Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: David Rubinstein joins us here.
Speaker 3: He is a co founder and co chairman of the
Speaker 3: Carlisle Group, an owner of the Baltimore Orioles as well
Speaker 3: as Cal Ripkin Junior, talking about those O's Baseball Hall
Speaker 3: of Famer, founder and partner of Ripken Baseball. Gentlemen, thanks
Speaker 3: so much for joining us here. We've got a lot
Speaker 3: of sports people running around. We were talking about women's basketball,
Speaker 3: women's soccer. Let's talk a little bit of Major League baseball.
Speaker 3: You guys are up a game in the win Colm
Speaker 3: on my Yankees, and it's going to be a great
Speaker 3: last few weeks of the year.
Speaker 2: David, I want to start with you here. You own
Speaker 2: the Orioles. Here, What are you doing? Why are you
Speaker 2: buying a sports franchise?
Speaker 4: Well, in this case, I grew up in Baltimore and
Speaker 4: I wanted to give back to Baltimore a bit, and
Speaker 4: I thought the team could maybe use rejuvenation in some way,
Speaker 4: and it's part of rebirth of Baltimore. Baltimore is trying
Speaker 4: to rebuild itself in many ways from some of the
Speaker 4: struggles it's had. I thought a new ownership group would
Speaker 4: probably be helpful. So I did it for that reason,
Speaker 4: And obviously I hope to make my as well from
Speaker 4: myself and my investors, but it's more of a philanthropic
Speaker 4: thing on my part than anything else.
Speaker 3: And Alex he's got a few partners there, including mister
Speaker 3: Bloomberg who owns this radio program.
Speaker 2: Ah, how about that? How about that? About secular for us?
Speaker 3: The exact ca all comes back together. Cal talk to
Speaker 3: us about the Orioles. Boy, Man, I'm a Yankee Finn
Speaker 3: so I'm looking at them every day.
Speaker 2: Man, they look good. Tell us about this team.
Speaker 1: It's an exciting young team to watch, talent all over
Speaker 1: the place. We've had little problems with injuries and our
Speaker 1: pitching staff, but when you have a deeper minor league system,
Speaker 1: sometimes when somebody gets hurt, you can it's an opportunity
Speaker 1: for someone else. So they're playing really well. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting when many owners come in to buy a team,
Speaker 1: the thing they have to fix is what's happening on
Speaker 1: the field. In our particular case, that's the best part
Speaker 1: about the investment is that Michaelias has done a really
Speaker 1: good job of creating an environment of culture that knows
Speaker 1: how to win knows how to play, and he's put
Speaker 1: talent in the system. So the good part is you
Speaker 1: just take your hands off of and say just keep
Speaker 1: going and hopefully the luck factor with David will in
Speaker 1: the very first year will take that all the way
Speaker 1: to the World Series.
Speaker 5: That's a really dumb question. Yes, why is investing in
Speaker 5: sports like a good business? And I say that because
Speaker 5: at some point we're going to reach the top, right, Like,
Speaker 5: there's so much money coming in.
Speaker 2: How do you know that?
Speaker 4: Well, over the last ten or fifteen years, it's been
Speaker 4: very difficult for somebody to buy a major league professional
Speaker 4: sport operation and lose money. People have made staggering sums. Now,
Speaker 4: of course that tends to track more money, and as
Speaker 4: you suggest, at some point there's always a peak. But
Speaker 4: right now, the interest in sports is so dynamic that
Speaker 4: the live television despite your view and my view that
Speaker 4: live television should focus on interview shows, actually it focuses
Speaker 4: on live sports, and live sports is what's keeping television
Speaker 4: alive really. So if you take a look at the NFL,
Speaker 4: for example, I think of the of the fifty most
Speaker 4: watched television shows last year, forty five of them were
Speaker 4: NFL games and now baseball sees a lot of people
Speaker 4: as a lot of people watching as well, so there's
Speaker 4: a view that the positive population increases and as other
Speaker 4: things seem to be less attractive, sports is still very,
Speaker 4: very attractive, and so the TV contracts are going up
Speaker 4: and as a result, for example, the NBA just negotiated
Speaker 4: seventy seven billion dollars worth of contracts. It's expected in
Speaker 4: two years that the NFL will top that number. So
Speaker 4: that's what is driving. And also it's a global phenomenon
Speaker 4: that people now are buying sports teams, not only in
Speaker 4: their own country but everywhere in the world, and so
Speaker 4: it's really not just a US phenomenon.
Speaker 1: So can I have a simple All you have to
Speaker 1: do is to look at the health of sports is
Speaker 1: to look at the salaries of the players. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I guess I'd become one of those players saying, man,
Speaker 1: I wish I'd played in.
Speaker 2: This always goes up.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm like everybody else. It's got to top
Speaker 3: out somewhere, Yet it just keeps going higher. Cal How
Speaker 3: has the game on the field changed the kids today
Speaker 3: that you watch at Canbin Yard. Still, by the way,
Speaker 3: I would argue one of the best parts in Major
Speaker 3: League Baseball twenty five years on.
Speaker 2: But how's the game changed today versus when when you
Speaker 2: played well?
Speaker 1: I mean, the analytics have taken over and all the
Speaker 1: data and all the information. And I was an analytical
Speaker 1: player and I took the data from but there's no
Speaker 1: way that I was getting all the sort of data
Speaker 1: that you can get now. And the trick is, and
Speaker 1: this is the fun part about learning the game hasn't
Speaker 1: changed much because the diamonds the same, the bases are
Speaker 1: the same, the mounds the same, The game is played
Speaker 1: the same way. But with all this influx of new data,
Speaker 1: teams feel that they have an advantage when they extract
Speaker 1: some of the data and then use that to help
Speaker 1: them play in the game. But the secret is how
Speaker 1: do you give the data to a player to make
Speaker 1: them a better player. And that's the part that I'm
Speaker 1: having fun with is learning what the data affects the
Speaker 1: philosophy of how you play the game, and that's changed,
Speaker 1: and positioning on the field, you know, different old philosophies
Speaker 1: have kind of gone out the window because they've been
Speaker 1: proven not to be effective. So it's interesting to watch
Speaker 1: the game from that perspective. But it is all about
Speaker 1: the data, the numbers, they track everything that moves on
Speaker 1: that field.
Speaker 2: It's amazing and that's AI.
Speaker 3: That's big data coming into sports and ouse I'm sure
Speaker 3: you know this, but I mean, just cal has he
Speaker 3: has a little record out there.
Speaker 2: He played a lot of games in a row.
Speaker 3: He never took a day off, and that's that is
Speaker 3: something that just it'll never be broken up.
Speaker 1: I wish I was wearing probes or something that could
Speaker 1: figure out how I could do that, because I'm asking
Speaker 1: all the time, how in the world you play all
Speaker 1: those games in a row, and I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess my question would be with the analytics,
Speaker 3: that's never going to happen again, not even close.
Speaker 1: Well, I think they're predicting now, at least in a
Speaker 1: medical sort of way, when that you might be inclined
Speaker 1: to have an injury, you know, and so if they
Speaker 1: start to think that you might have an injury, then
Speaker 1: they put you on the list a little early, the
Speaker 1: injury list a little early, and they're they're looking at
Speaker 1: the long term as a the short term.
Speaker 5: But I don't know if that's a good thing or
Speaker 5: a bad thing.
Speaker 1: There's the one thing that's hard to measure is what's
Speaker 1: inside your heart, your guts, and how you go out
Speaker 1: about playing a game, how you compete. That's not measurable
Speaker 1: right now. And I think that's what drove me is
Speaker 1: when you're an everyday player. The definition of an everyday
Speaker 1: player when I played was every day. I had the
Speaker 1: body type in which to do it. I healed really
Speaker 1: well and I could play through pain. And when you
Speaker 1: find out that you can play through being less than
Speaker 1: one hundred percent, because I would argue that even if
Speaker 1: you play one hundred and forty games, you're still playing
Speaker 1: at less than one hundred percent. Maybe the only time
Speaker 1: you're one hundred percent is the first day of spring
Speaker 1: training and then you end up moving towards the year.
Speaker 1: So that's the hard part where that's not measurable.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: And I like to see players that push through and
Speaker 1: force themselves to play every game to see too.
Speaker 3: You don't see that too much anymore, hey, David. And
Speaker 3: aside from the Orioles, you've got a day job here
Speaker 3: co founder, co chairman of the Carlisle Group. Perfect time
Speaker 3: to ask you this question. I know you bought the
Speaker 3: Orioles as an individual's part of a partnership right now,
Speaker 3: private equity. The NFL has allowed of it equity. That's
Speaker 3: mean as part ownership. What do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Well, Carlisle is one of the groups that's permitted, so
Speaker 4: I make it for it. Yes, I think that it
Speaker 4: was inevitable because the price of NFL teams are going
Speaker 4: up so much that it's very difficult to find somebody
Speaker 4: by himself or herself who can buy a team anymore longer.
Speaker 4: The last team that was sold, the Washington Commanders, went
Speaker 4: for six billion dollars. It's a large amount of amount of money.
Speaker 4: Very few people can buy that by themselves. You need
Speaker 4: to have consortium of people to do this, and private
Speaker 4: equity is a big pot of capital sitting there. But
Speaker 4: the deals are ones where you have to be ten percent,
Speaker 4: no involvement in the day to day management, and you
Speaker 4: have to hold for at least six years. So NFL's experimenting.
Speaker 4: We'll see how it goes.
Speaker 5: So Cal you have had minor league investments, but this
Speaker 5: is the first time that both of you have had
Speaker 5: major league investments. How did this come about? Like, how
Speaker 5: did the partnership come about? Has it going there?
Speaker 4: Well, the owner of the team for the last thirty
Speaker 4: years was the Angelo's family. I had talked to them
Speaker 4: over last summer about a possible sale and it came
Speaker 4: to be. But I wanted to have people in the
Speaker 4: consortium that were more connected to Baltimore and baseball than
Speaker 4: maybe I was. I haven't grown up in Baltimore, but
Speaker 4: I haven't lived there for a while. So I talked
Speaker 4: to a number of people in Baltimore and some of
Speaker 4: the people who are also connected with the Oriols, and
Speaker 4: obviously the first call I made was cal Ripken. They
Speaker 4: said he would like to invest and also help us
Speaker 4: in other ways what he's doing. So I think it's
Speaker 4: worked out quite well and win win for Baltimore and
Speaker 4: for for that.
Speaker 5: Was like no brainer for you, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely no brainer. I felt like I've been an
Speaker 1: oriole through and through my whole life. I mean, I
Speaker 1: grew up in and around the Baltimore area. My dad
Speaker 1: was in with the Orioles the first fourteen years of
Speaker 1: my life. He was a minor league manager. And then
Speaker 1: you have a dream to be a player, you get
Speaker 1: drafted by the team you want to get drafted by,
Speaker 1: you play your whole career with that team. So I
Speaker 1: know that I went off for a little while, and
Speaker 1: you know, you buy minor league teams, you learn about
Speaker 1: business in other ways. You put your head down, you
Speaker 1: don't pay much attention to what's happening at the Oriols. Though,
Speaker 1: when David called, it was an opportunity to get back in,
Speaker 1: to look at it from the inside looking out, And
Speaker 1: I'm really surprised that I'm way into it now. I
Speaker 1: used to think the whole world revolved around baseball, and
Speaker 1: then you get out and you realize it doesn't. But
Speaker 1: then now it seems like the world revolves around baseball again.
Speaker 4: Of course, And to put it in context for those
Speaker 4: who don't know the record, Lou Garrick played in one
Speaker 4: and thirty consecutive games. People thought that was the unbreakable record.
Speaker 4: Cal Ripkin did twy six hundred and thirty two games
Speaker 4: over seventeen years, not missing one day. And all of
Speaker 4: us who work day to day for living in non
Speaker 4: athletic things, can you imagine going to work seventeen days
Speaker 4: and or seventeen years I rope without missing Oh.
Speaker 2: Totally exactly, Cal.
Speaker 3: What do you think the Oils need to work on
Speaker 3: over the next couple of years? Here again, I'm looking
Speaker 3: at the record. Your record is great. What do you
Speaker 3: think they need to work on? Is it minor league?
Speaker 4: Is it?
Speaker 1: No? No, we have a minor league that's stocked with talent,
Speaker 1: and you can only I mean, if you develop three
Speaker 1: shortstops in the minor leagues, you can only play one
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: So many times the talent that you have in the
Speaker 1: minor leagues is used to trade to get to get
Speaker 1: the pieces that you need at the big league level.
Speaker 1: And the Ools are in good position for that. They
Speaker 1: have young players that are going to be superstars, that
Speaker 1: are already superstars, and maybe the biggest challenge in the
Speaker 1: future is how do you keep them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean no salary cap here, so
Speaker 2: tough to keep the star players.
Speaker 4: Right, Yes, Unlike football or basketball, there's no salary cap
Speaker 4: in professional baseball, so you can get contracts that are
Speaker 4: as high as seven hundred million dollars, and so it's
Speaker 4: hard for smaller cities to compete in that domain. Somewhat.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, have to see how that plays. I
Speaker 3: really appreciate you too, gentlemen. Stopping by David Rubenstein. He's
Speaker 3: a co founder and co chairman of the Carlisle Group.
Speaker 3: He's now the owner of the Baltimore Oils and Cal
Speaker 3: Ripken Junior D Cal Ripken Junior Baseball Hall of Famer,
Speaker 3: founder and partner of Ripken Baseball