Al Guido Discusses the Sports Industry Business Model (Podcast)

an executive. Um. He really did some amazing work, uh, not only at the Dallas Cowboys, but with the San Francisco forty Niners, helping them to create what is really a unique sports stadium in in all of professional sports. The technology that they developed right there in the backyard of of Silicon Valley for enjoying sports, enjoying a facility, uh, is really there's nothing like it anywhere else in the country.

Elvate Sports Ventures puts a lot of time and effort into finding new technologies, finding these things, commercializing them, and being able to share them with other sports facilities and other teams. It's really a fascinating conversation. If you're remotely interested in sports technology venture capital, you're gonna find this to be really intriguing. So, with no further ado my conversation with al Guido. I'm Barry Rihults. You're listening to

Master's in Business on Bloomberg Radio today. I have a special guest. His name is al Guido. He is the president of the San Francisco Fornia Niners and he has a fascinating career in both sports and business. He was a wide receiver for the Powerhouse College of New Jersey before joining Comcast Spectacres owned Philadelphia Flyers and seventies six Ers.

He moved to the Cowboys front office. During the building of the A. T and T Park, he joined Legends, a well regarded UH sports consultancy formed by the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Yankees, to help open the new San Francisco forty nine er Stadium. The San Francisco Forny Niners Stadium was named the Sports Facility of the Year. He was appointed president of the forty Niners at the ripe old age of thirty six. UH named to Sports Business Journal forty under forty. He is also a guest

lecturer at Stanford and You See Berkeley. Al Guido, welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you so much for having me. It's for pleasure. So you've had a really fascinating career and you're you know, do you shave you? How? How old are you now? I'm thirty eight right now, thirty eight, So president of the forty niners. We're gonna talk about a few of the projects you're working on, uh that

are really quite fascinating. But I have to begin with a really interesting story about you being accidentally blind copied on an email and you said that was the email that changed your life. Tell us about that, no problem. I went down to interview with the Dallas Cowboys for job that was titled at the time, sales manager. I was the vice president of sales for the Phoenix Coyotes. I wasn't sure what the job entitled. I got caught up in the title and the pay and not actually

the project, which which was a mistake. I'm sure we've all been there. I didn't handle the interview real well. I was. I answered the questions right, but you know, you have that sinking gut feeling when you right where you're just like, you know what, I missed that one. So I get home to Phoenix, I wake up the next morning I got an email in my inbox. It says, you know, Al was great, you know, polished, certainly knows

the job, you know, not sure is the passion. There's a family situation back in Phoenix, and so you know, if we don't hire him, we're gonna have to reopen the search. Well, obviously I knew I wasn't supposed to be copied on this email. So this, by the way, that reminds me of the Curb your Enthusiasm accidental text, right, the text by accidents, So they blind they copied you by accident with Jerry Jones, Stephen Jones, Charlotte Jones, the

entire Jones family. And uh, you know, you're sitting stew for a little while. Your first you're kind of pissed, right then you then you decide you're gonna write the email. Then you delete it and you write it again. And I just essentially I responded and said, hey, if you guys don't hire me, I think it'll be the worst mistake the Gallas Cowboys ever making their franchise history. And you also, we're up front, Hey, I know I wasn't supposed to be copied on, but I'm glad I was

I think it changed my life. I mean, if I wasn't, who knows, I would have done my follow up call. I would have sent my thank you cards, doing all that, you know, all the stuff you do when you try to land a job. But for me, everyone says, hey, it took a lot of guts, and I just feel like I had no other choice. And and so when ten minutes later, Jerry, Jerry calls and says, you know, he says that that took a lot of guts. He didn't use those words, but that took a lot of guts.

But I respect it and like it. You're hired just like that. That was the accidental email on purpose. So I think this is a new NFL, a new NFL strategy. It sounds like something uh Belichick created. Here's what we're gonna do. Um so tell us about what the job was like at the Cowboys. What did you do for them? Uh? Look, it was a game changer for me. I mean, we we went down there to open up a facility, you know, called Jerry World at the time now a T and

T stadium. No one had ever thought about doing it the way that he was about to go and bark right the size scale. The building was being sunk down fifty feet, which, by the way, is an amazing architectural feature. Someone who's been to a lot of stadiums, you walk in, You're in the middle of the stadium. It's not like, oh my god, I gotta walk up or down a thousand yard do you like? It just feels for a giant stadium. It feels so accessible. And then those immense screens,

it's amazing. The screens were the largest in all of sports at the time. The trusts were the largest and heaviest in the world. I mean, you could fit the Statue of Liberty inside of Cowboys Stadium. That's sending up standing up. That's how crazy it was. And then on top of that, what we were doing on the sales and revenue side. Just to give you a context, personal seat licenses in the NFL have been around for a long time. There's probably twenty teams now that have them.

The largest PSL campaign in NFL history was the Carolina Panthers. They raised about a hundred and fifty million. With the Dallas Cowboys we did over six hundred million, and so it just changed sports forever. And and we did that and had a ton of success. From there, we launched Legends, the Yankees and the Cowboys, basically the two most successful franchises in each of their respective sports. You got it. Randy Levine and Steven Jones and Jerry Jones and came

together in the stuy and Wrenner family. They wanted to do Legends as a food and beverage company, you know. So they formed this entity and Goldman Sachs was the third party. They formed this entity around food and beverage. That was the only vertical that they were interested in. Then they decided, you know what, we can get into the sales and we said, hey, we can do this sales consulting stuff. Because everybody keeps wanting to know how we did this down at Cowboys Stadium, So let's stop

and we'll tell you. So what's since you instead of giving away free advice? So we created Legends. The forty niners were our first client. So I moved out to the Bay Area in late two thousand nine. I was on the ground in two thousand and ten as the Legends employee. Stayed there untill two thousand and fourteen as a Legends employee, and then the York family um brought me on board full time to run the team and roughly yet roughly two thousand fourteen, right before we opened.

And that's the new in San Francisco and new Leli Stadium, because you come on as chief operating operating officer run obviously all the business vertical for both the team and the stadium itself. What happened is when Jerry decided to do the PSL campaign the way he did, it changed

sports financing in the NFL forever. Right, if you if you just go thirty ft for a second, most sports stadiums built in the late nineties or early two thousand's were some form of private and public partnerships, right, tax revenues were going into these, which has always been a contentious today a very contentious and there's really, honestly, there's not a lot of appetite anymore in the world today for taxpayers to pay for billion dollars stateis right, you're

a billionaire, you own a team that's worth three or four billion, build your own stadium because the economics and honestly, the economics have changed. Right if you you know, if you go back to the late nineties in the stadium boom, where the Ravens came on board, the Steelers came on board, the Eagles built a new one. They're all they were all roughly three right. Very different from a financial Now

you're talking a billion too. When we were in Alice a billion, four in San Francisco four and a half, the five billion in l A. I mean, the risk portfolio on these projects is dramatically increased. And so what wound up happening is how how you finance those projects changed and and that's why, look, we have the forty

niners business. I'm also the CEO of Elevate Sports Ventures, which is a sports consulting firm that's literally built to handle this space because the game has changed relative to how sports franchises view their brand and how they monetize it. So you play bowl in college, you uh, you operate as a business person in the industry. You grew up a fan. How do you reconcile those three different roles? Do they ever get confusing in your head? Well, every time I walk into a venue now, it's a little

different than when I was a kid. Right when I was a kid, I was looking for wherever the popcorn was and the and the soda that my dad would buy me later in life, good beer and a hot dog. Now I probably walk into a venue, I look at the signage, I look at the concession areas, I look at the arena operations, all the content. So it's changed, but I still got that fandom. I mean, there's no doubt that's why I love sports right because it's it's the one place where you can sort of get away

from your day to day life. The emotion and the passion that people have around their sports teams. I still have that day to day. Um, I just probably look at venues a little differently. So let's talk about venues. You work with the forty Niners to build Levi Stadium. These big projects are notorious for being late and over budget. This comes in on time and and practically under budget. How did how did you manage to accomplish this unbelieable visionary and Jed York got out in front of the

stadium design. We we had a building that was design probably two years before we even put a shovel on the ground, which was great for us. Is that not typical? There's always changes? Yeah, I mean you that is always last minute changes. I mean we used to joke that we wanted to kick Jerry out of building Jerry Jones out of his building for the six months leading up to stadium opening because he was constantly making changes. And by the way, it's what makes them great, what makes

Jed York great. But we had a great construction team. We were lucky and in the tech side because we we built Levi Stadium on three pillars fan experience, sustainability, and technology. Being inside the Bay Area. We had the world's greatest, greatest technology partners. Facebook just went I p O. We literally hired the person who built the Facebook infrastructure to build our stadium infrastructure. So we came along in a really good time. Um, you know, the financing world

was really good. Our team was starting to come along and starting to perform. So a lot of things went well. But I gotta say a lot of it is is I give credit to Jed York and the York family. So you come on board as chief operating officer, and then last year it was it last year. You get promoted two years ago, two years ago, two years ago. How did your role change? What are your job responsibilities today versus then? Well, they change, They didn't change very much.

To be honest with you, what I would say is we've grown in nature. So you know when we set out to build Levi's what I say is, we're a sports and entertainment company that also plays football, right because the building itself. You don't build a one point four billion dollar stadium and only hosts ten or twelve games and it makes no sense, right, So twelve if you lucky, that's right. So we've now incubated a technology company. We have four We've done forty investments in the last two years.

We have a restaurant concept, we have physical therapy centers that are not forty niners. We have forty niners, fitness gyms that are branded underneath our watch with a gentleman who used to run twenty for our fitness named Mark Master off its so co branded for fitness gym. So we've taken our vertical instead of looking at the three pillars of revenue like every team right suite, sponsorship tickets,

we of course we have those for us. It's why can't we take our brand and expand outside of our footprint, inside of technology, inside of land development, and so for me, my role hasn't changed much outside of the fact that the company has grown tremendously over the course of the

last two years. So here's the pushback for that. You have a fan base that lives and does with how well the team is doing, and they're fairly loyal group um because once Montana and Rice retired, you know, I would have that would have been the last year saw me for a while, but they stuck with the fort in Us for a while. Do you run the risk of deluding the brand, of changing the fan experience? Because if you go to a game and it's a close game and they lose, you're dejected, but you know it's

still part of the fan experience. If you go to a restaurant and you're not happy and it's forty nine ers logo, do you go to a gym and there's an issue, you don't quite have the same control of that fan experience. And it it that has to be a legitimate risk, isn't it. It's it's a legitimate risk that every stadium arena owner needs to ask themselves that

they're designing the building right. It's and I think that's the pillar and the vision that we look through right or the lens, I should say, is let's not do things that take away from the hero feature. And the hero feature in my mind is the play on the field. Right, If everything else is just additive, meaning if I could get you two in and out of the stadium faster because I use technology, you would say that's great. Right.

If I can make the building safer because of the mobile ticketing platform and knowing the data, you'd say great. If I could deliver food and beverage to every single seat in the building, which has never been done before, we did it Leavi Stadium, where the world's fastest pizza delivery company will deliver something to your seat in less than eight minutes. To me, it's what are the convenient things that you want as a patron inside of a

venue that's gonna make you keep coming back? And you know what I can give you those I'm not going to take away from what I grew up as a fan loving. Right, don't change the game on the field or give me too many bells and whistles that distract me when I'm watching the game. I'm watching the game. But in football, as you know, we got a six hour time frame from the time you leave your house to the time you leave that parking lot. Four of those hours of the game window. Inside of those four hours,

only twenty eight minutes of live sports. So are you telling me you're gonna be disconnected from the world from the rest of that time. No. Now, Look, NFL is different than baseball, different than the NBA. So what I would say is what we built is perfect for Levi's in the Bay Area. I'm not suggesting that you should just dump it into some other market. I think you gotta build for each market. So how do you measure the success of the organization. It has to be more

than just win loss record. It should be I mean, look, the goals of a football team are to win the Super Bowl every year. That's not the why or the purpose right to me. I measured success obviously by our wins and losses on the field. But in football it's a tough business to be in. Right, fifty percent of the teams you make the playoffs don't make it the next year. You know, generally speaking, three core things make

you a consistent winning for football organization. Right, continuity that within your front office, your ownership, your GM, your coach a coach. Schematically that gives you an X and O's advantage, and we like to think Kyle Shanahan is one of the best in the business on the offensive side of leisure and then pretty simple a franchise quarterback. And so you know, if you think about the a f C, there's been three quarterbacks that have participated in in you know,

sort of the Super Bowl. In the a f C side, you've got Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlisberger, Sprinkler and a couple of Joe Flacco's over the last seventeen years. Right, So just tell you what you need. On the business side. For us, it's all about fan experience. Where we rank in the NFL. Obviously, revenues are a big component of it because we want to stay competitive with our other

partners in the league. And we've gone from a bottom tier revenue team in the NFL when we're at Candlestick Park, which is hard to believe the five times Super Bowl champions, being the bottom of the NFL and revenue, to now being a top revenue team with a massive global footprint that's arguably second or third in the line of the NFL based off where you are. There has been so

much news about sports over the past few weeks. We have to discuss some of that, and we'll get to it, but I have to talk about the new venture that the forty Niners launched with some partners called Elevate Sports Ventures. Tell us a little bit about what's happening with that.

So I'm super excited to announce as part of Elevate Sports Ventures, which is a consulting, sales and marketing consulting firm working with landmark sports properties arenas stadiums, we have now brought on oak View Group and a gentleman by the name of Tim Lawicki, who is a titan in this industry. He built a g He was the president

of Maple League Sports Entertainment. Oak View Group for the last two years has been spending time building arenas in the facility management space, and they were looking for a partner on the sales and marketing front to run all of their operations. So today I'm excited to announce that partnership and to tell people that we will be operating the new NHL Seattle Arena that hopefully is going to come online, which we get good news on June. Waiting

to hear a new HOW team coming to Seattle. And when that happens, the new stadium gets built with the help of elevator. Well, you know what I'm I'm super excited about. We didn't have to build a new stadium. What we what we're doing is we're spending about seven hundred million dollars to renovate Key Arena. You're almost building a new stadi. Yeah. And what I would tell people

were kind of in your backyard, right. So for those listeners who might be a New York sports fan, think about what happened to Madison Square Garden a couple of years ago, right where they kept the historic nature of the garden, but they've redesigned and reimagined everything. I will, I will be grudgingly admit it's a significant improvement. And I'm one of the people. I'm a long suffering Knicks fan who want to see them level that dump and put up a new one. But I have to admit

it's gotten significantly better. I would agree, and I and I think if you look at KI Arena in Seattle, right for all the history around that, for the concerts, I mean, you talk about a music venue. So we we've hired a populous oak View group is funding the entire project. We are running the sales and marketing on behalf of Todd lie Wicky, who is now the president of that team, who used to be the chief operating

officer of the NFL. So we're beyond excited to announce that we're also bringing on another partner, Live Nation and Ticketmaster, the world's largest content company and ticketing business. We feel as if we can bring oak Views facility management properties and they're consulting along with our sales expertise, combined with the content and the technology that Ticketmaster will bring to bear, that we feel like we can work with any sports property across the across the globe. So that raises an

interesting question. You have UM legends out there. This is essentially the same space. How many new stadiums are going to get either built or refurbished. Is there enough business for this sort of UM company or is it consistently the bottom what's call at sevent of teams need help in monetizing what they do. So it's I would say there's parts of it that are similar UM. To answer your question of whether or not this is a big enough business, thirty billion dollars is being spent or has

been spent in building, stadium renovation, designs development. So I tell you this is a big space. Sports business is only growing, There's no question about that. Our our key differentiators from what they do there are a food and beverage company and a sales marketing consulting firm. O v G is putting capital risk. They're funding these properties when they go into it. Right there, They're they're putting the money down. O View Group is funded by Tim Lewicky.

Obviously irving A's off used to be the x CEO of of Live Nation and Dolan right the MSG properties and then uh Tim also took on some money from Silver Lakes. So we are actually putting capital at risk and then going in and managed on behalf. We're not just a fee based consulting firm, which is similar to what that's what Legends does. I have nothing but respect for them. I work for them. They're tremendous people. I

think there's enough to go around in this business. We think we have a vertical and an offering that will reimagine this sports marketing consulting space. And I think given just that we've been in the market ninety days, we now have a client every single sport. That's pretty impressive. So you've answered the question. I was gonna ask about what do these consultancies do, but you hinted at something else I have to talk about. You mentioned the technology

in Levi Stadium. What do you think is going to happen in terms of digital interaction and augmented reality and just the entire fan experience combining technology and and enjoying the game. I think this is the best time to be inside of technology and sports, and they're all sort of coming together at the perfect It's like the perfect storm, right, and you guys are really in the sweet spot of that, right, And and it starts with let's just at the core

of it, it starts with safety. If you think, unfortunately about the vents that are going on in our world today, the incidents in Manchester and that arena a couple of years ago, it's becoming clear that fans now understand the importance of the digital footprint, the tracking mechanism. Right, if you went to an airport, you would have never thought before that, hey, I could just give you my airplane

ticket and you could go jump on that plane. But that's how nobody checked you on, right, And that's how it's worked in stadiums forever, but that that time has to end. So once you take the utility functions of the technology right, and what I mean is your tickets and your parking, great, but then what do you do? Do you even enter with a ticket or do you enter with biometrics when you get inside the stadium forgetting

VR right of putting a goggle on? What is your a R How are you using your AI, within your chatbots and your services to you know, to make sure that you can communicate with seventy thousand fans. So to me, this is part of the why we created the venture arm and invested in all these technology companies because the game is changing. You we've talked well, I'm sure we'll talk about gambling. How does that work? In venue? How do the how does the mobile footprint right? How do

you how do you where to each venue? You know? How do you interact with fans? Given where technology and content is today? It starts with building the infrastructure, which is why to your last question is is there enough business? All of these people are either building new or renovating to get themselves updated with the current needs of the world. The news flow has just been NonStop. Have to talk about the Supreme Court decision legalizing state betting on sports.

If I'm the NFL, I have to be salivating thinking this is an enormous revenue opportunity. I think they're twofold. Everybody understands the revenue opportunity. The concern is the integrity of your game, right and and so what I think the NFL, when I know the NFL is stated in Roger Goodell is look, we're gonna follow this. The most important thing is the integrity of our game. We would this to come down at a federal for the federal government to take a perspective on this and not necessarily

go state by state. Well, I think it's that that ship is sailed given the Supreme Court decision. It may unless there's congressional legislation, correct, and it sounds like there's going to be either way. Your point is well taken. Look, I think it's here. It's coming. Um, it's already coming. And the question becomes, you know, Adam Silver is already out there saying he wants one per cent of all wages placed on the NBA. Look, don't yeah exactly, I

don't know if that's exactly what's going to happen. But there's no question our i P is valuable in the NFL. I am a firm believer that gambling and fantasy sports grows our fan base long term. I don't think anybody would argue that what fantasy football has done for the NFL makes people tune in on the broadcast, makes people you know, follow each individual player. So to me, I view this as an unbelievable positive down. The next question

is how do you roll it out? Right? Do you go to the English Premier League round where you literally have cash boxes in every single stadium in arena and they're making bets intro game that will they make the penalty kick? What will they who scores first? It really

is an amazing yeah. And if you think about football, right, football, outside of horse racing, is probably the easiest sport because can you imagine the amount of prop bets, the downtimes that every quarters, the kickoffs, the the you know, the coin flip. Right, Other sports generally probably that happened a little bit more faster paced, don't have as many of those. So look, trust me as a person that operates, I got a couple of hats, but you know the San

Francisco Fognars business. Of course I'm interested and I am tuned into what is about to happen on the integrity side of the sport. There's no question that you have to think about it. Right. Match fixing has happened in the world, and so you know you have you have to at least understand how this is going to be regulated within your sport and outside of your sport. Um but I look, I I view it as it's happening. It's coming, we need to get ready for it. I

think long term it's going to be a positive. So that's my take. Let me put on my market guy hat and address integrity. So the way you make money fixing sports is having a long shot, unexpectedly win and being on the right side of that. Now, in Europe where they've had sports gambling for a while, when an unseated player in tennis beats the number six player and and it's a pretty big purse, that immediately generates an investigation. So and it's the same thing happens in in the market.

If there's an unexpected takeover of a company and there was some gee, why was all this stock option activity three days before this takeover. It's a red flag. You can actually use gambling as a way too. There's a temptation from the various people to abuse it. But the market can allow you to actually operate, to maintain integrity, to do the game. Yeah, I think you can, and

but the examples you brought up are scary. You know, think about this, right, A football game might be harder, given that you know, one on one matches, it's a fairly easier thing to do. But look at the Tim donnehee situation right in the NBA. It doesn't have to be a player. It could be a referee, It could be a replayfully, you know. So you know, my thing is you never want that in your sport because I do think that that would ruin you know, ruin pieces

perceptions of whether or not it's a fair game. So you mentioned replay. Let's talk a little bit about a basic football question. What the hell is a catch? I remember when I was a kid. You caught the ball, you maintain control, You hit the ground, and you still have control. It was a catch that seems to have gone away. Like I'm with you. We we finally changed this rule this year. We were all frustrated by this

rule inside the league. I mean I you would sit in again, I'd sit in games, whether in our venue and other venues. And you just like what you said. I mean when I grew up, right, I knew exactly what I thought it catch was he use control of the ball, that's it. If it scored it out when he hits the ground, it's not the whole like football move, not foot what is a football move? And uh, I

think we've gotten to the point right now. You know, catch two feet on the ground, that's it, right, And if you you know this year, I think the Jesse Jameson thing is Jesse james right, the extended over the goal line of Pittsburgh. Obviously you know when the ball then hits the ground, it moves that that's now a touchdown when it when it wasn't a catch before. Like it's not making Jerry Jones feel any better that Dez Bryant's catch in Green Bay is now catching wasn't a

catch then? And look, I it's it's it's easy for everybody in the audience today. This is where I think technology is both good and bad. Right when you and I were growing up, HD wasn't there. You couldn't slow mow these things down. It's a difficult sport. Every sports a difficult sport to ref But even you know, even when you slow it down millisecond by millisecond, you actually

create this fake thing. You have to look at it all right, So here it is in real time, and here it is slowed down a little bit, but you get a distorted viewpoint with these super duper slow mos and ultra HD. That's not the real world. You might as well be looking at, you know, nanoparticles. At that point, Yeah, you're sort of paralyzed by all the replays and analysis and everything else. And I think you're right. You can

push it too far. Right. You have all this technology which then allows you to do all these things and slow it down, But then it's paralysis by analysis. So you get to a point where, holy smokes, it's still just a game. Can't we just can't we just referee and it should really not be there, shouldn't be lawyers involved. Yeah, so I think we're I think finally we're simplifying it this year. This coming year, the new rule will be intact. I hope that it reduces the amount of discussion because

you just don't want that right. You want the discussion to be X and o's should have a should coach went for it on fourth down? Punted? Gone for two? That's what you when you're walking as a fan, right when I look, when I walked out of games with my father, my mother, the whole debate was should we have done this? Should we have done that? It wasn't Was this a catch or not right? It wasn't taking that.

I'd haven't really even thought about the referees at that time unless they throw a flag on holding or pass interference, right, the subjective calls. But you know, for the most part, you want people leaving talking about the game, not the referees. So let's talk about and and we caveated this before, but I'll repeat it. Al is not speaking on behalf of the NFL. This is his opinion, so he is not making broad declarations on behalf of the league. But as long as I have you here, let me ask

you about celebrations in the end zone. Okay, I have always thought that that penalty was sort of weird. You have this unsportsmanlike conduct. If someone is being a jerk and taunting somebody you could throw a flag at them, but somebody hasn't a using play, and they in a big game and they score, why not let them celebrate dance a little bit. What's the problem with that? To

be there's there should be no problem with it. And and thankfully the NFL last year allowed back in the touchdown celebrations because look, whether it's funny or I mean, people called us to no fun league, and I think you can become that a little bit. And to me, I think it removes that connection from a fan to

a player to a team. And and if you look this year and obviously the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, not only were they known as a really good team, they were probably known as the team that was most you know together because their celebration, their touchdown celebration, their interception interceptions. They were doing dances out on the field.

And I go back to our history at the forty nine is whether it's the Dion Sanders dance, the Marten Hanks chicken, at some level you remember those moments because of them, right that fans love it. Fans. What I what I tell people is and you're seeing it now how it plays out on content, right, everybody watches the games, but the content that gets the most engagement is when you get behind the mask, right or underneath the hood and you learn about these people as as as as

human beings. I mean, look at Tom burst time right on the Facebook. You know how many times people get an in depth look at how time Brady lives his life. We need to do more of that as a franchise, as a as a league. All leagues do because you want people now want a connection with their teams on a much deeper level than just wins and loss. That's right, Brady is what fifty three fifty four and he's still

in there playing amazing. Look, it's an amazing story. I mean, however old he is, I mean, he's one of the greatest ever do one of the greatest ever. So the celebration is one thing that's an easy question. Let's talk about again more news. The we just heard about kneeling um and the new rules the owners have issued. I was in the impression that those sort of penalties if you kneel you'll be fined, are covered by the contract between the league and the players Association. Do I not

understand that correctly? Now, what seemingly what came down here was that the NFL will find the team, the team will decide to discipline their player on their own. Now, they give the player the option of staying in the locker room during the national anthem instead of kneeling. What happens if a dozen players don't come out? I mean, you're creating a possible all right, Now, there's a new

scenario here, you know, remains to be seen. I would say we we at the forty niners, we've obviously dealt with this for for a long time, right, because why would it affect you more than anyone else? Our former quarterback, I should say, Colin Kaepernick started the movement, and look what I what I would tell you on this Our owner UM abstain from voting, was one of the only

owner owners to do so. I think about it in this way, right, what we need to somewhat in this country and in this sport move from protest to progress. Our owner UM has donated over ten million dollars the last two years to impact social causes inside of the

Bay Area. We've seen our police, UM and our communities grow a deeper level of engagement based off those things, you know, do I what I kneel for the national athem, No right, UM, but I do believe that there's underlying issues in the world, and we as a community at the San Francisco For and Honors, believe that we should be in those discussions. And uh, it's sort of our job to be a good community partner and steward. And

so we're gonna keep working with our players. UM. I can't speak for what every other team is gonna do, but for us, you know, we know that our players are not just there for the sixteen or eighteen or nineteen games they play. They're they're an employee of ours, They're a fabric of our community. Their kids go to

schools in our area. So for us, it's find out what they're are passionate about, help support him in that cause, Help educate and make people aware of the things that are going on in the world, and put money, um back into the community to affect change in a positive way. We have been speaking to al Quido. He's the president of the San Francisco forty Niners. If you enjoy this conversation,

be sure and stick around for the podcast extras. Will we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all things uh, sports, business and football. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. You can check out my daily column on Bloomberg dot com. Follow me on Twitter at Rid Holts. I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Master's in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast. Al, thank you for doing this. I

wish we had more time. I know you have a busy schedule this week. UM, let's let's just do a quick speed round. I want to talk to you more about you and not just about sports, gambling and Colin Kaepernack. So. So in the five or so minutes we have left, let's plat through ten questions really quickly. Are you ready? This will be a speed round. Most important thing people don't know about your background or about you. I grew up a blue collar family. Father was a truck driver,

mother was administrator. Um. Unfortunately I move thirteen times before I was seventeen years old, bankrupt, two homes. So, UM, you know, my my parents did everything they possibly could to to give me a good life, and I'm I'm unbelievably fortunate for it. Tell us about your early mentors. My father from a work ethic perspective, um, you know, my mother from a loving perspective. In the business world.

You know, I say I have three. Jim Vanstone taught me this business at the Philadelphia Flyers and seventies six chat Estis with the Dallas Cowboys taught me how to be a leader and build great culture. And Jed Yorke taught me how to be a visionary and an entrepreneur and think outside the box. What players, businesspeople, sports figures

influenced your approach to thinking about the business? Wow, players, sports figures, um or business people, business people, I'll say a partner of ours who have come to really love the CEO of S A P. Bill McDermott has become a great friend. I love his sort of corner store Delhi to the corner office, the way that he runs his organization. Uh. From a culture, management, leadership perspective, it's good to know at that big of a company the

little things still matter most. Um and the SAP the giant, the giant. Yeah, because I just think that at his core it's all about leadership, vision why purpose? To me, by far and away, he's one of he's been one of my favorites. That that's interesting. Tell us about some of your favorite books. What what do you read? What do you find interesting, sports, non sports, fiction, non fiction, whatever. I'm a big, obviously business book reader, but I'll tell you my passion is in the Simon Sinek is a

tremendous friend, executive coach. His start with Why Book for Me sort of changed it all, um, you know, and then and then Leaders Eat Last was a tremendous opportunity to learn from the military. I think, to take military practices and put him in business world. So he's been an unbelievable mentor. But both really interesting names. What do you find most exciting about what's going on in the world of sports business today? I think that sports business teams, brands,

leagues are branching out into other areas. Is the most is is to me. You know, you've got the NBA doing e sports, You've got the NFL looking into development, pretty's overseas. These these brands are becoming global brands. Their publishers, their content creators, their storytellers, right their sales and marketers. They've you know, there are incubators and innovation and technology it's not just a sport anymore. What do you do outside of the office for fun? I got three little

girls at home. UM, so my wife would tell me if I do anything outside of take care of my nine, seven and five year over that too much. I love to play pick up basketball. UM. I enjoy a good golf round, although I haven't played in quite a while. Tell us about a time you failed and what you learned from the experience. Well, I, UM, I went into a job opportunity with the Lakewood Blue Claws, a single a affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies, and Uh, I wasn't

as prepared as I thought I needed to be. I thought it was a layoup job for me. Um. I didn't show up with with my A game is what you would call it. And I and from there on out I made or that there was never a time where I didn't show up with my A game. Recent college graduate comes up to you and says, I'm interested in the career and uh, in the business of sports. What sort of advice would you give them? Grit and perseverance.

It's not an easy world to get into, but once you get into it, man, work your tail off because it is the best. In my opinion, it's the best job vertical you could be in. And the other thing I would say is be a sponge. Learn inside and out how these businesses operate. It is not as simple as a movie theater. Don't just focus on the ticket someone buys. Focus on how the don't focus on the end result. Focus on how, the how, the how the

how they got there. And our final question, what is it that you know about the world of sports business today that you wish you knew a couple of years ago when you were beginning. Normally I say thirty years ago, but with you, I have to say a decade ago when you were first getting uh getting involved in this business. My largest learning curve is to deal with the political specter.

You know, I think as a business person um rational thought generally always prevails and in the politics world that's not the same. And so to understand people's motivations is important. I don't say that in a negative way. I just think that you need to understand in every conversation what's important to that to those people, and politics and private don't always align. Under understood. We have been speaking with al Guido. He is the president of the San Francisco,

forty niners. If you enjoy this conversation, be shure and look up an inch, ight down an inch on Bloomberg dot com, Apple iTunes, overcast, wherever finer podcasts are sold, and you can see any of the other two hundred or so such conversations we've had. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would be remiss if I did not thank the correct team that helps put together these podcasts each week. Taylor Riggs is our producer, Booker

Medina Parwana is our audio engineer and producer. Michael bat Nick is our head of search. I'm Barry Results. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.