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Hi everyone, welcome back to the Deal.
I'm your host, Jason Kelly alongside my partner Alex Rodriguez. All Right, Alex, I feel like, you know, it's been seventy two hours since I've seen It's like the longest we've gone in a couple of weeks.
Like, what have you been up to? What's going on?
My preference, Jason, if I saw you daily? We text daily anyways, exactly.
We know exactly what's going on in each other's lives and in the sports world. So we were at Sloan MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference last week, a really, really fun conversation with David Blitzer. I'm so excited for people to hear that later on this spring, and we talk about one of One. This is a guy who we could have gone for three hours, don't you think we could have?
And I mean he is one of one. That's a perfect way to describe him. I mean to think he's been at Blackstone since nineteen ninety one and now he's making a paradigm shift to run in his family office.
And what I think our viewers would really find interesting in our listeners is he has an extraordinary amount of equity across every sports platform and how he uses a data all the way from Little League as being a partner to cal Ripken to what he does with his guardians and everything else in between is a fascinating conversation.
Yeah, so really look forward to everyone getting to hear that. So here's one interesting thing. I actually meant to text you this. So I was texting with Jess Gallman, you know, who's sort of the convener along with Daryl moriy of Sloan, and I was saying to her, I feel like one of the measures and this is a snooty measure, so like fair warning, but one of the measures of a really great conference is like the power of.
The green room.
And man, when we walked in there and saw all the other folks who were going to be on stage had been on the stage. You know, we saw triple ages. We were like walking through the there were all these NWSL owners, there were Celtics executives. Like interestingly enough, it was a lot of not surprisingly our deal universe. Kitlin Goo, who is a guest on the show, she was actually on a panel with the guy who's gonna be our guest today Mike McCary from TGL, and they were talking
about emerging league. So it really was a who's who and so excited to dig into that. In the meantime, there's been a lot happening in the sports media world.
Our guy, Stephen A.
Smith, he told us last year when he taped this show he was gonna get paid, Alex, he got paid.
He got paid, and he's worth every every dollar.
Look, the head of ESPN, Jimmy Potero, loves him, and for good reason. I mean, he is very, very compelling. Love him or hate him, you're going to tune in. He has very strong opinions. He's well informed. Yeah, and my favorite thing is, I mean when he walks into arenas, it's like Michael Jordan, I mean, is a trot.
He's a phenomenal talent.
Yeah.
So he's going to get one hundred million dollars about twenty million a year. And what I found so interesting is I was sort of reading about it talking to people. He told us when he sat down with us that first of all, he was chasing the bag. He's unapologetic about that, but also he wanted more, say, more flexibility, more ownership and and to your point about the influence he look, he went viral last week over a confrontation
of sorts he had with Lebron James. So you know, Lebron comes over to him in the middle of the game. This is what I love about steven A. Right, steven A is sitting courtside, He's sitting in between Larry David and Ari Emmanuel like talk about like a power move, just a power a seat, and Lebron comes over and gets in his face about what steven A has been saying about Bronnie, and steven A then turns it, as
he does, into a viral moment. The entire morning the next morning on Big Take and on the steven A Smith Show was all about that encounter.
It's amazing. His content this generation is incredible.
It is a gigantic win for steven A. Smith, is an enormous win for ESPN. But this is the deal, and I do want to just kind of go back and double tap a little bit on the deal because if you think about it, it took probably two months for steven A Smith and ESPN to agree to one hundred. It took about twelve months to get all the fine print on what he can do what he can't do.
Can he do on YouTube? Can he go into politics?
It just tells you deals have never been more complicated, and this is a perfect example of that.
Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up, because what the complexity speaks to is how multi platform you have.
To be if you're going to be successful.
Listen, I'm like going down the self referential rabbit hole here, but it's like, think about this show. You can listen to it, you can watch it on YouTube, you can watch it on blueberg dot com, you can read about it all these you see it on social We have to think that way. Steven A has been thinking that way for a long time, and he is He is a business man for sure.
All right.
Speaking of businessmen, another guy familiar to our listeners, Dave Roberts, probably not your favorite guy back in the mall because he beatured New York Yankees to win the World Series. Of course, the manager of the Dodger, as Dave Roberts is, he's getting paid as well, eight point one million dollars a year a four year extension he signs. Tell me about the significance of that deal from your perspective.
Well, I think Jason the power shift in sports, but I would say baseball is probably most synonymous with analytics, and they were the you know, going back to you know, Brad Pitt and Billy Bean, right and moneyball. If you go back to those days, I think Sandy Alderson who was a mentor to Billy Bean. He had a guy by the name of Art Howe, and basically the front office message started back then a couple of decades ago, which was saying, we the front office, have all the power.
We were hired to be the voice of the team. Will give you a seat at the table. But as long as you run the team the way we want to run it, analytics are and D departments.
You are are a guy. And the days of.
Loopanella Buck Show, Walter Joe Torre being in charge, those days are over. And I think one of the things that Dave Roberts have done has done a beautiful job with is check the ego the door, both his experience and his playing days and really be a collaborator and really the lead. But let's make no mistake the front officer running this team. One great example of the shift in power I remember in six o seven when Joe Tory was the manager and my manager with the Yankees.
He was making around six or seven million dollars at that time. Brian Cashman, the GM was making a million dollars. Today those numbers have completely reversed. Now you have a guy like Andrew Friedman, the head of baseball for the Dodgers, making ten million, and before this deal, Dave Roberts was making closer to two to four million. Yeah, and that tells you where things are, or as where the power lies.
Wow.
So I have to say you surprised me there.
I did not think that's what you were going to say, because I see this paycheck and I'm like, wow. You know, he and Craig Counsel are sort of like more or less even in terms of being the highest paid managers Craig Council of course of the Cubs. That's fascinating because I remember watching I mean, I read the book Moneyball, as I think anybody who cares about sports either has
or should Michael Lewis's phenomenal, phenomenal book. And then the movie you mentioned, Brad Pitt, you know you remember so vividly. Art how was played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman to great effect.
And he was I mean his legs.
Were cut off underneath him right by Billy Bean because Billy Bean was dictating, here's who we're gonna play, Here's who we're gonna get rid of. Made some very dramatic decisions. So that is continuing. That's really fascinating. So is that good for baseball?
I think it's good.
But I think, you know, like most things, Jason, the pendulum go THO sometimes overcorrects way too much to the right. And I think when you land, whether you want to land at fifty fifty or sixty seventy or seventy thirty, whatever you want to do, it can be one hundred percent to zero. Yeah, and you still have to have experience in baseball people. And that's why I think today's modern day manager, the perfect person for that is a guy like Dave Roberts or Aaron Boone with the Yankees
or Greg Council with the Cubs. You have to check your ego to door and you have to be you're running these franchises a little bit more like a board. And ironically this might be surprising to our listeners, Jason, that the most powerful person in the organization where the buck stops. It's really not with the manager, and is not with the general manager, is with the head of analytics.
Yeah.
Again, a dramatic shift. And you've obviously seen it. I mean you see it. I would imagine in basketball too. You know, you and I run across you more than I in a more intimate way in your travels with some very powerful people, you know, inside basketball teams, football teams, etc. Who are the men and women who have the numbers? And if you have the numbers, I mean, listen, that's
the whole basis. Going back to where we started, we were hundreds of people at the at Sloan, at the business school at MIT.
MIT is all about numbers.
And I mean the analysis that they're doing both on the business side and on the field, on the pitch, on the court. We've never seen anything like this before. And you know, we were talking to Blitz, David Blitzer again. He was talking about how much he uses analytics across his portfolio, and he feels like he's just getting started. So you do wonder as the pendulum swings back and forth where all of these sports land. And I would imagine and here I'm leaning on your expertise across multiple
professional sports. I guess the answer is different depending on the team and depending on the sport.
Right.
Look, I think one of the things that analytics you've got to be cautious for, and this kind of a cautious tale, is that sometimes analytics does not see what a guy like our former guest Johnny Damon brings to the tape. Yeah, and his confidence and his swagger and his ability to make the clubhouse mood more fun and less especially in a place like New York where you want to lower.
The temperature, you want to lower the pressure.
Guys like John Olerude, my former teammate, Johnny Damon, they may not be like the greatest players of all time when it comes to analytics, but when you combined what they bring to the clubhouse plus their analytics, the world champions.
And that's exactly what we did in New York with Johnny Damon.
Yeah, that's a great example.
And if folks did not see that one on your feet, you should definitely go back listen to Johnny Damon. I mean, man, talk about one of one. If you made that guy up, no one would believe you. He's unbelievable.
We even had our first political reference, which we weren't expecting.
We certainly need, we certainly did.
I guess in retrospect, if anyone was going to do it, it was going to be him.
So check that out.
And also, if you're going back to the feed, check out our conversation with Steven A. Smith from last year, because he he lays it all out. He talks about the foundation of his argument that ultimately led to this big deal. And I went back and listened to some of it, and you knew exactly where he was going, and you knew that if he didn't get this number, and he essentially said it to us, if he didn't get the number that he wanted, which I think this was it, he was gone.
And I think ESPN knew that all right.
Coming up on the deal, the CEO and the co founder of Tomorrow's Sports. That's Mike McCarley. You know him best as the co creator of TGL. You've seen it on TV, maybe you've seen it live. We're going to chop it up with him and get into the business of golf. Stay tuned, all right, Well, joining us now is Mike McCarley. He's the founder and CEO of Tomorrow's Sports founded back in twenty twenty two.
The project that you're probably.
Most familiar with that falls under their auspices is Tomorrow Golf League, also known as TGL. It's been I would say, Alex kind of inescapable in the best possible way. We see people talk about it, we hear people talk about in our world. I feel like the cap table is like a list of either former or dream guests on the deal. And so we're really happy, Mike to have you with us. So for those who don't know, break it down for us. What is TGL and how how do you describe it in your elevator pitch.
Yeah, it's very simplest forms. It's a platform for primetime team golf. So can we take some of the best elements of golf that resonate with a modern media consumer, you know, modern fan, and try to put that into a format that will really resonate in today's age.
And what does that mean?
It means primetime live, two teams enter, one team leaves two hours later, a winner, lots of data, lots of moments, global stars. And what we found was the technology allowed us to do that. So we weren't setting out to create this, you know, super tech forward Golf League. We were setting out to create a short form version of golf that would appeal to younger fans that we could put it in in prime time in a team format that we thought would resonate in this day and age.
And it happens to be true now that we're we're three months or so into the season.
So, Mike, you served as NBC you know, sports president, you know, for golf and other departments. At what point are you just sitting back in your family on a Saturday and saying, I have an idea.
How do you even come up with such a great idea?
Yeah, it's over time, I would say.
You know, one of my first jobs at NBC was working with a lot of the different Olympics sports and marketing the Olympics.
And in a lot of.
Ways, what you do in between the Olympics is those sports wilme to you and ask you, you know, how can we be better on television if you look at sports through that lens, you know, how can a certain sport perform better on television? In a lot of ways, It's spent the last of the quarter century or so, I was at NBC sports. The last ten or so years I was dedicated to golf. So if you're looking at a sport every single day through that lens, you
start to notice a handful of things. When the US Open goes to the West Coast and the US Opens in primetime on the East, ratings pop. We see it in the Ryder Cup every few years, when the guys are in a team environment and they can feed off that energy and they can feed off of each other.
Some real moments are created from that.
So if we kind of take the elements of prime time the elements of team golf and put them together, how do we create more of those moments in a condensed fashion?
And then I think the.
Other piece of it, Alex is just watching what's happened in technology general throughout sports. If you can imagine, you know, watching a football game now without the first and ten line, and how hard it would be to kind of explain to a fan who's just dropping into the sport for the first time what it is that they're trying to do.
It really helps demystify the.
Sport of football, much in the same way the tracer line on the golf ball really helps to demystify what some of the best players in the world are trying to do when they're out on a golf course. So all of those things coming together, you know, it just kind of shows you what is possible and when you when you put it all into one piece, what comes out is something that looks a lot like TJL And so.
How do I mean we're getting into the nitty gritty of the deal. It's it's called the deal. Uh So this stands to reason, like, how do you go about, like you put together a pitch deck, Like, what's what's the process for you to sort of bring this to life?
What are the first early steps?
Because I am anticipating already what Alex's next question is going to be, and it has to do the certain most famous golfer in the world.
But that was a very important meeting.
We'll just say that leading up to it, you're noticing all these things that I just described, and you start to form a thesis and then you start talking to people, and you know, it was very close to Tiger and his team and very close to Rory and his team, just being so involved in golf with NBC and Golf Channel, and then the pandemic hits, and you're kind of thinking, Okay, if this is going to work, now's the time to
make this work. Because technology and screens, you know, look at what we're doing right now, really started to take over and just have a much more important role in our life. And then you start to see, you know a lot of the tailwinds that are happening in sports with data coming in, you know, more and more media opportunities from for a live standpoint, and how that helps. Sports are really trying to keep the traditional media bundle together.
So I middle a pandemic for kids homeschooled at home, I had my full time job, and my wife and I started kind of working on what this could look like. And then had a few conversations with Rob McNamara, who's on really close to Tiger on his team, few.
Conversations with Ryan Dodters.
Who's the CEO of Full Swing Technology Company, and a handful of others, and just continue to ask the question, you know, is this possible?
Can you do this?
And then eventually went and sat down with Tiger, and ninety minutes later he just looked at me and said, look, if I commit to doing this, will you commit to doing it too, and at that point I knew we were kind of off and running.
Well, that's a great segue, thank you, Jason.
So, Mike, I go back with Tiger when I first entered the major leagues at eighteen.
We're about the same age.
He was a freshman at Stanford, and that was when I first got to know him a little bit. You know, one of the things about Tiger, if you know him, he has one buffet type discipline, meaning that he says no to like ninety nine out of one hundred things. How the hell did you get him to say yes? So I'm Tiger, I'm a terrible golfer, but I would like to pretend I can be a poser. Pitch to Jason and I how you got him to say yes?
We'll build a venue within thirty minutes of your house. You drive over, you play for two hours, you drive home. You keep your same schedule on the PGA tour, you keep your same prep for the Masters. You don't ever get an airplane, don't. You don't stay in a hotel. And if we do this right, they'll be you know, real money, like you would make if you're flying all over the world. You know, kind of wrecking a week
or wrecking your body. And the reality is, you know, these guys you know for a very long time golfers. You know it's a global game and they travel all around the world to play, and I think they always will. But you get to a certain place in your career and frankly in your life where you're a father, you've got kids, you've got soccer games.
Got other things.
If you can have a way to monetize your time and create something that frankly, can be a legacy business for you for decades ahead, it's.
Going to get your attention. And I think it was.
It was a combination of a lot of things, but timing was a really important part of it.
And so after that conversation, right hold on, Jason.
So so, Alex, how's that pitch? If someone will come, well.
It's great. I didn't want to hug the ball.
But my second question was going to be a follow up, was why didn't you come to Jason and me that's the same.
I haven't seen your golf games. I everyone has seen Tiger's golf games. Will say that you only got a hardball that flying an hour.
That's fair.
Listen, I can't speak for Alex, but if you had seen my golf game, that'd be a hard pass from your perspective. But I'm getting better, I'm trying. I'm trying my best, and so I would love to be in your head for that minute that you walk out of the meeting with Tiger. He's turned it around on you right and basically been like, if I'm doing this, you're doing it. What's the next step, what's the feeling? What's the first phone call you make at that point?
And Mike before you answered that as you're walking in, I want to just piggyback up my partner, Jason handicap it are you thinking maybe fifty to fifty?
Are you nervous? Are you excited? Are you just like there's a walk in the park.
No, it wasn't a walk in the park, but I think my chances were pretty good, just because you know, we had done a lot of the pre work in advance.
I mean, Tiger's got a great team around him.
Rob McNamara, Chris Hubman, Mark Steinberg is a longtime agent, sure, and we had all been involved in other projects together and had spent some time on this before. So I think, you know, The next step was one me saying yes to that question and two calling Rory, and then within a couple of weeks, Rory was on board.
And the plan all along was that.
The three of us would go to the PGA to and bringing the PGA Tour on board as a partner. And you know, and that took after that first meeting, that took you a couple of weeks to kind of get Rory on board. It was a few phone calls.
Rory and I had been involved in a few projects together, so and he already had this thesis about embracing technology to really help bring the sport of golf into the future and kind of this digital future for golf, and much like Tiger has a thesis that was aligned with getting more kids and families involved with sports, especially especially golf. So the two of them kind of saw what the
future for the sport could look like. I was just coming in with the idea and frankly a little bit of the background and the track record to be able
to pull something like this together. And getting the PGA Tour was a big piece of it, because we always wanted to do something that was going to be complimentary from a schedule standpoint for the players, so they could continue to play the schedule that they preferred to play, keep their existing sponsors, all of those sorts of things, and just making this additive to this existing ecosystem that's already really good for the players on PGA Tour.
Talk us through building out the rest of the cap table, because you know, I sort of somewhat globally said it at the top, but it's like, these are the people that Alex and I sort of know admire. We think about these as the smartest investors, the savvyest athlete investors who are out there. You know, you're talking about Serena and Steph Curry, Fenway Sports Group, Stevie Cohen, David Blitzer,
Mark Lazri. I mean, I could go on and on and on, Michael Strahan, Jeter, Eli Manning, Like, what's the process through which you do that, because people who are listening, who are entrepreneurial in thinking about an idea, are like salivating at the prospect of having that sort of cap table.
Yeah.
I think it's a good question, and it's one that we get asked a lot, But I mean, I think it's the very basic part of it is you've got a track record and a history in the sports business.
We all know. It's a small world that we live in, you know.
I like to think that through the years, I've developed a nice network of you know, strong relationships, and you try to treat people well, you know, all all the way around. So you start making a few phone calls. One of my first phone calls was Dick Eversall, who's a mentor of mine, worked very close to together for a long time.
Dick Eversolt legendary like TV producer ran NBC Sports, you know, essentially invented the modern Olympics coverage. I think it's fair to say ran SNL for it. I mean, by the way his book, Alex, you should listen to it at some point. It's an unbelievable memoir of like sports and entertainment.
Sorry, Mike, but go ahead.
So so, yeah, that's a good point.
Jason so called Dick because I kind of wanted him to talk me out of it. I mean, I got four little kids at home, you know, very good career, and he didn't. He said, I think it's a great concept, and if you can do you know, X, Y and Z things and get those done, you know, how big of a check can I write into this business to be the first investor, and it just kind of took
off from there and we started. I mean, you guys know, it's like you introduce a concept to somebody and if they like it, they say, I'd like to introduce this to my friend so and so, And it just so happens that we're working in a group of people where the friends that they have or have, you know, all the capabilities and the wherewithal to be able to support something like this and frankly help make it fly.
I mean the team owners that.
We brought on board for TGL having Arthur Blank, having Alexis and Serena, having Fenway Sports Group, having Mark Lazar, having Steve Cohen. I mean, it's it's been a really successful group of people to put together and to kind of be advisors as you're building a business for the first time. And that's not to mention Tiger and David Blitzer teamed up to own the Jupiter team as well, So you get six people around the table that can
help you build something. And for the teams that have really a portfolio that they can put this team in the middle of. From an operational standpoint really help them move very quickly and accelerate their growth very fast.
On the other side of that, just one question is you know, with these deep pockets also come fairly large egos, strong opinions, a lot of thoughts.
How do you manage that?
And has your experience being a television executive can I help you kind of bring this all together?
Yeah?
I would say that was very helpful.
I think it was also helpful having Tiger and Rory and the PGA Tour on as partners, because no one's going to question the golf at cum In, right, so the core sport of you know, our first project in TGL, no one's questioning why are you doing this? Why are
you doing that? We would have discussions about it internally, but at the end of the day, you know, Tiger and Rory kind of bless a competitive format, and you know, we've we've had some things that we've changed along the way from the original plan, and a lot of times, you know, Tiger Rory have said, I like this idea, and we will go test it and come back and say here's what the testing tells us, and then you kind of make a decision to move forward.
But I think, you know, managing egos.
I think you have a general sense of you know, and reputation of who's going to be helpful, especially in the business at this stage, which is really important. The people who had been involved in startups before were I mean Arthur Blank's history with Home Depot alone, just understanding what it takes to pull something like this off and
having lived it himself really helpful. I like to think that because of the cap table we've put together, we're one or two phone calls away from you know, getting the best advice on almost anything in the world.
So this is not Mike not been without setbacks. I mean, obviously the arena itself essentially Malfa.
I don't know, how would you describe it, lost the roof.
On the building.
I mean a lot like what happened in Tampa this past year from the hurricane. Yeah, those visuals were similar.
Yeah, So that sets you back a full year, right in terms of launch. So what is that moment like and how how did you have to adjust at that point in terms of the modeling, in terms of you know, the TV content, like what's involved when you have to make that sort of decision to delay.
Yeah, it's a very tough decision one.
And I knew pretty quickly after we knew kind of the timeline.
That we were looking at.
I got there that later that day on site, and the team, the construction team, you know, I'd already put together a bunch of plans on how they could get something ready to go for that season, and I just knew that it was going to be rushed and it wasn't the right right idea. And I knew at that point my job was more consensus.
Builder than anything else.
I mean amongst investors, amongst team owners, amongst sponsors. We had so FI on board at that point, we had ESPN on board as a media partner, and the team owners pretty much all told me, you know, a bunch of one on one calls like, hey, we trust you, you know, come back to us with what you think is the best thing to do. I had a conversation with Anthony Notados, the CEO of so Far, and he said, look, I believed in this a year ago when you first told me about it. I'm going to believe in it
more a year from now. So don't worry. We're going to be fine. And then ESPN Roz Durant. To her credit, she flew down Florida. We set at a coffee shop for two hours on a Saturday morning, and we walked through all the different scheduling opportunities and at the end of it, we knew, you know, part of the business when I started the scheduling piece of this was don't compete with football. Have football as something that's going to
be a promotional vehicle for you. So after about an hour, we pretty much had decided the schedule for twenty twenty five should look almost exactly what the schedule for twenty twenty four was. And then the last hour we kind of just caught up on, you know, all the personal things and frankly, she just want to know how I was doing because it was a very stressful time, which those moments with a partner you remember forever, those people that were with you and kind of doing the right
thing when you're in a tough spot. You always take that with you and you'll never forget it. It's a really important to note though. At that same time, what happened is the college football Playoff expanded, so the ESPN schedule changed, so we did have a few wrinkles, you know, even after we had decided generally what we should do, then there was a lot more work to be done because that was still that expansion was still to take place.
Was there a moment or more than a moment when that accident happened, that you're like, Okay, I just this may not work like that, this may not get off the ground.
Maybe I'm foolishly optimistic.
But over five years of kind of nothing but building this business full time, those thoughts never really crept into my mind.
I mean they were always for me. There was just there was no plan B. And if anyone seemed.
To think they had a doubt that this wouldn't work, I just kind of moved on.
You know, if an investor, a.
Partner where everything was on zoom, because you were still in the early days of the pandemic, but if it just seemed like they didn't get it, I couldn't get off the phone fast enough because I could get waste my.
Time and get with someone who really believed in it.
Of course, of course, one thought, you know, mentors have been such an incredibly important part of my business career and baseball career. I'm wondering, you know, you're a young guy you're very experienced obviously, what a competitive advantage to be on television with such a great company at Comcast NBC for so many years. But wondering about more mentors that helped influence your career and really have helped you think about this project in particular.
Yeah, it starts with Dick Iversol for sure.
And then I spent really good time with Jim McKay when he came back and did his last Olympics in Salt Lake in two thousand and two. Then I spent a lot of time with John Madden when he came over to NBC for Sunday Night Football. And you know, there was a core group of us who just had a blast building those early days of Sunday Night Football with Dick and John and Al and Frekidelli and Drew Usakoff.
And I would say when I came down move moved from New York to Florida, Arnold Palmer had founded the Off Channel in the early nineties and was still here and wasn't really involved with the business that much, but I went to go see him and really just kind of leaned on him as from a history standpoint of not just that business, but golf on television, which if he kind of traced back the history of golf and the popularity of golf on TV, it was color television,
the Masters and Arnold Palmer in the early nineteen sixties that really.
Made golf on TV fly.
And then so you think about thirty years later, the guy gets on the front end of cable television and creates a twenty four to seven cable channel.
Dedicated to the game, and he and I had long.
Conversations about the future of golf global, US centric. He always told me, he goes, always remember and don't let everyone forget that television needs to be at the center of every decision on the future of the business of the sport.
Wow, because it was so important in the in the building of it over time.
So look, I was very fortunate to be able to kind of have these people placed in my life, and I think at a time in which they were willing to be patient and give back, which meant, you know, they were kind of on the older side of their careers and they were in a reflective mindset and wanted to share, which I was just smart enough to just kind of shut up and listen as much as I possibly could to learn from them.
Mike.
I love the great question, though, Alex, because I look, I think back on that I made decisions based on a history and a career of things that I've experienced, and a lot of times you don't really know why you made the decision, but you think about it later and you say, Okay, I made that decision because of X, Y and Z things that I know I saw.
In my past.
Yeah.
Look, I'm obsessed with this because I didn't have the regular you know, go through college. But I guess for Jason and I and our listeners, can you maybe share one or two nuggets for each one of those guys that you learned that you still live with, and especially a guy like you know, John Madden.
Yeah, I say with coach Madden and Arnold both were so genuine and it was amazing just to kind of see how they treated people and how that persona over time that was just them. They were so genuine and just kind of both this just man of the people
approached that everyone identified with. And they were really savvy business people, but they saw a good idea or they saw you know, something and they just knew that was the right thing to do and they went after it, you know, and there wasn't a whole lot of strategy sessions.
It was more just a lot of gut and I.
Think this is the right thing to do, for the right reason and with the right people, and so we're going.
To do it.
It's interesting to think about those two guys, especially the way that you framed them, Mike, I had never heard that about Arnold palmer fit and it. If I knew that he had started the golf channel, I'd forgotten. That's such a fascinating idea of him putting television at the center of the game, because that is not intuitive, that's
not an obvious insight, to be honest. So you think about that, and then you think about John Madden almost single handedly revolutionizing football and television, you know, changing the style in which the content is delivered, et cetera. Talk to us about how not just those guys, but your whole career at NBC has influenced the television product for TGL, which I mean essentral to its success. How are you
thinking about it now? What are the early takeaways as you sort of moved through this first season.
Yeah, I think part of it is I kind of thought about in my career.
Two big things at NBC that weren't golf for the Olympics, and so did I football. And you work for four years and you know, the day of the opening ceremony, you've got all of these things that you want to get done by that date. You know, much like the athletes are preparing to get everything done by that competition, and they got to be all. You know, they have to peak for that competition. And if you don't get it done, you're you're waiting four years to try it again.
And then you juxtapose that with a property like Sunday Night Football, and you.
Can make improvements every single week. You know, some of them are big, some of them minute. But over the course of a season, the first week products compared to the last week's product better damn well, be a lot better. And you make a lot of changes and a lot of improvements because of it.
So I with TGL, you know, we had one chance to launch as as good and as big as you possibly can.
You know, check we did that. And you know, we're creating a version of a sport. You know, we're basically from scratch trying to appeal to everything that a consumer in twenty twenty five would want to latch onto and then our job and I preach this to our team every week is continual improvement, every single week, and it doesn't matter what area it is, necessarily every area needs to be improving. I found this kind of concept that if you're not changing something, you're choosing.
That this is good enough.
And I don't think any of us are ever signing up to be any anything we ever do any day that's good enough. You always want to be able to make it better. And if you're not seeing things that can make it better, you're probably not.
Doing your job.
Wow.
One of the interesting things that I saw and are as we were sort of pulling together.
You know what's going on with you guys.
You're bringing down that the median age viewer is sort of coming down for golf, which is kind of key.
I say this as a.
Definitively middle aged white man, I'm sort of the target audience. But what you really want is like my kids, my college age kids watching this, So how do you continue to do that?
And also, you know, you mentioned something that I.
Wanted to sort of double tap on, as Alex says, which is this notion of finding the right windows in which to put it on both seasonally but even like day of the week. It feels like that has been very deliberate. So talk to us a little bit about that.
Yeah, Look, the youth movement was really important, and it's something that we knew.
We could put together a lot of.
The concepts and ideas that we either knew or thought would translate into a younger audience. But you don't really know if you're going to get a younger audience until you actually see the data after you put your first few competitions on. And frankly, we were surprised at how young it was, and I was surprised at how young
it got as fast as it did. It was almost immediately, you know, first first night, fifty two years old median age, which is on par with the NBA, which Alex knows is one of the youngest sports, really the youngest major American sport on television. And then a large percentage, you know, on par with the NBA as well, was in that advertiser coveted eighteen to forty nine year old demographic. And the reason why we say it that way is is
that's what advertisers are buying. They're buying that eighteen to forty nine with disposal income and spending habits that'll be kind to prove out lifetime value. Frankly, it's about a
dozen years younger than traditional golf. Which that was one of the conversations that I had with with Jay Monahan when I went and talked to him about doing this in partnership with the PGA Tour, is if we do this right, you know, there will be younger fans who will get introduced to a player on primetime watching TGL on ESPN, and then that same player will be on the leader board that's that today or Sunday on CBS or NBC, and that fan that saw them on Monday
or Tuesday night in primetime will follow that player because they're going to get a sense of the personality and something in this new environment where they're micd up and you hear from them all for two hours straight.
And we'll find new fans that way.
And I think the reality is, if you look at the demographic data, we are finding new fans, especially young fans, and we're hearing anecdotally a lot of families are watching together, which is great. I mean that kind of gets you back to you people watching on whatever streen is available to them at the time. But the idea of a family sitting around watching a sports competition of any sort, I think is something that we can all get on it.
So what's the next big step forward?
Like, what is the thing that you're going to come out of this season looking to next season? Give us this a preview of something you've seen that you're like, all right, we need to like level this up, or we need to do this differently. Like what jumps out as one of the biggest learnings here.
Well, we got two weeks left for the playoffs, so we want to make sure we continue to focus on that. We are getting a lot of interest from a lot of different sports team owners on expansion, and that's something that we're looking at seriously.
Now.
We're looking at a potential venue on the West Coast just to make the schedule easier for players. And then I think there's a lot of little things talking about that continual improvement. About eight months ago, I told everyone on our team start your season two lists now, because there's going to be a period of time where we can't make big changes for season one.
But you want to make sure that you make those for season two.
So I think you know elements of which holes resonated, what type of holes resonated with fans, what technology really worked, What are some of the things that the tech shows that we could do more of, just based on the fan feedback? And I think, frankly, we are able to hear from fans and get feedback from fans in this
day and age more than you ever have before. So hearing them and then putting these things into play, some of them we can do, and we've done this season, but you know a lot of that you'll have to do a year later because it does take more R and D construction, et cetera.
You know, more tech.
Work, right right? That sounds great? All right, so let's do the lightning ground. It's five questions. We'll bounce it back and forth, keep it tight, and we'll jump right in. What's the best piece of advice you've received on deal making your business?
Say? Please, say thank you.
Who's your dream deal making partner?
Man?
We got a lot of really good ones.
I A would say the team owners that we have around the table right now, for a lot of different reasons, they all bring something to the table for us.
That's a pretty good lineup. What's the most nervous you've ever.
Been asking my wife to marry me?
I assume she said, yes, you have kids favorite hype song before you go into a big meeting or a big negotiation or proposal.
I guess I.
Grew up in Memphis, so I got a lot of music in my background.
Is there anything that kind of puts me back near my roots? I would say, is probably the right the right vein we need, We need.
A song, Give me a song, so like bb King or Elvis Presley like that sort of.
I would go with some old blues or you know, something with some some big bass in it.
I'm a big Rolling Stones fan, so you okay, I can hit a lot of Stones as well.
All right? That sounds good?
All right?
And what's your advice for someone listening who wants a career like yours?
You gotta work hard, you know, just start working, show up early, stay late. There is no job that should be beneath you. You can get experience and learn something from pretty much anything that you're asked to do. You just got to be there and start start rolling up your slaves and do the work.
All right, well, Mike McCarley, congratulations on season one of TGL. It's been really fun to watch. I know Alex and I are eager to come see it live, so if not this season next and again, best of luck as this goes on, you know, and hopefully you know, we'll become good enough.
Golfers that you know you'll hang out with us. At some point.
We have nets to.
Cover up the led, so you guys are invited time to watch the match and we'll get you to hit some shots.
Thanks Mike, Bye bye, thank you.
The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me Jason Kelly. This episode was made by Annamazarakus, Stacey Wong, and Lizzie Phillip. Amy Keene is our editor. Our theme music is made by Blake Maples. Our executive producers are Kelly Leferrier, Ashley Honig, and Brenda Newnham. Sainte Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Support from Rachel Carnivale and Elena Los Angeles. Thanks so much for listening to the Deal. If you have a minute, subscribe,
rate and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us. I'm Jason Kelly, see you next week.