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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the Rundown interview edition. Today I am talking to Max Martin, the co founder and CEO of N Hance Group. N Hance is the company behind the N Hance Games, which is a sports competition where athletes are openly allowed to use performance enhancing drugs. This company went public via SPAC last week and their inaugural event is happening on May 24th in Las Vegas. So in today's conversation with Max, we get into why he started this company, the business model behind it, how they've been Inspired. Inspired by F1 and UFC and his message to the haters and skeptics out there. This was a very interesting conversation. I think you guys are going to have some strong opinions after listening to this one. So let's get into it. Max Martin, welcome to the Rundown.
- [00:49]
B
Thank you so much for having me on.
- [00:50]
A
Hey, I'm super excited for. For today's conversation. So for the audience here, Max is the CEO of, of Enhanced Games. So I'm just going to turn it over to you, Max. Like, for anyone that hasn't heard of Enhanced Games, give us an overview of what the games are. What are the sports that are included? What makes you guys fundamentally different than a traditional sports league or competition?
- [01:14]
B
Yeah, give me just one second before I answer. Right. You know, we have a consumer business as well.
- [01:19]
A
Well, let's talk about that as well. I want to talk about the consumer business as well. Let's first talk about the Enhanced Games itself getting into coming up next week, and then we'll talk about the consumer side.
- [01:27]
B
Okay, perfect. No, I'm just making sure. Okay, cool. So the Enhanced Games are a completely reimagined sporting system where the biggest asset that we have as a society, which is science, is an integral part of it. So, as you know, there's banned substances regulations in almost every sport. They've been around for decades. And since they were introduced, we have people that had been cheating left, right and center on it. There's actually research that shows that 43% of Olympians actually admit to using banned substances, but only 1% of those are skating caught. And we have a massive cheating problem where every other athlete is actually getting away with that cheating. So you ask yourself, how is that possible with all the testing that's happening? That's possible because the athletes that cheat resort to newly developed drugs that are not well researched and they take additional drugs on top of that to hide what they're taking in the first place. That lets them get away with the cheating, but the price they need to pay for that is with their Health. And our approach is when you look at other industries like Hollywood, everyone's openly enhanced. If you look at some of the best executives in the world, they're openly enhanced. Why not allow the benefits of enhancements for athletes as well? And so we're saying everything that is an FDA approved drug that is prescribed to you by a doctor is allowed. On top of that, what we're introducing is medical screenings for athletes where we're looking at their health over time to make sure that they're healthy and safe to compete. So that's really the first big thing that FDA approved substances are allowed. Second big thing is that we're starting to pay these athletes very well. We do three sports, track, swimming and weightlifting. And all of these sports, the athletes are basically not compensated at all. If you win a medal for Team USA at the Olympics, you get paid $37,500. Not by the Olympics, which make, by the way, billions in media rights, billions in sponsorships. No, but by the US Olympic Committee, you get paid $37,500. If you go to Love island, you make probably three times that much just from their appearance on that show. And so it shows that the system is fundamentally flawed in terms of compensating the people that are the backbone of that system. And so if you win an event at the Enhanced games, you make $250,000. If you break a world record, you can make another $250,000 and a million dollars for the records in the hundred sprint and the 53 in the pool. And then additionally we have like a team set up for athletes where we pay them very well in six figure deals a year on top of that. So the compensation that our athletes receive are life changing for them. For our first Games, they're coming up now on the 24th of May, over Memorial Day weekend in Las Vegas, we have built our own competition complex, a stadium like you haven't seen it before, where track, swim and weightlifting are all happening. In the center of the stadium we have the rock band the Killers performing. We have DJ Alan Walker with Faruko with an additional performance. And everything is modeled after the Super Bowl. The company also that produces it is the company that's been producing the super bowl for the last 42 years. So this is going to be an event like no other. It's going to be broadcasted across multiple different platforms, available for free for people to watch. And it's going to change in our perspective, the perception of science and sport.
- [04:31]
A
So you guys are kind of leaning in to the whole entertainment side of sports, in including all the medical advances that have happened, you're like, hey, the athletes are allowed to take whatever substances that have been approved by the fda. And you're saying you have doctors that are monitoring the athletes to make sure that they're safe when it comes to, like, the drugs that they're taking?
- [04:49]
B
Absolutely, yes. I would even argue that probably the health monitoring and medical care that we provide for our athletes is probably the best in any sport. And we have two independent governing bodies that monitor all of this. The first one is our independent medical commission. That medical commission is responsible for screening the athletes from the medical side and clearing them from a health and safety perspective to go into the games. So, for example, from a safety perspective, what also is considered is, for example, if an athlete has the flu in 2024 for the Olympic final of the 200 meter men's sprint, Noah Lyons, American athlete, ran it while he had Covid.
- [05:24]
A
Yeah, I remember that, yeah.
- [05:26]
B
Completely collapsed after the race, had to get carried out in a wheelchair. Whether that was safe or not, I leave that up for debate. But that's not going to happen in our games. And what we've seen with the athletes now in preparation, actually, is that all of their health has massively improved. And that's something to be extremely proud of. Because what people misconstrue is that when you think about enhancements, it's not that the more is merrier. So for, because, for example, think about you have a race on the track and you line up 10 bodybuilders, that's maybe entertaining to watch, but it's not going to be anything that is considered to be a good performance in terms of sprint times. So for the athletes, the enhancements are really just the icing on the cake. And even if you look at the protocol that I'm on and you compare it to the protocols that our athletes are taking, compared to some of them, I'm taking six times as much. And so for the athletes, the biggest benefit of enhancements is actually in the recovery and injury prevention. And so for them, they all have personalized protocols based on who they are as an individual. You know, some people might like milk, others are lactose intolerant and what their event is. I think about it, you need a very different skill set to women on the track versus as a weightlifter. And so these two factors really determine the personalization approach for the athletes. And then it's really just fine tuning the capabilities of an athlete and letting them recover, recover much quicker.
- [06:46]
A
And so you're saying you have three sports, right, to start off with in Vegas, you're doing swimming, weightlifting and, and track, I believe.
- [06:56]
B
Yeah.
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A
Okay, gotcha. And then is there, is there plans to expand to other sports down the line or, or, or you're gonna just kind of see how the first one goes.
- [07:05]
B
So the games themselves, I think we're going to keep those three sports and we very mindfully chose those sports because those three sports have historically been sports that defined what the human body is capable of. They're also all objectively measurable when it comes to the performance. So that means no judges are involved. Everything is data. And so through that data we can clearly communicate and prove the benefits of enhancements. And we have two categories of athletes where this, this data monitoring becomes actually so interesting. So one is the athletes that have the potential to break world records. I think we'll have like five, six world records being broken at the games. But then another category of athletes which might not break a world record is equally as exciting to me. So this is, for example, an athlete that's in their mid-30s that came out of retirement trying to beat their personal best from when they were in their prime. So we have one swimmer, for example, her name is Megan. Megan is 35 and in training now, she swum quicker than she ever has in her career before. So 35 year old Megan is better than 23 year old Megan. But Megan is not just an average athlete. Megan was a two time world champion when she was in her Prime. So at 35, is she quicker than when she was a two time world champion at. And that's for me the power of enhancement that you can redefine at which age you can be in your prime and get the most out of your health and your performance.
- [08:22]
A
That's interesting. I mean, I want to pivot a little bit. I will come back to the games, I want to pivot a little bit and talk about the business model. And before we talk about the business model, I want to talk about the fact that you guys went public last week via a spac. I'm kind of curious what the thinking behind that one, behind that decision is. Because you know, what does being a public company unlock for the enhanced games that staying private wouldn't have?
- [08:47]
B
Yeah, it's a good question. And there's multiple avenues on why we went public. The first one is, and most important one really we think of enhanced as a movement and we want people in this movement not just to be part of it by watching the sports or purchasing products that we offer, and we'll talk about that later. But by being an owner of that movement too, you know, if you want to invest in sports as an investor, you either need to pay like 8 billion plus for a sports team, leagues are de facto unobtainable, or you can buy shares in TKO, which owns WWE in the UFC, or Liberty Media, which owns F1. Other than that, particularly as a normal person, you cannot own any sports assets.
- [09:25]
A
Well, don't they have like publicly traded companies in Europe of some of some soccer clubs? And then there's talks about the New York Knicks being spun off into a publicly traded company as well?
- [09:35]
B
Soon there are a few clubs in Europe that are public. Man United, for example, or Borussia Dortmund in Germany. But we're an American company and we're serving the American market. And so this is what we are focused on. So we want people really to be an owner of that movement too. Why? Because we are right now where the UFC was in 1993, before UFC won, or where the WWE was 1985 before WrestleMania 1. That's where we're at. And so we always knew we wanted to be public to have give people access to ownership in that too. But then on the secondary side as well is now that we're public, we're running towards transparency as an organization just as much as we're running towards transparency in sports. And that was something very important to us as well. Our investors and the public will know where does every single dollar go? How much is paid to the athletes? Something we're super proud of. The budget for the first games is 50 million, of which 25 can go to athletes. And so like that just shows our commitment to the athletes we will be seeing how much money are we investing into the healthcare of the athletes. And that's the transparency that we've always been looking for. But really we want to give people the opportunity to become owners in that movement too. And then lastly, being public, particularly in the New York Stock Exchange, just gives you tons of capital raising opportunities as a company. And that's been something that we've been excited about too.
- [10:51]
A
But Max, doesn't it add to the stress of it as well? Because obviously you have a lot going on right now with the events coming up, but then you know, your Stock is down 40% since it debuted last week. That probably adds to the stress and you're probably getting more calls and emails. So I think the market is probably maybe having a hard time understanding like the big picture, the big picture plan here for the Games. So I guess let's talk about the business model now, like beyond just the games, what is the business model? I think you mentioned that there's a consumer side as well. How does it all tie in?
- [11:19]
B
Yeah, great question. So a year and a half ago roughly we thought about we're doing so much for the athletes health in such a regulated environment where we're learning so much. And that's a truly big asset that we have. And if we have 50 athletes now going into the first Games, we switch the roster 100% for five Games, you know, we'll have changed 250 lives. That's already amazing. But that's not enough because being enhanced is also nothing that's new. You know, look at a guy like Jeff Bezos. Yes, it's openly enhanced, taking the best of it. No, of course.
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A
Right, right, right, yeah. I mean he's got.
- [11:54]
B
Yeah, but Bezos protocol and access to information is not attainable for the average Joe like ourselves. Right. But what is important is what is expensive is not the substances. What is expensive is the access to information for personalized protocols. And so that's what we then decided that we want to build and give more people the opportunity to live enhanced. And so we started building our consumer platform, Live Enhanced, which has the objective to let people live enhanced. Now what does that mean though? Being enhanced is something very subjective. For some people it might be just doing cord plunge sauna and taking multivitamins. For other people it might be injectable hormone therapy. So it's really a spectrum and where you sit on that spectrum is entirely up to you. So what the live Enhance platform provides is a big coverage of that spectrum. So what we have, we have supplements which are stacks, think of it like an ag one, like im8, etc. But we have one that's focused on longevity, one that's focused on strength and recovery and those sit at the top of the quality that you can purchase in the market. So for example, Brian Johnson is actually going to be a broadcast host.
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A
I saw that.
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B
He's not going to be a sports expert, but he's going to be the human enhancement expert. So he's going to be walking the audience through, you know, the protocols of the athletes and explain, etc. When I showed Brian for the first time the formulations especially of a longevity product, he was swept off his feet and couldn't believe A, how good the product was, but B, also the price point at which we're able to offer it, that's on OTC side, on the prescription Side, we have prescription drugs across various categories. The biggest ones, I would say longevity prescription drugs, TRT for men, HRT for women, but then also really big peptides. And peptides is probably the space in the prescription that we're most excited about, particularly, you know, with HHS directing that they want to take a new look at categorizations of certain peptides, making them, you know, moving them up to category one so that they can be prescribed and compounded in the US Again, rather than people resorting to ordering unregulated, untested substances from China or Mexico. So this is a space that I think will be able to capture a lot of value in. And so that's how we built the live enhanced consumer platform. And then the beauty of it is, if you start thinking about taking a more proactive approach to your own healthcare, what we're really interested in is personalizing the product. Because if you're getting enhanced, you're going to be on a different protocol than I am, because you're going to have a different baseline and you're going to have different objectives that you're pursuing for the general consumer. Are you 25, training for your first marathon, or are you 65, looking for more energy to take your grandkids to the playground and play with them? And those protocols, your first protocol is not the same protocol in six months from now. It's not the same protocol in 18 months from now. So what Live Enhance is providing you with is kind of. It takes you with you through your own personal health journey to make sure that you're always getting the most out of it.
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A
Are you guys developing, like, personalized enhancements for the athletes competing in the games as well, or do they have their own team developing those enhancements? And then if you are developing those, are you going to be eventually selling those enhancements based on the data that you learn from the games and then sell that to the consumer side?
- [15:08]
B
So let's define developing. We're not trialing or developing new drugs, but what we're designing for the athletes are their protocols. And so what we have set up is the enhanced medical program. The enhanced medical program is actually a clinical study that's been reviewed by an IRB board. This means basically that it's operating under the highest clinical medical standards that there are internationally. And we've done this in collaboration with the Department of Health in Abu Dhabi and the largest hospital in the uae. And so as part of that program, why did we do it? Because we wanted to impose on ourselves to operate under the Highest standards that there are in the clinical study. What the athletes are recommended is based on all of the medical screens that we do with them. Images of the heart, brain, musculoskeleton analysis, blood, urine, saliva sampling, etc. Literally, we have the best monitored athletes in the world. Based on those medical screenings and the events that the athletes are doing, we design protocols for them and the. But the. Based on FDA approved drugs. So all drugs are already FDA approved. But then the athlete always has the ultimate choice on what they want or won't take.
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A
Sorry, go ahead, go ahead.
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B
Yeah, so that's how, that's how we're doing it. So we're helping the athletes. We've been designing their protocols and optimizing them. Also adjusting the protocols over time. Right. As an athlete starts, they're not going to take a high dose immediately, but it's like slow roll to make sure the athlete responds well. If an athlete doesn't respond well, you can adjust again. So it's really very personalized and tailored to each athlete's needs.
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A
How much of, let's just say two or three years down the line, how much of the business will be the consumer side where you're selling the peptides and other enhancements to consumers versus like the sports league side of the business? Because I think the sports league side is the one that's getting all the attention right now. What's that revenue split going to be? Down the line?
- [16:58]
B
Yeah, down the line it's going to. The consumer side is going to massively outgrow it. So what we're actually doing is we're building a sports property that in itself is going to spin off cash. We're monetizing that through sponsorships in the future, media rights, not in year one because we wanted to make it as accessible and freely watched as possible. But through traditional sporting revenues, the sports side of the business will spin off cash and be a profitable part of our organization. And the live enhance platform is going to be the secondary part which is going to be constantly fueled by sports. Now in two, three years from now, the consumer side is going to massively outgrow the sporting business. Reason being is because we're just going to be able to hopefully serve millions of people with the product. But with sport, we don't think of it as we want to have 10,000 athletes. We want to be always very targeted and very focused and provide a very entertaining product that we can monetize. That's what it's about. And in this sports property, what we're Learning with the athletes is that important and valuable IP in terms of how to personalize protocols, which we then take and make available through our live enhance platform for average people. So think about it really like Formula 1. What the engineers do in a Formula 1 team when they develop a car is at the forefront of scientific innovation and technology. That Formula one car is never going to get mass produced. But what they learn in developing the Formula one car in some form of derivative is going to trickle down into the road car production a few years down the line. And so it's very similar, for example, shifting paddles that you have in cars, they come from the grid, so it's very similar for us. What helps an athlete break a world record, what helps an athlete like Meghan at 35 beat her personal best compared to when she was a world champion, is way too complicated for an average Joe. But the work that we do with the athletes is constantly improving our own product offering and the prescription guidelines for those personalized protocols for the general people. And so what we're really doing is we're democratizing the access to all of that information that the doctors of all of the big Marvel superheroes, all of the big executives, all of that knowledge is basically what we're improving through the work with athletes and, and making accessible to the general public.
- [19:08]
A
It's a very interesting approach and business model. But I have to ask, you know, this is also getting a lot of hate, right? A lot of haters are coming out in the sports world especially, you know, I think you have the. Was it the world. What was the name? The Anti Doping Agency came out. Other national government bodies have also come out against it. Does that, does that bother you at all? Or I guess what is your message to. To the skeptics and haters that are like, hey, like, this is. They're, they're. They're, I don't know, turned off by this.
- [19:38]
B
So my first point of sometimes criticism on that feedback is that people are very, very quickly informing an opinion. That's what's helped us actually a lot in terms of getting so much media attention. Because, yes, the concept is very polarizing. It's very novel, and it's going against decades of indoctrination into our brains. The performance enhancements are illegal and unsafe. So if you just think about these guys are allowing performance enhancements and the only thing you think about, it's unsafe and illegal, then I can understand how you come to a negative conclusion about what we're trying to achieve. But if you peel back the onion and actually look a little bit deeper. Everything is FDA approved. Everything's been around for decades. We know the risk and benefit profiles of those substances extremely well. Doctors, quite frankly, prescribe those substances to other people every single day. We have the best medical screenings in the world. We provide so much for the athletes. And then even look at the content that our athletes are producing about their experience with us. You quickly realize that what we're doing is actually quite phenomenal. And so that's why also the feedback that we've been getting, or not the feedback, but like the public criticism from people from the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti Doping Agency, etcetera, has actually massively tuned down over the last year. Now, there's still people, obviously that where it just goes against every grain of their body, but quite frankly, that's okay. If it's not for you, it's not for you. What is the case though, is that at least my social media is completely going crazy about health optimization peptides and everything. And people are willing to order research chemicals from China, from Mexico, that are untested and inject themselves without doctor supervision because they're so crazy about it. So why, just like in sports, we can't be naive and pretend it's not happening. And just because we're looking away, we hope it goes away. It doesn't. So what we're here to do is provide a safe pathway to those enhancement benefits with a system that is regulated by the fda, the global gold standard, by the way, in drug administration, with American licensed doctors per state, compounding pharmacies per state, and a pathway with continuous monitoring where you are required to put your blood in, where you are required to speak to the doctor to make sure that you can do it safely. It's not the use of performance enhancing substances that's dangerous, it's the misuse. And so what we're about is providing a safe pathway to supervised and regulated use.
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A
Yeah, it's funny that you say that. I'm not going to name names, but I know some buddies of mine that have, you know, might have ordered some, some stuff from overseas and tried it. And I was always shocked. I was like, you're going to do that completely unsupervised? And now to see peptides, you know, in 2026, it's just like a very common thing to talk about it and now it's sort of being embraced generally. So that's very interesting. I'll give you the last word here, Max. I mean, you know, you have the games coming up. Just tell the audience that they want to check out the games, where they can watch them and what to look out for in the future, whether they're an investor or sports fan whatnot, when it comes to the company.
- [22:35]
B
Yeah, great, thank you so much. So the games, you can watch them in Roku here through North America, but also on YouTube, Twitch cake and a few other platforms. What I think for me is really exciting and that's really truly what makes us so special as an organization. What we have is two great assets on a standalone basis. We have a sports business and we have a consumer health business. Those two interact with each other very similarly to what Red Bull does. Red Bull owns and operates sporting events, sporting leagues, etc, and makes money off of it. But they also utilize it to showcase a consumer product, an enhancement product, quite frankly, that they're selling on the back end is very similar for us. So for people that are interested in A owning sports, but then B, on a bigger picture, have a positive outlook on healthcare, on the development of the peptide industry, I fundamentally believe that through all of the work that we do with sports, our athletes being the proof point of not just like fancy, beautiful looking marketing, but like health monitored and tested, you know, like performance tested results of the products that we sell, I think we have a massive potential to establish ourselves as a stewards of the human enhancement space. And that space for me is everything that you think about in terms of proactive healthcare. Traditional healthcare is your baseline, something's wrong with you, get you back to normal. Erectile dysfunction, hair loss, everything gets you back to normal. The space that we're playing in is the optimization space, the space that goes beyond. And I fundamentally believe that we as a company can own that space.
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A
Fantastic, Max, looking forward to the games next week and I appreciate your time today, Zay.
- [24:05]
B
Thanks for having me on.
- [24:07]
A
Well, all right guys, hope you enjoyed that conversation with Max Martin. This is one of those interviews where I came in skeptical but left genuinely intrigued by the business model. I think the Red Bull comparison is what really struck with me. That being said, I gotta keep it real with you guys. The stock is down over 50% since its first day of trading and they have a lot to prove with this first event in Vegas. You know, personally as a big sports fan, I'm really interested to see how the athletes perform. So I'll try to catch some of the highlights of the games and I'm really curious to see what the stock is going to do following the event. Let me know in the comments on what you guys think, especially the sports fans out there. Do you think that the enhanced games could be the next UFC? Drop your thoughts on Spotify and YouTube. And while you're at it, if you have an extra 5 seconds, consider giving us a 5 star rating as well. All that engagement really does help us out, and it helps other people find the show. Also, if you're new here, just an FYI, we post an episode every day throughout the week breaking down what's happening in the markets, so definitely get subscribed to the podcast if you haven't already, especially with everything going on right now. Thank you guys again for listening, watching and commenting. Shout out to Mike and everyone at Public for all the work behind the scenes and we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.