← Pablo Torre Finds Out
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Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
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The next time any of these leagues, any of these networks, think about the fans.
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A
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E
Can I ring back?
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David brought this in. John, have you seen this in person?
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B
I have not. I think these things are hideous. If I actually was fortunate enough to get one of them, I cannot imagine wearing that.
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A
Can you describe it for the audio audience? Can you describe David Sampson's World Series ring?
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B
It's precious because of what it takes to get one of these and how rare they are. There is nothing elegant about this. There's nothing particularly sophisticated about this. This is a marlin with a whole lot of inexpensive chipped stones. Though I don't assume it's trivial. I assume it's an expensive ring, but would you wear such a thing where it. This is the most.
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E
Please don't put it on. Seriously, like, can I have it back, please?
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B
Oh, are you worried about my germs?
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E
I just would prefer you not to have it cross your knuckle because of
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the germs embedded in the ring.
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A
Can I just.
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B
Let's pass that around.
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A
I need to further describe this. It says, world champions. There is a golden marlin. There are many diamonds. The stitching, the red stitching is also. Spoiler alert. What kind of stone?
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E
It's an emerald. There's a teal diamond in there as well.
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A
It says Samson in giant letters. 2003. Prez Prez, P, R, E, S. Because
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you can't get I, D, E, N, T in there. You're the prez Prez. So is it an option to take a check instead of taking that ring?
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E
No.
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B
You don't wear that, do you?
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E
I do. I wear from time to time. Certainly not every day, but I wear it to, you know, weddings, bar mitzvahs, speeches.
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A
If you hire David Samson at your bar mitzvah, by the way, couldn't you
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B
make like a mo. Could use a version of that to perform the circumcision ceremony.
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E
You've never seen a newborn, Quite obviously. And I've got a small finger.
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B
No, I noticed. Good.
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A
I feel like much. Much like John's imagined ceremony. I am going to cut this short.
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E
Thank you.
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B
Yeah, better cut that off.
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A
In the world of sports business, the ring that everyone is chasing, of course, is more figurative. The ring happens to be NFL media rights. Is that a good segue?
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E
No.
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Let's go with him.
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B
It's a bit of a reach.
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E
I don't want you to rest on your Pulitzer laurels. I need your transitions to be sharp. I need you to be on time. All the things.
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A
In the world of sports business, there is one ring that everyone must kiss better.
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Much Better.
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And it belongs to a man named Roger Goodell. The coverage, John, about Goodell at this moment in sports business history, in media rights history, is so comically different than what it was certainly when I was working at ESPN for you, when it was Roger Goodell, this punching back. And now you have everybody. I mean, I will quote the Vanity Fair piece in which he is in a room full of all the most powerful people at Rert Murdoch's 95th birthday in March. And there is Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Hugh Jackman, Michael Bloomberg, Tony Blair, Barry Diller, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, all of these people. And the guy, of course, they're all strategizing around in this scene, according to this reporting, is Goodell, because there is currently an inflection point in which the NFL is in something like, I would say, financial conflict with suddenly the federal government potentially around the protections they have around how they want to do business. So can you explain, John, what this story is actually about as you have personally negotiated these deals before with Goodell?
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Well, I would first of all suggest Roger Goodell was never a punching bag. He's always had quite a bit of power. It happens that in the existential transformation of media from analog to digital, that sports has become the most valuable content that there is. And the NFL is the most valuable sports content. So I don't know if it's kissing a ring or punching a bag. It is. I want to get close to the people who will enable me to have some portion of this content that is the most valuable content in the world. World. And the NFL is in an advantageous position that they have way more bidders for that content than they do have that content. Right. Other leagues have more content, less bidders. So you, of course, I guess it's a version of kissing a ring. You have to be nice to the guy who controls that. And that's all that's happening. Right. I mean, I don't think it's any particular transformation of him as a human being or even a transformation in the NFL, but they've been sort of the top of the heap. It's just everybody has realized in the last few years that the most valuable content in all of media is sports.
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E
To me, it's been that way for even longer because when Fox first bid for the rights to the nfc, Fox used it as a loss leader to introduce their primetime lineup, like with the Simpsons, etc.
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B
Right.
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And that they wanted to use the NFL for that. And that was the beginning of additional competition that has now, obviously transformed with the streamers, which is why you bring up the Murdoch party. And what fascinates me is what Murdoch is trying to do is to put his thumb on Goodell a little bit, trying to find a way to get rid of the Sports Broadcasting act of 1961, trying to get rid of the exemption that exists because he doesn't want to be outbid. He doesn't want to lose the NFL because of what it means to his public company and earnings per share. So I don't think I'm surprised they were at the birthday party. It's a very.
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A
Well, this is why I. I want to establish Goodell's sort of primacy in these rooms, because the 1961 Sports Broadcasting act, which protects the ability of the NFL to sell these things together. Right. As a league, as opposed to individual teams.
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B
John, let's stop there for a minute. Can you explain to me how anybody believes that taking the antitrust exemption away from the NFL would result in consumers benefiting?
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E
The answer is it would not. But that's.
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B
It would be worse.
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E
That's. Well, much like the streamers, if you look at what you've always said from the beginning is for customers, all of these options for streaming has made it worse because now everyone, instead of just cable, has to have 14 different platforms in order to watch NFL games every day of the week. So it's never been about the consumer.
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B
But. So Rupert Murdoch going to Donald Trump and saying, you ought to look at this antitrust. But because consumers are getting screwed. But it's not. It's. If the Cowboys had their own individual team rights, they'd sell them for as much money as they could, and the Giants would sell them for as much money as they could, and the 49ers would sell as much money, and consumers would pay more. So it is not a solution to any problem to get rid of the antitrust exemption, is it?
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E
And no, because. And what Roger Goodell would tell you is that it's not good for anyone for the Cowboys, Giants, and Niners to go out and sell on their own because they can't exist without the other teams, which is why there's a schedule, which is why there's a league. In Major League Baseball, there used to be a large component of local revenue which was teams going out and selling on their own. And look what it's done. It has quashed franchise values. It has caused huge labor economic issues inside the game, and they're trying to go to the NFL model just like Adam Silver did. The same damn thing where it was very micro and local, and he's trying to make it very national. So none of this should be surprising to either the consumers or to DC
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but can we just establish that what Rupert Murdoch is doing here is he is signifying something very fascinating, which is he's the little guy. Fox is the little guy among all these bidders.
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Now they're the little guy because they have always denigrated. Remember, David Hill famously said, the Internet's like a library. It really won't matter.
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The former head of Fox Sports, former
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head of Fox Sports. Fox sold at a high, by the way, very smartly. Fox sold all their digital assets mostly to Disney. Right. So they exited and said, we're going to make as much money as possible on the old traditional media legacy. And Roger is in the process of increasing the prices potentially to where nobody can afford to buy NFL packages except Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, YouTube, etc. CBS has already got the most problem, but they've already been to them and they're in a position where they can't give up the NFL. So they're going to pay and set the market at some 35 to 50% increase over the recently negotiated deals.
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A
And that's why Rupert Murdoch is going to the White House to say, hey, think of how more. I mean, again, it's funny, the external messaging around this secret meeting has been, this is because we are fighting for the consumers. Of course, what he's doing is trying to scare the NFL into having something like the status quo remain possible, preferable, even as they consider we're going to blow up all these deals because of the streamers.
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E
I didn't take it that way. I didn't say I didn't take it as though they're trying to scare the NFL. I took it as though what they're trying to do is level the playing field as best as they can. They wouldn't be the sole beneficiary of Washington, D.C. involvement. It would really accrue to the benefit of all of the mainstream media companies who do business with the NFL. He can't just do something in D.C. that helps Fox.
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B
Essentially. The NFL is very rapaciously, though appropriately, selling less and less to more and more. Right. I mean, CBS and Fox used to basically own the afternoon. Nobody else got any of those games. And they'll split those packages into two and you'll be having to flip back and forth on your television. I guess you don't do this anymore.
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E
It's a fantastic plan. Making the Dial Motion by Roger Goodell So I, I don't, I have no issue. I, I don't think Rupert Murak has an issue with what Roger Goodell's doing.
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B
Rupert would do the same damn thing.
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E
100.
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A
Well that, that's the comedy of this, right? Is that like how do we fight this? Let's get the government involved because there is no other move. The gravity of money is self evidently a law that will prevail.
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B
And by the way, I will only quibble with one comment, which is anything that Trump would do for Fox would have to extend to CBS and I assume Disney. And he has a practice of helping individual companies. I don't think he'd see any conflict or any ethical issue with going, I'm going to help Rupert. He'd probably help cbs. I doubt he'd help Disney.
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E
Yeah, I don't see a scenario where the executive branch has the ability to undo the Sports Broadcasting act of 1961, though. You'll argue that it doesn't matter.
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B
It doesn't matter.
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E
But.
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Well, it's the Justice Department that would get dragged in. Brendan Carr, by the way, has, this is the chair of the FCC has been saying, John, Americans are frustrated when they sit down and can't find the game they want to watch. The feeling only grows worse when they realize they might need to sign up for another streaming service.
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B
Brendan Carr doesn't even have an opinion. He's going Trump, what do you want me to do? I'll say whatever. I don't. Brendan Carr gives a shit about anything other than pleasing Trump. As far as I can tell, he's
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already people who don't like doing anything but pleasing their boss. That does exist in this world.
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B
I never experienced any of that.
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Really. That's. You lived in a company where that was the goal of the people under you. Well, I want to ask please you.
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I want to ask John about being the president of ESPN and negotiating with Goodell. So I want to understand there is all of the financial might we've outlined that the NFL enjoys as the most valuable media property left in America. What was it like to negotiate against them?
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B
Well, I would regard them as among my least successful negotiations. And in fact I was, it's the only negotiation I was ever taken off of. Bob Iger and George Bodenheimer at one point decided that they needed to finish the NFL negotiation because they weren't sure that I was up for it.
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A
Why were you taking off the negotiation?
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I think you'd have to ask somebody other than me. And by the way, I was sort of having Fun. We were down to the negotiation of whether we'd get a Super bowl and whether or not what sort of wild card playoff games we'd get.
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E
It's not uncommon for a chairman of a company to come in and act as though it's like the commissioners coming into the collective bargain agreements at the
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last minute, all the closers coming in from the bullpen.
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E
That's really what it is. It's the closer. And you had to have a deal.
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Get the lefty out of here.
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E
I guarantee that Skipper had the deal in position to be closed. And there weren't A issues list 50 pages long when they took John off, is my guess.
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ESPN and the NFL have always had an appropriate tension because ESPN is the only major sports media company that is also in the sports news business.
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That's really important, is that you actually did, when you were running the company, protect the news with a degree of personal investment. That was rare.
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B
And I have to say, if I have to guess why, and they didn't have to give me any reason but to guess why, it's when Roger, and this is figurative, not literal, is sitting across the table looking at me. Among the many things he sees, some of which he likes, some which he doesn't, is. That's the guy that's going after my league about cte. That's the guy whose company is questioning whether or not we had a secret deal to find some offensive lineman. And so I, I, that would be. My guess, is that tension might impair the relationships at the end. And, and they were more charming than me.
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E
It's very common. It really is. Like, I wouldn't. It's, it sounds like a really cool story like, oh, Skipper gets replaced in the years.
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A
We're gonna, we're gonna aggregate that. Yeah, we're gonna make a headline out of it.
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E
Sorry, John. I tried for you with the NFL.
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B
What I will say is, as negotiating for espn, I generally had a great leverage advantage with the distributors. I often had a great leverage advantage with the leagues. In the case of the NFL, we did not have negotiating leverage with the league. We did not.
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A
Why not?
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B
One, they didn't like our news coverage. Two, there's plenty of bidders, so somebody else would step in. Three, espn. I meant to make this point before you were talking about Fox basically built their business and their network business on the NFL. So did espn. ESPN was a fairly small cable operator until they got a full season of the NFL and went to the distributors and exacted, because we had leverage, a very big price for having A full game of the NFL. The only, by the way, at the time it was the only games that you had to pay for, theoretically were the games on espn. So it's not a bad thing. I want to go back to Murdoch, sat with the President of the United States and ask him to do something which wouldn't solve the problem, wouldn't accrue to him. So it's just a, it's not a good solution to the problem. I also want to make the point that people are talking about Goodell. Will he kill the golden goose? I do think there's a dangerous scenario here and that is I'm going to make an assertion I'll be interested to see. I don't know what the books look like at NBC or cbs, but everybody's losing money on their NFL deal. It's a lost leader. So what Roger is going to tempt fate with here, he's been very good at this is the Delta between how much money an NFL package brings in the door and what you pay us is going to get bigger. That's what's going to happen. CBS is not generating $2 billion worth of advertising and their package is going to go up to 3 billion. So at some point, and Roger is pushing the deals out further because he knows the traditional media companies are only going to get less powerful and less wealthy. And he is going to make it. He's very cleverly brought gradually all the streamers in the big tech companies because they can afford to pay 4 billion, 5 billion. By the way, it's the exact equivalent of Adam and Roger letting the equity firms in.
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A
Adam Silver.
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B
Yeah, because the teams are getting too expensive. Roger knows that he's getting so expensive that the tech companies are going to outbid the next round. But he should be careful. He didn't have to be careful because it'll be the next commissioner, not him. So it's not going to be on him because the next commissioner is going to deal with the fact that these big tech companies have more leverage over you and they don't need your product as much as the traditional broadcasters do. The NFL is at this position right now because these traditional media companies cannot exist without an NFL package. If the Delta gets to be billions of dollars, they will have to decide to exist without it. They'll decline faster, cable TV will decline faster. And the only people who will be able to afford the NFL's packages will be great big trillion dollar market cap companies. But they are also tough, mean companies. Netflix negotiated with us over the per diem cost of our production crew on an inexpensive documentary. They will not. They're going to. Look, Roger, whoever is the next commissioner is going to be sitting across the table with somebody who's going to go, if I don't have your. If I don't have your rights, I'm okay, because I'm still going to sell a ton of Apple phones, and if I don't have the NFL, I'll be okay.
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E
They walked away from Warner Brothers Discovery, to your point.
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B
Yeah.
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E
Netflix walked away because it was no longer the right value proposition. And what NFL has already done is they're taking certain games they don't want to be a bidder for a full package, which will cause Goodell to split the packages even more when there are more companies doing what Netflix did. But you said something, and I can't believe you didn't pick up on it. You said that you had competition.
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B
I might not have given him time to pick up on.
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E
Well, that's okay. It was great. But did you hear him say that there was a bunch of competition when he was negotiating for espn? Did you? Did you hear him say that? What, there's competition now, too. Everyone always thinks that with the streamers, that all of a sudden there's way more competition for stuff, and that's killing different sides of negotiation. Back in the day, in your day, in my day, there was plenty of competition.
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B
I didn't say there wasn't competition.
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E
And it causes you to act in a certain way that at some point becomes irrational. And the question is, what's that point? There's always a point. Whether it's 1980, 1990, 2030, or 2040, every negotiation is either side looking and saying, how far can I go? That's all Roger Goodell and the next commissioner. How far can I go before everybody says no, and then I'll retract?
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But this is what's so interesting. Right? So the longer deals that he's trying to lock the networks into.
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E
Right.
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A
If the networks act as they have historically, which is to say, yes, we need this so desperately, more desperately than any tech company on the planet. So let's lock it in as long as we can. It's is very funny to imagine, like, Roger Goodell extracting as much as he can from the people who will pay the most until they can no longer pay any more, until the. The blood is drained from the body, and then he will turn to the other people. And at that point, that's when sports, I think, gets scary. Right? The point at which the tech companies are the ones remaining. And suddenly the big green arrow of growth does not go up into the right anymore. Like to me, this is not just about the NFL's value. This is about sports.
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E
It's also about technology. It's about both sides of the equation. And the key thing to look for in these agreements and the only thing that matters, and I know on your side it did too, is the opt outs. That is so critical because if you're a tech company, you would like to in theory lock in. You'd like to lock in and just have cost certainty. And what Roger Goodell wants is the ability one way. He doesn't want to give it. He doesn't want to give it out to his partners. He wants to have the opt out. Think about the way he's using the sword right now. He's in a possibility where there's a delta between what he's getting now, what he could get. So use the sword, opt out. And he wants to even do it three years earlier. A new deal without an opt out would be a very interesting thing.
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B
Well, you look at me about opt outs. I don't remember any opt out deals. These are fairly new. I don't remember ESPN having opt outs. We didn't ask for them, we didn't give them. I'm assuming they gave one to the NFL. But I don't think in baseball we, we. The last deal was the first deal
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E
that had some options. Yeah, that's. And you saw what happened and who asked for it?
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B
Was that baseball or espn?
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E
It's.
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B
There's a espn.
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E
I think there's people on espn. I think ESPN has to opt out of the deal with baseball. And there's people on baseball who say baseball wanted to opt out from espn.
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B
I suspect they'd both pass a lie detector test. And it doesn't mean it's true. It means they think it's true.
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A
And you know how to clench to pass the test.
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E
And what baseball is trying to do is they're trying to figure out how to get streamers involved and split up the rights and the packages and get more national games. The question we have for consumers is do you really mind having to look to see what channel a game is on to the point that you don't watch the game? And what we've learned is no, people are watching the game. People are supporting the sport even if they need to take an extra five seconds to look and see what channel the game's all.
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D
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A
Hi, I'm Joel from the New York Times Games Team and I'm out here talking to people about games. What's your favorite game?
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C
The Mini Connections.
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A
The crosswind.
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D
Ah, strands.
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A
What's your vibe when you're playing one of our games?
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C
It makes me feel like I'm procrastinating in a really productive way.
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D
It just scratches an itch in my brain.
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C
All of these games are so fun because it's like a little 5 to 10 minute break.
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D
I love these games.
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A
Yeah, you can play all New York times games@nytimes.com games or in our games app. The notion of the NFL having this domino effect for all of the rest of sports. I want to quote something from the Vanity Fair piece which I was referencing before they write. The new deal may create an opportunity for new platforms looking to snap up other sporting rights as the older players are squeezed at risk. Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer. With only so much money to go around, the NFL could suck out all the cash from sports rights. Which is to say these networks only have so much, they're lost leaders. Which I want to return to in a second actually as well. Just the idea that they're losing money to get all this stuff. But if they only have a zero sum budget and they're giving all of that to the NFL, it is. Is baseball worried?
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E
No, because there's so many opportunities on so many different platforms. If this were a world where there were three bidders total for every single bit of content, then everybody would be worried. But it's just not the case anymore. There is a huge market for what you would call secondary rights. And I hate to call baseball a secondary. Right. But I'm going to call everything secondary to NFL. But you can get very wealthy with huge franchise valuations by being second to the NFL. So MLB is not sitting around worried about that. They're worried about how they're going to get all their rights of their individual teams to sell as a group the way Roger Good Dell already does. And I think that secretly Adam Silver thinks about that too much. More so than worried that they won't have a home.
- [29:18]
B
I'll agree with you. While having a slight distinction. Baseball is a first tier. Right? Right. College football, baseball, NBA, they're not going to suffer here. What's going to happen is what happened to F1 Del. Carl, F1 and MLS. And I happen to be very fond of the commissioner of MLS. I don't know the F1 guys, they had to go take a deal because there's so much pressure to increase the average annual value of a year that Don was under so much pressure to deliver an increase. Fox and ESPN had been the bidders. Fox is not particularly soccer centric and so they weren't going to bid. So he had to go get that big increase from Apple. It has a deleterious effect, which is fewer people watch Apple, so less people are watching MLS games. F1 moved over because they were getting 75 or $85 million from ESPN. ESPN paid all that money. The NFL, they go, how are we going to save a billion dollars? Oh, we're not going to renew F1 or we're not going to give a big increase, we're not going to renew mls. So that's where the effect is. Those I would call, and I mean this in an appropriate way, a silver medal is a great thing. MLS and F1 are second tier rights in the United States.
- [30:34]
E
I don't agree that the billion dollars that that's the reason why Disney gave up F1. I think that they. And you just told us you didn't like doing this. But I believe now with analytics and there are actual ways to value content and to value properties and they can come up with, Your view was $1 more than what someone else is paying. And if I want something, I'm going to get it. That's its value. Now with analytics, they're coming up with, well, here's really what we're doing. We can certainly put some off on if people are going to get Peacock, we can say that can be part of the value here for NBC's bid. But there is a calculation and there's a breaking point. And I think what happened with Disney is they just F1 had a different view of what they were worth. And Disney said, go ahead, go get it. It's not here.
- [31:21]
B
Didn't I say the same thing? Maybe, but look, I mean, look, it's just simple math. If you spend a billion dollars, you gotta win CBS because this is in a budget.
- [31:32]
E
They had the money to read to renew F1 is all I'm saying. They just chose not to allocate it there. They're going to allocate it not just to the NFL though. They need other programming, just have the NFL.
- [31:45]
B
I wasn't suggesting that. But you know, as somebody who ran a club, when an unexpected expense comes along that comes off your bottom line, you have to find that money or some portion of it, and you can't. It's like when you lay people off, you lay people off who make a lot of money. You don't lay people off who make a little bit of money. So you must lay off important things. Right? They didn't. And you have to lay off things with big tickets, right? You got to save a billion dollars. You don't want to do it. 23 million dol a time. You got to do it. They're paying 60, 70 million for MLS. They're paying 85 million. That's $150 million.
- [32:24]
E
I'm just laughing because John talking about layoffs, right? When we're in this business, in this show, he gets very angry when companies do cost cutting measures or laying off people because he's become this sort of caricature of the left. And what I'm smiling about is that when he worked for the man, which is Disney, this is exactly who he was.
- [32:44]
A
I would say that the Men is less of a compelling title than in the sporting class. Guys who fired people. Less compelling than the sporting class as well. But the notion of the accounting, David, you were gesturing towards there being modern analytics in ways that are trying to capture the true value of something in an era in which it's not just eyeballs and Nielsen boxes, which is what of course, the previous era was. Don Garber basically publicly said, I am retiring at the Sloan Conference, where we were also at. He was coming off stage right before we were there, David, doing our whole Steve Ballmer episode. And it just reminded me that getting out of this game right now is much like coaching college football, totally understandable. It's a crazy world now in which the Business, the numbers, the power is shifting. And in this case, I wonder when you look at why Rupert Murdoch and Fox are running to Donald Trump,
- [33:45]
D
did
- [33:45]
A
government play a role? John, previous like this. In your experience running espn, David, in your experience with sports, how does is this move familiar or is this new?
- [33:56]
E
It's quite familiar. The president got involved in the work stoppage in the 90s in baseball. The this is way before Trump where there is a possibility that you will have to get presidential involvement or judicial involvement. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor is much more well known to baseball fans as her involvement in getting baseball going again than in her being a Supreme Court justice. And so again, we all act and I listen forgetting where we are politically. We all act like what's going on now has never happened. It's unprecedented what's going on. And I just have a different view of it. And I'm not that old and my memory is not that good, but I have instances in my head in business where we were all doing these sorts of things long before the current administration was around.
- [34:40]
B
We didn't have many. At my level, the most important political influence that Disney had to worry about was making sure that the trademark on Mickey Mouse didn't run out. And yeah, they spent a lot of time lobbying Congress to make sure Mickey Mouse didn't run out.
- [34:56]
A
It remind us why that was complicated scene.
- [34:58]
B
But Willie is like 1926, 1929 or something. I think the copyright law in the United states was about 60 years at one point, so. More than 60 years.
- [35:06]
E
Do you know how much money you spent in Tallahassee as a company?
- [35:10]
B
No.
- [35:10]
E
Yeah, quite a bit.
- [35:12]
B
Oh, no, no.
- [35:13]
E
It's not just in Washington D.C. there's local politics, there's state politics that companies get involved with. And Disney being in Orlando would be involved in Florida state politics. They had a huge presence in Tallahassee. You're spending tons of money. You have a whole department of lobbies.
- [35:28]
B
I wasn't saying we weren't at espn. We. The political issue we worried about was the FCC and whether or not our distribution practices would at some point come under scrutiny. And that was mostly what we were
- [35:43]
A
charging because you were the big bad wolf.
- [35:45]
E
They were getting paid per person for people who didn't watch espn. They John's still laughing at.
- [35:52]
B
Was there any. Was anybody licensing their content to distributors and not getting paid for every customer?
- [36:00]
E
All of us were. All of you were.
- [36:02]
B
Thank you.
- [36:02]
E
But. But no, I'm not saying that you were brilliant and the only one doing it. I'm saying that the model where you're sucking money out of people who are not getting any benefit to it, and now you have the goal to say in 2026, God forbid people don't know what channel to go to or have to buy another streamer. Oy vey, that'd be terrible.
- [36:18]
B
And by the way, you are are fostering a misunderstanding that lots of people use. 80% of everybody who has cable television watches ESPN.
- [36:31]
E
You don't believe that the rights, the leagues, sports center, the ancillary programming, they
- [36:36]
B
watch something on espn. I mean, it's just, it's a.
- [36:40]
E
Is that a study you did?
- [36:42]
B
Yes.
- [36:42]
E
Okay, I can do a study too and get to 40%, you know that. Okay, but we'll go with it. 80% of cable subscribers watch ESPN. Does that make you feel better? Is that why you say that?
- [36:55]
B
How many, what percentage of people watched MLB channel?
- [36:58]
E
Almost zero.
- [36:59]
B
Almost zero. And did you worry?
- [37:02]
E
No.
- [37:03]
B
Okay, just checking.
- [37:06]
E
Once. Once, by the way. Once it's not out. Once it's out, then I worry.
- [37:10]
B
You basically asked the question. Basically was did you ever have something that might rise to the level of going to the President of the United States and asking for help? I didn't experience that in anything only
- [37:23]
E
because I had a relationship with any president.
- [37:25]
B
And the only thing I remember that rose to that was the Mickey Mouse thing.
- [37:33]
E
At the highest level of Disney, above espn, there is interaction with the White House, of course, all the time. We had a huge office under every White House. It's not that Murdoch was like, oh, I have a brilliant idea because Trump's Trump and I'm trying not to defend Trump because it's so ridiculous to do, and I won't do it. But to think that Murdoch is the first CEO chairman to go to the President for something is just not accurate. That's all I was trying to say.
- [37:57]
B
Nobody, you're, you're, you're countering an argument that nobody has made, including me, like Pablo's making it.
- [38:04]
A
Well, what I'm raising the question of is what is new in this wild new era and what is old.
- [38:11]
E
The world is littered with politicians who get rich once they stop being politicians. The fact that politicians can maybe figure out how to get rich while being politicians is the natural next step gap to abuse of power.
- [38:23]
A
The question I have.
- [38:24]
B
I'm with you. Since you added towards the abuse of power.
- [38:27]
E
Well, that it's always been that I
- [38:29]
B
thought you were going to end. It's a natural next step for a capitalist.
- [38:33]
A
The thing, the thing that because they have a Rock.
- [38:35]
B
They have a rational job. They have an obligation to their shareholders to cheat and lie and steal.
- [38:40]
E
The problem with you is you think that anyone who disagrees with you is not rational. And I don't share that. I think you're very rational in what you say, even when it's wrong.
- [38:47]
A
One the question around capitalism that I have, right as we're talking about the green arrow and we're looking ahead to a world in which Netflix, Google, Apple will remain, others will wither. The question I have is what is going to be enough? So the NFL, for instance, right? Let's just.
- [39:08]
B
There's never enough.
- [39:09]
E
Never.
- [39:10]
B
I mean, I don't understand that question. The other component to the problem, Pablo, is the nature of leagues.
- [39:17]
A
This is what I'm getting at.
- [39:18]
B
They're not businesses run by CEO, right? They are collectives, mostly with antitrust exemption that has an administrative head who's given certain obligations and opportunities. But the owners will never. You dealt with it. The owners will never go, let's do some. Let's take less money for some.
- [39:41]
E
Nor will any CEO or owner of any business anywhere. So you ask, when does it stop? It's like asking, when does the stock market stop going up? The answer is if you are an investor for the long term, you are going to make money in the market. If you don't panic when there's a down and sell low and buy high, which most do, if you just stay the course, you will make money in sports, ownership, asset value, homes generally, you will get an increase in the value. And you don't stop that, that NFL will have to keep finding more avenues for revenue, like every business.
- [40:17]
A
But this is, this is the thing I am getting at though, is at a certain point, the desire for more and the lack of reasonable competitors while you're still striving for more and more and more, it becomes obviously unsustainable.
- [40:35]
E
No, because there's never a lack. They're going to look different, much like the competitors today look different than they were in the 70s and 80s and 90s. They look different, but there's competitors. When John's there, what's the end game?
- [40:46]
A
Because what I'm imagining right now is a world in which they are going to drain all the money out of the networks. Silicon Valley is going to come along and they're going to say, we're not going to pay as much. And the NFL is going to react by saying, then we're going to do this other next thing to make sure that we are still growing. What Robert Kraft is saying in his Vanity Fair piece is that he wants 18 games, two preseason games, 16 international games. So every team, every year plays international game. They're a streaming audience, and that's cool. But there's going to be more. They're going to want more. And then the product at some point is going to not be totally familiar to the people who love it. And then at that point, the question is, is the golden goose actually decapitated? And why did you do it? Because you wanted more?
- [41:27]
E
I've never seen that. I know the expression, just like cutting off your nose despite your face. I don't see a lot of noseless people walking around who don't have skin cancer. So I just. I understand the expression of killing the golden goose. I've just never seen that. So, yes, the older we are, we are going to age out of what the NFL cares about. The way we engage with the NFL, it'll be a different way for kids and grandkids and how they engage. So, yes, the NFL could change how it distributes its product. They could go to 40 games.
- [41:54]
A
You just.
- [41:55]
E
You don't know what is going to happen going forward. They could play twice a week. You could change a bunch of rules. It's hard to know other than they want the asset value to keep going up, happen.
- [42:05]
A
Right. I guess my naive but sincere question is, isn't there a way to keep growing or at the very least, keep your sort of like, rate of return seemingly stable, maybe even slightly above flat, and be totally happy?
- [42:23]
E
Can you imagine Pablo?
- [42:26]
B
He's channeling me now.
- [42:27]
E
Can you imagine going to a board meeting, a meeting with your board, and say, listen, I am a genius. I have a plan that will keep us flat.
- [42:35]
A
We are the number one property. Everybody is kissing already. Do this forever. Just don't frack the earth underneath us, such that poison is released, killing the entire sports ecosystem? That is, I hear, genuinely my fear.
- [42:52]
E
I'm sorry, I really. It's hard to be you.
- [42:55]
B
Well, you take a look at oil and gas, you think they spin it. They are literally going to destroy the world. And is anybody going to stop?
- [43:06]
E
But then the rights fees won't matter. Like, if the world blows up, we're just racing.
- [43:11]
A
We're just racing.
- [43:12]
E
If that's what happens, then what are we talking about? It's a game of musical chairs. You just don't want to be holding the last chair.
- [43:18]
A
But this is it, right? So there is now talk of when is Roger Goodell going to step down? Who is going to be in charge? We just Mentioned Don Garber is leaving. How long is Adam Silver going to do this job? It does feel like we are in a period of maximum extraction and the bill will come due for someone else.
- [43:39]
B
Well, or. Or the world just goes somewhere else. Right. Everybody who went to California in 1849, they. If you'd said to them, don't take all the gold out, just take as. Just take half the gold out, leave
- [43:52]
E
the rest for the next group, if you don't mind.
- [43:55]
B
If you run through all the gold people start using silver, they'll do something else. It's hard to remember, but the NFL, you remember the most important. What's called the greatest football game ever was the Baltimore Colts. And who'd they beat?
- [44:10]
E
Is that John Unitis back in that day?
- [44:13]
B
Yeah, 1958, the Giants. It was on Giants. It was the Giants and the Colts and I think some astonishing number of people watched. And it was the first time most people had seen football on television.
- [44:24]
A
Yes.
- [44:24]
B
Before that, you have to think back. That's only what, 42 and 20, 68 years ago, the NFL was not even a thing. Nobody cared. Right. People cared about horse racing, boxing, college football, baseball. And your worst problem is not that you'll kill the golden goose. It is that somebody will come along with a better goose that lays better eggs and take away your audience. They're not going to lose their audience because it's harder to find because it costs more money. You have to buy a couple of streaming services. They're going to lose their audience if people someday don't care.
- [45:01]
A
Yeah, the product right now, nobody really change if the product changes. If the goose is different.
- [45:06]
E
Do you think the product has changed because it's on more channels?
- [45:08]
A
I think we are running a risk when it comes to the NFL's great glory being manufactured scarcity of adding more and more games such that that incredible competitive advantage of owning parts of the calendar is cheapened. And suddenly a lot like everything else, Men's Wearhouse helps you love the way you look. No matter if it's a formal occasion or a more casual thing. Job interview, tea time, high school reunion, wedding, courtside seats, or just a neighborhood party where you want people to say, man, that dude looks impressive. So if you're a man with literally anything on the books, Men's Wearhouse has everything you need from formal to casual. Dressed up to dress down. And the best part is they pride themselves on impeccable service from the moment you walk in the door with in store experts well versed in finding you the right look for any occasion and on site tailors to make sure the fit is perfect for your body. Men's Wearhouse really has it all. Suits, tuxes, sport coats, jeans, shorts, chinos, T shirts, polos, loafers, sneakers, sandals. All of it. Get ready to look and feel good from head to toe by visiting Men's Wearhouse today and with over 600 locations nationwide, they are nearby when you're ready to love the way you look. Men's Wearhouse Love the way you look if you've ever tried to keep up with the world of wellness and performance, you know that it moves really fast. New products, new ingredients, and new claims all competing for your attention. And that's why the Drop by GNC exists. It's where new happens first and where GNC cuts through the noise to find out what actually works. No guesswork, no endless scrolling, just a curated selection of the best from the latest launches and trends and innovations in wellness and performance, all hand picked by GNC's experts. And here's the advantage you're getting a sneak peek at what's coming next, the newest formulas, the latest flavors, and the up and coming brands before they hit the mainstream. From trending ingredients to breakthrough formulas, the Drop by GNC keeps you informed and focused and on top of your goals. And with new drops launching regularly, there's always something fresh to discover. So if you're ready to stop chasing trends and start staying ahead of them, check out the Drop by GNC today. GNC.com the drop is the destination to discover something new to try today. And get the facts you can trust on what's new and trending. And make sure to plan what's next by browsing the Coming soon calendar of drops. That's gnc.com the drop
- [47:38]
D
most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold Every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark Web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam, call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24. 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or even just to vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today@aura.com safety. Protect yourself now@aura.com safety.
- [48:59]
A
The thing I'm saying is it's not that fans, I think are going to revolt because they got to go to these streaming services. Although that is frustrating and annoying and more expensive, which are all real things we've talked about at length on this program before. I think the real concern is the way that this is evolving is not even considering whether this is good as a product. It's all about, oh, wait a minute. We can extract more right now.
- [49:24]
B
Well, I'll make a point I've made many times and it's one David and I agree on. The next time any of these leagues, any of these networks think about the fans, we'll be the first.
- [49:35]
E
I hate to just echo that because it's so boring to close a show. There is no greater, more true statement than the fans. Never come up in a conversation. Never. And I'm sorry, but I've been in them and so have you. Yes, not one time.
- [49:52]
A
And this is why the actual true name of the sporting class is of course, Rich guys only Fans.
- [50:01]
E
I don't know what to tell you. I. I'm disappointed with today's show in so many ways.
- [50:04]
A
Why?
- [50:05]
E
Here's what I found out. I had a blast that I find John, he's so entrenched in his. I don't know if we're done with the show, but he's so entrenched in his position. I don't know if he can hear me. But he's very entrenched. And what he'll do is he'll manufacture an argument in order to bolster that entrenched position. Oh, that's almost to the point of being arrested.
- [50:24]
B
That is unusual human behavior. And my friend to my right, you would suggest your views are not entrenched.
- [50:32]
E
I would suggest that I always learn from you every show. And I look at things differently. By learning what you're saying was going on in your head when you're thinking and doing certain things. That's all.
- [50:41]
A
At some point, this show will end. I just want our audience to know they will continue to argue.
- [50:46]
B
We're not arguing.
- [50:48]
E
We're just.
- [50:49]
A
We're not arguing about arguing.
- [50:50]
B
I get mad at people I argue with. I don't get mad at David.
- [51:03]
A
Pablo torre finds out is produced by walter averoma maxwell carney, ryan cortez, juan galindo, patrick kim, neely loman, rob mccray, matt sullivan, claire taylor and chris tuminello studio engineering by rd systems sound design by andrew burcic digital strategy by bailey carlin and andrew northern theme song as always by john bravo and we'll talk to you next time.
- [51:38]
D
Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam, call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 247 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or even just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com safety protect yourself now at aura.com safety
- [52:53]
B
acast powers the world's best podcasts.
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A
Here's a show that we recommend.
- [53:00]
C
The world of ancient Greek myth and the wider history of the Mediterranean is and always will be incredibly relevant. Whether you have a casual interest, interest in myth or are a dyed in the wool nerd for the ancient world, you will find your fix with let's Talk About Myths Baby. I'm Liv Albert and together with my amazing producer Mikayla Pangowish, we bring the context, intricacies and the stories of ancient Greece and sometimes the wider Mediterranean to life. Let's Talk About Myths Baby has something for everyone. Listen to let's Talk About Myths Baby wherever you get your podcast, new episodes every Tuesday and Friday or find more information at mythsbaby.
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B
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A
Com.