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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome back to Firewall. I'm your host, Bradley Tusk. My guest today is Aaron Miller. Aaron's a principal at Wool Ventures and they invest in sports entertainment consumer technology. And we met not that long ago and we're talking about prediction markets. And he sent me a substack that I wrote that he wrote, I wrote, he wrote I wish I wrote it about prediction markets that I thought was so interesting that I asked him to come on and join us. So Aaron, thank. Thanks for coming on, man.
- [00:33]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me, Bradley.
- [00:34]
A
And we would normally be in our studio, which was the plan, but of course it is the day after a actual blizzard, not one of those, hey, we're going to get 20 inches and we get two. We actually got 20 inches or even more. But you're, you're here in New York, but holding up okay.
- [00:48]
B
I'm, I'm doing good. I feel like the galaxy brain move was actually to do no prep and just plan to walk to the grocery store when it was totally empty during the storm. So that's what I did.
- [00:58]
A
And that worked out for you. So I would say don't try that at home. That is normally not the right move in situations of disaster preparedness. But it sounds like this time, this time it worked out pretty well for you. So. And I was trying to remember.
- [01:11]
B
I feel like we don't get any snow days anymore, so you gotta.
- [01:14]
A
That's true. My, my, my kids school was canceled. My son is home right now and enjoying the snow day. So. Yeah, once in a while it's nice when life throws you a curveball like that. I was trying to remember how you and I met. Did.
- [01:28]
B
Do you remember we met because. Yeah. So I read your book back in college because my friend Sammy Koppelman knew you and he said you gotta this book. And that was, I mean, eight years ago at this point.
- [01:40]
A
Yeah, ages ago. Yeah.
- [01:41]
B
And I forget what even made me reach out. But I thought about you. I think we were just thinking about a few investments where the political side is just really important. And I thought I wonder what that Bradley tough guy's up to. And so reached out and we had a great chat and yeah, excited to have more.
- [01:58]
A
I ran at the same. The other day at the Garden, I was the Knicks game, it was that really, really depressing loss against Dallas. I remember I wanted to chat with him, but I was in the middle a long line for the bathroom and I remember saying to him like I, I love you, I'd love to talk to you. There's no way in hell I'm giving up the spot on the on the line. So who's much more a hey, oh and we'll catch up later kind of thing?
- [02:21]
B
Sam's a beast. He has an awesome three pointer. So Shout out. Shout out.
- [02:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, the Nick Staton. I could probably could have used them so, so I want to start with prediction market simply because what I thought you wrote was so interesting. So let's let me start with, with a couple of basic questions and then we'll get into it. So the first, what is your current exposure to prediction markets? And define for the audience what the conventional view in your mind is of prediction markets.
- [02:50]
B
So will ventures and so as you mentioned at being Bradley so we're an early stage VC focused on sports and entertainment and consumer so we invested in a whole bunch of sports betting startups and not just online sports books but a whole bunch of different businesses. And so we recently made an investment in a prediction market startup that we haven't announced yet, but hopefully we'll be announcing shortly. And I'd say the general overview of what's going on is sports betting could potentially be shifting from a state regulated business to a nationally regulated business because now for the first time as of around a year ago, the CFTC essentially saying we are going to oversee sports trades. And so you have platforms like Kalshi and now a lot of sports books like DraftKings and Fanatics spinning up their own prediction markets, essentially running these things as nationally regulated businesses, not state regulated businesses which was, which was the status quo post paspa.
- [03:50]
A
Right. So why in your view, if someone said okay, you know, Aaron explained to me, you know, the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that states have the right to regulate sports betting if they want to. A lot of states went ahead and did it and now all of a sudden we see Kalshi and Polymarket and other companies coming up as CFTC licensed federally regulated entities doing a different form of what many people, you know, think looks like gaming. Anyway, how did this come about in your understanding and what makes it different?
- [04:26]
B
So the argument that you could make is that these are contracts that could be traded under the cea, which essentially oversees commodities and other sorts of real financial instruments. And the argument is event contracts could be instruments to hedge risk and have real economic value for traders, for investors. That is essentially the party line that Calcium Polymarket will want to tell you that these event contracts are financial instruments. If you double click, it does get a bit more complicated because Donald Trump Jr. Is an advisor to Both Calcium Polymarket, you have a lot of other close ties in the White House. So for example, Charles Schwab, who's a big Trump donor, was one of the first advisors to Kalshee. Peter Thiel, who was an early investor in polymarket, also a big Trump supporter. And so a lot of people have accused the Trump administration of self dealing essentially and propping up the prediction market space. So you could cut it any which way. You could say it's intellectually and legally honest. You could also say that there's inside dealing by this White House and this White House specifically is responsible for this regulation upheaval that's going on. But people have different opinions, right?
- [05:47]
A
And states obviously feel like this is their territory, regardless of whether they think this is all the product of self dealing or not by Trump. Either way, they do think that it is part of their jurisdiction. And you've seen litigation between states and federal government, different entities around this seems likely to reach the Supreme Court. What happens if the Supreme Court does decide that this should be the purview of states, not the, not the federal government in terms of the industry.
- [06:24]
B
I mean, what, what would happen in that case is sports contracts probably get shut down on, on Kalshi and other prediction markets. And that happened first in Massachusetts last week. They won an injunction against Calci and a lot of other states are trying to get them shut down in the meantime as this case like moves up the legal ladder. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a world where maybe sports contracts aren't allowed on these prediction markets, but maybe weather or macroeconomic or political contracts are. And then that brings up the big question, which is like, what are people actually doing on these predictions?
- [07:02]
A
Yeah, unless. Good, good segue. I feel like you should be me here. So. And this is really why I want you to come on. I mean, I want to set a baseline with the listeners, which, which you just very capably did. But you have a vision for what prediction markets could become that far exceeds, I think, what anyone else is talking about or many people are talking about right now and what it is today. And that's really what I wanted to, to get into, which is you are beyond bullish on this because you think it transforms into something else entirely. Why don't you start laying out kind of how you see it?
- [07:36]
B
So anyone who thinks that Calcium Polymarket are just sports betting companies are not seeing what the VCs that are investing them are thinking, because Sequoia, Andreessen, Founders Fund, some of the biggest VCs in the world are backing these two companies at 10 to 15 billion dollars valuations. DraftKings right now in public markets is trading around 16, 17 billion. So these guys are not looking for a 1.5x on their investments in calcium. Polymarket. Clearly there's something much bigger that's going on beyond just sports betting. And the really interesting idea is, like, what if you can create contracts around everything and then these prediction markets become a source of truth for what's happening in society. So, for example, you're going to be able to tell everything from, like, the actual percentage of a president of someone winning a presidential election, or you're going to be able to see, like, what's the percentage of Mr. Beast making his next video about something? Or you're also going to be able to see the percentages of, of who wins the Super Bowl. The idea is that these, that these prediction markets become a real source of truth. And by the way, a lot of this stems back to a lot of, like, Shane, the founder of polymarket, and Tarek, founder of Kalshi. They'll point you back to Hayek's, like, research from 70 years ago, which talks about how aggregating people's opinions across the society are actually a better bellwether of truth than. Than anything else you could get out there. So that's really the vision. It's not just you could trade sports, it's that these things, you go to CNN and you're able to see these are the Kalshee odds and an event happening, and you're like, wow, that, that is what I should believe.
- [09:23]
A
And so I think part of what you say in the piece, and I highly recommend that people go on the Will Ventures substack and check it out, is that effectively, we live in a world that is so stratified at this point that there aren't that many places left where the wisdom of the crowd can emerge simply because everyone is sort of in their own corners these days. But you think that prediction markets have the ability to, in some ways, be a unifier representing how people very broadly see something. And therefore that creates both a reality and an opportunity that doesn't currently exist.
- [10:02]
B
It's exactly that. I think about it, like, back around the mayoral election, I was really curious what Zoron's actual odds were to win. And one option is to go to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. And I would say a lot of just traditional media feels politically biased, and it's hard to know, like, who it's coming from. But Then I just looked at Kalshee and it said he has an X percentage chance of winning and it's super digestible. And you can make the argument that it's just the most accurate source of information. And that's what you should look to.
- [10:34]
A
And tell me why you think one in a world where everyone seems to only want to effectively hear what they want to hear and then have their views reinforced, why prediction markets are kind of defying that trend and then why that might have real financial significance in terms of broader markets and economic choices.
- [10:57]
B
It's actually a very libertarian ideology behind it. And what I think is really interesting about prediction markets is there's this whole crossover with the crypto world and crypto is very much rooted in libertarianism as well and kind of like moving outside the institutions. And that by the way is probably like the ideological underpinning behind a lot of the Trump White House being in favor of prediction markets because it's a very anti establishment ideology. But I think there is real utility outside this. You could imagine, for example, like Nike, let's say Nike CEO is afraid of tariffs affecting their business. Could you essentially buy an event contract for several millions of dollars hedging against that tariff risk? Let's say you are another company that's afraid of a certain presidential candidate winning. Similarly, you could buy contracts hedging against that. So the argument is these things could have real financial utility. Assuming the liquidity gets there in the markets.
- [12:04]
A
Right. What do you think it would take to get there? And then given the current both volume on Calisthen Poly market and the most recent valuation of those companies, what does that tell you about whether or not the liquidity will get there?
- [12:18]
B
I mean right now these prediction markets are sports, sports and more sports. Especially at the end of the NFL season. It's funny that Cal Sheet published their annualized trading volume, but really just took the one week of the most popular NFL week, I think like NFL's first weekend and then annualized that number, which doesn't make sense because as anyone who works in sports betting knows, it's a very seasonal business with NFL, NBA. And so what's happening right now is around 90% of volume on Kalshi is sports. But the bet is that that will be what kind of gets people accustomed into prediction markets. And over time liquidity is just going to grow into other markets and markets are going to expand way larger than sports. You're going to have people trading on everything eventually. That's the bet.
- [13:09]
A
Got it. And then when it comes to Sports itself. You write about this and I think maybe it's just not abundantly clear to everyone. But the underlying approach, if you are a participant not meeting an athlete in the game, but someone you know buying a contract on production market or placing a bet on, on a sports traditional sports betting platform, what's explain how the two work differently. You make the case that the exchanges have a more better friendly model. Why is that?
- [13:39]
B
So the way online sportsbooks work is you are betting against the house. So DraftKings is essentially pricing the market and then you're betting against DraftKings. What prediction markets do is they're essentially, they're exchanges. So they are taking trades on both sides and those that volume of trades is essentially setting the price. That said, so Cauchy and polymarket would want you to think we're not the house, we're not the evil house who's taking money from you. But in reality what's happening is Cal and polymarket are giving the retail flow to institutional market makers. So really smart investors, guys like Sig and Jump and the Citadels, by the way, those guys aren't necessarily trading on prediction markets yet, but they probably will be kind of similar and it's similar dynamic to what you have in the stock exchange. But I think there is this narrative that like prediction markets aren't the house, therefore you're getting a better price. Truth is, right now you're not necessarily getting a better price trading on a prediction market because those market makers are just the ones making money off you. It's not the exchange themselves. So essentially it's just a different model. We'll see where things shake out and where prices end up being better.
- [14:58]
A
What do you think happened? If, if you're the states and you know, you're invariably going to try to get to the Supreme Court to make the case that, you know, regulation over prediction markets should be yours, not the cftc. And let's say you lose. And the legal experts I talked to really do put it at 50, 50. Where do you go from there? You know, I, my theory is that gambling is one of those things where once you decide as a government to start generating tax revenue from it, you can't really get off of it. Right? Because there is always some greater public need that you're funding with it. And when the question becomes are we going to make our schools better or not, Are we going to have textbooks or not, Are we going to pay teachers more or not? You know, the answer is always justifies the means and therefore gaming revenue remains Ultimately, you know, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the cftc, it's hard for me to see a world where a FanDuel or DraftKings really continues to invest in their state regulated businesses simply because at the CFTC level they pay a lower tax rate and it's an easier regulatory structure to deal with. If the Supreme Court rules in favor, assuming they take up this case in the next couple of years, the federal government, what happens in your view to sports betting at the state rule? And then do you agree or disagree with my prediction that the books, the sports books will shift to a federal prediction market model and then states will start to authorize iGaming, which is online casino gaming, to fill the revenue void?
- [16:40]
B
I mean I think a lot of sports books are already starting to give the middle finger to state regulators because lobster state regulators came out and said even if you launch prediction markets in a state that's not my own, we're still going to take away your OSB license. And then a bunch of guys like Fanatics, DraftKings, they went ahead and launched prediction market apps. You also have underdog the DFS platform. They were planning on launching a sportsbook app in several states and pivoted and said no, we're actually going to go with prediction markets. And so yeah, I think that's what happens if prediction markets win out in the Supreme Court. You're going to see sports betting as a nationally regulated business, not a, not a state regulated one. To your point on iGaming, I think a huge, huge second order effect everything prediction markets is just the prevalence and permeation of gambling in American culture. And by the way, I don't think it's just limited to sports betting in icasino. Like there are real conversations to be had around companies like Robinhood. If you are check if you're reading Wall street bets every day on Reddit and then you're going and trading meme stocks. Is that a financial investment or is that gambling? I'd argue it's gambling. And so I wouldn't be surprised if the public tide turns and we start seeing I casino legalized in more than I think it's six states right now. You already have tons of people betting on crypto based casinos like Stake, which I think is one of the most interesting companies in the gambling world. So a second order effect would not be surprised if we get legalized I casino.
- [18:20]
A
Do you feel like everything you just said represents a shift in societal norms where people are gambling more than they used to or do you Just think that human beings like the excitement of gambling, the variability of it. They may not accurately assess their ability to pick winners. And then based on all of that, when you combine it with just more accessibility, this is always what would happen.
- [18:46]
B
There's 100% been an uptick in gambling behavior in the last few years. I think I saw a stat, and sorry if I misquote this, but the AGA said 57% of American adults had gambled in the last year, and that's up from 49% two years ago. So 8.8 percentage point uptick in just two years. And there are a whole bunch of theories for why that's happened, and I'll lay out several. First, there's this whole theory around financial nihilism. I feel like Peter Thiel is one of the first people to introduce this. Basically the theory that all these young Americans don't have economic mobility, they don't have the ability to save, the ability to buy a house. And they're just saying, screw it if I can't afford a house. Might as well put it all on red. Might as well try to make as much money as possible in the casino. That's one theory. Another theory, which I think Jonathan Haidt has done a great job of pushing, is just how we're so addicted to our phones and constantly scrolling TikTok and addicted to dopamine. And I think there's a fair argument that just like we want dopamine from social media, we're looking for dopamine hits from like, sports betting and online gambling. And then I think there's just overarching trend of like, the digitization of everything. We're spending more times on our phones playing everything from games to gambling. And of course, like post PASPA regulations kind of paved the way for us, for us to gamble and play more games on our phone. So, yeah, I just think that is a secular trend that is not going away.
- [20:16]
A
Got it. And where do you see. So you've got prediction markets, in your view, eventually morphing into really a financial exchange. Right. More than anything else. And if I understand your argument with the ability to reflect broader consumer sentiment potentially than normal equity markets and capital markets, and you also see as those things evolve, whether it is social casinos or trading like Robinhood or exchanges like polymarker Calci, that perhaps one day move from sports into all the different areas that you're talking about, new types of businesses are going to enter the mix, whether they're B2B or B2C. How do you, as a VC see that unfocus.
- [21:03]
B
You know, gambling is such a complicated space to regulate because it's such a moving target. Like, I love the question of, let's say you're a Republican legislator, what do you think about gambling? Do you either take the social conservative stance and say, this is bad for families and virtue, so we should ban gambling, or do you take the libertarian stance and say, hey, people should be able to do whatever the hell they want with their money. So that's just such a good example of how it's really complicated to police this space. And so for that reason, I think gambling is always going to be a moving target. And that's why you have like osb, DFS sweepstakes, you have crypto casinos, you have online casinos. You have all these different regulatory frameworks. And as long as those keep shifting, there are always opportunities for arbitrage. And so the way I look at things is I'm never going to predict what the Supreme Court is going to say in five years or what legislation we're going to see from Congress or who's going to be president. But you can just back the best founders, and the best founders are always going to be smarter on their space than the VCs. So what I'm looking for is just people who are crazy, crazy passionate about the space that they're building in, have a good sense of where things are going, and could probably make a compelling case about where regulation is going, even though they don't quite know the answers. But just put money with those guys because they're going to figure it out.
- [22:25]
A
Got it. That makes sense. So tell me where you think, you know, what else you're excited about apart from kind of how this asset class itself will evolve and stuff that you're investing in. Like, what's another thesis that you have that's a little unconventional that people will find at least different, if not worth pursuing?
- [22:45]
B
Yeah, at Will Ventures, I'd say we have the privilege of just getting focused on sports entertainment. It's a lot of the fun stuff. And so I've been spending a lot of time in college sports lately. I think we are on the precipice of a huge, huge restructuring of that space. And so I've been doing a lot of research in the college sports space. We just made an investment in a company called athletes.org started by a guy named Jim Cavall, who's essentially pushing for collective bargaining in college sports to give athletes a seat at the table. And also it bring more structure in terms of compensation. To the space which has been so crazy since nil. So yeah, that's where I've been spending a lot of time.
- [23:27]
A
Let's figure out this a bit. And you were nice enough to introduce me to Jim and I think he and I actually speak in this week for the first time. So I'm excited to talk to him. There was for a very, very long time, I would argue extremely unfair treatment of college athletes. Right where they effectively were unpaid and treated not fairly in return for generating collectively hundreds of billions of dollars probably in re, you know, since the beginning of college athletics, over time pendulum swung. They are now being compensated through nil and different things. But recently you're starting to see a backlash. The backlash where both people inside college sports as well as I think fans are complaining that it's out of control. Guys are, you know, transferring the week before a bowl game and not playing in it and kind of ruining the fan experience. Where do you think it stands and more importantly, where do you think at all both will land and should land?
- [24:28]
B
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I'd say it's a great thing that, that student athletes are getting paid and no one disagrees with that. But I think the problem is that right now it's just a race to the bottom because incentives are such that the Alabamas and Ohio states are going to spend more and more money on football and basketball, which are the revenue generating sports, and then less and less on the Olympic or the women's sports, things like fencing or gymnastics. And so the incentives are such that you're really going to be left with like basketball and football and then everything else is going to have major budget cuts. And that's, that's the effects of NIL without regulations. And so that's why I think there needs to be first of all, major restructuring of college sports where you don't have this conference system where everyone's acting independently. You need to bring all these assets together, you need to bring the SEC, Big Ten, etc. Together to sell meteorites in unison. And then you need collective bargaining to put a cap on player salaries and put rules of the road because right now, yeah, the quarterbacks are just getting more and more and more and also there's no transparency in the system. But college sports needs to look more like the NFL or the NBA where players get 50% revenues. That is set in stone. And then the business can be built around that.
- [25:45]
A
So the argument the NCAA has always made, as I understand it, was the one that you said, which is, yes, you know Football and basketball may produce tremendous amounts of revenue. And yes, it may seem unfair that the players are not being compensated for that revenue, but effectively there would allow all the other sports, all the women's sports, all the Olympic sports, everything that is not getting TV contracts to flourish. And so if you want to see, you know, women's fencing or whatever it is, this is the structure we have to have. So I guess you're saying to certain extent there was something to that, right? If that's the case, and you had say, you know, the NFL, NBA model, roughly a 50, 50, which seems fair, right? In terms of how the revenue is distributed, does that leave enough revenue for all of the non football, basketball stuff? And if not, does that, how much does that really matter?
- [26:40]
B
Well, and by the way, no one is disagreeing with that original argument. Like, yeah, football is what makes money and pays for gymnastics. But the problem is, let's say you have a marginal million dollars to spend if you're Ohio State, are you going to spend that money on getting another running back or are you going to spend that money on renovating the gymnastics locker room? Like you know where that million dollars is going to. And that's the problem. And no one's saying that every athlete should be treated evenly. That's going to be one of the hardest things to figure out. Like what, you know, what payment should a gymnast get versus a football player? And that is why collective bargaining is going to be really, really complicated.
- [27:22]
A
And should, I mean, why should any college athlete if, if your sport is operating at a loss, right? Which is the true for the vast majority of them, because there's not external revenue that wants to fund it. Should you get paid at all?
- [27:37]
B
Hey, it's, it's a good question. I think so, because I think you are still contributing to the larger athletic program, which is really important for the brand of a school. Like a brand, a school sells themselves as, hey, we're not just a football program. We're like a program of 35 divisions.
- [27:57]
A
But if, if you are, but if you're a school, I'm like, at the end of the day, people who play pick up anything, right? Do so because they love that game, right? And no one pays them to do it. If anything, they're spending their own money for the opportunity to do it because it makes them happy, right? I can't imagine anyone other than the people who are playing these sports go to a school because they're like, yeah, I'm going to go to Michigan because I want to watch football and basketball But I'm really happy to know that judo exists as well. Like I don't think anyone ever says that. Right. So is there other than the people who play the sport, and in which case I would argue if they truly love a sport, they're going to find a way to play it one way or another, is there really any societal value in any sports that don't have market demand? And if, if, if the, if there's not, why not just say like all right, you will have a worth locker room because this is a hobby effectively and you don't get paid for hobbies.
- [28:50]
B
Well, the position of NCAA in the schools for years now has been that college sports are an important part of the educational experience. And I do think that there is some merit to that. But at the same time a lot of sports are at risk of just getting cut. And so if you're a judo athlete, I don't know if there are D1 scholarships for that sport, but let's say there are. Would you take just a scholarship and no payment if you could play your sport? Yeah, probably. And that probably feels like good compensation. But yeah, at a certain point the free markets probably will pay play out and a lot of athletes shouldn't be expecting the same.
- [29:33]
A
Yeah, I don't think that's unreasonable. Like at the end of the day, like you know, there's no societal value to, to judo, right? Police departments aren't training it to apprehend criminals. People play or play is the right word. People do judo because they love doing judo. Right? Which is totally fine. But like I going to the next game, no one pays me to go to the next games. I pay to go to the next game. Right? Like there's societal value in my view in sports in sort of a couple of ways.
- [30:05]
B
Right?
- [30:05]
A
There's an economic value in terms of sports, but only if people like me are willing to pay money for the ability to watch it. Right. It's a market like anything else. And like I think about, you know, baseball, I'm a really big baseball fan and two things about it. One is the average MLB fan is a 54 year old white guy, which clearly is not from a demographic standpoint great for the long term success of the game. However, let's say that that played out and Gen Z never really got into it. Like baseball wouldn't go away, it would just be a poorer sport with worse stadiums and lower salaries and everything else. But so what? Right? It would still exist. And if that's where the market was for, that's where the market was for it. And if you look at say, minor league baseball, there's been some good, you know, really good memoirs over the years about playing minor league baseball. They do it solely for the love of the game. Right. They don't have good pay or good, you know, conditions or anything else, but they do it because it makes them a lot happier than any other job that they would be able to get doing something else. And so if, if the value of sports is either as a business that has economic utility or something that people enjoy doing and it brings them happiness and relationships and exercise and everything else, why is the NCAA ultimately responsible for anything other than harnessing the first part?
- [31:32]
B
Yeah, I mean, what you're talking about is like the professionalization of the business. And if that happens, then yeah, if you're not driving economic value, then you shouldn't be making anything back. I think the NCAA ultimately has the interests of the universities at heart and the universities very much want to preserve the status quo of a whole bunch of sports programs and going back to that educational mission that they have, that that's really what's on the top of their minds, not the professionalization of the space.
- [32:03]
A
Right. But I just don't know if that's, you know, universities to me are not the marker of sound decision making. Right. The entire American education system in many ways has become something that is clearly not in the best interest of the people who use it, but instead in the best interest of the system, of the education system itself, where we have this view that you're supposed to get a four year liberal arts degree. Now look, the data is very clear that people who go to college on the whole end up with far better careers and make far more money lifetime than people who do not. So clearly you should want to go to college if you can, but we have a system where we try to have the best of everything and charge people money they can't afford, issue debt that really cripples people's lives and their ability to try to pay them back or just isn't paid back at all, all because the university has some idea that in order to meet their platonic ideal or to rise up 4 points on U.S. news ranking, or just because the faculty wants to be to or the administration boast about whatever it is, like why do they need a world class facility for any sort of athletic sport that doesn't have a real market demand to it? Isn't that just driving up the overall cost of education and putting Americans in a worse financial position as a result?
- [33:28]
B
It's a fair question. I think you could ask why does college need to exist in the first place in 2026 when probably half of college students are mailing in their assignments with chat GPT and you could probably learn things better by moving SF and trying to buy code an app. Not that you know, so that I
- [33:44]
A
would say so to me I was thinking about that. But that's like 0.1% of the population.
- [33:50]
B
I will say one thing. Even though the gymnastics program might not drive revenue for an Ohio State, donors very much do care and will give back to the school. And that's.
- [34:00]
A
But that's an. But that's a clear economic choice. Ohio State says through any sort of outside economic benefit or donors, which is an outside economic benefit, gymnastics will generate more P than L. It is perfectly reasonable to invest in gymnastics. Right. But to say that we need to be able to say that we have top tier programs in 48 different sports and if tuition that has to go up 8% overall and that's part of one of the things driving it, so be it. Like no. Right, because you're taking all these people to whom there's a negative externality of their, of their cost of an education going up to allow a university to check some box that probably doesn't matter to the students in the first place or their education. So you know, yeah, if there's a donor who wants to pay for something specifically, sure, take the money. But otherwise, like, you know, to, to. To. I'm not sure that everyone should do and do vibe coding because the reality is that's going to work for, you know, a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of 1% of the population. But at the same time that doesn't mean that we don't have to start seriously reforming the US education system, especially higher education, like you said. And I don't know why the notion that we have to have all of these different sports and they have to be funded is one that really is all that logical.
- [35:23]
B
I think it's a fair line of questioning. But what I'd go back to is to say college football and basketball are massive, massive businesses and they're under monetized. College Footballball is the second most watched sport in America and drives meaningfully less revenue than the NBA and, and the NFL for sure. And so what? There needs to be a restructuring so that basketball and football could be properly monetized. And then if the schools want to use that profit to support all of the other sports and kill their and hurt their own Bottom line, then they can do that. But granted, that probably does hurt. That does take away from other resources that the schools can be spending on engineering school, on their engineering school and really anything else. So I understand the line of questioning
- [36:11]
A
that you're saying if, if, if the SEC and the Big Ten broke off and created their own league and it was a for profit league, would that do just as well? Or just sort of the fiction and perception that somehow this is collegiate in some way and therefore the, you know, tens of millions, not hundreds of millions of Americans who at some point went to a school and therefore has some sort of rooting interest as a result. I mean, is that necessary for that business or do we get to a point where it just doesn't matter at all? And this is just minor league football?
- [36:47]
B
I mean people pitch that super league concept and by the way, it's pretty similar to the super league idea that was pitched in Europe, European soccer a few years ago and then fans all across Europe freaked out. I would argue it's good for the SEC and Big Ten schools because they're just going to bundle their media rights and sell them for a fat check to espn, but it's probably worse for the whole ecosystem because right now you have dozens and dozens of schools with massive, massive fan bases and they could all be generating profits. And so you really want one system like the NFL, like the NBA, where everyone's working together to maximize the economic value. But that requires a ton of coordination. And that's why Jim Cavall's job is so tough with athletes.org he's trying to wrangle everyone together at the same time.
- [37:33]
A
Interesting. So for someone like you, I look at my son, he's almost 17, he loves sports. Sports obviously is in some ways very useful connective tissue. I noticed the other day my dad works with me and right before the end of the day he was sitting in my office and we were talking about the Mets or the Knicks or something like that, that. And then I was having dinner with my son maybe an hour or two later and we would talk about the Mets and Knicks or something like that. And it does provide this connective tissue where I can go up a generation, down a generation and have something religion to talk about. But then the reality is, as much as my son might think, well, it would be fun to have a career in sports, he doesn't have the talent to be a professional athlete of any kind. And so there are some jobs in it. I think one of the reasons that he loves David Stearns at the Mets is that he can't identify with being a player on the. But he can't identify being a smart kid from Manhattan who goes to, you know, good schools and studies hard and maybe could participate that way. Did you always love sports as a kid and then sort of this, you know, venture capital ended up becoming your way to be part of that world in a broader way, or was this just an accident?
- [38:46]
B
First of all, that's awesome that you work with your dad. My dad's definitely going to listen to this podcast and be like, why don't we work together? So thanks for that idea. I always loved, loved sports. Like, I have a picture of my desk on my desk, me playing basketball when I was like 4 years old in the driveway. I painted my room purple and gold because I was obsessed with Kobe Bryant when I was in middle school. I always wanted to. I always loved sports. But I went through high school and college actually thinking I'd go work in politics or journalism. And that's when I read your book. I was studying government in college and got to the end of school and realized, I don't know if journalism and, like, being a Capitol Hill reporter is for me, I want to try something else. But I had no interest in doing the traditional consulting or banking paths that a lot of my friends were doing. And I was always very much someone who was passionate, who needed to be passionate about what they were doing. And I'd always loved sports. So I said, all right, I'm going to go try to make a career in sports. And out of college, I went to go work for the agency WMEs, and then after that went to go work for the NBA League office and had an awesome three years where I was working on the NBA's expansion into Latin America. They're bringing a G League team to Mexico City. They were bringing a bunch of games to Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay. And I just love the sports business.
- [40:03]
A
So on that real fast, before you pivot, who's of the three of baseball, football, basketball, to take Canada aside for a second, who moves first into either Europe or Latin America with a professional franchise?
- [40:17]
B
Great question. I mean, the NBA is doing it right now. NBA is trying to stand up the European League, and you're going to have new franchises in London and Paris. You're going to have teams like Real Madrid joining. And then I think there's going to be some competition where, like, real NBA teams are going to play against those European teams. So that's happening right now.
- [40:37]
A
Interesting. So, all right, so you're at the NBA, you're expanding to Latin America and then what happens?
- [40:42]
B
Well, I just love the sports business. I thought it was such a cool mix of media and negotiations and the creative and events and I thought man, like this isn't just a cool space. As a fan, like I love working in this industry. I just wanted to see what it would be like to work in a leaner, faster paced environment. Because big leagues, they're essentially corporations, they're pretty bureaucratic and hierarchical and so that's why I decided to go to business school. I moved out to the Bay and went to Stanford and when I was there I just tried working for every startup possible. Like AI video is just becoming a hot VC category. So I tried meeting all the AI video startups like Luma and Pika and Runway and then use that to meet a whole bunch of VCs and met the Worldventures team and now we're investing in the sports industry. So I still feel like I get to satisfy that love of sports. But you get to move really fast paced and as you know, venture is one of the fastest paced businesses out there.
- [41:42]
A
Yep, yep, absolutely. Aaron, how can people follow your work?
- [41:46]
B
You can check out my substack 4am club. I try to write once a week every other week about just something I'm thinking about. Check out the Will Ventures website. We have a whole bunch of perspectives from everyone on our team. We're writing about everything from emerging leagues to agentic commerce to sports betting. And you could also throw me a follow on LinkedIn.
- [42:06]
A
All right, Aaron Miller, thank you for joining us.
- [42:09]
B
Awesome, awesome talking Bradley. Cool.
- [42:17]
A
Firewalls recorded at my bookstore pnt.net where located at 180 Orchard street on the Lower east side of Manhattan. We'd love to hear from you with questions, feedbacks or idea for a guest. Just email me at Bradley Firewall Media or find me on LinkedIn. And to keep up with what's on my mind and my latest writing, please follow my new substack@bradleytus.substack.com thanks again for listening.