Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Business of Sports show. We explored
Speaker 1: the big money issues in the world of sports on
Speaker 1: Michael Barn I'm Scarlett fou on the show. Today we
Speaker 1: welcome Ron Kruschowski. He is chairman and CEO of ste
Speaker 1: Full Financial Corporation, which late last year became the title
Speaker 1: sponsor of the US Alpine Ski team. And turns out
Speaker 1: they struck that deal right on time because the team
Speaker 1: is led by Michaela Schiffrin, who recently broke the record
Speaker 1: for most World Cup wins by a woman with three.
Speaker 1: There it is the final guft but let you get
Speaker 1: that Kaela Schiffred victory number eighty three. That was Schiffen's
Speaker 1: when captured by a very excited NBC Sports. Steples deal
Speaker 1: with the US Alpine Ski team includes a special financial
Speaker 1: education program for the athletes as well, and we'll dive
Speaker 1: into all of that and more with Ron Schukovsky. He
Speaker 1: is with the show right now with the Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: of Sports Round. Welcome to the show. I'm pleased to
Speaker 1: join you. We got to bring this up, Tom Brady.
Speaker 1: We talked about a guy who's made a fistfull of cash. Uh.
Speaker 1: He is officially retiring and he says this time is yeah,
Speaker 1: it says this is for good this time now this
Speaker 1: is According to the database spot track, Brady has earned
Speaker 1: more than three two million dollars twenty three seasons in
Speaker 1: the NFL. He has endorsement deals with under Armor and
Speaker 1: Hurts among other big brands. Forgot. I mean, it's huge.
Speaker 1: So so when can the skiers get in on all
Speaker 1: this and get all this endorsement stuff? You know that
Speaker 1: That's a great question. And I think that what it
Speaker 1: comes to is at the United States, one of the
Speaker 1: obviously the biggest market in the world and one of
Speaker 1: the biggest sports markets in the world, um comes to
Speaker 1: understand and appreciate the alpine skiing, uh, you know, as
Speaker 1: they that they do football. Maybe not quite that. I'll
Speaker 1: give you an example of World Championships are gonna be
Speaker 1: starting in Courseable France, and I was looking at some
Speaker 1: numbers you don't talk the business of sports, and approximately
Speaker 1: the estimates are about four million Americans will watch it, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and delayed or or streaming uh in Germany
Speaker 1: ten times that amount ten times. So I think that
Speaker 1: when your listeners understand and maybe some of them do them,
Speaker 1: some of them, don't MICHAELA Shipwrin is the goat. The goat.
Speaker 1: She is one win away from the all time record,
Speaker 1: which you think of our stem mark of eighties six
Speaker 1: wins and she's twenty seven years old. It's incredible. And
Speaker 1: and for us talk about catching lightning in a bottle.
Speaker 1: We we signed the steal last year. No one thought
Speaker 1: she'd have this kind of year. Maybe I did, but
Speaker 1: maybe that's about it. Pretty incredible timing um definitely given
Speaker 1: uh what she has been able to do, not just
Speaker 1: of late, but throughout her career. And Stephile also has
Speaker 1: sponsorship agreements with the St. Louis Blues, which of course
Speaker 1: plays in your hometown. Uh there, you're the official jersey
Speaker 1: sponsor and several PJA golfers, and are also the presenting
Speaker 1: sponsor of the Hoskins and Antako Awards, which recognize the
Speaker 1: USS top collegiate golfers. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: overall about the strategy behind why steeple is aligning so
Speaker 1: closely with athletes and with sports. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I give my own little bit of marketing line here
Speaker 1: with steeple Um. What we say is that we're an
Speaker 1: organization where success meets success. So if UM we want,
Speaker 1: we want to be aligned with successful people, and athletes
Speaker 1: are the you know, the most obvious example of success,
Speaker 1: whether whether you're Tom Brady or MICHAELA Schiffrin or frankly
Speaker 1: a young collegiate golfer that's gonna be the next Tiger
Speaker 1: Woods or you know, the next athlete. So we see
Speaker 1: UH sports and especially individual sports like golf and skiing
Speaker 1: as epitomizing the values and core beliefs that we embrace
Speaker 1: as a as a company. So it's rather it's a
Speaker 1: rather easy um uh connection for us. But it's interesting
Speaker 1: that you say individual athletes as opposed to team sports.
Speaker 1: Can you expand on that? Well, I think, look, there's
Speaker 1: no Eyeon team as as people like to say, and
Speaker 1: U we UH team sports do not have from a
Speaker 1: from a marketing perspective, UH necessarily the same ability to
Speaker 1: identify with success or even success and failure. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the great stories about MICHAELA, even though she's
Speaker 1: the greatest of all time, where she did not have
Speaker 1: UM a stellar Olympics to say the least. And I've
Speaker 1: talked to her about that and and how what she
Speaker 1: talks about in a view listen to her, you will
Speaker 1: see that even the greatest have failures. Um, and you
Speaker 1: know Michael Jordan's said, you know how many shots he
Speaker 1: missed in his career, and yet you know he always
Speaker 1: wanted to have the last shot. And I'm sure Tom
Speaker 1: Brady you know, has stories of his failures. Uh. So
Speaker 1: individuals are easier to relate to. Teams are important, but
Speaker 1: don't have an individual component that we that we value.
Speaker 1: That said, we're a big sponsor of the Blues as
Speaker 1: a team. You mentioned that you need to have the
Speaker 1: skills and traits required to be a top athlete, and
Speaker 1: it has to mirror what it takes to be a
Speaker 1: successful investor. In other words, to coin my father's words,
Speaker 1: don't be a knucklehead? What do you do to to
Speaker 1: what are what are the skills to be a top
Speaker 1: investor if you are a top athlete, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: look it's it's uh, it's skill. You need perseverance, you know,
Speaker 1: especially in investing. If you if you just become emotional
Speaker 1: with the markets, you're you're gonna what your dad say,
Speaker 1: be a knucklehead. You'll be You'll be a knucklehead if
Speaker 1: if you do that and and uh of course, what
Speaker 1: we what we do, and every great athlete you know,
Speaker 1: has a support system, and what we want to do
Speaker 1: for our clients has provide a support system, you know,
Speaker 1: not necessarily for athletic prownness, but for savings and retirement
Speaker 1: and financial advice, prounness, and so the qualities that it
Speaker 1: takes skill, dedication, perseverance to be a great athlete, we
Speaker 1: believe those skills are needed to be a great investor
Speaker 1: and not be a knucklehead. I like that, actually, I
Speaker 1: like your dad. So talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: your strategy or what you're thinking is in terms of
Speaker 1: further expanding into the sports world. You articulated, um, the
Speaker 1: value of individual athletes as opposed to an entire team.
Speaker 1: Really looking to identify the traits and individuals that your customers,
Speaker 1: that your customer based UH might be able to relate to.
Speaker 1: Where do you see CELS involvement in the sports world
Speaker 1: expanding to Well, you know, I think my board probably
Speaker 1: thinks I've done a fair amount here. I'm not. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know again, we do. We're involved in college golf, UM,
Speaker 1: we're involved on the on the pro level of golf.
Speaker 1: Were involved with hockey, UM, we we do UM, you know,
Speaker 1: we do the l A Bowl. Um, that's more branding
Speaker 1: for us, and of course, UM, the USK team uh
Speaker 1: and the individuals on the USK team. So at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, I know this is the you know, the
Speaker 1: business of sports here. I think I think my plates
Speaker 1: kind of full right now in terms of what we're doing. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask a silly question because you mentioned about golfers, uh,
Speaker 1: and you are the presenting sponsor of the Haskins and
Speaker 1: Anika Awards. If I'm saying that right, I'm assuming we're
Speaker 1: talking about Annika Sorenstam. Absolutely, the Haskins Award is for
Speaker 1: the best male collegiate golfer voted by their peers and coaches,
Speaker 1: and the Anika is the is the correlation for the women.
Speaker 1: What does it take? Because you got your your hands
Speaker 1: in a lot here, a lot of great sports. It
Speaker 1: you must be stretched to the limit because you know,
Speaker 1: you've got top athletes all over the place, UH, and
Speaker 1: you've got you've got a good map of what it
Speaker 1: takes to help these athletes bring in sponsorships and bring
Speaker 1: in more sponsorships and more sponsorships. What do you tell them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that the athletes we want to be themselves. Okay,
Speaker 1: we like, uh, you know, we obviously want them to
Speaker 1: be good, you know, citizens and good good for their community.
Speaker 1: What then they are, you know, and that's that's what
Speaker 1: we we want to see. Take college golf for example,
Speaker 1: Just think about it. You've got kids that carry their
Speaker 1: own bags. You know, they're they're not making the money
Speaker 1: yet they golf, the sport where you keep your own score,
Speaker 1: your call, your penalties on yourself. You know, all of
Speaker 1: these moral um qualities that we value. So they you know,
Speaker 1: they always say to me, you know, what do you
Speaker 1: want me to do to UM, to sponsor or to
Speaker 1: promote stiful And my answer is, I will just be
Speaker 1: in your back light. You be good, and I get
Speaker 1: to associate with you, and when you're good, I get
Speaker 1: the I get the back light, which I like the
Speaker 1: halo effect. Right there you go, Ron, I want to
Speaker 1: we can't let you go without getting your take on
Speaker 1: the overall economy. But I want to hear about your
Speaker 1: view on the overall economy through the prism of what's
Speaker 1: going on in sports and sports rights. UM. People talk
Speaker 1: about live sports as its own asset class, or at
Speaker 1: least sports adjacent assets as their own asset class, because
Speaker 1: it's not correlated with the equity market the bond market
Speaker 1: in the same way that other traditional securities are. We've
Speaker 1: seen how sports rights values have just continued to climb,
Speaker 1: and the NBA TV rights, I'm sure we'll fetch a
Speaker 1: record amounts of money after the um current contract ends.
Speaker 1: How do you look at, uh, these values of teams,
Speaker 1: evaluations of teams and the sports rights in the current environment,
Speaker 1: when we are facing a slowing economy, possibly a recession,
Speaker 1: certainly tough times for the rest of this year, maybe
Speaker 1: into next year. That's a great question, and you know
Speaker 1: you got it. Let's go back a few years to
Speaker 1: try to answer the question, because um, you obviously could.
Speaker 1: I I would sit there and go it's crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: we look at what the sports franchise are trading for,
Speaker 1: whether it was Phoenix or Denver in football or basketball
Speaker 1: in the television rights, and you would sit there and say,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. But ten years ago I said it
Speaker 1: was crazy, you know when they when you would see
Speaker 1: what franchises are these rights would trade for. I think
Speaker 1: what it is is the reason that we are in
Speaker 1: the business of of associating with sports, and that is
Speaker 1: it is you know, it's American, it's competitiveness, and the
Speaker 1: consumer likes that they like watching these athletes, they relate,
Speaker 1: and therefore the value just skyrockets. And I think the
Speaker 1: pandemic actually, you know, increase the value because it's just um,
Speaker 1: it's it's what people like to do and it makes
Speaker 1: it makes you feel good. Uh. And so any any
Speaker 1: business that you do where you were, you know, the
Speaker 1: clients or the consumer walks out feeling good, that's a
Speaker 1: valuable business. That's what's going on in sports. I want
Speaker 1: to brag on you before we let you go, if
Speaker 1: you want. In twenty nineteen, the Horatio Algier Award UH
Speaker 1: selected for membership in the Algier Association of Distinguished Americans,
Speaker 1: which honors individuals who have overcome adversity to achieve success
Speaker 1: and who have demonstrated commitment to higher education and charitable endeavors.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about the adversity you had to
Speaker 1: go through to win that award? You know, first of all,
Speaker 1: that was very nice of you to mention that it
Speaker 1: was one of the greatest honors of my life, let
Speaker 1: alone career. UM. Yet in some ways, my adversity, which
Speaker 1: was simply, you know, coming from a family where I
Speaker 1: was the first to go to college and uh and
Speaker 1: you know then in the university if you will, about
Speaker 1: you know, climbing through that today you know, having the
Speaker 1: fortunate being the CEO of a great public company. UM.
Speaker 1: But I have to say, when you look at Horatial
Speaker 1: Alger and you talk about real adversity, which is broken families,
Speaker 1: potential of drugs, I don't hold a candle to that. Not.
Speaker 1: I just want to say that, I mean I do
Speaker 1: feel that, you know, I'm maybe a pretty good success story. UM.
Speaker 1: And I appreciate you bringing that up. But some of
Speaker 1: these stories are amazing and and to to my fellow
Speaker 1: Horatial Alger and what we support is education to help
Speaker 1: people achieve success. So I got a lot of future
Speaker 1: clients that are that are in the educational system for
Speaker 1: Horacial Alger and that that kind of warms my heart.
Speaker 1: Ron Kaschowski, I know him now. He's the chairman and
Speaker 1: CEO of Stephile Financial Corporation. You are so kind to
Speaker 1: join us, Ron, thank you for so much for joining
Speaker 1: us here on the Bloomberry Business of sports. My pleasure,
Speaker 1: my pleasure, thank you. This is the business of sports podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Michael Barr, along with Scarlet Food By the Way,
Speaker 1: We miss You, Nami and Sassaur Got You is here
Speaker 1: each and every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday exploring the world
Speaker 1: of money in sports and catch me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Big Bar Sports. I don't think Damien misses us. He's
Speaker 1: somewhere warm and sunny by the beach for for work
Speaker 1: on assignment, on assignment, so he says. I'm reachable on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Scarlett f. You're listening to Bloomberg Business of
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