Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Jason Kelly. I'm Alex Rodriguez, and on this
Speaker 2: episode of The Deal, George Pine. So George Pine, Alex.
Speaker 2: He is the former CEO of NASCAR, former president of IMG,
Speaker 2: now the founder of Bruin Capital. This is a guy
Speaker 2: that if you are in the sports world, you are
Speaker 2: one degree from him because he's everywhere. He's got a
Speaker 2: speed dial like no one else, has been involved in
Speaker 2: major deals and is looking around the corner constantly for
Speaker 2: what's happening next in sports.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think in many ways, Jason, guys like you and
Speaker 4: I we looked up to Warren Buffett and other great CEOs.
Speaker 4: I think this is a guy that if you're a
Speaker 4: young entrepreneur you should study.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And the reason why he has a perfect trifecta, I mean,
Speaker 4: you said it best. He's a wonderful family man. He's
Speaker 4: built an incredible business in Bruin Capital, and he's got
Speaker 4: old class relationships with an amazing culture.
Speaker 2: Here's George Pine. All right, George. Should we start the
Speaker 2: show always by having people introduce themselves, their names and
Speaker 2: what they do.
Speaker 3: George Pine, founder and CEO Brewin Capital, now I could
Speaker 3: use the Boston accent. George Pine, I.
Speaker 2: Realized, listen, when you use a Boston accent, it gives
Speaker 2: this guy PTSD.
Speaker 5: So your audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so use that, use that to your advantage. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you don't like it, question, if you don't like
Speaker 2: a question you asked, just answered, and the boss, you know,
Speaker 2: we're wondering how to start the conversation with you, you know,
Speaker 2: looking at all the stuff you've done for your career,
Speaker 2: what would you say so far? Is your signature deal?
Speaker 3: Signature deal? You know, I do? You know, I don't
Speaker 3: really look in terms of that. I think the thing
Speaker 3: probably if you ask you what am I most proud of?
Speaker 3: Maybe you know deal. Earnhardt passed away on the last
Speaker 3: lap of the Daytona five hundred weeks before I was
Speaker 3: promoted to run the company. Having to lead the safety
Speaker 3: initiatives at NASCAR through a very difficult period, it's probably
Speaker 3: the thing I'm most proud of. And then, of course
Speaker 3: that had two avenues. One was actually putting in safety
Speaker 3: policies and procedures and creating an R and D center,
Speaker 3: the first of its kind in the world, and then
Speaker 3: also too navigating the communications challenges of that because overnight
Speaker 3: NASCAR became so much more popular at that time. So
Speaker 3: that of all the things I'm most proud of, I
Speaker 3: think it is that error and dealing with that challenge,
Speaker 3: and luckily they've had almost perfect safety record since then.
Speaker 2: What was that moment, like, I mean, that was a
Speaker 2: I mean that was a similar moment in the sport.
Speaker 3: It was to lose your greatest driver of all time,
Speaker 3: and we had lost three other guys in last eighteen months,
Speaker 3: and then when the greatest of all time passes away,
Speaker 3: it just it shook the whole industry right to the core.
Speaker 3: And of course we were leading the nightly news three
Speaker 3: nights in a row and we are The scrutiny on
Speaker 3: the sport was off the charts, So that rattled you.
Speaker 3: It really rattled you to your course. So having to
Speaker 3: kind of stabilize and kind of like sports getting out,
Speaker 3: you got to go back and play the next day
Speaker 3: and dig in there and find your way through it. It
Speaker 3: was really probably one of the most challenging things, but
Speaker 3: we came out the other end and made great strides
Speaker 3: and had a real impact over a long period of time.
Speaker 3: So if you look at ask me what I'm most
Speaker 3: proud of. It's that effort.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about that, George, Because obviously, when the returns
Speaker 4: are great and you're returning capital to investors and all,
Speaker 4: that is all wonderful, But in a very very difficult
Speaker 4: moment leadership wise, what were some of the things that
Speaker 4: you did over those three days to thirty days to
Speaker 4: make everybody feel better about themselves?
Speaker 3: Wow? I think you have to lead by example and
Speaker 3: taking tough positions. I mean, we installed hans device, which
Speaker 3: was very unpopular at the time. We put data recorders
Speaker 3: in the cars, which was also controversial. So pushing through
Speaker 3: a number of changes that culturally and for other reasons
Speaker 3: the organization had never done before. But you had to
Speaker 3: do it right. So what was your option? So having
Speaker 3: the courage to push through change at a difficult moment
Speaker 3: and sticking with it and believing it and standing up
Speaker 3: was really what I took away from that. So I
Speaker 3: think a leader has to take a stand, do things
Speaker 3: that are uncomfortable, and be thoughtful at that is, you
Speaker 3: don't really want to go against the grand to go
Speaker 3: against the grain, but you know, you to lead, you've
Speaker 3: got to take a stand and do what you believe in.
Speaker 2: So over the course of this conversation, we're going to
Speaker 2: talk a lot about your leadership and candidly like your
Speaker 2: operational expertise and your operating experience and how that translates
Speaker 2: into your investment world. But I feel like I have
Speaker 2: to go all the way back. And Alex knows this
Speaker 2: because I've known you for a long time. I mentioned
Speaker 2: when I was basically a kid in Atlanta for our
Speaker 2: mutual friend Billy, and right, he started out in the
Speaker 2: real estate where you come out of Brown. What's the
Speaker 2: quick story of how you get from there me meeting
Speaker 2: you and Helene, like on club Drive in Atlanta to today.
Speaker 3: As I tell everyone, there's no way to replicate my journey. Right,
Speaker 3: I moved to Atlanta, I had five thousand dollars. My
Speaker 3: wife had a car with ninety thousand miles in no
Speaker 3: air conditioning. My car had one hundred and seventy thousand
Speaker 3: miles and only two of the four doors worked right,
Speaker 3: and we literally had to use our credit credit cards
Speaker 3: to pay the bills we had. Our friend Billy came
Speaker 3: over to our apartment and said, I feel like I'm
Speaker 3: in a college JOm. I said, yeah, this is all
Speaker 3: my stuff for my college JOm So it was a journey,
Speaker 3: but again I come from a family of athletes and
Speaker 3: didn't want to fail. Like I never really cared about winning,
Speaker 3: but I never wanted to lose, right, And so I
Speaker 3: moved away went to this new place, Atlanta. Atlanta was great.
Speaker 3: It was having the Olympics in the Super Bowl, and
Speaker 3: I worked in a big real estate company and had
Speaker 3: built twenty seven buildings in downtown Atlanta. And I was like, hey,
Speaker 3: we should get in the sports business. And my boss
Speaker 3: thought I was crazy. But on the side, I built
Speaker 3: a little sports business, signed up NASCAR in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 3: and people forget today. When I went to NASCAR, it
Speaker 3: was called Winston Cup. Sixteen races were on the Nashville
Speaker 3: Network and the company had one office and it was
Speaker 3: very small. You know, when we left here on Fox.
Speaker 3: At NBC we had nine offices.
Speaker 2: Hold on, I want to stop you there. It was
Speaker 2: not called NASCAR.
Speaker 3: It was Winston Cup Racing right as a tobacco sponsor,
Speaker 3: and people referred to Winston Cup. The NASCAR brand at
Speaker 3: that point didn't really exist, and NASCAR at the time
Speaker 3: when I went there was a company that sanctioned the
Speaker 3: races and administered the races. It wasn't supposed to be
Speaker 3: in the commercial side, and so they let myself and
Speaker 3: Brian France were anointed to go try and develop a
Speaker 3: commercial business. And man, we took off. You hit it hard.
Speaker 3: I knew we had a big opportunity and it worked out,
Speaker 3: and so it was an amazing run. The industry was great,
Speaker 3: but I wasn't a car give so, you know, I
Speaker 3: was forty years old. It had a little itching me
Speaker 3: and I want to do something else. And so I
Speaker 3: had a frantic oldman Sacks and said, hey, you know
Speaker 3: you should go see this guy Ted Forceman, he just
Speaker 3: bought IMG. And I was like, all right, I didn't
Speaker 3: know who Ted was, and I thought I went by
Speaker 3: I saw Ted. I thought it was go me thirty minutes.
Speaker 3: It was two hours. And Ted, when he wanted something
Speaker 3: was pretty compelling. And the notion of good IMG worked
Speaker 3: for a guy who is a leader in private equity
Speaker 3: to me was legend in private He said he invented it.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that too, but I felt like working
Speaker 3: for him I could learn a lot, which I did.
Speaker 3: And obviously IMG was in thirty countries and so running
Speaker 3: a company that operated in thirty countries that was in
Speaker 3: wide array of sports. Working for a guy like Ted,
Speaker 3: for me was like, all right, that sounds good.
Speaker 4: So I like when you mentioned Ted force me because
Speaker 4: the first time I heard of him was when he
Speaker 4: bought twenty four hour Fitness from my partner, Mark Mastrow,
Speaker 4: and I think they did that deal for about a
Speaker 4: billion eight marchers loved working with him.
Speaker 5: But tell us a little bit about Ted.
Speaker 4: Our listeners, probably a little bit younger, don't know much
Speaker 4: about Ted, but he's a legend. Tell us what he
Speaker 4: meant to you and what were some of the attributes
Speaker 4: unless as you learned from him.
Speaker 3: I had really three great mentors. And Atlanta, a guy
Speaker 3: named John Portman who was one of the great American
Speaker 3: architects at twenty five million square feet of real estate,
Speaker 3: and I work with him through a financial restructuring, and
Speaker 3: then working at NASCAR for Bill France. Bill France was
Speaker 3: another billionaire, very successful guy, and then working for Ted Forsman.
Speaker 3: So I learned different things from different people. Ted what
Speaker 3: I really learned was he was very conservative and a
Speaker 3: little bit negative. But boy, if he was able through
Speaker 3: structure to come up with an idea to minimize the risk.
Speaker 3: Like the guy was all in right away. And so
Speaker 3: what I really learned from him was, and I tell
Speaker 3: my kids, the risk reward ratio, what's the upside, what's
Speaker 3: the downside? Is it worth it? And if it's worth it,
Speaker 3: you go for it. That's what I took away from Ted.
Speaker 3: The other thing from these three guys all highly successful,
Speaker 3: they all worked, they worked hard, They're smart. I'll tell
Speaker 3: you one of the funny one is, so my last
Speaker 3: day at NASCAR, I'm going to lunch with Bill France
Speaker 3: and Jim France, two billionaires. Where do we go? We
Speaker 3: go to stake and shit, and they're wearing like short
Speaker 3: sleeves and we're driving home and I said, I go, guys,
Speaker 3: can you give me one piece of advice? It's great advice.
Speaker 3: They said, no, when to squeeze and no when not
Speaker 3: to squeeze, And that was it, right, But that was
Speaker 3: kind of having the judgment of knowing when to push
Speaker 3: and when not to push. So like watching these guys
Speaker 3: Dan and Dale for me was a great, great learning experience.
Speaker 2: I mean, what's the transition like from what I mean
Speaker 2: you go from these two like iconic people in American
Speaker 2: business and finance. Was there any sort of transition from
Speaker 2: working for the Frances, you know, you know pretty well
Speaker 2: codified family business to Ted Force, I mean barbarians at
Speaker 2: the gate. How do you sort of adjust mentally like
Speaker 2: what are you going home and saying to Helene of like, okay,
Speaker 2: this is this is a different world.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So NASCAR was because it was a family business.
Speaker 3: Really all you had to do was convince the family
Speaker 3: of the right thing to do, and you're doing immediately
Speaker 3: no politics, which I love, and there was no kind
Speaker 3: of political maneuvering and so that was great for me.
Speaker 3: And I was kind of a guy that went out
Speaker 3: there in the fields and did the work and you know,
Speaker 3: brought the goods home and did it again and did
Speaker 3: it again. And when you went to Ted, Ted was
Speaker 3: an investor, not an operator. And investors sometimes when they
Speaker 3: don't know a business, there there are a lot of
Speaker 3: different inputs, and when you're running a global company, there's
Speaker 3: a lot more politics. And I was not When I
Speaker 3: first went to I'MGA i was forty years old. I
Speaker 3: was like, hey, if you're doing a good job and
Speaker 3: you're driving results, that should be good enough. And what
Speaker 3: I learned in that environment was that may not be
Speaker 3: the case. So it's you know, I tell people, you know,
Speaker 3: you need good style, but also up in substance, and
Speaker 3: I was more substantive I think at NASCAR, and I
Speaker 3: needed to work on the style kind of the presenting
Speaker 3: and being a little more political, which I didn't like
Speaker 3: quite honestly, and we don't have it brewin today. But
Speaker 3: that was if you said to me, what was different?
Speaker 3: You know, working for a global financier who has a
Speaker 3: lot of inputs, you've got to be a different set
Speaker 3: of management skills working for a family business and delivering results.
Speaker 2: And so what was the like you get to IMG
Speaker 2: and what's the biggest challenge that you took on there?
Speaker 3: Well, the biggest challenge is trying to reinvent and grow
Speaker 3: the company, which you know, one of the things with Ted,
Speaker 3: which was great training for me and I knew it
Speaker 3: when I took the job, was all right, you know,
Speaker 3: my job is to grow earnings. Right, Scale doesn't matter, profitless,
Speaker 3: volume doesn't matter, growing earnings.
Speaker 2: Because he's an investor.
Speaker 3: He's an investor, and so how to grow ibadah is
Speaker 3: was the thing that you know, we got trained in
Speaker 3: and measured, but ironically, you know the one thing that
Speaker 3: I learned a long time although I going back to
Speaker 3: Portman when I made a huge mistake, I used to
Speaker 3: criticize people for not having a plan. When I went
Speaker 3: ran my first business, I didn't have a plan. I
Speaker 3: got really taken to the woodshed on that. I said,
Speaker 3: I'll never run a business without a plan. And so
Speaker 3: how's a guy that you know his wife taught him
Speaker 3: how to drive a six shift, run NASCAR and set
Speaker 3: rules and so forth. Because that I was a very
Speaker 3: big three year plan guy. So we had to write
Speaker 3: a business plan and you checked in on a business
Speaker 3: plan a month on strategy and numbers. And when what
Speaker 3: happened NASCAR, Bill Frantz is like, you know what, it's
Speaker 3: working pretty good on the commercial side. Why don't we
Speaker 3: take this discipline and put it over to the core business.
Speaker 3: And that's what got me on the racing side from
Speaker 3: just the commercial side, and that has served me well.
Speaker 3: It served me really well working for TED because I
Speaker 3: have a very diligent planning strategy. It's not I look
Speaker 3: at it this way like numbers are like your blood pressure,
Speaker 3: cholesterol or whatever. They'll tell you what's right or wrong
Speaker 3: with the business, but they're not going to solve it. It's
Speaker 3: the strategy drives the numbers. The numbers can firm the strategy.
Speaker 3: I always been a big believer in that. Even yesterday
Speaker 3: I was in a staff meeting. I'm like, hey, guys,
Speaker 3: you know, let's make sure we have a collaborative approach
Speaker 3: with our companies and just someone doesn't show up in
Speaker 3: December and presents me a business plan. Let's start now
Speaker 3: digging in with people and let's go through the drafting
Speaker 3: of it. So I found that working with people, developing
Speaker 3: a strategy and then having the numbers check the strategy
Speaker 3: has really worked well for me for thirty years. I
Speaker 3: learned that at Portman. Actually, so I.
Speaker 4: Specifically on IMG you said one of the things you
Speaker 4: were looking to do from Teddy's kind of from the top.
Speaker 5: Is grow ibadat right.
Speaker 4: Maybe one or two examples of what strategy did you
Speaker 4: take and how did you move that number in the
Speaker 4: right direction.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, one of the ones I'm really happy
Speaker 3: about is IMG Academy. When you take about IMG Academy
Speaker 3: was they were really great at training athletes, the lead athletes,
Speaker 3: you know, Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, Maria shrup of a
Speaker 3: really great athletes had been through there, but for thirty
Speaker 3: years it had never been profitable. Right, So I put
Speaker 3: in a guy today who's at the Barclay Center and
Speaker 3: running the Nets. Sam's ustman. He was well educated, he
Speaker 3: went to Stanford Business School, Tel Aviv Law School. Sam
Speaker 3: came in as my chief of staff and I put
Speaker 3: him in to run IMS Academy. And Sam's a brilliant guy,
Speaker 3: but he had worked at McKinsey in yield management and
Speaker 3: running a sports academy is like running a hotel or
Speaker 3: in Sam's case, understanding the yield management in the airline industry.
Speaker 3: So we took IMG from not being very profitable too
Speaker 3: profitable in a very short amount of time, turning it
Speaker 3: into more of a place where you could go to
Speaker 3: go to college versus where we're going to get the
Speaker 3: next Maria Sharapova. And I was really proud of that.
Speaker 3: We bought this amazing IMG Academy just SILD for I
Speaker 3: think roughly one point two billion dollars, like ten or
Speaker 3: eleven years ago. We bought forty percent. We only owned
Speaker 3: sixty percent of it when I got there. We bought
Speaker 3: forty percent of IMG Academy for six million dollars and
Speaker 3: a two year payment plan. And it was hard because
Speaker 3: we did it during like nine and you know, cash
Speaker 3: we were managing cash tight. I had to go to
Speaker 3: the wall. That was like moving a mountain to get
Speaker 3: six million dollars to buy forty percent of the academy.
Speaker 3: They never been profitable for but you know, recently just
Speaker 3: SILD for like one point two billion dollars. So anyway,
Speaker 3: so that's one. And then you know, we had a
Speaker 3: lot of fun building the college business. We'd never been
Speaker 3: in college. And one thing I learned from Ted which
Speaker 3: served me well today, was we had to go around
Speaker 3: and find places to grow earnings that didn't exist. And
Speaker 3: so we did this. We looked, I looked at everything.
Speaker 3: We looked at all these different sports. And I had
Speaker 3: one of my buddies who used to be my CMO
Speaker 3: at NASCAR. I started getting these numbers on college sports.
Speaker 3: It was like one hundred and ninety million fans number
Speaker 3: one with young people, ethnically diverse, a wealthier audience than golf. Right,
Speaker 3: think about most CEOs went to college, right and gender neutral.
Speaker 3: I call my guy, I said, his name's Roger Vandersink,
Speaker 3: he's at the colts now, I said, Roger, I go,
Speaker 3: where did these numbers come from? He goes, oh, George,
Speaker 3: we never compared ourselves to college sports, and so we
Speaker 3: made investments in college sports and it turned out to
Speaker 3: be a real at IMG, I'm a real growth engine
Speaker 3: for us, and that was probably in two thousand and ten,
Speaker 3: and we were the first really guys that got the
Speaker 3: ball moving there.
Speaker 2: What does that look like when you're investing into college sports,
Speaker 2: Like so many things that you've done, they seem so
Speaker 2: obvious now, but they were not obvious at the time.
Speaker 2: So how did you invest in college Well, so the
Speaker 2: idea was I took a look at those numbers. I
Speaker 2: was a gas, right, and then you start looking at
Speaker 2: our Take Atlanta. You have the Atlanta Falcons and the
Speaker 2: Georgia Bulldogs. Now we lived in Atlanta, so you know, like,
Speaker 2: who's more popular, truthfully the Georgia Bulldogs, it's not really,
Speaker 2: it's not close.
Speaker 3: And so like when you look at all, right, what
Speaker 3: revenue does the Falcons generate and what revenue does the Bulldogs?
Speaker 3: And all of a sudden, the Falcon's away up here
Speaker 3: and the Bulldogs are down there. So I'm not the
Speaker 3: smartest guy, but I was like, you know what I
Speaker 3: want to do, I'm going with those guys and we
Speaker 3: should be and try to sell sell like the like
Speaker 3: the Falcons, And so we had. It was a big restructuring.
Speaker 3: I mean we I think we had. Unfortunately, we had
Speaker 3: a reploy had four hundred salespeople replaced three hundred and
Speaker 3: eighteen months, and so you had it was you had
Speaker 3: to replace people because you were selling differently. We wanted
Speaker 3: to sell like the Falcons, not like the Bulldogs, and
Speaker 3: we had to go out and get guys from the
Speaker 3: other leagues to come in and help us.
Speaker 4: You know, Georgia, I'm sorry you lost me a little bit.
Speaker 4: Take me step back. So you're invested in to the Bulldogs,
Speaker 4: the Georgia Bulldogs, But what does that mean. I mean
Speaker 4: that you're managing sponsorships or you're investing into the university
Speaker 4: walking through that.
Speaker 3: So there were companies, small companies at the time that
Speaker 3: had the marketing rights to these companies, and what we
Speaker 3: did is we rolled them up and when we left
Speaker 3: were representing eighty five universities WOW on sponsorship and local
Speaker 3: media rights, and then two hundred universities in licensing.
Speaker 2: So you were repping the schools and essentially replacing an
Speaker 2: infrastructure that was probably like local or regional right like.
Speaker 3: We were trying to That was kind of the whole,
Speaker 3: ye whole, So your point makes sense now, But transformation
Speaker 3: at that time, Oh yeah, go ahead of the cur
Speaker 3: that was the big driver of growth during the IMG time.
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Speaker 2: Visit YouTube dot com slash Bloomberg podcast and click the
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Speaker 2: Bloomberg Survey hosted by our partners material Go to YouTube
Speaker 2: dot com slash Bloomberg Podcast Today. It's really interesting to
Speaker 2: think about that sort of trifectave experiences. But what were
Speaker 2: you seeing in the business of sports that you found
Speaker 2: so compelling as you moved along.
Speaker 3: Well, when you think about sports anywhere in the world,
Speaker 3: it's the only thing that aggregates hundreds of millions of
Speaker 3: people together around something as a statement of who you
Speaker 3: are and what you stand for. So that connection, which
Speaker 3: at NASCAR, those fans were loyal in college is you're
Speaker 3: loyal Yankees fan, very loyal, and so what you really
Speaker 3: want to do is try and tap into that loyalty
Speaker 3: that's unmatched. And you know, in this world now where
Speaker 3: media consumption is fragmented, there are very few things that
Speaker 3: pull people together, right, And then when you think about
Speaker 3: all these new devices that can deliver content, you're really
Speaker 3: tapping into the consumer. I look at sports today like
Speaker 3: in a fragmented world, sports become more valuable. And where
Speaker 3: I think sports is going is this whole concept of
Speaker 3: the lifetime value of the consumer, right, because really it's
Speaker 3: a one to one relationship and I'm going to you know,
Speaker 3: I'm a Yankees fan. I want Yankees content. I want
Speaker 3: to know everything about the New York Yankees. And having
Speaker 3: that one to one relationship might give me permission to
Speaker 3: suggest products and services that are relevant, you know, to
Speaker 3: the Yankees. And by the way, you can take that
Speaker 3: to Europe. It's the same thing in any of those
Speaker 3: football clubs or leagues. It's the passion of sports and
Speaker 3: that one to one connection that's unlike anything else and
Speaker 3: will become more valuable because the media and the way
Speaker 3: we communicate so much more fragmented today than it was
Speaker 3: ten years ago.
Speaker 2: So take us through, you know, arguably the biggest sort
Speaker 2: of personal deal you make, which is you've been working
Speaker 2: for these like big companies. You've had these incredible, like
Speaker 2: iconic business figures you've worked for, and then you decide like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do my own thing, and not just
Speaker 2: I'm going to do my own thing, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to move from being an operator to being an investor.
Speaker 2: Like what's that thought process?
Speaker 3: Like the thought process was you had success in growing
Speaker 3: earnings and I could now apply this to a different
Speaker 3: area for myself. And I think we had talked a
Speaker 3: little bit about you know, the transitions. You know, when
Speaker 3: you're in a company, it's political, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: have a more horizontal, entrepreneur, results oriented kind of situation.
Speaker 3: So that was appealing to me. And you know, I
Speaker 3: was forty eight years old, and I was like, hey,
Speaker 3: if i'm forty years old, i fail, you know, I'll
Speaker 3: be fifty two or fifty three and I'll come back
Speaker 3: and take a job. Right But I said, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm going to wait till i'm sixty to take my shot.
Speaker 3: I was like, it's the age always meant a lot
Speaker 3: to me. You know, I was forty years old at NASCAR.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, do I see myself here? Twenty years old?
Speaker 3: I want to take a shot at something else. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm forty eight years old. You know, now's the time
Speaker 3: to take a shot. I'm twenty five, I'm going to
Speaker 3: move away from home. I have no money, so what
Speaker 3: if I feel like can always move back home again? Right,
Speaker 3: So like I'm forty years old, it's time to take
Speaker 3: a shot now. It was a big difference. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm in the one hundred and eighty eight dollars a
Speaker 3: square foot forty fourth floor of the GM building with
Speaker 3: all the great trappings, and you know, I'm in white
Speaker 3: planes at the Regis temporary office. I didn't even have
Speaker 3: a secretary. I mean I had, I didn't everyone to
Speaker 3: answer the phone. So really, literally was that journey. And
Speaker 3: I have to say, forty years old, it was nice
Speaker 3: to know that I was still that scrappy, you know
Speaker 3: that I still I still could get in there and go.
Speaker 3: And we built this thing from nothing, right, and we
Speaker 3: built it up, and yeah we're you look at Bruin today.
Speaker 3: We operate in seventy one countries. We have people on
Speaker 3: the ground in twenty countries. You know, we work with
Speaker 3: every major League of federation in the world. And you know,
Speaker 3: I literally started from regis temporary office in White Plans,
Speaker 3: New York.
Speaker 4: So, George, let's go back to when you were forty
Speaker 4: eight you said you want to take your shot. Now
Speaker 4: you talked about a three year plan. Walk us through
Speaker 4: your three year plan. How much are you raising, what
Speaker 4: are you trying to invest in? And there's for in
Speaker 4: laymans terms for viewers and listeners who don't know much
Speaker 4: about brow and walk us through that a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what the idea was was to invest in
Speaker 3: things that were very similar to the businesses that we built.
Speaker 3: You know, NASCAR, we came in, there were four people
Speaker 3: in the commercial division. When we left, there were hundreds.
Speaker 3: I don't know how many, but a lot of people, right,
Speaker 3: And so we built a media capability, We built a
Speaker 3: pure capability under scrutiny, you know, we built a sponsorship capability,
Speaker 3: a licensing capability, of marketing capability. Right then and then
Speaker 3: at IMG we're in thirty countries or in wide ranges
Speaker 3: of sports. We had to do a lot of restructuring,
Speaker 3: which I hadn't done a lot of NASCAR was more
Speaker 3: organic growth, and IMG was restructuring and then investing right
Speaker 3: working for a demanding guy who was really quite bright.
Speaker 3: So the idea was I did good at that for
Speaker 3: other people. You know. I had a friend of mine
Speaker 3: and said, hey, why don't you do it for yourself
Speaker 3: and your partners? I said, well, how do you do that?
Speaker 3: He goes, I'll help you do it, and you know,
Speaker 3: here we are.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us who that friend was?
Speaker 3: Cave Cars thro Shi at Allen Company. Cave was like,
Speaker 3: in the day that it was announced that Endeavor was
Speaker 3: buying IMG, called me up. He said that you're ready
Speaker 3: to go yet, And of course I wasn't ready at
Speaker 3: the time, but he you know, I had been I
Speaker 3: knew IMG was going to sell, and so I had
Speaker 3: to think about, like what do I want to do?
Speaker 3: What's the next step for me? And so I had
Speaker 3: been thinking about this probably two years prior to the sale,
Speaker 3: and Cavet was like, hey, man, you got to do it.
Speaker 3: And I was, you know, first of all, when you
Speaker 3: were at least I and I work, I loved the company.
Speaker 3: So it's always hard to lead like when I left NASCAR,
Speaker 3: I cried right, and it's like it's hard leaving these
Speaker 3: places when you give everything you have. But it was
Speaker 3: just an itch I needed to scratch. Whatever that was
Speaker 3: saying is.
Speaker 4: So, George, I want to go back to when you
Speaker 4: were forty eight. I'm forty nine, so I'm obsessed to
Speaker 4: this time of your time.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 5: There's nothing harder than raising a first time fund.
Speaker 4: You're an entrepreneur, you're an operator, but you haven't really
Speaker 4: raised a lot of capital at that point.
Speaker 5: A how scary is it?
Speaker 4: How big of a fund were you trying to raise,
Speaker 4: and how difficult was it for you or how easy
Speaker 4: was it for you to raise that money?
Speaker 3: Well, by the way, it was a lot harder. It's
Speaker 3: a lot harder than I realized when I started. I
Speaker 3: was lucky that my friend Cave essentially went to his
Speaker 3: clients and said, believe in this guy. And if it
Speaker 3: wasn't for Cave, I would not have I wouldn't be
Speaker 3: sitting here right now. And if I knew how hard
Speaker 3: it was to raise money, I think stupidity in this
Speaker 3: case was a real asset for me. And if I
Speaker 3: knew how hard it was, I probably wouldn't have done it,
Speaker 3: but uh, but having surrounding myself with good people and
Speaker 3: uh and people that believed in me. You know, Cave
Speaker 3: really delivered. And I have to think you know Martin
Speaker 3: Cerell too. Martin Crell is the CEO of w PP,
Speaker 3: and he came up to me and said, hey, I'm
Speaker 3: in for a third of the raise as w PP,
Speaker 3: no matter what the amount of money. Wow, you raised it.
Speaker 3: And of course, of course for me that was helpful
Speaker 3: in the race. So between you know, Martin Cerell and Cave,
Speaker 3: those two guys really, you know, meaningful. And you can
Speaker 3: hear my voice, I'm very appreciative of those two people,
Speaker 3: you know, to this very day.
Speaker 5: How much was it I'm going to take here.
Speaker 3: It didn't take very long. It was like six or
Speaker 3: nine months and we raised two hundred and fifty million. Nice, Holy,
Speaker 3: so amazing. Well, you know, Alex, you transitioned from you know,
Speaker 3: really probably as well as anyone. I know. What was
Speaker 3: it like transitioning from being a successful athlete to being
Speaker 3: a successful entrepreneur? And how are you able to Why
Speaker 3: do you think you're able to do that? Because you've
Speaker 3: done amazing?
Speaker 5: Thank you, George.
Speaker 4: You know, First of all, I think I've had some
Speaker 4: incredible mentors, you know, starting with George Steinbrener. So watching
Speaker 4: George Steinbrenner execute what I call VCP that he had
Speaker 4: the vision hit the capitol and he has great people,
Speaker 4: and those people have been there for north of twenty
Speaker 4: five years, so continuity was really important. I saw there
Speaker 4: was a great arbitrage in people and duration of those people.
Speaker 4: When I thought about my career, I said, well, if
Speaker 4: I can surround myself with the best people and take
Speaker 4: a forty or fifty year outlook in my business versus
Speaker 4: my competition was about the next five months or the
Speaker 4: next year, more transactional, I felt that was something that
Speaker 4: was really good. And then kind of staying in my
Speaker 4: circle of competence sports and real estate is what I
Speaker 4: know best, and I'm pretty dangerous in those spots, and
Speaker 4: I'm pretty like I don't know much about much else
Speaker 4: after that, and I just try to stay in those
Speaker 4: two places, bring in the best people, and just you know,
Speaker 4: run the heck out of these companies and do the
Speaker 4: best I could.
Speaker 3: Well it's amazing. I think it's amazing what we did
Speaker 3: in baseball, obviously, but I think the real estate, and yeah,
Speaker 3: what you've done in business is more amazing because there
Speaker 3: are a lot of amazing baseball players and athletes out there,
Speaker 3: but there aren't people that were the best at the
Speaker 3: athlete and being able to transition and do what you've
Speaker 3: done in business. So congrats man, thank you. Because I've
Speaker 3: been around this thing a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've seen it not go that way. And so
Speaker 2: one of the things that's so interesting, and we sort
Speaker 2: of alluded to this at the top, is you're getting
Speaker 2: into the sports ecosystem, which again seems so obvious now.
Speaker 2: And listen, we look around. We see all these funds
Speaker 2: that have been created. We see your friend Roger Goodell
Speaker 2: at the NFL like embracing private equity, which we never
Speaker 2: thought might happen. But you clearly saw something from an
Speaker 2: investment perspective in the broader ecosystem early. What was it, Well.
Speaker 3: You know what I saw with TED and IMG. Ted
Speaker 3: was early an early adapter. Maybe there's one or two
Speaker 3: others where he invested. He was a private equity guy
Speaker 3: that invested in IMG. Yeah, which at the time was
Speaker 3: unheard of and somewhat controversial. And what I saw was
Speaker 3: if you could deploy capital against good ideas and sports
Speaker 3: you could get great results. And so the idea was, Okay,
Speaker 3: we've done that a few times at IMG ted deployed capital.
Speaker 3: We deployed capital and got great results. You know, now
Speaker 3: we can do you can do this on your own.
Speaker 2: And you're thinking of like IMG Academy, like specific initiative.
Speaker 3: IMG College or other businesses that we bought along the
Speaker 3: way and saying, hey, we had a lot of success
Speaker 3: with that. You know, there's more opportunity here. And of course,
Speaker 3: you know when you kind of look back on me, now,
Speaker 3: what was unique was IMG was in thirty countries, and
Speaker 3: so we have a globe at Bruin, we have a
Speaker 3: global network. You know, we have fourteen Bruined advisors, many
Speaker 3: guys who had work with me at IMG, some people
Speaker 3: who compete with me at im G or now brew
Speaker 3: an advisor. So we have a global network. And sports
Speaker 3: there are investment opportunities literally in sports all around, all
Speaker 3: around the world. So when you look at it from
Speaker 3: a global standpoint or international and so there's a there's
Speaker 3: a big world out there.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting is you're not buying teams, or at
Speaker 2: least not yet. You have you know, really invested it again,
Speaker 2: I'm over using this, but like in the in the ecosystem,
Speaker 2: in some of the adjacencies. So what's the underlying theory there.
Speaker 3: Well, I think when you look at lower middle market,
Speaker 3: private equity traditionally has huge growth potential and you can
Speaker 3: take these businesses and really grow them. And so when
Speaker 3: we come in there, we're able to We've been through
Speaker 3: this now, we've we've experienced growing companies now brewing a
Speaker 3: fair amount. So we go into these middle market companies
Speaker 3: at you know, one stage and can add a lot
Speaker 3: of operational expertise and then obviously with our network now
Speaker 3: we open up markets and we can take these companies
Speaker 3: around the world that you know, quite honestly, they couldn't
Speaker 3: do it on their own. An example would be Delta Trade.
Speaker 3: When we acquired Delta Tree and had no US business.
Speaker 3: When we sold Delta Tree, half the business was was us.
Speaker 3: What does that company? They do? Webs apps and streaming
Speaker 3: and so you know, when you look at you look
Speaker 3: at us, we're able to open up new markets, whether
Speaker 3: it be you know, I said, we do business in
Speaker 3: seventy one countries, but we're big in Europe, we're big
Speaker 3: in the United States, and we have a big presence
Speaker 3: in Australia and we're able to cross sell, so that's
Speaker 3: a real value add on opening markets. And then you know,
Speaker 3: we have a team of people that really work in
Speaker 3: operations and I'm an operator, right, so like, you know,
Speaker 3: we're still I'm still pretty hands on, you know, I was.
Speaker 3: I was talking to a CEO yesterday. We had a problem,
Speaker 3: and I'm a little I'm a little more polished than
Speaker 3: they used to be. But h we had a pretty
Speaker 3: substantial problem, and I, you know, knowld ME might have
Speaker 3: been a little more progressive. I was like, look, you know,
Speaker 3: you got a great business and doing great things. And
Speaker 3: then I said, look, I've made a lot of mistakes
Speaker 3: and here's a list of all my mistakes. So let's
Speaker 3: be honest with one another. Let's work to figure it out.
Speaker 3: Our guys like that. So if you talk to our CEOs,
Speaker 3: we do because they're our best sales. When we buy
Speaker 3: a company, like, they're happy. And it's quite different than
Speaker 3: other forms of private equity because typically because the people
Speaker 3: that lead the deals or deal guys, they're not subject
Speaker 3: matter experts. So like when you do something with us,
Speaker 3: there are no boards, there are no committees, Like, we
Speaker 3: actually know what we're doing now. I have it the
Speaker 3: advisors and experts, but we have people that actually have
Speaker 3: done it, right, not somebody like I know two people
Speaker 3: that used to do it. So they're gonna whisper in
Speaker 3: my ear and I'm gonna they're gonna tell me what
Speaker 3: to do. Like, we know what we're doing, and we're not.
Speaker 3: We're not doing healthcare, we're not doing these that we're
Speaker 3: doing sports and media and entertainment.
Speaker 4: So George talking about Brun, if Jason was selling you
Speaker 4: on a pitch, right, walk us through what is the
Speaker 4: perfect what I call the two oh fastball right down
Speaker 4: the meadow for Brun meaning here's a space and we
Speaker 4: can make it up. Here's the earnings, here's the ibadah,
Speaker 4: and walk us to what excites you about that and
Speaker 4: how you think about growing and helping Jason as a found.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it would be if somebody earning ten or
Speaker 3: twenty million of EBITDA right that you know we've invested
Speaker 3: mostly in technology, not always well why technology, because the
Speaker 3: growth fundamentals are in technologies. Right. So occasionally we'll see
Speaker 3: things on location proof in the putting, we'll see a
Speaker 3: few things along the way where we think through our
Speaker 3: expertise we can add a lot but most of its technology.
Speaker 3: So it would be probably a check or data related
Speaker 3: company that had on its own great growth fundamentals and
Speaker 3: really you really like the CEO. And what the lens
Speaker 3: I always look through is can this company grow or
Speaker 3: not on its own? And if I don't believe in
Speaker 3: the growth, we can't touch it. Then the other lens
Speaker 3: we look at is through our network, can we add value?
Speaker 3: And it's important because if you have a great investment,
Speaker 3: then we can make it even better. And if, by chance,
Speaker 3: which happens, we're wrong, we can prop it up.
Speaker 4: Okay, So in this case, Jason's company is throwing off
Speaker 4: ten minutes dollars of ibadah most of a free cash flow.
Speaker 5: He wants ten times, you want five times. How do
Speaker 5: you land on?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 5: Is it seven and a half?
Speaker 2: Is it six?
Speaker 4: Obviously depends on the growth trajectory. Walk us a little
Speaker 4: bit through how you think about it? Yeah, well I
Speaker 4: like this company.
Speaker 2: This is great.
Speaker 3: You're just doing the number. Yeah, exactly. Well, usually there's
Speaker 3: a there's a margin of what what the multiple is.
Speaker 3: Now I will say for us, like, we don't want
Speaker 3: to be with someone who if it's all about I
Speaker 3: want to get the last nickel. Ironically and thankfully most
Speaker 3: a lot. I think you know, more than half our
Speaker 3: deals are one on one deals where people have just
Speaker 3: sought us out. There's not really a process because if
Speaker 3: you think about it, if you do your diligence on us,
Speaker 3: and you're a founder, like we're quite compelling if who
Speaker 3: you sell to matters, right, because like I've worked my
Speaker 3: whole life, I've built this company up, and now you know,
Speaker 3: I want to take a little cash off the table
Speaker 3: and I'm probably going to take more risk because we'll
Speaker 3: deploy CAW to do acquisitions, we'll open up markets, and
Speaker 3: of course we're going to be pushing for growth. So
Speaker 3: then if you're a founder like, well, who do I
Speaker 3: want to do that with the guy who said listed
Speaker 3: all his mistakes when someoneent wrong before we get into
Speaker 3: what went wrong, or somebody who's highly educated wagging their
Speaker 3: finger at you that's never run a business, And that's
Speaker 3: really where So that with our discussions not so much
Speaker 3: about the multiples, it's about hey, do we culturally agree?
Speaker 3: And I always tell the guys because I am a
Speaker 3: bit of a salesman like, I'm not and I don't
Speaker 3: want to sell it. I'm not selling anything. Like once
Speaker 3: we acquire your company, we can never part ways, so
Speaker 3: I don't want to convince you to do something you're
Speaker 3: going to do. So I'm always like, hey, if we
Speaker 3: buy a company, these are the expectations. Are you comfortable
Speaker 3: with it? And if you're comfortable with it, this is
Speaker 3: how we roll. And you know that's kind of how
Speaker 3: it works. So we don't the price thing. You know
Speaker 3: that there's a range of the price. We're going to
Speaker 3: pay a fair value whatever that might be. But if
Speaker 3: you're about the last nickel, it's probably not a guy
Speaker 3: that I want to spend the next X amount of
Speaker 3: years with.
Speaker 2: I'm not about the last night. I'm not about it
Speaker 2: the last night.
Speaker 3: I'm Mike.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna give it back to you. But it sounds
Speaker 4: a lot like the Berkshire Hathaway. Yeah, Charlie Munger Wander.
Speaker 2: One of the areas obviously very near and dear to
Speaker 2: us is the media world. You know, we're sitting here
Speaker 2: on our podcast. You invested in Box to Box, I
Speaker 2: believe not too long ago, which we I mean everyone,
Speaker 2: I'm guessing listening to or watching this show has consumed
Speaker 2: something that Box to Box made, especially Drive to Survive,
Speaker 2: which I feel like revolutionized the way we think about
Speaker 2: sports and sports media. Talk to us about that deal,
Speaker 2: how it came about.
Speaker 3: What you saw at this moment with that deal, Well,
Speaker 3: a couple of things. I see two great CEOs, James
Speaker 3: and Paul are very talented people. I have a good
Speaker 3: friend of mine, David Hill, who used to run Fox Sports,
Speaker 3: and I called Dave and he raved about them. It
Speaker 3: meant a lot to me. And then their product is
Speaker 3: really good. They do drives in full swing. They do
Speaker 3: kind of the behind the scenes for sports, you know,
Speaker 3: around the world. They're a market leader, and they fit
Speaker 3: well with us because they're they're global, right. We're helping,
Speaker 3: you know, we've been able to add some relationships and
Speaker 3: contacts with them as well. But I felt like I
Speaker 3: always wanted to get in media if I could find
Speaker 3: a smart way to do it, and where we see
Speaker 3: growth for them. You know, they podcast short form media.
Speaker 3: They haven't really done they haven't invested capital, they've never
Speaker 3: taken risk on the deal, they've never done acquisitions. I
Speaker 3: think there's opportunities for branding content so we saw four
Speaker 3: or five things that we think we could add, but
Speaker 3: again we were it was guys we believed in and
Speaker 3: guys we felt like we could add add something to
Speaker 3: In terms of a few client doors for them. They
Speaker 3: don't need too many because they're very global themselves. But
Speaker 3: they're great at what they do. And I love being
Speaker 3: with them because you get on a phone with them
Speaker 3: and like zoom, and they want to be great. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'll give you a little example. So one of the things,
Speaker 3: you know, my companies are very under leveraged. It's good
Speaker 3: in one way, but we have to be a little
Speaker 3: better at that. And so we put brought all our
Speaker 3: companies together in London, and I brought in an expert
Speaker 3: on debt because I'll never I don't I learned a
Speaker 3: long time ago making adults do things they don't want
Speaker 3: to do probably not going to work out too good
Speaker 3: for you. So I brought in this expert on capital
Speaker 3: markets and had them talk to the companies and these
Speaker 3: guys like embrace it and we just got our first
Speaker 3: credit facility for the company. But it was because they
Speaker 3: were interested and as I say, the guys, look, we're
Speaker 3: not going to lever it up will below lower leverage
Speaker 3: than everybody else, but let's be the best we can be,
Speaker 3: and they want to be the best they can be.
Speaker 3: And it was kind of a new area. So like,
Speaker 3: that's somebody that wants to be great at everything they do.
Speaker 3: They want to embrace new things and they're just hungry
Speaker 3: and they're really are and creative. So I'm really happy
Speaker 3: with those guys.
Speaker 2: And so what is it So when you're assessing when
Speaker 2: you're getting to know as CEO or a founder, like,
Speaker 2: what's that process like? Because I know you to be
Speaker 2: like incredibly personable, very humble, great family man. What's your vibe? Like,
Speaker 2: how are you getting.
Speaker 3: To know someone? Well? You got to often you go
Speaker 3: to dinner with them and try to socialize. And what
Speaker 3: I'm really trying to decide is is the person driven?
Speaker 3: What's the team?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Do I believe in the growth fundamentals of that business?
Speaker 3: And if I believe the growth fundamentals of the business
Speaker 3: and I really believe in the CEO, then it's you know,
Speaker 3: it feels good? And can I add value? Can we
Speaker 3: can we add value? If we don't? If we can't
Speaker 3: add value, then all we are is placing a bet
Speaker 3: on something and I'm not. I'm not a better I
Speaker 3: got to know, like I can add value to something
Speaker 3: great or if it goes wrong, can I add value?
Speaker 2: I want to go back to college sports if we can.
Speaker 2: Because one of the really interesting things about you I'm
Speaker 2: totally like taking advantage of, like knowing a lot about
Speaker 2: you I'm here is that you obviously you know, have
Speaker 2: been involved with college sports from a business perspective, but
Speaker 2: also as a dad. Your son Drew is a very
Speaker 2: successful quarterback on the college level. I do wonder like
Speaker 2: being able to wear those different hats. What's your perspective
Speaker 2: on sort of college sports at this moment, because it
Speaker 2: feels like such a revolutionary and kindidly like sort of
Speaker 2: fraught moment for college sports. How does it feel to you?
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's going through change, right, it's going
Speaker 3: through change because it's very successful, and it's so successful
Speaker 3: that the money became so significant that you know you
Speaker 3: have to share it with the players. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: when you think about the college football playoff game, one
Speaker 3: game eighty four million dollars in meteorites before all the
Speaker 3: other things. If you have eighty thousand people paying one
Speaker 3: hundred bucks a ticket and all the concessions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so one game is worth eighty four million million dollars.
Speaker 3: Do you think for two or three hour game? Three
Speaker 3: hour game, If that game's generating over one hundred million
Speaker 3: dollars for three hours, don't you think the guys on
Speaker 3: the field should participate? I estimated to be six to
Speaker 3: eight billion dollars a year generating college sports. Shouldn't the
Speaker 3: play people that are on the field at play. And
Speaker 3: so what's happened is the courts used to be deferential
Speaker 3: to the college model, but in this amount of revenue,
Speaker 3: the courts have now sided with the players. And so
Speaker 3: you're going to have to change. And by the way,
Speaker 3: change isn't easy, and it's hard in college because nobody's
Speaker 3: in charge. There's you know, everyone's their own independent person.
Speaker 3: If you know, USC and UCLA were part of a
Speaker 3: conference till they weren't right, right, So you have a
Speaker 3: bunch of competitors that work for their self interest. And
Speaker 3: so with no one in charge in a highly successful industry,
Speaker 3: you're going to have a little bit of turbulence. But
Speaker 3: I think at the end of the day, it'll all
Speaker 3: work itself out. You know, we went through all this
Speaker 3: with the Olympics, right, Oh, we shouldn't play the athletes,
Speaker 3: So we shouldn't play the athletes. Boy, I thought the
Speaker 3: Paris Olympics were amazing, unbelieva right, So like, and those
Speaker 3: are everyone's making money, No, nobody cares. In five or
Speaker 3: ten years from now, this thing will you know, make
Speaker 3: its way through. And you know, I have a little
Speaker 3: bit of laughter about this because I you know, semi
Speaker 3: knowledgele on football and my family's been playing college football
Speaker 3: for over one hundred years. You know, those playoff games
Speaker 3: last year Michigan and Alabama, you know it went down
Speaker 3: to the last play. Yeah, right, Like the product on
Speaker 3: the field pretty good. Yeah, So all this talk about
Speaker 3: yeah you're gonna blow it's the Florida State game was
Speaker 3: a blowout and then whatever bullet was. But so what
Speaker 3: there are always blows but those playoffs yeah amazing. So
Speaker 3: like the off field stuff of how what the player
Speaker 3: movement is, do the players get paid? It'll get figured
Speaker 3: out and it won't be easy.
Speaker 2: I mean. One of the things that I know, Alex
Speaker 2: and I both admire about you and have watched over
Speaker 2: the years in various venues, some of which you've been
Speaker 2: you know, the convenor of you know everyone, I mean,
Speaker 2: you really have like cultivated and unbelievable that there's no
Speaker 2: one that I talked to in sports who's more than
Speaker 2: like two degrees and often one degree away from you.
Speaker 2: Is that purposeful? Like, what's the what's the method to that?
Speaker 3: Well? I think a couple of things. There's a little
Speaker 3: bit of a track record, right, NASCAR was a good job, right,
Speaker 3: and then at IMG a lot of people we were
Speaker 3: their clients. But I think truthfully, you know, like an
Speaker 3: old shoe, you know, if you're around long enough and
Speaker 3: you're a good person and you deliver results and you
Speaker 3: do what you say you're going to do, you know,
Speaker 3: it pays out for you. Now everyone's got their angle, right,
Speaker 3: that's my angle, you know if I tell you, and
Speaker 3: I learned it from Bill Bill Frantz when he hired me,
Speaker 3: because I got three things where you said, tell the truth,
Speaker 3: work hard, don't embarrass the company. I'm still quoting it today, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I knew that if I told somebody and ask her,
Speaker 3: we were going to do it. We were going to
Speaker 3: do it. And so like that had an influence on me.
Speaker 3: And even Ted was honorable and so to me. It's like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, tell someone you're going to do something, you
Speaker 3: do it. Yeah, you try and do it in a
Speaker 3: nice way. I try to emulate Roger Penske. I told
Speaker 3: Roger I was with them this summer. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: some of these guys had impact on me. You know,
Speaker 3: So I think that is the basis from which you
Speaker 3: build out trust and respect over decades, right, And that's
Speaker 3: what you're seeing in the benefit. That's my stick. Doesn't
Speaker 3: mean it's everybody's stick, but that's my stick.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, one of the things that's fascinating
Speaker 2: about you, George too, is that, like you're so tight
Speaker 2: at the highest levels of all the major sports in
Speaker 2: the US and abroad. You're one of the only people
Speaker 2: I know who I feel like can call every commissioner
Speaker 2: of every league and like, get on the phone. What
Speaker 2: do you hear from those folks these days about sort
Speaker 2: of the state of the sports leagues? Because obviously that
Speaker 2: has a big direction in terms of your own investment
Speaker 2: thesis of where things are going, Like take us inside,
Speaker 2: some of those conversations.
Speaker 3: Really have to be kind of bullish right now, because
Speaker 3: when you look at the NBA to get two and
Speaker 3: a half times on their media deal is really amazing.
Speaker 3: Adam did an amazing job there. When you look at
Speaker 3: the NFL with all the contracted television revenue, they have
Speaker 3: really strong. NHL's got a long term deal, strong, Baseball's
Speaker 3: doing well. Everyone seems to be doing I mean, NASCAR
Speaker 3: did a great TV deal. Like all this stuff about
Speaker 3: how the media is changing and the fragmentation, nevertheless, the
Speaker 3: sports have held up really strong. So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think I think the big issue in sports today
Speaker 3: is that you do see institutional investors coming into sports.
Speaker 3: Capital is going to change the game. And so my
Speaker 3: advice to someone is, hey, if I'm running a sports team,
Speaker 3: I'm running a league in an organization, I need a
Speaker 3: capital plan to differentiate myself from my competitor number one,
Speaker 3: number two, I need a defensive capital plan. So whether
Speaker 3: I want to act on it, I need I need
Speaker 3: a phone call like, hey, if I'm if something's coming
Speaker 3: in with capital is going to disrupt my sport, what
Speaker 3: am I going to do about it? So I don't
Speaker 3: think you can just sit back, maybe like you used to,
Speaker 3: and say, well that's not for us. You have to
Speaker 3: have a capital plan and look at golf. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to make any commentary on what's good
Speaker 3: or bad. But look, somebody with capital showed up and
Speaker 3: the game changed. The other guy, I do he had
Speaker 3: to go out and raise capital, right, and a lot
Speaker 3: of it and a lot of it, and so like,
Speaker 3: if you're in sports, whoever you are, you better have
Speaker 3: a capital plan to go on offense and defense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an interesting but I hadn't thought about it
Speaker 2: exactly that way. But you know, you think about the NFL.
Speaker 2: If private equity is going to come into you know,
Speaker 2: even a half a dozen franchises, that doesn't just change
Speaker 2: those franchises, It changes the other twenty six is what
Speaker 2: like in terms of them, you know, having to figure
Speaker 2: out what their plans are going to be in terms
Speaker 2: of they're spending or.
Speaker 3: Well, it's going to change it, right, So you're you know,
Speaker 3: I think they've done a really good job of limiting
Speaker 3: it right and making sure that you know that the
Speaker 3: investors have really no say right, right, and so they're
Speaker 3: not their life's not really changing for the NFL, but
Speaker 3: they're benefiting from an influx of institutional capital into the industry.
Speaker 3: That money is going to go to provide liquidity for
Speaker 3: limited partners that might have had a hard time getting liquidity,
Speaker 3: might solve some family issues on some of these teams
Speaker 3: that are family owned. And it's going to provide capital
Speaker 3: perhaps for real estate investment and reinvent in the franchise.
Speaker 3: In lastly, it's going to increase the value of the
Speaker 3: franchises because you have more bidders. So again, the institutional capital,
Speaker 3: well controlled in this case, is changing the game, right
Speaker 3: and so, and probably over time will change it more.
Speaker 3: As you know better than I that other sports, the
Speaker 3: number is higher than ten percent. And in order for
Speaker 3: these franchises to keep growing and growing in value, you're
Speaker 3: going to have to look at different outlets for capital.
Speaker 3: I mean, to buy an NFL team, now you need
Speaker 3: two three billion dollars. Ear gets a little thin, and
Speaker 3: think about what rights you get. You know, if you're
Speaker 3: one of the guys in the Commanders that put four
Speaker 3: or five hundred million year for no rights, right, so
Speaker 3: that's getting harder and harder.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty expensive season ticket and it's a nice.
Speaker 3: Problem to have, but you're the victim of your own success.
Speaker 3: So you're going to have to understand the capital markets
Speaker 3: and have a long term capital plan. But again, it's
Speaker 3: all against the backdrop of success, right, everybody would love
Speaker 3: to have these problems.
Speaker 2: I think, all right, so let's do a quick rapid
Speaker 2: fire around. So this is the only thing I'll say
Speaker 2: is like, keep it tight. We'll bounce it back and forth.
Speaker 2: What's one word to describe your deal making style?
Speaker 3: Decisive?
Speaker 4: What's more important to you your instant gut or data
Speaker 4: instant gut.
Speaker 2: Who's your dream deal making partner?
Speaker 3: Someone's well capitalized and smart.
Speaker 2: What's the best piece of advice you've received on deal
Speaker 2: making or business? No?
Speaker 3: Whe to squeeze and when no, not to squeeze.
Speaker 5: What's the worst piece of advice you ever received?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I didn't pay attention.
Speaker 2: Do you have a hype song before you go into
Speaker 2: a big meeting or negotiation?
Speaker 3: No? But a good work. It's a good substitution.
Speaker 5: If you can only watch one sport for the rest
Speaker 5: of your.
Speaker 2: Life, what's sport?
Speaker 3: What it be football? Football? American football?
Speaker 5: And what's your favorite team?
Speaker 3: Uh? Patriots? My dad play for the Patriots. I have
Speaker 3: to go for Patriots.
Speaker 2: What team do you want to see win a championship
Speaker 2: more than any?
Speaker 3: Missouri tires.
Speaker 5: There you go, go for your son answer.
Speaker 4: One fun fact about George Pine that if your colleague
Speaker 4: chart about it, they would be shocked.
Speaker 2: They're surprised I played the veal. O. Wow. Listen, this
Speaker 2: was really, really fun. I feel like it's decades in
Speaker 2: the making. So thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 2: It's great to see you and great to be with you, guys.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thanks, thanks, sure,
Speaker 2: thanks so much for listening to the Deal. If you
Speaker 2: never want to miss a story, become a Bloomberg dot
Speaker 2: com subscriber today. Check out our special intro offer right
Speaker 2: now at Bloomberg dot com Slash Podcast Offer or click
Speaker 2: the link in the show notes. You'll also unlock deep reporting,
Speaker 2: data and analysis from Bloomberg reporters all around the world.
Speaker 1: The Deal is a production from Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals.
Speaker 1: The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Anamazarakis, Stacey y Wong, Lizzie Phillip, and
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