Madkour and Ourand break down day one of the CAA World Congress
Madkour and Ourand break down day one of the CAA World Congress
Good morning. This is a special morning buzz cast coming to you from New York City in the CAA World Congress of Sports. This is your buzz cast for Wednesday, October 12th. I made Mad Core. Thanks for listening to the Buzz Cast. I'm joined today in a special addition with John Duran. John, good to have you on the buzz cast with me this morning. You and I spent all day Tuesday at the CAA World Congress of Sports. Great day. I think we'd all agree. Started early eight 30, went right to five 30. Overall vibe of the day.
Overall, five people are happy with sports and people in sports are all looking forward. They're trying to figure out ways to go forward. You set the tone, Abe, cuz you moderated that first session that opened up everything. What, what, what was the tone that it set?
Yeah, I think I would agree with you. Everybody's very bullish on the state of the sports industry and the sports business, despite even some economic headwinds that we all agree are there with the recession. That came up a little bit today, but everyone feels good. First question for Ron Soriano. Biggest story of the sports business year. He said it's not yet happened. It's going to be the World Cup in November and it's gonna be huge. You heard that in your conversation with Eric Shanks, but, and the opening session, there was a lot of energy about the new ways of consuming content. Marie Donahue very, very bullish on Thursday night football on Amazon. Their audience numbers are good, their audience numbers are younger. Okay. Mark Tatum, just coming back from Tokyo where they had games. Also, Abu Dhabi feels very bullish about the international growth of basketball and talked a lot about the growth of NBA Africa. So that was a really, I thought, very, very powerful opening in terms of the optimism. You had a conversation with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, you interviewed him last year. I noticed an entirely different Manfred this year.
Yeah, last year. It wasn't that he was negative last year, Abe, but this year he was very positive. We are just coming off a wild card playoff series and he was very happy with how that series went. This is the first time they had, of course, a three game series in the, as part of the wild card, uh, playoffs. He was so happy with how it went that he said that there, there's a good possibility that they're gonna do it on a weekend next year when everybody believed that next year they were gonna get midweek so they didn't have to compete against the nfl. But the, the numbers that they saw, they were very happy with how that went forward.
And he was also very bullous on the state of the September month and he feels very bullish about October, attendance, merchandise interest. And he's very bullish about the changes to the game that you really pushed him on in terms of specifically the pitch clock with he thinks is gonna change the mindset, not just the pitchers, but hitters and make for a far more efficient experience,
Especially the batters. They have to stay in the batter's box. No more big poppy getting out of the box, Abe, sorry. Right. You gotta you gotta stay in
There. And of course you also, uh, peppered him with questions about the potential of the Baltimore Orioles, uh, and really the optimism around some of the young players in the game. Well,
He has a lot of stars in, in, in the game. I, I brought up a Rushman who's of course a catcher for the Orioles, rookie catcher, but there's also Aaron Judge who just said the American League home run record show OT and, and Los Angeles and Mike Trout. There's something that's going on in baseball right now where there's always been a complaint that they didn't do enough to promote their stars. It feels like the stars are getting promoted right now. And when I asked, uh, Rob Manford about that, he specifically pointed to the, all the efforts that are happening in social media and trying to get younger and get younger fans invested in these blis.
He definitely had a pep in his step. He was going to Yankee Stadium for game one, then he was going out to Los Angeles and then to Houston. He just did four games over the Wild Card weekend. But even among his executives here, John, I think you'd admit there was a real energy among baseball leaders among
All, all the baseball leaders. Absolutely. And it has little to do with TV ratings and, and although the the ratings are good, it's just that the, they have the labor deal done, they have long term media deals in place and they're moving forward. You had, uh, Michael Rubin of fanatics on stage, always one of my favorite interviews. You wanna talk about energy? Here's somebody that brings a ton of energy. What did you take from
That? My quick takeaways from Michael Rubin were that yes, there's still a work in progress in terms of doing all his vast ambitions at fanatics in terms of sports betting. He really, really kind of disassociated, not maybe distanced himself from ticketing. It didn't sound like they were gonna be in the ticketing business firsthand that they may partner with somebody he called ticketing a brutal business. Also media. He's not sure that that will be any time soon, but Michael Rubin still feels that they're on schedule, they're on pace to grow this behemoth, this giant and sports business. But the other takeaway was just like, he was just very bullish on the state of the sports business. And despite all these economic challenges, we're all seeing, he thinks we're in a great spot. And your interview at the end of the day with Eric Shanks, I thought, uh, hinted at that too. Eric Shanks feels very bullish about World Cup World Series. They have of course, the NFL and they also have the Super Bowl, and he still feels good about the fl his baby
Bowl. Yeah. So people better bake their plans now to be around the TV or be engaged with some form of Fox sports on Thanksgiving day. Have
You had the Eli Wiki brothers on on stage to,
To me, the most powerful session for me. You know, I've been in this business a long time and one of my goals was always to do an interview in person on stage with the brothers. And it's taken us a long time to do it. But, you know, people came up to me afterwards, just really moved by the way that the brothers play off each other. Tim's about three years older than Todd. There was definitely brotherly deferential treatment. There was respect. They almost sang each other's praises more than they, of course, they touted their own accomplishments. But I
Really thought, so let me interrupt for a second. Give us specific, how did you see that come out?
Well, just where Todd talks about Tim's unbelievable ability to sell, an unbelievable ability to build a culture, an unbelievable ability to be a builder and like never stopping to dream like climate pledge he brought up. But if you look at Tim Li Wiki's track record with AEG and Mlsc, but what really struck me, and I think what really struck the audience was their story of growing up, growing up in St. Louis. They lost their mother when they were eight or nine years old of cancer. Then they lost their stepmother of cancer, uh, by the age of 18. And Todd made a very moving, you know, unfortunate announcement with their oldest brother is just diagnosed with cancer at the age of 73. And there was some, you could feel the emotion on stage between the two of them, that their oldest brother has the same disease that took two people previously who they loved in their life.
So I just felt that that was a pretty moving way because neither of them went to college. They had this, they, they had these challenges growing up and they just went to work and they started working together at a major indoor soccer league team, the Kansas City comments, and they just kept going. So I just thought the stories of the Brothers Li Wiki is a great story of perseverance and just incredible, incredible skill acumen and tenacity. And so I think the audience appreciated as well. Overall, a really good day. We got some things today that you're kicking off the main session and we're taking it from there.
Absolutely. The main session is, is gonna have, we have, uh, Zach Leonis from Monumental Bohan of buzzer. Uh, Jessica Gelman is gonna be on there too. And we're the whole theme, we're looking ahead, how, how, how are fans going to change how they consume sports. It's gonna be a, i I can't wait for it.
It should be a great day. And we'll give you a full recap on tomorrow's buzz cast. But thank you for joining us for John Iran. I made Mad Core. This is your morning buzz cast for Wednesday October 12th. Until we speak to you again, stay healthy, be good to each other. We'll talk to you on Thursday.