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All Right, we're headed to Boston the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. The guest this time is going to be none other than David Blitzer.
I'm so excited about David.
First of all, he's been at Blastow since nineteen ninety one, and on top of that, he probably owns equity on more teams and more leagues than any human alive.
There are some big questions that come out of that, which is, what do you learn from all of that?
How do you apply it?
Because he's backing some of the most important sports franchises across the world.
How do you feel about being back in Boston? A not so good. It's gonna be great.
All right, Thank you so much. Thank you guys for having us. It's good to be in Boston.
It was funny.
We were reminiscing, you know, on the on the way in, and Alex was giving me what it's like to play at Fenway. You and I probably watched games at Fenway, but a little bit of a different experience.
It's awesome.
It's my probably my favorite park to play other than Old Yankee Stadium.
It's it's classic.
Yeah, it's not the easiest place to be a visiting fan.
That's true.
I've had some tough moments.
It's safe to be Yeah, yeah, TD gardened. Yeah, exactly exactly. I mean, this is going to be hopefully a very fun conversation. You know, Alex and I host this podcast called The Deal, where you know, we talked to folks at this intersection of business, sports and culture, and there are very few people who are in it as deep as our guest today, David Blitzer. Blitz is someone who when we created this show was at the top of our list as someone that we really wanted to chop it up with.
So we're really excited Blitz that you're here with us.
I guess I would start by asking you, and I'm going to go back to my own roots a little bit. You and I met when I covered private equity at Bloomberg, and you are a very successful guy at a little firm called Blackstone, and somewhere along the way you became one of the most influential investors in sports.
How did that happen?
Well, A thank you for having me. I've known Jason for a long time. I've known Alex for a long time, so it's really nice to be all here together. And I do think we also need to do a shout out for Jessica Gellman, so we don't have the jersey, we blew that with Jessica, Happy, Happy fiftieth birthday. Yeh, you do an amazing job with this conference, and we're all really happy to be here and.
To celebrate with you.
So yeah, Private Equity for you know, now, at this point in time is my thirty fourth year in the business. In about I guess it was twenty and ten was when my journey started on the sports side of the equation. So unlike Alex one of the greatest athletes of all time, I was, like many probably in this room, a failed athlete, which, like I thought I was good when I was, you know, like a teenager. Then I realized by high school that I was adequate at best and certainly was not playing
past high school. So instead of failed, maybe we say always aspire, always aspire. I'm still aspiring just new sports. But I basically I'm clearly a massive fan of sports in general, and obviously I think a lot about business and investing in companies and and you know, what are trends that are out there that you can get behind. Really like we talk about good neighborhoods or mega trends. But I hadn't really thought about investing in a sports
team until somebody came to see me. I was living in London for about a decade, and towards the end of that decade in London, a friend of mine came to see me and basically said he was involved in the NBA. He was like an assistant GM somewhere and he basically said, Hey, I think you sho should really think about investing in a basketball franchise. There's like six or seven that are for sale right now, are looking
for capital. And it was a very it was a real inflection point for the NBA for those who want to go back and remember this was twenty ten when this conversation first took place, and it was pretty clear that there was going to be a lock app okay, there was going to be a new media rights agreement and basically something like twenty three, twenty four, twenty five of the teams are actually losing losing money at the time, which is why you were seeing a lot of things potentially,
you know, go up for sale leading into that change. Anyway, long story short, I was really interested in the concept, but I was living in London. When I was home over that December break of twenty ten, I went to see a friend of mine who I'd gotten to know quite well when he lived in London as well a couple of years earlier.
It was this a guy named.
Josh Harris at Apollo, and I said, hey, Josh, he and I had gone to a pub one night when we were both living in London, and I don't know how this subject came up, but I just it's stuck in the back of my head that he was interested in investing in sports. And so when this call came and I thought it was really interesting and wanted to
like really dig in. Sitting there in London, and I went to see Josh and said, hey, why don't we look at the Philadelphia seventy six ers, Because amongst the teams that were saled, they were actually officially for sale, you know, with a banker and the process, and you know, some of the others were more you know, sort of whisper campaigns. And you guys had both we had both
gone to school at University of Pennsylvania. We both had other roots from family members in Pennsylvania and in Philadelphia, and it's an iconic brand, and our view was, yeah, let's go try to do that. So we agreed to sort of partner together and try to ultimately go by or invest in the Philadelphia seventy six ers, which was a transaction that signed in the summer of twenty eleven,
and sure enough, there was a lockout that fall. Because I still remember my first ever NBA board meeting was not the easiest meeting in the world because it was in the middle of the lockout trying to figure out both the dynamics between obviously players in the league and the CBA, but also even amongst the various owners in the group. And you know, I will just say again for those fans out there, it was kind of wild.
I went into my first ever NBA board meeting and I've got literally Larry Bird sitting on one side of me, Michael Jordan sitting about four seats down, and again the fan.
Part like kicked in a little bit. I was like, oh my god, this is kind of wild. But that was the start of the journey.
The reality was we treated it very much like a very business oriented investment, like does this make sense not just from an emotional standpoint, but you know, from a
business standpoint. And I think you know, given what Josh and I had done for our careers in terms of investing in business and buying you know, divisions out of you know, larger corporations, et cetera, this was a purchase of a small business inside of a large corporation, being Comcast Corporation, And we had a lot of experience in
corporate carve outs. We had a lot of experience in bringing in new management teams and thinking about incentive structures in ways that I don't really think sports had had really done. Franchise had done that in the past. So any case, all that said, it's still isn't easy, as we all know, and Alex is on all sides of this equation. But being an investor in any of these teams and leagues is fun, it's rewarding, it's challenging, it's
really difficult. Everybody always thinks about it as like the fun part, but it's tough.
So in twenty ten, that's a long time ago. What do you know now that you didn't know then? And how accurate was your thesis on investing in sports?
Yeah, well I put that in two buckets.
The first thing is I get a lot of people who come to me over the last whatever number of years that are thinking of investing in a sports franchise or a league, etc. And they always ask me, you know, for lots of advice, and I kind of bloil it down to like one piece of advice that hopefully they will listen to me on, which is, don't do anything in your first season, like literally, don't just learn. Just go around and meet everyone in the organization, watch what
they do, how they do it. Do not come in and do big things in your first season. By the way, no one has taking that advice. I was gonna say, I don't think so for those of you know, no one listens toiece advice, and it is the best piece of advice. Take your time to really learn what's going on, and don't just jump in and want to make a splash. You know, this isn't fantasy sports, right, And so what I've learned number one is take your time, really know
what you don't know. Okay, even though we've been investing in businesses our whole careers, the reality is, you know, sports team investments are very different than owning a consumer products company or investing in a data center or a you know, metal bender, et cetera, and the nature of those businesses and the fact that what you really are is you really are a steward of a community business like, let's not kid ourselves, that's what we are, and getting
used to that, versus just investing in a kind of more normal industry. I guess I would say, I don't know if normal it's the right word, but.
You know, et cetera.
Traditional, traditional is something I think it takes a lot to learn. But the thesis Alex at the time, to be honest with you, wasn't that complicated. And it's still to me a thesis that I have today on this sector, which is fundamental laws of supply and demand. It's the easiest thing I ever learned in school, which is just the basic, you know, law of supply and demand. And they're not making any more of these major teams, and
the demand for them is going up dramatically. The demand is going up partly because you know, you have I think there's something like five times the number of billionaires in the world today that there was, you know, less than twenty years ago. Frankly, if you took that threshold up even more to like ten billion or more, it's even more stark in terms of the growth. So you've
got this massive demand side on high net worth. And then obviously, as I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about, but you now have institutional investors coming into the space. And having kind of watched that movie with my Blackstone lens over the years, when institutional money starts to come into a new area, set class, et cetera, obviously capital formation is can be quite dramatic, and prices tend to move in an.
Upward sloping direction.
So you've got the ultra high network dynamics, you've got the institutional capital dynamics, and you don't have more supplying Okay, So that curve is unbelievable when you just think about that supply demand curve. And then secondly, and I know everybody here knows this, but these are just these are content and media businesses and they have some of the best ip in the world. And frankly, in today's world, when you think about live content, there's probably nothing more valuable.
There is nothing more valuable than sports content because other streamers and broadcasters and media companies have done amazing job of basically delivering us whatever we want, literally whenever we.
Want other than sports.
Yeah, okay, So the combination of the growth in the value of the IP and the broadcast rights, and I would say, what do you say, broadcast I'd say METI rights more broadly coupled with this supply and demand was our thesis back in twenty ten and would still be my thesis to the.
And so you go.
From being one of a few.
You know, as Alex knows very well, these are pretty small clubs in terms of ownership across the major leagues. But now, and I think Alex you would agree with this. Now you're one of one because you have equity stakes, some majority, some minority across literally every major sports league in North America. Then you tack on the EPL and other European soccer leagues, plus things like League One volleyball. I had a press release come across my desk just
this week. There was like Table Tennis League David Blitzer, and I was like, this guy, help us understand that like broad portfolio approach that you have taken.
All right, let me try to put it into two different buckets. The first is on the major sports. Okay, so let's call it soccer. I'm sitting here in America. If I was in London, day would be very angry at me. So soccer slash football, American Football, NBA, NHL, and MLBA in those sort of areas. To me, the real value in the equation of being across that piece is both from the business side of the equation. Okay, what we can get as a synergy across having all those
multiple sports is amazing. So both on the efficiency side of the equation, we can have sales reps and branding partners and sponsorship folks that go across the teams. Not everyone goes across the entire organization, right, but significant numbers do. So we can do a deal that we did earlier this year that I thought was really innovative is we did a deal with Campbell's across a number of their
consumer products and across four of our properties. It was across the Commanders, the Sixers, the Devils, and Joe Gibbs Racing.
If you only had one team, you have whatever your inventory is, that's what you can offer a sponsor, particularly in today's kind of global world that we have our ability to look at some of the you know, the greatest companies in the world that are looking for those kinds of exposures and being able to offer to them both across geographies and of course across US markets and different sports I think is quite compelling. So that's sort
of on that synergy side of the equation. And then if you just think about also where the world is going from a sports science perspective, from a technology perspective, from an AI and data analytics perspective, et cetera, our ability to invest in these areas and amortize that across four or five or more different organizations allows us to make investments that you just wouldn't make necessarily or couldn't make of that scale if you just had one particular
little property, you know. And I think about the lot with my Blackstone hat on, which is our ability to invest in many things that are going to drive you know, significant growth in the future. We can do because we're across all of these alternative investment products, whereas if we were just a private equity firm or just a private credit firm, you wouldn't be able to make those types of investments.
So, speaking of Blackstone, you were into pen and then nineteen ninety one you land as a young lad in Blackstone.
What lessons virtues.
Have you taken from there in your thirty three years and applied it to your sports portfolio?
Yeah?
Well, I think, you know, the first part of that would have been the sort of the art of the deal. You know, basically there's a level of pattern recognition when one is investing in something, just from the standpoint of dealing with the counter parties, understanding the key items on our due diligence in order to be able to, you know, decide what we think something is worth. Being able to actually execute these deals are immensely complicated.
I know that's that's obvious, et cetera.
But again, having done that your whole career, those types of financings, both equity and debt, and those carve outs of corporations and incentivizing the management teams in very different ways and really aligning interests across the organizations. I think a lot of that, you know, clearly came from my background at Blackstone. But the other thing I would say again is is this mega trend question. You know, why am I still doing this? Meaning in this sports media
and entertainment space. It really stems from a mega trend. And you know what, I and many others at Blackstone spend a ton of time on are thinking about what those longer term trends are and let's get behind them early, okay.
And so if you take like digital infrastructure as an example, everybody in the world wants to invest in digital infrastructure right now, right, but we've been doing it for fifteen plus years, all along the way, different journeys, okay, and different ways, and we Blackstone, okay, many wes data.
We have to define our wis.
So when you think about constantly looking for those mega trends, powered recognition, being able to bring that to this what I call my night job in sports media entertainment sector, I think has been really important.
And so in terms of the data of it all, that is very of keen interest to this audience, especially how do you approach the data side. You know, you talked about sponsorship opportunities and things like that. I would imagine there's also a massive amount of data and analytics possibilities when you look across both the professional portfolio, the sort of big cap as you were talking about, as
well as more of the startup level as well. How do you pick and choose and distill down the data side of it.
Yeah, Well, the good news again for somebody in my seat is I get to just ask a lot of questions and hire amazing people like I am, by no means any expert in data and analytics. However, I've been dealing in data analytics my whole career, both you know, from a Blackstone perspective and a sports perspective. So that allows me to go in and a higher amazing people both on the sporting side of the equation and on
the business analytics side of the equation. Because as you mentioned, like these are in many cases two totally different worlds, right, and so obviously I think many of you in this room would obviously be familiar with you know, Darryl moriy Right.
So of course the Philadelphia seventy six ers are going to have an amazing data and analytics department and where we're getting a ton of help on the business analytics side of the equation as well as a course who we have on our existing teams and staffs right now. But again, the multi property aspect of it allows us to really invest behind it, and I would say, what really is AI? I always ask people now because I
don't know the answer. Like, we've all been using data analytics our whole careers to some degree, but obviously it's gone exponential, particularly in the last couple of years, right, And we're still on this large language model frontier, and we're going to hit another frontier pretty soon, which is really going to be all the application layer side of the equation. But at its core, you need good data.
All these tools in the world are sort of, you know, not that relevant if you don't actually have great underlying data. And each one of these sports and teams to some degree have different data sets, right okay, And so like the baseball data is incredible because it's single event. There's a pitch and a swaying over and over again, and these games have been filmed at that level for a really long time. Basketball then got cameras into the arenas pretty early. Okay, So basketball data excellent.
In the pros.
College is you know, moving but certainly behind where the NBA is. Hockey doing a great job right now, but again, day didn't get cameras, and we're able to capture certain types of data sets that we all captured today. I can't go back twenty years. I can't look at some of the things Wayne Gretzky was doing and what that means in today's NHL and then soccer, and you know, motion based also is quite different than single event based.
And so it's a long way of saying, the data is getting better and better, the models are obviously getting better and better, and ultimately the insights will get better and better, both on the sporting side of the equation and on the business side. And I think that we're testing a lot of different things. You know, I was literally talking to Diryl about it earlier today and talking with our teams about it, and you know, we're trialing
lots of stuff. So on the ones hand, sure we can get coding done much more efficiently, okay, But in terms of outcomes, okay, like will we be able to scout better, will we be able to automate player tagging or or pick and roll tagging as an example, versus just having somebody sit there and watch one hundred hours of film, right you just crank it into the computer, Okay, So those types of efficiencies and then ultimately, again as all of this is getting smarter and the data sets
are getting better, et cetera. How far will it go in terms of will you still where will your scouting department? It's sort of an interest question. I have no idea what the answer to that is other than we try a lot of different things and we see and we're in the super early innings. Similarly, on the business side, you know where everybody wants to get to is they
want to actually know their fan base incredibly well. And most teams think they know their fan base as well, they don't actually number one, they're getting better at it, and number two, they don't really know what they're doing very often outside of the arena. So yes, we're all capturing concession data, and you know there's plenty of good
ticketing type data out there these days. But when you start going further and further and wanting a more and more personal experience again between a brand and the consumer, we're like in the first or second inning of that entire game, and AI is going to pay a huge role in that equation to where you know you're going to be getting offers from your team, okay to a fan that's literally personalized to that one individual.
Wow.
And so all of that is super early in things, But I would basically just say, while we all are doing plenty on the data and analytics side, I think we're really really early, both sporting wise and business wise in terms of how we can get closer to that customer and fan and monetize it over time in very very different ways.
So when you say person line splitz, are you you're talking about, I'm going to get I'm going to get an email or a text message it says, Hey, come to this game. We know you like to sit in this particular spot, this is what you like to eat, this is I'm going to know where you go.
On your way home from the game. I'm going to know that your favorite player is Tyree s Maxi, and I'm going to send you a personalized Tyree Maxi X Y or Z. I might then, depending on your level of spend with the organization, serve you up for an experience with Tyree s Maxey after the game on Thursday night.
If you can make it. I mean it's going to be that level wow of detail and more.
You talked about baseball a little bit.
You have your investment with the Cleveland Guardians, your paths control Baseball's had extraordinary a couple of years with the rout changes. Rob Manford's really on top of it. Our numbers at Fox were amazing. We did over twenty million people because we had the great matchups of the Dodgers versus the Yankees.
My question, you're making a lot of friends here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well we lost, so it did really work out for us since two thousand and nine.
But my question to you is, David.
But we're not talking about two thousand and four.
No, no, no, definitely not, definitely not if you were whispering in Rob Manford, the commissioner Baseball's ear, or if you're the commissioner for a day or a week, what are some of the things you would continue to improve in the game to make the game a little bit more dynamic and more really popular for the younger friend.
You know, it's really interesting question.
I mean, what baseball did two years ago in terms of the size of the bases and what that did on a stolen base, that what they did on the you know, on the shift and you know you can't have two guys on the other side of second base. What they did on the pitch clock, and a few other smaller things. I mean, that's pretty dramatic in general for any league, Okay, and Baseball I find to be the one that more than any other sport, everyone says, well, we can't do that, because that's the way it's always
been done. In baseball, there's just more pureists, I guess, I would say, in the overall fan base and the ecosystem. So the fact that Commissioner Manfred, working with you know, some wonderful executives, were able to come up with things that, by the way, the players didn't want to do that first, and there were plenty of folks out in the analyst community and media, etc.
Who thought this was just.
Like crazy baseball camp do this, and again you're not gonna have one hundred zero type you know, approval for it. But I think massive positive reaction to the fan base. So as a couple examples, you know, number one, as you well know, the games are about twenty four to twenty five minutes faster, and that is a huge difference to the fan base out there. You've had the average age of a viewer of Major League Baseball go down
about four years over the last couple of years. You've had the average age of a new account on MLB dot com is down something like six years, okay in age. And if you looked at the viewership numbers and both the attendance people in a seat and people watching on TV, the average as again has come down in and around five years. So from a demographic perspective, if you're Fox and some of the other you know, kind of broadcasters,
that's that's amazing. Let alone, the interest is up. You pointed out the numbers on you know, kind of the World series. But the reality is also if you think about it from a global perspective, the interest going on right now more globally, and obviously a lot of that is Otani all right, and so what else? You know, Look, it's kind of funny. I don't really have the answers.
I think Rob is continuing with his team. Commissioner Manfred is continue with his team to look at ways that we can increase the attractiveness and continue that push from a demographic perspective to lower the average age. I will say one other thing, having been involved in the youth sports business, and particularly in baseball, you know people all say kids aren't.
Playing baseball anymore, not like they used to. It's just wrong. It's just not true more than ever.
So first off, little League World Series, go take a look at the ratings on a Little League World Series. But going to participation once, I think is more relevant.
Youth participation was at a ten year high this past year and has been growing at a keger of about seven percent okay on youth baseball participation, So depending how you define and cause you to find it, grassroots is about nine million, okay, And that's baseball, by the way, softball, which is amazing and finally getting more exposure like many of the women's sports. You know, I think youth participation in softball is like eight million kids across the country.
And again both those numbers are significantly up over the last decade, not down, So we are getting people in the ecosystem. One of the problems with baseball is a lot of kids play baseball and they stop after that you thirteen year unless they're on a track for a scholarship or they're you know, a complete and utter unicorn like my friend over here. But the reality is is so a lot of kids age out at you thirteen.
So what I've talked to Major League Baseball a lot about is like, how do we open that funnel further from a participation perspective, But how do we not have that funnel close so much at that you thirteen level? How do we create more and more pathways for kids continuing to play that aren't necessarily looking for that scholarship or that you know, minor a major league baseball career.
What would you do?
Well, that's a great question. I've thought a lot about this. I think I would open up the floodgates. I mean, in a world where content is king, then certainly baseball should be king. Right. You have two hundred games and about two hundred and thirty two days including spring training playoffs. You guys went really deep into the playoffs last year. Blitz,
congrats on that. But look, if we're all at a desk when you're at Blackstone, when you're in Bloomberg, there should be your phone or your iPad where you just should be able to see all thirty teams in real time. Batting cage is open. I want to see Aaron Judge. I want to see Otani, but not in uniform. I want to see him in shorts. Behind the scenes, what is he working on? What can I share with my son or daughter? Of Otani's mechanic because I'm also hearing them.
I'm also seeing weight rooms and bullpens. That's one thing I would do a lot more microphone, I think one of the greatest things. We have some of the best athletes in our game today, but we have no idea who the hell they are. I mean, I barely know enough about Aaron Judge. I know him because I've known him since he was a kid. But Aaron Judge is an incredible story. We stole him from football and he decided to go to smaller college and play baseball. Well
that's a benefit to us. So Blitz to your point, at the age of thirteen, how do we gap at thirteen to age seventeen when I got drafted, and we hopefully can create a lot more Aaron Judges. So I will say I think entertainment first. Baseball's just your mote, but I think media entertainment. And you have to take the straight jacket of a history away and be able to try new things. Not everything's gonna work, but the more chance you try, the more you fail, the better it is.
You're totally right.
And interestingly, again, maybe it goes back to a little bit of this purest concept. Maybe it doesn't, but the superstars haven't been marketed as clearly as they have in other sports. The teams have been. But that's different than the total superstars, right. And when you talk about like having the ability to watch Aaron Judge at batting cage, or watch schemes throw one hundred and whatever miles an how or however many times in a row, like back
to that's amazing content. And the next generation is consuming content and completely different ways. We could spend hours talking about that, but that's the type of content that that next generation and that younger demographic wants versus you know, watching an entire game of anything, for you, just baseball.
My kids are huge sports fans. It is rare for a.
Regular season game for them to watch any of the major sports all the way through.
Blitz.
When you were nineteen ninety one, when you entered Blackstone, I was drafted in ninety three.
I mean that's not that long ago. That's three decades ago.
Baseball was number one by far, and I think the way to get back there is we've given the other league's almost ten strokes on a golf course, and we can't do that anymore. And you can't play with one hand tie behind your back. The greatest content in the world is like we have it hidden in the library.
I mean to watch Aaron Judge and o'tani and some of these guys through their side work, Kershaw talk about what is he working on with a technique if you're a lefty pitcher or your lefty pitcher who's a softball. There's so much content out there, there's so much value saying if we unlock that, it could be really.
Agree and so blitz building on that.
I mean with a lot of the investments you have in some of these you know, not really challenging league, sort of startup leagues. You know, even I know you are deeply engaged in the NWSL for instance, which is I think by definition less purest because it's a new league, it's only been around for about a decade. It's the third try at you know, professional women's soccer in this country. What are you learning there that you sort of apply or vice versa.
Well, look again, I put these in some slightly different buckets. I go back to this sort of thematic view that I have around a variety of things. So let's hit women's sports really quickly. So women's sports is, from my perspective, a mega trend, a mega theme that one should get behind from an either a well from every perspective, from a fan perspective, from an engagement perspective, from an invent perspective, it's probably.
For this audience like a great place to go.
Yeah.
And by the way, aside from the fact that these athletes are absolutely incredible and in my opinion, haven't been marketed particularly well over the years. So I look at even you know, Caitlin Clark and Angel Race, okay, absolutely amazing Okay, and when they started getting marketed differently in college, take a look at those college ratings.
So the NCAA Women's.
Final last year had I believe, eighteen million eighteen point something million people watch the women's final. The men's final got something like high fourteens.
Yeah.
And I remember sitting with Jimmy Pataro when he was like, the women out drew the men of ESPN, okay, and he was following it all the way through because it wasn't just that one game. By the way, as well, my point is there have been amazing women basketball players for pick your period, fifty years, eighty years, whatever, since they invented the game, Okay, why now? Why did it
suddenly explode from immediate perspect in popularity? And some of that was the same storytelling, okay, and content delivery that you described. Some of it was just plain marketing. I feel like ZBS and ESPN really got behind women's basketball and did an amazing job and once people watched. Because I always talk about the funnel when I talk about fans. What you want to get is somebody who's not a fan to be a casual fan of a sport, and then you want to drive a journey of the casual
fan to become an avid fan of the sport. Okay, So we have to start with the funnel, and I find when people watched. I remember taking my own daughters to a WNBA game and to a women's hockey game and said like, let's just watch this game for what it is, meaning amazing athletes and performance, and they were hooked. But they had to be taken right in a sense, or at least in my case. And that's why I
always say to people, like about hockey. So many of my friends have never been to a live hockey game, and I'm like, why don't you come to a hockey game and they all go to a live hockey and they were like, oh my god, that was absolutely incredible. So now I have a casual fan. So back to women's sports. I think the trends are there. I mean just really big picture. I mean, if you think about the WNBA right now, aside from where the prices of these franchises seem to be going.
Look at the viewership numbers. They're absolutely incredible.
So it's not like it's just I mean, I think it's something like thirty percent of when an NBA game on average about is the WNBA. But they're getting two percent of the media rights money. So what do you think is going to happen the WNBA media writes overtime like they're going to go up back to my sort of content.
Ip, etc. So I'm bullish on all of the women's sports. You're right.
I spent a ton of time on soccer. I'm extremely bullish on volleyball. I think hockey's doing an amazing job, which was a reboot because you used to have separate American and Canadian leagues and they finally merged. You can actually have the best players in the world all playing together. And then you mentioned startup leagues, which, to be honest, you know there's there's startup leagues in the sense of like venture capital, right, and then there's some others that
are maybe a different format. Okay, So like if you think about TGL, which I think is getting an Innovation Award today, that was a different format that you know, Mike McCauley and some colleagues realize that, you know, hey, we should think about golf competitive golf in a different way, right, And again, I'm sure some of you have seen it, others might not have. I think TGL has done an amazing job.
Huge content play too, I mean, that's what that's.
And again, demographic very very different from who's watching on Saturday or Sunday afternoon on a PGA tour, and of course there's crossover, but they're bringing a new demographic into the sport. So that's kind of like, hey, let's go try to do something different. Then, like you said, you've got you know, major League table tennis, right, you know, we'll see. But on these I'm bullish because again, on these niche sports, we all underestimate the audience numbers and
we're all used to hearing these broadcast numbers. But what we're not probably is it tuned too or that some of the people in this room might be is the YouTube numbers right, is the Instagram numbers? Is that you know, all of these different ways that younger folks are consuming and not just younger folks. But I just point to, I don't know again in the habit of like looking at what my kids are doing and why and their friends and so as an example.
You know, you've got the you've got the slaps, Dana White, genius.
Okay, if I told you five years ago there was going to be this situation when we sat across the table for you as I was going to slap you as hard as humanly possible, okay, and then if you were able to get up, you were able to do it back to me. And that was going to be a sport that people were watching and turning into a league. I don't know that you would have thought that that was a very good idea, and they're unbelievable, but I mean you're just using like an example of people are
consuming that content in incredibly different ways. The number of views on YouTube for some of these slap matches is, like you know, sort of stunning. So again it comes a little bit back to Alex you mentioned it before, like where do I think there can be great storytelling? And maybe it's in places that you didn't even think about. I mean, we all know about Drive to Survive, Okay, Like what Netflix did to Drive to Survive and what that did for Formula one is you know, unbelievable. But
like I think about some others too. I think about like Queen's Gambit, yeah, okay, and what Queen's Gambit did the chess. I mean, it's beyond dramatic in terms of there. And if you look at Welcome the Rexham or Ted Lasso okay, or you look at you know, quarterbacks, So that storytelling goes back a lot to what you're saying. Let's bring these amazing athletes and sports closer to us in ways that we didn't consume it before, and let's watch that continued growth out there in the marketplace.
All Right, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk a little bit about youth sports. And one of the ways that I would love for you to get into it, Blitz is you mentioned volleyball and Caitlin galhoo Ce Young co founder of League one Volleyball, was on this stage earlier.
You're an investor there.
I remember you and I talking about this years ago, and you were talking about how compelling it was, mostly because it's youth to pro which we don't see a lot of talk to us about the opportunity in youth sports. Let's the through line for youth sports from an investment perspective.
So from an investment perspective, it goes back to something we were talking a little bit about before. It's massively fragmented, right, so the demand is there. I think the people again calculated differently. I calculate the youth sports business at about forty billion dollars growing it, you know, high single digits a year. Our own business is growing much faster than that. But it's if you think about it, most people who run a youth sports business is a relatively small, mom
and pop oriented business. Where they got into that business, I'd like to think in the vast, vast majority of cases for the right reasons. Okay, they wanted to help kids, they wanted to get them active on fields. Okay, that's even become more prevalent in today's world, where the kids are on screens way more than like when.
We grew up.
So I think people got into these businesses to do really good things with kids with youth, but they don't want to deal with accounts, payable and insurance and you know, legal and complain. You know, they just want to program, whether it's leagues or tournaments or I don't know, Alex, if you ever went through baseball factory, but as an example, Baseball Factory, you know, takes kids through their baseball journeys in terms of instruction at higher and higher levels along
the way. So you have all these different areas of youth sports, but at its core a I think, just again big picture, it's great to have kids enrolled and engaged in as many sports as possible, and actually they spread it across. I think there's too much specialization. As one of my other big things, kids are specializing way
too early. You talk to any professional athlete, they will tell you that they either did or wish they had played more sports for long enew okay, So the ability to actually show up with capital now okay, then show up with great brands. So as an example, cal Ripkin was somebody who is like my idol as a player, but more relevantly post his playing career. Cal basically wanted
to help kids. He wanted to teach them to play baseball the right way in a safe environment, and he and his brother Bill started Ripkin Baseball and they have the best youth baseball business in the country in my opinion. And once we got into youth sports, I had been talking to Cal for years about trying to partner with him in some way, shape or form, And once our business started to grow, etc. Went back to Cal and said, hey, maybe we should merge our businesses.
Here.
You've got the best brand in the world and you and Bill are still involved, which is amazing, and we'd love to keep all of that the same way.
We're just going to give you.
A bigger platform, so you're gonna be able to help more kids in more markets, etc. So again that ability to bring capital the equations, so we have better fields, we have safer environments, we have better instructors, we have better facilities overall, because a lot of them are now starting to turn into these sports vacations right where you're going with your parents and your siblings, and maybe it's
three days, it's a long weekend. In some cases, we have one of our baseball facilities in Cooperstown, New York, is basically a week, So you go with your whole family for an entire week. And we keep upgrading all of these facilities, and so it's sort of this fragmented industry that we think we're both doing something that's really good for society, for lack of a better term, for the kids and their families. But we also think that they're good business in us.
All right, So we like to end every episode with little rapid fire, So good luck to you. We'll bounce it back and forth a little bit, you know, keep it tight, and we're excited to hear what you bring to the table here. But let's all right, what's one word to describe your deal making style?
One word to describe my deal making style? Direct?
What's more important to you your gut or data?
Keep in mind you are at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
Blackstone Data Sports Gut.
Okay ooh okay, split the metal. Who is your dream deal making partner?
My dream deal making partner? Well, I hope one day it's my kids.
Oh okay, good answer.
What's the best piece of advice you received on deal making or business.
Well, I think it was somebody told me early on in my career, clearly because I wasn't doing it very well. But it's actually it sounds simple, but it's the best advice I ever got, which is, David, you talk too much, listen a lot more. So you don't need to be the loudest voice in the room. You don't need to be the person who spent the most time talking in the middle of a meeting. Doesn't mean don't say anything, just means listen a lot more. Why it might not
feel that way. I'm actually a pretty good listener.
What's the worst advice you've ever been given?
The worst off given, worst advice I've ever been given.
Don't buy the Sixers.
Yeah, it was actually not the Sixers. It was don't invest in hockey. Really it was terrible advice, meaning because I didn't take the advice. Yeah, but I had people warning me that, you know, they didn't have national TV deals that were great and it was really a local business and don't do that.
And I didn't listen.
All right, So what's your hype song before a big meeting or big negotiation?
Hype songs?
It's on my phone, I think it's like Bob Marley, it's not so hyped up.
Three little birds.
If you have to pick the top three teams from your portfolio, what are they?
I can't answer it.
My answer anytime any of that body asked me about your my favorite team is, let's be clear, it's who's your favorite kid, which, by the way, so I'll answer it differently.
I do have a favorite kid sometimes.
But it's a different favorite kid depending on what's going going on that week or that year or whatever. So I definitely don't have a favorite team over a long period of time, but like right now, it's probably the command.
Yeah, that's that's a pretty good answer, David, No favorite blitz.
You can only watch one sport for the rest of your life. Which one is it?
That's really brutal? One sport for the rest of my life? Hockey if it's live. Okay, okay, so live. My answer is hockey.
All right.
This is funny because it's sort of it's sort of a retread of the earlier, earlier question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway.
What team do you want to see win a championship more.
Than any that's your favorite kid question? So can I give you a cheat on this one. We asked the same question of Melody Hobson, and you know what her answer was?
What mine?
Yeah, so that's that's that's a pretty good answer for sure. It'd be nice to have one. We don't have it. We don't have a championship yet.
Blitzer, you have a fun fact about yourself that will surprise all of us, but mainly your colleagues.
Maybe that I we talk about Jusic a lot, and maybe it's how much I absolutely love a lot us more set. They would look at me like, really a lot of more set because everyone thinks I'm just like a big Springstea fan.
But all right, Blitzer being a big a lotus more set fan. I mean, that's my takeaway from from this entime. From the brilliant insights you've given us about business, that's something I'm not gonna soon forget.
That was a curveball. That was a curveball.
Yeah, I'm trying to think if I have something better for you. No, that's pretty good. I think I think we got ended there. Uh David Blitzer, what a treat to spend some time with you. Alex always fun. Uh m, I t sloan you guys are the best. Thank you so much for having us really appreciate it.
Thank you.
The Deal is a production from Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals. The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly. This show was produced by Anna Maazarakis, Lizzie Phillip, and Stacy Wong. Original music and engineering by Blake Maples.
David E.
Ravella is our managing editor. Our executive producers are Jason Kelly, Brendan Francis, Neonham, Jordan Opplinger, Trey Shallowhorn, Andrew Barden, Kelly Leferrier, and Ashley Hoenig. Sage Bauman is our Head of Podcasts. Special thanks to Rachel Carnivali, Elena sos Angeles, Nick Silva, and the team at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Rubob Shakir is our creative director. Art direction is from Jacqueline Kessler. Joshua Devaux is our director of photography. Camera
operation by David Degner. Listen to The Deal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also tune into the video Companion on Bloomberg Originals and on Bloomberg TV. Thanks for listening,