WHEN: Today, Tuesday, September 16
WHERE: CNBC Sport x Boardroom Game Plan Summit
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcripts of panels from the CNBC Sport x Boardroom Game Plan Summit which took place today, Tuesday, September 16 in Los Angeles.
Mandatory credit: CNBC Sport x Boardroom Game Plan Summit.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman
BETTMAN ON SPORTS BETTING
BETTMAN: It became an opportunity in terms of our clubs and our league, in terms of business partners, and it became something that became important to fans, and it’s just now another way to connect with the game. Part of it’s probably a function of the digital revolution changing times, the access to information and data, which we all create in ways we never did before. And while, whether or not I think it was a good thing or a bad thing, it’s the fact of life. And sometimes in life—
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: It seems to me like you don’t love it though.
BETTMAN: There are, well, I think everything in moderation. And I think, I think if, if gambling becomes more important than the games themselves, then something’s wrong. And I worry about the impact on young people and responsible betting.
BETTMAN ON THE OLYMPICS
BETTMAN: And from a competitive standpoint, it had an impact because the international composition of our teams is so great that some NHL teams would send 10 players, some would send one or two, and after the two-week break, our teams would come back competitively in a different shape than they were when they left. Some teams banged up, other teams’ players well rested on the beach, so we decided to stop going – and it then became and then Covid was involved, and there were a whole bunch of other things. But ultimately, it became clear to me that it was important to our players.
BETTMAN ON NEW SPORTS LEAGUES
BETTMAN: There’s going to be some fragmentation, and maybe even like the tech bubble, some are going to make it, and some aren’t, but the opportunity to have more and more, not to insult them niche sports is since the ability to see these sports, to consume their content, there’s never been as great an opportunity, and I think that’s what’s fueling some of the fact that there are all these startups.
Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment Founder and Managing General Partner and 26North Founder Josh Harris
HARRIS ON UNDERINVESTING
HARRIS: You don’t win in sports by underinvesting. That’s not how you do it. You have to actually engage, engaging with the city, and then ultimately, obviously, you know, winning on the field.
HARRIS ON UPWARD PRESSURE
HARRIS: You’re seeing the globalization of NFL content, but also obviously NBA and other content and global soccer and football. So I think that that’s creating a massive upward pressure on value and on revenues. And then the other thing that you’re seeing, obviously, is the entrance of private equity, and there’s only 30 or 32 or 20, depending on the league, teams. And so you just see incredible demand for these teams. And I think that the reality is that people are going to want to own these and so, you know, the growth in wealth, right, is going to create demand for these teams. So I do think that there’s really a real growth rate here that will be, will grow through whatever environment we have.
HARRIS ON ASSET CLASS
HARRIS: I don’t think it’s a bubble, I think this is an asset class. I think it’s become an asset class. I think people see it as a great, long runway place to store capital. I think that for all the reasons I’ve mentioned, it will continue to grow. The New York Giants is they’re 1 of 1 right? Dallas cowboys is 1 of 1, Washington is 1 of 1, you know, there’s not that many incredible franchises, and there’s a lot of demand for it, and so people see it as a great place to participate in the growth and live content and the globalization of the media landscape.
HARRIS ON RECESSION RESISTANT
HARRIS: They’re a consumer, non-durable, like people love going. They’re not recession proof. I mean, obviously at some level, you know, if things got really bad, you know, that affects, you know, people’s ability to participate in sports. We’re always careful to make sure that we have tickets that are available, you know, at all types of price points, including low price points for everyone to participate. Part of what you do owning a sports team is you’re a steward. And you can’t just think about dollars and cents. You have to think about the community. And if you think about the community in the right way, and you do the right thing, the community supports you. But, you know, I would say they’re recession proof, not recession, recession resistant, not recession proof.
HARRIS ON IPO
HARRIS: When you think about IPOs and public, sports assets being public, so far, right, they’ve been valued more highly as private assets. And you haven’t seen, you know, the public valuations exceed the private valuations, and so therefore people have tended to keep them private because, like, ultimately, right, as someone who’s running a team, you want to be able to spend to win. You want to be able to spend. You want to be able to take a very long-term perspective. And the public markets haven’t always embraced that. And if you look at some of the teams that are public, they generally trade below their intrinsic value.
HARRIS ON PRIVATE EQUITY
HARRIS: I think that there’s a healthy liquid demand for these major sports, people want to get in it. And certainly minority, you’re getting private equity to do things they never would have done. You know, you know most very few asset classes could say to private equity, we’re not going to give you an exit, we’re not going to allow you to have any control. You can buy a minority stake, and we want you to pay a big premium.
SCOTT WAPNER: So antithetical to what happens—
HARRIS: It just shows you how much demand there is for these assets. So that’s why I think that you’ll continue to see pricing go up.
Val Ackerman, BIG EAST Conference Commissioner; Jim Phillips, Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Commissioner; and Brett Yormark, Big 12 Conference Commissioner
ACKERMAN ON TITLE IX
ACKERMAN: As a beneficiary of Title IX, I was a scholarship athlete in college in the early years of this important federal law. I can attest to what it’s done for legions of women around the country who, beginning in 1972, started to have the same kinds of opportunities that young men have had for decades. So, Title IX has been nothing but a success story as far as I’m concerned. And frankly, it’s also made possible the pro outlets, okay. The WNBA would not have started were it not for what was happening in women’s college basketball. So that’s a fact. I think Jim really nailed it – what the – and schools know what they have to do to meet the mandates of the law as it related to equitable treatment. What’s an open question it seems right now is under the rev share formula, what of the cash? Which of the cash? What is the proper allocation of those $20.5 million or whatever it is that a school elects to spend, what’s the appropriate allocation among the various sports? And right now, as Jim noted, I mean, football is driving the revenue story. Men’s basketball is second and then it sort of varies. Women’s basketball, probably third. And so the question fairly is, you know, should half of that revenue be shared no matter what, no matter who’s generating it? Or should – is there an opportunity for permissible disproportionate allocation if the other elements of Title IX are otherwise satisfied?
SHERMAN: So is that a school by school question or is it a conference question?
ACKERMAN: It’s not a conference question. I mean, we were, you know, schools are basically being told talk to your Title IX lawyers about it. So we – hasn’t issued an opinion. Brett hasn’t an issued opinion. You haven’t, and I haven’t, so we have not opined on it. Ibelieve frankly it’s going to end up in the courts is where I think it’s going to get resolved unless Congress gets involved. And that’s a whole another story. Maybe you were gonna ask that Alex about how we’re going to reconcile all of these federal laws, antitrust, labor, Title IX, tax that are all colliding.
PHILLIPS ON COLLEGE SPORTS REVENUE-SHARING MODEL
SHERMAN: Do the schools have the money to do this?
PHILLIPS: Yeah, that’s the question I think we are all trying to figure out. This is the modernization of college sports, right? The rev share piece has been long overdue – for student athletes at what Val indicated $20.5 million. Revenues have never been greater that come from the league. We surpassed over $700 million for the first time. Expenses, obviously, for our schools continue to go up. All of our schools have opted completely in. So they have found a way as they have begun this journey – is it sustainable is really the question. And so in the league office we continue to try to find new revenue streams that are available to us that will help offset some of those expenses. But at the end of the day, some of these decisions are local decisions where the campuses have to decide, are they all in or not. We just came off of a two-day ACC board of directors meeting with all of our presidents and chancellors last weekend – Wake Forest hosted – and we’re at 94% basically of our schools that are at the full rev share, which I think you can do the math, with a 18th right there. So, we feel really good about that. And to be determined whether this is sustainable or not.
YORMARK ON POTENTIALLY SELLING A STAKE TO PRIVATE EQUITY
SHERMAN: You sort of have dabbled with the idea of maybe selling a stake in the Big 12 to private equity. How close are we to seeing private equity dollars in college sports and what may it look like?
YORMARK: Well I can’t speak to how others think about it, but from my perspective, I have to bring optionality to our board. That is my job as the commissioner. And we explored private equity, traditional private equity. We looked at the debt market as well. I think if we are ever to go in that direction – and it’s an if – it’s not going to be – it will be a hybrid approach and very bespoke, where we can partner with someone that provides some commercial expertise, and resources in addition to being a capital partner, potentially. We are not going to sell a stake in this conference for sure. We think there is real upside. We don’t want to give that up. But do we partner with someone strategically that provides different types of resources, capital, strategic resources, etc. Yeah. I think that potentially could happen in the short term.
Michael Rapino, Live Nation Entertainment President and CEO and Ryan Smith, Smith Entertainment Group Chairman and CEO
SMITH & RAPINO ON CHARLIE KIRK SHOOTING
RYAN SMITH: I just pray and hope that we can use this as something that brings us closer together – I think that’s what sports and entertainment does. We’ll talk more about that but there’s a dark cloud kind of hanging over a lot of things and a lot of people hopefully can use this to wake up a little bit.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Michael, what do you think and how do you reflect on it as somebody who puts live events together, puts lots of people thousands, tens of thousands of people together all together to try to create a shared experience? And increasingly security issues, the safety issues at different events along the way. I know that Travis is going to be here later, that was an incident. There have been these incidents over years but the question is how you think as we both a country going forward and in terms of what your business is and in terms of how you think you have to keep us safe and are things changing?
MICHAEL RAPINO: I mean there’s no doubt. On a global basis, our businesses now, the stadium shows, the festivals, the level of security detail and the thinking through it from the old days of – I mean The Rolling Stones had the Hells Angels as their security at one of their festivals in 1970 right? So the world has changed. It’s a very sophisticated business. I would say the one beautiful part about concerts, even different than sports because sports has a bit of a you versus I. Concerts still are that one place no matter what you bring to that table that day, you unite around that one shared experience, you’re there to champion the Travis Scott or the Oasis shows if you went to any of those shows. I was there last week, it’s truly 80,000 people, different people from every side of aisle having a great moment.
RAPINO ON MARK CUBAN MARKET CALL
RAPINO: God bless him, Mark Cuban on CNBC was really the first one to say the roaring 20s are coming back, buy Live Nation stock so it was crazy at the time because I had an all-time stock price while I had, you know, negative revenue happening so it was, it was a tough period.
SMITH ON BULLISH ON LIVE EVENTS
SMITH: I’m pretty bullish on live events. I don’t think they’re going away. I think it’s just going to get more and more and, you know, I never thought when we were going into sports, we were also going into the music industry because touring was where everything was going to become.
RAPINO ON TICKET EXCLUSIVITY
RAPINO: Generally, the venues woke up in America many years ago and decided that having an exclusive ticketing company is valuable to them. They could put three RFPs out and someone will pay more. Probably like the same way they only have one coke supplier, one insurance company like most companies would so we have always said this is a, this is the billionaire sports guy doing the RFP. So we don’t care if it’s exclusive or not. The venues do because it’s a great piece of IP to leverage and monetize. Some places outside the world it’s not exclusive so whether it stays exclusive or not really depends on the venue owner but if you’re spending that two billion, you probably have done the RFP for most of your main categories and ticketing is one of them whether we win it or not but it wouldn’t change the ticket price, it wouldn’t change the consumer experience whether it’s exclusive or not exclusive.
NFL Fashion Editor Kyle Smith
KYLE SMITH ON STYLING PLAYERS LIKE JOE BURROW
KYLE SMITH: Well, a lot of people forget is the league is made up of really young cool men. They’re all like 23, 24, 25, and Gen Z really understands that you can be interested in sports and fashion, and they understand the importance that fashion has for their personal brand, for example, so they know that if they post their outfit on Instagram, that could lead to of course finding new fans, a brand deal for example with whatever brand it is that they really like so there’s so many players that already have a sense of style and I love to amplify that whether it’s through our NFL social channels or talking to other magazines GQ, Vogue. Some other players you can tell they’re trying. And they’re trying, but maybe with a little bit of help, with a little bit of experience, someone who’s more experienced, like we can help cultivate what it is and I always say it comes back down to the player’s individuality. The music they like, the places they travel to, where did they grow up? Do they have causes that they support? And then that’s what I like to include into their style and how I can help them grow their brand by leveraging fashion.
JULIA BOORSTIN: So give us some examples or an example or two of an athlete who you who you really helped find his own voice.
SMITH: I think maybe the most well-known example might be Joe Burrow. We worked together so well and everyone’s like, what’s it like working with him? We talk about everything but fashion. We talk about how much he loves space and dinosaurs, and we travel together and I think then, OK, like let me find you a vintage Jurassic Park t-shirt. Let me get you this like bejeweled like planet chain that you can wear to NFL Honors. What are your brand deals that you have and like how can I help maybe manage that relationship for you?
SMAC Entertainment Co-Founder and CEO Constance Schwartz-Morini
CONSTANCE SCHWARTZ-MORINI ON CHOOSING THE RIGHT BRAND DEALS FOR ATHLETES
JULIA BOORSTIN: How do you figure out what to say no to, especially if someone’s a big star and they’re getting a lot of money and opportunities thrown at them?
CONSTANCE SCHWARTZ-MORINI: I go back to the authenticity. Would you use this product or would you do this even if they weren’t paying you? That’s a big thing. I’ve primarily worked with Hall of Famers and retired athletes and in the last few years since NIL became such a big mainstay in our careers, we started working with Travis Hunter right when he graduated from high school and for Travis and all these kids it’s like, look, there’s money being thrown at them like nothing before but we instilled in Travis as well. You have to want to use this. Like you have to want to do it for free. So this has been the first time with a teenager who’s now you know in his 20s, but we had to really explain to him the impact it could have. And when it does work, I mean, here’s a perfect example. Coach Prime is known for wearing sunglasses all the time. We launched these sunglasses two years ago. We sold a million pair in a week. Like it was crazy, but it was perfect timing. It was the phenomenon. It was all the things, and that was because he’s known for wearing sunglasses.
Kevin Durant, Boardroom Co-Founder, 2x NBA Champion and Rich Kleiman, Boardroom CEO and Co-Founder
DURANT ON HOUSTON TRADE
KEVIN DURANT: Yeah so I would say around February the Suns had pretty much let the league know that I was on the market. And—
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: How did you feel about that?
KEVIN DURANT: I mean, I was initially I was a little upset because you know we, I felt like we built a solid relationship, me and the Phoenix Suns, and to hear that from a different party was kinda upsetting, but that’s just the name of the game so I got over that quickly and was trying to figure out what the next steps were and I heard Golden State was in a mix around the trade deadline, so but I, we, Rich, that’s when Rich came into play and those relationships that we built around the league and also planning Golden State helped so we was able to tell them that, you know, kind of hold off on that. And then, you know, so since me being on the market in February, but there’s also a trade deadline, it was just, you know, people were kind of just, you know, seeing how their seasons played out and what they needed for their teams and we knew where we would revisit that right around the summertime and Houston kinda jumped on it and was happened pretty fast from there.
DURANT ON RETIREMENT
SORKIN: How long do you want to play for, do you think?
DURANT: As long as I can, I mean, I haven’t put a number on it. I haven’t obviously you think about retirement every year and you think about what it’d be like.
SORKIN: What do you think it would be like?
DURANT: Who knows, man. Who knows. Who, who knows, man, I don’t even wanna think about it right now, but when people ask me these questions every day, I can’t, you know, help myself but think about it.
SORKIN: It’s annoying.
DURANT: But, I still enjoy going to the gym. I still, I, I, I enjoy that, that, that struggle of, getting better every day and, and grinding as an NBA player, so hopefully it’s in my 40s, I can play until then.
DURANT & KLEIMAN ON BITCOIN
DURANT: I gave him a little nudge, yeah.
SORKIN: You gave him – how did you.
KLEIMAN: No, he did. He called me in like, 2014, ‘15. We got on a call with our business manager at the time, who just, like, shut it down. And was like, you guys, like, stop.
SORKIN: Hold on, go, go backwards. So you, you, how did you learn about Bitcoin?
DURANT: Just scrolling on YouTube, to be honest, can’t lie to you. And then you I just seeing so many videos of seminars of people like this talking about cryptocurrency, and how is the future of the world? And I was always into, like, futuristic, you know, the new technology coming, how our world can change. And I felt like that was something that could be consistent and can last. And, I mean, here we are now, 10 years later, we’re still talking about it.
RICH KLEIMAN AND KEVIN DURANT ON COINBASE ACCOUNT
RICH KLEIMAN: I lost him some money because had we bought it at that point in 2014-2015, but about a year later, right when he signed with the Warriors, Ben Horowitz hosted a dinner for Kevin for his birthday and the whole Warriors team came. And at the end of that night I was like, Kevin, I just heard the word bitcoin 25 times this evening and the next day we started investing in bitcoin. And fortunately, we’ve yet to be able to track down his Coinbase account info, so we’ve never sold anything and his bitcoin is just through the roof.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: And you have a partnership and an investment in Coinbase –
RICH KLEIMAN: And we can’t get the password yeah. It’s just it’s insane. It’s actually insane.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Hold on. You really don’t have the password?
RICH KLEIMAN: We really don’t have it.
KEVIN DURANT: It’s in the cloud.
RICH KLEIMAN: We will get it, there’s just a process we haven’t been able to figure out, but bitcoin keeps going up, so it’s like, what’s the problem? I mean, it’s only benefited us.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: How long have you been trying to get the password?
KEVIN DURANT: It’s been a few years, yeah.
DURANT ON NIKE PARTNERSHIP
DURANT: I feel like I’ve built this brand over the last coming up on two decades, that has been ingrained in basketball culture, entertainment culture, for a while. You know. So if you’d asked me this when I’m coming out of college and maybe, but you know, for right now, you know, I feel like I want to continue to keep building this brand with Nike, and it can be from apparel to sneakers to anything. Honestly, it’s just such a huge company. But I’m just grateful for that. For that lifetime partnership is something that, along with making it to the NBA, being a part of Nike was a dream of mine as a kid.
DURANT ON THE OLYMPICS
DURANT: Team USA also presented that platform to put us, put me on a put us on a big stage, so many people watching and I’m not profiting, just playing for your country. You know what I mean, it’s a dream come true, going to other countries and representing United States and seeing that pride and everybody has to their country. It’s a special thing. And you seen it last summer, you know, the Olympic coverage was just magical.
Monumental Sports & Entertainment Founder and CEO, Revolution Growth Co-Founder Ted Leonsis
LEONSIS ON EXPANDING HIS SPORTS EMPIRE OUT OF WASHINGTON D.C. AREA
MICHAEL OZANIAN: Would you consider going outside the D.C. geography to expand the empire? I mean, couldn’t you still use valuable IP, as some others have, to build up the total valuation?
TED LEONSIS: I think that would be a mistake. Couple of years ago, the Wizards played the Knicks at the O2, and we all went to London. My daughter lives in London and so investment banks were taking me to see teams. I looked at Chelsea. We had one NBA meeting, by the way, where Adam Silver said, “Before we begin, if anyone in the room is not bidding on Chelsea, will you please stand up?” I think there were like nine NBA owners that were in that mix. And I spent the time, and I came home and said, we can’t do this. This is so inauthentic. I didn’t play soccer. I’m not going to live in the neighborhood. They’re going to kill me, and I’m not going to be able to add value, and our platform can’t help. So like Fenway, those guys are the best operators, the best people, but they have a network in New England and a baseball team and they have a Liverpool in London and they have the Pittsburgh Penguins and it’s hard to get a singular focus. It’s hard to get a customer first focus where we were the first to say we’re going to be digital first and global first. We’re in Washington D.C., 200 languages are spoken and when you’re spread out and diverse, you’re a holding company and for the most part it’s very hard to manage a holding company with a higher calling.
LEONSIS ON D.C. SPORTS
LEONSIS: So I want to make Washington, D.C. the world’s capital of women’s professional sports, and we have one of the most alpha driven women who bought the Spirit. It’s unbelievable what Michelle has done there. We own the Mystics. I certainly want to buy the hockey team. Volleyball is really, really hot. Lacrosse, that area, Baltimore and Virginia is one of the most important markets for lacrosse. And I can see one day we have Monumental Sports, and then there’s Monumental W and then we can bring female executives and entrepreneurs, and they can become limited partners in a professional sports enterprise, and very few could write the big check to become a limited partner at Monumental now, the floor is $250 million. Think about that, right?
LEONSIS ON LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD
LEONSIS: Title IX was launched and basically, Title IX was let’s try to level the playing field and make the same kind of investments in women’s basket – women’s sports as men’s sports. And I watched it all through my life and career, every generation of the WNBA and the players was more impressive. I’ll be honest. I think the WNBA style of play is better than the NBA.
LEONSIS ON INVESTING IN SPORTS TEAMS
LEONSIS: So when the opportunity came to start to invest and buy these teams, I said, I have to do it. And it’s not just because I was playing basketball as a kid. It was because the community needed to be uplifted.
Travis Scott, Recording Artist, Cactus Jack Enterprises CEO
TRAVIS SCOTT ON HIS LOVE FOR FORTNITE & VIDEO GAMES
TRAVIS SCOTT: When Fortnite specifically started. I played the game a lot. I love games. So I like I played the game a lot. So and I was into like how like, you know, Unreal Engine they were able to like adapt to things on the fly in real time, which is like crazy to me. And so for them to give me that, you know, introspective like dial into how they do it, it was like cool and be able to bring my world of life is even crazier. So, yeah, I think with anything like that, right, you know, I think that’s what makes it so easy.