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On this edition of Bloomberg Intelligence, we're bring you some of the best conversations from our Bloomberg Power Players event in New York, brought together some of the world's most influential voices in the business of sports.
Today, we'll look at weather we're set for a major change in all areas of college sports.
Plus we'll discuss what comes next as women's soccer hits the mainstream.
But first we're going to dive into a conversation with David Rubinstein, co founder and co chairman of the Carlisle Group. He's also principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles, and he was joined by Cal Ripken, Junior Baseball Hall of Famer and founder and partner of Bripkeen Baseball.
They discussed their connection to the Orioles and the city of Baltimore.
First, we asked David why he even bought the Baltimore Orioles.
Well, in this case, I grew up in Baltimore, and I wanted to give back to Baltimore a bit, and I thought the team could maybe use rejuvenation in some way, and it's part of rebirth of Baltimore. Baltimore is trying to rebuild itself in many ways from some of the struggles it's had. I thought a new ownership group would probably be helpful, so I did it for that reason.
And obviously I hope to make money as well for myself and my investors, but it's more of a philanthropic thing on my part than anything else.
And Alex he's got a few partners there, including mister Bloomberg who owns this radio program.
Ah, how about that? How about that?
Secular forces exactly all comes back together. Cal talked to us about the Oriel boy man, I'm a Yankee stin So I'm looking at them every day.
Man name look good. Tell us about this team.
It's an exciting young team to watch, talent all over the place. We've had little problems with injuries and our pitching staff, but when you have a deeper minor league system, sometimes when somebody gets hurt, you can it's an opportunity for someone else. So they're playing really well, and it's interesting when many owners come in to buy a team, the thing they have to fix is what's happening on
the field. In our particular case, that's the best part about the investment is that Michaelias has done a really good job of creating an environment of culture that knows how to win, knows how to play, and he's put talent in the system. So the good part is you just take your hands off of and say just keep going and hopefully the luck factor with David will in the very first year will take that all the way to the World Series.
That's a really dumb question. Yes, why is investing in sports like a good business? And I say that because at some point we're going to reach the top, Right, there's so much money coming in. How do you know that?
Well, over the last ten or fifteen years, it's been very difficult for somebody to buy a major league professional sport operation and lose money. People have made staggering sums. Now, of course that tends to tract more money, and as
you suggest, at some point there's always a peak. But right now, the interest in sports is so dynamic that the live television despite your view in my view that live television should focus on interview shows, actually it focuses on live sports, and live sports is what's keeping television alive really. So if you take a look at the NFL, for example, I think of the fifty most watched television shows last year, forty five of them were NFL games.
And now baseball sees a lot of people as a lot of people watching as well, so there's a view that the population increases and as other things seem to be less attractive, sports is still very, very attractive, and so the TV contracts are going up and as a result, for example, the NBA just negotiated seventy seven billion dollars worth of contracts. It's expected in two years that the
NFL will top that number. So that's what is driving and also it's a global phenomenon that people now are buying sports teams not only in their own country but everywhere in the world. And so it's really not just a US phenomenon.
So can I have a simple All you have to do is to look at the health of sports is to look at the salaries of the players. Yeah, and I guess I'd become one of those players saying, Man, I wish i'd played in.
This always goes up. I mean, I'm like everybody else. It's got a top out somewhere, yet it just keeps going higher. Cal how has the game on the field changed the kids today that you watch at Canbin Yards still, by the way, I would argue one of the best parks in Major League Baseball twenty five years on. But how's the game changed today versus when when you played well?
I mean, the analytics have taken over and all the data and all the information. And I was an analytical player and I took the data from but there's no way that I was getting all the sort of data that you can get now. And the trick is, and this is the fun part about learning the game hasn't changed much because the diamonds the same, the bases are the same, the mounds the same, the game is played
the same way. But with all this influx of new data, teams feel that they have an advantage when they extract some of the data and then use that to help them play in the game. But the secret is how do you give the data to a player to make them a better player. And that's the part that I'm having fun with is learning what the data affects the philosophy of how you play the game, and that's changed
and positioning on the field. You know, different old philosophies have kind of gone out the window because they've been proven not to be effective. So it's interesting to watch the game from that perspective. But it is all about the data. The numbers they track everything that moves on that field.
It's amazing and that's AI.
That's big data coming into sports and ouse I'm sure you know this, but I mean, just cal has he has a little record out there.
He played a lot of games in a row.
He never took a day off like That's that is something that just it'll never be broken down.
I wish I was wearing probes or something that could figure out how I could do that because I'm asking all the time, how in the world you play all those games in a row, and I don't know.
Well, I guess my question would be with the analytics, that's never going to happen again, not even a close.
Well, I think they're predicting now, at least in a medical sort of way, when that you might be inclined to have an injury, you know, and so if they start to think that you might have an injury, then they put you on the list a little early, the injury list a little early, and they're they're looking at the long term as the short term.
But I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing.
There's the one thing that's hard to measure is what's inside your heart, your guts, and how you go out about playing the game, how you compete. That's not measurable right now. And I think that's what drove me is when you're an everyday player. The definition of an everyday player when I played was every day I had the body type in which to do what. I healed really
well and I could play through pain. And when you find out that you can play through being less than one hundred percent, because I would argue that even if you play one hundred and forty games, you're still playing at less than one hundred percent. Maybe the only time you're one hundred percent is the first day of spring training, right, and then you end up moving towards the year. So that's the hard part where that's not measurable.
Yep.
And I like to see players that push through and force themselves to play every game to see too.
You see that you don't see that too much anymore, Hey, David, And aside from the Orioles, you've got a day job here, co founder, co chairman of the Carlisle Group.
Perfect time to ask you this question.
I know you bought the Orioles as an individual's part of a partnership right now, private equity. The NFL has allowed private equity crime in as part ownership.
What do you think about that.
Well, Carlisle is one of the groups that's permitted, so yes, I think that it was inevitable because the prices of NFL teams are going on so much that it's very difficult to find somebody by himself or herself who can buy a team anymore longer. The last team that was sold, Washington Commanders, went for six billion dollars. It's a large amount of money. Very few people can buy that by themselves.
You need to have consortium of people to do this, and private equity is a big pot of capital sitting there. But the deals are ones where you have to be ten percent, no involvement in the day to day management, and you have to hold for at least six years. So NFL's experimental will see how it goes.
So Kel, you have had minor league investments, but this is the first time that both of you have had major league investments. How did this come about? Like, how did the partnership come about?
Has it going well?
The owner of the team for the last thirty years was the Angelo's family. I had talked to them over last summer about a possible sale and it came to be. But I wanted to have people in the consortium that were more connected to Baltimore and baseball than maybe I was. I hadn't grown up in Baltimore, but I haven't lived
there for a while. So I talked to a number of people in Baltimore and some of the people who are also connected with the Oriels, and obviously the first call I made as cal Ripken, they said he would like to invest and also help us in other ways what she's doing. So I think it's worked out quite well and win win for Baltimore and for for.
That was like a no brainer for you.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely no brainer. I felt like I've been an Oriole through and through my whole life. I mean, I grew up in and around the Baltimore area. My dad was in with the Orioles in the first fourteen years of my life. He was a minor league manager. And then you have a dream to be a player, You get drafted by the team you want to get drafted by. You play your whole career with that team. So I know that I went off for a little while, and you know, you buy minor league teams, you learn
about business in other ways. You put your head down, you don't pay much attention to what's happening at the Oriols. But when David called, it was an opportunity to get back in to look at it from the inside looking out. And I'm really surprised that I'm way into it now. I used to think the whole world revolved around baseball, and then you get out and you realize it doesn't. But then now it seems like the world revolves around baseball again.
Of course, put it in context for those who don't know the record, Lou Garrick played in thirty consecutive games. People thought that was the unbreakable record. Cal Ripkin did twy six hundred and thirty two games over seventeen years, not missing one day. And all of us who worked day to day for living in non athletic things. Can you imagine going to work seventeen days in or seventeen years in rough without missing total?
Exactly?
Cal, What do you think the Oils need to work on over the next couple of years? Here again, I'm looking at the record. The record is great. What do you think they need to work on? Is it minor league?
Is it no?
No, we have a minor league that's stocked with talent and you can only I mean, if you developed three shortstops in the minor leagues, you can only play one of them.
Yep.
So many times the talent that you have in the minor leagues is used to trade to get to get the pieces that you need at the big league level. And the Ools are in good position for that. They have young players that are going to be superstars that are already superstars, and maybe the biggest challenge in the future is how do you keep them?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean no salary cap here, so tough to keep the star players.
Right, Yes, Unlike football or basketball, there's no salary cap in yet professional baseball, so you can get contracts at are as high as seven hundred million dollars, and so it's hard for smaller cities to compete in that domain.
Somewhat all right, thanks to David Rubinstein and Cal Ripton Jr.
Coming up, we're gonna break down how NASCAR is trying to build audiences and a conversation with its president Steve Phelps.
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We continue as some of the best conversations from our Bloomberg Power Players event in New York. It brought together some of the most influential people in the business of sports.
Next up a conversation with NASCAR president Steve Phelps. We discussed how NASCAR is trying to build audiences and expand outside the US.
We first asked where we are now with NASCAR and the global sports scene.
Well, I think I would say until two thousand and nine, the growth of the sport just continued. You know, the recession hit, and I think sponsorship started to go away because not necessary to the sport just because of where things were with the economy. And then we had a slow, steady decline, if we're going to be completely honest, until twenty eighteen. But since twenty nineteen, attendance is ratings are up.
We did a almost a one point one billion dollar per year media deal last year for seven years, so almost eight billion dollars. And so I'm very bold us on where the sport is today, but importantly where it's going.
Where do you think it's going to go? Like, has it broaden appeal? How do you get someone like me to watch it?
Sure, I think you know it.
Yeah, And that's a and there's the trick, right, So like.
Me just I don't know. I don't do sports at all.
I like the Olympics, I like the US Open.
So I think, you know, we're trying to appeal to both obviously our existing audience and serve that audience and then bring a new audience in. We're doing that through a number of different things. So for example, we did a Netflix show earlier in the year, and that audience for us has been more female, it has been younger, and I think if you look overall in NASCAR in the last three years, our growth has come from women,
people of color, and younger people. And so it's working, but we've got to continue.
To do that.
The key for me is what content opportunities we have that will capture you, Alex right, and what are the storylines we have that will capture you. And I think that's important because I think people think of it in a way that is not right, which is you're either going to serve your existing fans or you're going to go after new fans.
I don't think that's true. It's an and it's not an or.
These fans, the existing fans, they want great racing, they want great storylines, they want their drivers to win, they want to see exciting racing.
These people want the same thing.
It's how do you capture them right, And so I don't think that two things are all that different. It's just where we investing our money. So for example, we just built a sixty million dollar productions facility right outside of Charlotte next to our R and D facility, and it's really two components to it.
It's live event production.
So how are we going to put our own events on for our five media partners going forward in twenty five? And then how do we create creative content and really compelling content either be distributed through our own channels of distribution or someone else's. So we've got, you know, the three new media partners as part of it. So Fox and NBC came back, who are existing partners, but we add an Amazon, Warner Brothers, Discovery and the CW and the CW is for our second series, which is called
the Xfinity Series. So five media partners, five opportunities for us to have, you know, kind of a megaphone of where things are going. It used to be alex you know, Ford cars, Chevy cars in the race. If you win on Sunday, you sell on Monday. That's how important it was. Talk to us about the economics of just the teams out there. How many teams are there? Do they make money?
Sure?
How does that work?
So I would look at it in three kind of three buckets. Right, So we have three national series. The one that most people think about is our Cup series, which is our top series. So we're coming to a close, I think, you know, pretty quickly on something called charter extensions. So I would think of it as franchise light. OK, so it's not franchise, but it creates enterprise value for our race teams. And so we're in the in the final throws of getting those extended. Right now, race teams,
if you probably are collectively losing money. So in the charter agreement that we have based on our media deals and some other things that we're doing, we're going to provide the race teams with more revenue. So two pieces of revenue guaranteed revenue and then what they race for. And so to me, starting in twenty twenty five, we should have cash flow positive race teams, which is what we want. And I've heard lots of fans say, well,
I don't really care about that. My whole point is, yeah, that's exactly well, not only that, but it creates more compelling racing, right, and that's what we want, we to competitive racing. So we have of our twenty six races we've had this year, fifteen different winners, nine different organizations of the fifteen charter organizations that we have.
So it's it and the racing is terrific.
It's just it's the best style of racing I believe on the planet, and I think our race fans are telling us that. So again, ratings are up despite significant rain issues we've had.
All year long raining.
Okay, yeah, so Daytona five hundred we were down twenty seven percent because we raced on Monday, yep Coke six hundred rain event, down fifteen percent. We had a race in the streets of Chicago rain again, down fifty percent. So our three largest rated events of the year all down double digit and yet we're still positive right of ratings.
So it's it's.
Working just real quickly. Any new markets got about thirty seconds left our sure.
Yeah, So yeah, so I think.
So. We are going to race next year for the first time outside of our border in the Cup Series in Mexico City. So we have some other discussions that are going So we're again we're excited about the broadening of.
Our sport our thanks to NASCAR President Steve Phelps.
Moving now to college sports, we spoke with Brittany Whiteside, vice president of Collegiate Partnerships at Altis Partners.
We discussed the state of college sports and first asked Brittany about how the landscape is changing.
You know, it is changing rapidly. Probably in the last three years, we've seen some of the most change in college sports, but also in an industry at large. We have the implementation of nil. I'm sure you've heard of that. That's a buzzword right now. Athletes can earn money off of their name, image and likeness. And so when you talk about college athletics and change, and you think about that in the last year, in the last three years,
that's the biggest change. And now we're at a point where we continue to see the change and you have the House settlement where schools may be able to now pay athletes directly and so as you think about college athletics and the business model, it is completely shifted and leaders across the country are preparing for that.
All right.
To me, it's all about the economics, and I think most people agree that given the money behind big time college sports, that in fact the athletes should be compensated for that. The question is, is nil the way it doesn't seem like it seems like rudimentary at best. You've got there's no regulation and there's no way to ensure and.
Even play playing field. Where do we go from here? It seems like we open up Pandora's box and we have no idea. Yeah, well, I agree with you.
It is the right thing for athletes to be able to earn money off of their name, image and likeness. So but to be able to monetize that right. Nil was the first step in that, the ability for athletes to go out and to earn income, whether that is through working with brands or in some spaces. You've probably heard of collectives in this space as well, you know, helping athletes generate money off their name, image and likeness.
Where do we go from here?
You know, we have the pending House settlement, which as we sit today the judge will hear arguments against the fairness of that House settlement. Right, House settlement is really the next step in the framework for college athletes and athletic departments to be able to share in that revenue.
Right it's a revenue sharing proposal, and so in terms of next steps, right now it is the pending House settlement and next steps for athletes to be able to be paid directly from institutions, SUS brands, and collectives in all of the other areas. And then there will be some upcoming regulation.
To that as well.
What about I mean that this is tied to a college or university is also just so odd, Like this is like a professional business that one can be a part of. But yet you're going to be nineteen years old also expecting to like go get your GPA and do well in school. How does all of this going to coexist?
You know, it has coexisted now for a while. And you know that was a major concern of mine early on, is how are athletes, How are college students going to be able to navigate this? And what we've seen is they've been able to handle it well. Some of them engage in the NIL space and do so in a way and meaningful ways where they're getting internships and opportunities and skill sets that they did not have the opportunity
to get before. So when you think about nil, you think about managing your brand, you think about negotiating all of those skills are skills that you need for life. And so as part of being a student, part of that is preparing for life after you know, your time on campus for four or five years. And so inil and many ways has been handled for students has a great opportunity for them to leverage their their brand and be able to generate money and help prepare them for a future.
What's the I guess the other big issue in college athletics has been the realignment of conferences. And now we've got my poor you know, Rutgers field hockey team sleeping on the floor of Newark Airport because they're taking a flight out to Stanford, Stanford in Palo Alto.
What's going on there?
What?
Where? How is this going to evolve? Do you think?
Wait? Wait, why is that bad?
Because now Stanford on the West coast is now part of the ACC for so they got to go fly from Palo Alto to Durham, North Carolina get it.
And I can.
Understand that for the football team they're on a charter jed all kinds of same thing for basketball. But I thought, for like the smaller sports, how is this impacting?
Yeah, you know, that's an interesting dynamic when you think about some of the Olympic sports, right, Yeah, And you talked about what are some of the things that we still need to figure out in college sports. I think that's part of it. Conference realignment as a whole, you know, mostly driven by football schools that are eating out the highest level with schools that want to compete at the
highest level. With that comes other Olympic sports that it may not make as much sense economically for them to travel or for student athlete experience for them to travel. But when schools and institutions want to compete at the highest level, that is part of it. And so right now many schools are having those conversations on where do we want to be in this landscape? Do we want
to compete at the highest level? And if we do, that may come with your field hockey team traveling across the country to compete against the best in the country.
But then they still have to go like take a test and do grades. I mean, that's that's something else.
You have wi FI Now.
OK, fair enough.
What do you think that athletes could be doing better though?
Right now?
Oh?
You know, it's such a key time for athletes to hone in on who they are, their their identity, how they can manage themselves because we all know.
That grand team I know, right.
But also they are also engaging responsibly and thinking about like what are some of the brands that I work with on or you know a coffee shop that I always go to a local coffee shop, how can I utilize my NIL with that local coffee shop to create a partnership? Right, And so you know that's how athletes are navigating it now. They're navigating at the local level.
And then also they have schools that are putting resources together to help educate them on how to really navigate it in a way that is best for them.
What do you advise schools to do as they think about how to really implement an NIL and take care of their student athletes?
What are you recommending? Is that kind of an overarching view?
Yeah?
Absolutely, it always starts with education, and so early on it's educating the athletes on what NIO is, what it isn't, how to build their brand, how social media plays into this, how this entire ecosystem works. The second part of that is as a department, to really hone in on your strategy. How are you going to invest in the resources for your athletes to be successful in this space like you would in strength and conditioning, like you would in nutrition.
This is another part of the.
Student and athlete experience that as an institution, it's your responsibility to invest in in resources so athletes can really optimize their nil while they're on their campus. And for some of the athletes, this is their you know, this is their time to their prime time. This isn't their
prime time. Some are competing at a national level on TV, and so as an institution, it's like, how can we utilize our network, our resources, our institution IP to help athletes generate revenue, generate income for themselves our Thanks to Brittany Whiteside, vice President of Collegiate Partnerships at ALTS Partners.
Coming up on the program and look at what comes next as women's soccer hits the mainstream.
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We continue as some of the best conversations from our Bloomberg Power Players event in New York. It brought together some of the world's most influential voices in the business of sports.
Next up a conversation with Jessica Berman, commissioner of the National Women's Soccer League. She joined to give us some insight on women's soccer as it hits the mainstream.
We first asked Jessica to talk to us about the state of the National Soccer League.
In the last two and a half years. It is true I think women's sports and the National Women's Soccer League in particular, has exploded. We've reached this inflection point where it is no longer a question whether investing in women's sports is a good business investment. And because of that, the money has followed. And we're looking at our ownership group across all of our teams fourteen teams across the country, and we have the right capital and strategic investors around
the table to really build for the future. Talk about our recent announcement this morning. Bob Eiger and Will Obey are now the control owners. It is a Boom is a mic Drop are now the controlling owners of Angel City, which are the highest enterprise value women's sports team in the world. Oh wow, traded for two hundred and fifty million dollars. And you know this is a league that launched twelve years ago. Angel City is.
Only three years old, so jealousy.
If you put that side by side with the men's leagues that have been around for decades, some more than one hundred years, it's really incredible to see the amount of growth. We also announced that Magic Johnson is an investor in the Washington Spirit with Michelle Kang. So the type of owners who are coming to the table to really invest in this is really driven by the future vision of you that we really can be the best
league in the world. And because of the backdrop, as you mentioned of women's soccer, it's it's just an incredible moment to be part of witnessing this growth.
Well, I was going to ask as to the why now. Part of it? Is it because you've had, you know, super good success with some amazing players in the game. I also, as a finance nerd, I'm going to go back to like the FED had zero interest rates for a really long time. There's a lot of money that need to be put to work that needed a good return because you couldn't put it in the bond market,
like that kind of stuff. Like what are you hearing as to why people with money think this is a good investment now?
I think if you look on a longitudinal basis, particularly at men's sports as a parallel over the course of decades, it outperforms every other asset class on a long term basis, and so you've often seen investors who are long range in their thinking around putting capital to work invest in
sports and see incredible returns. If you look at that compared to the product of women's soccer, there really is no reason why we should not be as successful as men's sports, particularly in a sport that has the backdrop of when you think of success and soccer in the US, you actually think of women first, and that really creates
a unique value proposition. Has really woken up the investment community to say, if we look at men's sports and the way that they've grown in enterprise value on an exponential basis over decades, and we are at the inception of our growth, there's very few things in the world that you can get in at the ground level. I think we're definitely beyond the ground level, but we're certainly nowhere near the top of our hockey stick growth.
Media rights, it's the big driver of global sports valuations globally. What's the media strategy for US women's the soccer League.
Yeah, we signed a landmark media deal and announced it in November of twenty twenty three. We got a collective quarter of a billion dollars invested into our league from the combination of CBS, ESPN, Amazon and Script's Ion. And in addition to that incredible investment in our league, which allow us to put those resources to work to grow
the league. We've also made the very important strategic decision to also invest in ourselves and ensure that our games are viewable and discoverable on platforms that are national in scope and scale. And so from last year to this year, we went from six games being available on national broadcast to over one hundred and twenty wo oh my god. So now when you are sitting on your couch, which some people still do, and channel surf, which some people
still do, you will find our games. And if you were watching the US Open, which I was, and there was a promo ad to tell everyone that you can watch on ESPN. We are in the places and spaces where people consume live content and that will help us to catalyze the growth of our audience.
All right, thanks so, Jessica Berman, Commissioner of National Women's Soccer League. We continue with women's soccer. We got more insight on the game and conversation with Midge Purse Afford for that New Jersey, New York at Gotham Football Club and the United States women's national soccer team.
And we first asked Midge if women's soccer is finally having its moment.
I don't know if I can subscribe to that. And I'll tell you why tell me it's because every four years we have the Olympics and we have the World Cup, and everyone gets really really excited about women's soccer, and then it usually dissipates at some point. I do think women's sports in general are having an incredible moment.
I mean you can see it with the WNBA.
You even see it with like rugby and track. I'm with you, I believe in it, but I want to wait to see it before I subscribe.
You've been on the national teams, the US national teams for years, so you've seen the global competition. But the US team is, in my opinion, I don't know that. I'm not that into it the best team for a long time globally in terms of looking at the World Cups and so on. Talk to us about the growth of soccer internationally outside the US. What are you seeing in terms of competitiveness, because I know there are a lot of international players in the US league.
Oh absolutely, And I mean I think you can see it even with the last World Cup we had. We won this Olympic gold, which is absolutely fantastic, and I think anyone who watched the games could see that they were difficult games. It wasn't six zero, wasn't five zero,
wasn't three zero? A couple of Germany games where we're in our favor, But in general, it's the competition is leveling out, and you know, the global stage is getting a lot more Even so, I think even seeing a lot of those players come over to our league and increase the competitiveness that we have here at home, it's really amazing to see the progression of women's sports globally.
What do you think of the how to monetize that, like as a player? Like we talked to the commissioner, We talked to a partner that sort of helps collegiate athletes monetize themselves and understand how to do that and works with them work with colleges. Do you think this is all being done.
The right way?
No?
This is great.
This is why I want to talk to someone who actually does the stuff.
In short, No, I don't.
I think that we're still behind in terms of the industry approach on how we support players, help players, and promote players. I think one of the biggest issues I've had with women's sports in general is that the landscape for how we market women's sports has always been extremely derivative with the land skip of how we market men's.
Sports and shocking.
Yeah, they say shrink it and pink it is something that Michelle King likes to say, and I'll take that from her. But it's not even just derivative of the men's game, but we're derivative of the European format as well. And you know, the American population, this demographic, it's a different audience that you need to cater to, and I think we need to be just a little bit more specific industry wide with how we do that.
How do you expect the growth of the of the league to be over the next several years? To expect it to get more competitive, maybe more teams. What do the players feel like?
Oh, I don't think anything's going to stop this league, to be completely honest, I think we will be huge competitors with the MLS. I do see a lot more teams coming in. I think more international players will want to come play here, and I think it's going to be even harder to play here domestically.
Right, What about like, do you think we're going to have like competitions not like the Olympics or whatever World Cup where like you can play more internationally and make it not just like a US soccer sport.
Absolutely, we have the club World Cup that's happening, so it's definitely we are integrating with other leagues and making that global community for women's soccer.
Our thanks to Midge Purse forward for the New Jersey, New York Gotham Football Club in the United States women's national soccer team. We moved now to a conversation with Grant Hill, managing director for USA Basketball and co owner of the Atlanta Hawks.
He took up behind the scenes look at the big talent and big personalities who brought home the gold for the women's and men's US basketball team.
We first asked Graham to talk to us about the current state of Team USA.
It's an exciting time and obviously I succeeded Jerry Colangelo, who along with coach k had an incredible run together starting in two thousand and six, and I came in during this sort of Olympic quad. We had our World Cup last summer. We didn't fare as well in the World Cup. The women won the gold medal in their World Cup, but the Olympics were absolutely incredible and both teams were pushed. They were tested. There was just excellent
and on the court all over the world. We saw Serbia and our semi final games, they were so worthy and deserving of winning. Came up short.
Yeah, I saw that one.
But it was it was just phenomenal. I mean the fact that we had, we got tested, we got pushed, We had to show some fight and some toughness collectively to win that game, but also win the gold medal against France. The women's team got pushed and a very close tough matchup they had in the gold medal game with France as well. So I think it was just a win win, not just for USA basketball and our continued excellence, there was a win win for basketball universally,
like I think all across the globe. If you're a fan of the game, uh, the Olympic basketball scene was spectacular.
And even if you don't know the game or watch the game normally, like I was totally into it.
It was amazing. It was really great.
Talking about investing and where do you see opportunities. I know that you and your wife are also investors in Orlando Pro women's soccer team, and we were talking about that as to where the opportunity set is is sort of where women's soccer is.
Going to go.
You know.
Look, so I have two daughters who are who are jocks, who are athletes, and and so yes, and you know, I think sort of through them really getting exposed to women's sports and really wanting them to see women professional athletes. So, whether it was the w NBA or the NWSL. We live in Orlando, we were fans and consumers at first, and we got so caught into it and just loving
it and having a passion for these teams. We also saw the potential and the upside for growth and uh, and so the opportunity to invest in the NWSL, the Orlando Pride. We're in first place right now. Yeah, we haven't not lost the game, had a few ties and all wins. But I just feel the momentum is really growing. And now you have superior leadership. Jessica Burman is a fantastic commissioner, has great vision it is can execute that vision, has surrounded herself with a solid team. But also we
have professional ownership. Now we have owners now who own other sports, who've been in this, who understand it, see the long term trajectory of the business. And so I wouldn't say we're at an inflection point right now, but I think we have long term positioned ourselves nicely for great success. And I think of all the sports leagues, I really believe this. I think the NWSL has the greatest upside and so really excited. I was excited to see Jessica at Midge person one of the stars in
the league. And yeah, we're thrilled to be involved, all right.
Thanks to Grant Hill, Managing director for USA Basketball and co owner of the Atlanta Hawks.
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