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I'm Jason Kelly, I'm Alex Rodriguez, and on this episode of The Deal, Sue Bird.
All right, listen to this resume.
Two national championships with Yukon, four WNBA championships with the Seattle Storm, five gold medals for the United States of America. She did it all as a player. Now she's in your business as an owner.
How's she doing.
She's doing pretty good.
Not only is she in my business with WNBA, but also we both started our careers in Seattle and she played obviously her entire career there, actually seven years. It's really interesting the way she thinks about pivoting from being a world class athlete to now doing some great things in business.
Absolutely, she's in my business as well, in the media business. She started a company called Together with Chloe Kim, Alex Morgan, and Simone Manuel. She's got a podcast with her partner, Megan Rapino, another athlete.
We've heard of. Lots to talk about with Sue Bird.
All right, well, welcome, Please introduce yourself and what you do.
This is like the hardest question now that I'm retired. I don't like it at all. It was so much easier just saying superb professional basketball player.
There you go.
My name is Sue Bird. I am a retired professional basketball player. I am currently figuring my life out. But I am, I guess, an entrepreneur getting into the media space. I'm a co founder of a media and commerce company together, but also co founder of a production company A touch more.
Own a couple professional sports teams as well.
Yeah, I'm in Gotham FC and NWSL as an investor and then part of the ownership group with the Seattle Storm, the team I've played for.
And so what would you say, so far is your signature deal.
I think what I'm finding is a lot of how I played basketball as a point guard. I like things to make sense. I liked, you know, things to fit to go for a to B t C in a way that set everybody up for success. Is really what production is like. So as I'm getting more into the world of production, I'm really seeing my point guard skills show themselves.
All Right, So, if we can, let's go back aways to the start of your basketball career, or not the full start, but probably the seminal moment where we're all introduced to you, which is at Yukon. To call it a historic program, it actually under sells it. Talk to us about getting there. You know, you grew up in Long Island. You get to Yukon, and Yukon's already Yukon at that point.
What is it like to take us back there? Yeah?
So, yes and no. So they had one their first national championship in nineteen ninety five, and that's Rebecca. They go un defeated. What makes Yukon, I think, have success from a fandom standpoint is that they're not quite Boston, They're not quite New York. So if you're I don't know, Red Sox, Celtics, whatever you are, or if your Yankees, Nicks, Mets, whatever you are down here, the people in Connecticut needed something. Yeah, and so Connecticut people really rallied around. I mean, god,
the fans are so amazing at Yukon. So anyways, Rebecca Lobo hits that ninety five team hits, it blows up. They're like everybody's sweetheart. It blows up. I get to school in ninety eight. We end up winning my sophomore year two thousand and that was the next championship. Oh oh, So I was a part of the second one, right, yeah,
a lot of times. Yeah, you think Kyukon, you think the eleven, you think it's always So I was there pretty early, but it still was like a very prominent pro It was the program at the time.
And so, I mean, and you experienced this as well in a slightly different way. But you know, choosing where to go to college, for you, that's one of your first big business decisions, right, So how did you make that decision? What are the conversations like with your family, like how do you decide?
So my parents were really big on academics, and you know, Yukon's the top twenty public. We're doing all right. But I was also being recruited by Stanford. I was also being recruited by Vanderbilt. Those were actually two of my other final schools. So I actually had to battle a little bit with my parents on wanting to go to Connecticut. I remember my dad. One of the final things he said was like, do you want everyone you know to
be from the state of Connecticut? Like do you want the person you marry to be from the state of Connecticut? And you know, you had a good point. You go there and outside of the athletes, it's a lot of Connecticut residents. But at the end of the day, I mean even as a sixteen seventeen year old when I
was making the decision, it really just felt right. And if you fast forward to now, I can sit here and honestly tell you that a lot of the decisions I have made, whether it be the teams I'm choosing to play for, or investments I'm trying to make, ownership groups I'm getting involved with, it's always a feel. There's like a feel there that you got to follow. So it's not that different.
I do want to go back to that idea of what your dad said, because obviously no one could have known exactly what was going to come after that. But I mean, not only are you not limited to people from Connecticut, I mean you become on that platform one of the most famous athletes in the country pretty quickly because of the platform that Yukon has. Were you aware of that as it was happening, Because as you said, it was early days for Yukon, it really starts to happen while you're there.
What does it feel like?
God, great question. I've never thought of it this way. Because of that ninety five team and because of Rebecca Lobo especially, there was national attention always on that program. And so when me and not just me I had, I came in with a class of five and all top recruits, all we had the number one, like tippy top, right, So we came in with our own attention. Yeah, our own national attention at times. You know, you play in the All American Game, you have a lot of that
hype coming in with you. So it really was I think a really good blend. Like I said, my class and then what was already happening at Connecticut, and it just became normal, Like when I got there, the media attention, the amount of coverage we got. I already mentioned the fans sold out. So we played in Gamble Pavilion on campus, which is only ten thousand, But then we'd play in Hartford it's called the Excel Center. Now that's like sixteen
plus sold out. No matter what every game, whether we're playing like the crappiest team you've ever seen or you know, the number two team in the country, whether it's a beautiful day out or you know, twenty inches of snow, people are getting to those games. Yeah, and that just became the norm for us, Like the hoopla. We couldn't, you know, we would go to the mall or whatever, we would do, recognized everywhere. It really became normal. I didn't see a shift because there wasn't a shift right
when we stopped on campus. It was like that. I think it had already been brewing in that way.
It's interesting to think about sort of that fame and notoriety, now what that would translate to, Yeah, dollars wise?
Do you ever think about that?
But of course n I L What do I mean? Yeah, if nil was around when we were in college, because we really did have it was a it wasn't just my class. I don't make it sound like that. Like koach Aama plays a huge role in this. Sure who he is, how he is, his personality, his little you know, yeah, his little one liners in media that combined with in a lot of ways, the people of Connecticut took us
in like we were their daughters. Yeah, Like that's how they would treat us, Like they would send us cookies all the time, and Brownie's on our birthday. Like there was there was I don't know, this familiar thing, familiar thing happening. Yeah, but it all led to and then the basketball play. We were dominant in my four years. I mean we were dominant. So you're winning all the time.
And I think if you look back in the history of women's sports, there are so now that we've broken through in twenty twenty four in these unbelievable ways, especially in basketball, it's going to feel normal, right, Like all these franchises are going to have crazy success, whether it's attendance, viewership numbers. But if you look back at the history, there always were random teams or random programs that somehow found a way randomly. I'm just thinking of the Portland Thorns,
the NWSL team in Portland. They sell out, they've been selling out for years. They kill it and it's just like, oh, like, what happened, what's the magic potion? Why aren't people copying it? But I think the truth is there's just some scenarios, or there were some scenarios where like a couple of variables were the right exact recipe, and Yukon women's basketball falls into that. And then you add on Nancy a tournament, which is just like a marketing.
Machine, right right, So you talk about your four years at Yukon, you obviously played for a legendary Hall of Fame coach. A few questions. What lessons did you learn from coach and your time of winning? Because all your Connecticut is win. How has that shaped you into business today?
I think the two things I take with me from Coach Rayama. One is preparation. He always used to tell
us about. He would do this like comparison between how it felt when you were ready for a test, right, how it felt when you had studied for that test, how you feel when you walk in that classroom versus when you crammed and you weren't quite ready, and just he would really I vividly remember it was like tapping into that feeling because I feel like we can all right now close our eyes and feel what that feels like, right you walk in the class while you're like, yeah, exactly, exactly,
And so he would always try to tell us, this is how you want to feel on the basketball court, prepared right Like, of course, when you play a game, anything can happen. You have to that is what it is. But the things that you can control, you have to and you have to prepare in the ways that you can. So that I took with me for sure, and then he used to always say basketball is not a game of how to, it's a game of when to, and that I think is probably well the preparation as well.
What does that mean?
Everybody knows how to shoot? Everybody knows, especially at a certain level. Right everybody knows how to dribble, shoot, pass, But do they know when to do they know when to do this? Do they know when to do that? And to be honest, when I think of my own play, that's probably been the separator for me because I'm not the tallest, Like I was fast when I was younger, but like as time goes, you're not the fastest, you're not the quickest. But I knew when to do those things.
I knew when to pass, I knew when to shoot. I knew when this needed that or that needed this.
I love that. I want to just share one quick thing there because Lupinella taught us another common denominator that I played in Seattle in my first seven years, started in ninety four and left in two thousand and lou who was a great teacher, would always say the when when do you do this?
The scoreboard would teach you when you take, when.
You swing, when you try to hit a home run when you move a guy over, so that resonates with me as well.
I want to talk about this transition from the college game, which is we've talked about Massive to the WNBA when you made it, and I've heard you talk about this in interviews, the culture shock as it were, of going from guaranteed sold out to far from guarantee sold out to say the least, I think we're interested in what it feels like as a player and as a human, But at that point you're becoming smarter and smarter about the business. What are you making of that as you make that transition.
So early on nothing, I'm just like cool, I'm a professional, Yeah, like whatever, I'm figuring it out. You know, I'm moving from New York, Connecticut to Seattle, which was difficult, super far from everybody, so I'm just kind of like getting
through it. Some of the early stories or early memories that I have that I've told about is when you know, I've just gotten drafted, fresh off the plane, the Sonics are in the playoffs, and they take me to like what is like my first media day essentially, and they're preparing me for it, and I'm kind of like Okay, cool, Like I've just come from the final four, you know what I mean, And Yukon and I walk in and I'm like, well, is everybody here yet, you know, because
there's not that many people, right, And so that was that's the culture shock you're talking about. And then of course, you know college, you're flying charter. Everything is like, you know, you're staying at the Ritzes or whatever it is. And interestingly enough, we didn't charter. Obviously the WNBA did it, but my rookie year we were actually still owned one hundred percent by the NBA, so we hadn't gone to
individual ownership models yet. So I did have like one year maybe two I can remember exactly where we still were getting some NBA treatment, So the like didn't we didn't fly charter, but the hotels we stayed in we're all super nice, you know. We we had a practice facility because we were with the Sonics, which is kind of standard at that time. A lot of the WNBA teams would use their NBA affiliate practice facility. But yeah,
so we had some bells and whistles. But then I think the media coverage is probably the best story to tell that that showcase like where where it was compared to college. But very quickly I started playing overseas. And I actually just say this as like a matter of fact, we were all making so much money overseas that in a sense, I don't want to say we didn't care because we cared, but because we're making so much money over there. When CBA negotiations come up, we were like, okay, whatever,
just get it done. We want to keep we want in the weeds.
Right, we want to keep playing, and the money's fine, not here but over there, so let's just just do it.
And so when you say making a lot of money, give me a range of for me personally, yeah, or the league high love.
It's hard, Yeah, it's hard. It's so individual. So I would say early on, I mean always well over six figures, and early on, like my first couple of years, we're talking like I've got them really going back like in the like three to six hundred thousand dollars range. But that's all like it depends how many months you play.
So usually your doc that's what you're making. In Russia.
Yeah, in my first couple of years, but I only went for like five months, so like bang for your bucks, not so bad. By the end of my time, now we're up in like the million dollar range.
Wow.
So I would say like that was started probably like let's call it, like three hundred thousand, and then by the end I was much closer to a million.
Wow.
And yet with bonuses you can get over right, and.
You've got endorsements and all that, And yet it's plateauing generously here. And so how are you sort of rectifying that in your mind? What are you thinking and what sort of business decisions are you making with all of that in mind for yourself?
Yeah, so none of my business ventures if you want to call it that at that point in time, So let's call it. You know, I'm in my thirties. Let's say, like I'm forty four now, so I'm like thirty years old. They were all I was betting on. People Like I have a good friend of mine who I grew up with. I always joke if he had called me and said I'm opening up a zoo, I would have invested, Like I'm opening up that, I would have invested. He wanted
to do restaurants. That's like my first big investment. So we now have I think it's five in the Boston area, So what kind of restaurant like upscale bar food vibes Like, that's how it started, and I got lucky. They killed it. I got my money back within like a year or two years. Wow, yes, killed it. I know in the restaurant business, I know, I know, Yeah, I got lucky. And as you're.
Writing these checks, is there a part of it as excited or part of you is more nervous.
I know I was excited. Really, I feel like I was investing in the people, not the businesses themselves.
Whether it's given your background or ukon or whatever it is. Do you feel confident as a at that point? Is a business person You're like, yeah I got this.
No, no, no, But I feel like I sit here now and say I'm confident in my ability to read people. Another business I'm invested in are again a friend I grew up with. Her and her husband have sports center facilities in New Jersey. So you know you rented out, you do you host like leagues have their tournaments there. That kind of a thing killing it, Yeah, but I
invested in them right right. It's very shark tank in that way, because like it's their life and I'm like you know how like they always invest in people when it's like their life. Yeah, so I felt like it was a good investment.
Yes he does know that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, shar I want to get inside your head a little bit. As opportunities must come from all over the place. Are you someone that goes kind of wide and shallow or narrow and deep in the things that you like and walk us through if a deal comes through? How quickly do you say no? How quickly does it go to like there's a maybe? And then yeah, I.
Think I'm more so I'm learning. I'm still learning very much. I've had moments of wide and shallow. I don't like it. I don't like it. I like narrow and deep better. And I think assuming the investment that I'm looking is something that I feel like values are aligned, I feel like I can, you know, provide some sort of whatever it is, nuance, expertise. Then it does. It usually moves pretty quick. I kind of know right away, Like when something catches my eye, I kind of know right away.
And then when something feels a little not often in a bad way or a negative way, which is maybe not right, I kind of get like that initial initial like ping, and then obviously, like the financial piece of it is usually what I have to figure out, just like how much is you know, like how do you do this? You know? So that's yes, that could be very scary, and I've you know, I've hit and I've missed.
So I want to talk about one big decision that you make in your career that's one of the most recent decisions, and it's something that comes to you, which is you're done playing and somebody sort of like virtually knocks in your doors like hey, do you want to own part of this team?
Or at least that's how the story gets told us the story.
Yeah, no, that's not that far off. It was actually right after I retired, probably a month and you know, obviously have a great relationship with the ownership group in Seattle, so like, hey, we want to show you. So they were just opening up and doing like a race for like a small amount of investors. So the three women that own our team, they were the sole owners and then they just were doing this raise in this moment.
So I was being asked to get involved in that, and they're like, we want to show you the investor deck the same way we've been showing everybody like we want to treat you like a real you know what I mean by real, like like we don't know you, basically like we want to present. So a lot of this is going to be redundant. Your picture is going to show up a couple of times, just ignore that. But this is what this is.
We've had some of the most impressive and important you have heard it for super exactly.
Yeah, So I was like, okay, So they sat me down. We did know. They took me through the whole deck. And obviously this wasn't about convincing me and to believe like I believe because I've been preaching that people should get in the probably the last three or four years. It was like, get in now, because A you're gonna look like a genius in five to ten, but B in a couple of years, it's not gonna be this cheap like get in now. So I didn't need to
be convinced of any of that. But in the moment, what I wasn't sure about was because I've literally just retired, I was just like, well, how does this impact any other business things I might want to do, Because it does. I mean, we all just saw what Tom Brady that like laundry list of things he can and can't do it. Being an owner of a team when you still want to stay involved in the sport does have implications. So I just wasn't ready to pull the trigger yet. And
that's the only reason why it took. It ended up technically taking like a year and a half to get done. For like a year, I just like waited. I see, I want to see what was what? What impacts this? What impacts that I kind of wanted to live my life not have to worry about. You know, like our CVA negotiations are going to start soon, so we can't talk about anything. So like that. I want to be able to be free to speak. I didn't want to
be held back. And then as time went I was like, Okay, I don't want to be I want to be a genius. I don't want to be the idiot who got into line.
Yeah, so you said something that I would love to dig into, which is what you were seeing from a business perspective while you were still playing.
That made it so obvious.
What was it that like just made you so convinced other than it's an awesome game. Yeah, there's got to be something tangible from a business perspective that you're seeing.
What is it?
Yeah, So I'll actually start at the end, which is so Pagebeckers is, you know, about to be a senior whatever year was she was in high school?
So high school, okay, senior in high school.
Twenty eighteen nineteen, something like that. And I'm starting to see on social media like this kid's got buzz. People are following her. You know, you go to her Instagram account, who knows what it was. She's got three four, five hundred thousand followers, which for a high school kid, a basketball player. So I saw that and I was like, huh. I was like something like something's like there's something is
clicking for that generation. So it's kind of the end because when I saw that, I was like, oh, we're good to go. But from my own experience, what I already knew and what a lot of us already knew, was yes, we weren't making a ton of money from
our WNBA salaries, but I was getting endorsement deals. I did have value, like significant financial value to come speak at events or represent you know, a certain company, or I mean even down to the like hey, my kids getting bought mitzfoot, I'll pay you this to come show up at this event. So there was like a disconnect. I was like, wait a minute, I'm getting these offers off the court because I'm a basketball player, but on the court, the business part of the basketball is not
getting the looks or the value. So then I started learning about how the systems are not really set up for the WNBA to succeed. So I knew it wasn't going to be easy. But I also was like, the reason that this has not kaboomed the way we're seeing it now isn't because people don't like women's basketball, right, Like how many times would you hear ten years ago,
like nobody goes to those games. And then I'm like, well, that's weird because I was just in the finals and it was sold out and people are seeing it now and they're like, wow, look at this crowd support. And by the way, the attendance has been record breaking. It's not to take away from this year. Every finals I've ever played in has been like that, with the exception of a few where we couldn't play not in Seattle.
We had to go on the road, and some of those teams couldn't get their arenas, so we had to play in smaller arenas. So that happens, see how the systems aren't set up. But all you hear, all the narratives and the conversations were like, oh, nobody cares, nobody watches, but I knew. I walk around the streets, I get stopped for pictures like obviously people care, right, And this
is ten fifteen years ago. So anyways, but if you bring it back around to seeing the page Beckers getting that attention in high school, I was like, oh, something's changing.
And that's a really interesting point because I remember that. I remember that very well. Page buckets like all of that going. You know, she commits to UKND. It's like, oh you gone, you know, here we go. And it certainly presaged what we saw over the last two years, right or the last maybe three years in the NCAA with Caitlin and Angel and whatnot. Like the page mania was really there's a lot of heat around her.
Yeah yeah, so now like for me that what that said was like society's changing, Like younger people are interested in women's basketball or girls basketball. She was in high school. Yeah, and you had even not just girls, but boys. Like what I remember during the pandemic, you know, we're all bored. Page was like going on her ig Live and like people were coming in. You know, you can like bring one in and it's like NBA guys. So that's different. Now,
that's different. And that all speaks to like the cultural cachet that I feel like pro sports usually has that women's basketball for some reason, we were you know, I like, we were the butt of the joke on SNL skits. Yeah, we weren't cool just yet. And Page to me marked this moment of coolness.
I mean, especially given this moment you alluded to it that we're sitting in for women's sports, there's a lot of when too. It feels like going on now. So when you make this investment, take us into that start thinking.
So some of its luck in a sense, I think Together is a great example of the when too. This was a scenario where it was twenty eighteen nineteen. I get a call from Alex Morgan and she has this idea, And the easiest way to tell it is she calls me on the phone. She's like, you know, Lebron has uninterrupted, right, Derek Jeter has Players Tribune, So these athletes are starting to build these platforms to tell other athletes stories. She's like,
and they do cover women, both of them. They've covered women's that I've been covered by both of those platforms, but there's not one dedicated to women's sports. But the win too of it all is here you had myself, Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim comes on board, some Ommanuel four athletes that have been living our athlete lives. We see what's happening in front of us, We understand the landscape and we can like sense something. So we all come
together and together gets formed. Now the lucky part is you can't predict what happened in women's sports from let's call it twenty nineteen, equal pay for the World Cup, the women's the US women's national team twenty twenty happens. What comes from that is the WNBA does their bubble season, a lot of activism. We're able to stand for something bigger than ourselves while playing the game that is now on TV a lot more because there's nothing on TV
right at this point. Then you have Sedona Prince. She shares her TikTok of the discrepancies between the men's and women's trade rooms. Yeah, so you have all these moments that in some way we're luck right, but together was formed before this. We launched like shortly after, but the wheels were in motion, things were in place, and boom, when we launched, we're ready to catch all that. And now where I would argue one of the more important
platforms in telling athlete stories. And again we were just ready to do it. So when this moment hits, we're right on top of it.
Describe what it started as and is it more or less what you imagined it would be.
It's not too far from how it started to where it is now. But I think when it started, we were just trying to tell the stories of women in sports, right, shine the light on people that don't always get the light shot on them. And as you know, as it turns out you fast forward to now, you start to realize.
You know, men's sports, a lot of their fans are generational fans, right, Like you go to a Yankee game because your dad took you and because his dad took him, and so on and so forth, and that's how a lot of the fans are like become die hard. And for women's sports, we just don't have that history yet. And so for women's sports, a lot of it is the storylines. It is the players stories. I feel like the best parallel is the Olympics, Like we all do it.
We turn on the Olympics, you happen to catch a special for like somebody who's about to, I don't know, play badminton, and now you're like tuning in. You're like the biggest badminton fan ever. Women's sports thrives on that, like we have data around that now.
So the shoulder programming types toime, yeah, like yeah, understanding the players, gaining to know them in a different way.
And so much of men's sports, like we know so much about male athletes like Meganos yeah, biasmosis almost yeah, like we know what they eat for breakfast. You don't even know how somehow you do and that just doesn't
exist as much for womens sports. So Together's part of Together's mission statement was definitely to make a mark in the media landscape in that way telling these stories, whether it's you know, a quickie on Instagram where you tap in you see something for thirty seconds, or becoming more like long form, whether it's documentaries or series, and so
that was always what we wanted to do. But I think the part we couldn't have predicted was the community that it built, and how the identity of the company itself almost was yes, dictated by the founders, but more so dictated by that community, like what they wanted, what they were inclined to be, almost like obsessed with, and then you're kind of feeding that. It was almost like a north Star in a sense.
I bet she never thought she'd be in the T shirt business. Talk about that.
I mean that that's incredible.
I mean, that's a cool, fascinating business story.
So one part of it is it shows you the gap in merchandise that exists in women's sports. You can't get like cool stuff in women's sports. It's changing, Don't get me wrong. I'm not really talking about the last couple of years. A friend of mine and I were just talking about the like pinket and shrink it. I actually didn't know that term.
What is it?
Yeah, So yeah, I didn't know either. So it's basically like, all right, we'll use the Yankees. I bet when the Yankees, at some point, let's call it fifteen years ago, when they wanted to get merch going for women, they would make it smaller obviously, and then they would just make it pink, pink it and shrink it. So but the truth is, like not everybody wants that, right, Like I actually would prefer to have like a real you know, Yankees uniform or whatever, like a jersey. Yeah, you'd want it,
like the authentic thing. You don't want the pink version that fits me. Yeah. So all that to say, the everyone watches women's sports t shirts proves the huge gap that is in merchandise in women's sports, but also it proves or business.
Right.
For a long time, women's sports was looked at as a charity, this box some people would check. And now I think we're being looked at as like a real investment or real business. But the people involved in this world are still very much about the impact and they're still very much about making statements and making points. I think when people wear that shirt there's like a pride to it, like yeah, like this is factual now, you know. And so there's something to that.
How did the T shirt come about? Like what's the origin story?
Yeah?
So I was not there, like I'm not in the day to day by any means. We had done a couple of different T shirt drops through the years, and then this particular time they were in a room. From what I understand, a bunch of the people that work it together just kind of thrown out ideas and you know, oh I mentioned this earlier. A lot of people were like, nobody watches women's sports, and so they were like, what can we do to like play on that, Like do
we do a shirt? And you know that I didn't know what was called this, by the way, but SpongeBob SquarePants font yes, where it goes like uppercase lowercase, uppercase lowercase. So they were thinking, like, oh, do we do something like that, as if to say no, you know, you're making fun of it. And then I think it was Justine Brown a couple people in the room, they were like, why don't we just write like but that's wrong, we just have like everybody watches one in sports? And there
you have it. Wow, And it went crazy And a big pivotal moment of that was dawns Daily wearing it during a South Carolina game on I want to I want to say national television. Yeah, and then it just took.
Off and so is is something like that within the company. I mean, is it measurable? How do you measure the impact of something like that either on your business on the broader world, Like, what are there metrics underneath that that you can then use?
Yeah, I mean this one's pretty simple. It made a lot of money. Yeah, it made a lot of money that wasn't expected, which obviously in business that's.
Always you know, welcome millions.
So yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know if I'm supposed to like but yeah, yeah, yeah, like way up there. So now, like I said, this was this this arm of the company that was there but not really given a ton of thought er dedication to. And now it's like, oh, like we have something here, like what do we want to do with this? How do we want to grow this? How we want to sustain it? And so now those are the conversations.
Because you're doing team you'll you'll do a collab with a team, right with their team colors Colors.
Yeah, yeah, and we did for the Olympics. We did it in French, which is really cool. So that was nice. I'm sure there's going to be Yeah, there's going to be more.
And so that becomes a sort of if I'm understanding you sort of an unanticipated growth area then for together that you continue.
To invest in.
Yeah yeah, absolutely totally unexpected and now totally real.
Yeah yeah. You know.
One of the things that I think we're we've all seen anecdotally but also empirically, is this rise in in viewership, Like, so, how do you how does that sort of carry through to what you're doing, the decisions you make about what to make. It's sort of the the how to, the what to, and the and the when to that you mentioned earlier, So how do those viewership numbers affect you?
Honestly, it's just kind of like a big I told you so, Like, oh, if you invest in this, because for me, the story of the WNBA, if I were to be like super simple about it was look where we got without any investment. Now imagine if you invested in it. Like we were able to do this while having like legit, concrete poured all over us constantly, like nothing can grow when it has concrete poured on it. And yet we still found a way. And sometimes this
one's a little bit of a stretch. I'm working on this, this talking point.
Your worship works time.
But I always felt this I was like women's sports. Girls sports isn't some like random startup where we're like, no, trust us, Like girls aren't going anywhere, They're going to keep being born and sports isn't going anywhere. Like these two things like girls' sports and women's sports are not going anywhere. So to me, it's like why not invest
in something like that? And and then of course when you start to change the narratives, that's probably been the biggest key and what I call that cool factor, Like we have this line of cool now where culturally, like like the WBA Finals, like people felt like the intensity they were steaks on that game, like you know, I'm
actually not like a huge baseball fan. I like tap it, but like the World Series, like hell yeah, I'm watching that right, So we never had that where the casual is like, oh this means something.
Yeah, So anyways, I think changed that, Like what changed it? Because that stakes point is a really really interesting one, Like what changed the perception of the stakes?
I think it's this cool factor that I keep referencing. I think we were like in the consciousness of the casual fan, we weren't worth it. It didn't matter. And I always feel like in fandom there's like three categories. There's the diehards. They're there no matter what, like, doesn't matter, they are there. They are a ride or die. Then there's the people that don't like it, which every sport has that. Yeah, the people that don't like it. And
that's fine. I always say, like women's basketball, if it's not your thing, that's cool. Like, but if it's not your thing, that's cool. Like there's stuff I don't like, that's fine. But then there's that larger piece, or that larger group, which is the casual fan, right, the one that isn't really into it, but is going because their
friends are going and it's cool to be there. And so we've always struggled in that and that's where I'm going back to this like consciousness, like people just I mean, we were the butt of the jokes, yeah, and it was really hard to break through. So if I were to nutshell it, I would say things that I've already mentioned.
The twenty twenty season like a Page Becker's DANCA final four has always been amazing, Sodona Princess TikTok, Kobe Bryant wearing the WNBA hoodie, like there was these little moments of breakthrough and then all of a sudden, this player named Kaitlyn Clark comes and the way I frame it is, fire was going. It was burning. It was burning, and it was burning brighter like even if you look at a twenty twenty three viewership in the WNBA finals, it
was way higher than twenty twenty two. Like it was starting. The fire was there. But Kaitlyn came and she poured gasoline all over the thing. Yeah, and just took it to another level and she broke through. I think with her logo threes. It was we finally had the anecdote to dunking.
Oh interesting, because.
All anybody ever wants to say is you're not Literally they don't literally say this, but what they are saying the translation is like, you're not worth it. I can probably beat you, you can't even dunk. But now it's, oh, that girl's hitting logo threes. I don't think I can do that. Yeah, And everybody respects that. Men, women, there's a respect factor and that leads into all the things you're seeing and the cool factor and it just is born from that.
So, so you talked about years ago, even a decade ago, you starting to foresee what could be for the w fast forward to where we are today, five ten years, What is the upside.
For this league?
Because I don't think anyone really knows that.
Yeah, no, I know. I mean I'm hopeful that in a couple of years we look at the media deal that we just signed and we're like, oh, needs to be bigger. You know, I'm hopeful for that because that's always been part of the you know, the argument like men's sports is so obviously so successful, pick a leak, it doesn't even matter. But how much growth can actually happen only like a percentage point or two, right, and you hope for that. But for women's because we haven't
had the investment, the media coverage, all the things. The growth is insane and it's hard to put an exact number figure on it. I personally think my semi hot take it's not that hot. I think the women's basketball is going to be the biggest story at the LA twenty twenty eight Olympics, and I think that is gonna We're going to continue to grow in the next four years the way you've seen it this year, it's going
to continue to grow. The page Beckers, the ju Ju's Flage, Johnson all of this young talent that builds huge brands and huge fan bases in college. By the way, that's another part of this whole story that was always a major disconnect. I went to Yukon, I had huge following WNBA Gon it was like it didn't come with and that's for years. Yeah, but now it's starting to. I think Nil plays a role on that, and now it's
starting to. So now all these young players are going to come in, They're going to you know, hit the stage and meet up with the Caitlin's and the Stewies and the Asia Wilsons. And in four years when we hit the Olympics, that growth will will get to a point where that Olympics could then be like that next gasoline layer, if you will.
You know, one way Jay's way of thinking about it is there's always going to be haters for every league, right for men and women, you name it. Everyone says, well, w has been a failure for so long. I look at it a little bit different. First of all, you got to give David stern commission David stern On a lot of credit for his vision, you know, almost thirty years ago or whatever. But if you look at the NBA compared to the WNBA in the first twenty five years.
You can make an argument that a W has been more successful than that NBA in the first twenty five years. So when you think about upside, it's right on track. It is a growth business and it's doing quite well for being such a young league.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's one of the talking for mes for sure.
Let me ask you this because I think it's very interesting when you said, Yukon you have this enormous fan base and it doesn't transfer when you go to Seattle. How much has social media impacted that? Because one of the things that I looked at was like, wait a minute, they have more followers than.
Some of our guys.
What's happening here? So you have a real matric in your face that you can't ignore, even if you are a hater. So how much of social media played a part in that?
Huge? Huge Some of it is that we have big followings. I think you're right. A lot of times you go check male athletes and it is it's surprise. You're like, oh, it's like it catches you off guard for a second. And I'm thankful for social media. It played an incredibly huge role in what we're seeing now, not just in women's basketball, I think all of women's sports, because we were all able to use it to tell our stories. We're able to use it to show different parts that
you weren't seeing. I mean one of my favorite favorite it's not a great story, but favorite because it kind of tells the story. So I'm into fashion. It's not like my favorite thing, but I like getting a fit off every now and then. And when that was becoming cool in the NBA, we were also wearing our little fits to the game. But we didn't always have photographers.
Mmm.
So there was a year where I had to especially on the road. So at home we could tell our team and like, hey, can we get the photographer when we show up? Cool, no problem.
But on the road for your tunnel fit.
Yeah, for a tunnel fit. But on the road we couldn't get a photographer. There were years where we had our PR guy on his iPhone just like snap it, and then what we would do is we would post it on our own social media. And that's one example social media. There's a thousand, but that's one example I like to use to show how we were able to use social media. To show stuff that the larger I guess media landscape wasn't wasn't going to get to see if we didn't, if we didn't put it on our own channels.
I'd love to talk for a minute, if we can, about your partnership with Megan Rapino, especially when it comes to the investments that you guys have made in each other's sports. Yeah, the work that you're doing together with a touch more. How does that all work and how does it evolve?
Well, we're in couples therapy, so there's your answer. No, it's been good.
Sometimes we hear that on the pod.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it's been great because Meghan and I are so different but really compliment each other, and we're seeing that show up in business. Like I'm you know, I just preached preparation and know when to so I'm like very much like the planner, and I like I like to like when we do our pod, you know, I'm kind of the one more leading from like one topic to the next. I'm the one like
keeping that run a show in my head. Where's Meghan's more spontaneous and more off the cuff, and you need both so you're like Jason, Yeah.
And what have you learned?
I mean, I'd be interested in what you've learned through the Gotham investment.
I would imagine, you know, these are two you know, growth leagues, different paths, different stages of growth. Women's soccer has literally failed three times already professionally in the country. The w to Alex's point has been, you know, growing solely and then all of a sudden, really quickly. What do you take from each of those?
The better way to answer your question is actually, when Megan and her national team were in their equal pay fight, they were also doing a CBA and it was pretty much at the same time that we were doing our CBA. Oh interesting, Yeah, because to your point, the leagues are different. We're very lucky at times. I've called the NBA gift anna curse because it's such a gift. We wouldn't be
here without the NBA. But the curse part of it is sometimes you need individual attention, you know, so that exists, but very much a gift. And the WNBA is so much further along because of you know what we've been able to learn from the NBA. Where's the NWSL It has like almost less rules whereas in the WNBA we're very much at times we're hamstrung by NBA rules. Now, sometimes they fit for us and sometimes they don't, and that's what we're figuring out or or we have been
figuring out. But my point being, we were able to learn from each other to be like, oh, that's how you would do that, Like, oh, let me see if that would work over here, and vice versa. What I've seen in my time with Gotham is now that the Tish family has bought the team, you really see what it means. And I feel like you guys have done this a great job of this with the Links in Minnesota, Like you see what it is when they put investment, and you see what it is when they're like, go
get those good players, Championships come finals come Now. Where the leagues are totally different is the salary cap of it all. The WNBA is a hard salary cap. There's a zero wiggle room. You are like you either your money fits or it doesn't, like that's it. Whereas the NWSL so they have like a little more there's a little more like fluidity in there. We can kind of I don't even know what to call it. It's not. Yeah, Angel City just had a thing, so I don't want to.
Say we're going to move to the rapid fire portion.
Ten questions. I'm gonna edit hard. You're a pro, will bounce back and forth. What's one word to describe your deal making style quick?
What's more important your instincts or data instincts.
Who's your dream deal making partner? Oh Man Alex.
What's the best piece of advice you've received on deal making or business?
Probably something in the do your homework where world. I don't have like an exact quote. Yeah, yeah, how to?
Yeah?
No, one to?
I mean, what's the worst advice you've been given?
I haven't really been given, guys. I'm open for advice. If it wants to give me any good or bad, I am open.
What's your hype song before a big meeting or a big negotiation.
I'm a jay Z fan, Okay, so anything jay Z? Yeah? I mean to have my go tos, but Lucifers won My first song's another?
You've won at the end double A level, you won at the WNBA level, and you've won at the Olympic level.
What's your favorite title?
God, it's really I know this is a rapid fire. It's really hard not to pick Olympic gold medals, Yes, particularly my last.
One, particularly your fifth.
Yeah yeah, But the twenty eighteen WNBA Championship does have a special place. Why because we were going through a rebuild and I stuck around for it. Whereas I could have requested a trade or tried to go win somewhere else, I stuck around. I was like, no, I'm going to do this and never expected to be there again. So to do it unexpectedly that late in my career, it's like a you do it unexpectedly early, and when you do it then you're like, oh, it's great, I'm going
to be your over year you're not. But when you do it unexpectedly later in your career, there's just something special to it.
If you're can to even watch one sport for the rest of your life, which one is it?
It's basketball. What team do you want to see win a championship more than anything?
Well, Seattle Storm, it's no other answer.
Not the Huskies.
You know, I wouldn't mind seeing the next one. Wow, okay, that'll be number three.
Do you have a fun fact about yourself that your teammates would be surprised.
To hear about Oh, good question.
Probably that I made a really poor decision in college and got my tongue Pierce. WHOA, that's usually the reaction.
Do you still wear?
No? Our college coaches like got word that some people got it done. I took that thing out immediately.
Wow, I cannot imagine's face.
I was like, I thought you were saying with me having I was like, yeah, I can't even imagine anything.
Yeah, that's that's a given.
This has been really fun. Thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you.
The Deal is a production from Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals. The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly. Our producers are Anamazarakus, Stacey Wong, and Lizzie Phillip. Original music and engineering by Blake Maples. Our managing editor is David E. Ravella. Our executive producers are Jason Kelly, Brendan Francis Newnham, Jordan Opplinger, Trey Shallowhorn, Kyle Kramer, Andrew Barden, Kelly Laferrier, and Ashley Hoenig. Sage Bauman is.
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