seed round, but it was not enough to run
Speaker 4: the first season. They were like, we got to put
Speaker 4: some triggers in front of this and then we can
Speaker 4: go do a Series A. And that was get a
Speaker 4: network deal, sign the players to MoU's at the time,
Speaker 4: because we were all still under our MLL contracts MOUs
Speaker 4: in this case, memorandum of understanding, right, so it was like,
Speaker 4: this is what we're going to do, and if.
Speaker 1: You're meaning the players will commit yep. Okay.
Speaker 4: So we had them UNDERMUS and then they said court
Speaker 4: some sponsors.
Speaker 1: We were able to get those three done. That led
Speaker 1: to our Series A.
Speaker 4: Income Joe Tie, who I consider the godfather of lacrosse,
Speaker 4: co founder of Ali Baba runs the Brooklyn Nets, also
Speaker 4: played lacrosse at Yale.
Speaker 1: We had conversations with him going back to twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: on this.
Speaker 4: But Joe, as many like really top tier executives, they
Speaker 4: want to stay out of the crossfire, especially if it's unnecessary.
Speaker 4: So he knew that this was going to be a
Speaker 4: little bit of a heated battle out of the gates.
Speaker 4: And wanted to see as if Mike and I could
Speaker 4: get out, and once we did, he came on, and
Speaker 4: we've had subsequent rounds and brought on folks like Arctoscia,
Speaker 4: Churning Group.
Speaker 1: Right and Paul.
Speaker 3: Before you get into like those blue chippers, going back
Speaker 3: to the safe note, can you share or at least
Speaker 3: what you could share, what were the terms on that
Speaker 3: note versus when you brought in CIA and Churnin Group
Speaker 3: and others.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, what you do is you put a.
Speaker 4: Cap on the convertible note and you say like, okay,
Speaker 4: look we want to raise I'll give you ballpark numbers.
Speaker 4: We weren't raising away from three to ten million bucks
Speaker 4: so that we can build the structure of this company.
Speaker 4: We don't know what the valuation is and that's why
Speaker 4: you put a cap on. How it converts, and so
Speaker 4: then you agree around like what the cap is, or
Speaker 4: you disagree. That didn't work. So our price round was
Speaker 4: like we raised X amount of dollars, but I can
Speaker 4: give you ballpark around when it's multiple since about fifteen
Speaker 4: x sixteen x since our Wow, those who came in.
Speaker 1: The seed round, So it was a low valuation.
Speaker 4: But again we hadn't brought in any revenue yet, and
Speaker 4: you think about the nearest comparisons, probably TGL that has
Speaker 4: been selling teams at really high prices.
Speaker 1: Which is the new golf concept.
Speaker 4: Yeah, run by Mike who's his former NBC executive ran
Speaker 4: the Golf Channel's great dude. He has been able to
Speaker 4: tell a really good story and also pull on case
Speaker 4: studies of other leagues since then to say, hey, this
Speaker 4: is what it's worth without playing a match yet, right,
Speaker 4: which is extraordinarily difficult to do and really high risk
Speaker 4: because in the end, like we're all playing the long game,
Speaker 4: the PLL is not going to be my last business, right,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: So you're going in as an athlete, you've got to
Speaker 2: tell a story that says not just I think there's
Speaker 2: a lot of potential here, but like I know what
Speaker 2: I'm doing. Like, how did you convince people that you
Speaker 2: know this was the right path forward?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: I looked at the history of inflection points in pro sports,
Speaker 4: and you go all the way back to Major League Baseball,
Speaker 4: and we asked the question too, like why are team
Speaker 4: sports home and away while they have stadiums, what are
Speaker 4: the revenues tied to such Baseball and nearly nineteen hundreds
Speaker 4: was a ticket sales business a lot of games. For
Speaker 4: that reason, it became an RSN media business, and then
Speaker 4: it became a concessions business merchandise business. But you play
Speaker 4: one hundred and sixty two games, a lot of games.
Speaker 1: He's aware, I'm just making sure s yeah.
Speaker 4: So so you get to a business that was built
Speaker 4: around very much. So even even the day to day
Speaker 4: worker was born in New York City and lived their
Speaker 4: life in New York City. And there's so much community
Speaker 4: that actually lives today right, And it's important to get
Speaker 4: that right in pro sports. If you look at what
Speaker 4: the turning point was the NFL for Pete Roselle in
Speaker 4: the nineteen sixties, it was deciding to go on broadcast cable,
Speaker 4: which seems like, oh, home run. Wasn't the case then
Speaker 4: because the worry was in a ticketing business. If you
Speaker 4: broadcast games, people won't.
Speaker 1: Go, they won't show up.
Speaker 4: They jumped the TV faster and Major League Baseball did.
Speaker 4: I think the NBA and David Stern and Adam Silver
Speaker 4: in the eighties and nineties better than anyone else, has
Speaker 4: created culture and entertainment and this connectivity around the NBA
Speaker 4: that is star led for team sports. So what we
Speaker 4: said is like, okay, cool, this is twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: We're raising money.
Speaker 4: I'm a testament to this as an athlete that's built
Speaker 4: a profile because those wages didn't change, by the way,
Speaker 4: but my income did. Because I got sponsors signed up,
Speaker 4: because I started a YouTube channel, a podcast, I was
Speaker 4: active on social. I knew modern media what I felt
Speaker 4: better than anyone else. So I was like, these are
Speaker 4: the leagues of X, Y, and Z. We're going to
Speaker 4: be the league of digital. And that's why you're going
Speaker 4: to invest. We know how to leverage the new attention economy,
Speaker 4: we know how to storytell. Our large business unit at
Speaker 4: the poll from day one is going to be our
Speaker 4: production house because right now every team and league outsources
Speaker 4: media and marketing. We're gonna take that inside. We're gonna
Speaker 4: make us fast and more agile. And we believe we're
Speaker 4: not building CrossFit or slam ball, which are new sports
Speaker 4: really from scratch. This is a sport that already has
Speaker 4: product market fit. Our job is to get it to
Speaker 4: the red zone and then over the goal line.
Speaker 3: So just to expand on that a little bit, if
Speaker 3: you go back a little bit, Paul, tell us a
Speaker 3: little bit about the two or three things that you
Speaker 3: thought that the prior league that you played in was underachieving,
Speaker 3: and what was your thesis to the investors, besides what
Speaker 3: you just mentioned with the media, that you can do
Speaker 3: better and ultimately build a successful, sustainable business.
Speaker 4: Number one is your most important part is your network.
Speaker 4: You have to have a media company, not only invested, which,
Speaker 4: by the way, one of our board members is David O'Connor,
Speaker 4: who used to be a partner at CA, was running
Speaker 4: MSG at one point and now is co founder of
Speaker 4: Arctos YEP.
Speaker 1: Brilliant Doc o'kind love Doc.
Speaker 4: As everyone knows, and Doc told us about a few
Speaker 4: years ago, the most difficult thing to do in sports
Speaker 4: is get a media rights deal. Most of those two
Speaker 4: hundred leagues that I had mentioned from the nineties that
Speaker 4: started all the way through, they're in revshare deals or
Speaker 4: time buyse We were a revshare partnership with NBC Sports
Speaker 4: when we first launched. Why would they give us a
Speaker 4: media rights deal? It's not tested yet, and so the
Speaker 4: former league really struggled with that chicken and egg theory,
Speaker 4: which is you sort of need a network to develop
Speaker 4: an audience and score rating, but they have all the
Speaker 4: leverage until you score rating and then whether it's entertainment,
Speaker 4: which I always referenced Seinfeld to Cheer where Seinfeld got
Speaker 4: its first pilot, big rating on the heels of that
Speaker 4: fifty million audience, and so entertainment you test new shows.
Speaker 4: We don't really see pilots anymore based on lead ins.
Speaker 1: Sports.
Speaker 4: With a great network, you get a good lead in,
Speaker 4: you get introduced to a new audience, which is really
Speaker 4: important for a sport like lacrosse. So we knew we
Speaker 4: needed to get that and we might have to fight
Speaker 4: to get that and really dig in as a network
Speaker 4: partner to drive viewership. And that's what NBC noticed, and
Speaker 4: they decided to invest into the production.
Speaker 1: We did a revshare.
Speaker 4: It was a profitable business at the time, which three
Speaker 4: years later led to that media rights deal with the
Speaker 4: Gang at ESPN.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that fascinates me and Alex
Speaker 1: has this too.
Speaker 2: You just have this ability and willingness to just walk
Speaker 2: in to these meetings with these massive executives and just
Speaker 2: be like, here, I am, I've got this idea, I
Speaker 2: believe in it.
Speaker 1: You should too.
Speaker 2: Let's do that and then you're so, where does that
Speaker 2: engine come from? Because that's different. That's different from like
Speaker 2: being good on the field.
Speaker 4: I think that, you know, I had mentioned the stereotype
Speaker 4: that I felt for most of my career and still
Speaker 4: do at times.
Speaker 1: You don't have that.
Speaker 4: When you meet with sports executives, they love they love it,
Speaker 4: they understand that. And sure, another thing that we had
Speaker 4: to work on that the former league didn't have is
Speaker 4: get real corporate partners in that are willing to spend.
Speaker 4: And we had Gatorade and Adidas in Capital one in
Speaker 4: our first year and now it's stretched like Ticketmaster and
Speaker 4: cash App and Progressive and so many different categories. Now,
Speaker 4: going into those meetings is hard. But when you sit
Speaker 4: with Jeff Carney, who was one of the three Jeffs
Speaker 4: at Gatorade, who knows what it's like to sit for
Speaker 4: a meal with Abby Wombox, Aerena Williams and Michael Jordan.
Speaker 4: They know that work ethic. Yeah, I don't feel pressure there.
Speaker 4: I actually feel welcomed. I feel community. But make no mistake,
Speaker 4: I think what we've learned and you go next, is that,
Speaker 4: oh man, we can defy odds.
Speaker 1: If we were to look at the.
Speaker 4: Percentages of becoming a Major League baseball player, a professional
Speaker 4: acrosse player, or an international player in whatever sports. Love
Speaker 4: it's under one percent. So when you do it, you
Speaker 4: sort of trick your mind into believing that you can
Speaker 4: manifest in anything. And I believe in manifestation, by the way,
Speaker 4: So that's not enough on its own.
Speaker 1: You've got it and do the work. And so man,
Speaker 1: I study.
Speaker 4: I study you guys before even walking in here, and
Speaker 4: I know both of you, so I think it's just
Speaker 4: so important to come prepared. And that's another sport attribute. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean does that resonate with you?
Speaker 1: I mean, what's your mindset when you go in Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's two things.
Speaker 3: I think Paul and I are not afraid of the work,
Speaker 3: and the numbers will tell you that over our long careers.
Speaker 3: But the other thing is we've proven that we're able
Speaker 3: to surround ourselves, check the ego at the door, and
Speaker 3: surround ourselves with the best.
Speaker 1: Minds in the world.
Speaker 3: So when you go and talk to these titans, that's
Speaker 3: exactly what they've done. Now, they have fancier degrees, they
Speaker 3: have better returns and all that, but when you look
Speaker 3: at our resume or you look in at a LinkedIn account.
Speaker 3: We're looking at a trajectory, right, and when you look
Speaker 3: at Paul's trajectory, it screams champion. Right from the time
Speaker 3: you're in college to where you are today, it's been
Speaker 3: like this. No, it hasn't been straight up, I'm sure
Speaker 3: for both of us we've had this, but we're not
Speaker 3: afraid of the work. We surround ourselves with the right
Speaker 3: people and we're never going to give up until we
Speaker 3: win the title. And I think that's what they recognize.
Speaker 3: And the other part is we're talking about sports. We're
Speaker 3: not talking about gas and oil or something that's really
Speaker 3: like not as sexy. Everybody will take the meeting a
Speaker 3: because your Paul b because you're doing something big and bold,
Speaker 3: and see you and Mike have a real thing here.
Speaker 1: Why not? Why not?
Speaker 4: I'd add to it one more thing that Alex had
Speaker 4: me think of, which is in the startup community, they'll say,
Speaker 4: what's your unfair advantage? Our unfair advantage is that I
Speaker 4: had a relationship with the players. I can't run a
Speaker 4: league and play in a league against myself, And the
Speaker 4: unfair advantage was, okay, you could have hypothetically a few
Speaker 4: other folks come in and pitch starting a pro lacrossely,
Speaker 4: but they don't have the players. It's all for nothing, right,
Speaker 4: So in any line of work, what's your unfunded advantage
Speaker 4: table stakes?
Speaker 1: You have to be a subject matter expert.
Speaker 2: But that relationship with the players is a critical one.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's interesting because you've now sat on both
Speaker 2: sides of the table of like being an athlete being
Speaker 2: an owner. You know, you were essentially doing both at
Speaker 2: the same time. Well, Alex said it, and it's not.
Speaker 2: I think it's actually really really underrated in the entertainment world,
Speaker 2: which is what we're in as a pro athlete, or
Speaker 2: you know, if you're in cinema and you're an actor
Speaker 2: or even a writer, is being humble and having a
Speaker 2: level of self awareness and being kind to your peers.
Speaker 2: That actually doesn't exist everywhere. But the people that I
Speaker 2: try to surround myself with have that. They also have
Speaker 2: the freedom to check me when I get over my skis.
Speaker 2: I notice Alex has that.
Speaker 4: And you know, now an owner of the Timberwolves, you
Speaker 4: probably have a really natural and authentic way about going
Speaker 4: and talking to the players on the team. And that's
Speaker 4: different than traditional sports owners. You know, where there is
Speaker 4: a pretty clear and distinct wall between ownership and players,
Speaker 4: and that's why a lot of times unions started.
Speaker 3: Let me add this, I think what Paul and I
Speaker 3: can do very well is we can be the bridge
Speaker 3: between institutional capital and the athletes because we now know
Speaker 3: how they both think. Yeah, and that is really I
Speaker 3: want to underscore that because, especially as an owner of
Speaker 3: the Timbles and the Lynks, I see how valuable it
Speaker 3: is to have empathy for the players to understand how
Speaker 3: difficult it is today. It's never been harder to be
Speaker 3: an athlete in today's world. At twenty twenty four. Thank
Speaker 3: god social media wasn't around. I got myself in enough trouble. God,
Speaker 3: you know, with social media it was in the heyday
Speaker 3: when I played, it would have been that much more challenging.
Speaker 3: So having empathy for the today's player, I think is crucial.
Speaker 4: And sometimes empathy is just sitting with emotions and not jurisdicting,
Speaker 4: which is you know, as executives, is what you feel
Speaker 4: like is now.
Speaker 3: One question when you think, I love what you're thinking,
Speaker 3: But when you're describing what you did, which is beautiful,
Speaker 3: and this what makes you kind of Paul one of
Speaker 3: one is Adam Silver is the same way. He's just
Speaker 3: a tremendous commissioner. Any commissioners or leaders out there domestically
Speaker 3: ori internationally that you look and study to see how
Speaker 3: you can apply to your league.
Speaker 4: Adam is a friend, is a mentor. I try to
Speaker 4: get with him a couple times a year. He is
Speaker 4: absolutely that. Whether it's Adam, whether it's Jimmy Pittarro, whether
Speaker 4: it's Don Garber. The best executives I've noticed in sports
Speaker 4: and sports media, they have velocity, you know, but it's
Speaker 4: not just returning your email or your text fast. It's
Speaker 4: doing it thoughtfully. And I think that to your point,
Speaker 4: when you're a senior executive, your job is to keep
Speaker 4: the wheel going. You know, talent really matters. You can't
Speaker 4: forget what business you're in. You know, we run the PLL.
Speaker 4: We have to think about and spend a lot of
Speaker 4: time with our players. Is that revenue driving You could
Speaker 4: like throw dotted lines to such, sure, but it's the
Speaker 4: essence of what you do. So I think being able
Speaker 4: to understand that is of utmost importance.
Speaker 2: One of the things that strikes me is that both
Speaker 2: of you are quite evolved, and I also know have
Speaker 2: done a lot of work on yourselves. You talk pretty
Speaker 2: openly about being in therapy. You've talked about that a
Speaker 2: lot as well. How has that changed you? And I'm
Speaker 2: going to turn it on this guy too, but how
Speaker 2: has that changed you as a leader?
Speaker 4: It's a great question. I asked Alex about this in
Speaker 4: the past because my concern about originally about sports psychology
Speaker 4: and therapy is that it would make me soft. And
Speaker 4: now I think about the soft masculine and how that's
Speaker 4: the most powerful version of ourselves where we can be
Speaker 4: empathetic and then also turn up the dial on our competitiveness.
Speaker 1: And it's not a light switch.
Speaker 4: So I had to learn that because I wanted to
Speaker 4: be the A Rod of lacrosse. I wanted to be
Speaker 4: the MJ of Lacrosse. I wanted to be you know
Speaker 4: what Tom Brady was, And I see these fierce competitors,
Speaker 4: fierce and you know on the cover of the book
Speaker 4: that runs in at direct odds with understanding or having
Speaker 4: perspective around losing being okay or part of the process,
Speaker 4: and we will heal, we will actually grow. So it
Speaker 4: was a challenge for me to get into it and
Speaker 4: then once and I want to give a shout out
Speaker 4: to my sports psychologists, formerly doctor John Elliott. Once I
Speaker 4: got into sports psychology and understood that actually know it's
Speaker 4: a superpower and you're not going to lose that and
Speaker 4: kind of that metaphorical dial versus switch, and that you're
Speaker 4: going to become a better leader, which is what helps
Speaker 4: teams win, it was just all in for me from there.
Speaker 1: So I was doing therapy like twice.
Speaker 4: A week every week for seven years, and it became
Speaker 4: like practice, and like practice going back to what we
Speaker 4: do in sport. When we love in sports, you can
Speaker 4: feel yourself improve and learn about psychology, and that psychology
Speaker 4: on the business side has been a big unlock for me.
Speaker 4: What I've learned the difference therapeutically between being an athlete
Speaker 4: and a business person is this, in sports, you can
Speaker 4: win with sheer willpower and effort and strength, and it's
Speaker 4: designated to do such.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like we're going to square.
Speaker 4: Off, one of us is going to win, in one
Speaker 4: of is going to lose. So Mike comes into play.
Speaker 4: In business, that's the absolute wrong idea. You don't want
Speaker 4: to go into a partnership where you won the deal
Speaker 4: and the other person feels really bad because guess what,
Speaker 4: that partnership ain't going to renew, right, and you want
Speaker 4: to be in the renewal business. And I know that
Speaker 4: we've discussed that before, so I'd be curious what any
Speaker 4: you think of it.
Speaker 1: No, I always say the ninety percent.
Speaker 3: Rule, right, if you know, in order to get a deal,
Speaker 3: both sides, I feel have to hurt a little bit
Speaker 3: and win a little bit.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: It can be like all one side, or that'll be
Speaker 3: the last deal. But let me bring you inside because
Speaker 3: I agreed with everything you said about the stigma around
Speaker 3: therapy or on sports.
Speaker 1: And we've come a long ways.
Speaker 3: I mean we're now twenty twenty four, but bring you
Speaker 3: back about call it twenty years back into our club.
Speaker 3: I was when George Steinberner was still running the team.
Speaker 3: So George Steinberner says, I want to introduce Chad. He
Speaker 3: is a very very good sports psychologist. His office will
Speaker 3: be right next to mine. Come see him anytime. Okay,
Speaker 3: two years we had zero people walking that run.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So then he reintroduced him and he said, hey, I
Speaker 3: want to introduce Chad. He did is a reintroduce. Reintroduced Chad.
Speaker 3: He's a performance coach. Twenty three out of twenty five
Speaker 3: of us went in there. But Chad is such a
Speaker 3: great guy became still a very close personal friend and
Speaker 3: an integral part of a two thousand and nine championship team.
Speaker 3: But talk about how you label something and the way
Speaker 3: to go around it goes from psychologists to performance coach. Yeah, athletes,
Speaker 3: we bought into performance coach, and.
Speaker 4: That's just also underscores culture, which is set at the
Speaker 4: top and mister Steinbrenner's focus on and his belief and
Speaker 4: how that could help the team.
Speaker 2: How do you apply all these lessons that you have
Speaker 2: learned to what feels like a critical moment? Maybe there
Speaker 2: are a lot of critical moments, but this one feels
Speaker 2: like a critical moment in the business of lacrosse. Like
Speaker 2: you're looking ahead to twenty eight in the Olympic. You've merged,
Speaker 2: as you said, the PLL and the MLL, you've absorbed
Speaker 2: the league that you essentially usurped.
Speaker 1: What needs to happen now?
Speaker 2: Things are trending the right direction, But what are those
Speaker 2: key decisions you have to make? Are the key things
Speaker 2: that need to happen next?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, a few highlights.
Speaker 4: So when we launched our league, we were wholly owned,
Speaker 4: still our single entity. We changed to a touring model,
Speaker 4: which is part of what got to send the door
Speaker 4: with these investors unique. And so we looked at the
Speaker 4: UFCF one tennis golf and said, okay, if you can
Speaker 4: bring all of your teams and descend upon a major
Speaker 4: market city and a professional venue one time a season,
Speaker 4: then you're going to flip the supply and demand curve
Speaker 4: because lacrosse fans aren't as big as basketball, football, or
Speaker 4: soccer fans in America. So we have a different model.
Speaker 4: I'll come back to that. If you looked at what
Speaker 4: we did from a media standpoint, we were able to
Speaker 4: grow year of a year double digits. Since we've launched
Speaker 4: and own and operated social and digital and now with
Speaker 4: our media deal with ESPN, we hare to raise great capital,
Speaker 4: support our players and new business initiatives like we just
Speaker 4: talked about for us as we look into now getting
Speaker 4: lacrosse back into the Olympics in twenty twenty eight. If
Speaker 4: those are the goalposts, how does this league transform into
Speaker 4: a top six team sports league in North America And
Speaker 4: what that transformation may look like. Is no longer tour
Speaker 4: And if you think about what we had talked about
Speaker 4: we worked with Major League Baseball and still does with
Speaker 4: team sports leagues. It's community and so we are working
Speaker 4: pretty actively on dual scenarios, continuing to build out the
Speaker 4: Holy owned model that's tour based with our teams in
Speaker 4: home markets and going to those home markets, expanding our schedule,
Speaker 4: which is in our business called tonnage, which means you
Speaker 4: get more hours on television, which helps your media right
Speaker 4: steal to then path two, which is selling our teams.
Speaker 4: We have eight of them, and if you have great
Speaker 4: owners in markets like Minnesota, like down in Utah, like
Speaker 4: we have in New England, the crafts are investors and
Speaker 4: you find the right ownership group with the package of
Speaker 4: owning a venue with other sports properties that they can
Speaker 4: cross promote against effectively their lead INDs. As I had
Speaker 4: talked about the value of networks. That's a real path
Speaker 4: and it doesn't stop at eight. If we choose that
Speaker 4: shift maybe to a trade association model or with Don
Speaker 4: Garbage in MLS which you maintain a single entity. And
Speaker 4: he had Soccer United marketing and owners came in. They
Speaker 4: owned the right to their team and up and their
Speaker 4: pro out of position of forty one percent of some
Speaker 4: which owned US and Mexican soccer rights. Our version of
Speaker 4: call it some marketing is women's lacrosse ownership. We own
Speaker 4: the largest media company called TLN Youth Lacrosse Investing. We
Speaker 4: have these other properties that are really valuable and big
Speaker 4: in addition to just owning a team. So that's how
Speaker 4: that model could flex. And then you go from eight
Speaker 4: to ten to twelve to fourteen to sixteen, and you're
Speaker 4: really leaning into community in real estate, where if I
Speaker 4: think about what makes sports high multiple businesses, enterprise businesses,
Speaker 4: it's attention right through your partnerships and everything else I
Speaker 4: talked about. It's revenue, so it's your corporate relationships, it's tickets,
Speaker 4: it's merchandise, it's youth community and then real estate.
Speaker 3: So Paul, when you think about that model, and you're
Speaker 3: going kind of two different paths at the same time,
Speaker 3: which I think is super smart to give you options
Speaker 3: as an entrepreneur in five years, what do you think
Speaker 3: is the north star and if you can have a
Speaker 3: year way, what is the perfect comp that in the
Speaker 3: league is doing that where they're hunting right now?
Speaker 4: So for touring, our players will be full time and
Speaker 4: living in markets, practicing every single day averaging six figures
Speaker 4: in wages. We will be playing instead of fourteen weekends
Speaker 4: of the year upwards of twenty four. If it's individually owned,
Speaker 4: then we'll have our players in those markets. Their salaries
Speaker 4: are passed through to team owners. They have their venues
Speaker 4: that they're part of. The tonnage moves from fourteen to
Speaker 4: twenty four weekends, which is looking like probably forty eight
Speaker 4: upwards of eighty games, and that's a really good business
Speaker 4: for us. From a breath of properties. We're entering a
Speaker 4: new rights negotiation. Our four year deal with ESPN goes
Speaker 4: through twenty twenty five. I think the media environment is
Speaker 4: really exciting. People look at what would often be considered
Speaker 4: the best business model over the last sixty years in America,
Speaker 4: the cable bundle, as an indictment on media companies. They're
Speaker 4: just losing that frothy business model which used to have
Speaker 4: one hundred and ten million. But they're in the business
Speaker 4: of content ownership, content licensing, and distribute.
Speaker 3: I have one on that. So, Paul, when you think
Speaker 3: about it, I just want to get it. I'm thinking
Speaker 3: of you like if I'm an investor, right, so I'm
Speaker 3: literally pitching you like you're looking for my capital even
Speaker 3: though you're not in five to seven years. Is it
Speaker 3: fair to say that you're either something like the NBA model, Yeah,
Speaker 3: or something like the UFC model.
Speaker 1: Yes? Is that fair? Yeah? And I think both both
Speaker 1: paths are really valuable. I agree.
Speaker 4: You know, the UFC sold to Endeavor as they staged
Speaker 4: up for about four billion, and then Bob and will
Speaker 4: Iger just bought Angel City at a two hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: million dollar post. So I think it would probably be
Speaker 4: NWSL or UFC. And I believe our enterprise value as
Speaker 4: a league will be in the multi billions over the
Speaker 4: next five years.
Speaker 1: Where is it today? Approximately under one billion. I can't
Speaker 1: give you more than that. That's fair number.
Speaker 4: But look sports sports leagues and teams on average trade
Speaker 4: for eight to ten times revenue, right, And the reason
Speaker 4: why is all that we had just discussed. Warren Buffett
Speaker 4: calls them monopolies because of scarcity. That's that and what
Speaker 4: the technologists would say. Our LTV is thirty plus years.
Speaker 4: You know, you get someone into a game, you get
Speaker 4: them to be a Yankees fan, it lasts a lifetime.
Speaker 4: That's way different than even the streaming business. LTV For
Speaker 4: those who are lifetime value.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 4: So you figure out how much getting Alex to be
Speaker 4: a fan of the PLL is worth to us from
Speaker 4: a revenue standpoint, and then you do what's called a
Speaker 4: customer acquisition cost analysis, so you build your CAC. How
Speaker 4: much then would it cost me from a marketing and
Speaker 4: investing into getting Alex? And is that a profitable difference? Right?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: So if we're running a software business, which kind of
Speaker 4: talking about would be intimidating to walk into a room
Speaker 4: because it's not our cup of tea like sports was,
Speaker 4: then I would be pitching our next round of financing
Speaker 4: around how how low our CAC is and how big
Speaker 4: our LTV is, and then you just pour it on
Speaker 4: customer acquisition. We're in that stage right now where we
Speaker 4: have a good idea around where we need to spend
Speaker 4: on awareness and casual sports fans. There's two hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty million in the US. When we launched the PLL,
Speaker 4: we had fifteen million lacross fans in the US. Now
Speaker 4: we have forty six million, scorting to an MRI Simmons report.
Speaker 4: That's in just five years of operating. So we'll do this,
Speaker 4: this this all the way through LA twenty eight. Which
Speaker 4: one more stat When I started playing, there were eighteen countries.
Speaker 4: Now there are ninety two.
Speaker 1: Wow, all right, we're going to do our rapid fire now.
Speaker 1: A lot of pressure, a lot of pressure. Keep it tight. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right? What's one word to describe your deal making style? Compassionate?
Speaker 3: What's more important to you? Instant gut or data gut?
Speaker 1: Who's your dream deal making partner? Mark Cuban? Good one?
Speaker 1: What's the best deal you've ever made? The next one.
Speaker 1: What's the best piece of advice you've received on deal
Speaker 1: making your business?
Speaker 4: I think actually from Alex and making sure that everyone
Speaker 4: feels a little pain and they also see the big
Speaker 4: picture of why they're letting go of something for something
Speaker 4: much bigger.
Speaker 3: What's the worst piece of advice? And don't say Jason,
Speaker 3: please win the deal, Win the deal, Win the deal.
Speaker 2: What's your hype song before you go into a big
Speaker 2: meeting or negotiation?
Speaker 4: I fall back to nineties rock honestly, Like I listened
Speaker 4: to Rage against the Machine before workouts. Still, but before
Speaker 4: a meeting, like I didn't listen to Rage walking into this?
Speaker 1: Okay? I try, yeah, I try.
Speaker 4: You know what I'll say that try to listen to
Speaker 4: something that has to do with the meeting in advance. Huh,
Speaker 4: I countlessly, whether it's interviews or pitches. I've picked up
Speaker 4: something in the last minute walking into the door that
Speaker 4: was seminal to closing it interesting.
Speaker 3: Take lacrosse out. There's only one sport you can watch
Speaker 3: for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: Which one is it? I'd call it football, but the
Speaker 1: English Premier League.
Speaker 2: Okay, what team do you want to see win a
Speaker 2: championship more than any The Boston Cannons my first team,
Speaker 2: first team and revived now for the New York Blo.
Speaker 3: A fun fact about yourself that your colleagues will be
Speaker 3: surprised to hear about.
Speaker 1: I'm a failed musician. Ooh, that's a good one.
Speaker 4: I've always wanted to play. I've tried to play the piano. Well,
Speaker 4: you used to get lessons when I was younger. I've
Speaker 4: tried to pick up the guitar as an adult, watch
Speaker 4: YouTube videos. Just haven't been able to get the and
Speaker 4: even drums, like as an athlete. I'm embarrassed to say,
Speaker 4: because you think we're really well coordinated, I just can't
Speaker 4: figure out the multi movements of music. So you guys
Speaker 4: can bet that it won't be musician in there.
Speaker 1: At some point. Paul Rabel failed musicians next time on
Speaker 1: the Deal. This has been really fun. Thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you good. I started sweating on the rapid Fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, listen, pressure and its psychology.
Speaker 4: Man, I learned that too, by the way, is that
Speaker 4: you know your body. You feel nerves in big moments.
Speaker 4: And I remember John Elliott tell me it's a good thing.
Speaker 4: He's like, if you're not feeling it, he was like, whoa.
Speaker 1: I thought.
Speaker 4: He was like, no, no, don't say nervousness. That means
Speaker 4: you're not prepared. Nerves are bodies as athletes were walking
Speaker 4: on the field.
Speaker 1: He heats up.
Speaker 4: That's our muscle fibers and twitching beginnings so that when
Speaker 4: a defender is coming at me to take my head off,
Speaker 4: I can react and dodge by him.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And that's just the feeling that you're feeling, right, And
Speaker 4: that was a change of framing, which if I didn't
Speaker 4: give that answer on one of those rapid Fire questions,
Speaker 4: I'm sure it's like frame differently and always optimistically.
Speaker 1: M beautiful here the man. Thank you so much, Thanks
Speaker 1: you guys.
Speaker 5: The Deal is a production from Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals.
Speaker 5: The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly.
Speaker 5: Our producers are Anamazarakus, Stacy Wong, Lizzie Phillip, and Victory Veyees.
Speaker 5: Original music and engineering by Blake Maples. Our managing editor
Speaker 5: is David E. Ravella. Our executive producers are Jason Kelly,
Speaker 5: Brendan Francis Newnham, Jordan Opplinger, Trey Shallowhorn, Kyle Kramer, Andrew Barden,
Speaker 5: Kelly Laferrier, and Ashley Hoenig. Sage Bauman is our head
Speaker 5: of podcasts, Additional support from Rachel Scaramazzino and Elena Los Angeles.
Speaker 5: Joshua Devaux is our director of photography. Rubob Shakir is
Speaker 5: our creative director. Art direction is from Jacqueline Kessler. Casting
Speaker 5: by Julia Manns. Our associate producer is Natasha Abbilard. Camera
Speaker 5: operation by Ryan Cavatero, Jesse Ridner and Suma Hussein. Our
Speaker 5: gaffer is Alex Brown, and our grip is Max Garstak.
Speaker 5: Our production assistant is Gabriella Demataes. Katia Vanoy is our
Speaker 5: video editor. Listen to the Deal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 5: or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also tune
Speaker 5: into the Video Companion on Bloomberg Originals and on Bloomberg TV.
Speaker 5: Thanks for listening.