Trading Cards: The Fan Engagement Goldmine with Jeremy Aisenberg

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Speaker 1 Part of how we grow the hobby and bring more people into this as a way to make fans stickier to their teams and the leagues and the sports is collecting.

Speaker 1 When the licenses were being held by Upper Deck and Topps and Fleer and Donruss in the 90s, it sparked a lot of innovation.

Speaker 1 You think about some of the great vintage inserts that's of the late 90s and early 2000s are some of the most collectible cards on the planet.

Speaker 1 Billions of dollars, millions of collectors, one booming industry. Trading cards aren't just back.
They're taking over. Projected to hit 52 billion by 2027.

Speaker 1 The hobby has evolved into a full-blown business with culture, cash, and clout all at the center. From the vault to the back room, we're talking to the heavy hitters writing the future of the hobby.

Speaker 1 We feature Brian Ludden from Luddex, the fastest and most accurate trading card scanning app, Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia and creator of V-Friends, South Carolina card king Maddie Rich, one of South Carolina's largest retail store owners and si collectibles contributor and sports executive jeremy eisenberg plus some other surprise guests this isn't just about collecting it's about investing scaling and ruling the hobby right about now we're making the hobby make sense massive dollars don't miss this incredible series what's up guys welcome to right about now we're always talking about how to learn more about business and get right.

Speaker 1 And you know, we could talk about last week, we could talk about two years ago, but we want to make it topical for today.

Speaker 1 And you know,

Speaker 1 I can admit when I'm doing guilty pleasures, but I'm doing guilty pleasures that you need to know about because this is part of our trading card series.

Speaker 1 We had Brian Ludden from LudX on, we've got one of the biggest collectors in the southeast that's coming on. We've got some other big names, and that's why I went to Jeremy.
Jeremy Eisenberg, he is

Speaker 1 not only you know an OG trading card guy, talent, brand labs, founder, and I think just a sports junkie. Is that what it is, Jeremy?

Speaker 1 That's fair.

Speaker 1 Sports has been a big part of my life since I, as long as I can remember. Yeah, man.
Octagon,

Speaker 1 any of our agency crowd will know some name drops that'll get in here.

Speaker 1 We compared some more stories of agency life a little bit before we got started, both kind of coming up through that. Jeremy, I do.

Speaker 1 I did go through like your background and brian shared a little bit but i was like

Speaker 1 you know and i got blessed to work on you know verizon some big names we did some sports sponsorship stuff but it wasn't to to say that my backgrounds in sports brand marketing all that would not be painting the i'd say more wireless and tech but i read yours and i go who wouldn't grow up and go i will i want to be that

Speaker 1 That's what I thought when I was reading through your kind of bylines and everything you've done. I've been lucky, man.
That's all I can say.

Speaker 1 I didn't necessarily, it wasn't the plan.

Speaker 1 I was

Speaker 1 get a PhD in genetics and took a leave of absence and ended up working for one of the most influential people in golf. And that was a quick PhD in business.
And

Speaker 1 where that entrepreneurial first step has taken me in the last 20 years is someday I'll write a book. It's been, I pinched myself.
It's been an amazing journey. You need to name that name, though.

Speaker 1 And our listeners that know, if you even golf and maybe not golf, you'll recognize this name we talked before. Might be one of the first influencers in golf, wasn't he?

Speaker 1 David Letbetter. Yeah.

Speaker 1 When I think about it, I was lucky enough to go work for a guy who recognized that his opportunity to leverage his influence and the attention he was able to generate across his own channels and through businesses he owned and controlled.

Speaker 1 He built an instructor certification business, a brick and mortar academy business, a product licensing business, a product development business, a content distribution business, and all before the introduction of social media.

Speaker 1 And so I took that experience working for David and

Speaker 1 learning from him and

Speaker 1 seeing how important it was to over-deliver value.

Speaker 1 I took all these great lessons and got to work over 18 years years for one of the largest agencies in the world and apply that personal branding to this

Speaker 1 explosion of digital and social content and democratization of distribution. And

Speaker 1 it's taken me in all sorts of exciting directions, some of which hopefully we'll get to chat about. Yeah, man.
I'm glad you brought up the democratization of

Speaker 1 content and distribution. And that's what's so damn impressive about what David did, you know, but is before, you know, even that time, you know, like I'm talking about mad respect.

Speaker 1 Like, he didn't even have the benefits that now, like, there's no excuse for anyone now. Like, if you've got

Speaker 1 the goods. You got the goods.
You got to have the goods. You do have to have that.

Speaker 1 But if you have that, nothing's in your way with the way social media and if you throw YouTube in there, it's social, but whatever, content, distribution. And,

Speaker 1 you know, we can talk about walled gardens and all that stuff. Don't let that get in your way.
Like, you have an ability to reach millions, you know, like I people throw that around.

Speaker 1 I'll throw it around sometimes. And look, I'm building a podcast network.
I don't always love the walled garden thing.

Speaker 1 However, I don't, I'm not going to smack the hand that feeds me, and it's got a built-in user base of billions. So, it is what it is.

Speaker 1 But I think it's been fascinating for me, but I think, especially for you, I'm sure, Jeremy, that whole journey watching what's happened in this explosion of all these channels, you know, TV, online, social media, YouTube, now TikTok, Instagram, all these things with the people and brands that you've worked with.

Speaker 1 I'd love to dive down that little bit. You know, telling kind of your story because you kind of came up through it all.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I appreciate that perspective.

Speaker 1 I always felt like I was representing Challenger brands, so to speak, because

Speaker 1 I wasn't representing the agency that I work for, Okta. We had Michael Phelps, we had Steph Curry, but I was representing coaches and broadcasters in golf.
Now,

Speaker 1 where golf had this great advantage was

Speaker 1 the people who distribute content related to playing better golf have an outsized amount of influence over their audience.

Speaker 1 If someone is promising better, better scores, lower handicap, more fun playing golf, they're basically promising them

Speaker 1 a dopamine high, right? So I was able to, it's a, what I've said to a lot of big technologists is golf is this incredible test kitchen for new innovative technology.

Speaker 1 You know, when Microsoft was looking at how the augmented reality world might come into play in business, they used golf courses as the way to visualize and bring that to the business community through a PJ Tour partnership.

Speaker 1 But you were able to use HoloLens and see how this holographic type interface works.

Speaker 1 And it it was you know a great example of of where golf's influence and the pyramid of that influence is so so powerful and why I've been able to you know be you know as someone like Hank Haney was was written up in Wall Street Journal in 2011 as the most authentic user of Twitter in the world not just the golf guy, but in the world, because

Speaker 1 we were out there trying to find ways to showcase

Speaker 1 our content in as many channels as we could. And whether that's through augmented reality or whether that's through podcasts or through OTT subscriptions,

Speaker 1 Hank had a

Speaker 1 very significant

Speaker 1 eight-figure business, 10 million plus business

Speaker 1 a month doing online content subscriptions.

Speaker 1 because again that that insatiable appetite for game improvement improvement is undying. So

Speaker 1 the premise has held true, and guys like Gary Vee have been both friends and sort of influences as well, is

Speaker 1 the bottom line is you've got to put your message in as many places as the potential audience might be.

Speaker 1 And the gatekeeping makes sense in certain spots, but really ubiquitous omnichannel content distribution authentically and organically

Speaker 1 is the answer. And then if you've got the goods,

Speaker 1 you can achieve a lot. How did this trading card thing come? I mean, where did that enter?

Speaker 1 Obviously, and you'll talk about, you know, as a kid and stuff, you know, like we, a lot of us have the kids' stories, but where did that intersection happen in the career?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I collected like everybody. I stopped collecting.

Speaker 1 I was born in the late 70s, collected in the mid, late 80s, sort of put them all away in the early 90s and got into Nirvana and Pearl Jam and went to college and got married and had kids and started

Speaker 1 familiar. And then I woke up and I was 30 something

Speaker 1 and I maybe my folks made me take more of the cards home.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 probably right about the time I got to Octagon, 2006, 2007, I sort of saw cards lying around the office. And

Speaker 1 we started representing big stars. And I'm thinking, huh, I wouldn't mind getting a basketball sign by David Robinson.
And I started kind of, I'm in the sports marketing business at this point.

Speaker 1 And I've been, you know, on private jets with Hall of Fame athletes and managed not to ask for autographs. So it's sort of, it's this, you know,

Speaker 1 get the benefit. Like, right, you're there, right? I have a great story, and it just shows you what an amazing human this guy is.
And everybody's probably got a good one of these with Charles Barkley.

Speaker 1 But I was so talk about like a Forest Gump kind of life. But I was very fortunate to get to become very good friends with Charles Charles when Hank Haney filmed the Haney Project.

Speaker 1 I was on site for most of the

Speaker 1 production days over six months and ended up being Charles' dinner date for quiet

Speaker 1 nights after a long day of filming. And

Speaker 1 Charles used to say when somebody would be coming up to the table, he'd be like,

Speaker 1 Finally, I said,

Speaker 1 you're so kind to these guys. You never say no.
You're always a chipper. How do you do it? And he goes, man, it's going to take me the same 15 seconds either way.

Speaker 1 And this guy's going to go around for the rest of his life and say I was either a jerk or I was a great guy. And for me, it's the same amount of time to blow him off or to be nice.
And, you know, that

Speaker 1 it just gives you a lot of respect for how hard it is for them to find peace and quiet. And, you know, the bigger the star, the harder that is.
And I got to see that up close.

Speaker 1 And personal, but at the same time, collecting is such a fun, fun aspect of being a fan.

Speaker 1 and uh so i i got that it just got scratched again you know and i might have mentioned this when we were chatting i mean michael rubin deserves all the credit in the world for for his identifying you know collectors as the best fans and in order to you know i i really believe that this hobby is in its infancy from a growth perspective and i

Speaker 1 yeah while at octagon we did some really cool research into the hobby to illustrate that part of how we grow the the hobby and bring more people into this as a way to not not just grow the hobby, but to make fans stickier to their teams and the leagues and the sports is collecting.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's clearly acknowledged now by,

Speaker 1 I was talking to the NHL about

Speaker 1 the opportunity to engage young fans through collecting. It's sort of identified now as one of the pillars.

Speaker 1 And the growth trajectory for collecting in general is pretty exciting. And

Speaker 1 one of the things we'll talk about is what we've built in partnership with

Speaker 1 Sports Illustrated and

Speaker 1 Authentic Brands Group and Minute Media, who are our partners in the Sports Illustrated Collectibles business.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Everybody's got their hands. They know the collectibles

Speaker 1 realm and the trading cards. They see the smart people are connecting the dots and building units.

Speaker 1 you know, around how you connect all these things together and how you leverage it to, you know, keep fans being fans.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I think the smart, the winners are going to, you know, not that they'll necessarily be losers. I don't know if there's any losers.

Speaker 1 I won't go that far, but there's definitely going to be some big winners. And it's hard not,

Speaker 1 it's had some rocky moments. I think the Fanatics and Top Singer, there's been some stuff.

Speaker 1 But you can't deny that it feels directionally right

Speaker 1 is my observation.

Speaker 1 They're opening the tent wider, right? The Fanatics Fest, we went to the first Fanatics Fest, it was awesome.

Speaker 1 Couldn't have been a more

Speaker 1 fun, entertaining experience for casual sports fans.

Speaker 1 There were plenty of areas that they were the first to recognize they can make improvements on.

Speaker 1 I'm excited for what... they'll do in the event space.

Speaker 1 And I think healthy competition is good. And Panini's not going anywhere, and Upper Deck's not going anywhere.

Speaker 1 Did that deal need to happen, though? Pardon? The Panini Tops. Did that deal need to happen, though? Would it have been better for the industry?

Speaker 1 You know, it's a great question. I think it would be better for the industry to have more than one license.
I think competition is great.

Speaker 1 I think when the licenses were being held by, you know, Upper Deck and Tops, and FLIR and Donruss in the 90s, it sparked a lot of innovation. You think about some of the great old vintage

Speaker 1 insert sets of the late 90s and early 2000s are some of the most collectible cards on the planet.

Speaker 1 That's the pinnacle of Upper Deck's

Speaker 1 early work in

Speaker 1 memorabilia cards and autographs. And still to this day, when I show some of the trading card innovation to people who've been out of trading cards for a while,

Speaker 1 they're blown away by what's happened and the collectibility and the tentacles into art and

Speaker 1 into

Speaker 1 serious game use memorabilia,

Speaker 1 to museum quality pieces and investment funds looking at this stuff through the lens of alternative asset classes. It's

Speaker 1 30, 30,

Speaker 1 not related to my background as a geneticist, but 35% of us us are genetically predisposed to want to collect stuff. Sort of remnants of human beings.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the human condition a little bit, you know, like

Speaker 1 that fine line between collecting and hoarding.

Speaker 1 I think the tide is rising on collecting because collecting is the ultimate, you know, expression of fandom. And

Speaker 1 fandom is one of those last safe spaces

Speaker 1 where we can all come together and cheer on a team and not be angry at each other for something else. Yeah, I know.
Everything is so polarizing. It's black and white.

Speaker 1 But in sports, you can kind of, it feels like you can, I mean, you're always rooting for one team or the other, but it just feels different than

Speaker 1 the shit that's out there that is just maddening and polarizing.

Speaker 1 I don't feel like fandom is polarizing. It's just fandom.

Speaker 1 Almost every Republican and Democrat in Boston can agree on the fact that they want the Red Sox to kick the crap out of the Yankees. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 You come together, and

Speaker 1 where you can start to bring people together, you can find the opportunity, right? So

Speaker 1 sports has been that. And

Speaker 1 like I said, I've been so fortunate

Speaker 1 to be able to be on the journey I've taken. And

Speaker 1 this platform we built with Sports Illustrated,

Speaker 1 I chased the SI leadership for years.

Speaker 1 They are an iconic brand, not just in sports, but also in collecting.

Speaker 1 And the thing that I observed through my years at Octagon, where I mentioned I did some consulting work for Tops, we identified that Laps collectors were this huge universe of people coming with kids and ready to rediscover the hobby.

Speaker 1 I was able to help broker the deal between gary vaynerchuk and tops to create a uh

Speaker 1 to create a insert set within uh 2019 top series 2 around uh the best entrepreneurs in baseball and gary was very adamant he wanted tops um we proposed to tops developing a collaboration with Gary around a what they were doing branded sets direct-to-consumer custom branded sets and they launched the first one with with Bryce Harper It was a big success.

Speaker 1 And they were looking at subjects to do the next one with. And we said, well, maybe you should take a look at Gary Vaynerchuk.
He's obsessed with cards. And

Speaker 1 now could be a perfect opportunity. And

Speaker 1 they took it and

Speaker 1 put a really fun set together that unlocked Gary's universe to the latest and greatest of modern sports cards. And

Speaker 1 lots happened since then in the hobby as well. But

Speaker 1 one of the things that was missing all through that journey, long-winded here, was

Speaker 1 a major sports media platform that was paying attention to the hobby. And that's what we were able to convince SI to

Speaker 1 move forward with. Talk to me about

Speaker 1 what SI is doing.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 when you think about the collectibles, it's so ironic. Old sports illustrated magazines are like one of the most collected things.

Speaker 1 For sports fans, especially.

Speaker 1 I'm not even,

Speaker 1 just in the last last six months have gotten back into collecting cards.

Speaker 1 But I wouldn't consider myself like a lifelong collector, but I am. When I go, I've got like 10 or 20, you know, Sports Illustrated that I've hold on over the years, and some are autographs.

Speaker 1 I went to Clemson's. I got some Dabbo Sweeney and Deshaun Watson, you know, like

Speaker 1 that, that meant more a few years ago, but we won't go down that road. But anyway, it is what it is.
But it's, it just fits.

Speaker 1 So talk to me about what Sports Illustrated and you've been doing.

Speaker 1 What is that division exactly? Well, so

Speaker 1 when Sports Illustrated said, yeah, we're into the idea of building a hobby vertical, the first thing we did was build out a team. And we hired a...

Speaker 1 So I have two partners in this collaboration with SI.

Speaker 1 guy named Chris Perrone, who

Speaker 1 had previously been the general manager of SI at Arena Group and was my partner in helping us to launch the idea initially. And then

Speaker 1 come full circle, Minute Media was interested in the opportunity to do the same thing. And we were able to launch SI.com/slash collectibles.

Speaker 1 And why that's significant is that the SI.com domain is one of the oldest and most

Speaker 1 trafficked on the internet and most has the highest one of the highest domain authorities on the internet, you know, and sort of how Google ranks sites and drives traffic. So,

Speaker 1 what is it, 99? Like, I don't know. It's really,

Speaker 1 yeah, that's guys not, I'm sure it starts with a nine.

Speaker 1 And so, we just get traffic when we have interesting content. So, our challenge was just

Speaker 1 making content about the hobby that people would be interested in reading.

Speaker 1 And we've built a staff of now over 15 really dedicated, talented writers, all hardcore hobbyists that have expertise in different verticals. And,

Speaker 1 you know, we're publishing on average 10 pieces a day. We're up to now over half a million unique readers a month and

Speaker 1 up to

Speaker 1 750,000 to a million unique views a month, article views a month,

Speaker 1 which are good numbers. And we're only into our fourth or fifth month, but it gives us, it's the largest by a factor of 10.
among hobby content channels, just again,

Speaker 1 because of the nature of the domain authority. And so that's given us the opportunity to invest even further in original content.

Speaker 1 We're developing series featuring collectors and really celebrating people's collections. And we're going to give

Speaker 1 a dad and his four sons. Like, that sounds like a story or a video.
Junior

Speaker 1 is going to be great. You're going to email you after the call.
And especially if your collection is featured in Linux,

Speaker 1 you can

Speaker 1 pace that.

Speaker 1 Yes, it is. So that's exactly what we're doing there.
And

Speaker 1 we're doing fun things with the, you know, the journey of collectibles from sort of discovery. So think about sports collectible version of Antique Roadshow.

Speaker 1 So we've got some fun ideas in the hopper for video and

Speaker 1 a lot of things up our sleeve that we're excited about. Yeah,

Speaker 1 super smart, Jeremy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like, okay, this just fits. There's sometimes you hear something, you're like, okay, I don't know about that.
This is just like,

Speaker 1 it wasn't already happening.

Speaker 1 It wasn't surprising, man. Yeah.
Yeah. The very first Sports Illustrated had a whole, you know, pullout of 1954 TOPS design in the issue, the famous issue of Eddie Matthews,

Speaker 1 1954.

Speaker 1 So collecting is sort of in the DNA of the brand.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we all have heard or collect the Sports Illustrator for Kids cards that you know are the first appearance of so many icons that you know don't

Speaker 1 don't necessarily get a card in the traditional releases you know the hobby's done a great job of making cards for all these uh alternative sports athletes coming in from different directions and you know fortunately um they paid a lot of attention uh to women's sports so a lot of the the great legends of women's sports have cards uh some of their only rookie cards or early appearances were in SI for Kids, which

Speaker 1 is unfortunate, but at least they had cards thanks to Sports Illustrator, which is part of SI's legacy. Yeah, I remember those.
I don't have any of those.

Speaker 1 Still some good ones.

Speaker 1 As I understand it, Victor Webb and Yama's card from a year and a half ago or so is still

Speaker 1 pretty pricey. For our audience, you know, that's either in, you know, maybe collectors or hearing more about this industry.

Speaker 1 It's hard, and Brian and I talked about this, but just how big this industry is and just how popular. And at the same time,

Speaker 1 it'll make your head spin trying to get your head around every parallel. Like everything else, like, good grief.
It's like, I don't even know where to start with the actual cards themselves, but

Speaker 1 it's fun.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's part of what SI is going to be doing here with content is celebrating collectors and celebrating their individual collections and showcasing all the different ways that collectors collect.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that's a pretty broad spectrum of

Speaker 1 embodiments of collections. I personally collect vintage Red Sox guys.
So I collect Ted Williams and Carl Yostrevsky. And if you ask what are the cards I would never part with,

Speaker 1 it's about

Speaker 1 100 give or take vintage

Speaker 1 Red Sox cards. And the rest

Speaker 1 is sort of fun stuff that I like to own. I've got some Roger Clemens rookies.
I mean, that was in my come up time.

Speaker 1 We're also when they got overprinted a little bit. So I don't know.
I mean, pretty good. They're conditioned now, right? Yeah.
Yeah. We took good care of them.

Speaker 1 And that's another whole element that's, you know, was there was a lot of resistance to grading when I remember it first coming into the scene in the early 90s

Speaker 1 when I was still an avid collector without a driver's license.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it was sort of like, what is this?

Speaker 1 Third-party grading. But

Speaker 1 it serves such an important role in the growth of collecting because of the trust factor that it's injected into what was previously a pretty...

Speaker 1 challenging environment when it comes to trust

Speaker 1 in cards and collecting. Subjective condition grading.

Speaker 1 It was really a big roadblock to to the growth that's happened uh you know i i started my ebay account in 1998 so i guess i was still dabbling you know in college with with buying and selling collectibles uh but you know the

Speaker 1 the cards you would purchase in lots i thought i had it beat i have mine's 2001

Speaker 1 100 feedback uh and 2001 my kids saw that when we got back into it and we were selling and buying a few things on ebay they were like you know doing i mean, these my kids are, you know, four boys under the age of 15.

Speaker 1 And it's like,

Speaker 1 see, in 2001, so my eBay account was there.

Speaker 1 It's hilarious. Yeah, it's a great date stamp.
It's one of those fun, like, you know, what's your Uber rating? Yeah, when did you start?

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it just ages us or if it's definitely some cred

Speaker 1 in the buying circles. Yeah.
Gary Vanchuck and I talk about the AOL chat rooms. You know, I used to buy and sell them them there in 1992 and 93,

Speaker 1 9,

Speaker 1 92, 3.

Speaker 1 I grew up in Northern Virginia where AOL was headquartered. And

Speaker 1 they put a DVD in your mailbox every night back then. I remember that.
My parents got it. I was loading it on their computer.
I remember it.

Speaker 1 And that noise. Oh, that dial-up, man.

Speaker 1 Little did we know, but it was on the other end of that dial-up line.

Speaker 1 Where Where do you see the industry going? And what's your thoughts on the NFTs and the digital space? Like,

Speaker 1 you can't fight it. It's coming.
I like to think it's an or,

Speaker 1 you know, like, and not like,

Speaker 1 I don't know, make your choice. I mean, but unless you hit on it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a complicated one. And there's so many different directions to pull it into.
You know, I think that these

Speaker 1 digital worlds, digital communities,

Speaker 1 you know, the success of platforms like Roblox and where that's going to be headed and

Speaker 1 the worlds that can be built within these platforms.

Speaker 1 I'm reluctant to cast judgment on a lot of this tech that is

Speaker 1 just really being

Speaker 1 understood, how it can be used effectively.

Speaker 1 I hate to don't hate.

Speaker 1 Gary is definitely an influence on me, but

Speaker 1 he made a big point with his

Speaker 1 NFT launch to bring real world tangible value to his buyers because he was certain of one thing, and that was that

Speaker 1 the journey of these things

Speaker 1 was going to be long and

Speaker 1 bumpy. And he wanted to make sure that there was value extended no matter what.

Speaker 1 Look, I think that blockchains, I know enough about cybersecurity to understand the value proposition of blockchain and why that's a new security protocol that people like and can rely on and can provide things that security experts like, like chain of custody kind of insight.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I'm hardly an expert on predicting what the commercial markets will look like. I think I come back to

Speaker 1 what is the evolution of the fan experience and how is it actually impacting fans now and how will that change? And there's a lot of real things. There's ticketing uses.

Speaker 1 There's definitely collectibility that's a legacy of

Speaker 1 what happened during the explosion and it's starting to come back through some types of utility.

Speaker 1 I think it's early, early days.

Speaker 1 I'm sure that people will start putting back puzzles that they were working on with the interconnectivity of these worlds as they start getting traction.

Speaker 1 There was a really interesting group in Golf that was selling

Speaker 1 one of these distributed network

Speaker 1 owned membership organizations, and you were going to have access to a golf course. And I think they went out and bought a golf course, but your ownership was embodied through the NFT.

Speaker 1 I think that'll, I'm excited to see where that goes and excited to see how I might be able to test it in some of the work that I do. Yeah, I mean, I see the value that my kids put in digital things.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 we've got the physical cards, and I don't think it's replacing, like I said,

Speaker 1 I don't think they're choosing one of the over the other.

Speaker 1 But I have been surprised because I kind of panned when the whole metaverse and all that stuff was happening during COVID, I panned all of it. And I don't want to say I was right, but I was right

Speaker 1 in that moment that that was a flash in the pan. It's not that I didn't think it's coming one day.

Speaker 1 You can't fight technology and progress, but I think a lot of that stuff's crashed and burned because it didn't really have a core, solid core. It was just kind of very glitzy in the moment.

Speaker 1 But I do see the value,

Speaker 1 even in like Fortnite, what their character has on and how much they'll spend for that. And that that cache means something.

Speaker 1 And it's so there's value even in digital assets

Speaker 1 that the younger generation have, right?

Speaker 1 It's part of youth culture now, for sure, is

Speaker 1 some digital expression, what they're sharing on their social channels, on their TikToks, and

Speaker 1 who they're interacting with, and that community of influence that they've embraced

Speaker 1 in their...

Speaker 1 content consumption patterns,

Speaker 1 where they're going for content and who they're going to for expertise. And

Speaker 1 I think that that continues to evolve. And I think there's a big place for digital stuff in the future of

Speaker 1 our population. I think smart companies and smart creators are going to find ways.

Speaker 1 But I tell you what, there's nothing like the thrill of opening that physical pack

Speaker 1 and, you know, holding the cards. I mean, call me old school, but, you know, and now how beautiful the cards are and the designs and all that,

Speaker 1 that's a hard experience to replace. And I don't know that it has to replace it.
I think it's, you know, again, and

Speaker 1 not or,

Speaker 1 you know, in that regard.

Speaker 1 You still open packs.

Speaker 1 Are you following what they're doing with sort of these real world

Speaker 1 repacks that you open online? You know, I'm not sure if it's Arena Group or one of the arena clubs. Yeah, yeah.
Like, literally, I mean, whether breaks and whatnot, all that. Yeah, I I mean,

Speaker 1 we have our own whatnot channel, like we've we've sold 500 items already. Like, we've we're in it, man.
We are in it. That's why Brian's sending me the Ludux crew.

Speaker 1 We're gonna get our whatnot sponsored by Luddux or something, you know. That's what we get SI involved.
Like, you know, the Rad Collective, that's uh, us,

Speaker 1 the uh, Rad Rips, Rad Collective, and I own breakingrad.com. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 1 We need to talk. So, so, what we are working on a really cool breaking content initiative with one of the biggest companies in the world.
And

Speaker 1 we should talk about what we can do.

Speaker 1 That'd be fun.

Speaker 1 It's a fun industry. And

Speaker 1 look, it's brought my sons and I close up. I'm an entrepreneur to all these companies.
And my kids know I do podcasting.

Speaker 1 No, I have like some influence online and all that, but they haven't really cared. But once

Speaker 1 we got it, I'm teaching them business through the sports cards now.

Speaker 1 we got our own Shopify site that I've built and showed them how to build and like e-comm and social and then whatnot.

Speaker 1 And all like, you know, it's like giving me an avenue to teach them things that I would have liked to teach them through what I do every day, but it's meeting them on,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 a grounds that they like.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. My buddies

Speaker 1 at Big Night Entertainment Group started Card Vault a few years ago.

Speaker 1 You know, sort of, It was a fun side project during the pandemic.

Speaker 1 They had all these nightclubs and bars that were shut down and they figured they could entertain people by doing breaks on these stages.

Speaker 1 And they built a business and lo and behold, they're now partners with Tom Brady and scaling Card Vault by Tom Brady all over the country.

Speaker 1 And that'll bring you know, so many new collectors to the game who will see that name and the way that that they're merchandising the hobby.

Speaker 1 And next thing you know, we've got a new collector going on their own fun journey and embodying their passion for their sport. So

Speaker 1 it's a really exciting time. A lot of big companies, private equity, venture capital, are putting resources into the space.
I think it will continue. It's one of the

Speaker 1 true

Speaker 1 ubiquitous passions that's enjoyed globally. It really truly is

Speaker 1 global hobby.

Speaker 1 You know, the NBA is collected in just about every corner of

Speaker 1 the connected world. So,

Speaker 1 yeah, man. It's exciting stuff.
Jeremy, where can everybody keep up with what you're doing with Sports Illustrated and you in general? Yeah, on Instagram, I'm J-A-I-S-E-N-B-E-R-G at Jasonberg.

Speaker 1 I'm at talent brand labs,

Speaker 1 www.talentbrandlabs.com. And

Speaker 1 just keep an eye on si.com/slash collectibles for all sorts of fun new content. I love it, man.
Made a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 They were smart to listen to you and the rest of your team that was kind of pushing this. So it makes a lot of sense and can't wait to kind of keep up with the content that you guys are doing.

Speaker 1 And hey, maybe the RAD collective fits in there somewhere. I think we should talk about that.
Have your people call my people. Yeah, I know.
I think I know you.

Speaker 1 We'll exchange numbers. Yeah, we do.

Speaker 1 Hey, guys, you know where to find us, RyanisRight.com. We'll find the highlight clips, the links to all of Jeremy's social, his website, you know, brands, sponsorship, partnerships.

Speaker 1 Hey, you know who to call. You call Jeremy.
And look, go check out Sports Illustrated's new collectibles, backslash collectibles, SI.com backslash collectibles. Hey, it just fits, man.

Speaker 1 That is where it is. It fits.
And I love seeing what everything's happening in the industry. It's part of our trading card series, The Business You Need to Know.

Speaker 1 Hey, find me at Ryan Alford on Instagram. Thank you for making us number one.
See you next time. Right about now.

Speaker 2 This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production. Visit RyanisRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire.

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