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What's up? Everybody?
Welcome to this edition to the Steph Nick Smith Show coming at you at the very least three times a week over the digital airways of YouTube and of course iHeart Radio. As always, I like to take a moment to pause and thank my subscribers and followers for the support and love that they continue to show in this direction.
Thank you so much.
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Once again, straight shoot a book dot com to get yourself a copy. You know, on this particular day, I can't wait to talk to the one guest that I'm gonna have for this particular show. It's iso. It's me one on one with somebody and his name would happened to be Michael Rubin. He is the founder and the boss for Fanatics and every year since last year. Last year was this inaugural year. This year again they're having
something called fanatic Fest. When you think about Comic Con and you think about things of that nature, fanatics Fest essentially is the sports version of all of that, where you just bring the entire sports world together and they descend upon one locale to celebrate sports in a variety of ways, games and guest hosts and all of this other stuff that's going on. And fanatics Fest was obviously
a wonderful, wonderful experience when I experienced it last year. First, take my day job on ESPN airing every weekday Warned from ten am to twelve noon was their live for the debut of fanatics Fest. Last year, seventy thousand people showed up at the last minute for fanatics Fest. This year, it's expected that over one hundred thousand people will show up and it's going to continue to grow and proliferate before our very eyes, and I can't wait. I'm very,
very excited. But no matter how excited I am, I'm not nearly as excited as the man that I'm.
About to talk to next.
As you will see, it's a one on one conversation about fanatics Fest and all that it entails with the originator, the founder himself, the one and only Michael Rubin. He is here with me right now. Take a look, my guess is the founder and CEO one of the biggest digital sports platforms that connects fans with their favorite sports figures. He's joining me now to discuss the second annual Fanatics Fest n YC. Please welcome to one and only Michael Rubin to the show.
What's up, big time? How are you man? How's everything?
I'm getting excited, man, A couple of days away. Ready Fanac's Fest number two.
We're ready to go, baby, damn right, damn right.
Last year's inaugural fanatics Fest was a huge success. Obviously I was there. How many people were there? And how many are you expecting this year?
We had seventy thousand people in the first year, and we're definitely gonna have well over one hundred thousand people in year two.
It's amazing.
I mean last year we started with the NFL, the NBA, Hockey, Baseball, WW and UFC. In addition to all six of those sports coming back, we now have FIFA Premier League F one, Nike, Usta, Dick Sporting Good.
So it's gonna be a movie. I'm psyching.
I just looked at the list this morning of all of the athletes and artists and celebrities coming. I think we have three times amount of people coming from last year this year. I mean, just some of the biggest names in sports and culture. So it's gonna be a blast.
Explain to the audience how you originally came up with this idea, What was the motivation of the impetus for it all.
Explain that, Yeah, you.
Know, I had been to so many music festivals. It's like Coachello. I've been to south By Southwest, I'd been to Comic Con, and I'd been to the National which a big training card show, and like, I wondered, why is there no sports festival, and I like.
Say to my team, like, gottlam check, is there any in the world? There really wasn't. There had never been a sports festival.
There had been like, you know, FanFest with the Super Bowl for the NFL, or a fan fest with the NBA All Star Game, but never really a sports festival. I think the reason was there was nobody other than Fanax that could really corral all the different sports together and then also have individual partnerships with so many athletes that mattered to bring.
It all together. So, you know, typical.
Fanac style, we just said let's go for it, no idea whether it was going to work or not.
And three weeks before launched last year, I'm like, how to get myself into this?
This is too hard and I'm like, wait a second, that's not like that's all right, So we're gonna make it work. And sure enough, seventy thousand people came the first year, and people just had an amazing time.
And that's what made this all worth while.
I seeing just so many happy fans and this is the most incredible weekend of their lives. And look, Steve en A, you came and opened it up last year. I remember watching many thousands of people just cheering, going crazy watching your show, and I didn't know what to expect, Like, I mean, three weeks earlier, I was like, how do I get myself into this mess? So, you know, it was a great weekend. And for me, this is really
just about a fan give back. Like, look, I think it's very easy to build a big company, it's not easy to build a beloved company. And we want to build a beloved company, and we're just getting started with
doing that. And you know, we've done done certain things really well and other things we haven't done well enough, but we really you know, our dream is to make an accent beloved company in the world, and this is a small piece of how you do that because you connect with you know, one hundred thousand plus fans live and then also you know, hundreds of millions of people via social media to see what happens there, and it makes people really have a special relationship with the fanatics.
Now, talk to us about what you believe you've done well, particularly with the Fanatics Fest. What is it that occurs there that really stands out that makes it such enjoyable for the fans to the point where seventy thousand shows up at the first ever event, and now you're expecting over one hundred thousand people to show up this Friday.
What is it that goes on there? It has people so riled up about it. I think there's so much to do for everybody.
Like take somebody like yourself, who has access to anything in the world.
But you could go there and spend three days, you'd see so.
Many people that you love, so many people that you want to catch up with.
And by the way, I know, you'd be.
Like doing different competitions, whether it's being in an F one car or you know you're ww walkout or how hard can you punch the UFC punching bag. It's just like there's so much to do for everybody. I can't wait to go. They just start sending me pictures. I'm going Thursday night because like I don't get to really experience it during the festival because I'm just going from person to person trying to make sure everything's going well.
But it's like the inner kid in us comes out because there's just so many great things to do and so many great people to see.
It's so much great content to watch.
Like I love that you're opening up, you know with first take this year from ten to twelve Friday morning, but there's six different stages with content every hour on the hour, and whether you're a football fan or WW fan or UFC fan, or you're a WNBA fan, there's just great content, great people, great activations. And the thing that's most interesting is how many people come from ten to seven Friday and Saturday and ten to four on Sunday.
They want to be there the entire time.
So that talks about just the amount of action that exists a fanatics fest.
Well, I got a busy schedule, especially covering these NBA Finals, but I would have been there just for you to begin with. But to have the time that I had last year, it was electric. I couldn't believe how packed it was. I could have believed how site everybody was to be there. And then on top of all, Tom Brady showed up, Peyton Manning showed up, Alan Arbison showed up.
I mean, every damn body was there.
Who can people expect to see this year? Is that something that you're a secret that you're holding there? Did to you until Friday?
Now we have.
We've already announced I think three times the amount of athletes, artists, celebrities coming this year versus last year. So in one of the things we did is removed the festival from August until June because we wanted to have active NFL players.
If you remember last year we did in August.
The problem with that was all the NFL guys were already in pre season. This year, in the NFL, we've got I think a third and a half of the starting NFL quarterbacks.
Got Jaden Daniels, c J.
Strode, Caleb Williams, Bryce Young, Joe Burrow. I know, we've got guys like Michael Parsons, DeVante Adams, CD Lamb.
Justin Jefferson.
I mean, there's so many, and I think there's fifty current NFL stars there. In basketball, you got Bron Wemby, kd Kat, James Harden and the amount of people even hitting me saying hey, Rube, like I want to come.
It's just like you got room for me. So everyone's been hitting me all weekend.
By we got Kevin Hart coming, Jay Z, Travis Scott. I mean, I remember last year Jay looked at me, He's like we were in the forty forty and he looked at me.
He said, this is the most incredible thing, Like Traff.
Took over and he's now the house DJ at forty forty, Like this is the most insane thing in the world. And by the way, trafvor at the time of his life. It's like everyone's coming back and so many more people. And one of the things you know about me, I love getting people together. And it's great to see so many great people getting together and so many great things that come from that. So you know, that's you know, there are a lot of things I suck up at.
One of the things, I'm not bad. It's just bringing breef people together and letting great outcomes come from that.
So I think we're gonna see a lot of that an.
AX Best issue too, And the content is amazing, Like if you just look day by day, hour by hour, what are all the different things I can do? There's so much to do, but you know talent, I mean, it's you're just gonna see people walking back and forth through the aisle.
It's like crazy because there's so much to do. You know.
I'm also here in the prize pool. There's a prize pool that's gonna take place, that's gonna include about two million in total cash and prizes.
Is that true? Two million in total catch and prizes? It is true.
And the funny thing is I just have been thanking people for coming right before I jumped on here, and the last person I hit was Eli Manning, and I guess he didn't know that.
So we're doing the Fanatics games.
And what the Fanatics games are, We're doing eight different athletic competitions.
You take your best six scores, you drop your worse too.
So it's things like football throwing accuracy, Baseball pitching accuracy, ww walk out you have ce punching accuracy accuracy. So anyway, again, you take your best six scores, you drop me worse two. So and we pair people in groups of two or three to go through the different games, kind of like God, you're competing on your own, but we still pair people, and just for sport, we decide to pair.
Originally, Kalid called me. He's like, Yo, do you see my run? Man? I'm so fast, he said, I want Brady in the games. He said, Brady may be able to beat me football, but I'll beast. I said. He was fast, reallytic, It's.
Amazing what you can do with AI these days. So so Khalid called me. He said, I want to take on Brady. So he's talking a lot of smack, talking a lot of smacks. So Khaled said, I could beat him in basketball, I could beat him in baseball, I could beat him.
In WW walkout.
So originally I called Brady and Brady said that may have better have an ambulance to follow him around like that.
That was his response. Then I realized we're missing something.
How do we not have Tommy and Eli going up against each other? So now we got a little threesome guarding off Tommy, Eli and Kalich. So there's gonna be a lot of shit talk during that. During that little uh threesome going down.
It's gonna be hilarious.
It's gonna be hilaric because DJ Kylla can't play no damn basketball. Now golf might be a different matter, but he can't play any damn basketball. I already saw him do that. He needs to stop that Dons sense, by the way, before I let's get on out of here. I got a couple of things. Number One, I gotta produce some mine. His brother is gonna be competing in some event.
He's one of the fifty fans that got picked.
And by the way, we're root we're rooting for your guys, brother, because you know it, if we can have an incredibly athletic don professional athlete win this, that's the best of the wall.
Right now.
A lot of our common friends are talking a lot of smack called me, say, yo, I'm taking that bag of a million dollars home.
Yo, I'm driving that five hundred thousandsf Ferrari out of there. Yo.
I'm taking that two thousand and three tops Lebron James rookie card. This what quarter million dollars, I'm taking that home. So I'm rooting for your guys brother.
I want him to win. I want the average fando wins.
And we try to cast this right, make sure there's some good competition, so that's gonna be fun.
And we may needs use.
Steven A to come commuentate, give a little bit of you know, when we got brading, Eli and Kali going down, you may need to jump in there and just do ten minutes of comedy because watching those guys.
Go competing, yeae, that's you trying to add more work. That's not trying to add more work to me, Michael, you know you're trying to add more work to me.
You do anything, so you know you coming in and be able to make fun of college.
I'm getting a little eli tellmy competition go, we need you man now.
I will say this though, I mean, I understand it's not your fault. You know, I'm gonna leave it alone, you know, because I know people get a little sensitive if I'm around because I'm in the media and stuff like that. But I do get a little jealous when I see other people at the White Party. I'm not gonna front because it's.
Other people in the media.
I'm like this, I would look better than them rocking all white. I've rocked my all white outfits from time to time. I would like something like that, but I'm not. I couldna be mad about it because I'm coming to fanatics, pest, But I just want you to know me at.
The right.
I was honored to just send you the shoes that only came to the people for the White Party. Even though there could be some white people the White Party you may have been a little critical of over the years, maybe like quarter of the White Party, you.
Know, But and you're just doing your job. You doing what you do. But I wanted to.
Make sure you have their shoes because their shoes are specials.
Anything. That's where no one could say shit.
You gotta be there, and you gotta be you, and I love you being you because you're the best.
That's right.
I'm gonna be there, man, and I'm looking forward to it. The one and only Michael Ruber for Fanatics. Fanatics Fest second Edition. Oh it's gonna be specially y'all. Javitson in New York City is big time, no doubt. Over seventy over one hundred thousand people showing up. I can't wait to be there. I look forward to seeing you Friday. My man can't and my brother love you, man, great senior, all right, same, I love you too, man, One and
only Michael Ruber right here. Fanatics Fests NYC twenty twenty five takes place June twentieth through the twenty second at the Jacob Javid Convention Center in.
New York City.
For ticket information, go to Fanaticsfest dot com. That's it for this special edition to the Stephen A.
Smith Show.
I'll be back with you in a couple of days, if not tomorrow, You never know.
With me.
There's a lot to talk about, and I'll be around to do just that. Until then, This is stephen A signing off, thanks again to the one and only Michael Rubin Fanatics Fests this weekend. Check it out Javitt Jacob Javid Center in New York City. It's a must attend event, make no mistake about it, and a whole bunch of people are gonna be there, just like Michael Rubin told you. Don't miss it, y'all. Until next time, it's a stephen A signing off. Peace of love, be safe, cou bless