Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Hi everyone, welcome to this episode of The Deal. I'm Jason Kelly alongside my co host Alex Rodriguez. Coming up on the show, we're going to check in with Jasmine Robinson. She's a founding partner of Monarch Collective. They're a new and pretty novel fund. They're completely focused on women's sports. So much to dive into their alex. But before we get to that, I want to check in with you. I'm looking at your background.
You are not my friend in Miami. You're in Tahoe for a golf tournament, a big golf tournament. I know you've been looking for it to tell me about it.
Yeah, so John Miller, executive longtime executive for NBC was kind enough to invite me. And Taho has always been a tournament that I've always enjoyed watching from afar, but it was always during the baseball season. But I remember watching Michael Jordan's that Carey with a hole in one, and you know Tony Romo. So I always said, if I get an opportunity, I'll go, and sure enough, the
schedule worked out this year. I know Jason that we've traded places now, because a couple of weeks ago you were into this golf kick, I.
Was kind of laughing at you. Now you're laughing at me.
I'm laughing my ass off.
My goal is not.
To win or to you know, post a great score, is really not to embarrass myself as much as possible.
You know, I think that that is It's a very novel goal. I have a lot of faith in you. But I mean, this is no joke. I mean, these are really good golfers. I bet it's a pretty tough course. Give us a sense of like what it's all about the because you mentioned there are a number of notable people playing, but it gets from all over like media world and business world and sports world.
Right, yeah, I would say is the titans of sports across every industry in sports, right from like the Jordans of Steph Curry's of the world, Tom Brady's, Aaron Rodgers and like so many names you would recognize as coming here over the last twenty five years. And then you have some executives across the NBC platform. And what I like specifically about this is you get to play your own ball, but you play your handicap, so I'm a fifteen handicap, Jason, So if I shoot an eighty five,
maybe that's a net seventy. And you play Thursday and Friday with an opportunity to advance a Saturday, chances are I won't be playing on Saturday, but I'm going to give it my best go.
I have to say I always assume that a highly successful professional athlete would naturally be good at any sport, including golf. But I think you're not as good as maybe you thought you were going to be. Is that true? Can I say that is your friend the reason?
Oh yeah, you can say it as my friend, as my foe, as anything you want. I've been called a lot worse. I think I'm a friend. Absolutely, you're a close friend. But that doesn't make me good golfer, Jason.
No.
I will tell you the one thing that is so hard for me, and I think one of the reasons why pitchers and hockey players are so good and quarterbacks is pitchers don't have to combat their baseball swing. You know, for forty years I've been thinking about one thing is really snapping my wrist as fast as possible. Wait wait, wait in a snap? Well, if you do that in golf,
that's hell. So one of the things to talk about in golf is really keeping a very still risk, which is a contrarium move to what I've been doing for the last forty years.
So that's what I have to fight.
And my biggest fight is inside fifty yards, like the chipping and putting.
Yeah, anyway, well, good luck. I'm sure you're going to do great. I'm in LA and I'm headed today to something that I'm excited to tell you about after the fact, which is Uninterrupted, who obviously we know Everick Carter and Lebron James. It is part of the spring Hill Group. They are doing a film festival in Hollywood and it's all about athletes telling stories. And one of the movies that's gonna premiere I'm so pumped to see is about
Renee Montgomery. You know her as a fellow owner. She's an owner of the Atlanta Dream and most notably she played for the Land Dream until she didn't And the reason she didn't she opted out in the twenty twenty season because of everything that was going on in the country at that time and devoted herself to voting rights.
If you recall Kelly Leffler, who was then the owner of the Atlanta Dream, had come out in a way that was antithetical, I think it's fair to say to a lot of the Black Lives Matter movement and a lot of the protests that were going on, and the Atlanta Dream led the way to essentially unseat her from her senate seat, Kelly Leffler, and she lost to Raphael Warnock. And so this movie tells the story of a lot
of that. So I can't wait to see it. Obviously, very much a vibe that you and I both like in terms of athletes, you being one of them telling their own stories. So I'm psyched to see it, and I think it's going to be great.
Well, I was remarkable, and I'm jealous.
I wish I was there with you, Jason, But you know, I had an opportunity to spend some time with Renee at a United Way Boys and Girls Club event that we had, and she was wildly impressive and had so much convictions. Ye And look, it's relatable to me because we were at Ground zero in Minnesota, just a few blocks away from Target where we play our home games, with the timbles and the links, and that was ground zero, So, you know, admirable that she took a position that she really believes in.
Yeah, and it is very much in line with the guests that we're going to talk about coming up. Jason Robinson has herself gone all in on women's sports. This is someone who has worked with other people that we know, specifically with Grouseback, who is the majority owner of the Boston Celtics. For now the different topic for another day in terms of what is going to happen with the Celtics. But she teamed up Jasmine did with Karen Nortman, who is well known as one of the founding partners of
Angel City. They created a fun monarch collective that is solely focused on women's sports. They've taken a couple stakes in NWSL teams that's of course, the National Women's Soccer League. They've been involved looking at some of what's going on in the WNBA and just really investing heavily literally and figuratively in women's sports.
I think it's a very exciting space. If you think about the NBA teams, whether it's the Lakers, the next
Golden State. You're talking about the Giants, right, You're talking about Google, Facebook, you know Microsoft and what they're trying to do with their fund I think is more of a starter mentality, right, you know, you can say women's sports, even though they've been around for a long time, they're starting to get real reo attraction, which is really exciting and it makes the investment thesis very exciting, but it's high risk, much higher rewards.
It's gonna be interesting to talk to her at this moment because one of the really interesting things for me as a consumer of sports media, which I know you are as well, is how much women's sports is finding its way into the top headlines, whether it's on ESPN, whether it's on the athletic So much attention is being paid, which is wildly different from where were just a few years ago. And when you think about the things that have to happen to really make this business case real,
part of it is purely exposure. Chronicling it and exposing it to you know, a broader audience is just really important. And by the way, for you as an owner, for Jasmine and her colleagues as owners, that's what's ultimately going to make this a profitable business, I think is people just paying attention.
On the consumer You said it best. They're ready for the story. They're ready to.
Spend the hard earned money into women's sports, and we're seeing it with the links. We're having record numbers and attendance in viewership. Obviously, we're having a good year. We have one for titles, which helps. But I'm really excited to hear how she thinks about it. And anybody who's out there thinking this is going to slow down, I think they're wrong. I think this will have a compounding
effect with the consumer. With the quality, I think is a flywheel that'll create even more talented players in the future that are going to win in on this, because as you celebrate the Kaitlyn Clarks and others, there's going to be a twelve year old gal out there, someone like my daughter.
Someone may be like our kids.
I would say, hey, I want to be the next Kaitlyn Clark, and that's good for business totally.
And I think about this all the time. They're going to be young women who say, not only I want to be Kaitlyn Clark, but I want to be Jasmine Robinson or I want to be Jess Gellman, you know, like the people who have these positions of power in sports, you know, as owners, as executives, et cetera. So let's get to it, Jason Robinson. So here with us is
Jasmine Robinson. She's managing partner at Monarch Collective, an amazing background that she's going to get into and talk to us all about what Monarch are is up to and women's sports in general. So, Jasmine, how do you introduce yourself to the world?
Amazing? Yeah, excited for the conversation.
So I am the co founder and managing partner of Monarch Collective, where the first fund focused exclusively on investing in women's sports, and have been in the sports ecosystem almost my whole career, so sports and investor, sports operator, and also fun fact, daughter of an NFL athlete, and so I think I feel like I've gotten the player perspective, the owner perspective, and everything in between.
Let's start with Monarch because it's amazing that it took as long for this to happen as it did in terms of like a dedicated fund. But tell us about the decision to start it and why now is the right time for you and Kara you'r co founder.
Yeah, I think it.
Both took a long time for this to happen. But a lot of things happened really recently that I think made it possible for us to actually kick off this fund. Hard to even remember that it wasn't until twenty nineteen that actually US sports leagues were really welcoming fund investors into teams and leagues, and so that was obviously a really important precursor. But then also I think it really
takes the market really buying into the thesis. And so you know, I was a sports investor at this fun called Causeway prior, and we looked at a bunch of things in women's sports, and you know, there weren't that
many things that were of scale. And then I think finally you started seeing proof points come onto the market, and I think what my partner Kara co founded in Angel City was certainly one of the big ones, but many others around the market that finally you had a few case studies to talk about when you go and talk to institutional investors about why women's sports really makes
sense as an investment class. And I think when we started our fundraising, we were right at the bleeding edge of being able to get investors to buy into that would go out and we could get everyone excited about women's soccer, but then we talk about women's basketball and people would be like, maybe we need to lower the hoop to make it more interesting, or like, you know, I just don't really think women's basketball is going anywhere.
And then a couple of months into the fundraise, the NCAA numbers came out two years ago, and you know, we stopped getting the question about why women's basketball was interesting to us. So I think we time the market. I think at the moment when institutional investors could hear this message, but I certainly think the investment opportunity was there long before.
So Jasmine, I'm really interested to know if there was like an AHA moment for you, obviously Kalin Clark's and AHA moment for the whole world, but you were ahead of a curve. Can you tell us an example too, when you just said, Okay, now I'm convinced, I'm resolute, I'm going all in.
Yeah.
I think it was a lot of really studying the history of what made the NFL takeoff in the seventies and the NBA takes off in the eighties. Like I wrote papers on some of these topics when I was at Harvard, it was just sort of fascinated by that history. And so while it's a different set of circumstances that made women's sports really pop up, it started to be clear to me that, you know, the cultural moment was
really right for greater acceleration of fan adoption. And at the same time, I think having invested in and diligenced, you know, probably every emerging sports league that's come about in the last five years, I had real conviction that it takes both media companies and brands to be really behind a sports proposition to really make the P and L work and really make that sort of acceleration moment happen.
And so I think one of the big things for me was going and talking to the folks at the major media companies and brands just on wide ranging topics, but it started to be that finally women's sports was sort of a core strategy that they wanted to talk about, and that to me was the Reil shift that made me believe, this is the moment that it can really take off.
Tell us about sort of translating that to the limited partner community and sort of what those conversations were like, because obviously, as we all know, like they're incredibly data driven, they want commps, they want you know, every emerging fund has its own challenges, but I wonder about those sorts of conversations and how they evolved over time.
I think we had the real benefit fit of the fact that there were groups like ARC doos out there really educating the broader institutional investor market of why sports is an interesting asset class to be investing in. And all the folks at ARCTOS are great collaborators as we think about this space, as well as many of the
other funds around. So I think it was great that we'd go out to investors and many of them had heard the ARC dose pitch before, so they kind of got like why sports, and what we needed to help educate them on was why women's sports.
Yeah, and just to be clear, we're talking about ARCTOS, the private equity firm. They were created to invest specifically in sports teams and the sports ecosystem. Yeah.
I think the other interesting element to this is, you know, we have institutional investors in our LP base, but we actually have a lot of individuals and more institutional family offices as investors as well. And we also found people that said, you know, I would have never really thought about investing in sports, but the way that women's sports can move topics of gender equity and racial equity forward in really unique ways really speaks to me and is
sort of clear why this investment opportunity really resonates. And so I think that's a big angle of it as well.
And so if you look across our LP base, two thirds of them or either women or people from underrepresented backgrounds, because I think people kind of really got that angle of this story too, and why we feel like dynamics of representation really are things that drive enterprise value in actually building women's sports teams where you need to build things that resonate with athletes and fan bases.
So, Jasmine, as you think about women's sports, one of the challenges you and your partner, I'm sure had to come across to Jason's point is the Trailing twelve, the trailing twenty four thirty six. It's an argument that you have to forecast to say, don't pay attention to the past, pay attention to where we are.
Today and we're moving forward.
If you look at Mark Lazurie and Josh Harris, right, they bought the Bucks and the Sixers. Lazurie with the Bucks for on five hundred and fifty million, and Josh Harris with the Sixers under three hundred. I think that'd be the first one to admit if you fast forward ten or twelve years, that those franchise wouldn't be worth what they are today. So if we had that same exercise with the WNBA, what do you think these teams could be worth high end low end in ten to twelve years from now.
Yeah, it's a good question. I think you're spot on that.
A little bit of the problem is if you think about what's happened over the last two years, you'll kind of miss how quickly the growth is happening, like the way ticket prices are moving, the way sponsorship's moving. I think the really you know interesting things about driving returns in women's sports is you know, you don't have to forecast that these are going to become billion dollar businesses to actually believe that there's a really strong return here.
You know, if you think you can make the case that it's going to be something that's worth two hundred and fifty or three hundred million dollars, you can get into a lot of these assets and drive a great return. Now, I think to do that it actually takes being real hands on in collaborative partners about how you actually build the fan base and how you sell sponsorship and how you treat the athletes and sort of all of the
important things. But I think you can get there, and so I believe pretty firmly that they'll be worth sort of well north of those you know, few hundred million dollar valuations. But I think that is really underwriteable today just based on revenue where it is today, and you know, even some of the just sort of ticketting and sponsorship data that's out there from the NWSL and WNBA, from the top performers.
You know, Jasmine, you mentioned arctos, And if we think about sort of this growing universe of sports funds, you know, you think about arctos, You think about you know, Dynasty dial et cetera, or blew out. When you look at sort of the addressable market as it were, or even the kind of aperture through which you're looking is it mostly team stakes, is it the entire ecosystem? Like what are the most attractive and feasible investments that you're going after as monarch.
Yeah, so we're taking a very focused strategy. I think there's going to be a lot of value created across the ecosystem. But when we were setting out our strategy, we really felt like there was this unique moment where around the most mature sports teams, leagues, and then sets of proprietary rights, there was really strong protected downside, but where we felt like the upside really looked a lot
more like venture type returns. And so we felt like, given that's where the market is today, that's really where we want to focus. And so we've made three investments in teams so far. We're deep in conversations around some sort of league or more rights oriented opportunities, and so that's really what it'll look like. And you know, we're not trying to go and do fifty of these deals.
We want to do six or seven deals in this fund that we think are the spaces where we're in aligned ownership groups, where we feel like there's tons of room for growth and where hopefully we can add value.
Is hands on investors, So jasmine, if you had two examples as invested in a primary team in a primary city like New York or LA and this business is throwing off is actually negative cash flow five million dollars versus a city and a secondary tertiary market is not growing as fast. It may not be as popular, but it's making five million dollars a year. How do you think about those investments in which one would you pick?
Yeah, Oh, that's a great question.
I guess I kind of think about sort of the cash flow profile of teams really as like, if a team's losing money, if that loss is actually high ROI growth capital around you know, where where I think the asset value is going to grow, then I would take the team that was losing money, but in a larger market.
Like if I felt like that five million dollars as actually an investment in building the fan base or upgrading the practice facility or something that I felt really confident was going to have a you know, three x plus return on making that investment, then I think I'm fine with these teams losing money. I think we're we're running too is. I think, as with any business, there are some of those losses that are driven by high ROI growth opportunities, and then there are other cases where it's
actually a loss but it's not creating net value. In as directive a way, and so we really try to kind of measure it like that when we're thinking about it.
I think that being said, like you know, New York and LA are incredible markets and probably ones you'd always want to be in in any given league, but I think there are real opportunities, depending on the sport, to be in markets that are outside of that that might be every bit as valuable just because of dynamics of you know, use academies and what the pipeline is there or what the fan base looks like in any given sports. So I think there are certainly opportunities outside of those cities too.
And what do you see, Jasmine when you when you look across the ownership groups and Karen Nortman, who we've sort of alluded to a couple of times, as you mentioned your partner and choose one of the founding investors of Angel City, you know there has been this, for lack of a better term, sort of this evolution of ownership groups, you know, sort of the types of investors, the types of owners who are coming in. And I
know we've seen this in men's leagues as well. You know, Alex has seen this up close and personal in both the w and in the NBA. How do you see that at this moment and where does it go from here in terms of, you know, some original investors selling out, new investors coming in, Like what does it look like as you're sitting in those boardrooms.
Yeah, I think I've been surprised at the pace that ownership groups have turned over in the NWSL and I think it'd be really interesting to see how that evolves in the WNBA. And I think, you know, it's really important to have the right owners around the table, Like I think that for us is table stakes of you know,
jumping into a league. If you don't have people who are both have the ability to invest for growth, but are also the kinds of people that actually have conviction around the opportunity, I think you're really going to struggle.
And so it's been great seeing owners coming around the table.
And I think one of the other things it's been really exciting in the NWSL is you're getting people who are first time sports owners.
So, you know, you alluded to Kara and her co.
Founders Julie and Natalie co founded Angel City to you know, Angie and Chris Long in Kansas City You're just seeing really interesting new first time owners who are coming in and thinking differently and actually creating some of the most
valuable franchises out there. And so I think the owners will be on the WMBA and on other places to think about how do you get different types of people who are going to come in and think differently that can sit alongside the existing ownership groups and collaborate to bring that diversity of.
Thought to the table.
Yeah.
I want to stick with the NWSLF we can for a minute, because it feels like this league is at an exciting and also critical moment in its existence. This is the third go round, as you well know and as Alex knows at you know, a professional women's soccer league. You do have these new ownership groups coming in. What are the things in your mind, as someone who has literally invested in multiple teams here that need to happen to make sure this is sustainable and that basically this time it works.
Yeah, we kind of talked a little bit about the ownership group side of it, and I think that really evolution has happened nicely. But I think the next phase of what needs to happen here and we're certainly starting to see it is getting the right management and operating teams around the table who actually can build and scale
these franchises. And I think that probably looks like some of the top operators from the broader sports ecosystem, but it probably equally looks like great operators from startups and from media and real estate who can come in and really help with the many areas that we're needing to build all of these businesses rapidly after they've been really underinvested to this point. And you know, I was talking to an operator over at AFC and she said, you know,
people come in with just sports experience. If you haven't, like started a scrappy startup, it might be hard to you know, to fit in in this space. So I think, you know, it takes a blend of backgrounds to really succeed.
When you look at the investing landscape around women's sports, whether it's volleyball or others, is there places that we should be paying attention to that we're not right now?
For US, soccer and basketball are most interesting because we think the leagues are strong, the sport is really global, high growth, and so for US that's probably where we're spending eighty percent of our time. But I think there's
a lot of interesting things happening across the ecosystem. Probably the ones that we follow closest or golf, tennis, softball, and volleyball, like all of them are showing viewership numbers and the million plus across poor events, you're seeing startup leagues popping up that are well funded and with great operators. So I think those are probably some of the areas
that we're spending a lot of time on. Yeah, I think there's a lot happening outside of that, and also I think takes a little bit of focus and depth of relationships as you jump from sport to sport, and.
So we do try to be disciplined there too.
So speaking of relationships, I know that there probably were some existing relationships around the league when you guys decided, because I believe, and keep me honest here, your first investment was in the Boston expansion and WSL team. Is that right exactly? Tell us a little bit about that. Kara had the experience with Angel City. This was you know, a new group of I believe, you know, four core women coming together putting together the deal for a Boston
expansion team. So this is a team that's going to be, you know, kicking off in twenty twenty six, so you know you've got some runway to get that figured out. There are questions about facilities, and it's Boston and all these different things. This is a place you know, well, you went to school there, you worked with with grouseback. So tell us about that deal because it just seems like a fascinating case studying.
Yeah, it's a really interesting line. And you know, it really started with where it often does when we're talking to groups, which is that we were just there providing advice and guidance from you know, what Kara and I had sort of seen in the investment ecosystem, what Kara had built with Angel City, and eventually they ended up winning the expansion bid and they said, hey, would you
like to invest alongside of us? And so, you know, I think we have those conversations with lots of groups who were thinking about sort of expansions or broader investments in women's sports. Yeah, it's an incredible group. So Jennifer Epstein, the lead owner, her and her family are also co
owners in the Celtics with my former partner Wi. So They were really close relationships there, and it's a group that has a lot of experience across you know, completing the grill estate projects in Boston, backing and building startups, building for women's focused nonprofits in the Boston area. So it's really a group that we felt like was super
locked into the community and really high execution. So really incredible to partner with them, And I think we think the opportunity to build expansion teams is uniquely interesting because you know, you're starting from scratch and you're building the fan base from day one, and so you can really do it as you'd hope to, really, you know, jump off to a fast start.
Jasmine, I want to start at the beginning where you mentioned your father as a retired NFL player, and you mentioned Wick, who's the general partner of the Boston Celtics. I would love to know who are some of the best mentors you've had in why.
Yeah, it's a great question.
I feel like I have been very lucky to meet great mentors over the course of my career, maybe starting with some of the folks at the forty nine ers when I was working there, really close relationships with John and Jed York, the owners over there, and actually Prague Marathe, who had up a lot of their investing in salary cap work, was the one who connected me in Cara, So he was a big part of the origin of Monarch and has been a really close mentor. And yeah,
Weick to this day remains a really strong mentor. I mean, I feel like the sports ecosystem is one where like relationships and network matter, and so having those kinds of people that are willing to get on the phone and call a head of a media company or ahead of a league or another owner to just really advocate for you or just really valuable relationships.
So, Jasmine, I wanted to follow up with you on your answer about Jed York, the general partner of the forty nine ers, and Wick, general partner of the Celtics.
You talk about their playbook.
Is there one play from each one of those playbooks that you learned that you can attribute to some of your investors investments in the future.
Yeah, it's a great question.
I think, you know, Jed and John York are really deep relationship people, and I remember them both, you know, saying, you know, I feel like sometimes sports execs they're trying to run to get the next deal done or whatever, but sometimes you need to slow down and actually just build relationships and that's actually what's going to pay off.
And so I think that's so true in everything, but especially in women's sports, where it's like the strength of the network that we're really building while you know, spending all of our time thinking and talking about women's sports. I think that's you know, so core to our ability to help teams in leagues scale and really to be effective.
And then yeah, I think from what I would probably take that, really finding and backing the right person is sort of core to every investment, and I know that's kind of everyone says that, But the way that he thinks about really building relationships, really understanding that someone's going to be, you know, a strong operator through thick and thin, and really like building and setting those expectations from the front, I think is one of those things that he's incredible at.
And I definitely sort of take into all of the investments that I'm working.
On so Jasmine, I know that Alex and I are both very interested in sort of like getting down into the nitty gritty of how you operate these teams. As a very hands on investor, when you think about the revenue streams, is the revenue mixed different you know from the perspective of like media rights and you know just the very simple like butts and seats and attendance, and like how do you think about that and is it different from other sports that were more familiar with and how does that evolve?
Yeah, I think it's interesting.
You know, you look at an NFL team and you show up to start operating for the year, and it's like, you know, over half of the revenue is already locked in and distributions that are coming from the league, and that's very much not the situation that the NWSL or the WNBA are in. And so there's so much more sort of variability, i would say, from team to team and the ability to make an impact with those local
revenue streams. And so I think given that dynamic, we think a lot about to your point, like where are you going to go to a market where you can build a really strong fan base that's going to show up, you're in and you're out, where you can actually deliver a premium and exciting experience so you can actually drive real to get revenue. And then where you can build deep brand relationships that create when when partner deals that
can sort of support the business over time. So local revenues become so much more important, and I think it.
Just requires a lot more execution as a result.
Yeah, we're going to move to a lightning round. It's five questions, so just answer them tight and we'll bounce it back and forth. So I'll start. What's the best piece of advice you've received? Could be from somebody we've already talked about on either deal making or business.
Yeah, I think.
It's just to always be learning, like optimizing on every decision on how do I how do I continue to learn more and engage with people to really aim to continue to learn.
What's the best deal you've ever worked on?
One of my favorites room best in business called quint Events, which runs vip for f one and the NBA among others, and incredible, incredible founding team to partner with.
What's a deal you wish you'd been a part of.
Wish I'd invested in women's sports a few years earlier before I probably could have raised the capital to do it.
What is your hype song before a big meeting or negotiation?
Ooh, probably something old school Beyonce, so maybe like crazy in love.
That's great.
What's one mistake that everyone should avoid in negotiations?
I think thinking about it as a I win, you lose, rather than framing it is like how do we find the right win win opportunities?
All Right, this has been really fun. I feel like it's speaking of learning. We learned a ton from you. I feel much smarter about the current state and the future of women's sports, especially best of luck to you and Takara and the rest of the team. Jasmine, Thank you so.
Much, Thanks so much. Really fun conversation.
Thank you.
The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me Jason Kelly. This episode was made by Victor eveyas Stacey Wong, Annamasarakus, and Lizzie phillip Arth. The music was made by Blake Maples, Brendan Francis. Neonham is our executive producer. Sage Fouman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Additional support from Kelly Lafarier, Ashley Honig, Rachel Scaramzino, and Elena Los Angeles. If you
have a minute, subscribe, rate and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us, Thanks so much for listening, See you next time.