The Sporting Class Live from Cannes Lions: Private Equity & Naming Rights; Is Charles Barkley retiring?
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So the thump that you just heard was David Sampson dropping his unsponsored Gatorade, sorry, unsponsored anonymous bottle of something onto the ground. David and John, can you explain where we are right now? Can you explain for the people only listening what's around us right now? What is around us is a multitude of sweltering human beings on the beach in the south of France.

Meeting and greeting and hugging and slapping and spitzing. And trying to justify their expense account. Which is what brings us here today.

So I have wanted people to understand that we are not just a show that I call Rich Guys Only Fans. We're a show that lives the lifestyle of Rich Guys Only Fans. We're in the south of France. We're at Cannes Lions. We're at Sport Beach specifically. We are suspended in a cube above a stage. And if you watch on YouTube or the DraftKings Network or just on YouTube, I don't know what we're doing with this episode because it came together quite suddenly. But beneath us...

I mean, there are athletes, there are marketing people. This is the largest advertising festival, John, on the planet. Yes, it is. And so, David? John is grumpy. I think we need to put that out there right now. Yeah. He's a 10. I'm about a 7.

Great. And we're on the south of France, guys. I hear you. There's a couple things missing right now. What's missing? Air conditioning is number one. Number two, a place to keep liquid is missing. There's a table in front of us. I have to call out that Coke is not in my ear. So there's two things that are necessary to do a proper sporting class. One, the bracelets, done. Schlep them all the way to France. Two, Coke in the air.

So now we're basically going, we're flying solo. No net. We have great people here from Sport Beach. Yes. I mean. We have a whole crew here to support us. I would just point out, we can watch the guys blow a shower. This guy appears to be soaping up and curing the result of his fitsing.

And I would have passed on an episode this week, but for there's more going on. If we were back in studio, in Metal Ark Studio, there just happens to be...

So much going on that people are taking a break to go to a conference here, but the world of sports business has no break. It's absurd what this beach has become. So for people who have not had the pleasure of being at the south of France with two of their friends, who are also their colleagues, sometimes their boss, other times their arch nemesis, you see that the whole beach has been overtaken by mostly tech companies, it seems like. Meta's here, Amazon, Netflix. And then there's also the sports stuff.

And so I want to actually use this opportunity, John and David, John, former president of ESPN, David Sampson, former president of the Marlins. What we're doing when it comes to the trajectory of sports as it fits into the age of tech.

because there is money in sports still and I would have assumed that, oh wait a minute, tech's here to eat everybody's lunch. And so what is happening, John, from a big picture perspective? Well, tech is here to eat everybody's lunch, but the best way to eat the traditional media company's lunch is to buy the sports rights from them because it continues to be the most predictable, the most valuable content in the universe.

So I had the great fortune to mostly be in the sports media before they emerged as the BMS they are. But sports is going to be more valuable than ever. I've never thought that the entry of tech companies would have any effect on sports other than to make them more valuable.

What interests me is that you were in the business of, and we've talked about this a bit, about long-term deals versus short-term deals when you're trying to get live rights. And what I thought would change is that leagues, conferences, et cetera, would be more interested in staying short-term because if you look at what we're looking at here, up and down this beach, Sport Beach has this amazing setup.

and it almost feels like the anchor of what everyone else is trying to do. - It's the biggest setup. - And so when you've got that sort of asset, I've always liked the idea of being a free agent as often as possible. It's betting on yourself, it's maximizing your earnings in many instances,

and leagues, and we're seeing this with conferences now, they're really so worried about cash flow that they're willing to go longer, and that accrues to the benefit of the networks, without a doubt. - Well, I always felt that we were advantaged by going as long as possible, and I was always slightly puzzled

that the rights holders would sell us their rights for a long time, which they did simply because of the gratification they got from the large increases.

And people always forget that those are increases that are average annual increases, not year-over-year increases. But oddly enough, the rights holders, I think, not certain that the tech companies were going to come in, began to want to go longer.

I do know that some of the rights holders are putting in options to get out, probably to hedge their bets. But I would think that your point of view is right. With the emergence of the tech companies, the continuing interest of the traditional media companies, I would go short. There's something else here I wanted to mention. Is it the sweat pooling down onto your microphone? It's disgusting. I'm sorry. Yes, it is very, very hot in here.

If only I had known. So what you have to do is just sort of relax. That's right. That's right. We get a little Caribbean music playing. Breathe in. Look, I just want to point this out. The Côte d'Azur, is that how you pronounce it, David? Côte d'Azur? Is right there. It is so blue and relaxing. The Côte d'Azur is here, too. That's a region. In your armpit. It's also in your armpit. I digress. It's okay. Don't touch me, please. It's so moist. It's so moist.

I'm going to see, Pablo, if you and I can avoid sweating. I feel great. The more you think about it. I feel great. Can we return to a quick point here, which is I want to bring you back to the moment when MLB.com was invented and was approved. It was the first owner's meeting I ever went to, my first day in baseball. And it was a group of old, rich, white guys.

trying to explain this internet company and they didn't know anything about it. We just knew that we had pro formas of what distributions we'd get and we voted for it. We were like, let's start this company. Bob Bowman tried to explain what it was, but the irony of why conferences and owners are not necessarily able to maximize their revenue until they've put their trust in younger people. Look at the people if you walk around this beach.

We're old. This is now, when it comes to tech and sports... Sorry to break it to you, John. I'm sorry, John. I'm aware. So it's just a different... It's become a different world where to maximize value, you have to actually embrace what all these companies here on...

Sport Beach in con line are able to do for you. And it's something that it's hard to comprehend. And interestingly enough, in retrospect, Bob Bowman was one of the early people to understand what the value would be, though he mistakenly believed that what it would do was allow the leagues to control their own rights and distribute them digitally as opposed to continuing to sell them. So I want to explain that.

Pardon? He wanted that, and now the leagues want that now. So I want to explain, though. Bob Bowman, for me, was always associated with MLB AM, right? Yes. MLB Advanced Media. Yes. And for people who are not familiar, what were they ahead of, MLB AM? One, they were ahead of the technology of distributing games over digital, over the Internet. Right. And they were ahead in sort of understanding that you could sell subscriptions to consumers online.

Again, they thought it would lead to a different outcome, but Bob really did understand what digital media meant for media rights. And we were hired. It actually broke off in a transaction that you're very well aware of, MLB.com versus MLBAM versus the digital side. We ended up running other people's technology, NHL and other entities. Disney's, right? Well, Disney became a partner, and it was another screw job by John.

We bought BAM because they had built superior technology. And I do think, and Dave, you tell me if I'm wrong, that the baseball owners understood that they were never going to forego the big checks that media companies, now media and technology companies, would pay them in order to build media themselves. We were cautioned to not do the deal. Which deal?

Any sort of transaction with Disney, when we split it up and then sold it off, and then, remember, we sold the last part off as well for another huge chunk of money. Yes. And it was advised, and it wasn't a big chunk. After all, you were already in the black for that, and we could have held out for way more. I think you agree. For the record, I'm not agreeing publicly. Okay.

He's merely tolerating David. I'm merely nodding at your assertions, but I believe we played fair market value at the time. And by the way, the CFO of the company was dramatically against the deal. Of Disney? Yes.

Do you think today, looking back, the CFO of Disney would be upset? I believe that Disney, looking back, thinks that it was a smart acquisition. Well, this is what my question is, which is, David, so I like to imagine that... You're making me more grumpy.

Part of what I love, we never know what we're going to do on this show. Part of what I love that we do, though, is we end up relitigating the ways in which your paths have crossed throughout time. And so I like to imagine John, of course, president of ESPN, and David, relatively younger person with only one vote of 30. But there in the room, meant to foresee, you were meant to sort of tell the future. You were the young person. And so when you look back at

how this all went down, David, what would you have counseled your younger self? You could whisper into young David Sampson's ear anything. What would you have said about what the old David Sampson has seen? I tried to say it. I said it at the time and I said it now. The owners wanted the money because they believed they would use it to acquire players in order to win a World Series.

And you knew that. And everybody who does business with rich white people knows it because they're old. It's what Scott Boris trades on. That's his currency is, hey, let's say you're one piece away and I've got your piece. Was there an actual vote? Of course. And did you vote against it? I Jeffrey wouldn't allow it.

I was worried for an octogenarian white owner who wanted another World Series. Don't talk about your stepfather. Former. Former. In that way, David. I'm telling you, it's the perfect storm. Owners versus tech companies. Owners versus people like John. Which brings us to where we are today. It certainly does. Right around here, there's not a lot of people who are in a position to say no to this. They don't come to this. Right. Right. Right.

What they come here for though is the opportunity to obviously make deals of a way that is staggering when you see all of the C-suite people who are here, but also to find what you can monetize in sports these days. And so when it comes to, John, naming rights, we come here with a docket of stories. One of the stories we bring back from the United States is the idea that the Big 12 is looking to monetize

It's naming rights. Brilliant. This is of a piece of what we were just talking about, which is they believe they're going to get capital. They're going to use that capital to win championships or excel on the field and get more donor contributions and make money. And they're not. They're going to take this money and they're going to use it to overpay coaches and...

and try to compete with the Big Ten and the SEC. I just continue to be puzzled by the proposition that private equity will come into college programs and that that money will be sensibly used

to build something of value. I believe that there will be grumpy legislators and grumpy college presidents who will be going, "What do you mean that we have to pay down this debt and we're still going five and seven every year?" There's no cough button. So excuse me. There's two issues here: the private equity issue and the naming rights issue.

Brett, your mark is who we're talking about to start with. We can use him as a conduit. The commissioner. The commissioner of the Big 12, which I've now been calling the Big 16 because there's 16 teams. So I can't stand the fact. But not all six of them are big. All 16 of them are big. So they're going to get rid of the big and maybe name it the All-State 12? Right. The Big All-State Conference is on the table. Wait, why would you rename the conference Big 12?

and not correct the number. Why would you continue to call it the Allstate 12? Since the only reason to call it the Big 12 is some perceived brand value from history, just rename it the Allstate 16. So when Yormark ran for commissioner, he was told that he was going to raise revenue because that's his thing. And the Yormark brothers are famous for this. They find a way to get blood from a stone.

And this is a brilliant thing that he's doing. I don't want to sully him in any way because if you can get a company to give you 30 to 50 million a year, that's money that is incremental that will be distributed to the schools. Whether they use it for coaches, whether they use it for NIL, for players, or for a nicer house, doesn't matter. His job is to distribute more money to the member schools. And my skepticism is not relative to his skill at distributing

Look at the rights deal he did for the Big 12. I mean, arguably not as competitive, not as good a conference as the Pac-12. And he got the deal that had the Pac-12 gotten that deal, they would not have disappeared. It would still be the Pac-12, not the Pac-2.

I don't think they're going to call it the Pac-2. They should just keep calling it the Pac-12. Washington State and Oregon State, although I think they went to a different conference. The Mountain West, I believe. So there's no more Pac-2? There may be a Pac-2 because there still is a contract.

for media rights to be paid that I'm not sure has been obviated yet. The real conference was the friends they made along the way, David. Have you learned nothing about sports and business? The second thing you mentioned was private equity. And we covered this once on a sporting class when we believe it was Florida State who was looking to bring in money. And we had a great conversation about it. Now your mark's doing the same.

At the conference level. At the conference level. It's not at the school level. So you're talking about a venture capital firm buying 15 to 20% of a conference for up to what they're saying is a billion dollars. So quick math.

Let's say you get 20% of the billion, easy math, you're valuing the big 16, the all state 12, whatever you want to say at $5 billion. The only assets of that conference, this is what I've been racking my brain about while sitting in traffic in Schvitzing. What are the assets that generate that valuation?

The grant of rights is the... Let's explain, John, what a grant of rights is for people who are not fluent in college football speak. The colleges all grant their rights to the conference to be sold in aggregate. So the 12 to 16 teams in that insurance company are put together and sold to an entity.

And the value of the grant of rights is the amount of money that some tech company or some traditional media company agrees to pay. But so it differs from Notre Dame. I'm trying to draw the distinction for people. Notre Dame is historically not in a conference and they are sell their media rights one off their football rights. Yes. A la carte. They'll go to ACC. They sell football.

a grant of all their rights except the football to the ACC. And then they separately sell their football games to NBC,

though five of those games are with ACC teams, so I'm not quite sure how that works. Can't remember how that works. - The theory is that the grant of rights in the Big 16, that they're more valuable as a group than they are individually. So people put their grant of rights in the pot, and then the conference goes out and gets a media rights deal. Then the conference has money that it distributes to the 16 schools. But if you've got a venture capital investment,

where they need to get maybe a preferred return on their invested capital, or they have some sort of, there's going to be an agreement that's been negotiated that will explain how they get their money back.

It turns out that I can't figure out what the benefit is other than there's going to be a distribution made from the billion dollars from the venture capital firm that's going to go to schools outside of the media rights deal that can be used for paying coaches more, NIL players, etc. A mirror of the baseball dynamic. Right. It is an interesting change from our discussion about Florida State. Because if you remember that discussion, David, you were asserting that

and it's certainly correct from a business point of view that it would force Florida State to make their athletic department a profit center. It becomes even more complicated when you're now talking about 16 teams, and you've got to figure out how to make Texas Tech and Kansas and Oklahoma State and San Diego State and Central Florida and Tulane as an aggregate profit

profitable enough for the conference to pay back the private equity firm that invests. Do the individual schools have to be profitable for the conference to be profitable? I had it as different classes of assets. The conference setup has never been

intended to create profit. There is an amount of the money that gets taken off of the grant of rights or sponsorships that go across the conference that funds the administrative office. But it's always been a fairly marginal amount of money. These conference offices aren't big companies. I mean, you go in the SEC, and I don't know how many people it is, but it's not a big company. Is it bigger than this booth?

It is bigger than this booth, but just about the same number of people. They do not have Eric Cantona, though, beneath us speaking poetry to applause. If you heard that in the background, that's also happening right now. But I ask the question about how to monetize all of this, because we're now getting to the idea of, is this a good business? Let's start with that just broadly.

I don't think this is a good business, but I do never underestimate...

the willingness, particularly of male executives, particularly male executives of a certain age at marketing companies and private venture funds, to want to be close to sports. And I do think that's a lot of what sponsorship dollars and naming rights dollars, and I think these investments will be, is, oh my gosh, I'll get to sit...

in the booth, you know, at the University of Texas and watch them play and I'll get to go in the locker room. And that's what these college conferences and college teams are looking at is compromising themselves in terms of what they're going to do, how they're going to comport themselves. And it does. And David said this last time, and I agree, it forces them to sort of make these real businesses, which is a natural

a natural outcome of making the players employees and they will resist that term, right? They don't want to call them employees, but I don't know what it is when you pay somebody to do something. It's either work for hire or you're an employee. Do you know of any other designation for people who get paid? Hourly. But that's either a freelancer. I mean, that's a hard thing. I don't see how you navigate that path.

Contractors work for hire. It's work for hire and employees. Let's face it. This is not going to be the last conference to try to raise money this way. Florida State won't be the last school. Everybody's looking for influx of capital. Everyone's trying to find a way. And because you're hired to do that. And so...

I believe that what we're seeing in many of the stories we cover is just starting, whether it is the naming rights, the private equity, whether it's things related to gambling. To me, all the things that we're seeing now, we're starting and it's not going to stop.

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One of the interesting things that you guys have established though is the idea that these deals are made by individuals for whom sports holds allure. These are the most exclusive events at highly exclusive locations. I just want to drill down on like when we talk about marketing and deal flow here, how much of that actually matters because

Tech promised the the rigor of data, but we're not talking about data We're talking about a human element in a sense and John this has been obviously how business has been done for decades Yes, and I do think the tech companies are a little less smitten by the idea of getting to Comport with athletes and see them however

I'll suggest there is a new golf league in which golfers are going to tee off and hit into a green screen. And someone called to ask me my opinion of whether this was a good investment. And I said, it's a great investment if you're prepared to pay money to spend time with Tiger Woods and Roy McIlroy.

A tough day for Rory for this weekend. Tough day, but he's still somebody. Profitable day. Yes. A profitable day.

But people have agreed to pay money in order to watch people hit into a green screen who are very famous. Right. Well, people are paying money left and right to watch people do things, just to feel close to them. That's how Twitch was born. That's what YouTube is. We know at Metal Ark Media, when we do watch parties, when we do an Oscars watch party or a Stanley Cup watch party, there's great audiences who are interested in watching us watch something.

Now, that is counterintuitive to my upbringing in the world of business where I thought I had to add value in order to extract value from somebody. But the values now changed. Well, with a watch party, you're not extracting value other than the value of somebody's time.

but you're actually getting you're building subscribers you're getting more time allocation which you can then go sell you're getting sponsors for that watch party it's an actual profitable event so something like this conline but let me pivot that right so what david is talking about i believe is the idea that there is audience pre-existing desire for these events

That is a cough from David Sampson. It's okay. We're just in a tiny glass booth. I'm not contagious. It's allergies. I don't believe you. What David is talking about is the idea that you go to where the audience will be. So the parallel to the sports marketing executive is they want to be there too, but so does an audience. The question returns us to naming rights.

So here is a thing, David, that you have sold before with the understanding that there would be visibility, there would be audience, but it's not a show, it's a name. So how do naming rights work? - It's really such crap. I mean, I'm sorry to say it. All the companies that do it, when you wake a budget, you have a marketing budget and marketing people need to spend their marketing budget or they lose it. But when you're out selling naming rights,

You are selling a promise that you are getting the following exposure and you give them all sorts of analytics and the marketing people are pretending they analyze it and they do their own spreadsheets. Chase does it when it came to the garden or the US Open. Pepsi does it all the time. They have whole departments in place.

City Bank has entire departments where they're evaluating these deals, and it's just absolute horse hockey. The Citi Field deal is a great example at the new Shea Stadium where the Mets play. Everyone said, my God, there was a meeting in baseball when they got $20 million a year. Everyone was ecstatic.

And blessed memory, Ted Lerner, former owner of the Nationals, quick story, said, David, look, we're going to get $20 million for Nationals Park. I said, Ted, who did the financing for Washington's stadium? I don't know. It was already built. We got it for free, all public money. I said, okay. Citi Field was built. There were huge amounts of fees that Citi Field collected.

They were hired by the Mets as part of the deal they named the facility. They get a suite. They get various things that have actual ascertainable value. And then you're left with a piece that they call naming rights because really who gives a rat's ass when someone says, oh, today's game is at Citi Field. Oh, I'm going to switch banking to Citi Field. I'm going to move in out of Chase and I'm going to Citi.

It's not measurable, it's all made up, but it feels good for marketing people to see their name. It makes them feel as though they are associated with something and that's why they spend the money and it's fantastic.

Though, when you did suggest there were fees, now that could be good business, right? Which is, gee, we're going to do banking, the Mets are going to do banking. Yeah, that's good business. Putting your name on a stadium, I'm hoping that all these companies get something other than just that. They do.

They do? They do get tickets. I know that. And they get to go to games and you can take your clients and make them feel good about it. They get a suite. They get giveaways. But I do think it's very hard to do the mathematics to make it feel like it actually works.

is good expenditure of marketing. Famously, and I can never remember who said it, but there was a famous ad person who said, I know that 50% of my money is wasted. I just don't know which 50%. I think in naming rights, I think it's closer to 75 to 90. I know 75 to 90 is wasted, but it still feels good.

It's one of the great vaudeville acts of this century is the way we've seen naming rights. And you see it up and down this beach. There's people, they have inflatables. Everything is sponsored. Everything is sponsored. But again, the logic, though, is simple on the level of name recognition is by definition the simplest form of what advertising is. Have you heard of us? Are we in places where you associate us positively with things you like?

That's the very basic premise. What's that worth? Well, I will say it kind of feels to me like it's worth more to a newer company. I do not understand how a ubiquitous brand like Allstate finds value in putting their name on something.

Well, now we're getting to something else, the Super Bowl commercials and the prices of those continue to go up. And it really goes back and forth with companies that are startups who want to spend their entire annual marketing budget on a 30 second Super Bowl ad. And then people look at it and they're like, oh, I don't know even what that company does. But I remember it made a top 10 list of good Super Bowl commercials. But this brings us to, again, what tech is.

And I often say that we have been promised things and you guys fight back under the premise that there was never a promise. You merely, you being the larger consumer, believed a sales pitch that was dishonest from the start. But the premise here of what a Super Bowl commercial gets you, right, is the promise of here is the last remaining monoculture, right? No one else, what else are we gathering underneath when it comes to tents in America?

And so truly, if marketing is going to matter anywhere, I would imagine that sports would be the place because everybody's still across the aisle, religious, political. It's amazing. Musical still gathers here. Well, it's and it's also for traditional 30, 60 second advertising.

Sports is the only place you can get a large concurrent audience at the same time. That is valuable. That's why ads at the Super Bowl cost so much money, right? Somewhere near 140 million people watch the last Super Bowl. There clearly is value. However, I will point out I once bought a Super Bowl ad. I can't actually remember. I think I bought two.

What did you advertise? ESPN the phone. Oh, perfect. And I must tell you, it was a disaster. And I am sure that I know that way more than 50% of that money was wasted. And I think that was in the day when they cost only...

million dollars for a 30. Which would be a bargain. I think one million for a 30. And I think we projected we'd get like 80,000 subscribers. We thought the phones would light up. And I think we got about 15 or 20,000 subscribers. I have to know, was this brought to you or did you bring this to somebody else? I have to say it was my idea. Despite everything I've said here today, I thought, by the way, I thought it would make me a mock

I thought I would be the man. God, do I love when Goyim speak Yiddish. It's so good. It's making me have a clamp, honestly. But it did not. It did not do any such thing. And we shortly closed ESPN The Phone. Yeah, whatever happened to that, by the way?

Do you have a prototype anywhere? No, I do not. In fact, I'm embarrassed that I brought it up. I should have forgotten about it altogether. Every now and then, you can run, no, you still run into a few people who remember ESPN. I vividly remember it because in a way, by the way,

the way, this is another recurring line. Very cool phone. Very cool phone. Quote John Skipper. But we got our ass kicked by the telephone companies who actually knew how to sell telephone plans. What we knew how to do was broadcast sports and...

talk about sports and report on sports and we should never have gotten into the phone business. There's a lesson there, David. There is a lesson. No, no, no. There's a great lesson which is we entered it and exited it very quickly because we understood that we were not going to succeed. And there was a rationale.

And then I'll stop. Number portability happened, which is when you could actually change your phone number. And we thought that meant that many people would be more willing to change their phone plan. But it coincided with the introduction of

free phone plans when Verizon would give you four free phones and we were selling a phone for $500. It's the interesting thing. CNN Plus is an example of a network that started a big startup cost. They had a change at the top and they immediately stopped it.

I think that was around for a day or two days. By the way, I think it costs twice as much as the phone. For sure, in terms of the expense. But the idea of how quickly do you pull the plug on something? As soon as you know it's not going to work. But there are very many people who are not willing to admit it.

And so they throw good money after bad. It's one of the greatest ways that companies go bankrupt and have to go into the world of financing to borrow expensive money is because they're willing to keep going because they're not wanting to admit they're wrong. Yeah. Look, there is, of course, a through line here today also of executives and their incentives. Personal incentives being confused with macro company-wide needs, really. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. I wish I could remember that name of that paramount committee that was there to protect. Severance Protection Committee. That's right. That's a good one. And a shout out without Coke in the air, he would have had it for you right now. That's a merger that I've been still, if you ask me, I don't know where we are on the show because I don't see a clock. But...

I think Frank Lampard walked around downstairs. That's what I was monitoring. Sorry. To see if we're done? No, no, no. Just knowing that. And if Matt Koch was here, we could find out if it's Eric Cantona or Eric. I think it's probably that one. And I also believe it's Frank Lampard. There you go. I'm playing the role of ugly American today. No, no. This just means I've been watching European football longer than you have.

In fact, I've been living longer than you have. Well, also, John and I, on the walk over here, David, we walked by the FIFA tent. Did you kick a ball? No, but I did notice to see if they spotted one John Skipper, former witness in the FIFA federal corruption trial, walking by. As we walked by, I saw large sums of money being handed from one person to another. That is a joke. But I'm pretty sure. Are you sure? Not sure, actually. I did not actually see it.

The tents are all, there are people enclosed in non-see-through tents. They did have those pins, though, that indicated that they are, they're powerful in the world. It should compliment Sport Beach at Stagwell in one way, to say that I got to here a couple days ago,

And this wasn't nearly ready. It was a mad dash at the end. There were a bunch of people doing a bunch of things. And now you can actually get food, fries, and working cameras and lights. They erected a stadium. Very quickly. As it were. Though, of course, I'm not loving that we are suspended. We are very visible, again, in a cube over a stage. Somehow I'm confident tonight that there will be people both staggering well and not staggering well. Yeah.

That is likely. One of the people who are staggering, it seems, towards the exit is Charles Barkley. Can we talk about Charles? Because we take that story from across the Atlantic also. Biggest story of the... It's a bigger story than any story here. I believe his resigning has the same level of credibility as his running for governor of Alabama. He did not resign.

I know. He did not resign. You're right. He said he was going to retire. He said that after his next deal, after the next year, which means a whole other year, his claim is, I won't work for another network, which is total horse hockey. And his claim is, you know, thank you very much, but I'm done. And he was nice enough to name his successor, which I'm sure would make a media executive super happy. We named several possibilities. And by the way, I actually feel slightly different. I bet he believes. Vince Carter.

I think he believes what he's saying. I think he believes he's going to quit, but I believe it might become irresistible to continue because it's very good pay for having a little fun and not a lot of hours. Well, Turner's statement certainly would indicate Turner. Very unusual. I'm not sure that I would have actually agreed to this if I were to be running Turner. They agreed immediately.

to release a statement after Barclay did this. And the statement was, "We love you and we are gonna work with him to," I don't have the exact statement, but it was something like, "Hey, it's not over till it's over. "And we're gonna work with them to figure something out." I don't know why you would let your company be put in that position where you're basically over a barrel for an NBA analyst

And for Barkley to do it the way he did it, I just thought was very unnecessary, immature, but great, great leverage for himself. Well, and as always with Charles, who is a very nice fellow, it's entertaining. It does also seem to indicate and I don't think he has any insider knowledge, but he seems clearly to believe that that WBD is not going to assert their matching right.

Which may or may not exist. No, I actually believe it does exist. I have reason to believe it does exist. And I've said before, I was very skeptical it existed. I now know from a very good source that it does exist. There is a matching right. For a third party who wasn't involved? That still seems peculiar to me. I would say. But I have heard that there is a matching right.

again, from a good source, but I do not believe they will exercise that, nor do I believe... John's reporting, David. He's changing his entire story. No, no, I did not change my story. I've come upon new information, and despite your goading me to admit that I knew or didn't know whether it was a matching right, I apparently did not remember that there was such a thing. Wait, so you had one too?

You're not saying that Turner got one and Disney did not. Again, someone who should know from either Turner or ESPN has told me that there is indeed a matching right. For both parties. Yes.

David, while you've been- Who knows? I never read those contracts. Why would I read those contracts? We had an outstanding lawyer and legal staff, and I felt no need to read a contract. Can we let people behind the scenes? Please. We should. It's very normal that John would not read the entire contract start to finish.

Owners don't read stadium deals. They don't read the TV deals. They didn't read the formation of MLBAM. But you're given a summary memo. Yes. And that is often what owners will read and what I'm sure you got for the deal. The summary memo would have contained a matching right. That's a germane provision. I might not have read the summary. Oh, no.

Look, I always believed in doing my job and letting other people do their jobs. And my job was not to construct a contract. It was to negotiate the basic terms of a deal. Do you know how hard people work on those summary memos so that you can have a working knowledge of what you're signing? I had a guy who read the summaries. David was that guy.

I was the guy who started my life writing the summary memos and ended my life reading the summary memos. Well, you actually have, I believe, a... A law degree. Which is called what? A jurist? Doctor. Yeah. Yeah, a JD. JD? Yes. I'm not a doctor doctor. There's a lot of noise below us. Yeah, Sue Bird is being announced. Sue Bird is being announced. Aren't you interviewing her? Uh...

Not today, but she is appearing beneath the cube we're suspended in. She's somewhere there, yeah. It's actually quite a system they have here. I believe this studio is booked every single minute of the day. We are the ones who are most recklessly abusing our editorial freedoms inside of it, to be very clear, as we do. But I love that David—this is why I love this show, is that John will say something. John is a reporter now.

In doses, which I love. I've watched him report along the beach while you've been schwitzing. But my favorite part about John's journalism is that he's reporting about himself. He's realizing things. And David is on the other side of the table throughout his career, aghast. Well, absent perfect memory.

You have to report on yourself. And also disclose when a major update comes to the story. This is a major update. We are transparent in terms of our venue and in terms of our ethos with the show. I'm interested in these microphones that you have a beach sport and you have a sport beach. That's right. The more we say sport beach, the better it is, I think. I think my cube is on backwards.

Well, I'm not really positive how it's supposed to be. David, as the person who cared about the word and the orientation when he sold naming rights, when he was making summary memos and is now and is now in a relationship with a man for whom that could not have been close to the level of concern for him is a delight. Honestly, Sean and I go back, go back a ways. Variety is what makes the world go around.

The idea of the... Is this for the network, too? I don't know. You don't know? No idea. Are we being kicked out soon? We got like five minutes. Oh, because there's some other things that... What do you want to talk about? ...we're already mentioning. What should we talk about, David? Are you willing to just talk a little bit about what's going on with that lawsuit?

Would that bother you? This is our prep live on the air. With that lawsuit. The NFL antitrust lawsuit. Oh, the Sunday ticket lawsuit. Because, in fact, it impacts you and decisions you made and bids you'd be willing to think about making. How much it mattered whether or not games can be free for everyone or not. I'm not sure I understand what that lawsuit is about well enough to comment smartly upon it.

Let's have David's summary memo time. I'm going to do a little summary and then ask your opinion. I won't read it. You only have to listen.

Think about the concept where you turn on your local networks and you get to watch your local team. And it's free, whether it's CBS or NBC or ABC or Fox. You're watching your team. But you want to watch another team. You don't have the right to just buy. If you're in New York and are a fan of the Chicago Bears, you can't just buy the Bears game on that Sunday. You have to buy something called the Sunday ticket.

Sunday ticket is very expensive, several hundred dollars, and it gives you the right to watch every out-of-market game, not just the Bears. That's the concept. There's a lawsuit, and it's been going on for years, and it's basically an antitrust suit where what people are saying is, you made me pay so much money, and all I wanted to do was watch the Bears.

Okay, well, I have two questions. One, doesn't the NFL have an antitrust exemption? So I love where your head's at. The NFL does have an antitrust exemption, but what's being litigated now is that the exemption ought not to be covering this specific instance.

But it is certainly possible to combine multiple things into a package and sell it. That's not against the law, right? Last time I checked, I can get french fries with my hamburger for a single price, or I might have to pay for them individually. I'm not quite sure what that violates. You can go to any place to get fries. There's nowhere else to go to get a Bears game. You can go to...

McDonald's, Burger King, Shake Shack, there's very many options for fries. We can argue quality later. But for a live event, there's no way. I think you'll agree that's not a good competition.

It's probably not a good comp. But I could go to a high school game or a college game or a flag football game. I mean, Chicago Bears is not the only football game I can see. I mean, now we're going to run out of time. Because if that's going to be your position, I don't even understand what the lawsuit is saying. And people are thinking the NFL is going to lose this, which would be an epic loss at this court level.

I mean, they can appeal it, etc. But think about what the NFL is arguing. The NFL, they found emails saying we want to get the games to as many people as possible. That's one set of emails. There's other emails saying, hey, let's make sure that we do not lower the price and we do not offer anything a la carte. You're in. You're in for everything.

So they actually have a smoking gun of a behavior which drives prices to, allegedly, not really allegedly anymore, it's out as evidence, which drives consumers to pay more, which is what the government's trying to protect against. And the NFL could get caught. They're getting caught right now acting in a way that's different than what they were saying, which is we want our product for everyone. In fact, they were full of it. They want people to pay.

Yeah, I'm skeptical that the NFL will lose this and I can't tell you why in a legal sense, but I'm confident they can appeal it to the Supreme Court.

And Samuel Alito will vote to uphold it. And his wife will fly some kind of flag upside down. Like our microphone flag, their American flag will be upside down. I think it's safe to say. She'll fly the NFL shield upside down. We are now officially, I believe, out of time. We can get to antitrust when we get home. Let's do that for the next one.

Let's just do that privately. We'll get in the car and we'll do it. I'm not sure anybody wants to hear it. We'll review some French fries here. Love you, John. Thanks for being here. What an effort John made to come. And by the way, I think the chaotic nature of this was perfectly suited to sort of the environment we're in, which is fun and interesting and hot and chaotic. David has dried up.

It's America. Look at this. I regulated. I told you. Just relax. Thank you both. Love doing this with you guys. Thank you.

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