The Sporting Class: Worldwide Leaders, Killer Apps, and Michael Jordan's Special Contribution

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Speaker 7 Coach, the energy out there felt different. What changed for the team today?

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Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Speaker 7 Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

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Speaker 10 Coach, one more question: play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

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Speaker 10 Please play responsibly, must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.

Speaker 11 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre.
Today's episode is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings, the crown is yours.
And today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Speaker 12 I get great cargo shorts and undies right after this ad.

Speaker 13 You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.

Speaker 11 Glad, David, that you're here. And you're not complaining about anything yet.

Speaker 9 Well, you did clean up my hair, I guess.

Speaker 9 I don't think you complained about your hair.

Speaker 12 It was an observation. Observations are not complaints.

Speaker 9 I wish I had that hair. Don't look great.
I wish I had that hair before.

Speaker 11 Isn't Observations are not complaints the title of the David Sampson story?

Speaker 11 Just a series of observations, totally neutral observations.

Speaker 12 You above all people know that. I do observe a lot.
I don't complain much. I don't like the dearth of snacks that exist right now in the office.
I'm hungry.

Speaker 9 I'm grumpy.

Speaker 11 John, can you put your headphones on, I guess, is the other thing.

Speaker 11 Very good.

Speaker 11 Jesus Christ. First time we've been doing this.

Speaker 9 How long?

Speaker 11 When did we start doing this show? Coca, when did we start doing the show? Can you tell me in my year?

Speaker 11 Because I have my headphones on when we started this. When I started doing this with John.

Speaker 12 So the way I started, I started just with John, and we were missing a third piece. And when we asked you to host this, August 2023.

Speaker 11 Wow.

Speaker 12 Do you remember what you said? You said, listen, I'm going to listen anyway. I might as well participate.
So therefore, it's the same hour that i'm spending that's right it was sort of like

Speaker 9 mo and larry without

Speaker 12 curly curly dan got upset that you chose to do this i got to be curly yes so dan wanted to be curly but he couldn't commit to the necessary time to be curly and then you stepped in and then off to the races and he's commented from time to time like hey you know i could sit in that chair

Speaker 12 i said yes that's true I mean,

Speaker 11 this chair, the structural integrity, is already a bit on the brink.

Speaker 11 It's good to see both of you guys, by the way. John, David.
John, are you happy to be here? David is seemingly always, as himself, kind of conflicted.

Speaker 9 I'm very happy to be here, including with you, Mr. Samson.
Thank you. Very nice to be here.

Speaker 9 And good, good head of hair.

Speaker 9 Are you crying? That was emotional for me. He's happy to be with me.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I'm surrounded. You understand? I'm surrounded in this company by people who are not happy to have me around.

Speaker 11 Well, but we love his podcasting. We love the game, David.

Speaker 11 We love what we do together.

Speaker 12 I have a story before we start.

Speaker 9 No one asked you for this story.

Speaker 12 It's a funny story about this show.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 12 It's a true story about the show. I was in an Uber

Speaker 12 on the way to the studio, and this had not happened to me yet.

Speaker 12 The driver of the Uber knew about, recognized my name and me, and didn't ask about Survivor, didn't ask about nothing personal, didn't ask about the Marlins.

Speaker 12 He was asking and mentioned that he listens to Sporting Class.

Speaker 9 That happened about

Speaker 11 20 minutes ago. And what did he want to know about us?

Speaker 9 Just, that's it.

Speaker 12 He just was happy to see us.

Speaker 9 He is captive to the radio. Yeah, he

Speaker 5 maybe a lot of he's driving all the time. He's got a lot of choices, though.

Speaker 9 Maybe a lot of things to say.

Speaker 11 Maybe he saw David holding up the app and mouthing to him. There's a tip at the end of this.

Speaker 12 Over $100, 15%. Under $100, 18%.

Speaker 9 That's helpful.

Speaker 11 Do you not do it?

Speaker 12 You Uber all the time. You do not do it that way.

Speaker 11 I do the automated thing. I don't even look.
Five stars and whatever the automated option is. I'm saying give them that.

Speaker 12 It's a difference between me and you right there.

Speaker 9 And the difference between the three of us is

Speaker 9 I never have any interest in rating. You know, every time I make a phone call now, it says, rate your phone call.
I'm like, well, I was in an argument. Does that mean it's a bad phone call?

Speaker 9 Or are you asking about the quality of the video? How do you know now?

Speaker 12 Hit not like. No, I do.

Speaker 9 Every time.

Speaker 9 I'd like to be able to hit a thing that says, please never ask me to rate, like, post, comment.

Speaker 11 Hold on. When I say that we're podcasters, John, the whole thing is that our audience needs to know.
Any Uber drivers out there need to know, like, subscribe, five stars.

Speaker 12 Thank you.

Speaker 9 However, it would not surprise you to find that my reflex tip at all times is whatever the highest option is.

Speaker 12 So that's about, that's about 22%

Speaker 12 on top of everything. Although, do you now tip anytime you go buy a bagel at H ⁇ H, and I love H ⁇ H, shouting out, even though they're not a sponsor, I shouldn't say it.

Speaker 12 But now when you get a bagel, there's a place when you do Apple Pay for adding a tip, and I hit no tip. Yeah, I feel free.
I don't normally tip when I go to tip.

Speaker 11 I don't co-sign David's no tip on the bagel strategy.

Speaker 12 So do you tip on top when you go to a newsstand and buy a sticker?

Speaker 9 I round up.

Speaker 12 Rounding up is different than tipping. Rounding up is you're too busy to wait for change.

Speaker 11 Well, that's a bit of a motive that you've assessed.

Speaker 9 For me, it's not about the

Speaker 9 not waiting, it's about I do not want to carry a bunch of coins in my pocket.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I don't have coins in my pocket, but you just have them in a pool that you dive into after work.

Speaker 9 That's exactly right.

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Speaker 11 I think we need to start with ESPN, though.

Speaker 11 And I say that knowing that John Skipper, to my right here, former president of ESPN, who had to figure out something like the decision that has just been made around the direct-to-consumer product that is the future of ESPN, a huge part of the Walt Disney company, which is its app.

Speaker 11 It's DTC app. Do you want to give the fine print on this?

Speaker 12 I want to give the branding first because remember, there was the talk of it being flagship, but they didn't like that.

Speaker 12 So what they they announced is their new thing that they've been working on for multiple years, if not multiple CEOs and presidents, what is called the four letters that we all associate and love and associate with the worldwide leader, ESPN.

Speaker 12 Wait for it, that's the name of it. They called it that.

Speaker 9 It's a good name.

Speaker 9 It's a good name.

Speaker 11 But we've seen, just before we get into the brass tacks of the numbers and the pricing, like

Speaker 11 Max,

Speaker 11 we hardly knew ye. Like, the name has been messed up actively.

Speaker 9 One of the advantages we enjoyed at ESPN before I got there, while I was there, and since I am not there,

Speaker 9 is that we have a single brand. Remember, ESPN took over the sports on ABC and called it ESPN on ABC.

Speaker 11 How hard was that?

Speaker 9 That was painful for the ABC sports people, right? A great tradition, lots of Brunearlage. I mean, ABC Sports was a great brand name, Wide World of Sports.

Speaker 9 But we had decided long ago at the company, we had one sports brand, and it was highly advantageous as we were competing with

Speaker 9 the company that owned AOL Sports and Sports Illustrated and CNNSI and

Speaker 9 this Turner.

Speaker 9 The idea of having multiple brand names for a single genre is baffling.

Speaker 9 And it usually has nothing to do with the fact of anything other than these sports illustrated people don't want to sublimate their name to AOL, nor does AOL want to sublimate their name.

Speaker 9 Somebody at the top of an organization needs to say, we have one brand name for sports. In our case, it was ESPN, and we were always fortunate to compete against people who had multiple brand names.

Speaker 12 Let me talk for a minute about mergers and how that works. So when two companies merge, merge, one of the things there's...

Speaker 11 Two companies love each other very much.

Speaker 12 No, they don't love each other. They're doing it to try to bolster both of their stock prices.
But there's two major discussions that happen. One, which of the CEOs is going to run the merged company?

Speaker 12 Because you have two CEOs. And two, what's the name of the company going to be?

Speaker 11 And the name is how fraught an argument.

Speaker 12 It is major. So I'm going to mention Morgan Stanley very quickly.
Morgan Stanley merged with Dean Witter and it became Morgan Stanley Dean Witter for a minute.

Speaker 12 And then Dean Witter disappeared and it's back to Morgan Stanley. Law firms do this where Proscow arose.
There's five names after it, but Proscow arose. Federal Express became FedEx.

Speaker 12 People have a way of saying things. ESPN, to your point, that is what people say.
That's what they associate.

Speaker 12 No matter what ESPN buys or who they merge with, ESPN would always come out on top of that discussion.

Speaker 9 We bought a soccer website in the UK back in 2000. It was called soccernet.com.

Speaker 9 And I

Speaker 9 had the great privilege to be in charge of it because I was running ESPN at the time. Because you lost it.
And I said, great. We're going to call this ESPN FC or

Speaker 9 ESPN football or ESPN soccer. And they're like, oh, we can't do that.
The people who know soccernet.com will be upset. They won't be upset.
People, they will not be upset.

Speaker 9 They care about the content as long as it's not confusing. They have trouble finding it.
They don't know what they're getting.

Speaker 9 A better brand is a better brand.

Speaker 9 My first appearance at ESPN was to start the magazine. They'd started a magazine, and it was called Total Sports.
Oh, I didn't know this. Yes.

Speaker 11 As a former ESPN, the magazine employee, I didn't realize it was something else.

Speaker 9 It was called Total Sports. And the first thing I said was, well, why isn't it called ESPN? Which is what we call the magazine.

Speaker 9 And they said, well, because people think of ESPN ESPN as a television station, they don't think we have expertise in magazines. And it was all people want to have their own brand.

Speaker 11 Well,

Speaker 11 hold on, though, just because I'm trying to now put the pieces together. So, John, is it true that what I am finding out today is that you are responsible for the name ESPN the magazine?

Speaker 9 No, yes, but it was ESPN the magazine. But I'm just saying, like,

Speaker 11 there was no comma. Is there a more, but yeah, so the tongue-in-cheek part of it, it, it's just the most clear embodiment of the philosophy you're articulating is the fact that the magazine was

Speaker 11 called ESPN the magazine.

Speaker 9 But it was called by one and all pretty much ESPN.

Speaker 9 Well, so. And by the way, ESPN.com, at one point, we took the dot-com off.
Right?

Speaker 9 It's a good decision, in my opinion, to call this ESPN. Why try to confuse people? And by the way, that's the marketing.
You want ESPN? Here is the best way to to get it.

Speaker 9 Buy our app, get everything, all the bells and whistles, which they keep saying. I'm not sure which bells and which whistles yet.

Speaker 12 I don't know who told Bob Iger what to talk about, but I was shocked at the way he described this.

Speaker 12 I understand why they've been building to this, and everyone in the market is petrified of CNN Plus. Petrified.

Speaker 11 Of what happened

Speaker 12 for a day.

Speaker 11 Of CNN Plus. Right.

Speaker 12 And there was a huge building to that. They were signing talent.
There was going to be a lot of stuff.

Speaker 9 Yeah, there was a lineup of net.

Speaker 11 There's a lineup of the whole thing.

Speaker 12 And I believe, am I wrong that it was on for a day? Is it, it may be, I'll take the over on a day, but it was not a year. I don't even think it was a month.

Speaker 9 It was brief. I don't think it was a day.

Speaker 11 March 29, 2022, shut down April 28th.

Speaker 9 It was almost a month.

Speaker 12 That's pretty good. My memory's wrong.
I thought it was like the next day.

Speaker 11 But the question of, and that was not even a reflection of the quality of the shows that they had lined up. It was this larger job.

Speaker 9 Well, the problem there, too, was it was a different entity. This new

Speaker 9 app, streaming service, is just

Speaker 9 overwhelmingly an aggregation of content you can already get, either on ESPN Plus or on your cable subscription.

Speaker 9 There are these so-called bells and whistles that will provide, oh, you know, if you round up, maybe 1% of the value here for the difference.

Speaker 11 But the difference, to be clear, right?

Speaker 11 If you're a consumer, what ESPN Plus, which has always existed as ESPN standalone app, what it did not give you was the stuff that you get as a fan of certainly live events through your cable subscription.

Speaker 9 All the best, well, that's because they couldn't, right? You had deals with the distributors that had requirements as to where else you could put the content they were paying you a lot of money for.

Speaker 9 Clearly, at this point,

Speaker 9 they have moved to a place and the cable television universe has declined to a place where ESPN has no choice but to say, we still want to be in business with you, DirecTV, Spectrum, et cetera, et cetera, but we're going to make our content available to our subscribers, to our fans directly if that's the way they want to get it.

Speaker 9 Now, the compromise is, but if they already have a DirecTV subscription, they get this automatically.

Speaker 9 So they're using that, of course, to say to the distributors, we're not looking to disrupt your business at at all.

Speaker 12 It's showing there is barely any business, though. It is showing that the shrinking platform that the commissioner and baseball talked about is true.

Speaker 9 But it's not de minimis. It's certainly not de minimis.
50 million subscribers at somewhere 120, for ESPN, 120 million

Speaker 9 or to 10 times 12 to

Speaker 9 $120 a year for 50 million subscribers is not de minimis.

Speaker 12 And by the way, that will... Well, it's going this way.

Speaker 9 It is going that way.

Speaker 9 But the curve of that going down will

Speaker 9 decline slightly, meaning it will go down slower at some point. Some number of people will just keep the cables up.

Speaker 12 They just will. They're all going to die.

Speaker 9 They will die eventually.

Speaker 12 So I don't view that as right. It's not

Speaker 12 going to sound like half-life and half-life.

Speaker 9 Well, but it would be a good idea.

Speaker 11 But the steepness of the curve, though, John, is the question that informed when do we finally launch the DTC option, which is something that you could have done, but clearly it took until 2025.

Speaker 9 Why would you do it when you have 90 million, 80 million, 70 million subscribers?

Speaker 9 It still would be an interesting mathematical parlay to know when the lines cross that more people pay them directly than get their subscription through somebody else.

Speaker 9 I would argue that it's not going to be this year, next year, the year after. It will be several years before the lines cross and more people

Speaker 9 and more money.

Speaker 12 They've got projections. When you unveil an app like this internally, Bob Iger is not allowing this to happen without a financial plan of what's going to happen.

Speaker 12 How many people are going to pay $29.99 a month? How many people are going to pay for the whole year and pay the 300 bucks that it costs to get it? What are you getting?

Speaker 12 And what we heard from Jimmy Petaro and Bob Iger is: hey, you're going to get ESPN as though you had it through cable, as though you had it. It's actually SPN.

Speaker 9 Well, I'm a Hulu Live guy.

Speaker 12 I get ESPN. I'm not sure why I need to spend.
It's like, to me, a venue where it's like paying extra for a site to have stuff that I already can get.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's a little more convenient in one place, but for $29.99 a month, I don't think I need it, which is why they went to the, hey, there's some bells and whistles.

Speaker 12 You get personalized sports center and all such other stuff.

Speaker 9 Of course,

Speaker 9 I'm skeptical of bells and whistles. You know, you'll be able to sync up your bet, your bets you've made on this game and see on the screen whether you're winning or not.
That is

Speaker 9 of fairly de minimis interest to most sports fans.

Speaker 9 Again, people have been talking about camera angles, special mega casts for a long time, and mostly people care about the game as it is played and produced on a linear network. I mean, that is

Speaker 9 why sports retains so much of its value.

Speaker 9 Now, they may come up with some things eventually, but it actually, you also have the problem of every subscriber who cancels their subscription to Spectrum and buys

Speaker 9 and buys the Disney app.

Speaker 9 I don't, I'd have to, you'd have to do some projections, but my guess would be those subscribers are, have less net income per unit than the subscribers who are on the cable system.

Speaker 9 On the cable system, you have no costs for customer service. You don't have to bill anybody.
You don't have to have any bells and whistles.

Speaker 12 You've just... You got the cable man who never comes.

Speaker 9 Well, they're not paying for the cable man.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I guess we are.

Speaker 9 Yeah, you are. The ESPN's not paying.
It's a beautiful model to get 10, 12 bucks a month, and it is pure profit.

Speaker 11 But the beautiful model, I keep on, it's just funny.

Speaker 11 There are still people out in the world who need to listen to this show we do together called The Sporting Class, clearly, because what John said once is the thing that I keep on repeating to people, and they're flabbergasted.

Speaker 11 The idea that ESPN, at its peak, made more than the rest of the Walt Disney company combined because of the beautiful model that John is describing.

Speaker 11 And And so the question about the pricing schedule must be in this era, by the way, in which we're just tossing around terms like venue, the ill-fated skinny bundle we've talked about previously, and Max, the ill-fated branding for HBO, which got just this week switched back.

Speaker 11 In that era, how do you price this thing? And so David alluded to some of the pricing of it, right?

Speaker 11 $299 per year, in addition to a select plan, which offers all content available on ESPN Plus for $11.99 per month or $119 per year. There's some fine print there.

Speaker 11 But, you know, if you go with Disney Plus and Hulu, introductory offer, all three services, $29.99 for the first year, we're getting into the language of, as I used to hear as a New Yorker, you know, the triple play is the deal, like these jingles from cable companies.

Speaker 11 We are in that era for DTC now.

Speaker 12 Well, we're now,

Speaker 12 bundling is my favorite word because what we talked about was breaking the bundle and having people go a la carte and pay for what they want.

Speaker 12 That was the whole argument of why people were cutting their cord. I don't want to pay for a baseball game that I don't want to watch.

Speaker 12 Now, what all these companies are jumping over each other to do is to bundle and give the consumer an offer and the ability to get more than one streaming service.

Speaker 12 You put them all together and you pay a price per month. And what it leads to is

Speaker 12 you end up paying more. And so it's been one of the great grifts.
It makes me so happy

Speaker 12 from a stockholder standpoint is that people have not yet figured out that they're paying more per month. And we almost got caught just now with the NFL schedule release.

Speaker 11 Why?

Speaker 12 Because it was announced where the NFL is going to have games on YouTube and games here, games there. Someone added up how much it would be to get every NFL game.

Speaker 12 And it became a lot of money. And I got nervous because if people start paying attention to that, there's going to be a bit of a kick.

Speaker 9 back.

Speaker 9 And this is from the league that said they were going to be free for as long as possible. Well, that's

Speaker 9 fire. And they were.
And that was a fine place to be at the time. But there's a reason it's $29.95.

Speaker 9 The cable operators are paying probably at this point $11,12

Speaker 9 for ESPN 10, 11, 12 bucks.

Speaker 11 $29.99, by the way.

Speaker 9 Yeah, $29.99.

Speaker 11 That's very relevant.

Speaker 9 So they're already having to charge more money to get to the same economics on the customer. And get ready for something else which you will love, which is, and they've already done it on ESPN Plus.

Speaker 9 If you want to watch the really high-profile UFC match

Speaker 9 or a high-profile boxing match, you got to pay extra.

Speaker 9 I will bet you this app has the capability to say, you know, we would love to give you that Alabama, Georgia game free, but we've decided this year we're going to charge

Speaker 9 an extra $4.99 for that game. Well, by the way,

Speaker 9 it's called pay-view.

Speaker 9 It's called pay-per-view, but it's going to be good business. But you're going to, people think pay-per-view has to be the Tom Brady wrote, well, it wasn't, but they cost.

Speaker 9 It has to be a big boxing match, a big UFC match. We've talked on this show before that the Super Bowl will be a pay-per-view event.

Speaker 11 This is John's most long-standing take. Is that the money?

Speaker 9 Oh, I got other long-standing takes that were wrong, so this could be as well. But I'm consistent in my phone.

Speaker 11 It used to be in the phone, another long-standing.

Speaker 9 But you're going to,

Speaker 9 as they struggle with delivering the growth the to the shareholders they're going to say how else can we make money oh we have these people captive we have their information we can send them some talk about the information so about about about data as well well they data is interesting and it will be people will overestimate how valuable it's going to be you still don't get much data from having somebody on app you can ask them to give you some who are your favorite teams you know where do you live how much money do you you have?

Speaker 9 Maybe you'll give it to them. Maybe you won't.
They can do implied data.

Speaker 9 They can take outside data, put it against their files and find out where people live, where likely, what kind of cars they have. But then what are you going to do with it?

Speaker 9 I guess you would do better.

Speaker 12 Rental advertising.

Speaker 9 You'll go to more return on investment advertising. It will work somewhat.

Speaker 12 That is everything, though. Everyone's playing Netflix.

Speaker 9 It's

Speaker 9 Netflix. That is everything when you have a lot of data.
Data is not worth very much at all when you have a little data.

Speaker 9 And it's worth a lot if you have a scalable and if you have a mechanism to deliver

Speaker 9 more personalized ads. Nobody delivers completely personalized ads.
Everybody's had the phenomenon of talking about going to take a Greek cruise and suddenly you get ads.

Speaker 9 So there you're getting a personal ad.

Speaker 12 Well, because your phone's listening to you? Yeah, because you're not. I get that every day.
Maybe I assume we all do now.

Speaker 9 But cut that off, and you don't get personalized ads. You still get the same ads.

Speaker 9 Do you want that? Oh,

Speaker 12 I get the best chargers for my devices. I got things to help with cords that are all tangled.
I get great cargo shorts and undies. It is the ads that get pushed to me.

Speaker 11 I'm so worried about David Sampson's OPSEC,

Speaker 11 as they say in the Defense Department.

Speaker 9 I'm not at all.

Speaker 12 I would just also add that with the projections, I don't want to get off that, if you don't mind, because when Iger pitches this, there's an investment here, quite a bit of infrastructure investment.

Speaker 12 There is an assumption that there will be X number of subscribers and there's then a growth rate that's implied right onto this first number.

Speaker 12 And you have to get back to analysts. You have to get back to Wall Street.
You have to get back to your board.

Speaker 12 And if they don't get the crossover that you're talking about with people signing up for this flagship, that's how, and we're going to call it flagship, even though it's

Speaker 11 let's not call it flagship.

Speaker 12 So we call it ESPN DCC.

Speaker 12 Is that what you're going to call it for short?

Speaker 11 ESPN the app.

Speaker 12 If not enough people purchase the app and become subscribers on a monthly and annual basis because they don't feel as though they're getting any incremental benefit to what they already have, this app is not going to work.

Speaker 12 And it will be gone.

Speaker 9 Yeah,

Speaker 9 in my opinion, the app will work.

Speaker 12 I mean, they will. How long would you give it? How long before you have to show your board that it worked?

Speaker 9 At least three to five years.

Speaker 12 I was saying two years in the state.

Speaker 11 Let's walk through this because for me, it's very obvious that every company,

Speaker 11 it's the most obvious thing that ESPN was going to do this at some point, such that even John, I assume John, at some point.

Speaker 11 Do you remember actually, because I want to give a bit of the logic behind the scenes here. Do you remember when this was first presented to you as a possibility that, hey,

Speaker 11 this is something we should consider?

Speaker 9 The first year that cable subscriptions went down was 2012. So in 2012 would have been the first time that there began to be discussions about if this declines,

Speaker 9 what is going to replace it. And you were already having things that were starting as apps, right, as businesses.
So we were aware that that's another way to do business.

Speaker 9 And I think that they are actually have made

Speaker 9 about the right call on timing that doing it before this, they would have just given money away.

Speaker 9 But now they have to because you've reached a point in the pay television universe, particularly when you look at it age-wise, right?

Speaker 9 So lots and lots of young people, the most valuable people that advertisers won't, are giving up their cable subs. So it's not just.

Speaker 12 They're called never quarters now, actually, because they're not cutting their cords. They actually now never even have them to start with.

Speaker 9 But they're more valuable customers. And now there's enough of them that they have to do it now.
But their timing is pretty good.

Speaker 9 And I think they will get a

Speaker 9 this uptake will not be enormous. I don't think you're going to see 5 million subs at the end of one year.

Speaker 9 The only person really who needs this is the person who still has a cable to television scription and wants to get rid of it. Or the never quarter, what do you call them?

Speaker 12 Never quarters? Never quarters.

Speaker 12 Did you, you've heard that before?

Speaker 11 Somehow I hadn't.

Speaker 12 Okay, I may have it wrong then.

Speaker 5 Because you're waiting for it. No, I think it's right.

Speaker 9 But

Speaker 9 you've got enough of those. They have to do it now.
It will work over time.

Speaker 9 They're going to be successful. The only question is how successful.
And how quickly. And how quickly.

Speaker 12 And how big a runway did Disney give them?

Speaker 9 And how satisfactory is where they get to for the shareholders. And if they don't get to a place, do they become a target for someone else to acquire them, right? Because

Speaker 9 it's judged that they would be more valuable in a different aggregation of.

Speaker 12 The reason why you started in 2012 is that what your company realized is that your revenue was going down and your expenses had no avenue to go down because leagues were not giving you a break on the rights deals and you were stuck in long-term contracts and if you have fixed expenses with declining revenue that's it that's how a business goes under so those discussions have to start and here we are 13 years later so i would argue that espn it's not the perfect time because they have had declining results in that area now they've made up for it they've had declining results they have not had declining revenue.

Speaker 9 The decline of subscriptions until very recently

Speaker 9 was under the increase in per subscriber rate.

Speaker 9 ESPN was getting 7% increases every year in what the cable operators were paying them.

Speaker 9 Until very recently, the subscriptions weren't declining 7%.

Speaker 9 The more important fact, which you just mentioned, was the rights fees, on the other hand, were going up. Now, rights fees in a long-term contract are only going up 2%, 3% or 4%.

Speaker 9 So you're fine. Subscriptions go down 3%.

Speaker 9 Rates, your rights fees go up 3%.

Speaker 12 What's eating at your margin, though? It's eating to your margin. I mean, I understand your five.

Speaker 9 You're correct.

Speaker 9 And the margins were declining even back in 2012, 13, 14, 19.

Speaker 12 And that's what they'd say on Wall Street.

Speaker 12 I mean, that's when you talk about why stock prices are not going up the way they should, it's because what John just said, when you have declining margins, that means you have declining earnings per share.

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Speaker 11 I think the way that I have come to understand

Speaker 11 how you guys see this in our perpetual quest to explain as rich guys only fans what it's like in these board meetings is is the arrow green or red?

Speaker 11 Is it growing or is it going down?

Speaker 11 And managed decline has been certainly like an undeniable phenomenon since 2012 is the date John gave us.

Speaker 11 But at the same time, when it comes to the, and this is now cleanup, Isle Sampson, cord never's.

Speaker 12 Oh, I got it opposite.

Speaker 9 Very, very. It's probably true that most of them were never cords either.

Speaker 12 Never quarters.

Speaker 9 Never quarters.

Speaker 9 They were never quarters either.

Speaker 11 It's a funny old person thing to flip the term that describes a young person.

Speaker 11 Guilty.

Speaker 11 But I thank you for that cleanup.

Speaker 12 Really important stuff there, Pablo.

Speaker 9 Even if ESPN has some decline, it still is a significant contributor to the bottom line.

Speaker 9 And the reason they build a theme park, which they, I think they just announced as well, in the Middle East is because they believe that will

Speaker 9 allow them to show overall, because people buy Disney stock. There is no ESPN stock.
So you really have to look at it.

Speaker 9 And I know you know this as a collection of assets, some of which may have a green era, some of which may have a red era. That may change year to year, right?

Speaker 12 Do you think Abu Dhabi is getting a Disney park because there's a lot of people in Abu Dhabi who want to to go to a Disney park?

Speaker 12 I read that news totally differently, and we didn't talk about this, but I assumed that it was some sort of other deal involving the government, involving Disney, which gave them quite a bit of incentive to build a park.

Speaker 9 I would assume

Speaker 9 that...

Speaker 9 Where are they building it?

Speaker 11 Did I get it? Abu Dhabi.

Speaker 9 I thought it was Abu Dhabi. I would assume the government of Abu Dhabi is paying them a very handsome amount of money to build a park there because they want the

Speaker 9 brand halo that they get from having a Disney park. You build a park there, you are basically giving the Disney

Speaker 9 imprimateur to the government of that country and they pay for it.

Speaker 12 Much like getting a plane.

Speaker 11 Well, speaking of the planes, right? Like that's part of

Speaker 11 the whole Middle Eastern.

Speaker 9 It's a little different, I would say.

Speaker 9 It's a little different, I would say.

Speaker 9 I would say that the president's job is is not to grow his personal wealth. It is the job of a CEO to grow the wealth of his company.

Speaker 12 So this is a great point you're making because, therefore, you're saying it's fine when companies are doing business in places where it is less than, shall we say, moral.

Speaker 12 You're totally fine with that.

Speaker 9 No, I didn't say that. I'm totally fine.
I just said there is a...

Speaker 9 There is a hierarchy or a literal egregiousness and an individual getting a plane when he exit office if if the ceo of the company was getting a plane from abu dhabi that would become his personal plane upon retirement which is what will happen no matter what the president says he will get that plane it will be part of his library uh do you not think that bob iger will have use of a private plane as a definition

Speaker 9 i i expect that the consideration given from the abu dhabi uh from abu dhabi to Disney will not go into Bob Iger's pocket other than the compensation he gets for doing a good job.

Speaker 9 That's different than taking, yeah, you think Bob Iger gets away with taking a player

Speaker 9 for personal use pocket.

Speaker 12 I'm telling you that the deal with Abu Dhabi is not because Disney did market research around the world and said, oh my God, I've got it.

Speaker 9 We need a park in Abu Dhabi. Right now, the world of all business is rushing to the Middle East because they will spend money for reasons other than seeing a direct financial return.

Speaker 9 And they have a lot of it.

Speaker 11 Well, we saw, by the way, the world of politics and business converge on the Middle East as part of this whole week in which it turns out

Speaker 11 that when, in this case at least, when the cable television ecosystem is drying up, you got to find some places where there is ability to make profit, to increase earnings.

Speaker 11 And so the plain thing I'm going to say briefly is that, look, the premise of it is:

Speaker 11 Abu Dhabi, Dubai, these airports, which are very nice and have very nice planes, admittedly, right? That's part of the marketing for those regimes. And so they're saying, hey,

Speaker 11 you want to come from Shanghai, Hong Kong, to a Disney park? Guess what you can do?

Speaker 11 And this very beautiful, high-class, luxurious thing that also may or may not just not include, I don't know, some unsavory,

Speaker 11 let's say, less than American ideals that you're sort of like flying over, quite literally.

Speaker 12 I view Disney, I associate the brand. The reason this surprised me is my view of Disney is very much all-American.
It's very Disney pure. Disney, they don't want it.

Speaker 12 They're upset with all the McAfee stuff. Like, they don't want any part of that.
And then they're building a park in Abu Dhabi. It blew my mind until I started doing the math.

Speaker 11 Well, it's also just omnipresent. Like, we, again, we have to, this is a separate episode, truly, and we should do it.

Speaker 11 And I am doing episodes about this too, but just like the Middle East and its role as the bankroller of media, entertainment, sports, this is Disney is part of this true week of stuff in which everybody is getting into business in a way that's obvious.

Speaker 11 I want to get to Michael Jordan. Can we do that?

Speaker 11 David is not interested.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 12 You're not interested? No, I mean, listen, the NBA has made its bed with new partners. There's new TV deals that start next year.
NBC has really played it up that they're back in the business.

Speaker 12 They're calling out the 1990s with the round ball rock theme, which is John Tesh, my favorite guy. I love you, Connie Selica.

Speaker 11 What was that shout out?

Speaker 12 Connie Selica is

Speaker 12 Gil Girard's ex-wife, who's now married to John Tesh. She was in the greatest American hero.

Speaker 9 That is. Hotel.

Speaker 12 Am I the only person?

Speaker 9 Man, he's got some information.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 12 That's just called puberty, but okay.

Speaker 12 And so.

Speaker 11 Google this person.

Speaker 12 You've never heard of Connie Selica. I mean, we can edit this out because I'm so upset right now.

Speaker 9 I don't think we're going to damages that. Let's move on.
Michael Jordan.

Speaker 12 So Michael Jordan got, he is part of the 90s sort of.

Speaker 9 Well, wait, he's arguably, I would argue, the greatest player in the history of the NBA. And potentially the most popular player in the history of the NBA.

Speaker 11 And merely the second most relevant Jordan in the world of North Carolina

Speaker 11 these days, John.

Speaker 11 Notably, I'm sparing you from my own investigation there.

Speaker 9 And it's a coup to get him. How good he'll be, I don't know.
But if you are sitting around a room going, we now have the NBA, who do we want on the air?

Speaker 9 You'd say, Michael Jordan, the first thing you would get around the table is we'll never get him.

Speaker 12 He's not going to be on the air.

Speaker 9 So he's a special contributor.

Speaker 9 Isn't that what he keeps saying? A special contributor.

Speaker 11 What does that? So, so I want to get into the room, though, right? In which, okay, guess what? You've acquired this rights deal for billions of dollars and you got to staff it with,

Speaker 11 you know, the not staffing with Jordan.

Speaker 12 They did a contract where he has to make several appearances. He taped something for the upfronts.
He didn't even show up at the upfronts. They did a tape of

Speaker 11 that's a funny signal.

Speaker 9 So to me, you have to manage manage expectations about this hologram of michael jordan look it's marketing if if nothing else it will be successful marketing that they are getting associated we just talked about the the abu dhabi wanting to be associated with the walt disney brand they want to be associated with the dis with the jordan brand do you think his first contribution will be him giving an interview to somebody or doing the interview of somebody if you're a special contributor there you're working on stories it will be the former they will

Speaker 9 They will be interviewing him. We're going to have something that Michael Jordan is going to say about the upcoming game.
I don't think Michael Jordan.

Speaker 9 Michael's going to give us 10 minutes on who he thinks is going to win the championship this year.

Speaker 12 He's going to meet with advertisers. He's going to be part of the Brady Fox deal.
Well, I would assume, depending on the number.

Speaker 12 See, with Brady, we got the number, and part of the number was not just being the number one analyst. It was he had to do up fronts.
He had to do ambassador work.

Speaker 12 We have to see what special contributor means. If he's getting $7 million a year, that's one thing.
If he's getting $30 million a year, that's a wholly different thing, right?

Speaker 9 It'd be hard for me to understand why he would do it for $7 million a year. Isn't he a billionaire?

Speaker 12 Yep. You become a billionaire by making money.

Speaker 9 Well, I realize, but $7 million is not a matter of money.

Speaker 11 That's aggregating that clip.

Speaker 12 Ha-choo, hot-choo. I mean, why would you say

Speaker 12 someone offers you $7 million a year? You're like, oh, no, sorry.

Speaker 9 I mean, you're talking to the guy.

Speaker 9 You're not talking to a billionaire.

Speaker 9 But if somebody said to me, you know,

Speaker 9 for $96 a month, I would like you to do something, I would say no. And this is probably about $7 million would be about $96 a month for Michael Jordan.
Oh, I love that. Proportionally to me.

Speaker 9 That's my favorite.

Speaker 12 The argument of, oh, when he gambles $10,000 on a golf hole, he has enough money that's the equivalent of you and I on a weekend gambling $5.

Speaker 12 I get that math. It is the cruelty.

Speaker 9 But it is not how very well-to-do people think.

Speaker 9 Very well-to-do people.

Speaker 12 It's like $25 to do nothing, you would do it. Why would you turn down that's like an uber per month free well

Speaker 9 one it's an interesting supposition that'd be offering

Speaker 9 somebody offer me 96 to do nothing a month and i know you'll be surprised but i wouldn't take it why would i take money to do nothing it's my goal

Speaker 9 david would would love to be a special contributor to any organization out there that wants a no-show contribution you know what i'd like to offer my services right now as a special contributor to anybody listening who is prepared to pay

Speaker 9 $1,000 a month for

Speaker 9 no contributor.

Speaker 12 So your number is not 96%.

Speaker 9 Well, I've already now we're just quick. I always said you asked me about the Middle East one time.

Speaker 9 Trillions, I believe. Everybody is prepared at some number.
Mine is a trillion right now.

Speaker 12 So your numbers are a thousand, though. You just said there's a shot.

Speaker 11 You have an ongoing chart, by the way. The way that people have stock charts is what would we do to sell out to the Middle East.
Currently, the bar is at $1 trillion.

Speaker 11 That may adjust over time.

Speaker 12 yeah and we already know he'll do something for a thousand dollars ninety six not not good enough that's a hell of a negotiation that's happening right my only point was to make

Speaker 9 the point

Speaker 9 that i want i always wonder why people do things that are not material to their lives Because you add up little things, they become material.

Speaker 12 That's like saying, why do something nice for someone that's not big gesture? Because a lot of small gestures add up and become noticeable to the person who's doing it.

Speaker 12 I mean, I don't know this because I don't do those gestures, but I'm just going to say that.

Speaker 9 You're way off into

Speaker 9 interesting philosophical territory. You have to balance it against the use of your ever-dwindling time.
And Michael Jordan is not a baby.

Speaker 9 And to me, it would have to be a material amount of money for him to spend any time doing it.

Speaker 11 Yeah, Baby Jordan, Harold Miner, a different contract negotiator.

Speaker 12 He doesn't know who that is. What a gray car.

Speaker 9 We don't remember

Speaker 12 number 45 for the Miami Heat, Harold Minor. I don't know if he wore 45, but it just feels like he wore 45.
Though maybe that was Jordan's number when he came out of retirement.

Speaker 9 If my name was Minor, I would take 24

Speaker 9 as my jersey number.

Speaker 11 So perfectly. In the way that David Sandson flip-flopped never quarters and cord nevers, Harold Minor is number four.

Speaker 9 32.

Speaker 9 Wow. That's funny.
Not an accident.

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 12 Withdraw.

Speaker 9 Thank you. It's the best thing you can do.

Speaker 9 It was a a long time strategy of mine. It's just

Speaker 9 incredible restraint.

Speaker 11 The whole idea of we want to get our dream hire in here, and that would be Michael Jordan. I'm just curious, John,

Speaker 11 was there a white whale for you in terms of as the president of ESPN, the guy who made billion-dollar decisions, is there someone that you wanted to hire as a special contributor that you couldn't get?

Speaker 11 And he's already laughing.

Speaker 9 Well, I have to say, at ESPN, we weren't big.

Speaker 9 Our problem was not, we didn't want special contributors. We weren't looking for headlines.
We were looking for people to work. And it was frequently why I could not get some of the best talent into

Speaker 9 ESPN, right?

Speaker 9 Mr. Barkley was the best in the business at NBA, and we wanted to get Charles Barkley.

Speaker 9 But

Speaker 9 he would have had, by the way, he just complained the other day. This is in the news the other day.

Speaker 9 Charles Barkley said, don't think you're going to get me in that ESPN car wash. I'm not doing that.
I'm not doing Sports Center. Nobody's going to tell me what to do.

Speaker 11 Yeah, so you'll get the quote as you're trying to work less

Speaker 12 versus more, I believe you said.

Speaker 9 And yes, we had lots of people we wanted to get that we couldn't get. First of all, at the time we were kind of cheap, right? We paid.
lower scale because we had a lot of people.

Speaker 9 And we did,

Speaker 9 I tried very hard to get Shaq when he was available, tried to convince him that

Speaker 9 he'd be his show on ESPN.

Speaker 9 He wouldn't be the second fiddle to Charles Barkley.

Speaker 9 And David Levy, good friend of mine, went to him and said, you know, I'm going to pay you as much, probably more than John Skipper will.

Speaker 9 And you won't have to do anything except show up, start talking.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 9 that's all you have to do. And by the way, Shaq, who was very very funny about it, basically told me, I ran into him one time.
He's like, I wasn't going to come over there.

Speaker 9 You were going to put me up. And he was right.
We gave him an offer. It included sports center appearances.
It included whatever the early morning show at the time was appearances.

Speaker 9 It included, you know, post-game, pre-game. You got to show up.
You got to rehearse. And he said, why would I do that? And by the way, he was right.
I've not been able to get those kind of offers.

Speaker 9 I did not say I was immune to very material offers that did not require a lot of heavy lifting.

Speaker 11 To quote Charles Barkley on the record, quote, they're not going to work me like a dog and not pay me.

Speaker 11 They'll have me on ESPN 1, 2, 3, ESPN News, ESPNU, ESPN Radio, and then come up with that puny little check. They're going to have me on ESPN Deporte saying, muy bien gracias.

Speaker 12 He really said that. Yes.
I would like to point out to Charles, because Sir Charles may not understand the concept of licensing. His His contract will remain with Warner Brothers Discovery.

Speaker 12 A little nugget here for you, Pablo. He's not going to ESPN.
He's not an employee of ESPN. He has nothing to do with ESPN.
ESPN is licensing inside the NBA.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Licensing is a very good question.
I think that's

Speaker 9 an earlier quote. That was an earlier quote by Barkley, by the way.

Speaker 12 Oh, I think this was just this week.

Speaker 11 No, he's been saying this stuff.

Speaker 9 He did say it again.

Speaker 11 This was 2016 that he said that quote. But he's been saying a version of this.

Speaker 9 Yes, this week. He said it this week.
I'm not going to be.

Speaker 12 I'm not sure you're reading this week's quote.

Speaker 9 Why would you read this week? This said it from 2016.

Speaker 11 Because he's been saying it for over a decade.

Speaker 12 There wasn't a license deal. That's when he had not signed his big deal with Turner yet.

Speaker 11 That was the Shaq story.

Speaker 9 So he was also

Speaker 9 trying to host the show.

Speaker 12 I'm not trying to host the show.

Speaker 9 I'm trying to understand what the hell you're talking about. So

Speaker 9 Barkley did say it this week, and he said it in the context of complaining that it had not been made clear to him what the relationship between inside the NBA and ESPN.

Speaker 12 So he's basically saying it had been made clear to him, by the way.

Speaker 9 That I'm not privy to, but I would not disagree. And what he was saying was, I'm unhappy they have made it clear to me.
And by the way, they haven't made it unclear what my obligations are to ESPN.

Speaker 9 And I'm not going to do what they always do, which is do the car wash, go along all the shows, which is what people used to do.

Speaker 12 Can I help, Sir Charles? His obligation is exactly as that is outlined in his Turner contract. Those are the obligations.
It is not that his contract has been assigned to ESPN.

Speaker 12 It is not, I think he kind of...

Speaker 11 Charles Barkley once said, I got misquoted in my own autobiography. I don't think he's necessarily reading the fine print on anything.

Speaker 9 Well, whether he is or not, he also

Speaker 9 has

Speaker 9 a great reputation as a character, non-conformist,

Speaker 9 non-authoritarian. So he's just being true to his brand there, that he's

Speaker 9 not controllable. It's good for him.

Speaker 9 Even if he knows exactly what he has to do, it's good for his soul to say, nobody tells me what to do.

Speaker 9 Charles Barkley,

Speaker 11 beyond sounding like people that we may know or

Speaker 11 like and love in our own lives, he does play a game, Charles does, called Who He Play For?

Speaker 11 in which he doesn't know the answer to any of those questions. And it seems like maybe David is saying that applies to his own employees.

Speaker 9 Which called what?

Speaker 11 Who he play for? They show him a picture of, or rather, a name or a jersey-less player, and they say, Who does he play for?

Speaker 9 And he does not know. I worked one time for a couple of years at Us Magazine, and we had a game played Alive or Dead, which you chose somebody's picture,

Speaker 9 and it is shockingly hard.

Speaker 12 Oh, yeah. I had Lorraine Bracco on that list until I watched the most recent Nona movie with Vince Vaughan on Netflix, and I said, Oh, my God, I got that wrong.

Speaker 11 I just had to double-check.

Speaker 11 Connie Selica,

Speaker 12 don't say it,

Speaker 11 alive, and more than that, to quote the characters we've been talking about. I just want to apologize to Connie Selika.
I was not familiar with your game.

Speaker 11 What?

Speaker 9 I don't know. I surround.

Speaker 11 Withdrawn, as they say.

Speaker 9 Remind me who Connie Selica was.

Speaker 12 The essence of beauty. Okay.

Speaker 9 Wow.

Speaker 9 I think it's probably

Speaker 11 to stop podcasting.

Speaker 9 Wow.

Speaker 9 And how was that manifested? Is she an actress? Is she

Speaker 12 I listed the thing she was on. Pablo,

Speaker 12 you have a ding in your table and a mark.

Speaker 12 One of the shows that I've got.

Speaker 11 If you've been listening and not watching on YouTube, you've made a mistake for lots of reasons. But David has identified what I now identify as a pockmark

Speaker 9 on the table. And a scratch.

Speaker 12 And a scratch. It's got to be repainted.

Speaker 11 Is that you, John?

Speaker 12 It's incredibly distracting.

Speaker 9 I don't think so.

Speaker 12 It looks like a scratch.

Speaker 12 Someone scratched it. One of your guests, I assume, on your award-winning show.
Yeah. This is inexcusable right here.
This is Mark, though.

Speaker 9 Anyway, we'll talk about it after the show.

Speaker 11 I feel like we just did it.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 12 John. Thank you.

Speaker 11 David. Happy to be here.
Love podcasting.

Speaker 9 Goodbye.

Speaker 11 Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Averoma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Rachel Miller-Howard, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tumanello, and Juliet Warren.

Speaker 11 Our studio engineering by RG Systems, our sound design by NGW, post, our theme song, as always, by John Bravo.

Speaker 11 And we will talk to you next time.

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Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC member FENRA SIPC. Wealthfront is not a bank.

Speaker 22 The APY on cash deposits as of December 27, 2024 is representative, subject to change and requires no minimum. Funds in the cash account are swept to partner banks where they earn the variable APY.

Speaker 22 The national average interest rate for savings accounts is posted on FDIC.gov as of december sixteenth, twenty twenty four.