You're listening to DraftKings network. This is The Dan Levator Show with.

The Stu Guts podcast.

There's a lot of stuff for us to get to, all of it anchored in the world of sports business. I do want to do the thing that that is both uncomfortable and necessary. In which I point out that if you are getting your news from me right now, pablo Torre, host of Pablo Torre, finds out about the war in the Middle East. God help you, A, but B, there's just some basic accounting that is objectively horrifying. Like. As we tape right now, the death toll in Israel is up over a thousand people since Saturday, the terrorist attack carried out by Hamas. And by the way, the Palestinian authorities are now saying that over a thousand people have now been killed in Gaza due to the retaliatory attacks from the state of Israel. And so, of course, there is a lot here that will be infuriating to so many people. Even the framing of what I've said, I'm sure, is objectionable on some level at some point. But I want to get to what it is that sports has to do with this, because we're getting to a point, John and David, in which we're seeing statements from leagues, from teams.

This is a global catastrophe, but it's also one that we're seeing American sports weigh in on. And I'm curious, David, why that is. Are you surprised by it? What goes through your mind?

I will never forget being in Milwaukee on 911 and then going to the commissioner's office, which at the time was in Milwaukee with Bud Seelig and us sitting at a table figuring out what our response is. Are we calling off games? How long are we going to stop? When are we going to start again? What is the statement that we're going to make? And thinking to myself, sports has such a unique position. If I own a Walgreens franchise or a Wendy's franchise or any other business, I'm not thinking like that. I'm thinking about how do I deal with my employees and how do I keep making money? But sports as an institution that has the pulse of the people's cultural well being, is well established. And I think this is yet another example. When any natural disaster happens, people look to sports teams, sports leagues, 911. When this happens, the war in Israel, the leagues feel as though they have to respond, and they immediately there's, like a PR 911 call that goes out when things like this happen. And they sit down and figure out, okay, what are we going to say and when are we going to say it, and how much money do we have to donate if it's a natural disaster?

Yeah. I would remind people that sports did play a very significant role at 911 and an appropriate role. It's sort of re rallying the country to be resolute and continue on with their daily lives. Remember the game in Yankee Stadium where President Bush came and threw the first.

Pitch through a strike?

Right. He threw a strike. And but by the way, for most people, it symbolize, okay, we're going to move on. Right? We'll always remember we, of course, do want to retaliate, but sports had a role in bringing people back together.

There's a lot of hubris there. And I'm in sports, so it's hard for me to say this. Let me tell you. There's a lot of people that don't view sports as the entree into making the country feel better or who care about who won the One World Series when the Diamondbacks upset the Yankees, which would have been a perfect end, or when the Red Sox won the year of the marathon bombing. These are great stories because we love telling great stories in the world of sports. But there are things that are bigger than sports. And what I used to worry about running a team is, when do we not get involved?

Well, John, that's the question. Where is the line drawn? I mean, I want to look at this cynically. The idea that, okay, sports considers itself a civic institution in ways that are unique, clearly. But how do you calculate when you have to weigh in?

I'm not sure I understand that. I mean, I do understand 911. Right? It's on our soil. And clearly the leagues feel that they need to make a statement because of the special relationship with Israel. But you could make an argument that they have no business making a statement of every other country, every other association. Is the PTA coming out with a statement? Is WWF coming out with a statement? We all abhor.

Jewish owned and Jewish related businesses are all coming out with statements, and they're talking to their employees. This is not a small deal. There are rallies going on. There are threats that are happening. There's people who feel unsafe. As the CEO of a company, you're just going to sit back and say, oh, we don't need to get involved, but let's measure how many Jews we have in the company. How many owners are Jewish. But we have no, I think you were saying, and this is so interesting to me there's no Palestinian owners, so we have to come out on the side of Israel. Is that a thought that's in your head? Because it's never in mine. In my calculus.

In my calculus right now. No, it's not in my calculus. That because there's no Palestinian owner. They're making a statement in favor of Israel. Clearly, Hamas attacked and they are the Culpable Party and should be held accountable for that. But the question we're talking about is why are the leagues holding them accountable? Why is MLB, NBA, and NFL coming out and issuing statements? Did they issue a statement when there was a flood in Syria? I don't recall hearing a statement from the leagues about the loss of are.

You saying a flood in Syria is the same as the killing of women and children by a terrorist organization? You're not saying that?

No, it's more reprehensible. But it is still for the families of the deceased, it is just as profound that their people were swept away by a flood.

Boy I take natural disasters as quite.

Separate, but let's take it separately, though. And, John, we were talking earlier today about Myanmar, right. There are examples. The Rohingya, like thousands of people killed by a state.

That's a tougher one for me. Yeah. Comparing what you said. And that is one that I think about, is why do I care about certain issues and not others? And it's because those issues pertain to me. I have a connection to them. It's the reason why I raise money for cancer, lung cancer. I never did it before, then my sister died of it. Now I raise money for lung cancer. Before I didn't. It doesn't mean I didn't have empathy for people who had lung cancer. It just means there's a bandwidth for what you can deal with. So when something like this happens in Israel, to think that the leagues where there are Jewish owners and there's always something about the anti Semitism, it's much like what happened. There were statements made when there was Asian hate, when there were Black Lives Matter, these things. While some of them happened on American soil, some of them didn't. But there are certain things you very well know you've got to comment on.

Right.

That's what I view this as.

Right. And again, the commissioners are there to serve at the will of the owners. So I don't think they make these statements without consulting with owners. You would know this better than they're.

Racist owners, though, and they made a big NFL, NBA, everyone did a big thing about the racial reckoning that took place with the deaths, et cetera, of George Floyd. There's plenty of owners and why name, we don't do that. But plenty of racist owners. You know that.

Well, the commissioners also have another constituency, which is the players. And in that case, I believe the constituency was overwhelmingly probably the players, not the owners. Which is not to suggest that many of the owners weren't appalled as well, but I would assume they were reacting to the players. It is interesting that only the NBA put out a statement in association with their players. Association.

Very telling. Very upsetting to me that MLB could not get together with the union to do a joint statement. They do it when there's natural disasters. They'll combine. And you say that they do it out of love. It's actually part of the collective bargain agreement that there is a fund of money that is set aside under the agreement that gets donated together in concerts jointly when things bad happen. Natural disasters. But this the players certainly should have commented.

But are you assuming that the players were consulted and did not want to participate.

They better have been. Rob Manford spends his time as commissioner talking about trying to get a better relationship with the players. This is the type of thing where you don't want to flex the fact that, oh, we're making a statement and the players couldn't get to it. This is not where you're trying to win anything in collective marketing or in the court of public opinion. So I would assume that it wouldn't be the commissioner calling Tony Clark but there are PR people who would have spoken.

But if we do the exegesis, to use a biblical term now an Old Testament term, the exegesis of press releases, as we love to do on this show and we notice this stuff, it feels like the absence of total unanimity as to why and how they would do this. It feels illustrative of the larger complexity and moral hazard around this specific topic, which is to say, why does Israel get the attention? Why do they get the sympathy? And not Palestine and not Myanmar, not other. This is which speaks to, again, that sort of objectively, toxic, conspiratorial thinking around the quote unquote conspiracy of who is really in control of the world and sports in all of these institutions.

Well, that's an anti Semitic trope that you're discussing right now. That's not a conspiracy. That's an actual thing that people view Jewish people as, oh, they're all rich, they're all in control. They control banking, they control Hollywood, they control sports. The irony is the number of Jewish owners who there were when I was in baseball, we were in the very large minority. Not as big a minority as we are in real life where there are people around. I told the story today with Dan or whenever we taped whatever we're doing. I don't know what day it is. Goddamn, it's a blur.

It's a blur.

I never make those mistakes. Never say never. I was on survival with someone who had never met a Jew, never met one. And that is more common than you'd think.

I grew up in a small town in North Carolina with not a single Jewish citizen and by the way, without a single Catholic citizen at the time I grew up there that anybody knew of. No temple and no Catholic church.

Well, now you're surrounded by a Catholic, I guess, at least in name, no in ancestry and a Jew.

Well, it's interesting because people are forced to confront things and it's a big social experiment when you've never met someone who's trans or never met someone who's Jewish. When minority we're talking about minorities.

So you said something, David, that really resonated, which is and this speaks to how people are arguing about this. How are people plausibly seemingly confusing terrorism with resistance? Right. It's because for many people on all sides of this, the victims in question are abstract. The idea that. So go ahead.

I just was going to say I think David already said it. We respond to things that happen to people who are like the people we know, right? I don't happen to know any Rohingya Muslims so it's easier for me to view that as some distant thing. On the other hand, when this happened, I know people who are worried about their families in Israel. I must admit I don't know anybody who is worried about their family in Palestine. So I think David nailed it that you respond to those people you know and understand and in this country we overwhelmingly stand with Israel.

So I'm with you until that last sentence. I don't believe that in America we overwhelmingly stand with Israel. I think that politically maybe and maybe in sports. But if you go and pull people around our country their give a shit level toward what's going on in Israel right now is de minimis.

Yeah, I'm not sure I would agree with that. I think you would find that the American sentiment is overwhelmed certainly the public and the federal government and most officials. You'll find very few people, I think, willing to break with Israel publicly in the United States right now.

Well, it is certainly again polling data can answer this question, but for us here it does feel like this topic has been safely ranked as the number one most radioactive thing that people don't want to touch at all. Third rail, the most third electrified rail of American discourse feels like Israel and Palestine. And now I suppose we should turn our attention to the world at large and to all of these leagues, John, who like to behave as if they are nation states because, well, here we are empire building, right? And so the international desires of certainly we've talked about the NFL in London, the NBA in Abu Dhabi just recently. Why are these leagues, these businesses obsessed with expansion overseas?

John, I know what you're going to say. I could almost talk on your behalf but I'd like to give you the microphone because I think that people will not agree with you. And so that's why I want you to start so then I can explain why I think you're wrong.

I think that the American major leagues do think of themselves as nation states to a certain extent. But I also think that they want to be global sports. And I do believe that one of the big American leagues has the opportunity to be a global sport.

He's going to say the NBA bet, right? Because of his friendship with no, no.

I'm going to say the NBA because it is a fact the NBA has an opportunity and is well on its way to being a global sport. And that is mostly because you can play soccer with a field and some cans and bottles for a goal and with a ball. You can play basketball with a hoop and a ball and four people you cannot play tackle football or baseball or hockey without a lot of equipment.

That's not true. Have you ever been to the Dominican or Venezuela?

I have been.

We've scout players that don't have shoes. They barely have gloves. That's why they're so good at being oh. Why are so many Dominican players so good at baseball? Because they catch baseballs with their bare hand without spikes on.

But baseball doesn't have to conquer the Dominican. Baseball is the most popular sport in the Dominican Republic, and I agree with you. It'd be easier for them to play soccer or basketball. But they love baseball. And because they're close to the United States, they have a chance to send people to the United States for whom this is the greatest economic opportunity of their lives. But baseball is not going to be a global sport in the same way that basketball.

So Adam Silver goes to Abu Dhabi and puts a tempo down because he wants it to be a global sport. And to be a global sport, you have to have a presence in UAE. That's theory. Well, that is a possible another theory.

Well, there is a second, yes, and by the way, in this case, I could probably speak for you that you're going to suggest they're there because they want investment from the sovereign wealth funds into their teams because finish it off.

If you know what I'm going to say. I'll be happy to take a break.

That's all the Davidson, that's all the David Sampson I can do their meeting.

No, it's pretty good.

You never go full David Sampson is.

There having a meeting with the deputy commissioner, and the quote, I think was discussing and exploring further opportunities for collaboration. He's trying to get investment in teams. They're trying to get limited partners. They're trying to get money the way Leoncis did. He got the investment these teams needed.

Ted Leoncis, owner of the Wizards?

Yes. And the mystic.

Yes.

And the capitals.

Yes.

Owns them all.

You wouldn't argue with the fact that investment is a form of collaboration.

It's an ugly second cousin that once in a while you're allowed to kiss. Maybe, but no, I think that they're trying to hide they're trying to hide what they're really after here. And they're doing it under the form of, hey, we want to expand globally. We want everyone to love our sport, but they're not going to poor places.

You know, this is an occasion for me to observe just how biblical your name is. It is David Samson. Two of the I've worked here for so long. No, I understood this, but I think as we focus on the region, the biblical nature of your name becomes more and more important.

That's right. This is John trying to cut your hair. Incidentally, going a little Delilah on you.

Two amazing biblical characters.

I was named after my great grandfather, whose name was Dufchek, which a Yiddish name. He spoke no English. He was Yiddish and spoke Yiddish and not Yiddish Russian, but spoke Yiddish, and his name was Duchek.

But let me borrow a little Yiddish.

Right. Okay.

The Chutzpah. The chutzpah on behalf of Roger Goodell. Right. Trying to export the NFL to England. John, what is this to you know.

I've been consistent on this. I think going to play American tackle football around most of the rest of the world is an uphill struggle. It's sisyphean. And I'm not sure why the emphasis is put on trying to get teams to London. I've been to London, and I've seen the NFL games in Wembley, and they're entertaining and it's fun, and people have a great time, but they leave and they go home and watch singles Premier League on television the next week. And I'm not sure why the NFL wants to be not the most they can't be the most important sport in England.

Most important American sport or sports sport?

Sports sport.

Well, I think they're not trying to be the most important sports sport. They'd like to be the most important American sport. Assuming basketball I'm counting basketball, hockey, baseball and football as the American sports. Our thing with football is we always wanted to get to Europe first because we wanted to have the tent pole as an American sport.

But what is the point of being the most important American sport? It matters whether you're just an important sport in the country.

The reason why it mattered to us is that we wanted to get broadcast rights. We wanted to sell our broadcast rights. We wanted to get promoters who, if dollars are fungible and they're going to promote American sports in their facilities and they only have X dollars to deal with, if they give it to baseball, then they won't give it to football.

But what is the ultimate goal? Sell merchandise?

It's to augment the central fund with international revenue from broadcasters. That is, broadcasters. Merch is certainly one.

How much of the media dollars for baseball come from outside the United States?

So we're trying to create it's not big. Japan is the biggest, and then it goes down. And so Europe is sort of an uncharted territory. There's not a lot of money for broadcasting in Puerto Rico or Dominican or Venezuela. So that's why baseball you try Europe because you think that if you find some players who are European we had an Amsterdam player, a Dutch, a Dutch player. Thank you. Oh, my God. Coco what's his name? Vandenhirk. That I just may have wait.

From the present tense or from your time?

My time. He was rick Vandenhirk was a player, I believe.

Rick Vandenheck.

Is that really possible that I have.

There is a Dutch baseball pitcher whose name is Rick Vandenhurk.

So had him as a player. And we always said to baseball, let us go to Amsterdam because we're going to be big there.

I love this, John, because the other fact I've discerned from his Wikipedia page is that Rick Vandenhurk oh, no. You were exporting his 6.8 Era.

I didn't say it was good.

Just the desperation cheap.

But doesn't all the idea that a Dutch player is going to make you popular? In the Netherlands, there is a prototype for that, which is Yao Ming in China, which kind of worked.

On the other hand, kind of it's the number one example. It's why everybody has academies everywhere because they want to find players foreign born. They want Yao Ming. It's the number one basketball.

I got it.

But wait, what I didn't necessarily appreciate till I now get David's sense of the risk board that is planet Earth is the idea that these are also anchor babies, that we're going to plant them abroad and they will be the outpost around which we build our empire.

I was in the meeting when money was allocated to India to try to find baseball players in India. And we're sitting in the meeting saying, all right, how much money do we have to pour in there in order to get a major leaguer? And then we had the baseball operations. People come in and say, hey, it's a decade if it's a minute. And then it's likely never to happen. We're like, all right, just give them 100 grand. Do a little academy, but no equipment.

I love this notion that if we.

Just let them catch with their hands exactly.

Plant an academy, you'll end up with a Derek Jeter of baseball.

Isn't that what soccer does? I thought that was the whole thing. We always try to and now I'm being serious. We always try to replicate the academies in soccer where people grow up playing the sport and become big leaguers for.

Their country, but they tend to grow up playing the sport that's already being played in their country.

Got to start somewhere.

I know.

Let's reframe this, though, in the context of the NFL, which is not seemingly Taylor Swift aside, as thirsty as Major League Baseball is.

Oh, no, they're thirsty. They're more thirsty than anybody else. And David led us to an interesting point, which is they're there ultimately to try to get more media dollars to pay to their American teams, I guess is what they are. But I suspect at this point for baseball, hockey, maybe basketball and football, less than 1% of their media revenues come from outside the United States.

But you're still always trying to grow revenue. So you're looking for other frontiers. That's what expansion is.

Isn't it generally the case that you grow revenue from the place you already have the most revenue, but then you'd.

Never that's not you can maybe grow you know this when you're building your business. Go ahead.

The NFL just extracted multiple billions of dollars more from the United States media market would feel to me like an investment in more football in the United States would likely pay off before an investment in London.

But they're doing it. They got the 930 time slot. To play a 930 game, you got to be in a little bit further east than New York. And so they're in London.

You could play in New York at 930.

There's not one football player or union that would allow a game to start at 09:30 A.m.. We have to fight. You know, the Patriots Day game is a collective bargain and agreement issue. That's the one in Boston that starts on the Boston Marathon Day, Patriots Day, and I believe first pitch may be 11:00 A.m.. And they get an exception because in the agreement, games can't start before a certain time. Players don't like morning games. They're not morning people.

What's more patriotic than collective bargaining?

It's the number one. You have to bargain everything which you should want. If you are pro labor, you should want everything to be bargained where you can't tell your employees that they have to show up at 930, like in Metal Arc. You don't tell anyone when to come, and therefore they don't come.

No, they're here all the time. We're around the clock here, David.

That's right. I live in this we have bunks.

In the back that you may not be aware of.

I couldn't find a place to do an interview.

We have microphones made of milk cartons, just like in San Pedro. Yes. Okay, so, all right.

That's John's signal in case you're getting to know John. Pablo, when he drops an okay about six to twelve inches away from the microphone, he's ready to move on.

Both of you use the word okay in very meaningful meaningful senses differently. But I want to make just a slight pivot as we spin our globe, right? And both of you resemble Alexander the Great. Just like that quote about him, why Alexander wept.

I was just wondering why you kept.

Using the again, it's Sorry, coca. But the quote is and Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds left to conquer.

Yurtle the turtle. That's a Dr. Seuss reference for those of you in the back who don't know that.

Yurtle the turtle.

Do you know? Never heard of Yurtle the Turtle?

I have heard of Yurtle the Turtle.

The king of everything he could see so they climb on the turtles.

Dr. Seuss, I don't remember it with quite that degree. It's been a long time for me, David. I read it back between the two big wars back in the 30s. My mom was reading that to me.

It's my motivational book when I wake up in the morning. Don lebotard David Sampson. Weirdo because he was not the fun.

Substitute teacher who'd wheel out a TV.

And play a VHS tape of Armageddon in science class.

He was the weird one who would.

Eat an egg salad sandwich while clipping his toenails into the trash can and.

Ranting about Ronald Reagan stu guts.

The guy kept talking about how his.

Ass was smooth, smoother than a newborn's cheek.

He wouldn't stop bragging about his bare buttocks.

To me, this is the Dan Levatar.

Show with the stu guts. Who is more Yurtle the turtle, though, than Sepladder.

Wow. He climbed pretty high on the backs of a lot of people.

So here we are looking at our globe and looking at FIFA, and this is John's account, I think, in ways that are profound for reasons that I want to get into here. But here is the latest. The latest is that FIFA is examining the host country candidates for the 2030 World Cup. And it is looking more and more likely that Saudi Arabia is going to be the host. And of course, Spain, Portugal, Morocco are going to be the primary hosts in 2030.

And FIFA south America is getting the first game. So they get to count that as countries taken care of for 2030, conveniently making it so, hey, who's left? Australia? Yeah, they're going to bid, not win. And then Saudi Arabia.

Right.

And by the way, Set Bladder must be so proud. That what he did. And the foundation he set for the new guy, Gianni, must be so proud.

Septic bladder, is that what you called.

Him when you dealt with him?

A piece of garbage?

Sorry, Coco, but sep bladder. Gianni infantino. The same song, right? The same song. And so, John, what do you get out of this story that, oh, hey, Saudi Arabia might be having the most popular, most profitable sports event in 2034?

I believe they are probably floating it publicly to see what the reaction level is. But that that's where they would like to be because they will get paid a large sum of money for being there. And there was recently the news that they lowered the number of stadiums that you had to have from seven to, which happens to be the number that Saudi Arabia has that qualify. So, yeah, I think they're trying to set that up because it's the nonprofit organization with the highest levels of compensation for their senior officers possible.

I like that you're accusing them, and you have great reason, given your history and given what you know about it and given what we've learned about FIFA and how corrupt they are. But I would have liked to have seen them change the rules a lot earlier. I don't like the causation of changing a rule where you are doing it just to help a country. I don't think that's proper. And that's all they did. When you go from seven to four, and why not go from seven to two and say, look, Saudi Arabia catapults over the requirements?

Well, you don't like when they change a rule for a specific location. How about you just take the whole damn tournament and run it in the winter instead of the summer because you've decided to. Do it in Qatar, which, by the way, in their presentation, lied and said that they would have air conditioned stadiums which were not possible to get built. They did not build them. Now they're going to try to go to Saudi Arabia. It should be in football nations, and nations should have to earn that designation and be there. I guess they're trying to with their league. I don't know why you'd go back to the Middle East ten or twelve years when you haven't been to England, the home of the sport since 1966. Why you would feel the need to.

Go back to why would you ever go back to London, England? What's the purpose? What would be the benefit?

You've already conquered that world, is what David is saying.

I see that they're the lowest turtle. England is literally the lowest turtle in Yurtle, the turtle's kingdom.

By that definition, you take the Super Bowl to teams that don't the cities that don't have teams.

They've already talked about neutral sites. They've talked about doing it in cities where they're not where there hasn't been a football team. They're talking in baseball. Scott Boras wants to do the neutral site World Series as a way to increase revenue so his players get more. And I get it.

Do you say Borass that way deliberately, or is that just how it's actually pronounced?

It's Boris. Yeah, but he bores me. He's bored me. I've wasted hours of my life.

I thought it was a second syllable.

Yeah.

If we go back and listen to.

I'm glad you also are on that same wavelength.

First pronunciation.

I don't want to distract from Yurtle with Scott, but I will say that the big story for me around what FIFA did is they are now no longer. And maybe what they learned from the corruption trial is, let's actually be way more upfront with what we're doing. No need to hide it anymore. We're going to give it to 2030. All these different seven what are there, six or seven countries now? And then we're going to give it to Saudi Arabia. But does that help the football world, number one? Does it help them actually raise revenue by getting more people playing football around the world? Which is what they claim they do with World Cups, is they put a stake in the ground for it to become a bigger population center of football players.

So the other bit of context, John, is that the Saudi Pro League, their clubs, have spent nearly $1 billion over this summer bringing new players to their.

Shore, and the leagues are pissed. If you talk to owners of EPL teams or Syria or wherever other leagues, there's now another competitor. Saudi Arabia is like the Steve Cohn, but on steroids. When Steve Cohn came into Major League Baseball and upset the other owners because he was going to bring his payroll so high, saudi Arabia is doing exactly what they said they were going to do, and now FIFA is saying, we co sign. Keep doing it because you're being rewarded with the World Cup. I'd like them to be not rewarded with the World Cup.

I would prefer to see the World Cup somewhere else than in Saudi Arabia. First of all, they're once again suggesting they're going to play in the summer. It's a travesty to move the tournament to the winter, so they need to keep it in the summer. They need to explain how they're going to play those games in the summer in that area.

And you, as a broadcaster, what I was thinking about from a revenue standpoint, because FIFA gets its payments, but the actually, when they're bidding, don't care whether it's in England, Saudi Arabia, anywhere else.

They do care.

So you bid more if it were in a nicer place?

Well, my recollection is that we had to bid before we I don't have a good recollection of that, to tell you the truth. We did not consider the yeah, we would try to lobby for it not to be there. We would rather it was in a better time zone, and we would rather it was in Europe or in the Western Hemisphere.

But doesn't that lack of importance, such that you don't even recall it, doesn't that speak to what the actual probably does, the value of this thing, how desperate people are to get this.

But the thing is, they're not driving any more value by putting in Saudi Arabia other than money. Will exchange hands, almost certainly. And once again, the voting members of the Expo will probably be the beneficiary of this in some way or the other.

How do you bid? I'm sorry to ask a question and I shouldn't. I'm going to get in trouble after the show. How do you bid for something when you don't know what your production costs are? When you don't know where it's going to know? You just make assumptions.

Well, it just doesn't vary that much. Right.

It's not more expensive to be in Saudi Arabia than it is to be in Pittsburgh.

It would probably be much less expensive to be in Saudi Arabia because if you did what Fox did and threatened not to produce it from there, they will underwrite it. But if you actually have to spend money and go to Saudi Arabia, produce, it doesn't cost that much more money. They have facilities that they built. In fact, they have great facilities. They don't have great stadiums, but they have great facilities. They don't have great things for people to do.

It's funny, because in my head, as we're thinking about value, as we have meetings on the other side of our broadcasters, we always thought that broadcasters cared about location. We thought broadcasters cared about which teams were in certain games, who's playing in certain games, where, what time the games are played and all I hear you say, not all. Often I hear you say that it doesn't matter who's playing, doesn't matter where it is, it doesn't matter what time it is. And I don't think you were ever that way when you were the keeper of the purse strings in Bristol. So I'm getting to know you in a way that if I'd known back then what a softie you are, it would have changed every way. We would have negotiated.

I'm not sure I would have been regarded by the people negotiating that side table as a softie, but for sure I tried to just understand what the value was to us and was happy to try to get to a place that worked for both parties. But no, I didn't.

Seriously, how much time did you but.

All of this is saying that, David, you're a bottom rung turtle.

It's on.

Sorry.

There's no question up there.

John's not worried about the things that you are concerned with.

Not at all.

Look, here's the problem with thank you for that.

I feel it here too.

Problem with thinking that you ultimately have to pay a dollar more than whoever else is bidding. That's what I concentrated on much more than trying to mathematically decide, oh, this is worth exactly this much because I just wanted to win the bid and if I'm going to go in and I had a CFO who always was mad at me because she always said what's your walk away point? I said my walk away point is when we win.

Right.

That's my walk away point. And if you're going to go in and say, well, I'm not going to pay you more money if you don't play the world series in a certain location or you don't agree to do this or that, we did that a lot. But it wasn't usually in the negotiation. It usually was in the midst of our deals. We would say what about these changes? What if we did this? What if we added this to create value? And by the way, I always had a good response from the leagues that they were willing to do things. You are right. They would frequently run into we would love to do that, John, but it's not in the CBA so we can't do it. But we actually did go and get.

Some things that had the timing is big, right. So the reason why leagues would acquiesce to you wanting to do things is they would come meet with the teams and say, hey, we have a national deal coming up in two years and we want to make sure that they are primed and going to bid more money.

Absolutely.

If you come to us the day after you sign a deal, we're going to say no to you because it's too far. The new deal is too far away. So you purposely wait for the middle. Makes sense. But did anything actually change the day after the deal was signed? We're always going to hear you talk because we love you.

But I was busy celebrating the day after the deal was done, so I wasn't asking anything. It probably took at least a week or two.

So nice of you, but no, I.

Do think look, I think that we were unique in not spending most of our time noodling. Over exactly what something was going to be worth and how much ad dollars we felt if we did a long deal and we've talked about that before, we would figure out how to make it work. And it is somewhat binary to ESPN, which had a dominant position. You either get the rights or you don't get the rights. A lot of our competitors had to decide, we're going to bid for this. We can't bid more than this because if we do that, we can't afford to keep some other rights that we have. And we didn't do it that way. We regarded every battle as a winnable battle. If we decided we wanted to buy something, we tried to buy it.

And so now we turn to the battleground that Warner Brothers Discovery is surveying because the latest headlines there, David, are that, hey, Warner Brothers Discovery one of these competitors that was not a competitor when John was astride the empire.

Well, they were a competitor and a series competitor, but go ahead.

Kind of the top turtle to look down at. A mid turtle. My point being, though, that now Warner Brothers Discovery is competing with ESPN and Fox, ostensibly, reportedly, I should say, for rights to the college football playoffs.

Where did you learn that? What's the source of that?

The New York Post.

That's a source?

Yeah, it's a source. I would be interested in knowing where they got that information. The only person that that benefits is whoever's selling the College Football Playoff. I do not know whether in negotiations right now, I don't understand why Warner Brothers Discovery would be thinking about buying that. They have a lot of debt. They're making a lot of changes, most of which involve saving money. They have the most important sports rights in their portfolio up, which is the NBA. They need to win that College Football Playoff would do very little for them. I suspect they're thinking about driving a lot of subs into a streaming service by putting the college football playoffs. But there's not enough games and it doesn't last long enough. We did not value, for instance, the Olympics at ESPN because we did 17 days. It comes and goes and didn't really help us out. I don't know why they would put their attention. I do not believe they're a series competitor for the College Football Playoff. And of course, it was in the New York Post. So I'm assuming that some New York Post reporter went to the bathroom and the person in the urinal next to them said, hey, I hear Warner Bros.

Discovery might be interesting.

There he goes sullying the audience.

It does remind me of a great New York Post headline, though, which was headless, Body and Topless Bar.

That's an old one that's on t shirts. You can find that in Times Square.

Yeah.

Good part. It's long been the best part of the New York Post is their punny headlines.

I thought Page Six was that's always a good one. I think that there's a little deeper issue here. And I think, Pablo, you brought it up because you're saying that if dollars are fungible that Turner could go to the NBA and say, hey, what we've told you all along is we're not going to give you the three X increase that you want, and we're going to cover our bases. And getting the College Football Playoff, that would have a bonus effect just like it did when Fox got the NFL. It had a bonus effect of legitimizing lem. People don't remember what happened with Fox when they got the package. It legitimized their whole network. But people were too old. We're old for that. And it weakens someone else and makes you stronger. So getting this College Football Playoff as it's about to expand to twelve with an eye toward expanding further, which I think will happen because there's an unending appetite for college football. Why would you say that it would not be a good business move. I think it would be a better move than regular season NBA on TNT where people are more interested in Shaq and Ernie than they are in watching the actual games.

No the revenue they drive from the NBA playoffs and the regular season NBA, it would far exceed the revenue they would drive for what will turn out to be what four, eight like eleven games for now.

Could be more.

Twelve teams currently are projected for 2024. 2025 in the playoff?

Yeah. But no I don't think it does enough for them. It's going to cost a half a billion dollars to get that package and I would save that money and be spending it on the NBA.

But give me the argument for spending that money. Spending the money on spending the money not on the World Cup, on the College Football Playoff.

Well a bit of background for people who don't know. John was the one who ponied up all of the money for the NBA in a joint deal with Warner Brothers Discovery who got the other parts of that deal with the yes.

No no. We actually negotiated together. The NBA actually gave us permission. David Levy, TNT and I negotiated with the NBA together. We wanted there not to be a third package and we conspired together to pay them enough money to take the extra games they would have put in the third package. We were the incumbents remember. So just as TNT or I'll use that instead of Warner Brothers Discovery just as TNT and ESPN have the first right to negotiate which will last from now through April. I do believe the NBA will come out of that. And whether the by the way you were suggesting, David, there might be some leverage for TNT to say to the NBA, oh, we can't afford to pay. The NBA doesn't care and shouldn't care. By the way, the fact that you bought a boat and now you want to buy a house for more money than you can afford. The person who owns a house doesn't care that you can't afford to, but.

They'Re going to sell to somebody else.

They're going to sell to somebody else.

And that was my only point.

And they have plenty of so, more.

So you would not have been allowed to conspire had there been today's media landscape is Adam Silver. Well, I'll ask if you're Adam Silver, are you giving anyone the right to conspire? Right? Not no, no.

This was a different time. It was good for everybody because we were going to pay them significantly more money for us in TNT to continue to have all the NBA other than the regional sports networks. And now the landscape is completely different. I cannot imagine they would do anything like that. In fact, I think they'll probably come out. If I was at ESPN, I would try very hard not to let it come out. I would try to renew the deal that's going to require them paying an enormous increase. Whether Warner Brothers Discovery can afford to pay that enormous increase, I am not sure.

The equivalent here is when you're a free agent and you and your agent make the decision are you going to resign with your team or are you going to test free agency? And that's what the NBA is thinking about. But what is not mentioned is when agents and players decide whether to resign with their team or test free agency, they've tampered with the other teams to see exactly how much money is going to be available to them. I would assume if I am running the NBA and I am your good friend Adam Silver in a vacuum, I'm not letting anyone renew unless I know that I'm not getting more from the competitors.

So you mentioned the regional sports networks, you've mentioned the changing landscape of how it's different now. You mentioned agents working angles and now we go to Washington DC. Right? So this story I want to hit this quickly relative to how we've been pacing ourselves, but Rich Paul, agent partner of LeBron James and Draymond Green and so many other players in the NBA and now in the NFL as well, he says that the collapse of the regional sports networks is good for players. He said this in an interview with Semaphore and it's good for players because this is a form of player empowerment. When you are selling subscriptions I'll translate his words here. When you're selling subscriptions directly to consumers, you, the Washington Wizards, for instance, are selling games, individual games, deals with your customers, it's only going to make a LeBron or a Draymond who he names?

Why would he name them?

Yeah just accident, who knows.

What a joke.

But these would help drive demand for subs. And David, to that you say I.

Say there's going to be a problem in that union. And that makes me happy. Because Rich Paul is talking about the top 1% of the top 1% of the union that could possibly make an owner care to give him money in order to maybe drive direct to consumer prices for my digital product. But the entire stable of Rich Paul's players maybe he only represents the elite of the elite and so he doesn't care. But there are agents out there who look at the death of regional sports networks and the possibility of lowering of the cap as a real problem for their players because they have I guess what I would call normal run of the mill players who don't ever get to attain LeBron status.

I think this is nothing more than a case of someone suggesting that something happened was good for what he represents. I'm going to suggest that the death of the regional sports networks is outstanding for metalark. This is going to be a big moment for us because without regional sports networks there's going to be this need for content that we can and that's.

What did it the death of the networks because before that there was a dearth of need for content.

It's what he should say because that's how he makes a living. He is standing up for his players publicly he's selling his book which I think just came out. But the regional sports networks teams are not going to sign players because it's going to allow them to drive more subs. They're going to sign players who they think can help them win a championship.

But of course the counter to that is the Messi signing where I guess Jorge Maas in Miami signed Messi saying you know, this is going to drive I don't know how we're going to monetize it quite yet but now the leagues because Jorge Moss cannot monetize Messi the way that an NBA owner can monetize a player. Because the rights which you want everything to be global, rich Paul is not going to agree with you. You want everything to be national. You said that last week. NBA, no more local games, all national. So in that instance then that would have a negative impact on Rich Paul's players because why would an owner care if he has LeBron or LeBron Jr? Because he's getting his money nationally not locally.

Well I think we're confusing things. People own teams and they buy players to try to win championships. I don't think they're thinking about signing players relative to the media rights deals.

So the Messi signing was not relevant?

Well no, but the Messi signing is Sweden. Eris right, I mean, there's not anything the NBA could do that would look like that. I guess they could send LeBron to the Euro League and it would have some kind of effect if the Euro.

League were to suddenly start selling subs. Yeah. Having LeBron would help.

Yeah, but I'm not sure it feels confusing to me. I'm not sure that that's the way people sign players.

So where I'm going is what Rich Paul I'm trying to explain why what Rich Paul said is so preposterous. He's saying that because everyone is doing this, streaming these deals where it's 1999 a month or $7 a game, that the way to get someone to buy it is by having a star player. Therefore, star players are going to be empowered to go to teams and get paid more money because owners are going to want stars.

But is the team going to get a higher salary cap because they got their own subscription service? Don't they have a salary cap?

All I know at the very end here yes, of course, is that what they have in the present tense are alex Ovechkin, Elena Deladon and Kyle Kuzma. Bobbleheads offered to the first 10,000 subscribers of the monumental sports sub. Yes.

This is funny to me because they would get 10,000 subscribers without a Bobblehead. So they should give it to the last 10,000 because they'll be the ones who are the hardest to get. You're just giving it away to the 10,000 people who would sign up anyway.

And that, to borrow Dr. Seuss at the end, is how the Grinch stole Christmas.

Nice.

David, John, we're out of time. We could do this forever. But until next time.