Clubhouse 001: Nothing New Under The Sun · Brent Peus Jr., Dominyck Bullard, and Matthew Jester

0:00 So, one of the things I want to pose to you guys that we've been chatting a lot about is I I think there's there's this emphasis right now in the sports asset class of what AI will not touch essentially, right? Everyone's really focused on live activations, parasocial relationships, all the good stuff that hey AI is not going to touch. It's not going to affect in any sort of way, yada yada yada. The one thing I'm I'm interested in your guys' perspective just because I think you both bring a really unique set of skills, but I think also just backgrounds and stories and in terms of what you guys have done and what you're continuing to see today.

0:44 But what is the one thing right now that everyone is treating as permanent that's not going to be in the future of this asset class? the rise of these emerging sports leagues that push content 247 in order to build fan bases and engage with their audience and their consumer. I think there's a fundamental distinction in sports as an asset class right now between sports and leagues and teams that engage with their fan base through the form of ceremony and ritualization and like a real integral relationship with that fan base and assets and sports properties that engage with their fans through content.

1:33 because the first is participated in weekly, rhythmically, annually. That's why the NFL and college football is not going anywhere. But some of these other high-flying more emerging leagues that are leaning on streamers to push their product to their audience or relying heavily on Tik Tok or Instagram reels. Yeah, that's where the fan base is. that's where the 18 to 24 to 35year-old is, then you have no problem building up that fan base.

2:07 But I worry about the staying power of that fan base because it seems to me that their engagement is really mediated by the next dopamine hit and less so by what I would ascribe to college football for instance where my grandma went to Notre Dame so I'm a fan of Notre Dame and it's passed down throughout the the generations. there's a different level of intimacy, dare I say, between those properties and the the latter. And so when you talk about permanence, I think about that where it's like, okay, college football, the NFL, some of these other ritualistic sporting properties are not going anywhere because they are ritualistic.

2:53 But some of the new emerging entrance and that gets me back to there's this idea that the longer something's been around the longer it will be around right and so you can think of like some of the old religious texts for example or Nickian ethics by Aristotle some of these other ideas or ideologies right that have persisted for thousands of years because they've been around for thousands of years and so past predictor is actually or sorry past success is actually a a predictor of future success in some ways, right? And I think that idea translates here to the staying power of some of these leagues.

3:35 The longer something's been around in sports, the longer it will it will be around. It's such a trap to build something on top of a new or very hot platform as we all know and it doesn't mean that really good businesses haven't been built on that but if you think of like the cyclicality of think about how many businesses were built on top of Facebook and the Facebook algorithm in the 2010s and I wrote a whole piece about this on like the rise and fall of a lot of these media businesses the Buzzfeeds and the mics and a bunch of these businesses that basically took advantage of the hottest platform that had this unbelievable arbitrage opportunity. And it was very fleeting where your cost of customer acquisition via Facebook ads, bring those people to your site, drive more page views, make more ad revenue from those page views, have a spread.

4:34 That's your business. Recycle, recycle, recycle. people build great businesses, but they are anything but enduring. Like it's a way and tying it to the emerging leagues, like yeah, if you want to build something that maybe it's somewhat gimmicky and maybe it's not even gimmicky, maybe it's just new and part of the pitch doesn't mean that this can't be a complimentary thing to an otherwise really good league or property. But if the primary part of the pitch is, oh, and this, by the way, this shows up so well in short form video or this shows up so well, you know, like good luck. It just it's it sets you up to be on this you're you are buckling yourself into a ride on a hamster wheel if that's what you're chasing. And yeah, I I I don't mean to completely piggyback off Chester's answer, but I think he nailed it. Like if you're building an emerging league or property that is fundamentally built on another platform, that inherent platform risk makes it tremendously hard for you to build something that endures because as we all know, the platforms change all the time. And they have to. They have to because it's just a completely break neck speed group of consumers that have no attention span and want something different every year, every month, every week. It feels like >> Brent, what's your view on these emerging leagues while we're on the topic and the rate at which they're raising venture capital money and perhaps the incentives that are downstream of raising that venture capital money where you're sort of forced to scale as quickly as possible in order to return money to your investors. And so they have to scale versus some of these other leagues that we've talked about or spoken with the founders of. And they're raising money hand-to-mouth and they're bootstrapping and they're building off of like a genuine grassroots community.

6:27 Like two different models, two different value propositions, but like which is which is better and how does that play into what we're talking about? >> The gimmick tax that these emerging leagues are paying is ridiculous. like especially working on the the actual agency side of this stuff like the collateral we're producing and like it's it's so extremely shortsighted. So, it's a great great question for for this discussion anyways. >> Well, Dom, I'm sure you appreciate the leagues that raise money because they can pay you to come in and help them out.

7:00 >> Yeah, I don't I don't have a business, right, if if they're not doing that. But no, no, it's really fascinating like and I I want to hear I want to hear Brent's answer here, but I mean it's it's getting crazy like we're we're starting to get to the point and we can discuss it later on with like what was a aka I guess the team is is up to and and the cell there, but I mean we're we're really trying to find active ways to you know lock up more IP in some of these organizations as they're expanding quickly and selling rather than just floating the same feebased business out that we used to because like you're just seeing this like constant rise and fall like every you know we've I mean at this point like we could put the LTV of a starting league in our CM between like you know 12 to 17 months right which is just not a lot of time for much of anyone to create real value so yeah I'd be I'd be very curious Brent the mechanics that you're seeing it's like the path that so many early entrepreneurs and people starting a new venture have to decide if you want to go the VC route. We all know the pros of VC are you will get a ton of capital upfront and you have a mandate to spend it as aggressively and as quickly as you can and that can get you real traction and occasionally it'll get you real traction and you're building something that endures beyond requiring to raise that next round and remain on the venture assembly line that continues to subsidize all the stuff that you are trying to work out. And venture is an amazing component of capitalism. Like it it works for a lot of businesses.

8:40 It's the reason why so many of our favorite companies are what they are. At the same time, the venture capitalists themselves know that this like they used to say 8020 game. It's like a 9010 game. There's an unbelievable failure rate. you completely you understand that the power law outcomes of your portfolio it never fails like it's it's always going to be this small you know compressed group of winners and when I think about some of these emerging leagues that are there all these different ones in basketball and they're slightly different from one another that's just not going to work because history shows you that disproportionate gains acrew to the leader in the category think about something as simple as Uber versus Lyft.

9:28 Like I don't know what the market cap difference is these days. It's probably my guess is going to be a few hundred. Let's see. Uber is $142 billion company and Lyft is a $5 billion company. They effectively do the same thing, but that spread happens. And if I had to bet that gap is only going to widen. so anyway, maybe that's kind of a stretch of an analogy, but it's just the decision that you make. Do you want to do the the slow grind? We're not going to have this subsidy of VC dollars up front. You might get left in the dust by the people who do take it. It's not like it's all good and you should never, you know, bring in those dollars, but it's you're you're choosing to play one of two very different games. and I mean one of the some of the deals that that and opportunities that Matthew and I have talked about is like personally, this is a personal preference thing. I think that I would rather get involved with some of these businesses that have decades of builtup IP cuz that is their durability and that is their moat. and being able to create a 2026 2027 media play around that or some sort of experiential component or a league built downstream of that entrenched IP is to me a lot more interesting or maybe a lot a game I'd rather play than to try to come up with the next emerging league from scratch >> for for just for most people out there including myself what are you defining as this IP like what what's something that like what's a tangible example of this like you're what you're referring to.

11:13 >> I mean here's an example of a deal that I just thought was so interesting. I didn't have any any hands on it but I covered it in the newsletter and it was Hoff Capital HF which is a 15 billion AUM I believe shop with a portfolio full of crazy frontier tech and biotech and just cutting edge technology businesses. They are currently leading a consortium to take a majority stake of Bugatti like however many Jester maybe you remember the year I put it in the piece. This is an old company where that's unbelievable >> legacy.

11:50 >> Yeah. Talk about legacy. Unbelievable brand has endured decades and decades if not century. I can look up the the yearund years. Yeah. >> Yeah. 100-y old brand like that. Talk about a moat. you're not exactly worried about people nipping at your heels out of nowhere when they're trying to compete on anything in the IP layer. And so I would assume that these investors see a wild opportunity and again I'll kick this over to maybe Jester because this is really his bread and butter, but to take that cultural capital and IP and extend it every which way that has not been, you know, used yet. And then you play the game of do you overdo it and you dilute the brand.

12:31 But I'll pause there. >> Yeah. Can't dilute the brand. Can't do that. I mean, couple things. One, on the on the venture capitalization of sport that we've seen in the last like 5 years. Does the power law even apply to this industry? That's like a worthwhile question to investigate in my opinion because sports tech itself I think has a naturally capped TAM where if you're just going to sell into the 400 professional teams and colleges around the globe then good luck hitting venture power returns that you need. Now there's a few that are doing it well. Will Ventures is one. Game changer VC is another. They understand that you need to use sports as a wedge into a broader tam which I think a lot of sports tech companies are are doing.

13:18 But then taking that same concept and applying it not to beat on the snow league or the XG Games League or Baller League or Kings League or any of these other emerging leagues that have launched in the last few years that have raised venture capital money, but are the outcomes really that big? I I question that because like Brent talked about, value acrru to the few disproportionately in any endeavor. If you have a single like creative endeavor or you have a team of 10 people, nine people, the square root of that number of people do half the work.

13:51 Like there are there are power laws and hierarchies everywhere you look. Language, ZIF's law, bare principles, and that clearly applies to sports too. And so that's why we call we say things like the big five the big five American leagues or and then you kind of throw in the English Premier League in there and you throw in Formula 1 or you look at European soccer and there's like five leagues that matter and even within so even within those five leagues there's really like 15 teams that matter like there's power laws at every single level of sport and so I question the investment return analysis honestly of like zero to I get zero to one, but how big is the one really for some of these emerging leagues? And then Brent, on the cultural capital piece and the sort of like Bugatti thread, I mean, we both read Pachy McCormick's a scarce assets essay, which is one of the better essays I've read this year.

14:47 >> Banger better carve out some time. It's not short, but it's worth it. >> It's a Yes, it's spend spend 40 minutes going through it. It's worth it. But on the Bugatti piece, I mean, we've we've chatted with a number of these type of assets where they are 60y old brands and they haven't quite translated that brand identity or IP into a sophisticated content to commerce flywheel business like you can, but the value prop with something like Bugatti, I mean, you mentioned Hoff Capital like they're investing in Frontier Tech and AI and all these like cutting edge things. You see the same thing with Thrive right now launching Thrive Eternal. It's like this is a bit of a barbell economy. You've got like AI to the right and anti- AI to the left.

15:35 And so as a means of divers diversifying your portfolio and protecting your downside, you kind of need to invest in both Anthropic and Bugatti. But the thing that Bugatti has at anthropic won't ever is a hundred years of history and legacy and tradition. And you talk about a mode. You talk about like cultural relevancy being a moat. Well, I grew up thinking like Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bugatti, irreplicable.

16:08 And like every little boy grows up like wanting to drive, you know, Bugattis until like Andrew Tate comes around and says he's got 40 of them. Then it's okay. But beyond that, it's like, yeah, these are these are assets that everybody knows about. It's the brand name is the staying power. Like Bugatti is more likely to be around again 100 years from now because they've been around for 100 years. >> Dom, what's your take on this? I think the the integration of all these alter egos in sports is something I'm really curious about these days. So like if you think of like you can look at like a big league whiffle ball which is right this league that started in this kid's backyard and now Kevin Cosner has a team and they're quite literally putting on live events around whiffle ball games.

16:52 You can look at that and say that like hey maybe the TAM here isn't that great. there's probably not a 50-year runway here. And I would completely agree with you in most cases, but as an operator, you're you're starting to find that fans have all these different alter egos. So, like people that watch college football, like Matt, I loved your example that your grandma, you know, let's say she went to Notre Dame and now you're a Notre Dame football fan, right? The the lineage makes sense to me. but you also might be a fan of like indoor football or something or arena football, right? So, like I I'm just I'm curious as because there's there's not going to be people are going to are not going to stop taking shots at the dream league that they've always wanted to create, right? Like the Jesse Kohl's of the world. They're going to go create their banana ball and like go do that thing.

17:41 And maybe it's as powerful enough to go be this separate category and and really thrive. but I'm I'm more specifically thinking about like how do in this case like the Bugattis of the world, you know, tap into some of these alter egos, whether it's like the Inos Grenaders of the world to sort of grow their TAM even more than it already is or to reach a new consumer base that didn't know that they could even be fans of Bugatti, right? Like I I'm just thinking about it that way and like one of the great examples I've seen is like unrivaled basketball, right? So like I've worked with a lot of folks that are close to and very much integrated in into the W WNBA in this case and like they all have their own take and view on rivaled basketball, but it always comes down to like some sort of niche component in like the rules or the style of play that they like really love and appreciate. And you can see that like W fans really enjoy watching Unrivaled as well for the most part. we could talk whatever we want about the numbers, right? But I'm just I'm curious to think like do some of these operators that are running like the world fencing leagues of the world the major league rugies like some of these like challenger leagues that have still yet to maybe have the peak exit velocity to go be a big five in this case. like how do they look at the big five in front of them and see some sort of strategic angle into the future? Maybe it's not possible. I don't I don't know. But I'm curious like how you guys think about that because certainly there there is value in what they are creating to a degree. but how can it be rolled up per se to make it over the long run?

19:31 >> There are kind of three three things that came to mind as we're talking about this one. is maybe the easy answer and maybe it's the the not thoughtful enough one is that there's just going to be an unbelievable amount of consolidation because the giants are so freaking big that as soon as any of these things start to show some level of acceleration or staying power they might just get gobbled up and they become a subsidiary of one of the giants. That's not a groundbreaking take. The other thing that I was kind of thinking about earlier in the conversation is I said this on on another podcast recently, the amount that the sports economy has changed since I graduated college in 2020 is so wild. And like you said, the venture capitalization of sports, this seems to have all happened in the last 5 years, if not even more recent than that. So the reality is, and the funny thing about investing and early stage investing in particular, nobody knows who the good investors are yet. And we're not going to know for >> 10 years. And what's going to be awesome for some of these guys, some of these guys and gals is just, you know, it's just the rules of the game.

20:46 >> They're going to make a bunch of money off fees and they're going to have a really fun time between now and when they figure that out. And that first, you know, the the coming of age of that first vintage of the sports economy's maturity arc is going to tell us a lot. And we don't know yet. And like you can see, all right, who seems to be getting interesting access and deal flow and who's putting together a portfolio that seems compelling. but we just don't know. And we don't I mean, none of us know and we're trying to be in the mix and figure this out. The third thing and I'll I'll stop as those are three kind of tee ups I wanted to have is these businesses like the banana ball thing or like the whiffle ball thing.

21:26 I don't think that just because these things are small and maybe feel kind of gimmicky that they're bad businesses necessarily. You have to take each of them as they are individually. Some of these are probably incredible businesses. The question of the TAM thing is should they be raising venture capital money? Like I think that's the reframing of the of the question. Maybe they need some startup capital. Maybe you raise a seed round. But when you understand where you're playing, no pun intended, you got to probably think about, okay, we got this startup capital to get this thing off the ground. Now, we got to build a more durable business because pumping more investor dollars who are expecting serious irra and and long-term you know, smash hits is is just not really aligned with what these leagues are even, in a best case able to build.

22:18 >> Brent, to your point, you got to figure out what kind of game you want to play. There's nothing wrong with building like a heck of a small business, let's call it. And I don't know, let's put it this way. How many YouTube creators are there that have never taken an outside dollar of capital, but are still pushing out content and have a cash flowing YouTube channel that covers their life and their livelihood and their family and they have a great life and they can travel and they can do what they want to do. But if you're good good golf and you want to go raise $45 million or if you're Dude Perfect, you want to raise $100 million, then now you're playing a different game. It is about scale. It is about returning capital to your investors because that's the game that you're deciding to play.

22:57 So teach their own in that regard. But Brent, to your second point, which was I I frame it as this sports 1.0, 2.0, and now 3.0. 1.0 was I guess even if you want to back up further than that, like yeah, billionaires boys club for a really long time. Jerry Jones is of the world owning these assets. 2019 rolls around and these leagues start to open up to private equity investment. Artos is really the first person to identify that these things have non-market correlation and intrinsic value and cash flows into the future and predictable meteorites contracts that are the lynch pin of the entire ecosystem. and they were pretty quick. Neian Charles is brilliant for this to say, "Oh, if we just gobbled up a few minority stakes across the big five leagues, we could sort of put together an index more or less of the North American sports leagues and that as a bundle within a fund is going to be non-market correlated. I'm going to get my beta return that, you know, history demonstrates is above the S&P 500 and then maybe I can ink out a blip or two on of alpha through operational excellence. And that was like an incredibly insightful and and executable strategy that they did over the last 5 years. And that's why they turned out to be Arctose and turned out to be these beasts that get acquired by KKR. Sports 2.0 point was fresh off the heels of Artos executing that playbook which was the venture capitalization of sport and sort of this flooding of the zone and the you know shout out Sid and Siraj the new fund alert for the last five years like how many new funds how many new funds have launched in sports you know like >> how many new LinkedIn influencers have launched over that period of time >> you're looking at one right now brother >> you're looking at two aspiring linked influencers right Yeah, it is.

24:53 >> That's the point. That's like that's what happens in India industry, dude. This is like.com bubble two, you know, in 2000. Like this is just what's happening. And so you have this flooding of the zone. You have this venture capitalization of sport. You have family offices figuring out, well, I can invest in Arctose and, you know, pay these fees and it's great and I get this good return, but maybe I can start going direct. Maybe I can find these like smaller fund managers that have differentiated or asymmetric access into like this part of sport or that part of sport. And now there's this sort of like variance on thesis where you talk with these other fund managers. It's like, oh, what's your thesis in sports business? Well, my thesis is live events, but but your thesis is lower middle market private equity, double-digit Ebida to businesses trying to grab, you know, minority stakes of, you know, up to 49%, but then putting in my governance and my my mechanism so that I have more control because I really want to be, you know, hands dirty and go in there and drive or maybe I want to do a rollup strategy like now now you're getting it's becoming an institutional asset class in the way that every other institutional asset class has evolved. Okay, that's sports 2.0. Sports 3.0 is sort of I think this continues into the future and I think it goes down to the level of the individual and then everyone's going to take a page out of the Jerry Jones playbook and basically say, okay, if I hold these assets for a really long time, then I can let the IP of the underlying league compound, get those meteorites dollars to tick up and up, but then that gives me the breathing room in the space to launch as many businesses as I possibly can to become a real platform. That's what Jerry Jones did. He held the c the Cowboys for 30 years. I think like 50 plus percent of the value, the equity value of the Cowboys has come in the last like five or six years because it's a true exponential curve. But holding it for 30 years and having that permanent capital approach enabled Jerry Jones then to like launch a catering business, buy up this real estate, really like leverage the brand of America's team to get on Netflix and have his, you know, Dallas Cowboys do, you know, their thing on socials and now he has a multiaceted business. That's sports 3.0. That's that's live events. That's the total integration of technology. That's the multivariable, multi-revenue stream aspects of these what were once seen as franchises or like billionaire boys club assets and then sort of seen as like venture capitalization of sport is now going to become sophisticated operating institutional multi- revenue stream platforms.

27:32 Do you guys, this is here's a a question that ties to both what you just said, Jester and Dom, your point about like how many LinkedIn fluent LinkedIn influencers, sports personas have popped out out of nowhere. This happens all the time. Like the market is so hot. It does not mean there aren't incredible companies being built, but like this is a hot space right now. I think it would benefit all of us to to recognize that. And have you guys heard of the Gartner hype cycle? Have you guys ever seen it?

28:07 So, this is something that Gartner, the you know, the research firm came out with many years ago, but it it's whoever whatever associate came up with this, I hope continues to get paid. you have, we should pull it up, but it's this chart that starts with an innovation trigger or a technology trigger that changes things in a category or in a market. And that could be, you know, the the 2.0 changes to institutional capital in the sports landscape thing that you just mentioned, Jester, like a massive change or a, you know, a tectonic change in a in an industry.

28:49 Then the capital starts to flood in and the entrepreneurs start to flood in and the people start to show up and the influencers start to show up on the way up as the the cycle really gets hotter and hotter and hotter. And then Gartner labeled this next top as the peak of inflated expectations following which you will have this really sharp drop off. And Matthew, we just had this conversation with with Charlie last week in Chicago. He's been he's a guy who's been in the sports game for over 40 years. And so he's seen like many cycles of this and he's like you end up with these jokers who all flood in and they inevitably wash out. They're really down for the innovation trigger to the peak of inflated expectations ride but then as soon as things come back down and you fall into the next phase of the Gartner hype cycle which is called the trough of disillusionment.

29:40 You really shows you who's left, who shook out. And that isn't just people on Instagram and LinkedIn. It's companies obviously like who was able to weather the storm following which you have what they've labeled the slope of enlightenment followed by the plateau of productivity and it's like we I wrote an essay with my old boss at GSV and I think we titled it boom bust boom and the idea was boom bust and then the plateau of productivity being the second boom where if you can survive that first part of the roller coaster that's when you know the mature and the the compounding beasts remain. But I just thought of that from what both you guys were saying. I hadn't looked at the Gartner hype cycle in a minute. That's really good. I think we're all ready for the the bust of many different sports LinkedIn influencers, but perhaps perhaps we'll see how long Claude's able to power them. They might they might have more staying power than we think. Fable Fable 5 I think that's why they pulled it back. I think they saw the results.

30:46 >> They saw the power of influence >> and they were like, "Oh my gosh, like these businesses are growing. Like these guys are growing their businesses so fast. Like we have to find a way to, >> you know, like there's got to be a revshare on Fable 5. you know, firsterson data leads. It's it's just incredible. It's incredible. You know, and Matt, you're pretty close to it now, like maybe transitioning more to the agency side of these things."

31:15 you know, I I think the one thing that is perhaps different between like the.com bubble and today are influencers and the role that, you know, just social capital plays in in some of these things. Like I remember there there's this like original story about the Men in Black video that Will Smith did when the movie came out and he was like he he was accidentally wearing a pair of Ray-B bands in this video. And so that was when like music labels for the first time were like maybe we should actually go directly partner with these brands because they sold like 15 or 16 million pairs of Ray-B bands and they didn't see a a dime of it. and the reason nobody was thinking that way is because everyone back in the day could like, you know, basically, you know, write an album, have one radio hit on it, and the rest could be just total garbage and people were making money, right? So, you got a lot of people is, you know, and I guess as of now in sports as well, you could see this sort of the same thing, right? where there's a lot of folks I think have figured out like, hey, if I hook up Fable 5 to my LinkedIn and spit out enough thought leadership content, I can generate like a little bit of business or something along those lines.

32:24 but I I think the difference for some of these emerging organizations and leagues that really ultimately, you know, to your point, you know, Brent survived the boom bust boom side of things, right? Like influencers are a key component of that. and I'm just it's it's open mic conversation for all of us, but I kind of wonder where like how did the speeds of the world sort of integrate into some of these properties? Like I don't know if you've seen what speed's been doing with like the World Cup this year. it's been fairly creative. Nothing mind-blowing, but really curious because a lot of these emerging leagues are now part of their raise and part of their pitched to venture is we're going to go get these personalities that live in this sort of niche class or we're going to set aside you have things now like the enhanced games that spent you know you $250,000 to have clippers go take their clips and post it everywhere which I think Jester you called out earlier like that's probably not the best use of those funds. but curious to see how you guys are thinking about, you know, this this new social capital and and how folks can best invest it, right? What what you see is like the rise of of the creator economy and what that's really built off of is the migration of trust from the audience member, from us, from the networks to the to down to the level of the individual. And so what these sports leagues are trying to do is just capture KSI's audience or capture I showed Speed's audience. Like that's all they care about. They're trying to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible. That's not really a novel idea. What I think the agencies have to be careful of is not just being a facilitator, but actually having skin in the game and owning a piece of IP.

34:19 This is like a really important thing that I'd want to call out. that's informed by my boots on the ground experience in this. My partner is an investor in Range Media Partners, which is one of the larger management and production companies out here in Los Angeles. And five years ago, a bunch of partners from CIA left, started Range, raised a bunch of money, and now they're cooking. And with that business and with businesses like it, Wasserman, UTA, CIA, Endeavor, etc.

34:52 So much of those businesses are fee driven. Like I'm sure yours is st like I facilitate a brand deal. I clip my 20% commission. I represent this athlete. I get 3% of his contract. And that fee driven nature of the business is the lifeblood of those businesses in a really significant way. But let's just take Wasserman as an example here where you know Casey Wasserman stuff happened. Now he's selling the agency or the team, right? selling the team on public or on on a shopped market. I think Mullis is probably running that process.

35:27 They're going to fetch like a two two and a half billion dollar valuation. They're doing something like 200 million of Ebida, something like that, dude. Like 95% of that business is fee driven. And if they were 50% fee driven, they'd probably be going for more like six billion, six a half billion. So what what do I mean by 50% fee driven? Well, let's just compare Wasserman to Endeavor which is sort of the opposite playbook here. What Endeavor did, what Arianuel did was obviously you had William Morris, you had Endeavor, it operated like an agency for a long time. Like I said, the fee driven nature of this business is the lifeblood of those businesses. But what you use, what you do with that capital is the important piece. If I have this cash flow coming in from this high margin fee driven business and I'm able to invest it and go acquire, you know, bolt-ons or tuckins and roll up some of these other smaller agencies, smaller production studio, get into different games, launch into different verticals and I go and I buy up a 100 businesses.

36:33 This is what our Emanuel did. Now, Endeavor has a hundred different core competencies across a hundred different verticals. So now when those fees started to print off more cash, they then started to use that money to go buy IP and have skin in the game in IP. So they go and get the UFC, they go and get WWE, they go and get the Professional Bull Riders League. And now that that IP is in the Endeavor platform, they can service it and monetize it all those 100 different ways. And so you flash forward 10 years and UFC goes up and to the right and WWE goes up and to the right and so does PBR. And because Endeavor can both monetize it themselves because it's in the Endeavor platform and they own a piece of it, Endeavor is now a $20 billion business or whatever the number is versus Werman which stayed fee driven and it's going to be a $2 billion business. And it actually affects the culture of the organization too. Go and ask any agent in a at Wasserman versus Endeavor. They will tell you that they are always worried about their next brand deal or securing their next client. They're not thinking laterally.

37:34 They're not thinking how can I partner with this league, get skin in the game, leverage these influencers, have ownership over all of this, and set myself up for success over the next 10 years. Now, again, to each their own, it's Wman's prerogative to have that sort of ethos for their firm. And obviously, they've been able to build up a $200 million eBay of businesses. So, like, who's who's complaining here? But that's the difference between ownership of IP and fees. And that's the business that these agencies or you know management and production studios need to be in. They need to own a piece of their IP. This is all just a great practice in like first principal thinking. And I think a lot of venture money moves into things that first principles would probably just shoot down, right?

38:25 I think what you're describing, Matt, at the end of the day is like you are monetizing distribution that is either again adjacent to your core value prop or is an alter ego in your sphere, right? Like speed working with FIFA, right? Like speed is not FIFA. Dear goodness, he's not definitely not that. but he has people you know associated with him right that love soccer watch a FIFA product right so like that I think that's where it makes a lot of sense I'm a little bit I'm a little bit agnostic at the moment to like I think you can pick your poison if you want to do that on YouTube or really any platform I think YouTube and Instagram are by far the most valuable right YouTube being the most I I can agree with you on that the challenge obviously becomes for like any fee based business these days and if you're going after a sports specific market like these properties just don't spend as much money as people think perhaps on on things like this and you're also dealing with like a middle management that is just like trying to survive. Like if we if we go inside like the minds of middle management in sports right now, it's like I mean, have you guys seen the movie Inside Out and there's like little people in their heads and like the place is on fire. Like it is like I mean these these people are probably so concerned they're going to lose their jobs, right?

40:03 especially the some of the folks in these you know football English football organization soccer clubs that are getting capital called for5 to$10 million a year you know even though that they're winning and getting promoted like I'm sure it's still running in the back of their mind through like where is the consolidation going to be this year is it going to be in my department it's going to be this is going to be that like so there's just a there's a strain on innovation when that happens right like when you're so afraid of the bust you can't really boom, if that makes sense. so I think you got to like you're factoring all these into these conversations, but the thesis is like on point, right? And at the end of the day, I mean, if you are finding inroads for brands to reach new audiences in a very targeted way and you can do that at scale, I think you're going to be really successful. This is a a chance for me to ask two guys who I'd love to educate me on this topic and to get both of your I think you're both well positioned to have a take on this. What is going to happen with these collegiate programs football most particularly though maybe it's at the athletic department level I'll defer to you Jester who are doing these in-house production operations.

41:18 Like when I think about it, I think they have plenty of money for it and the cost of media production is as low as it's ever been and distribution is free. Why would they ever outsource it? At the same time, why do you ever outsource anything? People are better at it than you are. Where do you guys see that going? Some of these in-house like Clemson is one for example that I think is doing something like that. Creating studios inside the walls of an athletic department at the collegiate level. It's interesting from one side, Brent. I've had a lot of lot of lot of guys and friends our age try and start these businesses from kind of the third party perspective. Not a single one has worked yet.

42:00 >> And they're trying to serve colleges, college athletics department. >> Yes. Not to name names or drops, but it nothing has worked where they approach like an LSU and go, "Hey, let's shoot some content with this quarterback and Brian Kelly and then we'll get, you know, Huddle to sponsor it for like 50k." It just never ever works. mostly and and 50% of the time they can't even get to production because of the cost associated with it. now they maybe there's just not like a very sophisticated operator now because now YouTubers again with iPhones, right, are are making this stuff happen, right? So, I I quite frankly I I don't I don't know. I mean, I I hate I'm going to I'm going to make this I'm going to base my opinion here based off of analogy. So, it's it's flawed. Like just the mere fact that I'm doing this is flawed. But like the the the athletic department specifically like Clemson is very different but like the majority of your athletic departments like are they sophisticated enough to balance that sort of endeavor?

43:05 Right. To your point like maybe the multimedia group is just better at this so you outsource it, right? You could do it but could outsource it to them and that you know probably get more revenue from it. so I I think it's challenging. I I I think we'll kind of just I think we're in like a plateau of it honestly at the moment. Like I'm I'm not seeing anything that would tell me that things are going to be necessarily different and multimedia right groups just make it so difficult anyways.

43:32 for for innovation in that space to happen like I mean it's it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. yeah even talking with you know we work with a lot of like GMs now of basketball teams which is really funny. like these guys that are sitting in the portal trying to pick players up, but they're also like how why on earth is there a marketing agency attached to some of these schools? I'm like in an Athleta verse in this case because they're looking at the value of these players socials and thinking could we get revenue in their pockets that's like within or above the cap that we have so we don't have to draw from the actual NIL funds of our program but instead bring them value from the brand deals that we're driving for them based upon what their social value is and what they can drive there.

44:25 I think I think if if you are a in-house media department, like that's sort of the game you're playing now is like how do we go win some of those dollars and cents that aren't coming from the cap itself. but again that you know the majority right is going to go to those top 5% players at this. So I don't like I don't foresee you know a bunch of programs operating like the at the level that a Clemson is right now in the foreseeable future from from what I can see anyways. Those damn power laws keep showing up. Funny how that happens.

44:57 >> They show up everywhere. I mean, my my perspective on this is going to be less in the weeds on the content like like Dom's is. Mine comes more from the investor perspective. For context, at my previous firm, I spent like the better part of a year trying to invest private equity dollars into college athletics. I have mapped the collegiate athletics system intensively and I've spoken with dozens, hundreds of athletic directors, conference commissioners. At one point was fortunate to pitch Charlie Baker on trying to privatize the FCS playoffs. I have eat, sleepd, and breathed college athletics for the better part of a year.

45:34 And to understand the psyche or just the landscape I guess of college athletics, you first have to understand like what are the rights that these colleges and these athletic departments actually sit on? What are they monetizing? Who are the players in the space? And what you find very quickly is that their media rights sit with the conference. Their MMR rights sit with Learfield or Playfly or JMI or some of these others. their operational rights, let's call it basically the right to operate the athletic department. You could think about it that way, have been farmed out to like a hundred different third party vendors. Teamworks is the 800 pound gorilla in the room, but they farm out everything. And that's why Clemson Ventures and some of these other athletic departments like Kentucky or Michigan State are standing up these outside LLC's to bring them their MMR back in house. in the one second on the MMR model. It's just like a interesting misaligned incentive structure. They given you an MRG at the beginning of the year and then they sell your existing inventory against it. There's really no incentive to create new IP. There's no incentive to really mash the MRG that they give you. To be honest, >> MRG Jester, you define that.

46:47 >> Minimum revenue guarantee. If I am PlayFly and I partner with Texas A&M, I'm gonna give Texas A&M $35 million a year for the right to their IP so that I can go sell sponsorship on their stadium, on their jersey, across all their facilities, right? And so I give them $35 million so that I can go do that. From PlayFly's perspective, they think, "Okay, we can exceed that $35 million a year number." From Texas&M's perspective, they say, "Okay, $35 million a year. that gives us a pretty nice security blanket for the next decade. In that scenario in particular, I think it actually works for both sides. If you're a G6 or an FCS program doesn't quite make the same sense because what's happening at Lefield with PlayFly is they're staffing, you know, like a 22-year-old on Sacramento State's account and they're giving them $800,000 or something and then sometimes that 22-year-old hits the 800k, sometimes they don't. But like, but from Sacramento State's perspective, and I'm just using them as an example, take it for Montana State, North Dakota State, any of these others.

47:54 That's is that really like what you want? Are you are you really going to be maximizing your commercial value when you farm out everything to each other? But then on top of that, they sit on real estate rights that are completely undermonetized. They sit on, here's one, nil rights. Have we thought about that for a second? If I am, you know, I played at Princeton, the Ivy League has become a feeder system to the P4. The best Ivy League players now, go to Stanford or Duke or Vanderbelt or Northwestern, make $200,000 a year in NIL, and they get to graduate with the Princeton degree and 150K in their pocket, and then they get two degrees, and they're good. That's great. That's good for the Avid League, actually. But is Princeton or Harvard or Yale, are they seeing any kickback from that? It I'll put it this way. $500 million last year transferred up from the FCS and the G6 to the power for the institutions in which the that talent was originated from saw no dollars back. This is not this is the same system. We we do not have a promotion relegation system in college athletics of teams. We have a promotion relegation system of talent, which is the same thing that happens in European soccer. But the reason it works in European soccer is because there's transfer fees and that makes the whole system work. You're not having that happen in college. And then a moment on new IP, we talk about the importance of owning and operating your IP and scaling that IP. These colleges do not have the dollars really to create net new IP that they can monetize. A couple of of entities are doing this well. Brett your Mark is really first and foremost in that regard at the Big 12 conference.

49:43 But this is the backdrop upon which this discussion is taking place. and you go and you talk to the athletic director at mid- major institution in Illinois, they're not thinking about, you know, what content can I create or, you know, who which vendor can I, you know, how can I trim the fat on my, you know, operational outsourcing? How can I consolidate all of this stuff? How can I use capital to fuel growth? that's not a part of their psyche because they're like, "Oh, I need to go and talk to the donor and raise more money. I need to make sure my quarterback's taken care of. I need to make sure my point guard is going to come back next year and not get poached by, you know, Ohio State or whatever." And it's just dog eat dog zero some thinking. Everyone's treading water. And so, it's hard to lift your head up and actually look to the right or left and say, "No, we need to be executing on this commercial playbook and raise this capital from these sources and then go out and actually go do that. It's a really good take.

50:45 >> Yeah, that's a killer breakdown. What What do you think happens to some of these, you know, it's just all comes back to this these barbell examples and power laws and all these things like the the messy middle is so real across so many parts of life. What is going to happen to these midtier athletic departments? Because I'm thinking of it actually in the context of, you know, where I used to work at GSV. It's probably the most active education and edtech VC in the world.

51:18 And one trend that we were following very closely from 20 I worked there 2023 24 25 was the rate at which colleges and college campuses are closing across America. And these are not Sacramento states and Eastern Washingtons. These are schools that you've never heard of. But there was something like 50 plus closures in 2024 and then it accelerated to something like close to two a week or a college and a half per week was closing. And it's because the value prop just started to not make sense no matter how you sliced it. It's expensive.

52:00 You get a four-year degree, but it's a four-ear degree from a place you've never heard of. It's not an interesting market. Why not go the junior college route? Why not go to trade school? Why not spend quite a lot more? Because there's an exponential gain in the brand, the tier or two tiers above that. Is something similar going to happen with these programs that I mentioned earlier that have at least recognizable athletic departments? Are they going to get stuck in the full windown phase or is it going to be back to your promotion relegation thing? Is there going to be this like even lower tier where the schools that basically can't keep up get relegated?

52:39 >> Many of these mid- majors are on a hamster wheel right now trying to keep pace with the power four and they just they just can't. Look at Louisiana Monroe. They're actually a pretty great example of this. They're basically the worst team in the FBS. UMass as well. They're just running deficits year after year after year and they're not making any progress in the FBS. Are you telling me that they're better served as an institution in the FBS than they would be in the FCS?

53:07 I find it hard hardressed to believe that because another backdrop that we need to consider here, which is this macrolevel picture that you're talking about, Brent, is the enrollment cliff that's coming accelerated by AI. People are not going to college like they used to for a million different reasons, but one of which increasingly is AI is eating the world and changing the way that people view college and the way that people can build not needing a college degree now. And then you pair that with federal funding, federal and state funding being pulled from a lot of these institutions, especially in California where I'm sitting because the state of California looks at UCLA running a $220 million athletic department deficit and they say, "Why am I giving you state tax dollars so that you can go and give it to a quarterback and then that quarterback can transfer the next year? What are we doing?" And so you're kind of getting this onetwo punch across higher education at large.

54:04 And then you add on top of that this convergence of a few trends that are happening in the athletic the athletic side of college athletics, which is that the meteorites deals that were really struck under a few a previous amateurism model a few years ago are all going to expire in 2030, 2032, 2036. There's a window happening between 2030 and 2036 where the Big 10, SEC, the ACC, the Big 12, all their meteorites contracts expire. That frees up those schools to renegotiate their meteorites contracts. And that's sort of when this reshuffleling of conference alignment happens. But on top of that, you also have the March Madness deal that expires in 2032. You have the foreign championships deal for the NCAA speaking that also expires in 2032.

54:57 And so there's a really like critical window that's going to happen here in seven years that all of the rejiggering of the puzzle pieces is going to happen by then. And so if you are an FCS institution or a mid- major, what's going to happen is that over the next seven years, you're going to slowly get pushed out by the power for they already have 65% governance in the NCAA for the association. They already eat up the majority of the CFP and March Madness payouts. You talk about power laws. I've looked into this in depth.

55:32 It's a true power law. Big 10 and SEC each get 29% rev share from the CFP. The Big 12 and the ACC get 14% and you know 17% and then the G6 gets 10%. So you have the P4 basically taking 90% of CFP payouts and then the G6 takes 10%. There are power laws everywhere. So if I'm a G6 or if I'm an FCS institution, I'm slowly getting pushed out commercially in terms of governance, in terms of relevance on the athletic side, and then on the higher education side, I'm just getting steamrolled by the one-two punch of enrollment cliff plus state funding getting pulled. Where is there to go?

56:17 I'm getting closed in on all sides. And so what I have to do in the next seven years is try and dictate my commercial future and my commercial arrangement with the power for before that window comes and closes. And so I think one of the key points there is yeah I need to start getting those transfer fees that I talked about earlier. I need to start owning my commercial value and maximizing that and owning my IP and trying to scale it. And that was sort of the heart behind the FCS playoffs proposal. It's like the FCS playoffs is the one asset that the entire FCS shares uniquely. And right now all of you are losing money participating in it. The cost of success in the FCS is that you get the privilege of losing money to play in the playoffs. Montana State's losing like a $100,000 a year to go and play in the FCS playoffs and make the finals and win championship.

57:09 >> It's just like a completely backward system. How are you going to win? >> You mentioned UCLA. having the $220 million deficit. I saw a headline yesterday evening Louisville projecting their newest record $30 million deficit and like those are I mean UCLA being much more recognizable. Louisville is plenty recognizable and then you're talking about the Louisiana Monroes of the world. It's like good luck. How do you guys How do you guys both balance seeing so much information and then like not just going bananas one day and saying, "Okay, I I'm going to I'm going to go create a business to take advantage of this." I mean, I'm trying to build a a strategic media property.

57:53 The beauty of it is that downstream there's tons of opportunity that comes downstream of doing that the right way. before you even ask the part of how do you not start a business? How do you process all the information? Because there's like there's so much action right now. Back to that Gartner hype cycle. We're on the the vertical part of the roller coaster. I personally think that the best exercise that I have is forcing myself to write something every single week. This is more of a like personal preference, but every other week I write an essay thematic. What are the trends I'm watching? Where do they intersect as a result of those trends?

58:28 What are the companies you should probably pay attention to and what am I watching? Every other week, field notes, four people moves, three announcements, two things worth your time, one stat that matters, and one pull of the week for the sports economy and sports media, entertainment a little more broadly. It just forces me to sit down and just like sometimes it feels like your brain is it's like it's painful. Okay, I don't want to do it every week, but there's no better way for me personally to put out what I feel ends up being at least a somewhat earned perspective because I talk to these people on my podcast every single week. I have a million calls a week talking to people like you guys and dozens and dozens of others trying to get my bearings on what's going on. And it's great to be the person doing those interviews, asking this question, being in the mix, but until I give myself a moment to pause and think, all right, that was a ton. What do I actually think about this? Where do I actually have conviction? What do I think is BS? like smoking mirrors for me personally and I don't know if you'd say the same gesture with your super long form newsletter but it's very helpful in kind of reentering on all this stuff and not I don't know chasing a chasing a shiny object I guess >> Brent how is your your written form evolved over the 6 months that you've been doing this and what if anything has that improved your cog recognition of the sports economy, the sports landscape. One thing that I think has gotten better and one thing that I want to get back to is I've tried to make them purposefully a bit shorter of like how can I really s how can I have a level of detail that this is worth somebody opening the email and that I'm saying something insightful but also I'm trying to keep it kind of lean of like the whole point is this is like a signal versus noise newsletter and I want you to have a key takeaway from this and I want you to understand this trend by the time it's over and I'm not trying to make it sound like rocket science trying to do the opposite. Trying to take a relatively complex thing and make it simple. One really effective way to do that when you do it well, I think is to do it through storytelling. And so one thing that I've gone away from and just trying to get probably more efficient and to have more of a process is I don't necessarily have these like story threads, but some of my favorite pieces I've ever written, whether it was like one of the first ones I put out, which was just called the sports economy. I started it with like the initial purchase of the Pittsburgh Steelers and how that whole franchise got started.

61:10 And then I had another one called The Presence Premium talking about hshaped economy intersecting with wellness and longevity trends, intersecting with identity and affinity groups. This is why I think you should watch premium experiential travel companies. Like pretty niche, but I got to kick it off with a time that I went on a premium experiential travel trip and I found myself like on a bike in Eastern Germany. And people I got really good feedback from that cuz they're like that was cool. It didn't feel like I was reading some McKenzie report on some industry trend. It felt like a very readable thing and you got your point across probably better than you would have otherwise. So, that's something I want to get certainly want to get back to. But, got to carve out time.

61:54 There's no back to the the, you know, Gen AI slop all over LinkedIn. That I don't want to do that. And it requires real time to not do that. >> Humans definitely communicate through storytelling. I mean, think back to like however many thousands of years ago that we were sitting around a campfire telling stories about some aspect of the human experience. That same idea is true now in work in this industry. And so I think Brent, I remember that piece you wrote. who's I've I've replied to you and I said this is incredible because it it smooths it greases the wheels a bit for understanding what the point of the story is >> right >> and if I just come if I just come to the table and I'm like here are the facts digest them versus if I come to the table and I I do what you do which is that's the same thing that I've learned in my writing I'm writing like super ultra long form essays every other and they take hours. It's the lowest ROI thing that I do at least in terms of money. I spend hours on it, I make zero dollars. But what I'm not really measuring it by that. I'm measuring it by am I becoming a better investor? Am I becoming a better operator when I sit down? Because, you know, articulation is mastery in some ways.

63:18 And I think that's like an important concept. Whereas AI is like completely killing our ability to write because I can just type into Claude like, "Hey, write this AI's slot for me, please." then it'll spit something out versus okay, if I'm going to sit down and I have this like complex idea or like like with college athletics like I have this incredibly constrained system and I need to map it and I need to figure out how the heck I can put private equity dollars into college or whatever some super complex topic and I can like distill that information down and effectively communicate it then I have mastery over that concept. It's not a novel idea, but keeping that skill is incredibly important because it services the broader your broader work, but also just your broader life. Like Dom, you ask why what prevents me from becoming an operator?

64:10 Like what what stops me from just launching like seeing a trend in launching a business in light of that trend? Well, I would say one, I'm not like an operator at heart CEO type, but I also think I view it as like I'm operating the life of Matthew Jester, not necessarily like I'm building building this business in response to this trend, but I'm positioning myself as a person and when I get married in two months, the life of future Miss Bailey gesture, I'm positioning our lives in as much as I can alongside these trends that I'm seeing so that the operations of my life can be as as successful as it can be.

64:51 >> Don, a question for you. You have you have such >> such impressive consistency on your video series. and the numbers speak for themselves. You got like 45 something thousand people now on the Instagram. What is it that you see? I mean, I feel like you can give me the number on how many you've put out, but it feels like a pretty decent sample size. What have been some of the things from a topic perspective or from like your take perspective that have resonated the most with the crowds like these people who the algo finds serves your thing to? What has been red meat for them? What have been the things that people have kind of dived all over? I I personally think that just the the relatability of Main Street is what I constantly have running through my head. what I mean by that is I used to write I used to write a newsletter probably every week for about three years. it was more sports marketing based. and to your guys's point, like I there is no ROI on what I did there. right. It was it was just like learning to synthesize ideas and sort of yeah, it was it was kind of for for myself a little bit.

66:11 and the content I make now still is, but the one thing I always I figured out pretty quickly was like there there's I started seeing a combination between like something that was happening in real time and this like evergreen concept and then like the node that connects the two is what people really want. Like that's that's the storytelling. That's where storytelling takes place. So, not necessarily specifically like the Korean market crashes overnight, everyone defaults, gets capital called on all their margin, boohoo, everyone's panic selling. It's more like that thing just happened. Here's a reminder that that exact market has done this 26 times over the past 50 years and the rebound in the coming, you know, 60 market days is X, right? So, like people people kind of love this ability to sort of go to make something not feel unprecedented.

67:16 >> That's like number one. Like especially, and it's probably because I I I am an agency owner, so I've just been selling for so long now, right? So, like you got to make it feel like it's not unique and that they're smart for sort of finding it, if that makes sense. Right. So, when I think about how I construct videos and concepts and conversations, a lot of times my titling even and I take a risk on my titles. Like I don't I don't try and liically hijack people like the top five this or stop doing this. Like I I don't like playing that game.

67:50 >> I really like throwing out there like a very unique concept. Whereas like if you sit down and listen to this, you're going to understand how to process not just what this pitcher throws next to you, but the next 10 at bats. Because like when I was playing baseball, like that's how I think about things. Like how a pitcher like how I get information in at bat number one tells me what I do for the next 27 at bats this weekend.

68:12 And then that's how I actually got to become a really a better baseball player, right? And it's the same thing with content is, you know, trying to to convey that to people through, you know, okay, great. This this thing just happened. Here's what it like really means for you in your everyday life as Matthew you know Matt as you point like jester is just operating jester like everyone's just operating themselves but like here's how it you know probably factors into how you're functioning and what might be the next step you know after that. So, like that's that's how I process things, but you can't get around the work of what you guys have talked about and what needs to be done, which is that, you know, I put I put out probably like a video a day. right now I have condensed this down to like 50 minutes of like thinking and note takingaking and putting it together, you know? So, there's just no way to get around. I think that the one of the kind of superpowers that you guys both have like your Korean market example is just the ability to zoom out like pattern recognition at a big 30,000 foot level and I think like the storytelling thing your first question at the very top of this dom and Matthew we've talked about this in many months ago one consistent investing principle building principle that I I think is very worth remembering or that I totally hold pretty strongly is that I would never invest I don't want to be investing in things or working on things that are banking on human nature ever changing like at all.

69:57 And when you see companies that are framing their disruption and their innovation on some sort of crazy fundamental human nature change, I'm out. And maybe I'll miss some things that pop because of that, but I don't really care. Like that if that's consistently the a north star, I'm pretty sure that's gonna serve me pretty well. and I think that that's a thread that ties into a lot of what we just talked about. Like you can take, you know, will people want to spend eight hours a day in the metaverse using VR and headsets?

70:32 Maybe there'll be a really weird sad period of time where that is really hot. I have no interest in being involved in that >> at all. That is not that's counter to human nature. So, I'm I'm not putting a bet there. Maybe that's a side track, but I feel like there's some sort of a thread from a lot of the stuff we've just covered that that comes back to that principle. Absolutely. Dom, you put out a YouTube video a couple days ago talking about IMG Academy and Grind Academy and some of these other youth sportsmies that parents can send their kids to to get trained up. You related it back to like Spartan days in like ancient Greece where same thing parents would send their kids off to go or society, Spartan society would send seven-year-olds off to, you know, Spartan military camp so that they can be a functioning member of Spartan society. And my text back to you after I I listened to your video was that there's nothing new under the sun. And I think that's ultimately what what pattern recognition is, human nature.

71:31 There's nothing new under the sun. >> That's why these things happen. That's why they recur. That is because we are basically the same type of beings that we were a couple thousand years ago that we are now. And so, sure, the form has changed and you know, like you could honestly see sport in some way as like a new religion and you can see the stadiums as like a sacred architecture and some of these things and I think that's an important lens to have on this entire industry.

72:03 There's nothing new under the sun. >> Please make that the title of this pilot episode. Please. I gota >> Good call. >> I got Yeah, I got to I got to jump, guys. But this was amazing and and much appreciated. learned ridiculous amounts from both of you. I I'm going to be processing these notes for a while and they might they might show up in certain places. Let's wrap it there. I love it. Until next time.

72:29 >> Until next time. Peace.