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We're taking a look though at the ECO data that just crossed right in ISM Manufacturing had come in a week earlier in the week US services sector expanding at a modest pace. For the second month in August, ISM service a little changed about fifty one point five. Now remember readings about fifty still indicate expansions. Who want to get right to the guy behind the data. Steve Miller is chair of the ISM Services PMI Hay, Steve, what do you make of the data today?
Well, we're encouraged to see the second month in a row of growth, and it's the six month out of the year that we've seen growth, so definitely encouraged. One of the things that was one of the sub indexes is at a bit of a prize, was backlog dropping significantly down to about forty three percent. And what we attributed that to is a lot of the commentary has been around improving supply chain performance and utilizing capacity to
catch up. So we attribute that to maybe catching up on late orders that were impacted during supply chain dissuptions earlier in the year.
So give us a sense of what this means. Do you think for the Federal Reserve? How do you think the Federal Reserve will look at an ISM index that's still showing some positive growth there fifty one point five.
Yeah, I think it's very consistent with going forward with the rate cuts. It's the lowest rate of increase that we've had historically. There were only three ratings or three readings last year that were lower than this month's reading, and then going back to twenty twenty two, only December's
reading was lower than this. So we're seeing growth, which is positive, but all the indicators in the data are showing very slow growth and some of the indicators and far as costs and cost continuing to impact as well as interest rates continuing to impact investment.
Seems like now's the right time, all right, Steve, We appreciate it.
Thank you so much for that incident analysie. Steve Miller, ISM Chair for Services.
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Alex Deel, Paul Sweeney. We are live here at the Bloomberg conference here in New York. It is called the Power Players, talking about the convergence of sport business, you know, atternowledgement, technology, all that kind of stuff all coming together other and so they've got a great lineup of folks here today talking about that, and we're going to interview a handful of some really smart people coming up over the next couple hours that are gonna be participating in this conference.
We'll talk about that coming up. But it talks about the big business of sports. And the most recent news is private equity is now going to be allowed to invest in part in the NFL. So you think about
the here, this is a big deal. This is a big deal because the other the private ecutris got tremendous amounts of capital, and the NFL valuations have been just going so high that individuals anymore almost are priced out of the market that when families used to own these NFL franchise that's becoming less and less of an instance. You need big institutional capital and that's kind of one of the stories that they'll be talking about yes today and.
An alternative energy.
I mean, I'll turnm of investments go right to where I want to talk about is definitely the thing right is you have more money and it needs to find more opportunities. And luckily the Bloomberg Big Take Today sort
of helps set all of this up for us. Random Williams and one of the authors on it, and the title is the Billionaire NFL Family Eyes Windfall from Wall Street and the Swifties, and this really focuses on Dan and Clark Hunt controlling a six and a half billion dollar empire with a portfolio of teams across the nation from the NFL, Major League Soccer, and the National Basketball Association. I read it, I read the sports and it was a great, great I learned a lot. Actually, Randall Williams
joins us here at Bloomberg headquarters. Hey, Randall, walk me through what you learned about this family and how it runs itself and sort of all the different branches they have in sports.
Yeah you said it or you mapped it out out there going my glasses, it happens, but yes, you mapped it out. They have a majority ownership of the Chiefs of FC Dallas and then an eleven percent stake in the Bulls. So they are one of the premier sports families across the country and I'd say across the world too.
What are their ambitions here just sports in general going forward? As you mentioned, they have diversified ownership. Obviously, the biggest asset is the Chiefs, which they've owned forever. It seems like where do they want to grow going forward?
Well, it's all in sports.
I mean.
One of the things that Clark and Dan Hunt have talked about is the opportunity to grow in soccer. I mean, the World Cup will be here in twenty twenty six, the Olympics in twenty twenty eight. That's a tremendous opportunity to grow soccer domestically. Anyone who knows and I should say football, but you know, I know this is.
Going to get confusing, right because like soccer play with your feets, right, should be football.
I'll say soccer to stay American. But anyone who knows soccer knows that it is the giant internationally, it isn't here the same way domestically. The World Cup provides an opportunity for that. At the same time, the NFL has an opportunity internationally because that's the giant domestically. So the NFL is trying to play more games internationally. They're trying
to grow their business internationally. So those are the two opportunities that both of them see, and I think they're doing a pretty good job of managing it.
I have an actual, like legitimate but silly question, Sure, how do they deal with the name problem, the soccer versus football versus actual football, like, especially if they try and grow abroad.
For the NFL, well, I think that when you go abroad, you adjust, you ad justin. It's a question for the committioners and how they want to market it.
Do we know what the answer is that going to be.
I think football is going to stay football, and you know there'll be a budding rivalry between the two quiet one. But as long as everybody's making money, then you know it keeps everybody happy.
Fair enough, all right, So talk to us about private equity. That was kind of for me being a Wall Street guy. The big news in sport over the past couple weeks, and Clark Hunt himself led the committee in the NFL to kind of address this issue. What is they're thinking about private equity? Why did they go down that road?
Well, I heard you talking about this a little earlier. But the reality is, if you're selling a five to ten percent stake in a franchise that's worth six billion dollars, that's three hundred million dollars or six hundred million dollars in cash, and the evaluations are only going higher. How many people can write a three hundred to six million million dollar check, even if it's discounted.
Let's say you take fifty million off.
That's still a lot of money. Even the richest athletes in the world don't have two hundred million dollars in cash to just send to a team. And this is a long term investment. You're not getting that money back tomorrow. You have to be in this for the long run. And so with that, if you're selling to an individual that individ isn't going to come in and just want to sit on the sidelines and say, oh, yeah, I have a piece of a team. No they might want to ride on the team plane, they might want an
ownership suite. These owners and a lot across sports period, have inherited these teams over time. They are very very very close in prized possessions. That means that they don't want to let an individual who they may not know. In private equity is a solution to that. They want returns on their investment, they're not going to look to be riding on a team plane, maybe own the exactly exactly so they'll be willing to be quiet investors as
what I'd called them, and so it's a solution. But the most important detail that I think I'll be saying for years to come is that both Jerry Jones and Clark Hunt said that this was a positive day, not a happy one. It's not something that the owners want to do. Quite frankly, I think if they were making more money. That doesn't mean that they're not making money, but if they were making more money, they wouldn't be
allowing this. But these are providing solutions to secession issues, to stadium deals, to giving liquidity to owners who might not have the cash that they want. So that's setting a landscape for private equity and.
I noticed that, you know, the Hunts, they had a defeat recently in that they weren't able to get I guess the municipalities surrounding their stadium in Kansas City to help them renovate the stadium or maybe even a new stadium. What's the future there? Because I look a lot of people look at the Kansas City as maybe over the last five years, the most successful franchise or the RFL,
and our people tell you the stadium's terrible. Yeah, relative relative to the new stadiums being built that are just it's an older stadium.
I'd say that I think that there's a nostalgia feeling around older stadiums. However, there's a reason they're looking for this money to renovate because it needs renovation. So what's going to happen next. They've tried at the local level. I think they'll go to the state, but they've also opened a door to going across state lines to the state of Kansas. So all options are.
On the table.
Do they want to leave Arrowhead Stadium? No, absolutely not. Clark will tell you that. The team president, Mark will tell you that they don't want to leave Kansas City. But the reality is this is a business, and this is a money making business. If it's going to cost them more money to stay in Kansas City as opposed to going to Kansas where they might be able to build a stadium, they're going to do that.
Okay, talk to you about today, power players.
The fun day. Okay, party day.
It's a party yer for you and I get to learn about sports. So together we are united. What a panels are you going to be moderating? What are you excited about?
Among two college sports panels, we have Dajah Kelly, Brittany Whiteside, Tim Prinetti, all prominent people in college sports who are in the business of it. We also have open Door CEO Blake Lawrence. They'll be speaking at Blake Lawrence and Britney Whiteside will be speaking at a lunch panel. And then Dejah Kelly, Tim Prinetti and again Brittany will be speaking on another college sports panel.
So those are my two today. We have many Yeah, formula of Rutgers, great name in the Big East. The big thing college sports is. I think it's a wild West here in terms of oh of the dollars going around, nil name, image and likeness. Right, you got twenty million dollars rosters out there, and it's only going to go hire. Somebody's got to step in and regulate this thing. Who's going to do it? They will find out today. We'll find out today.
I mean, listen, if there was an easy solution to this, I think we'd have it by now. The NCAA is going back and forth to the Supreme Court. It feels like every other week on what it can regulate and what it can't regulate. What that means for the athletes, it's a great time. It's a great time. You can get money just about everywhere legally. I mean there's, yes,
there's some infractions here and there. But if you want to go into sports as a college athlete right now, the reality is you can go to Wretgers get one hundred thousand dollars, you can go to Texas get five hundred thousand dollars, and then you can go to Florida and get one point five million and never touch the NFL YE nineteen.
And having that, I mean like, no way would I know what to.
Do going back to school. Yes, I'm going back to school.
Definitely, sports them up me and soccer and we'll talk to Britney Whiteside actually just right after this break, so great stuff.
Thank you so much, Randall, really appreciate it.
Good luck today, enjoy yourself, looking forward to the rest of the panels from Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern car Playing and broud Otto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Alex Steel here alongside Paul Sweeney. We are live at the Bloomberg Power Players at Bloomberg Global Headquarters right here in New York. The some is bringing together industry leaders at the intersection of sports, business and technology.
AKA.
This is the day where Alex learns more things about sports. Yes, I think everyone will be very helpful to hear about. Joining us now is Brittany Whiteside. She is vice president of All Sports Partners and she has a long career in this area. Before this, she was at trustee of Whiteside served as an executive Associate Athletes Director at the
University of Virginia and Charlesville. She was also a member of the department's executive Leadership team and has been deeply involved in college sports for quite a long time.
Brittany, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
Okay, this is where you get dumb stuff down for me. So, college sports, I know is definitely changing. How is it changing and how quickly is it 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. It seems like rudimentary at best. You've got there's no regulation, there's no way to ensure and even playing field. Where do we go from here? It seems like we opened 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 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 depending house settlement and next steps for athletes to be able to be paid directly from institutions versus brands and collectives and 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 don't 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 NIL in many ways has been handled for student 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? 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. And I can understand that for the football team they're on a charter jet all kind 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 competing out the highest level, 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, 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 knew that grand teams, 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 overaarching 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 that athletes, this is their you know, this is their time to earn 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 and generate income for themselves.
Well, because that's why we see a lot of like former pro athletes now investing because they they were able to take control of their money and they have so many stories Like when we talk to a Rod like a few months ago, they have so many stories of their peers that were you know, given all this money in a really short amount of time and your earning power so limited when you're so young, and then it's like gone, Like it's it's not a sustainable business model.
Like Paul and I might have, what do you think that the media rights world, like as we change from traditional TV to streaming all that. How is that impacting college sports?
I think it will continue to evolve, and that's happening in college sports at the conference level as the conferences really hold the media rights to to the to those to those sports in that entertainment space, right, and so I think it will continue to evolve. I think it's going to continue to be a big money area in college athletics is the media rights.
And I think it's to be determined.
On what the future structure of FBS football looks like, and some in college basketball and those other things that really may take form as some of these media contracts are coming up from renegotiation in the coming years.
How about thee We all think about football and basketball driving it. How about the nil and the money? Is it there for women's sports? Is it there for the Olympic sports as you refer to them. Is it Is it trickling down to the non football bat basketball team?
Yeah?
Yes, with the institutions we work with, we are seeing it trickle down now, not at the same level as football and men's basketball, but we are seeing athletes in Olympic sports, primarily women's sports. We just had a school that announced that they had a women's sports sponsorship that included nil, right, And so you are seeing more brands.
And I also believe that women's sport are doing a really good job of leveraging their their their personal brands and they're really figuring that out earlier, right, And it's a time for women's sports right now. So there's definitely more attention and support and that is trickling down to two women athletes on campuses as well.
So how does that how does the partnership wind up starting? Like is it the athlete taking control and going, like you said, the local coffee shop, et cetera, being like, hey, here's what I got for you? Or is it you know, someone goes to watch a game and they're like that athlete's awesome.
Are they like their personality?
Like?
How does that evolve? So it is both.
So part of it is on the athlete, and athletes that do well are are are reaching out the brand means. Some of them have representations, some of them have agents
that are negotiating partnerships with them. And then you have the school and you have donors and supporters that have created these these businesses, these enterprises called collectives that if they have a donor that wants to support that athlete or that sport, that donor would give to that collective and then they would you know, find opportunities for the athlete to get that money.
And it seems like the collectives I'm seeing it, I'm hearing it and reading about it. There's definitely the haves and have nots.
For sure.
A certain school that I'm familiar with, their collective in their first year just dwarfed everybody else and it's it's a handful of phone calls. That doesn't feel right.
Yeah, how does that change? How does that Well, it.
Goes come directly from the university. Yeah, so you'll take out the collective as a mini.
Yeah, you know, there there are certain things that may regulate that collective space a little bit more. But right now, you know, as you have the pending House settlement, schools will be able to share in that revenue directly with athletes. So you still will have collectives in the space, right that will have play some role. But long term, you know, it's really to be determined on what that looks like, as there may be more regulation coming in that space.
You're absolutely right that change in college sports is just meaning so, I mean, it just seems like how how these universities are going to deal with it.
You know, I should have put my daughter in something. She was three.
Darn it.
Hey, Brittany really appreciated. Thanks very much, Brittany Whiteside, Vice President.
Thank you.
Altia's sports partners are really great conversation.
There, you're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecard Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station just Say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
We are broadcasting live from the Bloomberg Power Players Conference at Bloomberg Global Headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, bringing together a lot of the smart folks in the business of sports, the technology of sports, and the competitiveness and the economics of sport. I'll tell you what, in the last three or four years, women's sports in terms of popularity, audience ratings just I'm not going to say exploded, but really
had a noticeable surge. In my opinion, thank for example, Caitlin Clark with the basketball but I think it all started with women's soccer, the success of the US women's soccer programs team in the Olympics, in a World Cup and all that kind of stuff, and now the National Women's Soccer League. Jessica Berman joins us. She is the commissioner of the National Women's Soccer League. She joins us
here at our Bloomberg conference. Jessica, talk to us about the state of the National Women's Soccer League here in US. It seems like it's just growing dramatically. And I know you've got some news about some ownership out on the West Coast which really caught my attention being a former analyst covering the Walt Disney company. But talk to us about the league right now. In women's soccer.
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. About our recent announcement this morning, Bob Iger and will Obey are now the control owners.
It is a boom, it 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, 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 this morning 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 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 am 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 that 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.
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 the other night, which I was, and there was a promo ad to tell everyone that you can watch this weekend on ESPN. If you were watching CBS Mornings this morning, you saw a promo ad that you can watch the NWSL on Saturday on CBS. And so we are in the places and spaces where people consume live content, and that will help us to catalyze the growth of our audience.
So I don't have cable, So what about streaming? Like, how can I find it on my Apple TV?
Yeah, so all of our CBS games are also on Paramount plus. All of our ABC and ESPN games are also on ESPN plus all of our games on scripts Ion. You can also walk through like a Pluto TV or other all their streaming apps that provide access to over the air platforms. And obviously Amazon Prime is basically ubiquitous with national distribution both streaming and you know anywhere else that you would want to watch.
Jessica, how about talent here at the players? I mean, how you could do a whole league with the University of North Carolina. That's set such a great program for so long, and as a dupe person, I hate to admit that, but it's an international game, it's a global game. Can international players come here? Because I know that's a problem for the men's US Men's League. The US players, the great international players don't want to come to the US league relative to Europe. What's it like in the
women's side, Yes, there's that. Well, unless you're at the end of your career, you're looking at them.
Yeah, No, I think that is And I appreciate the question because maybe I should have led with that and the answer to why now, why invest in the NWSL. We are the best league in the world and we are at the top of the pyramid as it relates to attracting talent, and we have a lot of the best players playing here, not just the US one's national team, but we look at, for example, the Olympics this summer, where we as a league had fifty seven players competing
for eleven of twelve teams in the Olympics. If you looked at the gold medal match, we had the majority of the players on the pitch both for Brazil and for the US team, we had twenty seven players competing between both of those teams, and.
So we are a global league.
We've actually recently changed our rules to allow nine players on the roster be international players, because we really want to be a league that is a destination for the top talent in the world, which now is not just in the US.
There there's top talent everywhere.
This is truly is a global game, and we're excited to be a destination for the best players.
All right, Jessica, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Jessica Berman. She's a commissioner of the
National Women's Soccer League. You talk about the gro again in my opinion, kind of led by the Women's Soccer League and it's just been extraordinary, continues to grow, and you know, as a media person, we see the money, the rights start to go to a particular sport, that's where you know that the growth is and the opportunities, and that's certainly the case with the US Women's Soccer League.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
All right, Happy Thursday, everybody. I'm Alex Steel alongside Paul Sweeney. This is Bloomberg Intelligence Radio and we are broadcasting too live from our headquarters right here in New York City at the Power Players Conference where we're talking about sports, money, media, business and the combination between all of those things. And we just spoke to the commissioner of the US Women's
Soccer League. That was quite interesting in terms of the big money coming in in terms like you definitely missed the bottom, Like there's money already in there, but if you get in now, there's just so much more exponential growth that you could see.
Yeah, and big news coming out of you know, the second biggest market in the country, Los Angeles. Bob Iger, the chairman CEO of Walt Disney Company, and his wife will Obey buying a controlling stake or I think a full stick, a complete steak of the Los Angeles franchise. So yeah, that is a huge vote of confidence.
All right, Well, we just talked to the commissioner so let's talk to someone who actually.
Kicks the ball.
Right, Oh okay, because I think.
That that's probably a great idea.
Joining us now is Midge Purse is forward New Jersey, New York Gotham FC. She alsos United States women's national soccer team. Wow, okay, this is really awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.
Oh no, thank you for having me.
So can I ask a really dumb soccer question. This seems to me to be the hardest sport to play because everyone is running all the time. Like it's not like when you're in football and you kind of stay in a range or like tennis, it's a small area, Like.
How do you do it? While our coaches make us run a lot, right all the time?
Yes, all the time.
But I actually what I think is makes it the hardest sport is that any other athlete who tries to play soccer looks extremely unathletic. Where you can kind of fake it if you're playing football or basketball or even running track, but you look really anathletic playing soccer unless you know it.
I think that's a good point.
Mitch, talk to us. We were talking to your commissioner about the state of the sport in the league and everything. I don't want to talk to you about what it's like on the field. Talk to us about the competition, the level of competition, where the players come from. What's the level of competition on the field. Now you played your college soccer at Harvard. What's it like for that jump to the pros?
Oh, the jump is getting bigger and bigger. I think the gap between the collegiate game and the professional game has only grown over the past couple of years. I think when I was coming from college and going to pro that jump wasn't as big for me.
I had a good time my rookie year.
But now you see people not struggling more, but really having to take a little bit more time to get to that level and meshin with the rest of the players.
Do you feel like if I say women's soccer is finally having its moment, is it actually finally having its moment that's durable in here to day.
I don't know if I can subscribe to that.
And I'll tell you why.
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 can 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 and how 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 were 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 way 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 this. 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 landscape 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 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.
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 gonna 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, I think, I mean we already have a CONCACAF tournament happening right now. My team plays tonight. Good luck at the MFC. You guys are going to be fantassic, and 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.
All right, Mitch, that's great. Really appreciate getting a few midges minutes of your time. Mitch Purse forward for the nj NY Gotham Football Club and also the United States women's national soccer team. She played at collegiate soccer at Harvard. Talk about the growth of this, the women's professional league here in the US certainly, as Midge was suggesting, kind of hitting an inflection point, and that's consistent with what we've seen from women's sports just over the last three
or four years. And again I kind of just go back to the WNBA, which they're playing their season right now in Kaitlyn Clark and Angel Reese. That just kind of really taken over the zeitgeist and so women's sports big time here and that's certainly a focus at this conference here.
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Alex Steele, Paul Sweeney, We're live here at the Bloomberg Power Players Conference at the Bloomberg A Global Headquarters, seven to thirty one Lexington Avenue, fifty eighth Street. Man, You've got a lot of smart people running around here, a lot of interesting conversation about the world of global sport. This one you don't want to miss. David Rubenstein joins
us here. He is a co founder and co chairman of the Carlisle Group and owner of the Baltimore Orioles as well as Cal Ripkin Junior, talking about those O's Baseball Hall of Famer, founder and partner of Ripkin Baseball. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here. We got a lot of sports people running around. We're talking about women's basketball, women's soccer. Let's talk a little bit of Major League baseball. You guys are up a game in the win, Colm
on my Yankees. It's going to be a great last few weeks. Of the Year. David, I want to start with you here. You own the Orioles. Here, What are you doing? Why are you buying a sports franchise?
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 Orioles. Boy, man, I'm so I'm looking at them every day. Man, they 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, Like, there's so much money coming in.
How do you know, 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 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 it 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 the 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 era 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 is 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 women? 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 was 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 him 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. 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 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 a bad thing.
There's the one thing that's hard to measure is what's inside your heart, I mean, 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 it. 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 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 for it. Yes, I think that it was inevitable because the prices of NFL teams are going up 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 they can, Washington Commander went for six billion dollars. It's a large an 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 experimenting. We'll 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?
Haws 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, because I have 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 Oils, and obviously the
first call was a 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, uh with the Orioles in the first fourteen years of my life. He was a minor league manager. And then you have a dream you'd 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 uh, 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 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, not to 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 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 a row without missing totally?
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. Your 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 professional baseball, so you can get contracts at ores high ast seven hundred million dollars, and so it's hard for smaller cities to compete in that domain.
Somewhat.
All right, we have to see how that plays. Really. Appreciate you too, gentlemen. Stopping by David Rubinstein. He's a co founder and co chairman of the Carlisle Group. He's now the owner of the Baltimore Oils and cal Ripken Junior d cal Riton Junior Baseball Hall of Famer, founder and partner of Ripken Baseball. Appreciate you too, general. Taking a couple of minutes, you're trying to stop by here at our Bloomberg Sports Power Conference.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Alex Deel, Paul Sweeney. We were broadcasting live from the Bloomberg Power Players Conference here at the Bloomberg Global headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. Let's switch gears to the NASCAR, the business of NASCAR. I have a lot of experience with NASCAR. We took some of those track owners public back in the early nineties, and I got to really understand the business, the sport and the heritage of NASCAR Racing is just extraordinary education. There, Steve Phelps joins us. He's a president
of NASCAR. Steve, thanks so much for joining us here. You know, I got to know NASCAR in the early nineties when I think it was really on an ascendency in terms of television ratings and then attendance, and it was just crazy and it rad that it rode that way for a while. Then it kind of crested. Where are we now with NASCAR in the global sports scene here?
Sure?
Well, I think you're exactly right, Paul, So had this.
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 necessarily 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 up, 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.
Bullish on where the sport is today, but importantly where it's going.
Where do you think it's going to go? Like, has it broad an appeal? How do you get someone like me to watch it?
Sure?
I think you know it? Yeah, that's a and there's the trick, right, so's.
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 young, 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 and it's I think people think of it in a way that is not right, which is you're either going to serve yours 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 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 our productions facility ran 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 a you know, creative content and really compelling content either be distributed through our own channels of distribution or someone else's. So and 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 had 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 went 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, so it's not franchise, but it creates enterprise value for our race teams, and so we're 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 bankru Yeah, that's exactly Well, not only that, but it creates more compelling racing, right, and that's what we want.
We have 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. So Daytona five hundred 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 fifteen percent. So there are three largest rated events of the year, all down double digit and yet we're still positive right of rating.
So it's it's.
Working just real quick. Any new markets go about thirty seconds left?
Sure, yeah, so yeah, so I think so we're going to race next year for the first time outside of our borders in the Cup Series in Mexico City. Okay, So we have some other discussions that are going so we're again we're excited about the broadening of our sport.
YEP. Absolutely. I like Charlotte Motor Speedway, like Richmond, and I like Bristol, the smallest track, but it's just people down there are nuts for racing. It's kind of like Bristol, Tennessee, Bristol, Virginia, Span Toosday. It's really cool anyway. Steve Phillipstone joined US President of NASCAR here at the Bloomberg Sports Conference here in New York City talking to us about the business of NASCAR Racing car.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple Car Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
All right, Alex Seal, Paul Sweeney, your life here in the sixth floor of the Bloomberg Headquarters. We're here for the Bloomberg power players here at are headquarters. Let's talk a little hoops here Team USA Basketball. I'm gonna introduce my second favorite duke player of all time, Grant Hill. Just phenomenal. Of course, Bobby Hurley, his point guard back in the day, is my number one choice from Jersey City. Grant, thanks so much for joining us here Team USA. I mean,
you guys are hitting it. I mean, talk to us about the status of Team USA. I mean, you know, obviously Coach k stepped it back, A new regime kind of came in. You're there just about Team USA. Both men and women are just wow.
Well, well, first of all, Bobby Hurley was my favorite dup player of all time because he passed the ball to me right, Bobby was great. No, 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. Uh, there was just excellence 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, 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, uh, 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 the Orlando Pro women's soccer team, and we were talking about that over the last couple hours as well as to where the opportunity set 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 WNBA 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 u and so the opportunity to invest in the NWSL, the Orlando Pride in first place right now, we have 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 Berman is a fantastic commissioner, has great vision, 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 subside. So really excited. I was excited to see Jessica and Midge person one of the stars in the league, and yeah, we're thrilled to be involved.
Where do you see basketball is a global sport. We saw it on on at Paris. I mean, the limits all over, great competitiveness. How does the NBA, you know, how do you think then they taps into that? I mean there's so many international players playing in the NBA now, but what do you think they should be doing there well.
The game has become a global sport. You figured out the ninety two Dream Team and sort of what they did, they inspired a world a whole, multiple generations of basketball players. Now that the NBA is thirty percent international, Wow, And you know, I can go all over the world and people recognize me and they identify me with the NBA brand. The NBA is a global marketing and public relations firm.
The players, you know, they may come in, they may leave, they may you know, replenishes itself, but the ability to market and promote is what they've mastered and done a great job of that in the last thirty two years since the Dream Team. I think though, where we can you know, can continue to improve. Obviously domestically with our development, I think national basketball community has kind of caught us or maybe even surpassed us in some ways with how
they develop young talent. I also see expansion not just here and possibly Las Vegas or Seattle, but I you know, talk about going over to Europe, talk about partnering with the EuroLeague. I'm an investor in NBA Africa and the opportunity there and the potential as a lot of the nations in that kind on that continent are still developing,
but they consume the game. And uh and so the league is is is doing a number of efforts, a number a number of initiatives and just sees the continued sort of growth opportunities that their global media markets.
Yep, you know.
And the game is is isn't a good place and I think has even greater potential as we move forward.
Ten seconds. How good is this Cooper flag kid?
He's really good. He I brought him in on the select team to prepare with the prepares for the Olympic team, and he played very well, had a really good day. You know, he might have been one of the top five players. I might embellish a bit, but he might have been one of the top five players on the court that one day. And so big expectations for my Blue Devils this year.
With zachfi exactly right, all right, Grant, thanks so much for joining us. Grant Hill, he's a managing director of USA Basketball. He's a co owner of the Atlanta Hawk's life from the Bloomberg Power Players. He's here at our Bloomberg Global headquarters along with the letter other sports folks. So it's business, it's technology, it's sport, it's entertainment, it's only intersecting.
I'm so impressed with your ability to have this muscle.
Here.
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