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Bloomberg Business of Sports
MLB's Growing Wealth Gap; Bloomberg's Brackets for a Cause Winners
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The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America. Get closer to where business meets the beautiful game with a hospitality package featuring premium seats and entertainment. Get closer to wins on and off the pitch. Register interest@hospitality dota.com interest when you own.
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Business of sports can be intimidating or hard for a starter to break into. We really appreciate when our owners are.
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Actually there, you know, with us through the journey.
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Teams, ours especially, have been very intentional to diversify at all levels of the company.
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I think we're in the golden years for the NFL and college football. Our demographic reach has continued to expand.
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This is going to be really unlocking the streaming platform for sports fans.
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Sports valuations are rising. We'll see when they peak.
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You don't have to be the best.
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In your sport to make a whole ton of money.
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Bloomberg Business of Sports From Bloomberg Radio.
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This is the Bloomberg Business of Sports. We explore the big money issues in the world of sports. I'm Michael Barr along with my colleagues Damian Sassour and Vanessa Brnomo. Coming up on the show, we talk a little baseball. Now that the season's well underway, we take a look at the growing divide between MLB's haves and have nots with Bloomberg News global business reporter Ira Budway. Plus, we talk with the founder and CEO of vao, an innovative event management company. We'll learn about what they're doing to enhance the fan experience.
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Vao hosts up to 10,000 guests and seats. So we have a proprietary seating software that integrates with all the tools in our platform. We have a proprietary ticketing software. So everything is all in one. But what's very cool is not only do we host up to 10,000 guests and seats, you can have up to 400 people working in the platform in real time.
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All that is straight ahead on the Bloomberg business of sports. But first, we've got winners in the NCAA basketball tournaments.
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It's an even dozen for Gino Auriemma and Connecticut.
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Florida is back on top of the college basketball World Championship Madness. Paige Beckers and the Yukon Huskies won on the women's side while the Florida Gators won in a thriller for the men. Sounds like a great time for Vanessa Bernomo. She recently did a write up on Bloomberg's Bracket for Cause and can take us through her final thoughts on this year's March Madness.
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F
So it's the 10 year anniversary of Brackets for Cause that we do here at Bloomberg and it's just a mix of, you know, lots of people who have big money and they want to, you know, put it in and they actually raise money for charity. So it's a $20,000 buy in. They each have a different charity that they vie for and its CEOs, it's hedge fund managers, VCs, everything like that. And this year actually saw the first ever back to back winner for the men's bracket, the bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd. She said before that she, she can't give away her secrets, doesn't like to give away her secrets and filling out her bracket. But a couple of other people I talked to the women's bracket winner Jeffrey Taupins and George Walker, they tied for like they both had 211 points. This was a different year for the brackets and a lot of people had the higher seeds going further. But they both likened filling out their brackets to business and risk taking and calculated risks.
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A
By the way, that's back to back is the first time that has ever happened doing this. Like you're saying, but it's hard, it's hard to pick a winner out of this. I mean it's because like you said, it's like if you go off the board and you try to like okay, maybe I can zoom in and this and that, whatever, and win it that way. But no, this was one of those where, you know, you had the number ones pretty much going.
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F
Yeah, this was the first time in since 2008 that all number one seeds made the final four for the men's side and, you know, I think one of the reasons we've seen that a lot of people are likening it to Nil and the transfer portal, and, you know, now mid majors are losing their players after a year or so, so we're seeing a lot of that. But obviously the top seeds were just really good this year. But I think one of the interesting things for Whitney winning again was she didn't get swept up in the Duke, you know, bandwagon that I got swept up in Cooper flag and that. So that was another reason why I didn't do too great on the men's side.
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A
And we should add too, that Whitney Wolfe Herd. She was playing for Baby to Baby, correct?
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F
Yes, she was playing for Baby to Baby. Jeffrey Talpins is playing for American Prairie, which is doing a really interesting thing with, you know, they're trying to make the largest reserve in the U.S. george Walker was playing for the MSK Cancer center, which is a research institute here in New York City. So obviously, a lot of these people were just playing for really, really big charities that they have a lot to do with overall year round. So it was good for them. And because of Jeffrey and George both tied, they got first place and second prize split between their two charities.
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A
When you fill out a bracket, folks, and I've always said this, and we have to wait till next year to do it again, I like to fill it out in reverse. I. I like to fill out who I think is going to win. That's how I filled out the women's bracket, because I thought, okay, UConn's going to win it. And then I went in reverse the other way. I had Auburn going all the way, which. Well, we know how that came out.
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Yeah, I think, you know, obviously a lot of people were split between UConn and USC, and obviously South Carolina is. Has been top of the women's bracket for a long time. So I think it was easy, easy there. But I think a lot of people obviously, including me, had USC going far because of juju Watkins and. But we're happy for Paige Becker. She's going to get drafted into the wnba.
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Let's give a little forward look to this for our audience. Yeah, I mean, I think DraftKings and FanDuel are picking who Duke and Houston to lead to win it next year. Right. So again, they're looking for some repeat performances here.
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Houston could, you know, do it, I think. I mean, after that way of losing, I think you come back very, very hungry because that was. That was a rough way to lose.
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Oh, yeah, Duke, I'm sorry. I'm watching that game and I'm like, no, the refs had nothing to do with this, unfortunately. You know, things happen, but they're young men and, you know, they're going to bounce back next year, and I always support that.
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It's all about character, building, comeback. Hungrier than you were before.
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We forgot to add that everybody who plays on this puts up 20 grand.
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They put in $20,000 for the overall prize pool. And because this has been going on for 10 years, over $6 million has been raised by brackets. Fair cause.
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Wow. Very good. I wish I had that money to.
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Right. You know, actually Douglas, who was overall, globally, said, you know, he reached out to me and said, you know, great story. You know, I was so excited to get the top score overall. But he said, you know, hopefully one day I can be a part of that. You know, I can be a part of the giving up $20,000 for charity and really have some skin in the game. And I think that it's a really fun thing for. For the CEOs, for the managers, for everyone who's involved in brackets for a cause. I think they love to do it. People do it. Clearly, Whitney's done it multiple times, winning back to back. So I think people like to come back to it. It's more fun. Even when you have skin in the game for someone else, you're donating money to a good cause.
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In one thing that we were looking at, Vanessa, and we were talking about how the ncaa, how they're doing well in, you know, with the ratings and that's going on. But they also had a settlement with involving nil. And hopefully this will bring a path toward at least giving the money to people who said, hey, we couldn't make any money because you guys held us back. College athletes. And now there's been a ruling in that.
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Tell us about that. There hasn't been a ruling quite yet. You know, on April 7th there, there was a. Another hearing. And the federal judge basically kind of nodded her head and said, you know, this will most likely be approved. But there's another hearing, I believe, in either June or July where she will make that final decision. But there was a couple of things that she needed, you know, them to address. And one of those being there's this revenue sharing model that is really what's going to change everything, that people like players will actually finally get paid. And that's what you're talking about there, Michael. Schools will be able to opt in for this and about share about 20, $20.5 million with their student athletes in revenue sharing models that they've never been able to do before. But the problem there is that not everyone, you know, makes money and now they're going to have to give money to the players and know how to sparse it out. So there's like threats to Title nine that because they're going to give most likely a lot of money to football players and men's and women's basketball players. And then they want to make sure that addressing Title 9, they give scholarships to every player on a roster, which means any sport. But the problem is colleges can't really afford to do that. So the threat was players are going to start getting cut. I like I spent, I played college soccer the way that it works for college, for women's college soccer, we get 12 scholarships or so and they sparse them out through the team. I mean you can't really make a soccer team with 12 people. So we had about a roster of like 30 players. A few players were walk ons, they didn't have scholarships at all. But most of us had partial scholarships. And then they're made up by, with whatever else they can be made up with. But the problem is they want the whole 20 to 30 people to have four full, you know, full scholarships. And that's where there's a miscommunication and they think that that's where a lot of the tension could come from. And the judge wants them to rule that grandfather in the players who are already on rosters and things like that.
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Can you imagine if you had nil when you were playing soccer?
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You know, I think about it a lot and I think about it, you know, I talk about, I talk to other college players. You know, my step siblings also played in college and they played revenue generating sports. Yeah, they played. You know, my steps is who played basketball at Georgetown and my step brother played football at B.C. so you know, he would have made some money. Okay, so we talk about it a lot. I mean I personally as a women's soccer player, I think I would've had hustle really hard to, you know, make money because we don't really see a lot of women's soccer players getting those sorts of deals. But hey, if it was a possibility, I would have made that hustle. You know, I'm saying like I would have made it happen. And it all depends on the market you're in. We're in. I played in Pittsburgh and I could imagine a lot of Pittsburgh, you know, companies are really, you know, focused on having Duquesne players out at, you know, things and meet and greets and things like that. And I would have done anything I could have just to, just to get a little bit more money because we couldn't really work. We can't have jobs.
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No, I mean, but you could have like, you know, and that's what a lot of nil people are doing now. It's like, you know, but that's a Perdomo for the Ford Mustang. Yeah. And you could have done that. And now you're driving around in a Mustang.
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Yeah, 100%. I mean, that's what we see. Like Livy Dunn, who's a gymnast at lsu, you know, she's one of the only gymnastics, you know, athletes who's that high up. She's, I think she's third overall in nil. $3 million or something's her net worth. You know, she just made it her own and really, really went for it. And that's what you got to do. You know, we see some players who are walk ons, you know, getting deals and it's all about the hustle. It's all about the hustle, you know, unless, you know, you're a basketball player, football player at a power conference. And you don't really have to do anything to make that money, but good on you because you deserve it, actually.
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And, you know, it's about name, image and likeness. But I don't, don't quit. Because you got to build the name first to make name, image and likeness.
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Yeah, I think that's the hard thing that we're seeing again with, with this March Madness in particular, that was like a little bit affected by that. You know, seven out of the 15 players that were all on the All American, you know, Associated Press, were players that went to mid majors and then, you know, went on to bigger schools after that. And I think that those mid majors were just, you know, struggling to pay them what they could. But with revenue sharing, we're going to see that maybe those mid majors that are basketball centric, like a Big east, like an Atlantic 10, that don't have to play football players, they're gonna be able to compete with those. So maybe we'll be able to see that eventually get back, you know, up into, you know, they'll, they'll start, there's, they'll start happening again. But this year was, was a rough year for, for the mid majors.
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Check out Vanessa Perdomo's latest reporting on the tournament and brackets for cause now on the terminal and@Bloomberg.com up next, we turn to the baseball diamond and the growing divide between the league's wealthy and the teams trying to get by. For Vanessa and Damien Sassour, I'm Michael Barr. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business of Sports, Bloomberg Radio around the World The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer. It's the ultimate celebration of sports and culture and an opportunity to elevate your company. Get closer to where business meets the beautiful game with a premium hospitality package. Build partnerships in the best seats and suites. Achieve goals over world class food and beverage. Get closer to wins on and off the pitch. Register interestospitality dota.com interest Join Bloomberg in Houston or via livestream on November 4th for the Future Finding the Opportunities this 2025 event series will examine how companies are investing in their businesses to create efficiencies, innovating their products and services and improving the customer experience.
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This series is Presented by Invesco Q. Q. Q. Register at Bloomberg live.com Future Investor Houston.
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That'S Bloomberg live.com/Future Investor Houston this is.
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Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio.
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This is the Bloomberg Business of Sports where we explore the big money issues in the world of sports. I'm Michael Barr along with Damien Sass our and Vanessa Bernomo. The MLB season is well underway following an offseason that saw some of the league's top teams last year, the New York Yankees, Mets and the Los Angeles Dodgers adding big name stars to their rosters and spending a lot to do so. It's adding to a growing divide between the haves and the have nots of baseball. Bloomberg News global business reporter Ira Budway did some reporting on that lately and he's here now to take us through it. Ira, welcome back to the Bloomberg Business of Sports.
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Always a pleasure.
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Hey, you wrote a great article. You talked about no easy way to fix Major League Baseball's wealth gap. Obviously the big teams, you've got the Yankees, you've got the Mets, you've got the Dodgers. And then on the low end of the scale are teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates. Talk to us why we have such a gap? I mean, I guess I look at it like, okay, you have people in the world that are rich that can afford a Porsche. Then you got people in the world that are doing okay and maybe can afford a Lincoln. And then you got people like me that can just afford a Chevrolet Vega. So I mean, it seems like that's the same setup for baseball teams.
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Yeah, in a way you're right. It's like somebody went in and bought a Volkswagen and is trying to race the people who bought a Ferrari. You know, in the same field of teams, the revenue for the Dodgers or the Yankees just far outpaces what teams in, you know, what the Pittsburgh Pirates can bring in, or even the Milwaukee brewers or the Tampa Bay Rays, Baltimore, you name it. There's a lot of teams that just don't have the revenue because baseball is a sport that depends on local revenues. In large part, you get ticket sales and you got your regional TV deals. And those are local. Those are for that team mainly. So it just sets up a huge imbalance that's coming to the fore because now you're seeing that gap open up in what they're spending on payroll. And the fans look at that and they go, well, I start spring knowing I'm not even in this race. We can't keep up.
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And by the way, Vanessa, I don't want anybody from any of their teams coming at me with a torpedo bat and slapping me upside.
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Now, you don't want to get hit with one of those. I don't think it seems like they can hit pretty good.
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I'm just stating, you know, the obvious here about money.
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I think they know it too, though. And one of the things that I thought was funny in the piece you wrote, Ira, is what Hal Steinbrenner had said to you, that even they can't compete, even the Yankees can't keep up with the Dodgers spending. And I was like reading that as a Yankee fan, a little annoyed. And then I could imagine fans of other teams being annoyed. Like, what are you talking about?
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You.
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You could if you wanted to. So how does that even work, him saying that? I mean, they're still the most valued, highest valued team in baseball.
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Yeah, I mean, he said that on his own network, to be clear. On, yes, network. But he, you know, I think a lot of people heard that and raised an eyebrow, certainly Yankees fans, after, you know, he said that after Soto went to the Mets. Right. He lost out on that bidding war. You look at the Yankees and yeah, they. Any team technically can deficit spend. Right. Steve Cohen, I'm not sure, is balancing the books right now in the Mets. So if Hal Steinbrenner wants to lose money or lose more money, then he could. Right. But the question is like, what is reasonable to expect of owners? Where are their limits? You look at the Pirates, their owner is apparently losing money year over year a little bit. They've been taking on debt the last three seasons. Not enough to local reports Right. So that's what the fans would say is either keep taking on more or sell the team because this isn't working. But you could argue that they need some help to restructure this whole thing so that it can work for people like that who are rich but not mega rich, who have good markets but not great markets. Shouldn't it be possible for teams to compete without going deep, deep into debt? What is the model here?
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C
Ira, this article is amazing. There's no easy way to fix Major League Baseball's wealth gap. That's Ira Budway. Here's the interesting thing. I can't believe anyone's reading it because all Ira does is beat up on the Pittsburgh. And let's be clear, this is nothing new. The Pirates are one in five this year, six straight losing seasons. I think they've had a losing season in 28 of the last 32 years. This is nothing new. And by the way, the Players association isn't going to change. They're not going to put a salary cap in. As you rightly point out, Tony Clark is not amenable to putting a salary cap in to stop the bleeding. My question for you is what, if anything, is left to change the endemic wealth gap in Major League Baseball?
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I mean, there's a few things you can imagine, right? They've been adding to the luxury tax, Cohen tax. The Cohen tax keeps getting steeper. And that basically is a way to say, all right, we don't have a salary cap, but if you spend over a certain threshold, you're going to be taxed. I mean, at this point, the Dodgers, the Mets, when they sign a guy for 13 million, they're basically paying double that. Their marginal tax rate is 110%, right? So if they get it's 26 million, but they don't seem to care for them to get a $13 million player at this point. So that's one Aven you could keep trying to push that lever to see where Steve Cohen's pain threshold is. That creates a war between the big markets and the small markets. The owners who are receiving that revenue sharing money, that luxury tax money basically have a different set of interests than the owners who are paying it out. I think that's why they're looking at the salary cap as, from the owner's perspective, a better option. Because then you take the problem and you put it in the players rather than on your fellow owners. I think that's why we're headed for a lockout at the end of next year, because I think they're going to try to get a salary cap in baseball and that's going to be a real fight.
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Well, and Damian said it. I mean we just have an article that's out there on the terminal. The average MLB salary tops $5 million for the first time ever. And according to AP, and it's like Damian saying you put a salary cap in, well, the toothpaste out of the tube. I mean, who's going to say, all right, I'll take a pay cut?
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Yeah. I mean the way salary caps tend to work in other sports is they benefit the middle class, so to speak of that league, the players who are not the superstars. And if you look at baseball, it's interesting, you got these massive eye popping contracts. Juan Soto $765 million. But the amount of money of revenue going to players in total is less in baseball than it is in the NFL, in the NBA where they have salary caps and they have negotiated an amount, basically half that goes to the players. In Major league baseball it's 46% and it's going down. And so there are a lot of rank and file players who actually might stand to benefit from a salary cap. And so that's another sort of tension in this that's going to have to get resolved. The Juan Sotos of the world don't actually necessarily share an interest in how this works with your journeyman player who's, you know, trying to, you know, gone into free agency but is not going to set a record on their deal.
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F
But is it not like wouldn't it just change a little bit? Maybe they're like shorter deals or something like that. Because we do see $50 million, you know, quarterback deals in the NFL. It's not like they don't get paid a lot, right?
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No, I mean the NBA and NFL, the stars do great, but, but relatively the guys who are like a tier or two down, you see eye popping deals for those guys in the NFL and in the NBA because of the way the cap is structured. Basically it sort of creates a slightly fatter middle. Right. Which I think is what if you see a salary cap come to baseball, it's going to be at the cost of ownership saying we promise you you're going to get 51% of revenue or something like that. Right. They're not going to be able to get it without shelling out more than that.
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Is that a compromise they'd be willing to give?
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I mean, that's what we're gonna, we're gonna see. I mean, I honestly from people I talk to. No one knows, right? Baseball's gonna push for a salary cap. The union's gonna say no, there's gonna be a lockout. Everyone seems to agree on those parts of this. But then what happens next, right? How long does it last? Who blinks? If they do get a salary cap, what does that look like? I don't think anybody knows.
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C
Well, here's the thing. There has to be some sort of a blueprint here. I mean, there are teams out there in recent memory like the Royals, like the Devil Rays, you know, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays that have won the World Series championship. And they are small market teams right? Now, riddle me this. Is it just that ownership for those ball clubs are willing to spend on par with the Yankees? Or maybe it's something because the Double Rays played in the AL east, they're getting incremental revenues from playing the Red Sox and the Yankees. I mean, I'm just trying to wrap my brain around why the Pirates are stuck in this 28 of the last 32 years, they've had a losing season and no one seems to be taking notice. I mean, I guess people in Pittsburgh are taking notice of it, but who cares about them? No, I mean, Ira, seriously, is there a recipe?
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People care. It's the best stadium in baseball.
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It is a shame. It's a great franchise with a great history. But yeah, I think one answer is Moneyball, right? Be smarter. But obviously not everyone can be smarter. The definition is you're at a level above in your ability to identify talent and develop it and make smart transactions. I think being smarter can get you. The Rays are proof that you can do it on a consistent basis. But even they haven't won the World Series. And if you look at which teams are last year in the nlcs, in the alcs, who were the teams who was in the World Series. There is an opportunity to sneak in there. The Orioles had a great season a couple years ago. It's not like it's impossible. With a little bit of luck and some smart ownership, you can have moments as a small market team where you get in there. But the imbalance is getting to be, I think, pretty glaring just in terms of who has the opportunities to win it all compared to, you know, you don't. You don't have a Kansas City Chiefs. Yeah, right. There is no equivalent to that.
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C
All right, can I suggest for your next article, you talk about bigger market teams who can't seem to win at.
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E
All, like the Detroit.
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F
Well, I was gonna say that. The thing is, it's really only worked for the Dodgers. They're really the only team who's spending this kind of money. And it's really worked. I mean, it hasn't worked for the Yankees in, we know well, so the.
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E
Dodgers, the Dodgers are basically have the most money and have smart management, right? And so if you're playing Moneyball with a huge bag of money, then you're gonna be really, really good. And I think everyone's starting to wake up to the fact that we might be reaching a point where it's like, you might as well. You know, baseball's got a lot of randomness, injuries are there, nothing is guaranteed. But you just look at it right now and you go, well, if they're healthy, they're gonna be there in October. Right? You don't really need to play the season.
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A
I know we're out of time pretty much. But I got a creative on what maybe the smaller markets can do and that is I think of Paul Skeens. I mean, you talk about a pitching ace, that's great for the Pirates. Okay, maybe in fact his rookie card went for more than his salary did when he hopped in the league. That, that's incredible. But what if the team said, okay, listen, we can only pay you so much, but we're going to call a place like maybe Ford and say, listen, can you like give him a deal or something, man, for endorsement and it's.
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E
Not allowed, but I like the way you think.
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A
Well, see, I'm always on the down low. You can see what happens here. But anyway, Ira Woodward, thank you, my man. We appreciate you coming on the Bloomberg businesses sports. We appreciate it.
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E
Thank you.
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A
Check out his latest work now@Bloomberg.com and on the terminal. Up next, we take a look at how an event management company is looking to enhance the fan experience. For my colleagues, Damian Sassour and Vanessa Bernomo, I'm Michael Barr. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio. Around the world.
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There are two kinds of people in the world. People who think about climate change and people who are doing something about it. On the Zero podcast, we talk to both kinds of people. People you've heard of, like Bill Gates. I'm looking at what the world has.
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Using climate as a moral crusade. And the creative minds you haven't heard of yet. It is serious stuff, but never doom and gloom. I am Akshat Ratty listen to Zero every Thursday from Bloomberg Podcasts on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you get your podcast.
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This is Bloomberg Business of Sports From.
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Bloomberg Radio, thanks for joining us on the bloomb business of sports where we explore the big money issues in the world of sports. I'm Michael Barr along with my colleagues Damian Sassauer and Vanessa Bernomo. Joining us now is Jennifer Brisman. She's founder and CEO of vow, an innovative all in one event management platform looking to power what's called the experience economy in sports and entertainment. Well, first you gotta tell us what is vow? Because this looks like a very interesting company.
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D
Amazing. Thank you for asking. Well, I am a 20 year event producer and I very much built a B2B to VIP product to manage premium and premier experiences across sports entertainment, the business of sports, corporate philanthropy and more. So our all in one system allows event professionals to be superheroes, to essentially have an end to end interconnected tool that unifies event management. So managing the details of an event as well as people management. So what we call fans, guests, participants, it allows an organizer to manage all of these things at scale. And in a guest or a fan's hand, it puts an engagement app to drive an end to end experience for that guest. So that's what we're doing over here and we're modernizing how event pros plan and we are making it more elegant and elevating the guest experience at unbelievable scale and really ensuring that everybody going to end any gathering anywhere feels like vip. And that's, that's really what our value system is and that's really what we're driving towards.
- [30:32]
F
Jennifer, I'm curious, you know what was missing in the market that you felt like when you were planning things that you really needed and what you're doing for these planners now, what I found.
- [30:43]
D
Was missing was the ability for an event professional to engage them, right? As opposed to just hitting their inbox with email after email after email or just touching them with a flat ticket. And there's a whole journey of things that if you are going to an NBA game, if you're going to an investor day, if you're going to south by Southwest, you are a guest and you need stuff. Not just stuff when you enter the facility or the venue or the arena where they hit you with point of sale, point of sale, point of sale, you need things you might need. Hotel, nightlife, dining, parking. You might want to have a sense of where your colleagues are staying, if you're a speaker or what suite you're going to. And so Val really takes what in my opinion is a really 1990s experience that we all have when we attend live events and VIP gatherings and it really blazes it into the future and it also uses your data in the right way. So right now when you guys are going anywhere, you guys are getting hit over and over again by emails, whether from the brand, whether from the stadium, the event organizer and Val really changes all that. It's really there as a personal assistant in the palm of your hands to elevate and blaze your guest experience. So what I found as an event organizer is the only way that I could touch my guests or my fans or my attendees is just to hit them more on email. And that's just not the right way to go. And so we really built something that we want the end user to love so that event professionals can do more, can take time back and execute more high level experiences.
- [32:31]
A
Okay, so old man Barr wants to go to his favorite sporting event, a NASCAR race. And I'm trying to like, okay, I, I need your help. How can you help organize? If you can take me through the steps, I want to organize it with my friends and we're going to go see the Pocono 400.
- [32:51]
D
Yeah, it's a great question. So there's two sides to that. So we are for professionally organized experiences, meaning it's B2B2C. So it typically starts with a brand coming in. So maybe you're working for Morgan Stanley and to your point, they've bought a block or they're organizing something for Formula One and you've got a couple of friends going with you because you've been given a couple of tickets and a bunch of other colleagues have been given us a couple of tickets and a bunch more and so on and so forth. And so an organizer will come in and they'll go ahead and manage the event details in our product and then be able to ship you a guest facing app and say, this is Know before youe Go. It's everything you need. So in there for you and your friends, you're going to have everything around, where you need to park, where you need to go, a timeline, a venue map, everything. And it's intuitive, it's real time, it's in the palm of your hands. But more than that, today we are a guest experience app, but tomorrow you're going to be able to talk to Val, you're going to be able to say it about, hey, I'm going to Formula one with a bunch of my friends. You know, we're, we're six people, we need three hotel rooms. Can you tell us the best places we can stay? Great. Val, of course. And then Val will help you book that experience. Do you need parking? Do you want a place to dine? Do you want to know where a lot of other groups are dining nearby with similar interests? So it's moving you to a place where you can interact with it as opposed to, you know, if you and your friends or you and your wife did that transaction and you bought those tickets to Formula One, you then have to go shopping for hotels. And when you were done that and you, you had a very mediocre experience on Expedia, you then kind of search on OpenTable or Resi for dinner experiences and you kind of piece this journey together, kind of blocking and tackling, kind of like Mario Brothers, moving between all these different functions, we really roll it up in the palm of your hands and we kind of take this flat, let's call it ticketed experience, and we really elevate it.
- [35:03]
C
Jennifer, I'm looking at your app now and it looks awesome. I mean, the seating charts and the access passes and all this stuff, but this is the business of sports. We need to know about your business model. How are you guys making money providing this application to your stakeholders, number one. And number two, you mentioned something really interesting, right? The ability to collect data or collect information from third party providers and vendors and what have you and be able to offer that through your app. And so I'm just trying to wrap my arms around is sort of the moat that you're trying to create around your company, those proprietary relationships and the access to their data, or is it something more?
- [35:41]
D
So as far as the pricing structure, we have a traditional SaaS business model. We engage brands, the biggest brands in the world and they come on and they pay an annual subscription fee to use vow. It's a premium product, so it's at a premium price. And in doing that, they have a B2B2 VIP trusted platform to manage event details. But we do have this really interesting hub and what I call the business of sports. So kind of building alongside what I would call the decision makers in the sports arena for everything that happens across sports. Right. Sports has a huge corporate sector to it that keeps it moving and grooving. We have a SaaS fee for our brands. They come in and pay us. And what's nice about how they use VAL is today, VAL posts up to 10,000 guests and seats. So we have a proprietary seating software that integrates with all the tools in our platform. We have a proprietary ticketing software. So everything is all in one. But what's Very cool. Is not only do we host up to 10,000 guests and seats, you can have up to 400 people working in the platform in real time. There's very few save buttons, you don't have to share logins. This is a really big problem throughout both the event management and the ticketing space. So you wouldn't believe it, but there's a lot of legacy technology on the back end where you're paying what we call per seat, right? You're paying for a number of hours access passes. So four people on your team, five people on your team, we say, nope, that's not the future. The future is all the stakeholders working in real time. And that includes everybody within your primary team, all of the stakeholders you collaborate with. It could be across agencies, boots on the ground, it could be marketing, it could be ops, it could be public relations, it could be a broadcast team, anything you need, your check in teams, all live, all real time and the system can handle that much movement. So that's how we tackle that side. To answer your question about the data plays, right now your data is being cannibalized no matter where you go. If you walk into any stadium, anywhere and you buy two kids sweatshirts, the next thing you're going to get in your inbox is emails for Disney on Ice. That's just how the world works. Everything is about point of sale, everything is about commerce. Your data is being used, being sold to third parties. On val, we take such a different view of data and yes, it's a moat. The data belongs to the brand, to the organizer, but you as a guest, you are a single profile no matter where you go. And because VAL isn't just, let's say, a Ticketmaster application, because VAL is for all experiences everywhere, you are that same person. So you will get an experience tied to the event, but more important, tied to you. So your data is used to make your experience better for that particular event. But everywhere you go, it's learning and getting more predictive, more powerful, stronger for you. Does that make sense?
- [38:42]
A
It sounds like you guys plan this out and you make it a super duper experience.
- [38:48]
D
We do, we do. And I do think, and this really is my position and shapes a little bit about how I think and I build this company. I do believe that the ability to bring breakthrough and cannibalize people's data once we're about five years out from now is going to become leaner and leaner. And so if you don't offer not just better fan engagement. Right, which is what we call it today. What we call what I am talking about today is just pure data, data play, fan engagement. Right. We see that you love this platform so we're going to push you to these three other platforms. We see like these two things and you bought them. Point of sale. We're going to push you these three more and it's all about pushing things to you. We take a different position on you as a guest, as a fan, as an attendee, as a participant. I don't care what I call you, you are gold. Your eyeballs, your attention and yes, your data. But instead of selling that data, we use it to make you a better experience. So for us, this is a really important value prop. We believe that's where the industries are moving. It doesn't matter if you are on sports, corporate, premier league, rising league, emerging leagues, women's sports. And we believe that there's also a much bigger value prop in this for women's sports where women transact and do things differently than men do and they like an all in one experience. So we do think it sort of tracks where a lot of these VIP experiences overseas, uk, uae, but certainly where women and women's sports and women's engagement comes into play.
- [40:19]
F
Well, we're the one who plan everything, so.
- [40:23]
D
Yes, we are.
- [40:25]
E
We are.
- [40:26]
D
So hopefully I've done a decent enough job of explaining it. Look, we are early but super powerful, powerful brands that we're very proud of and excited to make our mark and really delineate how we make the space better.
- [40:39]
A
Our thanks to Jennifer Brisman for joining us. She's found founder and CEO of Valve. Thank you for joining us. For my colleagues Damian Sassauer and Vanessa Perdomo, I'm Michael Barr. Tune in again next week for the latest on the stories moving big money in the world of sports. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business of sports from Bloomberg Radio around the world.
- [41:09]
G
This is Tom Keene inviting you to join me for the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. It's about making you smarter. Each and every business day we bring you a recap of what happened overnight in Europe and Asia. The day's economic data and complete coverage of the US Market open, we cover stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, even crypto. All the information you need to excel. Bloomberg Surveillance also brings you the analysis behind the headlines. We do that with lengthy conversations with our expert guests, the smartest names in economics, finance, investment and international relations. We do all this live each and every weekday, then bring you the best analysis in our daily podcast search for Bloomberg surveillance on YouTube Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen on the east coast, listen at lunch and on the west coast when you wake up. That's the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast with me, Tom Keene, along with Paul Sweeney and Lisa Mateo. Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts.