Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Welcome to The Deal.
I'm your host, Jason Kelly here with my partner Alex Rodriguez. Alex, we're going to get to our interview with Midge Purse. She's a rock star. I'm so excited for this conversation in just a few minutes. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to her is she's going to be on hand for the Power Players event that's happening maybe the day that you're listening to this everybody, it's going to be happening September fifth at Bloomberg Headquarters. We're super
excited you're going to be there. I'm going to be there. This is your vibe, man like it is all of our people in New York. On the occasion of the US Open happening in New York. We're going to have a lot of conversations. That day, you and I are going to tape an episode of this show The Deal with a special guest, so stay tuned for that.
But I'm so sited you're coming to New York for this.
Well, I'm so excited, Jason. It's always good to go to New York and when you start seeing feeling the US Open.
It meant two things.
Better weather as a player, yeah, and October baseball is right around the corner. So as a Yankee, it's very exciting. US Open. Fashion Week is around the corner and right for me. But like Power Players is like a dream, right, because is what the deal is all about, is how we started the show, Jason, where it is the intersection
between sports, media, entertainment, and culture. And I'm always intrigued to see different angles owners talking, players talking, and I always feel a little bit richer and smarter when I leave those conferences.
Yeah, well, and I'm psyched you're going to be there and obviously not just be there, but be participating. I know we're going to have a lot of side conversations where, let's be honest, we're going to be recruiting for this show, a lot of people that we wanted who are going to be in that room, who someday will end up on this show, some who already have been. I'm glad you mentioned the culture piece because it is this funny moment in New York and I think you'll agree with
this too. This is the week that New York gets back to business, right, and it reminds everybody. It's like, Okay, this is the fourth major tennis tournament. It's the one everybody has circled on their calendar.
Is the most New York event that there is.
We are talking to Billy Jean King for an upcoming episode of this show about how incredible the US Open is in terms of like not just tennis, but the New York of it all. But also, as you said, fashion Week is happening, and everybody's like, come back from the Hamptons or from Nantucket or from Martha's vineyard, and they're sort of getting back to business. So it's a nice moment to bring everybody together. Speaking of business, can we talk a little bit about private equity recently approved
to come into the NFL. Yes, we knew it was coming, but how important is this in your mind?
First of all, it had to happen, and anybody who thought things opposite, they're just fighting logic and data. The facts of the matter are is that these franchise values, especially in the NFL, have balloon and rocket so quickly to these enormous enterprise values. Last I read, the Cowboys
are almost any eleven billion dollar enterprise. Imagine having about ten percent of that team, you would have to write a check for a billion a billion one and there's just not enough you know, people out there with these type of balance sheets. So I think it's great they picked really really respected private equity groups and NFL got their cakes and eyed it too, as they deserve it.
Yeah, So, Alex, here the basics when it comes to private equity provisionally approving eight funds. But what's interesting is it's actually four groups, so there's a lot of math involved here. But I think notably these are names that we really know, Arctose, six Street Aries, those are all individuals. And then there's a consortium that's comprising Dynasty Equity that's Don Cornwell and Jonathan Nelson's firm Blackstone, and Carlisle obviously
very well known to us CVC Capital Partners. They've done as much in sports anyone, and Loutis, which is actually a platform founded by Hall of Fame running back Curtis Martin. What I find so fascinating about this is there was clearly a ton of interest here and the NFL is definitely navigating how to bring different types of money into the table.
Plus, yeah, Jason, your favorite team is the Falcons Atlanta minus the Dolphins. You and I can maybe write a check for two hundred and fifty thousand or five hundred, depending on the limit, probably higher, but for all purposes, you and I can own a little sliver of our favorite teams. Which that retail market is really really broad and wide, which means enterprise values for the NFL will continue to rise.
There's another good reason for that.
Yeah, it's funny.
I know you've been This is a shameless plug and I'm going to use you like effortlessly here. You've been reading a book that I wrote ten years ago now, which I's sort of cheekily subtitled it's about private equity, is called the new Tycoons inside the three trillion dollar which is way lower than it is now. Private equity industry that owns everything, but they really do like own so much at this point. And to see them move into sports in a very meaningful way says a couple
things to me. You know, One is they're hungry for deals. The second is there's real value still on the upside, which I think you certainly appreciate as a sports team owner, because if institutions looked at this and said, Yeah, I'm just not sure that there's real money to be made here. They wouldn't be scrambling the way that they are to get into these teams, and the franchise values are going to continue to go up.
I absolutely love it.
And look the NFL, as they say, the power of the shield, they have the luxury not only to go last right from all the major other sports institutions, but they get to set their exact terms that they want. These are the eight funds that are going to be approved. These are our terms. If you flinch, you're out. We'll
go to seven over replace you really quickly. Oh and by the way, the reason and why I also love this besides institution and opening up the retail market for investors like you and I, but it's also not correlated to the market, so it's a great investment. What I mean by that is in two thousand and eight, when the world was falling apart, NFL teams were just doing just fine. Those TV money just kept coming in and in COVID nothing happened, not even a flinch. NFL teams
continue to plow through. This is why investors like it and family offices more and more. One to get into sports because if Amazon's down or Netflix down, or SMP five hundred is down, Nasdac's down, your NFL team usually is going up and up and up.
Yeah, I mean it is. You're right. It's the power of the shield.
And what's interesting, you know, sort of dovetailing with the conversation that you're about to hear with Midge perse everyone, is that the NWSL, as you know Alex was the first US league to allow institutional owners as majority owners in a league, and so Alan Waxman and his colleagues at Sixth Street, they are the control owners of BAFC. They're partners with our friend Brandy Chastain and several other former players and other notables like Cheryl Sandberg, but they
are the control owner. We're a long way from that, I think with the NFL. The NFL doesn't need institutional money to be control owners. But you sort of play it through the whole idea of institutional ownership in sports redefines this as an asset class. And it's a theme that we know we're going to hear a lot about at Power Players, and it's something that we talked to Midge person about. So without further Ado. Here's our interview
with soccer star Midge purst So joining US now. Midge Perse She's a forward for the US women's national team. She's on Gotham FC, she's a producer, a rock star. I got a chance to meet her in La over the summer, Alex and basically walked out of that conversation was like, all right, we got to get her on the show.
So here she is. Midge, really psyched you're here, Welcome.
Thank you for having me. What a great introduction.
All right, so tell us about you, Like I want to talk about this new show that you have, which you know there's so many superlatives around you, but like, give us the thirty seconds on Midge, Like, how do you describe yourself?
How do you introduce yourself?
I always lead with what I do, So I say I'm a footballer. I play soccer, and that's usually typically my intro. But if I had to keep going and you forced more worth.
Out of me, yeah, keep going, I keep going.
If I'm like describing myself, I would just say that I'm pretty driven and just goal oriented and also very very fun loving would just be the word that happens.
I think, I like to think I'm.
A good time when you say footballer, Like, take us back, did you start identifying as that when you were super young? Like I mean, did you always know that you're a gamer and you're gonna ball?
It's so funny.
I think when I was young, if you were one of the girls who played sports, that's who you were, and that's how you've known, and that's how you were identified even by teachers and other parents.
And like all adults, not just your peers. So from a very young age, I was a soccer player.
I think my email was like soccer sixteen major, like it was.
Like everything that I was.
And as I got older, I think I started to realize, Hey, you don't have to be everything central to soccer, and you can still put in the same amount of time and have the same amount of like drive and like live and breathe it without it being your entire identity. But I definitely grew up like wearing my soccer zip up to school every day.
So Midge, I love the word when you say fun I'm going to kind of just lean into that because I'm fascinated by incredibly talented people like yourself that are, you know, type a as I can imagine, but also like to have fun. So when you say you like to have fun, does that mean you like to have it adventures, you're spontaneous, you like to mix it up with your girlfriends, and I go to the beach. Talk to me about because I wish I had more fun in my career.
No, none of the above.
Actually, when I say fun, I think that I'm really good at finding the joy and really like monotonous, rudimentary things like everyday life. I think that at training, kind of one thing my coaches know me for is just like bringing this fun energy that kind of just like livens up a training. And that's just kind of like how I am, for better or for worse. I have a very infectious temperament, and people tend like sometimes adopt, Like if I'm irritated or annoyed, like it spreads pretty quickly,
and vice versa. When I'm like really excited and happy, like sometimes that spreads as well, and so I try to be the latter in the former.
Walk us through sort of the early stage of your career. You go to Harvard, you make the choice to go to school, You're playing all along the way. Tell us about those sort of choices in terms of developing, not just as a player, but also it feels like early on you've got visions and ambitions in the world beyond sport.
Is that fair?
Yes, probably for reasons that you wouldn't assume, mostly because I had to because back when I was playing soccer, I wanted to be on the national team the moment I learned about the national team.
But in terms of being.
A professional soccer player, that system, that infrastructure didn't exist, and what did exist for it was really really poor. It was a bad It was a poorly set up league where you made no money. So I mean, I remember telling my dad that I was going to go pro and he was like, no, maybe that's the one advice. He's an advice that he gave me that that wasn't good. Like I wasn't going to go into the league. I went and I entered the draft without telling my dad actually, and then got drafted.
So yeah, that's how that happened.
I want to come back to that for a second because I want to get to this show that you created called The off Season. It's the first of it's kind because it's a women's soccer reality series centered on the lies of NWSL players during the key off season training period. And this was a big moment. It's a big moment for this show to come out. You came up with this, you found a partner, you went and you did it. Tell us the story of how the show came about.
It came about from a very real need.
We spent some time with the MLB players down in Florida, in like near Jupiter Palm Beach where they train at Kressey.
So I mean from the experience.
As well, it's this thing in the US where both on the men's and women's side, there isn't really a high level training environment with everything that you need, all the amenities the training, like everything that you need in one place.
For soccer you're talking about.
Honestly, it's kind of the same for most sports. I mean, you can always go to your facilities and you can stay there, and there are just options scattered around. I know NHL goes somewhere in Canada and then Cressy was fine, but I wouldn't say they had everything that one would need to really like take care of your body, Like it's just here and there. You have to set it up yourself and I would say that those circumstances are
exacerbated when it comes to women's soccer. So in the off season, like that's one of the most important times for an athlete, Like your training is so important. There's so much opportunity to level up. You're trying to prepare for the next season. Whether or not you had a bad season or a good season, you always want to do better. And I just felt it was a really
really integral part of the professional athlete experience. And finding someone an investor who can help make that possible and like find those facilities and set that up was part of what happened.
And then so what happened was I called on.
My friends and I was like, Hey, will you come down here and train because I have this idea.
I think it'll be really cool.
And when I was down there, I was watching my friends watching all these players who I think are absolutely phenomenal, but people don't know them because they don't plan the
national team. And for whatever reason, the way the structure is set up in media and in eyes in the US, you only care about the US women's national team, but you have all these legit stars in the league who don't get the same type of attention or investment, and I was like, it's only because people don't know them, and it's a lack of investment in these storylines and these narratives.
And that's where the idea came from.
The off season is just like one arm of a larger strategy and reforming the way in which women are marketed in sport.
The show. You made the show the offseason?
No, I don't, actually, so that's exactly what I mean. Everyone's like the show, the show, the show, how amazing, And that's kind of just like one of the most prominent, like the biggest way that we're doing it now, But we're working on so many other kind.
Of like sports media house ish.
Endeavors in the sense where it's like you have women's basketball March Madness next year, we have the Men's World
Cup coming to the US. If that's not a moment for women's soccer to grow for obvious reasons, like I don't know what is so in terms of just like creating a lot more media and marketing around it and kind of also advising, we kind of been functioning in many ways as also an ad agency in a sense where we've been doing creative for a lot of companies who are trying to do really really authentic partnerships with athletes.
And it's really easy.
For us because we know all these players so well and we know their story so well that instead of taking just a single, instead of being like, oh, I want you to hold this product up and say it's great, blah blah blah, we can tell you she actually used this product five years ago.
This is how she used it.
This is a really authentic way that will be really fun for people to see. It sits well with fans, it sits well with the audience, and it makes you, guys look good. We're going to write this creative for you. So it's a much larger strategy. But the off season has been like they for now.
Yeah, Jase, I want to just follow up on this because I'm really excited to see it, and I really am, and I know that it comes out sometime in the fall.
My question to you is if this works.
It seems here like you have a potential franchise that you can run through many sports. I know baseball is one that needs more eyeballs that is starving to talk about their great young players.
This might be a perfect tool for them.
Any thoughts there, Absolutely, we're already in the talks with some leagues on formatting it. Right now, I think it works. Everyone who has seen it, the crew who worked this, they're huge soccer fans. Now, they like text me they go, I can't believe she got traded. Or they see a tackle and they're like, we know exactly why that tackle happens because we saw what happened in the house between these two players.
You see oh, no way, yeah, you see it.
Like It's kind of crazy to me that this model hasn't been explored in sports because you go into unscripted television and who's the most popular demographic as talent on that women Like people will watch Real Housewives, which are women who don't truly do anything, but you're.
Like obsessed and you like love not to say all of them.
I am an avid Real Housewives like fan, but they're not doing something that I kind of like sports, where you really have like these stakes, these lows and these highs, and like the trauma but then the triumph and you put that in and you then see the interperson relationships and the personalities, and then you can take all of that and put that context onto the game when the season actually happened.
Like, the model just really really makes sense for sports.
It's a model, ironically that's already proven right outside of sports. Whether you want to call the Kardashians you mentioned housewives, there's plenty of real estate shows. F one obviously has exploded because the Netflix piece. I mean, I think selfishly, because my first love was baseball and is baseball. I think this has Baseball's name in all over it. You see, Netflix has the starting five with the five NBA guys, the Braun, Anthony Edwards and a few others. I'm wondering,
like baseball should be next. So I think this is going to be the latest example of why this works.
And this all in your hands. What do you think about that?
I completely agree. I love your support.
Listen, if you want to help executive produce the baseball version, you let me know it.
Right, Deal's happening on the Deal. This is my favorite thing. Deal's happening on the Deal.
I love it. I love it. I love it.
So, Mitch, I do want to dig into this show concept though, because you'll oftentimes when something hasn't happened before, people have their reasons or people have their misconceptions or whatever. So tell us about because you link up with a Lexus Ohanian at some point for this show, right, Like, how does that happen? How does this become pun intended a reality?
Gosh, it was honestly one of the most difficult things I've ever done and really had I yes, it was. And you think you have a good idea. I'm sure this has happened to both of you. You think you have a really good idea, and like, how could anyone not see this?
And I'll tell you.
Alexis and I had so many meetings with networks because we were going to sell the show before we produced it. And I would have these meetings and I would explain to them the premise of the show.
I'd say, this is what it's about.
And the feedback I would get back was so disheartening, and not in the sense that they didn't believe in the show. They really loved the idea of it, but they loved their version of the idea. One executive said to me, we love the idea of this show, but there needs to be a reason for the women to be in the house together.
And I said, what do you mean.
They're training for the season, like they're professional athletes, and they go yeah, yeah, yeah, no, but they need like an actual reason and they're like, well, what about friendship. What if at the end they realized that it's more important to be friends than it is like sport.
And I was like, you.
Don't get it, like you don't see it, and it's just there is this pre conceived notion of how women need to be marketed all the time, that we do need some friendship emotional storyline and we can't just be high level athletes.
There has to be.
An ulterior motive. It's not enough just to lean on the sports narrative. And that was a really really difficult pill for me to swallow. That basically in twenty twenty four, there was still this misunderstanding, this gap in US athletes and how we see ourselves and then how big media still sees us. And that's ultimately why we decided to self produce. We had a lot of people offer and I said, I can already see now that they will change what the show is meant to be and make it something else.
You mentioned Alexis Ohanian, who is also married to Serena Williams. How do you then navigate through that repackage, repurpose. But you both are very specially you resolute about this idea because it's so I've seen so many young entrepreneurs just bend and bend to the big institutions. It seems like you held your own. But walk Jason and I through some of those conversations of how you guys had to stay with your conviction.
I think I have to give I do have to give him some credit there, I'll give him credit, not some credit.
Alexis is not.
Something he's like, seriously, bro, yeah, yeah.
He's fine. He's gets enough credit.
There was a time or like a moment where I was like, man, like, I have to be honest with you if I can't produce it the way that I see these women, because truth, these are my friends as well. I'm not going to put them in a situation to be misrepresented. I'm not going to put them in something that turns out to just be manifest actual drama and they look crazy for the sake of looking crazy and
sake television. I was like, I'm not going to do it, and he was the one who was like no, no, no, no, Like I have experience in seeing things that industry doesn't see, and this is one of those things. So I give him credit for that in terms of like ensuring that the follow through happened in the way that I saw it.
Mitch put this in the context of this sport of women's football right now, because you know, Alex and I have looked at this from all different angles. You and I had a very lengthy conversation in Los Angeles about sort of the ebbs and flows of professional soccer in this country. We've recently seen, you know, the highest ever valuation paid for a women's sporting franchise, two hundred and fifty million dollars for Angel City by will O Bay
and Bob Iger. Help us understand this moment in the context of what you're seeing as a player, and also as a player who has been far more active than most in helping shake this league.
The moment for me is, and I think even in the greater landscape of just a boom and interest in women's sports in general, is that for the longest time, the way in which women have been marketed in sport has been completely derivative of the way men have been marketed, and we have leaned into performance and statistics and been like look at this, look at that, like it's just this and that type of comparison.
And I use this example all the time.
I talk about how my dad he can watch baseball game, he can watch a Rod and he can listen to that game not even see it.
He'll listen to.
It and it will be like a Rod got on base and he's like, yes, He's like this is amazing.
But women, women need more of a storyline like who is a Rod? Like why do I care about him? Like like what is going on in his life?
Like what is he Like how you have because there's a lot.
Exactly but that and that's how you get that audience though, That's how you get women in sport. That's like, I mean, you see the same thing with Tayler Swift and the
Travis Kelcey. It's like the theater kid and the sport Like there's a narrative to stirline apart from her being like this huge pop star, and women I feel like in sport have been missing that storytelling and that narrative behind the fact the fact that these are incredible athletes, that they are highly talented and highly capable.
I just feel like the marketing hasn't been right.
And so this, this whole concept is a way to kind of revolutionize or reform the way in which women have been marketed in sport.
Talk to us more about what the NWSL needs to do next. There's a new collective Marketing and Agreement which is pretty radical in its you know, elimination.
Of the draft.
You know, this is a league that feels like it's willing to take some chances to ensure sustainability. That's what it feels like from the outside, at least. What does it feel like on the inside. Does it feel like, Okay, we're on the right track. Does it feel still a little wobbly, Like you are a leading player in this league, you're a leading voice in this league. Talk to us about what you're seeing.
I don't think anything about the league feels wobbly. I think it feels very solid. I think it's going to progress and only grow from here. I have to give so much credit to the NBRACELPA and our president Tory Huster and Megan Burke who did an absolutely groundbreaking historical job on that CBA, because in my opinion, that is.
The proof that this league is going to be stable. Like the changes that they've.
Made in that CBA are absolutely like it takes us out of this Also, I talk about being derivative and media and marketing, but we've been derivative in infrastructure as well. And the sport is very different than other sports. It's very different from Europe, it's very different from the MLS and we can't just coffee and paste everything in order for it to succeed.
So yeah, I think that it's only going to grow.
And what about for you you're injured it at the moment.
Something Alex can relate to is two professional athletes. That's the thing that I am not, never have been, and probably I'm going to go on a limp probably never will be. I think that dream is past. But like what if you've been up to like, how do you deal with that? What do you do to sort of make sure you're in it in the way you want to be?
I don't know.
I mean I take it day by day.
I've definitely had some really really tough moments for sure. I mean, it's an Olympic year. I was not at the Olympics. That was that was difficult. But at the same time, like I am extremely blessed, like not even just with my sports life and my professional pursuits, but with my family and the people who surround me. So I think that makes it a lot easier. And I'm
really good at playing the long game. I'm a good chess player, So I think that the fact that I have this whole year to prepare for next year, that's really what I'm thinking about.
That I have like.
Months to just sharpen and refine a bunch of skills that I've wanted to work on and dedicate even more time to getting back.
So yeah, but Alex, you tell.
Me no, no, no, I totally agree with what you just said and kind of the thesis of the way you're thinking about it. I think physically you're not present, but emotionally you're there following your teammates. Emotionally you're there with the US team. But what it does it re energizes your gratitude. And when you're in the sidelines or i say, the mezzanine looking down, you're able to see things that you can't not see when you're playing because
you're in it so many days in a row. When you're above watching, I think when you come back, you're like, oh my god, I'm better, I'm stronger, I'm healthier, and I'm way smarter. I want to tap into time allocation because one of the things that was heartbreaking when you're injured and I had, you know, four or five surgeries in my career, I really thought about that time. Okay, if I'm not playing, what can I do with my mind? What book can I read? How can I network?
I do want to ask you sort of fundamental question about your business, which is where does this drive come from?
Like I understand the athletic drive, you're a goal oriented person, but at what moment did you realize Because I've watched this journey with Alex and heard a lot about it, and we talked to a lot of people in the show about this, not every athlete has the ambition to do what you're doing, to you know, take leadership roles, to take entrepreneurial risk, to invest literally and figuratively in not just yourself, but in these broader notions that you're
talking about with you know, telling women's sports stories, et cetera. If you had to distill it down, where does that come from? When did you realize that was sort of a key part of your own mission.
I wish I had a better answer than this. I like doing cool stuff.
It's baffling to me when I actually will have like teammates or friends and I'm like, you don't want to do that, that's so cool, or you have this idea. Because I'm not the only one who has like good ideas. I hear great ideas in my locker room all the time that people just have no interest in pursuing. I just it's fun to do cool things. And that's all I can say.
Well, I mean, listen, but whatever it gets you, I mean it, but it is. I mean, I'm going to press you on this a little bit only because like it takes an extra effort, it takes extra strategy, It takes a certain willingness to put yourself out there that is beyond what a normal athlete does. You know the
follow through. Alex talks about this all the time. You know that learning from other athletes, like in Magic Johnson for him, you know, to like make that app, to take that meeting, to go to you know, a big investment house, to go to a media company, to make the pitch. There has to be something there and maybe it is just simple like you're chasing what's out there. But I feel like maybe there's something a little more substantive.
If we're talking.
About execution, I think the biggest thing would be I got this, And I think from the national team and my experience there and just being an athlete and we just I mean all my life, I've had coaches ask me to do things and I'm like, well, how am I supposed to do that? Like you want me to go be here and there and do this person's job and do mine. It's just like it's kind of the sports life, and one thing we say, no matter what
is you just find a way. And that is kind of like the operating principle of the national team when you know you're tides or zero or you're down and you have ten minutes left, but it's like, how are we going to wit? You just find a way. And I think in terms of execution and that that's definitely how I think about things that I do off the field. It's like, there is no other option than finding the right option.
I like him, all right, So we're gonna do a quick lightning round. These are you know, quick answers. There are five of them, so you'd like, buckle up, it's gonna be good.
All right.
I'll start, and then Alex and Al bounce back and forth. What's the best deal you've ever made.
The off season?
What's the best piece of advice you've ever received about deal making or business?
The most important thing is control.
What's the most nervous you've ever been?
First cap for the national team?
Okay, what's your hype song before you go into a big negotiation or a big meeting?
Dreams and Nightmares by Meek mil Ah.
That's a good one, all right.
So what's your advice for someone listening who wants to be a next gen mitche first in this stay age?
I always tell people to run your own race because I think it's so easy to get caught up looking at what other people are doing and comparing yourself to them, and that does not serve being original, It doesn't serve the effectiveness of all your energy.
So definitely run your own race.
I like, I love it, I love it. Thank you, Midge Perce, You're the best. Thank you so much for doing this. This was really fun.
You guys are phenomenal. Thank you so much for having me all right.
Thanks Fitch, thank you.
The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me Jason Kelly. This episode was made by Stacy Wong, Annamasarakus, Lizzie Phillip, and Victor Eveez. Our theme music was made by Blake Maples. Our executive producers are Kelly Laferrier, Ashley Honig, and Brendan Newnham. Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts, additional support from Rachel Scaramzzino and Elena Los Angeles. Thanks for listening to the Deal. If you have a minute, please subscribe, rate,
and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us. And remember, if you're a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free on Apple Podcasts. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel and connect your Bloomberg account.
I'm Jason Kelly. See you next week.