Madkour and Ourand wrap up Day 2 of the CAA World Congress of Sports.
Madkour and Ourand wrap up Day 2 of the CAA World Congress of Sports.
We are wrapping up the CAA World Congress of Sports in a special edition of Morning Bus Cast. This is your morning bus cast for Thursday, October 13th. Good morning. I'm a Mad Corp. Joined again by John Iran in New York as we wrap up the CAA World, Congress of Sports. And John, the conversation, the panel discussions on Wednesday were a little different than they were on Tuesday. You led the first discussion on Wednesday morning, five leaders in sports, all with different perspectives on growing sport and reaching fans.
Everybody's always looking to the future. It's always about trying to grow their business and how they can grow their business. What struck me about that morning panel is how everybody was looking, uh, at it. It was, uh, Han Schroder from the nfl. It was, uh, you know, Zach owns this from monumental, it was Boris Gardner from lga, Jessica Gelman from, uh, from the craft group and, and Bohan from, from buzzer. And they're ever, they're, they all are making a lot of money and they're the, uh, making a lot of strides in terms of, uh, looking to the future. But what really struck me is that there's a dichotomy cuz they still need old media. They still need broadcast, uh, television. There's still focused on trying to get butts into seats. You know, how do we get the fans to, to keep coming, coming out, trying to parse that or trying to figure out which one is more important than the other. I just didn't fi find to be really fascinating.
Well, you had that because yeah, Jessica Gelman really stressing that, hey, we still need to work as an industry to make the live event appealing and work hard to get young people to pay for tickets, to attend live games where you had others talk about, I'm just trying to get people to watch a 22nd clip on my service and that's the way that they'll be engaged with
Sports. And how do you get that person watching the 22nd clip, which are younger people to, to devote two hours, three hours to watching a game or even attending a game. But I, one of the thing that I loved was Jessica Gelman was talking about bringing down the price of the ticket to get younger people to, to watch. And Zach of course owns the wizards and the capitals and the mystics and the, in DC he said, I have a different viewpoint on that.
Yeah, he did. And he said like, our premium seats are actually selling quite well. And those are the really, I would say he's almost like, like the marketable valuable seats, cuz that's of course where they're making their biggest margin. And that's where, of course it's also the, the marquee. And we've heard in sports high end seats are actually, the premium seats at the live venue are selling quite well. It is that middle tier that has traditionally been the softer cell. But I do agree with Jess in terms of, like, you and I still talk about, we go to enough sports events that you still need to get people to the event because that really changes the dynamic and the fandom.
Well I've always thought one of the problems is, uh, with the nose bleed seats, how, how are you gonna make that experience better than watching it on television, which is the best seat in the house? That
Is a great question. And so you had different approaches and I thought that, you know, even with, uh, you know, Zach owns this in terms of all the, all the things they're doing in Washington DC around sports betting, around buying the regional sports networks and placing a bet on that business where John, you've written time and again, that's a challenging business, which he admitted.
Well, Zach had a great answer for that cuz I, I was like, why are you bought buying this old media, uh, channel that's in decline? He goes, We didn't buy a channel, We bought our rights back. And so what they're gonna do with those rights now that they own everything, they own the, the rsn, they own the teams, they own the building is uh, they're gonna be testing it and, and they're gonna be allowed to test it with a lot more flexibility than say a Sinclair, which is sort of encumbered by, you know, 21 different RSNs. This is one person that owns everything that's uh, that's gonna be uh, testing out different options. And
It won't be immediate, he said later to you and me that it's gonna take them time and it may take them well over 12 to 20 months to start testing and to really start seeing a difference in the marketplace. Cuz he said there are like, Well what are you doing? You know, nothing's changed. And he's like, Well we just bought these networks, you have to give us some time. I think that'll be one of the more interesting initiatives in all sports. What's happening in that DC market.
I wanna take my hat off to the Leona, uh, family cuz they have been really, uh, for runners in the RSN business in terms of testing the ga uh, an alternate gambling Right. Uh, telecast and doing like really innovative different things just to see, see if they can grab younger viewers or have viewers, uh, watch for a longer periods of time.
Yeah. And a theme for the two days has really been about Gen Z and drawing in young fans and you have Bohan who's doing it differently in terms of aggregating all these highlights, all these 22nd clips across sports, to your point, to try to keep them engaged for longer. You had Hans Schroeder talking about this database of all these fans who are in both NFL's database and all the, and all the teams. And they think that's a very powerful force. So they can do segmented marketing and go to each fan about their likes and about the way they consume sports. So there's a really a push there to try to grow the pie.
Yeah. And don't forget a, the big data that comes from it. Yeah. Cause the, the passive television viewer is they have no data on, on those people other than, uh, you know, a couple of Nielsen numbers. These digital viewers, they know exactly who's watching when they're watching and for how long.
And that's what Jess Anne Hans talked about with the Amazon deal. Like Amazon now is able to do this deal cuz they can get data on all these sports viewers for Thursday night football that may have not been in their ecosystem
Before. And well, not only that, but even if they have been in the ecosystem now they're spending three hours inside Amazon. Got it. Are they gonna be more likely to buy paper towels and, and uh, you know, whatever merchandise they might want.
It was pretty, it was a very fascinating discussion and we also saw the day really unfold around personalities, John and two great storytellers and you know, we had Dana White from the UFC and we had Paul Leveck from the WWE back to back and both just, I thought really animated, energetic, dynamic storytellers Dana White talked about just really growing that UFC brand. Yeah.
What a great way to end the, the two day conference. Uh, Dana White, uh, of, of course to the ufc, he really talked about just buying the UFC for, how much did he say
They bought it for $2 million that he and the TTA brothers and they sold it of course to Endeavor for 4.05 or four point, maybe two 5 billion.
That's not a bad return there. And uh, and just hearing, hearing him talk about that and sort of the sweat equity, uh, that he put in that. But one of the things that really struck both of us is when he, he talked about the women fighters and the popularity of, uh, of, of women fighters in the ring. And we gave them s Spj awarded them a league of the year last year. And one of the reasons we were in the room with the committee, with committee, one of the reasons was what they're doing to bring in, uh, women, uh, to, to pop panelize the, the, uh, women fighters.
I would agree. And so, you know, if you ever get a chance to hear Dana White, he's just a, I would say, uh, a run of just great stories. Uh, great laughs He talked about how he's used social media to really benefit the brand and it, you know, it's, it's really amplified his personality. We also had Paul Leveck.
Yeah. You, you were on stage with Paul Leveck who talk about a storyteller.
Storyteller who's really had a rough, you know, last patch. I mean he had a very serious, serious health scare and now he's in great health and he's taking on a much larger role at the WWE with Vince McMahon's retirement. And so he's in charge of storylines, creatives picking talent. It's a big job he has. And so to hear him talk about how they look at villains or how they look at heroes and how they thread that storyline and try to create these new personalities, I just thought was pretty fantastic. His wife, Stephanie Mcah was in the audience. Nick Conn was in the audience and they are the real leaders of the WWE right now. Yeah.
What, what, what I really like to see, it seemed like the entire WWE came from, uh, Connecticut down to Manhattan for this just to listen to triple H up on, on stage.
And I think that goes to show the, uh, uh, amount of, I would say appeal and I would say how fond they are of of Triple H and Paul Leveck. I, I'd say I did a lot of, you know, reaching out to people before the interview about what I, what I should ask him and what's he like to work for and with. And, you know, bar none, people love working with him and they love him as an individual and I think the audience could see that in his style, his compartment and the way he conducts himself. So I thought we ended the day, we ended the conference with some really good storytellers. Yeah.
I I I want to give one quick Dana a white story. Most of our speakers, we have high level speakers. Most of them go on stage, get off stage and and head to the exits. Dan Dana White was, was out with the crowd taking selfies, signing autographs. Uh, I think he, he introduced himself to every single person in in in the crowd as he was leaving. Uh, there was a, a doorman. He hugged the doorman on the way out. Is that
Right? Yeah. So there was a huge line to John's point of people waiting in line to greet or meet Dana White and I will say Paul Leveck after their respective appearances, and it shows the appeal that both of those leaders have in terms and the appeal of the fight game. This isn't
Event Abe, right? These are business executives, these
Are business executives and they were lining up almost as big fans of both Dana White and Paul Leveck. And John, I wish we could say that we had 10 huge takeaways from the ca world Congress of Sports that'll take a little bit more time thought and energy. But the overall takeaways that I have, people are very bullish about the sports business, even in the throes of an economic headwind and Paul and recession potentially. But by and large sports executives have spoke here on this stage, feel that sports is still in a very strong place in a very good investment.
We've done these conferences, Abe, in the middle of economic downturns, and it's been deadly. It's been very negative both in the crowd and on the stage. I didn't pick up on that at all. I'm not curious if it's because we're coming outta Covid and, and and people are sort of moving forward, but the, the po amount of positivity on stage and in the crowds really I, it struck me.
Yeah. And everyone of course loves this time of year because we've got baseball playoffs, we've got the NFL and full swing, we've got college football and full swing. It's an exciting time to be in the sports business. It's an exciting time to be in sports and it's an exciting city to be in New York for the CAA world Congress of Sports. And I think John, that all kind of led to some great energy in the room for the two days
And plus I got the on the buzz cast. Abe, thank you for having me on. Well
It's been awesome having you on, on the special edition of the Morning Buzz cast from the CAA World Congress of Sports presented by Sports Business Journal. And remember, if you're all access subscriber to Sports Business Journal, you can view all the sessions from the CAA World Congress of Sports on Demand. And if you're not a subscriber, that is your call to subscribe. So hope you enjoy all the content from a great event. And that is your morning Buzz cast for Thursday, October 14th. For John Duran, I made Mad Core stay healthy, be good to each other. I'll speak to you later in the week.