Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: What gets me up in the morning?
Speaker 3: What do I love?
Speaker 2: And I love playing shadow entrepreneur, and I like solving
Speaker 2: problems with capital. And it just so happens, you know,
Speaker 2: luck in people's career. I happen to hit an inflection
Speaker 2: point with sports that I couldn't possibly have seen coming
Speaker 2: back in two thousand, two thousand and one. Right, you
Speaker 2: look back on the last twenty years and you're like,
Speaker 2: you know, Luck's Greg. You really hit an air pocket
Speaker 2: where you took off. Now the challenge is navigating that.
Speaker 4: This week on the show, Alex Jerry Cardinal, this is
Speaker 4: a guy who you and I both know. He's the
Speaker 4: founder of Redbird Capital. He's a former partner at Goldman Sachs.
Speaker 4: He's had a hand in some of the most important
Speaker 4: moments in sports history over the last last thirty years,
Speaker 4: including some teams you are quite.
Speaker 3: Familiar with, very much so the New York Yankees.
Speaker 5: And he was one of the founding partners for the
Speaker 5: great George Steinbrenner, who when he was in his early thirties,
Speaker 5: trusted him with this incredible project to leave MSG and
Speaker 5: create his own network with the Goldman Sachs and the
Speaker 5: New York Yankee brand that today exists as the most
Speaker 5: successful regional sports network of all time.
Speaker 4: This is one of those things that I think we
Speaker 4: take for granted these days. It's like, yeah, you want
Speaker 4: to watch the Yankees, you turn on the S Network.
Speaker 4: This was a radical, controversial to say the least idea
Speaker 4: back in the day. People were mad about this, and
Speaker 4: yet George Steinbrenner, as was often the case, saw something
Speaker 4: that other people didn't. I think what's so interesting about
Speaker 4: Jerry Cardinel too, is you take the S Network, cool, amazing,
Speaker 4: Then you start Redbird Capital. That's pretty great. But then
Speaker 4: you start to list out the things that Redbird has
Speaker 4: been involved in the creation of the next look and
Speaker 4: maybe most successful version ever of the XFL with Dwayne
Speaker 4: Johnson aka The Rock and Danny Garcia. That's a massive
Speaker 4: bet and a really big investment. And then he goes
Speaker 4: into the business you're in now, which is owning a
Speaker 4: sports team. And he doesn't just own any sports team.
Speaker 4: He doesn't go by just anything. He goes for ac
Speaker 4: Milan arguably one of the top ten franchises on the planet,
Speaker 4: and one of the things that totally caught me off
Speaker 4: guard candidly going into the city. You had given me
Speaker 4: just a little bit of a teaser about this. He
Speaker 4: had a hand in a couple of the most important
Speaker 4: moments in your life. One getting to the New York
Speaker 4: Yankees and maybe even more importantly, winning a world series.
Speaker 5: That's what makes Jerry so special. I mean to think
Speaker 5: that he had a big hand in bringing me here
Speaker 5: in zero four from the Rangers when George Steinbrenner came calling,
Speaker 5: and then more importantly keeping me as a Yankee when
Speaker 5: I opted out. And then it was a famous lunch
Speaker 5: with Randy Levigne, myself and Jerry that led to the
Speaker 5: two thousand and nine title on this episode of The Deal,
Speaker 5: Jerry Cardinal.
Speaker 4: Let's get started with this jam. So introduce yourself for us.
Speaker 4: Tell us who you are, what you do.
Speaker 2: Jerry Cardinal, Founder and managing partner of Redbird Capital.
Speaker 3: And what does Redbird do look.
Speaker 2: Redbird is an investment platform that enables me to invest
Speaker 2: the way I invested most successfully at my twenty year
Speaker 2: career at Goldman Sachs. So it's meant to be an
Speaker 2: investment business that solves problems with capital. I'm really a
Speaker 2: big believer in legitimacy, and I think you know, today
Speaker 2: everybody's got capital, everybody's running around. There's just too few
Speaker 2: deals for the amount of capital chasing it. And you know,
Speaker 2: my style has always been to start not with the deal,
Speaker 2: but start with the problem, and if you can solve
Speaker 2: the problem inevitably. Capital is a great way to solve
Speaker 2: a lot of problems, not all of them, but if
Speaker 2: you can start with that, you have a great foundation
Speaker 2: for legitimacy for what you're doing. And that's what Redbird's
Speaker 2: meant to be.
Speaker 4: All right, So we are going to start with the deal,
Speaker 4: because it's a show called the Deal.
Speaker 3: I think we should start with Yes, you weren't there.
Speaker 3: That's a big one, all right.
Speaker 4: It's revolutionary. Take us back to the creation of the
Speaker 4: Yes Network. How did it get started?
Speaker 2: Look, it was a hugely radical concept and we didn't
Speaker 2: even know it was radical at the time. I mean,
Speaker 2: this was truly monetizing intellectual property at a time in
Speaker 2: the late nineties early two thousands when mostly investing in
Speaker 2: media and entertainment was around distribution. It was cable systems,
Speaker 2: it was outdoor billboards, radio stations, TV stations. No one
Speaker 2: really had ever invested in intellectual property, and today that
Speaker 2: would be just a no brainer and everyone.
Speaker 3: Would get it.
Speaker 2: George Steinbrenner came calling, and he had just broken away
Speaker 2: from Cablevision and MSG, and the story he told was fascinating,
Speaker 2: And what he basically said was, I don't understand how
Speaker 2: I can be putting all the risk capital in to
Speaker 2: put these players on the field year in and year
Speaker 2: out to win a championship, and I just get paid
Speaker 2: a fee for the monetization of those games, and my
Speaker 2: counterparty gets the appreciation in a stock price. That doesn't
Speaker 2: seem fair to me. When he put it that way,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, George was such a visionary. The
Speaker 2: light bulbs went off in our head and we were like, wow,
Speaker 2: I never really thought about it that way. I think
Speaker 2: this was like February of two thousand and one, and
Speaker 2: we started sort of looking at, well, could we create
Speaker 2: our own network? And so, make a long story short,
Speaker 2: I was a thirty three year old vice president at
Speaker 2: the time, and I started building the model. I knew
Speaker 2: nothing about sports. I was from Philadelphia, so I only
Speaker 2: kN about the Phillies. I don't think i'd ever seen
Speaker 2: a Yankee game, And you know, by September, coming out
Speaker 2: of Labor Day, we basically had the outlines of what
Speaker 2: would become the S Network, and we signed that deal
Speaker 2: and handshook on that September tenth, two thousand and one.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: And then I'll never forget. You know. The next day
Speaker 2: I was driving down the FDR to come into the
Speaker 2: office to you know, start the next phases of this,
Speaker 2: and you know, saw that the plane hit the tower.
Speaker 2: And by the end of the week, you know, Goldman
Speaker 2: Sachs did what you would expect Goldman Sachs to do.
Speaker 2: At the end of the week of nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: Goldman Sachs came in and backstopped what then was the
Speaker 2: largest private equity check ever written, three hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: five million dollars. And all we had was a piece
Speaker 2: of paper that said, you now own forty percent of
Speaker 2: the electual property of the New York Yankees and the
Speaker 2: New Jersey Nets, and you need to be on the
Speaker 2: are April first, when you talk about, you know, a
Speaker 2: crucible of having to really forge your way, and I say, George,
Speaker 2: you know, George is the kind of person if you're
Speaker 2: there for him in a moment like that, he will
Speaker 2: he will reciprocate and be loyal to you forever. And
Speaker 2: that really was sort of the career moment for me.
Speaker 2: And I haven't looked back, and you've really had that
Speaker 2: partnership with the Yankee organization, the Steinbergner family has been
Speaker 2: instrumental and everything I do.
Speaker 5: If you take a step back, going back to MSG,
Speaker 5: how far away was MSG from the Yankees and finally said,
Speaker 5: George said enough, Jerry, let's go do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good question. You know, it wasn't so much a
Speaker 2: bid ask. The bid ask was not numeric. The bid
Speaker 2: ask was philosophical. George, he didn't articulate it in terms
Speaker 2: of equity. George wanted equity. George was a principal. You know,
Speaker 2: he's a maverick, he's an entrepreneur, and so that was
Speaker 2: the fundamental difference. Now, the world's changed dramatically, but you know,
Speaker 2: that model of being a rights holder yourself and monetizing
Speaker 2: those rights and creating these terminal value businesses. Literally, I
Speaker 2: say to everybody that you know, everything I've done, you know,
Speaker 2: over the last thirty years, is really based on that moment.
Speaker 2: That model hasn't changed. That model where we partner with
Speaker 2: the rights holder in this case the Yankees, they put
Speaker 2: in their intellectual property and we come in with scalable
Speaker 2: capital and a company building mentality, which is important, integrating
Speaker 2: a lot of operating skills in addition to your typical
Speaker 2: private equity skills. You know, that sort of ven diagramming
Speaker 2: has never let me down. And it's sports, sports, media
Speaker 2: and media and entertainment. Fans are evolving in the way
Speaker 2: they want to consume this content. And you know, my
Speaker 2: view in investing is no one has a crystal ball,
Speaker 2: but if you start with great intellectual property, you will
Speaker 2: be able to navigate the cyclicality and the volatility in
Speaker 2: the way technology is disintermediating the way these things are monetized.
Speaker 4: So, speaking of Goldman, like if we could do a
Speaker 4: beat on Goldman, because it is the Yankees of investment, banking,
Speaker 4: Wall Street, it's all of those things. I mean, if
Speaker 4: George Steinbrenner is not for the faint of heart, nor
Speaker 4: is Goldman Sachs at that point which you alluded to,
Speaker 4: this idea of like you're struggling for a seat at
Speaker 4: the table, take us back to Goldman in the nineties.
Speaker 4: What was it like back then trying to sort of
Speaker 4: find your way it's private. It's still private at that point,
Speaker 4: right in the nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went public in ninety nine. It was interesting,
Speaker 2: you know, I joined Goldman Sachs out of Oxford and
Speaker 2: then I did a stint for a year at a
Speaker 2: think tank in Tokyo. So when I joined, you know,
Speaker 2: I wasn't one of these Wharton kids, you know, who
Speaker 2: knew that I wanted to go to Wall Street from
Speaker 2: day one, you know, And I joined, and I did
Speaker 2: a year in New York and then shipped out to Asia.
Speaker 2: And that's probably the best thing that happened to me,
Speaker 2: because I was able to find my setting working with
Speaker 2: these you know, just iconic families and entrepreneurs in Asia
Speaker 2: that were building their countries, and that you know, as
Speaker 2: a twenty six, twenty seven year old kid, you know,
Speaker 2: you're not going to get away from the analytics. You're
Speaker 2: not going to get away from actually doing the work,
Speaker 2: which was very important. But to also add that exposure
Speaker 2: was huge and it really opened my eyes to Goldman
Speaker 2: Sachs there. It really was a privilege to work there.
Speaker 2: And as I said, you know, we went from when
Speaker 2: I joined, a very client relationship based culture to a
Speaker 2: counterparty culture and you know, the firm always has to
Speaker 2: reinvent itself every year in multi years. In the terms
Speaker 2: of the way Wall Street's evolving, I was watching an
Speaker 2: interview with Tom Brady and Belichick, and you know these
Speaker 2: guys that mentality is Brady never looked at having won
Speaker 2: six Super Bowls when he went for the seventh, right,
Speaker 2: he was like, well, that's in the past. I'm only
Speaker 2: focused on And that's the way Gold was. It's that
Speaker 2: same mentality. I mean today, you know, the virtue is scale.
Speaker 2: You know, back then the virtue wasn't scale. If anything,
Speaker 2: the virtue was a little bit less is more, And
Speaker 2: that's you know, the world's changed and so that and
Speaker 2: and you can't just not evolve, but that makes it
Speaker 2: more challenging.
Speaker 5: I love that philosophy, not wide and shallow, but narrow
Speaker 5: and deep. And sometimes you mentioned ninety nine. You go public,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, the scoreboard changes and you got
Speaker 5: to just throw more shots. Not quality shots, but is
Speaker 5: more shots. And obviously that's what I love what you
Speaker 5: do in Redbird. You know, when I think about Redbird Capital,
Speaker 5: and you've been so far ahead of the curve, you
Speaker 5: might be maybe you and Michael Rubin, maybe the only
Speaker 5: two people on Earth right that can do a partnership
Speaker 5: with the Yankees and the Red Sox. And then you
Speaker 5: corral one of the greatest two owners of all time
Speaker 5: in Jerry Jones with Legends and George Steinberner. How and why.
Speaker 2: I appreciate what you said. You know, Jerry is iconic
Speaker 2: as they get. And I was lucky. I didn't know
Speaker 2: it at the time, but I was lucky to spend
Speaker 2: five days on a boat with him. This was two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven. I use as an opportunity to tell him,
Speaker 2: you know what one of my you know, stretch for
Speaker 2: the stars moment would be. And I said to him,
Speaker 2: you know, if I could do it, I said, I
Speaker 2: would love to merge the Yankees, the Cowboys and the Lakers.
Speaker 2: And I said, you know, if you did that, I said,
Speaker 2: I think you'll have Disney Wow. And I said, I
Speaker 2: would leave Goldman to go run that. And you know,
Speaker 2: if you know Jerry, which you do, I mean, he
Speaker 2: just loved that. I mean, Jerry's just one of those
Speaker 2: guys that wants to you know, Jerry looks at things
Speaker 2: with three D glasses.
Speaker 5: Right at that time, how old are you?
Speaker 2: I'm thirty thirty four, thirty five, thirty five, thirty six.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So basically we started going at it, you know, for
Speaker 2: lunch and breakfast and cocktails, and you know, with this
Speaker 2: five day boat trip, and we came up for all
Speaker 2: the reasons why it couldn't be done, you know, with
Speaker 2: all the different league rules and everything else. But at
Speaker 2: the end of it, I said to him, look, Jerry,
Speaker 2: this has been unbelievable, incredibly inspirational. I said, I can't
Speaker 2: leave this boat unless you and I have an agreement
Speaker 2: that we've got something to do together. And one of
Speaker 2: the things we had come up with was that both
Speaker 2: the Yankees and the Cowboys were building these state of
Speaker 2: the arts stadiums that had never been built before at
Speaker 2: the same time, right, and this was going in This
Speaker 2: was two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine. Economy apart,
Speaker 2: economy is falling apart. And I said, well, if we
Speaker 2: can't merge the Yankees and the Cowboys, why don't we
Speaker 2: merge some of the economic streams between the Yankees and
Speaker 2: the Cowboys. And what I said to him was that, look,
Speaker 2: you know, he was fascinated by the Yes model, because
Speaker 2: I think he was asked by the NFL to look
Speaker 2: at what became the NFL Network and he was one
Speaker 2: of the guys taking the lead on that, and so
Speaker 2: he was asking me like, how did you do yes,
Speaker 2: And he was trying to learn from that. I said, well,
Speaker 2: let's just keep it simple. I said, if Yes was
Speaker 2: about capturing the intellectual property of the Yankees and finding
Speaker 2: a way to put a multiple on that. And the
Speaker 2: Yankees and the Cowboys are both building these iconic stadiums
Speaker 2: at the same time, why don't we find a way
Speaker 2: to capture the intellectual property quote unquote of the two
Speaker 2: stadiums and find a pathway to put a multiple on that.
Speaker 2: And that became Legends Hospitality. So we basically created the
Speaker 2: economic engine of those two stadiums. And you know, at
Speaker 2: the time, you know, you a big piece of building
Speaker 2: stadiums was selling forward these seat licenses basically for premium
Speaker 2: seats and suites.
Speaker 3: Today, it's a.
Speaker 2: Little more challenging to do that because of technology, you know,
Speaker 2: as StubHub and other ticketing platforms you know, have enabled
Speaker 2: a la carte just like in streaming and cable, same
Speaker 2: thing in the stadium. But back then that was an
Speaker 2: incredibly important economic you know touch point for building these stadiums,
Speaker 2: and then of course you could wrap around at merchandising
Speaker 2: and hospitality and everything else that we do.
Speaker 5: Sarry How much capital do you need and what's Legends
Speaker 5: approximately worth today?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, great question on a lot of the
Speaker 2: companies that we create. That sounds just that statement right there,
Speaker 2: that sounds like venture capital. But what's so interesting is
Speaker 2: that because I'm rooting it in intellectual property and we're
Speaker 2: solving a need for something. In the case of the Yankees,
Speaker 2: brought casting where they can own equity in the broadcast.
Speaker 2: In the case of Legends, the same thing. For the stadiums.
Speaker 2: We're cash flow positive day one. Yes, was different because
Speaker 2: we bought forty percent of the electual property. Right, Legends
Speaker 2: was different. Legends, you didn't really need a ton of
Speaker 2: capital because day one we were cash flow positive because
Speaker 2: you were Now there's a bit of a J curve
Speaker 2: to get to those stadiums coming online. While you may
Speaker 2: have a bit of a J curve, it's very manageable risk,
Speaker 2: it's really not venture because you're rooted intellectual property, so
Speaker 2: you have a pathway to non binary risk terminal value.
Speaker 2: And then I looked to use these as platforms and
Speaker 2: then put more money behind it and build it out
Speaker 2: from there. So today Legends is a two to three
Speaker 2: billion dollar company. Wow, you know. Yes, we started in
Speaker 2: oh one. By two thousand and eight we had taken
Speaker 2: three and a half times our money out just by
Speaker 2: leveraging the cash flow. And then we sold it to
Speaker 2: Murdoch in thirteen for roughly four billion dollars.
Speaker 5: And then you bought it back, and then I bought
Speaker 5: it back.
Speaker 2: As Redbird in twenty nineteen with the Yankees Amazon, with
Speaker 2: a view that when we started, Yes, it was a
Speaker 2: growth equity, very play, and when we bought it back,
Speaker 2: it was in transition, and we knew that we were
Speaker 2: going to have to transition it from linear cable to
Speaker 2: direct a consumer. But we knew going into what everyone's
Speaker 2: dealing with today, and with the RSN model being challenged,
Speaker 2: we knew what we had in that intellectual property. It's
Speaker 2: the same story.
Speaker 4: Let me ask you a very specific question about Yes,
Speaker 4: which is this is literally born on September tenth, going
Speaker 4: into September eleventh. So yes, there's all of those assumptions
Speaker 4: are absolutely correct, except for a massive black swan event
Speaker 4: that at the moment. I think we can all agree
Speaker 4: we didn't know what was going to happen in the world.
Speaker 4: How worried were you in that moment of especially having
Speaker 4: convinced your partners at Goldman Sachs to backstop this thing.
Speaker 4: Was there a moment where you thought, well, this has
Speaker 4: been fun, but this isn't going to work now.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you about that's interesting. You know, Dick Parsons
Speaker 2: was the first to sign up with us. He was
Speaker 2: the CEO of Time Warner at the time, and he said, look,
Speaker 2: you know, I hate the concept of Yes, he said,
Speaker 2: but it's the right thing to do for New York City.
Speaker 2: Wow and so, and that's the reason he jumped in.
Speaker 2: And it was hugely important that he did that. I've
Speaker 2: got to give credit to Leo Hendriy to Leo, you know.
Speaker 2: Leo uh was our CEO and had a great relationship
Speaker 2: with all the cable guys in Dick and then I
Speaker 2: didn't have that oops moment that you talk about, because
Speaker 2: once Dick came in, then we everyone.
Speaker 3: Started to follow. How soon did that happen?
Speaker 2: That was pretty quick by Thanksgiving. But then we had
Speaker 2: a problem with cablevision. We couldn't get to an agreement
Speaker 2: with Cable Vision in our first year, and when you know,
Speaker 2: Giuliani stepped in to try to help his mayor. Then
Speaker 2: he handed the reins to Bloomberg, and Mike stepped in
Speaker 2: to try to help us. Spitzer was Attorney general time.
Speaker 2: He jumped in to try to help us, really just
Speaker 2: try to bridge the gap. Could not get it bridged.
Speaker 2: And you know, Cablevision represented three eighths of our subscriber base. Wow,
Speaker 2: even with them not coming on board the first year,
Speaker 2: going back to my earlier point, we were still cash flow,
Speaker 2: meaningfully cash flow positive, but it wasn't anywhere that close
Speaker 2: to what I had underwritten in my model. And we
Speaker 2: won a very important case after a year. And that's
Speaker 2: when I you know, when when you came on board
Speaker 2: and you were on the cover of the New York Post,
Speaker 2: and I put it on every I put on all
Speaker 2: the judges and everybody on all the lawyers chairs to
Speaker 2: make the point about how important this intellectual property was.
Speaker 2: And the important case was that we got yes to
Speaker 2: stay on basic, the basic tier in cable and one
Speaker 2: of our one of our non legalistic arguments was that
Speaker 2: a low income subscriber in the Bronx living next to
Speaker 2: Yankee Stadium should be able to see all their Yankee
Speaker 2: games without having to necessarily buy a ticket. That may
Speaker 2: be too much for them, but they should be able
Speaker 2: to get it from There is a there is a
Speaker 2: public private partnership between the cable industry and the community,
Speaker 2: and Yankee games in New York City deserve the people
Speaker 2: deserve that. And we won, and we won the right
Speaker 2: to stay on Basic or expanded Basic. This was a
Speaker 2: national thing because you know, McCain and other in Congress
Speaker 2: were starting to push back on ESPN, and even back then,
Speaker 2: this is twenty something years ago, people were talking about
Speaker 2: tiering sports all the cart and I also, I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: You know, my model that I built had this at
Speaker 2: a buck seventy five per subscriber per month, and ultimately
Speaker 2: through arbitration, we had a buck sixty seven. Wow. So
Speaker 2: we were pretty much right there on terms. And then
Speaker 2: you know, a moment that kicked in the next year.
Speaker 2: You know, this thing was off to the races.
Speaker 5: And Jason full disclosure. I've never told this to anyone,
Speaker 5: but back then, Jerry had to talk about full alignment.
Speaker 5: He has the Yankees, he has Goldman Sachs. He brings
Speaker 5: in the best people to run it. But he allowed
Speaker 5: me to invest a few bucks in the yesdal So
Speaker 5: I put a few million dollars. I did extraordinary well,
Speaker 5: and to this day I'm grateful. But he's one of
Speaker 5: the principles that passes the hat around and it's always
Speaker 5: about we, not I.
Speaker 4: So clearly, you guys start a business relationship at some point,
Speaker 4: and a friendship and a friend chip. And I mean
Speaker 4: my sense from talking to you, Alex and preparing for
Speaker 4: this is that going to him, you, Alex, start going
Speaker 4: to Jerry for all sorts of advice.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, well, I'll give you one of the stories.
Speaker 5: And I'll never forget this because in eight we did
Speaker 5: not make the postseason, and that was incredibly embarrassed. Jeter
Speaker 5: was embarrassed, Mariana, we were all very upset. And at
Speaker 5: that point I started talking to Jerry. I said, Jerry,
Speaker 5: we got to do something. This is not the way
Speaker 5: we closed down the greatest stadium of all time to
Speaker 5: open a new one. And again, this is eighth nine.
Speaker 5: So the economy is not doing well. There's tremendous amount
Speaker 5: of internal pressure on how Steinbrenner or General partner. He says, okay,
Speaker 5: so how do we fix it? And I start going
Speaker 5: back and forth. He says, I'm going to set up
Speaker 5: a lunch with Randy Levine, the Yankee President and really
Speaker 5: one of the unsung heroes in the Yankee universe. Doesn't
Speaker 5: like the spotlight. But Randy is a great leader of
Speaker 5: people and knows how to run a great business. So
Speaker 5: we set up this lunch at the Core Club in Midtown,
Speaker 5: and I remember it was about a ninety min at lunch.
Speaker 5: I remember, I think Jerry came from his office in
Speaker 5: Goldman Sachs. Randy comes from the Bronx and come from
Speaker 5: my apartment and we meet there and I order a
Speaker 5: chicken Caesar Shalad shrimp cocktail on a die Coke. And
Speaker 5: the reason I remember that is because it went untouched
Speaker 5: for And Randy is a very intimidating person and a
Speaker 5: great guy. And I remember I'm sitting here across from
Speaker 5: Randy and Jerry's to my left. I don't know how
Speaker 5: honest I can be. I don't know if I can
Speaker 5: be as honest with Randy as I am with Jerry.
Speaker 5: And I'm kind of he's your boss, yeah, and you
Speaker 5: know he's a lot like George Steinbroner, right. And I
Speaker 5: start kind of mumbling and fumbling my words, and Jerry's like,
Speaker 5: come on, come on, you can be honest, you can
Speaker 5: take it. We created an architect in a napkin, Cesar Sabathia,
Speaker 5: Martik Schera, and the one that I really pushed for
Speaker 5: was aj Burnett and Randy to his credits, literally taking
Speaker 5: notes notes, Long story short, Randy goes to work how Steinberner,
Speaker 5: to his credit, spends almost of a billion dollars in acquisitions.
Speaker 5: So now we cut to uh spring training. I have
Speaker 5: to go get hip surgery. We're not drawing one in April.
Speaker 5: We're off to a poor start. I'm in Vail, Colorado
Speaker 5: getting rehabbed. Mark tic Share is getting booed. Sabbathi is
Speaker 5: not off to a great start. I'm coming back and
Speaker 5: I called Jerry. I said, Jerry, I feel bad. Is
Speaker 5: there any anything I can do for the organization? Should
Speaker 5: I give money back? Should I defer money? Jerry says, stop,
Speaker 5: we don't need your money back. We need you to
Speaker 5: lead us to a world championship. We need you to
Speaker 5: be a clean up hitter and be the best baseball
Speaker 5: player you can. I don't know if you remember that
Speaker 5: with that, And sure enough about six months later, we're
Speaker 5: all on the field celebrating a world championship.
Speaker 4: All right, hold on, I remember we've got to unpack this.
Speaker 4: We got to unpack this big times for true. So
Speaker 4: how are you at that table, like, like, what's your
Speaker 4: role at that point that you can be this connective
Speaker 4: tissue between this guy and the Steinberg like and Randy Levy?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: How does that happen? Look if you remember that story.
Speaker 2: Like my verbatim and it's one hundred percent accurate, you know,
Speaker 2: it's just one of those things I think when you
Speaker 2: came out of nine to eleven. Our relationship with Steinbrenners
Speaker 2: and Randy and the anchorganization was formed out of nine
Speaker 2: to eleven. And so what happened is, you know, I
Speaker 2: was always and I was always a quirky guy at Goldman,
Speaker 2: and so I didn't really fit into these roles that
Speaker 2: they want you to fit in. And so I didn't
Speaker 2: look at it as you know, my banker in this
Speaker 2: case and I an investor in this case. I just
Speaker 2: I just was their guy, and I knew one thing
Speaker 2: in the same way. It was a privilege to work
Speaker 2: at Goldman Sachs. I didn't know I was going to
Speaker 2: have this career in sports the way it's become, but
Speaker 2: I certainly knew what a privilege it was to be
Speaker 2: apprenticing at that table, because you know what's happened over
Speaker 2: the last you know, twenty five years is you know,
Speaker 2: I've seen everything you know sports as very much as
Speaker 2: you know. It's a closed ecosystem. And really I owe
Speaker 2: so much of my career to the Steinbrenners into Randy,
Speaker 2: because they are incredibly loyal and they and they see
Speaker 2: everything they think like mavericks, and they demand loyalty and
Speaker 2: they demand world class and I love those ingredients. I
Speaker 2: can live with that. And the one thing I know
Speaker 2: is and never let them down. So when they ask
Speaker 2: for something, I don't even think about, you know, am
Speaker 2: I gonna make money on this? Everything else? I just
Speaker 2: do it because it's a privilege to be asked and
Speaker 2: then inevitably, guess what happens because we're all like minded
Speaker 2: the same way, it leads to something and it's gone
Speaker 2: on to this day. And the Yankees came in with
Speaker 2: me when we bought a CI Milan. I'm all about
Speaker 2: arbitraging you know things, and so all arbitrage at dislocation
Speaker 2: in an ecosystem, all arbitrage in competence and inefficiency. You know,
Speaker 2: sports is interesting because you've had this massive escalation in
Speaker 2: these valuations and frankly, none of the people and none
Speaker 2: of the infrastructures kept pace. And so what I do
Speaker 2: at Redbirds, I go in, I close that gap, and
Speaker 2: in the process of closing that gap, I create these
Speaker 2: terminal value businesses. That's a win for the rights holder,
Speaker 2: and it's a win for us as the capital. Only recently,
Speaker 2: you know, I decided to vertically integrate and become the
Speaker 2: rights holder ourself, right, right, And so that's an evolution.
Speaker 3: All right. We got to talk about Steinbrenner.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, so you said your thirty three
Speaker 4: year old guy come from the philm but you know
Speaker 4: who George Steinbrenner is. I mean, do you know enough
Speaker 4: that when that call comes in, you're like, holy cow,
Speaker 4: it's George Stein, Like what's your mindset when he comes
Speaker 4: to you?
Speaker 3: The first time, it.
Speaker 2: Was the first time I had ever interacted with a
Speaker 2: celebrity or someone of that stature. And the good thing
Speaker 2: is I was a kid, So I didn't know better, right,
Speaker 2: And so I'll never forget walking into his boardroom at
Speaker 2: the Regency Hotel in New York and there he was
Speaker 2: at the end of the table with the white turtleneck
Speaker 2: and the rings, and that was. That was a moment
Speaker 2: where I took a deep breath and I say, oh wow.
Speaker 2: I said, Okay, George is very sort of disarming. And
Speaker 2: he said to me, your cardinal. I said, you're a
Speaker 2: lot younger than I thought you'd and so, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a little bit of oh geez, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: under the gun here. And the great thing, George and
Speaker 2: I had a wonderful relationship. I think it is because
Speaker 2: I grew up with a very tough, old school Italian father,
Speaker 2: and you know, my dad basically put me on the
Speaker 2: witness stand every night at dinner, just grilled.
Speaker 5: Grilled me.
Speaker 2: And so I was used to a George personality. I
Speaker 2: was used to someone really giving me a run for
Speaker 2: my money, being in my face, and I didn't back down.
Speaker 2: I knew that you had to be intelligent in the
Speaker 2: way you responded. You couldn't shoot from the hip, and
Speaker 2: it wasn't always easy. But you know, he was very tough,
Speaker 2: but you know you'd stand your ground, and he respected
Speaker 2: you if you stood your ground.
Speaker 5: Jerry, I have my own experiences with George and I
Speaker 5: love the man. He was unbelievable. You mentioned a visionary,
Speaker 5: a numbers guy, courageous. How would you describe him?
Speaker 2: You know he has old school values and I can
Speaker 2: say that today twenty years later, when you know a
Speaker 2: lot of those old school values, you know you can't
Speaker 2: find him anymore. Right, George wanted to make money, George
Speaker 2: wanted to win. George was all about the bottom line.
Speaker 2: But also it was great about George. It was how
Speaker 2: he did it that was important to him. And George,
Speaker 2: you know, was as hard driving as anybody, but he
Speaker 2: also had integrity in a way that I miss.
Speaker 5: Here's my George story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I died to hear this, Okay, go.
Speaker 5: So brought me in two thousand and four and it
Speaker 5: was a thrill of my life to put on pinstripes.
Speaker 5: And Brian Cashman asked me when I received my MVP award,
Speaker 5: as I almost got a deal done with the Red
Speaker 5: Sox that fell apart. I was upset because I thought
Speaker 5: the deal would be a perfect deal for me for
Speaker 5: baseball Jeter against a eight Rod Yankees Red Sox. Long
Speaker 5: story short. I sit next to Brian Cashman. He says, well,
Speaker 5: if you're willing to move to third base, maybe there's
Speaker 5: a move for us. Well, I'm not a drinker. I
Speaker 5: had a couple of cocktails and by the third cocktail,
Speaker 5: I go, are you serious about that? So that's circulated
Speaker 5: with Raindey Levine and the Boss. A couple of weeks later,
Speaker 5: I become a Yankee. I get off to a little
Speaker 5: bit of a slow start. Like most Yankees, is a
Speaker 5: lot going in. You have to adjust fan base, media,
Speaker 5: all of that, and I get off to a struggling start,
Speaker 5: and I'll never forget. Is around May fifth and I
Speaker 5: have a letter and it says Alex from GMS. GMS
Speaker 5: is George Steinberner. Literally my heart stopped. I started sweating.
Speaker 5: I go, oh man, this is not going to be good.
Speaker 5: I'm off to a bad start. And he writes me
Speaker 5: the nicest letter. He goes, hey, I brought you here
Speaker 5: just like I brought Redggie Jackson. Trust your talent. I
Speaker 5: believe in you. I'm counting on you. Was how he
Speaker 5: would it was. End every letter, I am counting on you.
Speaker 5: All the best GMS. I sat down on my chair
Speaker 5: and I said, I went out that night, two home
Speaker 5: runs the next night, four RBIs the next night, and
Speaker 5: the rest is history, and I'm off to the races.
Speaker 5: And to Jerry's point, he's a handshake guy, he's a
Speaker 5: code guy. And him believing in you, believing in Jerry's
Speaker 5: a thirty three year old believing in Alex Me as
Speaker 5: a twenty eight year old, just meant the world to me.
Speaker 5: And the rest is history.
Speaker 2: You know, that's such a great story. And that day
Speaker 2: I walked into that boardroom and saw him for the
Speaker 2: first time. After he he you know, he digged me
Speaker 2: a little bit about my age. He said to me,
Speaker 2: do you know why I called you in Goldman Sechs.
Speaker 2: I said no, And he said, you know, when I
Speaker 2: was a kid and I came to New York for
Speaker 2: the first time, there were very few people who would
Speaker 2: give me the time of day. And he said, Gus Levy,
Speaker 2: who was this iconic CEO of Goldman Sacks. He said,
Speaker 2: he was one of the few people who gave me
Speaker 2: the time of day. And he brought me in and
Speaker 2: he introduced me to people, and he really helped me
Speaker 2: you know, get my feet under me in New York
Speaker 2: City and he said, I've always been loyal to Goldman.
Speaker 2: As a result, today he's a very loyal guy. And
Speaker 2: then it was like this moment out of a few
Speaker 2: good men. Do you remember that scene when Tom Cruise
Speaker 2: meets Jack Nicholson and Nicholson realizes that Tom Cruise's father
Speaker 2: was this very famous you know judge, And he said,
Speaker 2: you know, your dad is a Lionel Caffey, your dad
Speaker 2: is a legend.
Speaker 3: How is your dad?
Speaker 2: And Tom Cruse looks at he goes, well, he died
Speaker 2: twenty five years ago, sir. So like George said to me,
Speaker 2: how is Gus? And I said, well, actually he died
Speaker 2: twenty five.
Speaker 3: Year Others.
Speaker 4: Coming up, We talk about Jerry's transition from working with
Speaker 4: an owner to becoming an owner himself, the Redbird Capital's
Speaker 4: one point to billion dollar purchase of ac Milan, plus
Speaker 4: restarting the XFL now the UFL with Dwayne the Rock Johnson.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about a really important transition for you, which
Speaker 4: is you leave Goldman, you go to Redbird, and you know,
Speaker 4: before too long you consummate what is you know, arguably
Speaker 4: the most important modern deal that you've done, which is
Speaker 4: a seam A lot really want to want to get
Speaker 4: into that. But let's talk about that decision to leave Goldman.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, you know it was that was the toughest,
Speaker 2: toughest thing I've ever experienced and the best thing. But
Speaker 2: the irony is it was all self imposed. I just
Speaker 2: I had an entrepreneurial itch that I needed to scratch,
Speaker 2: and it was just, you know, the kind of stuff
Speaker 2: that we do at Redbird. More and more the way
Speaker 2: institutionalized financial on Wall Street has evolved, Well, you're just
Speaker 2: not really getting compensated for that amount of activity and
Speaker 2: that amount of rolling up your sleeves and really grinding
Speaker 2: it out and everything else. And I say compensated not
Speaker 2: just in terms of money, but just in terms of
Speaker 2: the overall effort. And so I guess I had a
Speaker 2: very philosophical moment where I said, you know what gets
Speaker 2: me up in the morning?
Speaker 3: What do I love?
Speaker 2: And I love playing shadow entrepreneur and I like solving
Speaker 2: problems with capital And it just so happens, you know,
Speaker 2: luck in people's career. I happen to hit an inflection
Speaker 2: point with sports that I couldn't possibly have seen coming
Speaker 2: back in two thousand, two thousand and one. Right, you
Speaker 2: look back on that the last twenty years and you're like,
Speaker 2: you know, look's great. You really hit an air pocket
Speaker 2: that you know you could where you took off. Now
Speaker 2: the challenge is navigating that because now everybody's discovered sports.
Speaker 2: Sports is now an asset class. That scares me When
Speaker 2: I start to hear about things like sports being an
Speaker 2: asset class, my initial reaction is to run any other way.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, but I say, look, you can't
Speaker 2: make money if you don't put money to.
Speaker 4: Work, and so how does that manifest? Nacy Milan? I
Speaker 4: mean we could debate this since yes, like kind of
Speaker 4: the biggest swing you've taken. I mean, like you are
Speaker 4: not an advisor, You're an owner, Like you're a full
Speaker 4: on owner, you are a control owner of I think
Speaker 4: it's fair to say one of the most storied athletic
Speaker 4: clubs in the world, like name brand for sure.
Speaker 3: How does that.
Speaker 4: Deal come about? You've talked about doing all the work,
Speaker 4: you know, looking at hundreds of clubs. How does this
Speaker 4: one come to fruition?
Speaker 2: Look, you know, the other theme in the way we
Speaker 2: invest is there is absolutely a virtue and continuity right,
Speaker 2: And so if you looked at our whiteboard, it's just
Speaker 2: a series of ven diagram rings. And you know, and
Speaker 2: I've said this before, you know, I wouldn't have had
Speaker 2: on Location without Legends, and I wouldn't have had Legends
Speaker 2: without Yes, and I wouldn't have had one team without
Speaker 2: on Location, and I wouldn't have ever passed without you know,
Speaker 2: the NFL deals that I've done five years ago connected
Speaker 2: with Billy Bean, and I really got to give him
Speaker 2: a lot of credit, you know. He you know, obviously
Speaker 2: everyone knew him from Moneyball, but he encouraged us to
Speaker 2: start to take a look at European football. And I said,
Speaker 2: you know, why would I look at European football. Any
Speaker 2: ecosystem that you have sovereign governments and you have Russian
Speaker 2: oligarchs cannot be an ecosystem that I should even contemplate.
Speaker 2: And he said, you know, you're missing the point. He said,
Speaker 2: you know, the transfer market in relegation, which are the
Speaker 2: fundamental pillars of economics in European football, is he had
Speaker 2: his tailor made for Moneyball. He is, because you build
Speaker 2: and buy low and you sell high. So you know,
Speaker 2: we did a tutorial in European football met with you know,
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty two hundred teams on every country
Speaker 2: on the continent and in England, and we made our first.
Speaker 4: You and Billy sort of like taking on this bread, Like,
Speaker 4: how does that work?
Speaker 3: What's the mechanics?
Speaker 2: It's us, Billy, our team of guys at Redbird, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's just it's really just you know again,
Speaker 2: you know this was a little bit before this U four.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've been lucky in our timing because and
Speaker 2: it's maybe it's my contrarian nature. If I had just
Speaker 2: discovered this today, I wouldn't be doing it because there's
Speaker 2: way too much for you. But back then, there really
Speaker 2: wasn't a lot, you know, of our kind of people
Speaker 2: are kind of capital chasing European football. Everyone is still
Speaker 2: focused on NBA teams and stuff in the States, but
Speaker 2: their ownership restrictions in the States. And so after doing
Speaker 2: all this work, we decided to make our first control
Speaker 2: by which was to loose in League One. And you know,
Speaker 2: it was great about that experience. I mean that was
Speaker 2: really a training wheels investment. As much as we knew
Speaker 2: about sports, we knew we didn't know anything about European football.
Speaker 2: And obviously you're investing offshore, which I learned from my
Speaker 2: days at Goldman. You know you never want to invest
Speaker 2: off shore. You've got to be in the market, right,
Speaker 2: So there was all the red flags of why not
Speaker 2: to do this. I make a long story short. The
Speaker 2: price talk around toul Loose was around sixty million euros.
Speaker 2: It got relegated down to the second tier. We bought
Speaker 2: it for fifteen million euros within within three months with
Speaker 2: Billy and Luke Bourne and our team, our data analytics team,
Speaker 2: we sold our first player for around fifteen million euros.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And then within after the first year we got it
Speaker 2: promoted back to the first tier. Now Toulouse is sort
Speaker 2: of playing middle of League One and with a very
Speaker 2: reasonable payroll that would suggest you know that you know,
Speaker 2: we'd be you know that we'd be spending a lot
Speaker 2: more to be in the middle of the pack the
Speaker 2: way we are. European football is all about spending that
Speaker 2: incremental dollar of capital better than the next guy. Then
Speaker 2: we invested in Fenway Sports Group during COVID because of
Speaker 2: my belief in this kind of intellectual property. We went
Speaker 2: Long Sports as a rights holder in COVID. We did
Speaker 2: the XFL with Dwayne and Danny did Fenway Sports Group.
Speaker 2: We did to Loose and you know, so Fenway I
Speaker 2: got exposure to the big boys with Liverpool, right, So
Speaker 2: that was the next step in the tutorial. That was
Speaker 2: one of the first deals that I've done in sports.
Speaker 2: I think it's the only deal I've done in sports
Speaker 2: where I very much in being a junior partner because
Speaker 2: you know, I was so impressed with John Henry and
Speaker 2: Tom Warner and Mike Gordon and Sam Kennedy that you know,
Speaker 2: I said, my god, I think these guys are you know,
Speaker 2: some of the best in all of sports. And the
Speaker 2: way they thought I thought it was fantastic. And you know,
Speaker 2: the conversation with them was could I come in and
Speaker 2: add value to them in terms of what they want
Speaker 2: to do in version two point zero Fenway and so
Speaker 2: you know, we bought Lebron's and Maverick's business spring Hill
Speaker 2: with a group of investors including Nike, and we bought
Speaker 2: the Pittsburgh Penguins. So you know, we're building that out
Speaker 2: and now hopefully we're going to partner with Lebron and
Speaker 2: get an NBA team when he's ready to go. So
Speaker 2: that was that part of the tutorial, but obviously looking
Speaker 2: at Liverpool, getting into the Liverpool guys. Billy, to his credit,
Speaker 2: had been around ac Milan for several years, and we'd
Speaker 2: sort of been watching it Italy, you know. But you know, again,
Speaker 2: you think you know a lot about sports, but then
Speaker 2: you realize you really don't. Because all the feedback every
Speaker 2: time I would raise the concept of ac Milan internally
Speaker 2: or back here in the States, everyone who said, you're crazy,
Speaker 2: don't ever think about investing in Italy. But you know,
Speaker 2: so the answer to your question is, you know, we
Speaker 2: we Ultimately we were hanging around the hoop. Elliott were
Speaker 2: the owners of ac Milan. They were in the debt.
Speaker 2: Originally there was a Chinese owner and the Chinese owner
Speaker 2: hit the wall and Elliott came in foreclosed and became
Speaker 2: the equity owner.
Speaker 4: And this is Paul Singer is very well Paul Singer,
Speaker 4: you know hedge fun activists, sort of exactly.
Speaker 2: So at first, you know, it's not someone you would
Speaker 2: associate with owning a sports team. I think Paul would
Speaker 2: tell you that, But I have to tell you what
Speaker 2: The thing that really changed it for me was meeting
Speaker 2: Paul and Gordon Singer his son, who really led the
Speaker 2: investment in the team at Elliott. And you know, I
Speaker 2: can't say enough good things about those guys. I'm very
Speaker 2: public about how you know, they did a phenomenal job
Speaker 2: in the four years that they owned ac Milan from
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen to when we bought it in twenty two
Speaker 2: of cleaning it up. And really it's impressive. Now, Gordon
Speaker 2: Singer has a tremendous expertise in soccer. I mean he
Speaker 2: just plays soccer himself and he knows.
Speaker 3: It really well.
Speaker 2: But they did a great job getting this cleaning up
Speaker 2: all the brush and getting it playing defense and getting
Speaker 2: it to a place where they could hand the baton
Speaker 2: to us and then we could go on offense. And
Speaker 2: so you know, I made the determination to keep them involved,
Speaker 2: and so we own one hundred percent of the equity
Speaker 2: by converted them into a seller note. And you know,
Speaker 2: we bought a seam Alan very attractively. You know, we
Speaker 2: I think we paid a fair price, but you know,
Speaker 2: relative to some of these other prices that you see,
Speaker 2: you know we pay I think we did. We bought
Speaker 2: it for under a four times revenue multiple. And when
Speaker 2: we bought it, it was just slightly south of cash
Speaker 2: flow positive or break even, and now we're meaningfully cash
Speaker 2: flow positive after our first year. Obviously, performance helps. We
Speaker 2: made it to semi finals of Champions League. And when
Speaker 2: I took over, you know, it was challenging because they
Speaker 2: had just won the Scudetto, which is the championship in Syria.
Speaker 2: So really, you know, I took a different approach than
Speaker 2: I typically do, which is for the first year, I
Speaker 2: did nothing. Really wow, I just watched. But I'll tell
Speaker 2: you over there, the best thing you can do is
Speaker 2: don't go in guns play. Just watch absorb understand that.
Speaker 2: You know you're an American, so you got to prove yourself.
Speaker 2: And there's a public private partnership in sports ownership over
Speaker 2: there you do not see in the US. Interesting, we
Speaker 2: made a lot of changes and we retooled the sporting
Speaker 2: director side, and we also turned over half the team
Speaker 2: from a players standpoint, and we got Captain America pooled
Speaker 2: the Stitch as well as some other great players. And
Speaker 2: so you know, the average age of our team is
Speaker 2: twenty three years old. We have room to grow. And
Speaker 2: you know, one of our inities also is building a
Speaker 2: new stadium. It'll be the first stadium built in Italy
Speaker 2: since twenty eleven. Wow, it'll be an American like stadium,
Speaker 2: seventy thousand seats and you know, we're going to bring
Speaker 2: music to Milan and build something a big live event
Speaker 2: entertainment campus from Milan, really anchored by the team, something
Speaker 2: like AC Milan. I'll tell you it's interesting because we're
Speaker 2: going to need to find a way to crystallize value there.
Speaker 2: But I mean that's something that you should probably own forever.
Speaker 2: I mean that is that is as iconic as they get,
Speaker 2: and the opportunities to I mean that as a platform,
Speaker 2: and we're going to build this new stadium. You know,
Speaker 2: when we're done building that stadium, I promise you we
Speaker 2: will have a company out of that that builds stadiums.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So interesting, I mean, speaking of these sort of connections
Speaker 4: and the and the echoes, I have to think that
Speaker 4: when you're looking at AC Milan, certainly as an owner,
Speaker 4: you're thinking back to owners you've known over the years,
Speaker 4: and one one person who's got to be sitting on
Speaker 4: your shoulder as Steinbrenner.
Speaker 2: Look, you know, it's a really great point and you
Speaker 2: know the benefit of even though George's past, you know,
Speaker 2: bringing the Yankees in with us in owning a C
Speaker 2: Milan was meant to do a bunch of things, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, it gives us a sounding board for exactly
Speaker 2: that it's meant to say to the world, especially in Italy.
Speaker 2: You know, we're going to bring a C Milan back
Speaker 2: to the world class seat at the table. How more
Speaker 2: world class can you get than the New York Yankees?
Speaker 2: But you know, I mean, I've been around you know,
Speaker 2: Jerry Jones and his family. I've been around Robert and
Speaker 2: Jonathan Kraft. I've been around these owners and it's you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's these guys all do it the right
Speaker 2: way and it just sort of absorb you just absorb it.
Speaker 2: So I knew going into asum Milan. I don't make
Speaker 2: a lot of the amateur mistakes that you see sometimes,
Speaker 2: you know, I remember one thing Georgia always said to me.
Speaker 2: You'd appreciate this, Alex. He said, whatever you do, never
Speaker 2: go into the locker room. Wow, don't fraternize with the players.
Speaker 3: They have a job to do.
Speaker 2: We have a job to do, and you know they're
Speaker 2: never going to be your friends. You like them, you
Speaker 2: have a beer with them, and everything else. But he said,
Speaker 2: you gotta and so you know I And so it's
Speaker 2: interesting because one of the first things that's come up
Speaker 2: in Asium Milan is, you know, people keep saying to me,
Speaker 2: you should come down into the locker room and see
Speaker 2: the players after the game. And I will not do
Speaker 2: that because of George. And you know, it served me
Speaker 2: well because you know, I don't. I'm not There's no
Speaker 2: question about my motivations. I'm not hanging out with the players.
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 2: You know, this is there's no vanity in this. I'm
Speaker 2: completely unemotional about it. We have a job to do it,
Speaker 2: so I'm I'm more belichick in the sense that it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, everybody does their job, some of the parts
Speaker 2: will be greater than the whole, right, And so this
Speaker 2: is not some vanity play.
Speaker 5: Jerry, I'm laughing my ass off because the irony is
Speaker 5: George had Jerry to be the bridge between Jeter, myself,
Speaker 5: Mariano and George going to the locker room.
Speaker 3: Jerry was doing all the dirty.
Speaker 2: Work, so funny or the good work. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 2: send our CEO down but to deal with them, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but that's you know, but that's really it. And then
Speaker 2: and then obviously, you know, it's it is interesting over there,
Speaker 2: the role of the fans. That's that's a new thing.
Speaker 2: Like I can't imagine like Jerry and the Cowboys having to,
Speaker 2: you know, having the fans, you know, question one of
Speaker 2: his moves or anything else. I mean, they could do it,
Speaker 2: but they do it in a nice respectfully.
Speaker 3: Over there.
Speaker 2: You know, your the fans are your partner and you
Speaker 2: have to treat them seriously and you have to and
Speaker 2: they they do not suffer fools. They expect performance. I
Speaker 2: made the changes earlier in the summer and it led
Speaker 2: to a very visceral reaction amongst the fan base. I
Speaker 2: think I'm starting to get the benefit of the doubt
Speaker 2: from the fans now because they see the new team.
Speaker 2: They see definitely that the team and the changes we
Speaker 2: made have been an improvement the team. They see the
Speaker 2: potential of this team to really go far, both in
Speaker 2: Italy and in Europe. And so you know, it's a
Speaker 2: question of establishing yourself and getting credibility with the fans.
Speaker 2: You know. The only thing is, you know, could we
Speaker 2: do a better job of explaining our moves publicly? And
Speaker 2: you know, I've also taken the approach of not trying
Speaker 2: to do that.
Speaker 3: You know, I haven't.
Speaker 2: I haven't really interacted with the press and the media
Speaker 2: over there until recently, and so I'm trying to figure
Speaker 2: out how best to do that so they can at
Speaker 2: least understand what we bring to the game.
Speaker 4: What's the opportunity for Italian football in that case, and specifically,
Speaker 4: how does it play into discussions around media rights, which
Speaker 4: obviously you know a little a little bit about where
Speaker 4: do you see that going in the short and mid term?
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I mean Acey Milan has the second most
Speaker 2: Champions League trophies in history, behind Real Madrid. I didn't
Speaker 2: know that when I started looking at AC Milanow. You
Speaker 2: know what's interesting is, you know talk about George Steinbrenner.
Speaker 2: You know, they want those championships under Silvio Berlosconi, Bertlasconi.
Speaker 2: I always say Berlisconi was the George Steinberner of European football.
Speaker 2: He really was the first oligarch of European sports. I mean,
Speaker 2: some of the players from that era are advisors to
Speaker 2: us at Asi Milana, and they tell me these stories
Speaker 2: about how Bertlosconi bought the team and then he went
Speaker 2: to the locker room and he sat down with the
Speaker 2: players and he basically said, I'm running for Prime minister
Speaker 2: and so I need you to win. And he said,
Speaker 2: not only win the Scudetto, which is the challenge, I
Speaker 2: need you to win Champions League. And sure enough that
Speaker 2: year they went out and they won the Champions League
Speaker 2: and Berlisconi became Prime Minister. Right, So one of those things,
Speaker 2: and it's a true story in some form. And so
Speaker 2: you know what the ultimate arbitrage here, I think is
Speaker 2: that ACE Mulan is truly one of the I think
Speaker 2: it's one of the top four brands globally in football.
Speaker 2: And now with the barriers coming down with streaming and
Speaker 2: the fact that you can get these games broadcast to
Speaker 2: the States live, and the younger kids today all know,
Speaker 2: not just the Premier League. They I can't tell you
Speaker 2: that I got more or shout outs from people people
Speaker 2: I know, people I didn't know when we bought Assumlan
Speaker 2: out of New York.
Speaker 3: Wow in the US.
Speaker 2: Then I got out of Europe, no kidding. And so
Speaker 2: the media rights is going to be an evolution as well.
Speaker 2: You know, there's not a lot of competition for this
Speaker 2: METEA rights in Europe.
Speaker 4: All right, before we wrap up, I have to ask
Speaker 4: you about American football, gridiron football, of which you have
Speaker 4: now invested in in more of a startup ish kind
Speaker 4: of way.
Speaker 3: Give us the investment case for XFL.
Speaker 2: I think that there is a demand for quality NFL
Speaker 2: football in America twenty four to seven. I think if
Speaker 2: you could have it, you know, if you didn't have
Speaker 2: just seventeen games, and you had the ability to do
Speaker 2: this a year round, I think there would be an
Speaker 2: audience for that. So when I first started looking at
Speaker 2: the XFL, I was looking at it with the NFL
Speaker 2: and Fox, and both of those guys educated me that
Speaker 2: there is a legitimate need, legitimate demand for spring football.
Speaker 2: So I go back to my point about binary risk.
Speaker 2: You know, when you look at the history of the
Speaker 2: USFL and the XFL, you know they come and go,
Speaker 2: come and go, and so it doesn't really suggest a
Speaker 2: track record of longevity. So I got comfortable on that
Speaker 2: basis that there is enough interest in these local markets.
Speaker 2: And then I look at, you know, the MLS model,
Speaker 2: and I say, well, if we're putting NFL quality football
Speaker 2: in these local markets, you know what I really want
Speaker 2: to do. If MLS is a local content and local
Speaker 2: content in a local market. I kind of look at
Speaker 2: the NFL the XFL and I say, well, if I
Speaker 2: can do a national quality product in a local market,
Speaker 2: that's going to be compelling. And that's what we're trying
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 5: One one more thing again is like everything else you've done,
Speaker 5: I know how much respect and what a great relationship
Speaker 5: you have with Roger Goodell and the NFL. You're not
Speaker 5: doing it to go up against it, but you're doing
Speaker 5: it to complement because I miss football that springtime. The
Speaker 5: scarcity a little bit like UFC. The NFL is an
Speaker 5: ultimate scarce act at only seventeen games plus playoffs in
Speaker 5: Super Bowl. But then what and I love the way
Speaker 5: you do able with respect to the NFL.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. Look, you know, the first thing we
Speaker 2: did when we bought the XFL at a bankruptcy with
Speaker 2: Dwayne and Danny as we got rid of the commissioner
Speaker 2: title because my view is there's only one commissioner in football,
Speaker 2: and that's that's Roger.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then the second thing we did is is and
Speaker 2: I I am grateful to Roger and his team for
Speaker 2: this is you know, I brought Dwayne and Danny in
Speaker 2: and we sat down with Roger and what we basically
Speaker 2: said is, you know, how can we be a worthy
Speaker 2: participant in the NFL ecosystem. The guys in the past,
Speaker 2: you know, they tried to compete with the NFL. There's
Speaker 2: no competing with the NFL. So if we can you know,
Speaker 2: if you look at one metric for success that we
Speaker 2: have eighty of our players from this past season, eighty
Speaker 2: of our players made the NFL this year. Wow, that's
Speaker 2: a great metric for success because what does that tell
Speaker 2: you synthetically? You know, we can be we can be
Speaker 2: the development league, the minor league for the NFL, and
Speaker 2: it's a great transition from college. The thing that Dwayne
Speaker 2: really educated me on is, you know, there's only fifty
Speaker 2: three players on an NFL team or an XFL team,
Speaker 2: But if you look at the quality of players coming
Speaker 2: out of college as well as the other players that
Speaker 2: are around out of college that didn't make the NFL,
Speaker 2: you could go eighty ninety and so you can field
Speaker 2: NFL quality football. That's what's so interesting, and it rejuvenates
Speaker 2: itself every year. And then you have a relationship with
Speaker 2: the NFL, and you know, in the NFL is collaborating
Speaker 2: with us on rules, innovation, health and safety for the
Speaker 2: players things that it's easier for us to innovate on,
Speaker 2: see how it goes, and then they can see whether
Speaker 2: they want to adopt it or not. So you know,
Speaker 2: we're trying our best to be a worthy participant in
Speaker 2: the NFL ecosystem.
Speaker 5: What advice can you give a young viewers of how
Speaker 5: to be a great entrepreneur and do what you're doing.
Speaker 2: It's an evolution and you don't just as a young
Speaker 2: person show up and be that. I think you have
Speaker 2: to determine. The first thing is and I give a
Speaker 2: lot of advice to a lot of young people. You know,
Speaker 2: figure out your DNA. You know, are you a natural
Speaker 2: investor or not a natural investor? And you can invest
Speaker 2: being one or the other. It's nature nurture. But I'm
Speaker 2: always intrigued by young people who just haven't an innate
Speaker 2: smell for making money for risk and and that know
Speaker 2: how to invest, because you can't teach that right And
Speaker 2: so that's that's one thing. Second thing is I would
Speaker 2: definitely say I think the pendulum is going to swing back,
Speaker 2: and I think it's it can't just be about the money.
Speaker 2: And I know that sounds, you know, a little lofty
Speaker 2: coming from me. So what I'd say too, if you know,
Speaker 2: to young people today is obviously follow your passion and
Speaker 2: don't worry about the money. The money will come, but
Speaker 2: it's the passion and figuring out you know, do you
Speaker 2: have a nose for investing that really will serve you
Speaker 2: well if you in the in the as you're you know,
Speaker 2: first starting out.
Speaker 3: Love that my man delivered.
Speaker 4: Now, I mean right, this was great, a great thank
Speaker 4: thank you so much for coming in. This is fun
Speaker 4: and this is the side of him I've never seen,
Speaker 4: you know, bouncing back and forth.
Speaker 3: That's great. Thank thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Who would have thought twenty years ago whatever we'd be here.
Speaker 2: So congrats on all that you're doing.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I'm proud of you.
Speaker 2: Thanks Jery.
Speaker 5: Awesome.
Speaker 4: Since our talk with Cardinal, Bloomberg has reported that an
Speaker 4: Italian is probing whether Elliott Management continues to maintain control
Speaker 4: of Acy Milan, despite club officials informing the Italian Football
Speaker 4: Federation that ownership had changed. Elliott has denied the allegations.
Speaker 4: Redbird has said it's cooperating with the inquiry and said
Speaker 4: quote the notion that Redbird doesn't own and control. Ac
Speaker 4: Milan is just false and contradicts all the evidence and facts.
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