Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: I'm Jason Kelly, I'm Alex Rodriguez, and on this episode
Speaker 2: of The Deal, Sue Bird.
Speaker 3: All right, listen to this resume.
Speaker 2: Two national championships with Yukon, four WNBA championships with the
Speaker 2: Seattle Storm, five gold medals for the United States of America.
Speaker 2: She did it all as a player. Now she's in
Speaker 2: your business as an owner.
Speaker 4: How's she doing.
Speaker 3: She's doing pretty good.
Speaker 4: Not only is she in my business with WNBA, but
Speaker 4: also we both started our careers in Seattle and she
Speaker 4: played obviously her entire career there, actually seven years. It's
Speaker 4: really interesting the way she thinks about pivoting from being
Speaker 4: a world class athlete to now doing some great things
Speaker 4: in business.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, she's in my business as well, in the media business.
Speaker 2: She started a company called Together with Chloe Kim, Alex Morgan,
Speaker 2: and Simone Manuel. She's got a podcast with her partner,
Speaker 2: Megan Rapino, another athlete.
Speaker 3: We've heard of. Lots to talk about with Sue Bird.
Speaker 2: All right, well, welcome, Please introduce yourself and what you do.
Speaker 5: This is like the hardest question now that I'm retired.
Speaker 5: I don't like it at all. It was so much
Speaker 5: easier just saying superb professional basketball player.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 5: My name is Sue Bird. I am a retired professional
Speaker 5: basketball player. I am currently figuring my life out. But
Speaker 5: I am, I guess, an entrepreneur getting into the media space.
Speaker 5: I'm a co founder of a media and commerce company together,
Speaker 5: but also co founder of a production company A touch more.
Speaker 3: Own a couple professional sports teams as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm in Gotham FC and NWSL as an investor
Speaker 5: and then part of the ownership group with the Seattle Storm,
Speaker 5: the team I've played for.
Speaker 2: And so what would you say, so far is your
Speaker 2: signature deal.
Speaker 5: I think what I'm finding is a lot of how
Speaker 5: I played basketball as a point guard. I like things
Speaker 5: to make sense. I liked, you know, things to fit
Speaker 5: to go for a to B t C in a
Speaker 5: way that set everybody up for success. Is really what
Speaker 5: production is like. So as I'm getting more into the
Speaker 5: world of production, I'm really seeing my point guard skills
Speaker 5: show themselves.
Speaker 2: All Right, So, if we can, let's go back aways
Speaker 2: to the start of your basketball career, or not the
Speaker 2: full start, but probably the seminal moment where we're all
Speaker 2: introduced to you, which is at Yukon. To call it
Speaker 2: a historic program, it actually under sells it. Talk to
Speaker 2: us about getting there. You know, you grew up in
Speaker 2: Long Island. You get to Yukon, and Yukon's already Yukon
Speaker 2: at that point.
Speaker 3: What is it like to take us back there? Yeah?
Speaker 5: So, yes and no. So they had one their first
Speaker 5: national championship in nineteen ninety five, and that's Rebecca. They
Speaker 5: go un defeated. What makes Yukon, I think, have success
Speaker 5: from a fandom standpoint is that they're not quite Boston,
Speaker 5: They're not quite New York. So if you're I don't know,
Speaker 5: Red Sox, Celtics, whatever you are, or if your Yankees, Nicks, Mets,
Speaker 5: whatever you are down here, the people in Connecticut needed something. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and so Connecticut people really rallied around. I mean, god,
Speaker 5: the fans are so amazing at Yukon. So anyways, Rebecca
Speaker 5: Lobo hits that ninety five team hits, it blows up.
Speaker 5: They're like everybody's sweetheart. It blows up. I get to
Speaker 5: school in ninety eight. We end up winning my sophomore
Speaker 5: year two thousand and that was the next championship. Oh oh,
Speaker 5: So I was a part of the second one, right, yeah,
Speaker 5: a lot of times. Yeah, you think Kyukon, you think
Speaker 5: the eleven, you think it's always So I was there
Speaker 5: pretty early, but it still was like a very prominent
Speaker 5: pro It was the program at the time.
Speaker 2: And so, I mean, and you experienced this as well
Speaker 2: in a slightly different way. But you know, choosing where
Speaker 2: to go to college, for you, that's one of your
Speaker 2: first big business decisions, right, So how did you make
Speaker 2: that decision? What are the conversations like with your family,
Speaker 2: like how do you decide?
Speaker 5: So my parents were really big on academics, and you know,
Speaker 5: Yukon's the top twenty public. We're doing all right. But
Speaker 5: I was also being recruited by Stanford. I was also
Speaker 5: being recruited by Vanderbilt. Those were actually two of my
Speaker 5: other final schools. So I actually had to battle a
Speaker 5: little bit with my parents on wanting to go to Connecticut.
Speaker 5: I remember my dad. One of the final things he
Speaker 5: said was like, do you want everyone you know to
Speaker 5: be from the state of Connecticut? Like do you want
Speaker 5: the person you marry to be from the state of Connecticut?
Speaker 5: And you know, you had a good point. You go
Speaker 5: there and outside of the athletes, it's a lot of
Speaker 5: Connecticut residents. But at the end of the day, I
Speaker 5: mean even as a sixteen seventeen year old when I
Speaker 5: was making the decision, it really just felt right. And
Speaker 5: if you fast forward to now, I can sit here
Speaker 5: and honestly tell you that a lot of the decisions
Speaker 5: I have made, whether it be the teams I'm choosing
Speaker 5: to play for, or investments I'm trying to make, ownership
Speaker 5: groups I'm getting involved with, it's always a feel. There's
Speaker 5: like a feel there that you got to follow. So
Speaker 5: it's not that different.
Speaker 2: I do want to go back to that idea of
Speaker 2: what your dad said, because obviously no one could have
Speaker 2: known exactly what was going to come after that. But
Speaker 2: I mean, not only are you not limited to people
Speaker 2: from Connecticut, I mean you become on that platform one
Speaker 2: of the most famous athletes in the country pretty quickly
Speaker 2: because of the platform that Yukon has. Were you aware
Speaker 2: of that as it was happening, Because as you said,
Speaker 2: it was early days for Yukon, it really starts to
Speaker 2: happen while you're there.
Speaker 3: What does it feel like?
Speaker 5: God, great question. I've never thought of it this way.
Speaker 5: Because of that ninety five team and because of Rebecca
Speaker 5: Lobo especially, there was national attention always on that program.
Speaker 5: And so when me and not just me I had,
Speaker 5: I came in with a class of five and all
Speaker 5: top recruits, all we had the number one, like tippy top, right,
Speaker 5: So we came in with our own attention. Yeah, our
Speaker 5: own national attention at times. You know, you play in
Speaker 5: the All American Game, you have a lot of that
Speaker 5: hype coming in with you. So it really was I
Speaker 5: think a really good blend. Like I said, my class
Speaker 5: and then what was already happening at Connecticut, and it
Speaker 5: just became normal, Like when I got there, the media attention,
Speaker 5: the amount of coverage we got. I already mentioned the
Speaker 5: fans sold out. So we played in Gamble Pavilion on campus,
Speaker 5: which is only ten thousand, But then we'd play in
Speaker 5: Hartford it's called the Excel Center. Now that's like sixteen
Speaker 5: plus sold out. No matter what every game, whether we're
Speaker 5: playing like the crappiest team you've ever seen or you know,
Speaker 5: the number two team in the country, whether it's a
Speaker 5: beautiful day out or you know, twenty inches of snow,
Speaker 5: people are getting to those games. Yeah, and that just
Speaker 5: became the norm for us, Like the hoopla. We couldn't,
Speaker 5: you know, we would go to the mall or whatever,
Speaker 5: we would do, recognized everywhere. It really became normal. I
Speaker 5: didn't see a shift because there wasn't a shift right
Speaker 5: when we stopped on campus. It was like that. I
Speaker 5: think it had already been brewing in that way.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to think about sort of that fame and notoriety,
Speaker 2: now what that would translate to, Yeah, dollars wise?
Speaker 3: Do you ever think about that?
Speaker 5: But of course n I L What do I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 5: if nil was around when we were in college, because
Speaker 5: we really did have it was a it wasn't just
Speaker 5: my class. I don't make it sound like that. Like
Speaker 5: koach Aama plays a huge role in this. Sure who
Speaker 5: he is, how he is, his personality, his little you know, yeah,
Speaker 5: his little one liners in media that combined with in
Speaker 5: a lot of ways, the people of Connecticut took us
Speaker 5: in like we were their daughters. Yeah, Like that's how
Speaker 5: they would treat us, Like they would send us cookies
Speaker 5: all the time, and Brownie's on our birthday. Like there
Speaker 5: was there was I don't know, this familiar thing, familiar
Speaker 5: thing happening. Yeah, but it all led to and then
Speaker 5: the basketball play. We were dominant in my four years.
Speaker 5: I mean we were dominant. So you're winning all the time.
Speaker 5: And I think if you look back in the history
Speaker 5: of women's sports, there are so now that we've broken
Speaker 5: through in twenty twenty four in these unbelievable ways, especially
Speaker 5: in basketball, it's going to feel normal, right, Like all
Speaker 5: these franchises are going to have crazy success, whether it's attendance,
Speaker 5: viewership numbers. But if you look back at the history,
Speaker 5: there always were random teams or random programs that somehow
Speaker 5: found a way randomly. I'm just thinking of the Portland Thorns,
Speaker 5: the NWSL team in Portland. They sell out, they've been
Speaker 5: selling out for years. They kill it and it's just like, oh, like,
Speaker 5: what happened, what's the magic potion? Why aren't people copying it?
Speaker 5: But I think the truth is there's just some scenarios,
Speaker 5: or there were some scenarios where like a couple of
Speaker 5: variables were the right exact recipe, and Yukon women's basketball
Speaker 5: falls into that. And then you add on Nancy a tournament,
Speaker 5: which is just like a marketing.
Speaker 4: Machine, right right, So you talk about your four years
Speaker 4: at Yukon, you obviously played for a legendary Hall of
Speaker 4: Fame coach. A few questions. What lessons did you learn
Speaker 4: from coach and your time of winning? Because all your
Speaker 4: Connecticut is win. How has that shaped you into business today?
Speaker 5: I think the two things I take with me from
Speaker 5: Coach Rayama. One is preparation. He always used to tell
Speaker 5: us about. He would do this like comparison between how
Speaker 5: it felt when you were ready for a test, right,
Speaker 5: how it felt when you had studied for that test,
Speaker 5: how you feel when you walk in that classroom versus
Speaker 5: when you crammed and you weren't quite ready, and just
Speaker 5: he would really I vividly remember it was like tapping
Speaker 5: into that feeling because I feel like we can all
Speaker 5: right now close our eyes and feel what that feels like,
Speaker 5: right you walk in the class while you're like, yeah, exactly, exactly,
Speaker 5: And so he would always try to tell us, this
Speaker 5: is how you want to feel on the basketball court,
Speaker 5: prepared right Like, of course, when you play a game,
Speaker 5: anything can happen. You have to that is what it is.
Speaker 5: But the things that you can control, you have to
Speaker 5: and you have to prepare in the ways that you can.
Speaker 5: So that I took with me for sure, and then
Speaker 5: he used to always say basketball is not a game
Speaker 5: of how to, it's a game of when to, and
Speaker 5: that I think is probably well the preparation as well.
Speaker 4: What does that mean?
Speaker 5: Everybody knows how to shoot? Everybody knows, especially at a
Speaker 5: certain level. Right everybody knows how to dribble, shoot, pass,
Speaker 5: But do they know when to do they know when
Speaker 5: to do this? Do they know when to do that?
Speaker 5: And to be honest, when I think of my own play,
Speaker 5: that's probably been the separator for me because I'm not
Speaker 5: the tallest, Like I was fast when I was younger,
Speaker 5: but like as time goes, you're not the fastest, you're
Speaker 5: not the quickest. But I knew when to do those things.
Speaker 5: I knew when to pass, I knew when to shoot.
Speaker 5: I knew when this needed that or that needed this.
Speaker 4: I love that. I want to just share one quick
Speaker 4: thing there because Lupinella taught us another common denominator that
Speaker 4: I played in Seattle in my first seven years, started
Speaker 4: in ninety four and left in two thousand and lou
Speaker 4: who was a great teacher, would always say the when
Speaker 4: when do you do this?
Speaker 3: The scoreboard would teach you when you take, when.
Speaker 4: You swing, when you try to hit a home run
Speaker 4: when you move a guy over, so that resonates with
Speaker 4: me as well.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about this transition from the college game,
Speaker 2: which is we've talked about Massive to the WNBA when
Speaker 2: you made it, and I've heard you talk about this
Speaker 2: in interviews, the culture shock as it were, of going
Speaker 2: from guaranteed sold out to far from guarantee sold out
Speaker 2: to say the least, I think we're interested in what
Speaker 2: it feels like as a player and as a human,
Speaker 2: But at that point you're becoming smarter and smarter about
Speaker 2: the business. What are you making of that as you
Speaker 2: make that transition.
Speaker 5: So early on nothing, I'm just like cool, I'm a professional, Yeah,
Speaker 5: like whatever, I'm figuring it out. You know, I'm moving
Speaker 5: from New York, Connecticut to Seattle, which was difficult, super
Speaker 5: far from everybody, so I'm just kind of like getting
Speaker 5: through it. Some of the early stories or early memories
Speaker 5: that I have that I've told about is when you know,
Speaker 5: I've just gotten drafted, fresh off the plane, the Sonics
Speaker 5: are in the playoffs, and they take me to like
Speaker 5: what is like my first media day essentially, and they're
Speaker 5: preparing me for it, and I'm kind of like Okay, cool,
Speaker 5: Like I've just come from the final four, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean, And Yukon and I walk in and
Speaker 5: I'm like, well, is everybody here yet, you know, because
Speaker 5: there's not that many people, right, And so that was
Speaker 5: that's the culture shock you're talking about. And then of course,
Speaker 5: you know college, you're flying charter. Everything is like, you know,
Speaker 5: you're staying at the Ritzes or whatever it is. And
Speaker 5: interestingly enough, we didn't charter. Obviously the WNBA did it,
Speaker 5: but my rookie year we were actually still owned one
Speaker 5: hundred percent by the NBA, so we hadn't gone to
Speaker 5: individual ownership models yet. So I did have like one
Speaker 5: year maybe two I can remember exactly where we still
Speaker 5: were getting some NBA treatment, So the like didn't we
Speaker 5: didn't fly charter, but the hotels we stayed in we're
Speaker 5: all super nice, you know. We we had a practice
Speaker 5: facility because we were with the Sonics, which is kind
Speaker 5: of standard at that time. A lot of the WNBA
Speaker 5: teams would use their NBA affiliate practice facility. But yeah,
Speaker 5: so we had some bells and whistles. But then I
Speaker 5: think the media coverage is probably the best story to
Speaker 5: tell that that showcase like where where it was compared
Speaker 5: to college. But very quickly I started playing overseas. And
Speaker 5: I actually just say this as like a matter of fact,
Speaker 5: we were all making so much money overseas that in
Speaker 5: a sense, I don't want to say we didn't care
Speaker 5: because we cared, but because we're making so much money
Speaker 5: over there. When CBA negotiations come up, we were like, okay, whatever,
Speaker 5: just get it done. We want to keep we want
Speaker 5: in the weeds.
Speaker 2: Right, we want to keep playing, and the money's fine,
Speaker 2: not here but over there, so let's just just do it.
Speaker 4: And so when you say making a lot of money,
Speaker 4: give me a range of for me personally, yeah, or
Speaker 4: the league high love.
Speaker 5: It's hard, Yeah, it's hard. It's so individual. So I
Speaker 5: would say early on, I mean always well over six figures,
Speaker 5: and early on, like my first couple of years, we're
Speaker 5: talking like I've got them really going back like in
Speaker 5: the like three to six hundred thousand dollars range. But
Speaker 5: that's all like it depends how many months you play.
Speaker 3: So usually your doc that's what you're making. In Russia.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in my first couple of years, but I only
Speaker 5: went for like five months, so like bang for your bucks,
Speaker 5: not so bad. By the end of my time, now
Speaker 5: we're up in like the million dollar range.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: So I would say like that was started probably like
Speaker 5: let's call it, like three hundred thousand, and then by
Speaker 5: the end I was much closer to a million.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: And yet with bonuses you can get over right, and.
Speaker 2: You've got endorsements and all that, And yet it's plateauing
Speaker 2: generously here. And so how are you sort of rectifying
Speaker 2: that in your mind? What are you thinking and what
Speaker 2: sort of business decisions are you making with all of
Speaker 2: that in mind for yourself?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so none of my business ventures if you want
Speaker 5: to call it that at that point in time, So
Speaker 5: let's call it. You know, I'm in my thirties. Let's say,
Speaker 5: like I'm forty four now, so I'm like thirty years old.
Speaker 5: They were all I was betting on. People Like I
Speaker 5: have a good friend of mine who I grew up with.
Speaker 5: I always joke if he had called me and said
Speaker 5: I'm opening up a zoo, I would have invested, Like
Speaker 5: I'm opening up that, I would have invested. He wanted
Speaker 5: to do restaurants. That's like my first big investment. So
Speaker 5: we now have I think it's five in the Boston area,
Speaker 5: So what kind of restaurant like upscale bar food vibes Like,
Speaker 5: that's how it started, and I got lucky. They killed it.
Speaker 5: I got my money back within like a year or
Speaker 5: two years. Wow, yes, killed it. I know in the
Speaker 5: restaurant business, I know, I know, Yeah, I got lucky.
Speaker 5: And as you're.
Speaker 4: Writing these checks, is there a part of it as
Speaker 4: excited or part of you is more nervous.
Speaker 5: I know I was excited. Really, I feel like I
Speaker 5: was investing in the people, not the businesses themselves.
Speaker 2: Whether it's given your background or ukon or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Do you feel confident as a at that point? Is
Speaker 2: a business person You're like, yeah I got this.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, But I feel like I sit here
Speaker 5: now and say I'm confident in my ability to read people.
Speaker 5: Another business I'm invested in are again a friend I
Speaker 5: grew up with. Her and her husband have sports center
Speaker 5: facilities in New Jersey. So you know you rented out,
Speaker 5: you do you host like leagues have their tournaments there.
Speaker 5: That kind of a thing killing it, Yeah, but I
Speaker 5: invested in them right right. It's very shark tank in
Speaker 5: that way, because like it's their life and I'm like
Speaker 5: you know how like they always invest in people when
Speaker 5: it's like their life. Yeah, so I felt like it
Speaker 5: was a good investment.
Speaker 3: Yes he does know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, shar I want to get inside your
Speaker 4: head a little bit. As opportunities must come from all
Speaker 4: over the place. Are you someone that goes kind of
Speaker 4: wide and shallow or narrow and deep in the things
Speaker 4: that you like and walk us through if a deal
Speaker 4: comes through? How quickly do you say no? How quickly
Speaker 4: does it go to like there's a maybe? And then yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Think I'm more so I'm learning. I'm still learning very much.
Speaker 5: I've had moments of wide and shallow. I don't like it.
Speaker 5: I don't like it. I like narrow and deep better.
Speaker 5: And I think assuming the investment that I'm looking is
Speaker 5: something that I feel like values are aligned, I feel
Speaker 5: like I can, you know, provide some sort of whatever
Speaker 5: it is, nuance, expertise. Then it does. It usually moves
Speaker 5: pretty quick. I kind of know right away, Like when
Speaker 5: something catches my eye, I kind of know right away.
Speaker 5: And then when something feels a little not often in
Speaker 5: a bad way or a negative way, which is maybe
Speaker 5: not right, I kind of get like that initial initial
Speaker 5: like ping, and then obviously, like the financial piece of
Speaker 5: it is usually what I have to figure out, just
Speaker 5: like how much is you know, like how do you
Speaker 5: do this? You know? So that's yes, that could be
Speaker 5: very scary, and I've you know, I've hit and I've missed.
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about one big decision that
Speaker 2: you make in your career that's one of the most
Speaker 2: recent decisions, and it's something that comes to you, which
Speaker 2: is you're done playing and somebody sort of like virtually
Speaker 2: knocks in your doors like hey, do you want to
Speaker 2: own part of this team?
Speaker 3: Or at least that's how the story gets told us
Speaker 3: the story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, that's not that far off. It was actually
Speaker 5: right after I retired, probably a month and you know,
Speaker 5: obviously have a great relationship with the ownership group in Seattle,
Speaker 5: so like, hey, we want to show you. So they
Speaker 5: were just opening up and doing like a race for
Speaker 5: like a small amount of investors. So the three women
Speaker 5: that own our team, they were the sole owners and
Speaker 5: then they just were doing this raise in this moment.
Speaker 5: So I was being asked to get involved in that,
Speaker 5: and they're like, we want to show you the investor
Speaker 5: deck the same way we've been showing everybody like we
Speaker 5: want to treat you like a real you know what
Speaker 5: I mean by real, like like we don't know you,
Speaker 5: basically like we want to present. So a lot of
Speaker 5: this is going to be redundant. Your picture is going
Speaker 5: to show up a couple of times, just ignore that.
Speaker 5: But this is what this is.
Speaker 2: We've had some of the most impressive and important you
Speaker 2: have heard it for super exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I was like, okay, So they sat me down.
Speaker 5: We did know. They took me through the whole deck.
Speaker 5: And obviously this wasn't about convincing me and to believe
Speaker 5: like I believe because I've been preaching that people should
Speaker 5: get in the probably the last three or four years.
Speaker 5: It was like, get in now, because A you're gonna
Speaker 5: look like a genius in five to ten, but B
Speaker 5: in a couple of years, it's not gonna be this
Speaker 5: cheap like get in now. So I didn't need to
Speaker 5: be convinced of any of that. But in the moment,
Speaker 5: what I wasn't sure about was because I've literally just retired,
Speaker 5: I was just like, well, how does this impact any
Speaker 5: other business things I might want to do, Because it does.
Speaker 5: I mean, we all just saw what Tom Brady that
Speaker 5: like laundry list of things he can and can't do it.
Speaker 5: Being an owner of a team when you still want
Speaker 5: to stay involved in the sport does have implications. So
Speaker 5: I just wasn't ready to pull the trigger yet. And
Speaker 5: that's the only reason why it took. It ended up
Speaker 5: technically taking like a year and a half to get done.
Speaker 5: For like a year, I just like waited. I see,
Speaker 5: I want to see what was what? What impacts this?
Speaker 5: What impacts that I kind of wanted to live my
Speaker 5: life not have to worry about. You know, like our
Speaker 5: CVA negotiations are going to start soon, so we can't
Speaker 5: talk about anything. So like that. I want to be
Speaker 5: able to be free to speak. I didn't want to
Speaker 5: be held back. And then as time went I was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I don't want to be I want to be a genius.
Speaker 5: I don't want to be the idiot who got into line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you said something that I would love to
Speaker 2: dig into, which is what you were seeing from a
Speaker 2: business perspective while you were still playing.
Speaker 3: That made it so obvious.
Speaker 2: What was it that like just made you so convinced
Speaker 2: other than it's an awesome game. Yeah, there's got to
Speaker 2: be something tangible from a business perspective that you're seeing.
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I'll actually start at the end, which is
Speaker 5: so Pagebeckers is, you know, about to be a senior
Speaker 5: whatever year was she was in high school?
Speaker 3: So high school, okay, senior in high school.
Speaker 5: Twenty eighteen nineteen, something like that. And I'm starting to
Speaker 5: see on social media like this kid's got buzz. People
Speaker 5: are following her. You know, you go to her Instagram account,
Speaker 5: who knows what it was. She's got three four, five
Speaker 5: hundred thousand followers, which for a high school kid, a
Speaker 5: basketball player. So I saw that and I was like, huh.
Speaker 5: I was like something like something's like there's something is
Speaker 5: clicking for that generation. So it's kind of the end
Speaker 5: because when I saw that, I was like, oh, we're
Speaker 5: good to go. But from my own experience, what I
Speaker 5: already knew and what a lot of us already knew,
Speaker 5: was yes, we weren't making a ton of money from
Speaker 5: our WNBA salaries, but I was getting endorsement deals. I
Speaker 5: did have value, like significant financial value to come speak
Speaker 5: at events or represent you know, a certain company, or
Speaker 5: I mean even down to the like hey, my kids
Speaker 5: getting bought mitzfoot, I'll pay you this to come show
Speaker 5: up at this event. So there was like a disconnect.
Speaker 5: I was like, wait a minute, I'm getting these offers
Speaker 5: off the court because I'm a basketball player, but on
Speaker 5: the court, the business part of the basketball is not
Speaker 5: getting the looks or the value. So then I started
Speaker 5: learning about how the systems are not really set up
Speaker 5: for the WNBA to succeed. So I knew it wasn't
Speaker 5: going to be easy. But I also was like, the
Speaker 5: reason that this has not kaboomed the way we're seeing
Speaker 5: it now isn't because people don't like women's basketball, right,
Speaker 5: Like how many times would you hear ten years ago,
Speaker 5: like nobody goes to those games. And then I'm like, well,
Speaker 5: that's weird because I was just in the finals and
Speaker 5: it was sold out and people are seeing it now
Speaker 5: and they're like, wow, look at this crowd support. And
Speaker 5: by the way, the attendance has been record breaking. It's
Speaker 5: not to take away from this year. Every finals I've
Speaker 5: ever played in has been like that, with the exception
Speaker 5: of a few where we couldn't play not in Seattle.
Speaker 5: We had to go on the road, and some of
Speaker 5: those teams couldn't get their arenas, so we had to
Speaker 5: play in smaller arenas. So that happens, see how the
Speaker 5: systems aren't set up. But all you hear, all the
Speaker 5: narratives and the conversations were like, oh, nobody cares, nobody watches,
Speaker 5: but I knew. I walk around the streets, I get
Speaker 5: stopped for pictures like obviously people care, right, And this
Speaker 5: is ten fifteen years ago. So anyways, but if you
Speaker 5: bring it back around to seeing the page Beckers getting
Speaker 5: that attention in high school, I was like, oh, something's changing.
Speaker 2: And that's a really interesting point because I remember that.
Speaker 2: I remember that very well. Page buckets like all of
Speaker 2: that going. You know, she commits to UKND. It's like,
Speaker 2: oh you gone, you know, here we go. And it
Speaker 2: certainly presaged what we saw over the last two years,
Speaker 2: right or the last maybe three years in the NCAA
Speaker 2: with Caitlin and Angel and whatnot. Like the page mania
Speaker 2: was really there's a lot of heat around her.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, so now like for me that what that
Speaker 5: said was like society's changing, Like younger people are interested
Speaker 5: in women's basketball or girls basketball. She was in high school. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and you had even not just girls, but boys. Like
Speaker 5: what I remember during the pandemic, you know, we're all bored.
Speaker 5: Page was like going on her ig Live and like
Speaker 5: people were coming in. You know, you can like bring
Speaker 5: one in and it's like NBA guys. So that's different. Now,
Speaker 5: that's different. And that all speaks to like the cultural
Speaker 5: cachet that I feel like pro sports usually has that
Speaker 5: women's basketball for some reason, we were you know, I like,
Speaker 5: we were the butt of the joke on SNL skits. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we weren't cool just yet. And Page to me marked
Speaker 5: this moment of coolness.
Speaker 2: I mean, especially given this moment you alluded to it
Speaker 2: that we're sitting in for women's sports, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of when too. It feels like going on now. So
Speaker 2: when you make this investment, take us into that start thinking.
Speaker 5: So some of its luck in a sense, I think
Speaker 5: Together is a great example of the when too. This
Speaker 5: was a scenario where it was twenty eighteen nineteen. I
Speaker 5: get a call from Alex Morgan and she has this idea,
Speaker 5: And the easiest way to tell it is she calls
Speaker 5: me on the phone. She's like, you know, Lebron has uninterrupted, right,
Speaker 5: Derek Jeter has Players Tribune, So these athletes are starting
Speaker 5: to build these platforms to tell other athletes stories. She's like,
Speaker 5: and they do cover women, both of them. They've covered
Speaker 5: women's that I've been covered by both of those platforms,
Speaker 5: but there's not one dedicated to women's sports. But the
Speaker 5: win too of it all is here you had myself,
Speaker 5: Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim comes on board, some Ommanuel four
Speaker 5: athletes that have been living our athlete lives. We see
Speaker 5: what's happening in front of us, We understand the landscape
Speaker 5: and we can like sense something. So we all come
Speaker 5: together and together gets formed. Now the lucky part is
Speaker 5: you can't predict what happened in women's sports from let's
Speaker 5: call it twenty nineteen, equal pay for the World Cup,
Speaker 5: the women's the US women's national team twenty twenty happens.
Speaker 5: What comes from that is the WNBA does their bubble season,
Speaker 5: a lot of activism. We're able to stand for something
Speaker 5: bigger than ourselves while playing the game that is now
Speaker 5: on TV a lot more because there's nothing on TV
Speaker 5: right at this point. Then you have Sedona Prince. She
Speaker 5: shares her TikTok of the discrepancies between the men's and
Speaker 5: women's trade rooms. Yeah, so you have all these moments
Speaker 5: that in some way we're luck right, but together was
Speaker 5: formed before this. We launched like shortly after, but the
Speaker 5: wheels were in motion, things were in place, and boom,
Speaker 5: when we launched, we're ready to catch all that. And
Speaker 5: now where I would argue one of the more important
Speaker 5: platforms in telling athlete stories. And again we were just
Speaker 5: ready to do it. So when this moment hits, we're
Speaker 5: right on top of it.
Speaker 2: Describe what it started as and is it more or
Speaker 2: less what you imagined it would be.
Speaker 5: It's not too far from how it started to where
Speaker 5: it is now. But I think when it started, we
Speaker 5: were just trying to tell the stories of women in sports, right,
Speaker 5: shine the light on people that don't always get the
Speaker 5: light shot on them. And as you know, as it
Speaker 5: turns out you fast forward to now, you start to realize.
Speaker 5: You know, men's sports, a lot of their fans are
Speaker 5: generational fans, right, Like you go to a Yankee game
Speaker 5: because your dad took you and because his dad took him,
Speaker 5: and so on and so forth, and that's how a
Speaker 5: lot of the fans are like become die hard. And
Speaker 5: for women's sports, we just don't have that history yet.
Speaker 5: And so for women's sports, a lot of it is
Speaker 5: the storylines. It is the players stories. I feel like
Speaker 5: the best parallel is the Olympics, Like we all do it.
Speaker 5: We turn on the Olympics, you happen to catch a
Speaker 5: special for like somebody who's about to, I don't know,
Speaker 5: play badminton, and now you're like tuning in. You're like
Speaker 5: the biggest badminton fan ever. Women's sports thrives on that,
Speaker 5: like we have data around that now.
Speaker 2: So the shoulder programming types toime, yeah, like yeah, understanding
Speaker 2: the players, gaining to know them in a different way.
Speaker 5: And so much of men's sports, like we know so
Speaker 5: much about male athletes like Meganos yeah, biasmosis almost yeah,
Speaker 5: like we know what they eat for breakfast. You don't
Speaker 5: even know how somehow you do and that just doesn't
Speaker 5: exist as much for womens sports. So Together's part of
Speaker 5: Together's mission statement was definitely to make a mark in
Speaker 5: the media landscape in that way telling these stories, whether
Speaker 5: it's you know, a quickie on Instagram where you tap
Speaker 5: in you see something for thirty seconds, or becoming more
Speaker 5: like long form, whether it's documentaries or series, and so
Speaker 5: that was always what we wanted to do. But I
Speaker 5: think the part we couldn't have predicted was the community
Speaker 5: that it built, and how the identity of the company
Speaker 5: itself almost was yes, dictated by the founders, but more
Speaker 5: so dictated by that community, like what they wanted, what
Speaker 5: they were inclined to be, almost like obsessed with, and
Speaker 5: then you're kind of feeding that. It was almost like
Speaker 5: a north Star in a sense.
Speaker 3: I bet she never thought she'd be in the T
Speaker 3: shirt business. Talk about that.
Speaker 5: I mean that that's incredible.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a cool, fascinating business story.
Speaker 5: So one part of it is it shows you the
Speaker 5: gap in merchandise that exists in women's sports. You can't
Speaker 5: get like cool stuff in women's sports. It's changing, Don't
Speaker 5: get me wrong. I'm not really talking about the last
Speaker 5: couple of years. A friend of mine and I were
Speaker 5: just talking about the like pinket and shrink it. I
Speaker 5: actually didn't know that term.
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So yeah, I didn't know either. So it's basically like,
Speaker 5: all right, we'll use the Yankees. I bet when the Yankees,
Speaker 5: at some point, let's call it fifteen years ago, when
Speaker 5: they wanted to get merch going for women, they would
Speaker 5: make it smaller obviously, and then they would just make
Speaker 5: it pink, pink it and shrink it. So but the
Speaker 5: truth is, like not everybody wants that, right, Like I
Speaker 5: actually would prefer to have like a real you know,
Speaker 5: Yankees uniform or whatever, like a jersey. Yeah, you'd want it,
Speaker 5: like the authentic thing. You don't want the pink version
Speaker 5: that fits me. Yeah. So all that to say, the
Speaker 5: everyone watches women's sports t shirts proves the huge gap
Speaker 5: that is in merchandise in women's sports, but also it
Speaker 5: proves or business.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: For a long time, women's sports was looked at as
Speaker 5: a charity, this box some people would check. And now
Speaker 5: I think we're being looked at as like a real
Speaker 5: investment or real business. But the people involved in this
Speaker 5: world are still very much about the impact and they're
Speaker 5: still very much about making statements and making points. I
Speaker 5: think when people wear that shirt there's like a pride
Speaker 5: to it, like yeah, like this is factual now, you know.
Speaker 5: And so there's something to that.
Speaker 3: How did the T shirt come about? Like what's the
Speaker 3: origin story?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So I was not there, like I'm not in the
Speaker 5: day to day by any means. We had done a
Speaker 5: couple of different T shirt drops through the years, and
Speaker 5: then this particular time they were in a room. From
Speaker 5: what I understand, a bunch of the people that work
Speaker 5: it together just kind of thrown out ideas and you know,
Speaker 5: oh I mentioned this earlier. A lot of people were like,
Speaker 5: nobody watches women's sports, and so they were like, what
Speaker 5: can we do to like play on that, Like do
Speaker 5: we do a shirt? And you know that I didn't
Speaker 5: know what was called this, by the way, but SpongeBob
Speaker 5: SquarePants font yes, where it goes like uppercase lowercase, uppercase lowercase.
Speaker 5: So they were thinking, like, oh, do we do something
Speaker 5: like that, as if to say no, you know, you're
Speaker 5: making fun of it. And then I think it was
Speaker 5: Justine Brown a couple people in the room, they were like,
Speaker 5: why don't we just write like but that's wrong, we
Speaker 5: just have like everybody watches one in sports? And there
Speaker 5: you have it. Wow, And it went crazy And a
Speaker 5: big pivotal moment of that was dawns Daily wearing it
Speaker 5: during a South Carolina game on I want to I
Speaker 5: want to say national television. Yeah, and then it just took.
Speaker 2: Off and so is is something like that within the company.
Speaker 2: I mean, is it measurable? How do you measure the
Speaker 2: impact of something like that either on your business on
Speaker 2: the broader world, Like, what are there metrics underneath that
Speaker 2: that you can then use?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean this one's pretty simple. It made a
Speaker 5: lot of money. Yeah, it made a lot of money
Speaker 5: that wasn't expected, which obviously in business that's.
Speaker 3: Always you know, welcome millions.
Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know if I'm
Speaker 5: supposed to like but yeah, yeah, yeah, like way up there.
Speaker 5: So now, like I said, this was this this arm
Speaker 5: of the company that was there but not really given
Speaker 5: a ton of thought er dedication to. And now it's like, oh,
Speaker 5: like we have something here, like what do we want
Speaker 5: to do with this? How do we want to grow this?
Speaker 5: How we want to sustain it? And so now those
Speaker 5: are the conversations.
Speaker 2: Because you're doing team you'll you'll do a collab with
Speaker 2: a team, right with their team colors Colors.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and we did for the Olympics. We did
Speaker 5: it in French, which is really cool. So that was nice.
Speaker 5: I'm sure there's going to be Yeah, there's going to
Speaker 5: be more.
Speaker 2: And so that becomes a sort of if I'm understanding
Speaker 2: you sort of an unanticipated growth area then for together
Speaker 2: that you continue.
Speaker 3: To invest in.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, absolutely totally unexpected and now totally real.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I think we're we've all
Speaker 2: seen anecdotally but also empirically, is this rise in in viewership, Like, so,
Speaker 2: how do you how does that sort of carry through
Speaker 2: to what you're doing, the decisions you make about what
Speaker 2: to make. It's sort of the the how to, the
Speaker 2: what to, and the and the when to that you
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, So how do those viewership numbers affect you?
Speaker 5: Honestly, it's just kind of like a big I told
Speaker 5: you so, Like, oh, if you invest in this, because
Speaker 5: for me, the story of the WNBA, if I were
Speaker 5: to be like super simple about it was look where
Speaker 5: we got without any investment. Now imagine if you invested
Speaker 5: in it. Like we were able to do this while
Speaker 5: having like legit, concrete poured all over us constantly, like
Speaker 5: nothing can grow when it has concrete poured on it.
Speaker 5: And yet we still found a way. And sometimes this
Speaker 5: one's a little bit of a stretch. I'm working on this,
Speaker 5: this talking point.
Speaker 3: Your worship works time.
Speaker 5: But I always felt this I was like women's sports.
Speaker 5: Girls sports isn't some like random startup where we're like, no,
Speaker 5: trust us, Like girls aren't going anywhere, They're going to
Speaker 5: keep being born and sports isn't going anywhere. Like these
Speaker 5: two things like girls' sports and women's sports are not
Speaker 5: going anywhere. So to me, it's like why not invest
Speaker 5: in something like that? And and then of course when
Speaker 5: you start to change the narratives, that's probably been the
Speaker 5: biggest key and what I call that cool factor, Like
Speaker 5: we have this line of cool now where culturally, like
Speaker 5: like the WBA Finals, like people felt like the intensity
Speaker 5: they were steaks on that game, like you know, I'm
Speaker 5: actually not like a huge baseball fan. I like tap it,
Speaker 5: but like the World Series, like hell yeah, I'm watching
Speaker 5: that right, So we never had that where the casual
Speaker 5: is like, oh this means something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So anyways, I think changed that, Like what changed it?
Speaker 2: Because that stakes point is a really really interesting one,
Speaker 2: Like what changed the perception of the stakes?
Speaker 5: I think it's this cool factor that I keep referencing.
Speaker 5: I think we were like in the consciousness of the
Speaker 5: casual fan, we weren't worth it. It didn't matter. And I
Speaker 5: always feel like in fandom there's like three categories. There's
Speaker 5: the diehards. They're there no matter what, like, doesn't matter,
Speaker 5: they are there. They are a ride or die. Then
Speaker 5: there's the people that don't like it, which every sport
Speaker 5: has that. Yeah, the people that don't like it. And
Speaker 5: that's fine. I always say, like women's basketball, if it's
Speaker 5: not your thing, that's cool. Like, but if it's not
Speaker 5: your thing, that's cool. Like there's stuff I don't like,
Speaker 5: that's fine. But then there's that larger piece, or that
Speaker 5: larger group, which is the casual fan, right, the one
Speaker 5: that isn't really into it, but is going because their
Speaker 5: friends are going and it's cool to be there. And
Speaker 5: so we've always struggled in that and that's where I'm
Speaker 5: going back to this like consciousness, like people just I mean,
Speaker 5: we were the butt of the jokes, yeah, and it
Speaker 5: was really hard to break through. So if I were
Speaker 5: to nutshell it, I would say things that I've already mentioned.
Speaker 5: The twenty twenty season like a Page Becker's DANCA final
Speaker 5: four has always been amazing, Sodona Princess TikTok, Kobe Bryant
Speaker 5: wearing the WNBA hoodie, like there was these little moments
Speaker 5: of breakthrough and then all of a sudden, this player
Speaker 5: named Kaitlyn Clark comes and the way I frame it is,
Speaker 5: fire was going. It was burning. It was burning, and
Speaker 5: it was burning brighter like even if you look at
Speaker 5: a twenty twenty three viewership in the WNBA finals, it
Speaker 5: was way higher than twenty twenty two. Like it was starting.
Speaker 5: The fire was there. But Kaitlyn came and she poured
Speaker 5: gasoline all over the thing. Yeah, and just took it
Speaker 5: to another level and she broke through. I think with
Speaker 5: her logo threes. It was we finally had the anecdote
Speaker 5: to dunking.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, because.
Speaker 5: All anybody ever wants to say is you're not Literally
Speaker 5: they don't literally say this, but what they are saying
Speaker 5: the translation is like, you're not worth it. I can
Speaker 5: probably beat you, you can't even dunk. But now it's, oh,
Speaker 5: that girl's hitting logo threes. I don't think I can
Speaker 5: do that. Yeah, And everybody respects that. Men, women, there's
Speaker 5: a respect factor and that leads into all the things
Speaker 5: you're seeing and the cool factor and it just is
Speaker 5: born from that.
Speaker 4: So, so you talked about years ago, even a decade ago,
Speaker 4: you starting to foresee what could be for the w
Speaker 4: fast forward to where we are today, five ten years,
Speaker 4: What is the upside.
Speaker 3: For this league?
Speaker 4: Because I don't think anyone really knows that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I know. I mean I'm hopeful that in
Speaker 5: a couple of years we look at the media deal
Speaker 5: that we just signed and we're like, oh, needs to
Speaker 5: be bigger. You know, I'm hopeful for that because that's
Speaker 5: always been part of the you know, the argument like
Speaker 5: men's sports is so obviously so successful, pick a leak,
Speaker 5: it doesn't even matter. But how much growth can actually
Speaker 5: happen only like a percentage point or two, right, and
Speaker 5: you hope for that. But for women's because we haven't
Speaker 5: had the investment, the media coverage, all the things. The
Speaker 5: growth is insane and it's hard to put an exact
Speaker 5: number figure on it. I personally think my semi hot
Speaker 5: take it's not that hot. I think the women's basketball
Speaker 5: is going to be the biggest story at the LA
Speaker 5: twenty twenty eight Olympics, and I think that is gonna
Speaker 5: We're going to continue to grow in the next four
Speaker 5: years the way you've seen it this year, it's going
Speaker 5: to continue to grow. The page Beckers, the ju Ju's Flage,
Speaker 5: Johnson all of this young talent that builds huge brands
Speaker 5: and huge fan bases in college. By the way, that's
Speaker 5: another part of this whole story that was always a
Speaker 5: major disconnect. I went to Yukon, I had huge following
Speaker 5: WNBA Gon it was like it didn't come with and
Speaker 5: that's for years. Yeah, but now it's starting to. I
Speaker 5: think Nil plays a role on that, and now it's
Speaker 5: starting to. So now all these young players are going
Speaker 5: to come in, They're going to you know, hit the
Speaker 5: stage and meet up with the Caitlin's and the Stewies
Speaker 5: and the Asia Wilsons. And in four years when we
Speaker 5: hit the Olympics, that growth will will get to a
Speaker 5: point where that Olympics could then be like that next
Speaker 5: gasoline layer, if you will.
Speaker 4: You know, one way Jay's way of thinking about it
Speaker 4: is there's always going to be haters for every league,
Speaker 4: right for men and women, you name it. Everyone says, well,
Speaker 4: w has been a failure for so long. I look
Speaker 4: at it a little bit different. First of all, you
Speaker 4: got to give David stern commission David stern On a
Speaker 4: lot of credit for his vision, you know, almost thirty
Speaker 4: years ago or whatever. But if you look at the
Speaker 4: NBA compared to the WNBA in the first twenty five years.
Speaker 4: You can make an argument that a W has been
Speaker 4: more successful than that NBA in the first twenty five years.
Speaker 4: So when you think about upside, it's right on track.
Speaker 4: It is a growth business and it's doing quite well
Speaker 4: for being such a young league.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's one of the talking for
Speaker 5: mes for sure.
Speaker 4: Let me ask you this because I think it's very
Speaker 4: interesting when you said, Yukon you have this enormous fan
Speaker 4: base and it doesn't transfer when you go to Seattle.
Speaker 4: How much has social media impacted that? Because one of
Speaker 4: the things that I looked at was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: they have more followers than.
Speaker 3: Some of our guys.
Speaker 4: What's happening here? So you have a real matric in
Speaker 4: your face that you can't ignore, even if you are
Speaker 4: a hater. So how much of social media played a
Speaker 4: part in that?
Speaker 5: Huge? Huge Some of it is that we have big followings.
Speaker 5: I think you're right. A lot of times you go
Speaker 5: check male athletes and it is it's surprise. You're like, oh,
Speaker 5: it's like it catches you off guard for a second.
Speaker 5: And I'm thankful for social media. It played an incredibly
Speaker 5: huge role in what we're seeing now, not just in
Speaker 5: women's basketball, I think all of women's sports, because we
Speaker 5: were all able to use it to tell our stories.
Speaker 5: We're able to use it to show different parts that
Speaker 5: you weren't seeing. I mean one of my favorite favorite
Speaker 5: it's not a great story, but favorite because it kind
Speaker 5: of tells the story. So I'm into fashion. It's not
Speaker 5: like my favorite thing, but I like getting a fit
Speaker 5: off every now and then. And when that was becoming
Speaker 5: cool in the NBA, we were also wearing our little
Speaker 5: fits to the game. But we didn't always have photographers.
Speaker 3: Mmm.
Speaker 5: So there was a year where I had to especially
Speaker 5: on the road. So at home we could tell our
Speaker 5: team and like, hey, can we get the photographer when
Speaker 5: we show up? Cool, no problem.
Speaker 3: But on the road for your tunnel fit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for a tunnel fit. But on the road we
Speaker 5: couldn't get a photographer. There were years where we had
Speaker 5: our PR guy on his iPhone just like snap it,
Speaker 5: and then what we would do is we would post
Speaker 5: it on our own social media. And that's one example
Speaker 5: social media. There's a thousand, but that's one example I
Speaker 5: like to use to show how we were able to
Speaker 5: use social media. To show stuff that the larger I
Speaker 5: guess media landscape wasn't wasn't going to get to see
Speaker 5: if we didn't, if we didn't put it on our
Speaker 5: own channels.
Speaker 2: I'd love to talk for a minute, if we can,
Speaker 2: about your partnership with Megan Rapino, especially when it comes
Speaker 2: to the investments that you guys have made in each
Speaker 2: other's sports. Yeah, the work that you're doing together with
Speaker 2: a touch more. How does that all work and how
Speaker 2: does it evolve?
Speaker 5: Well, we're in couples therapy, so there's your answer. No,
Speaker 5: it's been good.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we hear that on the pod.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it's been great because Meghan
Speaker 5: and I are so different but really compliment each other,
Speaker 5: and we're seeing that show up in business. Like I'm
Speaker 5: you know, I just preached preparation and know when to
Speaker 5: so I'm like very much like the planner, and I
Speaker 5: like I like to like when we do our pod,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm kind of the one more leading from
Speaker 5: like one topic to the next. I'm the one like
Speaker 5: keeping that run a show in my head. Where's Meghan's
Speaker 5: more spontaneous and more off the cuff, and you need
Speaker 5: both so you're like Jason, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And what have you learned?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'd be interested in what you've learned through
Speaker 3: the Gotham investment.
Speaker 2: I would imagine, you know, these are two you know,
Speaker 2: growth leagues, different paths, different stages of growth. Women's soccer
Speaker 2: has literally failed three times already professionally in the country.
Speaker 2: The w to Alex's point has been, you know, growing
Speaker 2: solely and then all of a sudden, really quickly. What
Speaker 2: do you take from each of those?
Speaker 5: The better way to answer your question is actually, when
Speaker 5: Megan and her national team were in their equal pay fight,
Speaker 5: they were also doing a CBA and it was pretty
Speaker 5: much at the same time that we were doing our CBA.
Speaker 5: Oh interesting, Yeah, because to your point, the leagues are different.
Speaker 5: We're very lucky at times. I've called the NBA gift
Speaker 5: anna curse because it's such a gift. We wouldn't be
Speaker 5: here without the NBA. But the curse part of it
Speaker 5: is sometimes you need individual attention, you know, so that exists,
Speaker 5: but very much a gift. And the WNBA is so
Speaker 5: much further along because of you know what we've been
Speaker 5: able to learn from the NBA. Where's the NWSL It
Speaker 5: has like almost less rules whereas in the WNBA we're
Speaker 5: very much at times we're hamstrung by NBA rules. Now,
Speaker 5: sometimes they fit for us and sometimes they don't, and
Speaker 5: that's what we're figuring out or or we have been
Speaker 5: figuring out. But my point being, we were able to
Speaker 5: learn from each other to be like, oh, that's how
Speaker 5: you would do that, Like, oh, let me see if
Speaker 5: that would work over here, and vice versa. What I've
Speaker 5: seen in my time with Gotham is now that the
Speaker 5: Tish family has bought the team, you really see what
Speaker 5: it means. And I feel like you guys have done
Speaker 5: this a great job of this with the Links in Minnesota,
Speaker 5: Like you see what it is when they put investment,
Speaker 5: and you see what it is when they're like, go
Speaker 5: get those good players, Championships come finals come Now. Where
Speaker 5: the leagues are totally different is the salary cap of
Speaker 5: it all. The WNBA is a hard salary cap. There's
Speaker 5: a zero wiggle room. You are like you either your
Speaker 5: money fits or it doesn't, like that's it. Whereas the
Speaker 5: NWSL so they have like a little more there's a
Speaker 5: little more like fluidity in there. We can kind of
Speaker 5: I don't even know what to call it. It's not. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Angel City just had a thing, so I don't want to.
Speaker 2: Say we're going to move to the rapid fire portion.
Speaker 3: Ten questions. I'm gonna edit hard. You're a pro, will
Speaker 3: bounce back and forth. What's one word to describe your
Speaker 3: deal making style quick?
Speaker 4: What's more important your instincts or data instincts.
Speaker 3: Who's your dream deal making partner? Oh Man Alex.
Speaker 4: What's the best piece of advice you've received on deal
Speaker 4: making or business?
Speaker 5: Probably something in the do your homework where world. I
Speaker 5: don't have like an exact quote. Yeah, yeah, how to?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: No, one to?
Speaker 3: I mean, what's the worst advice you've been given?
Speaker 5: I haven't really been given, guys. I'm open for advice.
Speaker 5: If it wants to give me any good or bad,
Speaker 5: I am open.
Speaker 4: What's your hype song before a big meeting or a
Speaker 4: big negotiation.
Speaker 5: I'm a jay Z fan, Okay, so anything jay Z? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean to have my go tos, but Lucifers won
Speaker 5: My first song's another?
Speaker 2: You've won at the end double A level, you won
Speaker 2: at the WNBA level, and you've won at the Olympic level.
Speaker 3: What's your favorite title?
Speaker 5: God, it's really I know this is a rapid fire.
Speaker 5: It's really hard not to pick Olympic gold medals, Yes,
Speaker 5: particularly my last.
Speaker 3: One, particularly your fifth.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, But the twenty eighteen WNBA Championship does have
Speaker 5: a special place. Why because we were going through a
Speaker 5: rebuild and I stuck around for it. Whereas I could
Speaker 5: have requested a trade or tried to go win somewhere else,
Speaker 5: I stuck around. I was like, no, I'm going to
Speaker 5: do this and never expected to be there again. So
Speaker 5: to do it unexpectedly that late in my career, it's
Speaker 5: like a you do it unexpectedly early, and when you
Speaker 5: do it then you're like, oh, it's great, I'm going
Speaker 5: to be your over year you're not. But when you
Speaker 5: do it unexpectedly later in your career, there's just something
Speaker 5: special to it.
Speaker 4: If you're can to even watch one sport for the
Speaker 4: rest of your life, which one is it?
Speaker 3: It's basketball. What team do you want to see win
Speaker 3: a championship more than anything?
Speaker 5: Well, Seattle Storm, it's no other answer.
Speaker 3: Not the Huskies.
Speaker 5: You know, I wouldn't mind seeing the next one. Wow, okay,
Speaker 5: that'll be number three.
Speaker 4: Do you have a fun fact about yourself that your
Speaker 4: teammates would be surprised.
Speaker 3: To hear about Oh, good question.
Speaker 5: Probably that I made a really poor decision in college
Speaker 5: and got my tongue Pierce. WHOA, that's usually the reaction.
Speaker 3: Do you still wear?
Speaker 5: No? Our college coaches like got word that some people
Speaker 5: got it done. I took that thing out immediately.
Speaker 2: Wow, I cannot imagine's face.
Speaker 5: I was like, I thought you were saying with me
Speaker 5: having I was like, yeah, I can't even imagine anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a given.
Speaker 3: This has been really fun. Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: The Deal is a production from Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals.
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