The 6-1-1 Podcast Ep. 1: Michael Rubin
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Order now. Welcome to your Walmart. Subject to availability restrictions and fees apply. Now that was a helpful commercial. Welcome back to the 611 podcast. We're here in Tokyo, Japan at the Skytree to kick off the 2025 MLB season. We got the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Chicago Cubs. But more importantly, I mean, I think we're trying to break records with the highest podcast ever.

- Legally high. - Legally high, that is. - Legally high as Puck is. Altitude, altitude, altitude. - With the man that has taken this game of memorabilia, ownership of things that we've used, played with, signed. A Philly guy. - Yes. - A guy that may be a fanatic or something like that. - Yeah, yeah. On a couple aspects. - On a couple of aspects. Entrepreneur.

He started when he was a kid. He loves money. You got to love the hustle. You know, he loved money, evidently. I actually love the action, not the money. He loves the action. Oh, we'll get into that. Hey, we're going to get into it. We'll get into that. Mike Rubin. I mean, the man needs no introduction. We appreciate you being here today, brother. I'm honored to be with you guys. My real Philly fam.

I think we're probably 3,500 feet. Is this? - Is that what it is? - I think so. - I don't know. I think a meter to a foot's 10, right? - That's what I was trying to figure out. - I think it's 3,400 feet. We're ready to ski off this place or something. - I mean, I'm afraid of heights, but I like flying with you, dog. - Let's go. We fly together. - Let's do it. - Let's go, baby. - Let's go. - Let's jump into it. All right. So let's talk a little bit about where you're from, right? Philly. How did Philly, being from Philadelphia,

shape your mindset in terms of you've got fanatical fans, fanatical people. The company is named Fanatics. Now, I don't know if that's tied in to it. I think right now we're just going to make it fact. That's how the whole name came together. It's not, but let's go. We'll run with that. But I want to know

what was the drive? What got you into the hustle? Because at such a young age, you got involved in the game. And so what was that mindset that got you there? What drove you? How did Philly and the fanatics of everything with fans and just how Philly is get you that drive to be where you are today? Look, I'll start by saying I don't know any different. For me, one

One thing I'll say about Philly, it's a like grinded out city. You guys always, you did what it took to win. You had that attitude. We're just going to like, we're going to find a way to win at all costs. I think for me, that's always been my mentality. Like I'm just going to find a way to get to the outcome I want. You know, look, I think a lot of people know my story. Barely made it out of high school. Didn't go to college.

you know, kind of school hard knocks and like you kind of, you gravitate to what you're good at. And I was always, everyone knows, everyone saw my baseball pitch. You guys saw that right how bad it was. I mean, you know, but I actually did that for a reason to show like you can suck at one thing and actually be good at something else. That's why I actually posted, actually Alex made me post it too. But,

I like to make fun of myself, but seriously, you gotta laugh at yourself. But, you know, Philly is a great city. It's a city that represents just a grind and a will to win. And that's what you guys did when you won the world series. And I think, you know, for me, um,

I think it's just taught me to just always never quit. And that's what's made me who I am. And I'm still doing the same thing today. I love doing what I do. I don't do... It's not money. It's not... It's all about the actions, about learning. It's about growing. And that's always been my mentality. And that's one thing I want to touch about because...

I think everyone, if you really thought about it, has some type of entrepreneurial drive. We want to build something that we can contribute to society that reflects who we are. But along that road, there are many failures. What, in your opinion, you've had to better yourself, obviously. But what is the difference between what some people see as failure and

and what is actually learning? - So first I'm gonna tell you, I'm not sure that I agree that everyone does have that entrepreneurialism in them. I think, you know, I feel like you guys were born athletes. - Right. - I was born not an athlete, okay? - Allegedly. - No, no, no. Okay. But I kind of, I had that entrepreneurial skills that I was kind of born with and I've always kind of, you know, kind of fine tuned this goes.

Other people may just, maybe they don't have it. It's not for them. So I think you got to figure out what you love doing, what's going to make you happy. And I think there are a lot of people that have it within them. And sometimes people can find it in their 50s, 60s, 70s. They don't need to find it at 10 years old or 20 years old. But I don't think it's in everybody. It's in some people. So that's point one. My AD is kicking in. The second part of the question was what? Was what do you define...

as failure yeah versus learning so i don't i don't like failures are great like i have failed so many times in my life every failure leads to the next success i could give you countless examples of like where people like it's over he's cooked he's done and every one of those experiences i figured out how to learn from grow from and um you know capitalize on so i kind of

I like to fail. I just try to do it quickly. Um, I try things all the time. I throw a lot of shit at the wall. A lot of times things don't work, but that's okay. Um, you know, think about for you guys as athletes, how many, you know, bad games did you have? How many failures did you have? But you don't look at that and say like, Oh, I'm going to let that take me down or bother me. It's like, okay, I'm going to work that much harder. I'm going to push that much more. And I think you have to do that to be successful. I've had some pretty epic failures. Um,

And some pretty big ones. And for me, every one of those, you know, from being a kid and, you know, running out of money. You know, I remember being 15 years old and it didn't snow one season when I owned the ski shops as a kid. And I literally owed $200,000 as a 15-year-old. And I had a sheriff show my time at my house a hundred different times over a school season. It would be like literally the doorbell would ring.

She'd be like, "Good morning, here's today's lawsuits." I'd give her a hug, the sheriff. At 15. At 15. 200 racks at 15 in lawsuits. Yeah. And by the way, I thought I was done. Like I'm a failure. I'm never going to do business again. I'm not good at this.

A couple of weeks later, another ski shop went out of business and I bought the merchandise at an auction, $200,000 of inventory. It was like, I can't remember, like $10,000 or $15,000. I didn't even have the money to pay for it. I went neighbor to neighbor, borrowed it from someone who charged me $1,000 a week interest for the 15 grand, and then sold a bunch of inventory to pay back my old bills and the new bills.

within weeks and that got me into the close up business. By the time I was 21, I was doing $100 million a year, making $10 million a year. So my point is like, I think I'm done. I think it's over.

I don't even believe in myself for that minute. And then weeks later, I turn this into a huge opportunity. So failures are great. You just got to figure out how to learn from them, how to take advantage of them, not have bother you. But to go off of that, right? So you get to that point to where you feel like it's done. What is stopping you from being, just wrapping it up and saying, all right, you know what? This isn't going to work. Because it's easy to do that. It's very easy. I don't... For some people. You know, my instincts are always like...

never ever quit period and um

You know, I always say like, you know, if someone's, I joke around people like, I'm the type of person, if you're going to try to, you know, put me down, you better kill me. Like, don't wound me, kill me. Because I'm always going to come back. I'm like, you know, it's like the Terminator. Like, they will not die. So, you know, what gives you that mentality? You know, again, I feel like that's something I was born with. I've always had that mentality of whatever comes at me, I'm just going to keep persevering through it. I'm going to keep fighting through it. I feel like, you know, one of the things I've been fortunate about is I get to see

so many different athletes and you see some people that are not the best talent but they have the will that they just they find a way to win then you see other people that could have all the talent in the world and they're like one thing goes against them and they're like you know they're out of the game yeah yeah and and so you know i think i was the person born without the talent but

but I just had the mentality. And I think I'll take that over someone who has all the talent, but doesn't have that never die mentality. We hear it all the time. It doesn't take talent to hustle. It takes drive. You got to go out there knowing what's against you, but almost you got to be delirious, psychotic. If it's one person that's going to get through that wall and I'm surrounded by a million people, you're looking at everybody else like, I'm sorry, I'm that one. And that's the only way I feel you could really be successful. And it's

I'll say right now, I am that one. I am that one. 100%. Have to be. And look, people say to me all the time, why do you work so hard? I'm now 52. I've been doing this since I've been eight years old. So I've been in business for 44 years. I've never worked harder than I work right now. I literally work 17 hours a day most days. Yeah.

even you saw me we were randomly sitting next to each other on the beach and all I'm trying to do is get five minutes with the kids and get back on the phone and I'm working away and grinding away and work life balance right that work life balance I'm sure you saw it I'm just I'm hustling back but for me I'm honored to do that that's fun for me I love that I actually don't have work life balance I just work work work but it's like

I have the greatest job in the world. I run a really exciting company. I think we can build the most exciting company in sports, one of the most valuable consumer brands in the world. We're just getting started. I just wish I could get eight days a week while my competition had seven. I just wish I could get 26 hours a day versus 24 hours a day. I'm always looking for that edge. People say, why do you work so hard? It's because I love it because I'm lucky to do what I do. Bro, I love that because it's the parallel.

for sports, right? For what we would go through. And it's the exact mindset of...

doing all the stuff behind the scenes. I was saying that the other day, people only see the finished product of what you see on the field. They don't see everything that goes on behind the scenes. They don't see you taking the extra swings in the cage, working out, doing all the prep work and all that kind of stuff. The sacrifices that take place. It just looks like magic. You're a natural. Yeah. Because it's like we say, it's, you know, with that work-life balance, right? Your family, there's sacrifices that you have to

you have to make in order to be able to be successful and get it, get to where you want to be. I think you can see it in people. When you get a chance to have exposure to people, you can see what they're made of. I could say, like, I remember when Kobe Bryant was getting near the end of his career, he was really getting into business and he would, and I'd met him. Fortunately, I met him in, you know, 2010, 2011, and he would call relentlessly with just question after question of question. I remember saying,

This guy's going to be the same killer he was on the court in business. And by the way, you see the same thing with Tom Brady, that just relentless, like I'm going to win at all costs in business. He's just always out working everybody. And then you see certain people who just, you know, they had all the talent in the world. They were incredible athletes, but maybe they don't want to work as hard for it. You know, again, for me, that Philly mentality that, you know, grinded out at all costs, that's the only thing I know.

Business wise, is there any opportunity? What's the one that got away? Is there one? Is there one that got away? So my mentality is never look back. And so I screw things up all the time. I miss things all the time. But I'm not ever one to say like, wow, I wish I did that. I guess probably...

you know, knowing that you guys are both, you know, Philly guys and had so much to do to bring, you know, happiness to, to Philly fans. I'd say the story I would think most about, and I don't look back and regret it in any way, shape or form, but I sold my first real company, GSI commerce to eBay in March of 2011. I remember Ed Snyder who owned both the Philadelphia Flyers and the Philadelphia Sixers. Um, he was like a, a mentor to me and I was very friendly with him. And Ed, um,

as soon as the deal got announced, it was in March of 2011, he hit me up. He said, hey, I want to come over and celebrate with you. He lived directly across the street from me in suburban Philadelphia. So he literally, right across the street.

So Ed comes over and he says, Michael, you know, first, congratulations. You know, so happy for you. You know, let's, you know, celebrate, have a bottle of champagne. He says, by the way, you should buy the Philadelphia Sixers. You should buy the team. And I said, ah, you know, basketball teams, they lose a lot of money. You know, like I've got, what do you guys, you want $400 million for the team? It's losing, like I had heard the rumors it was losing $25 million a year. You know, don't waste my time with this thing.

And he actually said to me, Michael, you know what? I dislike basketball so much. I don't want you to buy it. So he...

offered it to me, told me I should buy it. I then never thought about it again until Josh Harris and Dave Blitzer bought the team and invited me to come in. They actually bought it for $265 million, not $400 million. But I thought it was a $400 million equity check. They put up like $125 million. So I never even did the research after it was offered to me. And then Josh Harris and Dave Blitzer did this incredible kind of deal and had a lot of vision for where it was going and I completely missed it. But when I look back,

It happened exactly the way it was supposed to happen. Yeah. I, you know, I was part of the organization for 10 years. To be honest, we never had the, you know, success we need to, unless you win a championship in sports, right. You've lost each year. Like the way I look at it is if you don't win the championship, you haven't done your job. We never got our job done. And, um, but I learned a lot from it. Um,

you know, it helped me a lot just to kind of continue to grow as a business person. And, you know, when it was time to move on in 2022, so I could put all my energy into Fanatics, which, you know, the Sixers were kind of getting in the way of Fanatics and really growing Fanatics, you know, it was the best for everybody. So never looked back, but like,

When you think about it, I own 10% of the Philadelphia Sixers and 100% of the team was offered to me and it ended up being an incredible thing. But for me, again, I think I have the best opportunity in the world. I feel like even though today we're over, Fanatics is more than $9 billion. We have 22,000 team members that I work with every day. I feel like we're a startup. We're just getting going. So that's what drives me every day. So we're going to bag up a little bit because baseball is –

Full of superstitions. I don't know about other sports. You hang around, you know, the best of the best. When in baseball, people are very superstitious. Okay, we have a new section brought to you by Banana Boat. And we want to talk about morning routines, rituals, or superstitions. So Michael, what is your morning routine, superstition, or something that you feel you need to do to get you going, to get your day started? I don't have a routine that I do every day.

I move around, I travel a ton. I move around all the time. So I'd say, I wish I had more discipline around that, but I am superstitious as could be. Like I'm incredibly superstitious. Like I will never celebrate a victory until it's mathematically a victory. So like, I remember...

during the Eagle Super Bowl this year was 34-0. I'm like, okay, finally I can say, finally 34-0. I think we got this. But like, I sat next to Robert Kraft when he was down 28-3 against the Falcons. And, you know, everyone thought the game was over and I kept saying, this game's not over. You know, you got Tom Brady, it's New England Patriots, you can win this game. So like, I'm very superstitious about never celebrating anything until it happens. Even in business when people will be like, oh, you know, we got this locked up or this is set. Like,

Until it's done, I don't ever prematurely celebrate. I think that is the biggest jinx of all. So my biggest superstition would be not celebrating something until it's actually happened. I think if you do, you're going to jinx it and make it not happen. It ain't over. Now, that's a different question than what's my daily routine because I don't do the same thing every day. I do move around a lot. My schedule changes a lot. It just is very varied. But I believe in superstition. So that second baseman, I'm

I mean, I'm buying it. - Well, speaking of fanatics, we're in Tokyo. We got the- - 3,500 feet in the air. - 3,500 feet in the air. We got the unicorn plastered all over town. - Oh, wait a second, for a billion dollars, would you clean a window here? - No. - A billion dollars one time. - I'd do it. - You mean all the windows? - Just one? - One time. - Just one window or all of them? - One time down.

Oh, man. Hey, I'm going to be praying to God the whole time. Yeah. I'm wiping. You don't. I give it a shot. Maybe look, somebody has to do it. You don't have to tell me. I'm terrified. Somebody else. Hell no. I don't like heights. I really don't. But I'm 35 feet up. Yeah. Inside. I like heights. Outside. I have a parachute strapped to my back, too. Hey, give me that. That's a good ad.

- I think a billion with the power sheets. - That's it. - And then I'm good. - That's it, I'm good with that. - But yeah, 3,500 feet. But there's something that you got going on on the ground here in Tokyo, which is activations. And I was able to be a part of one. The Tops shop here, absolutely amazing. The memorabilia.

Licking that history, you got to see Ichiro, which I have a signed bat of his. Shohei, I have a rookie card, mint nine, dope, not getting rid of it. And then I had to go look at the number 55 jersey and the pinstripes. I didn't even like that one, but Hideki, you guys have done so much around here.

How has he shaped what we've or what you've been able to do in here and what we as a group, MLB, have been able to do within baseball? Well, start first with the Tokyo series. This is amazing. Like the excitement around...

this event, I feel like I'm at a Super Bowl. I mean, literally, you've got... Baseball like a Super Bowl. We're going to do $40 million of business around the Tokyo Series? That's big numbers. That just shows you the global excitement around the set of games. When I see Rob tonight, I literally thought I was kind of joking with him. I want the Tokyo Series every year. Right. You know, Japanese fans... I'm with it. You're in? I mean...

I mean, these fans are incredible fans. I mean, they love baseball here. And look, so first, what a way to kick the season off. You know, what a great series. So much passion for this year. And you see it everywhere. The amount of people I see wearing our merchandise everywhere you walk. People, they're proudly wearing Tokyo Series merchandise. So I think that's incredible. Shohei, I mean,

I met him for the first time actually yesterday. We actually were fortunate enough to get Marikami and Otani together. And I looked at him. I said, you're literally doing as much for baseball as –

Jordan did for basketball in the 90s. Because if you really think about what he's doing globally, we think... I think we all probably have a little bit of an American mentality. For sure. You think about... This country is so proud of him. When I see the numbers he's doing, what he's doing for the business, he is truly a unicorn. He is one of a kind. I'd say today...

I mean, we work with 5,000 athletes individually at Fnatic. So we work with just about every sport, every team globally. I mean-

he's one of a kind. He's a really special individual. And by the way, such a nice guy, so humble and nice. And you kind of feel like it couldn't happen to a better guy. I'm happy for him, man. I'm telling you, Rye. If you haven't had a chance to go by there to go see it, I walked through the O'Tonnie New Balance exhibit. Sick. Little shameless plug, or not shameless at all. They had a 30-30 club. I'm one of the keys in there. Then they moved up to the 40-40 club.

a few keys in there, then it was a 50/50 club. - I'm just saying, you're 50/50, 30/30 is not so good anymore. - I know, right? - I'm just keeping it in order. That's living in the past. - That's dope. - And then you keep going like, oh.

Yeah, that's different. That is different. That's different. And he's different. Like he's, you know, when he came over, he had all the fanfare, all the hype. And he slipped up to it and morphed up to it. Unfortunately, he started out in Los Angeles with the Angels. But it kind of worked because he got to hide a little bit, if you can hide them, you know, if anywhere. But you have the Dodgers versus the Angels. So he was able to hide in between that. And then when he popped out,

Man, he popped out. Yeah. I mean, him going to, obviously going to the Dodgers. I mean, it just elevated everything. We knew. Like you said, you couldn't really hide him with the Angels because he was that good. But then when you put him in the limelight over there with the Dodgers and the market. Talk about a win-win deal. I mean, here this guy comes to, you know, one of the most important sports teams in the world.

the Los Angeles Dodgers, and they go out and they give him a big bag of money. And that is a win-win deal. I mean, he did a great deal. And for the Dodgers, it was incredible. And I think it's been incredible for, you know, the sport of baseball. I mean, just seeing...

what he's doing, the energy around baseball. I mean, we're seeing our baseball business today is amazing. I mean, we have, you know, our collectibles business is, you know, was more than $800 million in trading cards last year. We'll sell, you know, close to a billion dollars of baseball merchandise. I mean, we see so much energy around baseball. So we talked about it here at the Tokyo series and we do have several activations. I've heard we've had a quarter of a million

a quarter of a million individual people so 250 000 people come to buy it our activation here in japan that is a lot of people that's a lot of people i mean shows you just the absolute fandom i mean i like to have that i actually think the tokyo um

dome, I think is the biggest individual baseball stadium from a merchandise perspective in the world. Um, yeah. And we actually operate that. The giants, it's, it's actually a FNAC stadium, but it's a, it's a, it's an incredible team, incredible venue, but to see, uh, the Dodgers and Cubs take it over and have the Tokyo series here. It's great. And we have multiple activations. We have activations for, um,

our apparel business, we have activations for our trading card business. And we didn't even have an office in Japan five years ago for Topps. And now that business is growing very aggressively. And look, Shohei's obviously been incredible for it. The 50-50 products we did last year, I mean, people wanted them everywhere in the world. We had, I think...

500,000 or 600,000 people buy his individual Tops Now card last year. We made 500,000 or 600,000 copies of the card that we sold. And hundreds of thousands of those people were new customers that never bought a trading card before. They were new to Tops. So that's the excitement that's around baseball that he's bringing to the world.

Wow, man. That's... Changing the game, bro. Man. Game changer. Indeed he is. I love it. I'm excited for it. Okay. McDonald's meets the Minecraft universe with one of six collectibles and your choice of a Big Mac or 10-piece McNuggets with spicy Netherflame sauce. Now available with a Minecraft movie meal. And participating McDonald's for a limited time. A Minecraft movie only in theaters. Speaking of trading cards, you know.

We had a pretty good rookie come in last year. Yeah. You know, Paul Skeens. Big stink about, you know, something that you made.

Indeed. A rookie card. Indeed. The rookie card with the pack. $500,000, $600,000. When these things happen to you and you see, you know, not only the fans get excited, but the players. They're starting to collect again. I collected when I was a kid, but I would give it to my cousin and the garbage cards, they went to my spokes and they were just making a noise and I'm writing. But now you have players that are saying, I want to buy, want my own card. I'm excited to see what's in the pack. And then you get this buzz about Paul Skeens and what is it, like the rookie pack?

or something. - Yeah, it's the rookie patch that goes on. Their debut patch. - Yeah, debut patch, there it is. And it's going for this, like, did you envision this? Like, you knew you wanted to change the card game, you have, you wanted to change the memorabilia game and you have. Did you see it getting to this point? - Look.

The trading card industry had been very tired and had grown by luck, not by innovation, not by marketing, not by focusing on the collector experience. So for us, when we won all of the rights in 2021, and then we bought Topps in the beginning of 2022, the first thing we said is like, we need to market this industry for the first time. We need to really innovate the products. And I remember the conversation. It feels like it was yesterday.

guy's the CEO of our collectibles business, Mike Mann. He calls me up. He says, Hey, I got a great idea. And the guys at tops think it's a great idea, but they said baseball would never do it. I said, what's the idea? He said, look, when a player plays their first game in sports, they come up from the minors in baseball or they, you know, they're, they're drafted into, you know, another sport. I want to put a patch on their Jersey for one game, um, called the debut patch. Um, and I want to make sure that, that, um,

You know, so, and I didn't, I was asking a question like, okay, how will this work? Are they wearing the patch for the season? Is it for the game? Is it? No, like it's one game. We put a patch on the jersey and as soon as the game's over, we take the patch off the jersey. They can keep their jersey. We just put the patch, we put that in a one-on-one trading card.

I'm like, well, that's a great idea. I'm like, what's the problem? They said baseball would never do it. So I literally called Rob Manford and Noah Garden with the CEO of the business on the phone. And he literally, I said, hey, you know, we got this great idea. They're like, is it for the season or one game? Okay, here's, you know, how does it work? We're just going to put the patch on the jersey.

They're like, you make the jersey, go get it done. We had it live four months later. The thing that's so amazing about that card, if you think about trading cards, it's really been about the rookie, okay? Always, yeah. People always saying, should I bet on that rookie? Is Paul Skeen's going to be the guy? If Shohei, if we had a debut, by the way, if we had a debut patch for Shohei, that'd be a $10 million card. I'd be buying boxes like, hey, hey. Same, same thing. Slide them through. So, you know, what's been so interesting for us is,

Everyone wants their debut patches now. So you see this. We've seen when we bought tops beginning of 2022, I think a small amount of... There were a small amount of players that really collected. Mike Trout, a few other guys. There were probably a handful of guys. Now I feel like 10 or 20% of the league is collecting and everybody wants the debut patch. So I think the card was an incredible innovation. And it's great if there's only one in the world. This is truly a one-on-one. I think back to like...

Could you imagine if I had Tom Brady's debut patch? Could you imagine if you had Otani's debut patch? If you had Mickey Mantle's debut patch, there was one in the world. Come on, bro. That would be insane. Yeah. So I think it was a great invention and people are absolutely loving it. The card is up for auction right now. I think as of today, it's $660,000. But people are predicting when the auction closes in a couple of days, they think it's going to be a million- A million dollar card. Substantially more than a million. Between one and $2 million is what people are saying. So

I can't wait to see what the card finally trades for. But if you think about it, there's only one in the world and that's what makes these so special. By the way, they're coming for the NBA. They're coming for the NFL. So we're going to have these across all sports. Baseball is where we started, but it's going to be across all sports. Man, that's great. That's great. Well, you know, it's too late for us though.

Anything's possible. Let's go. They got gold patches for a couple MVP. Did you win MVP? I did. I think we went back to back. Okay. I wanted a rookie of the year as well. Rumor has it that when you get those letters, you get a gold patch. You get those initials. We're just wondering, is there retrograde versions of those?

Or do we got to go play like a one-day contract? I think for you guys, maybe we could come up with a special invention only for the two of you. I mean, we got to take care of our guys. But look, the really interesting thing about trading cards, different than memorabilia. Memorabilia is really about achievement, right? You know, you won MVP. You know, you won the World Series. You won the finals. That's what, you know, memorabilia is really about. Trading cards has really been about

predicting what a rookie is going to do and chasing rookie cards. So what we want to do is have, you know, incredible things to really measure, you know, achievement in sports. And so what's more important than the Cy Young Award or the MVP Award? So there's going to be six patches in baseball. When you win those awards, you get a gold patch on your jersey for the year. So I think you've seen Shohei wearing that. You'll see that tonight when he plays his game. He's going to have a gold patch to signify that he was MVP last year. Same thing with Aaron Judge.

And only two people get to win. Right. In the NL, one in the AL. Which is pretty cool. And again, like art, trading cards are all about scarcity. And so this was another invention from Mike Mahan and the entire collectibles team to say, what kind of incredible products can we innovate with? And people are so excited about these. And a lot of ways, the mentality of general public would be to chase achievement more than kind of, even though in trading cards, we grew up chasing rookies. You think about like, you know,

any great achievement in sports, like if I could have, you know, a one-on-one card to signify that, I mean, that's pretty special. I like that. Growing up, were you a big card collector? Was that what kind of got you towards...

you know, this industry? Was that something you did? Yeah, I was a rabid collector between like eight and 12 years old and then I stopped collecting. And then really what I saw was a business that had grown by accident in a pretty major way. So if you look at how much trading cards grew, you know, the pandemic helped a lot, you know, but it wasn't for like what you would normally think of like

Great marketing, great product innovation, great business leadership. So we looked at the industry. We said, there's so many things that we could do to reinvent this business. And to be honest, it's worked out kind of the way we thought it would work out. And look, collectors are the best fan. If you're a collector, you're the best sports fan in the world because you care so much about... If you're going to collect a card, you're a really passionate sports fan. No doubt. So

We're going to switch speeds, you know, because there's so many facets to you. We could talk about this. You gave us a glimpse of the future, what's coming. Right. But something that is as important, you know, culturally.

And I want you to tell us, and we're aware of it, but the Reform Alliance, what was the motivation for that? There's a core thing, injustice, that you've seen. Everybody talks to the game. We want this. We want to make it right. But very few do something. You chose to do. Yeah. Look, it's a pretty well-documented story. I had a really good friend of mine who today is still one of my closest friends, Meek Mill. And

I watched him. I remember, like in your life, there aren't so many things you remember so vividly. I remember him calling me on a fine and say, hey, Rube, can you come to court with me on Monday? I said, and we lived like 15 minutes apart from each other. I'm like, you really want me to come to court with you? I was like, what? Like,

"If you need me to, I will." Like, why? He's like, "I want you to see what happens when a black person goes to court." And I didn't think anything of it. I thought Meek was just being Meek. And he said, "So, can you come to court with me on Monday?" And so I changed my schedule around. I got there at one o'clock and I thought this would be like, it was a probationary and he had popped a wheel on a motorcycle. And I said, "What could you possibly happen if you pop a wheel on a motorcycle? You can't really get in trouble. We live in America, no chance." And what I didn't understand is,

because he was on probation, the judge had a lot of flexibility to what she could do. And she was really, you know, in this case, his master. And she could just kind of throw the book at him if she wanted to, which is crazy. I thought it'd be a 15 minute hearing. I got there, went on for about an hour and a half in the recess. I remember we walked to the bathroom together. You know, it was like, we'd already been in court for an hour and a half. I said, you're fine. Don't worry about this. We walked back in. I see like four or five officers walking in. And I'm like,

maybe he's not fine. Maybe, maybe this isn't good. And, um, you know, an hour and a half later, I watch her say, I'm sentencing you to two to four years for probation violation for popping a wheelie on a motorcycle for breaking up a fight in an airport where, uh,

One had a $65 ticket and one had no ticket. So he got sentenced to jail for two to four years for that. So my immediate reaction was just, how do we get him out of prison? I worked together, you know, again, well known, sorry, I worked together with, you know, Jay-Z, Desiree Perez to get him out of prison. And, you know, he ultimately got out five months later. But the current governor of Pennsylvania kept saying to me, Michael, you can't make this about Meek. You have to make this about

you know, the millions of people who are unfairly, you know, hurt by the criminal justice system and, you know, all the problems within it. And so, you know, it's kind of like entrepreneur instincts. The day he got out, and we talked about it, like, while he was in, like, we got to do something about this. So it was just like, you know, myself, Jay-Z, Robert Kraft, me, got together, and then we got a bunch of other incredible founders. We started the Reform Alliance. And, you know,

You know, five years later, we've created a pathway for close to a million people that shouldn't have been on probation or parole to get off of probation or parole. And it's really, this is probably the only part of the criminal justice system. There's not a lot of debate around it. Like, the problem is that we're just leaving people on probation and parole

for decades and then you're stuck within the system and it's like, you know, by the way, I couldn't be on probation. You put me on probation for 10 years, you get a speeding ticket. Right, right. It's a wrap. By the way, I don't know if you guys know this, if you're on probation, you can't even be around another felon. If you grow up in a tough neighborhood, everyone you grow up with isn't, you know, everyone around you, right, someone's got something on them. Yeah. So look, I'll,

I'm proud of what we've done so far. Like anything, we're just getting going. We have an incredible organization headed by Jessica Jackson. We've got 70 people that dedicate their lives to changing the probation and parole laws. And I think this is a really good thing. There's other parts of the criminal justice system that I think may have been overcorrected. This is not one. Probation and parole, it's very proven that the real benefits within the first year or two, and then you want to get people out of the system.

By the way, what's the purpose of prison, jail, probation, to rehabilitate somebody? And so that's what you want to work on. So I think we've done good work so far and we're going to keep doing great work. No, that's amazing. I mean, obviously it's all got its quirks. It's all got its problems. But again, for you to recognize, to be there, and I think for me, you got to give it up to him, for him to say, hey, come and watch this. Because people like us...

And people like you, they don't get it. They don't understand it until they actually get to see it. And actually, like, unless you experience it, you don't get to experience it and then get to see it and then get to say, like,

wow, like what? I don't understand. Like you're saying, I don't understand how he can get this for popping a wheelie. If you grow up, like I grew up very much, you know, middle America, the house that I grew up in as a kid is probably like a $500,000 house today. So, you know, very much, you know, middle class, you know, very hardworking parents. I had no exposure to this. If you would have said to me seven, eight years ago,

Michael, what percentage of people that go to prison or jail belong to go to prison or jail? I would say like 99. Okay. I just had no clue. And then you watch something happen firsthand. Okay. And again, we weren't like, I wasn't any great guy. Like it was just one of my really good friends.

who went to prison for not committing a crime. I was just trying to help him together with, you know, Jay and Des. And then when we fixed that, we're like, okay, we got to fix the underlying problem. And I think that's, that's the definition of entrepreneurialism. That's when you take kind of your business acumen, you apply it towards something else. We're like, we got to fix this. We got to change this. And, and a lot of ways, some of the most gratifying things that we've done to be able to make an impact on the world. And look for me, you know,

I'm going to work probably at this pace, other than the last couple of days when I haven't slept at all. I'm going to work at this pace until I die because it's the one thing I'm good at. It's the one thing I love doing and I'm so fortunate to do it. I think if we can impact others, that's a really nice thing to do. And so I'm not, I'm truly not driven by, you know, you want to see how you're doing in

from a score perspective financially. How's your business doing? Are you doing better? Are you doing worse? That's how you keep score in a game. But I think giving back and making a difference is a really important thing. I think as a company, we have that mentality. I think as an individual, I have that mentality because I know I'm lucky as shit. I'm not confused. You can't get to where I am without having also good luck and good timing. 100%.

For that reason, I want to do everything I can to make a difference in this world. I think that was a place I was fortunate. By the way, all the credit goes to Meek. He's the one who went to prison for not committing a crime. He's the one that put this on his shoulders and said, I'm going to make sure we do this for the millions of people who are kind of the nameless Meek Mills. And one last question. I think we'd be remiss.

If we didn't have a couple of Philly guys in there, we didn't get his Mount Rushmore Philly athletes.

They don't have to be sitting next to you. They don't have to be here. I thought it was you guys' time too. You don't have to be that. First of all, feel free. Somebody asked me that question about a year ago. I hate that question. And the first thing I have to say is how many people are on my Rush Bar? But I actually know the answer and I didn't know a year ago. So I just want to be very transparent to know. I just said like, is it four people? Is it five people? I know it's four now. We'll go five.

No, it's four, right? I know. I'm saying, but right, right. The real thing. No, no. We're talking about Philly athletes because you may need to add in one. Okay. You know? Well, I mean. Add in one. Okay. Gotcha. I mean. Wait a minute. Why it got to be a possible? I mean. You made me like a spades hand. Look at him. He went on that. Hold on a second. I just want to see you guys work out your issues for us. I was just going to be silent for a minute here. This is what we got to do. We won't do this on there. We won't do this on there.

My all-time Philly greats. I think we have to exclude the incredible guys that are in this room just to give air time for others. I think that's just the humble thing to do. So I think if we talk about recent memories, and I mean, how do you not give it up to Saquon and Jalen? I mean, what these guys just did this year. I mean, you know, pretty incredible. As a kid, I grew up giant Julius fan, giant AI fan.

And then I just saw a guy a couple weeks ago I hadn't seen for a long time who I was such a fan of as a kid. I'm sure you guys probably were too. Mike Schmidt. Ah, Schmidt. I grew up a Phillies fan. He used to buy skis from my ski shop. The craziest thing.

Both Julius Irving and Mike Schmidt were some of my early customers. When I was in my teens, they both came into my ski shop, bought skis for me. That's what I meant. That's what I meant. That's crazy. You're a kid and Dr. J comes in or Mike Schmidt comes in and you're like, yo, this is crazy. They each bought skis for me. Wait, Dr. J bought skis? He did. It wasn't for him. It wasn't for him. I was going to say, he had skis for me.

I mean, he has skis for his skis of feet. By the way, the funny thing is I saw Mike Schmidt. I hadn't seen him in ever. I saw him a couple weeks ago. I said, I just want you to know, like we work with, you know, 5,000 athletes across the world. I said, I want you to know as a kid, everyone always says like, who are you a fan of? Like this business, you guys know, when you guys play, it's a business. Like don't be confused about that. You know, you work for the team, you know, you play for the team that you, you know, that you play for. Yeah.

That's who you want to get the outcome for. It kind of takes the fandom out of it over time. And I'm not embarrassed to say that. So it's like, I haven't been a fan since I've been a kid. But I said, I want you to know, you're probably one of the only guys in the world. I was a fan as a kid. I love it. I have all the memories going with my dad to the ballpark and watching the 1980 and 83 Phillies do what they did. So I think we got to finish it with Mike Schmidt.

- There it is, there it is. Well, Michael, we appreciate you being here today, man. This has been amazing learning experience. Tokyo at 3,500 feet. - The Skytree. - Being a part of it, the Skytree. - Yeah, at the Skytree. - Being a part of activations. And I just wanna thank you personally for what you've done for this game. I mean, really, you've changed it and I'm starting to get back into collecting. I've been doing a whole bunch of signings

And, you know, I kind of want to own something special too. I saw this little piece on Top Social a couple of days ago. They asked you what the value of your most valuable card was. You had no idea. No idea. I heard it was about $5,000. And then I saw a big heartfelt thanks to the fan who owned that card. It's real. I just...

You don't know. You don't know, but because of the things and innovation you and your team have done, you're making these things possible. You bring that excitement back to kids that want to own something. Well, I'll leave with two thoughts. First, thank you very much. Look, I'm humbled to get to do what I do every day. We really do feel like we're just getting started. We have so many things we need to do to be better in all of our businesses. And we're going to keep working our asses off to do that in everything we do, in the sports betting business and

in the collectible and trading cards business, in the commerce and fan gear business. We're just going to keep working to make everything better in everything that we do. But I want to give you guys a big thank you for what you guys did for Philly. I appreciate it. You guys did so much for Philly. That's right. Thank you. You brought a lot of memories to the city that I grew up in, that I've been in for really all of my, not even adult life, all of my entire life. So thanks to you guys. And I know baseball is so lucky to have you guys around. And it's been fun for me to watch it and relax.

Ryan, for you and I, I feel like you and I have known each other for a long time. It's exciting. So I think exciting days ahead. I think baseball's got a lot of momentum right now. And, you know, I love growing together with you guys. No, appreciate it. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you.