We got the CEO of Fanatics. You know what I'm saying? Founder of Fanatics Fest, your favorite fest, you know what I'm saying? And he's best friends with Lil Baby. Do not tell James Harden that, you know what I'm saying? 'Cause you might cause some controversy, okay?
James would be sensitive about that.
You heard the voice, man. You know the man. It's the man, the myth, the legend himself, Michael Rubin is in the house. Yes, sir. Mr. Hampton, Mr. White Party, you know what I'm saying? How we feeling, baby?
Fanatics Fest is July 16th through the 19th at the Javits Center in New York City. Talk a little bit about the inception of it, like how it came about because it's become a huge thing that everybody looks forward to every year.
So, what's insane, this is only our third year doing it, and you got to give credit where credit is due.
I don't want to cut you off. It feels like it's been 10 years.
Yeah, I agree. And by the way, it's aged me like 20 years. It's actually the hardest thing we do at Fanatics, but it's such a great give back to fans. We're going to have 200,000 people come there this year. Tickets are really inexpensive, they're only 60 bucks. We do it as a fan giveaway. We actually like ourselves and our partners spent like 80 to 90 million dollars to put it on each year, but it's such great marketing for our partners for Fanatics. And how it came about, give you a real story about how you can just take inspiration from others.
I walked into Comic-Con one day. And I'd never been there before. I'm like, why do we not have this for sports fans? Like, I don't get it. I want this for sports. I said, find me the person that runs Comic-Con. Got him in and said, 'Hey, you got a great career opportunity. You're changing jobs. You're coming to Fanatics. We're going to do the same thing with sports.'
Sometimes every once in a while you just got to copy somebody else, and that's what we saw with Comic-Con. We said, 'We need this in sports.' And we did it. We started it in 2024. This will be the third year doing it. There will be 200,000 people coming. Four days. The thing that's so amazing is we have the best athletes, artists, celebrities, streamers all coming together to give back to fans. You talk about basketball, I just look at the list of basketball players. You've got all the Knicks coming in. Come on.
Couldn't be a better time. Yes, sir. So, I mean, you're looking pretty fire right now.
Hey, man. It's like the first day I didn't have a Knicks jersey on.
Come on. You got to be supporting the Knicks. We need you in Knicks jerseys every day.
You're going to have all the Knicks there. I just saw Jaylen Brunson, Josh Hart interviewing Aaron Judge one day. You've got James Harden, you got LeBron, you got KD, you got Wemby.
No egg. No. We're not doing an egg for Wemby.
That'll be a dope booth, by the way. Egg Wemby.
No, no, no. We're not allowing that. He's a great guy. He's such a class act. That may not be popular to say in New York.
Yeah. Listen, Knicks won. They got the right outcome. Wemby's a great guy. He'll be there. Cooper Flagg will be there. SGA will be there. Anthony Edwards will be there. Trae Young will be there. Jamal Murray... We have that in every sport. By the way, talk about music. Jay-Z's there. Tribe's there. Wayne's there. So many different artists. It's great to have everyone come together to give back to fans. It's so fun. We have four days of incredible content.
Right now I'm in World Cup mania. The World Cup is so fun. We're going to have the actual official press conference that always happens in the stadium where the final is. They moved it for the first time in the history of FIFA to Fanatics Fest. So if this were 2022 again, you'd have Kylian Mbappé and Messi at Fanatics Fest, which by the way could be a repeat with the coaches in front of tens of thousands of crazy fans. I can't wait for that.
I didn't know football... football by the way...
I said to our guys, 'How much security we're going to have for that?' They said, 'They're going to be like 100 people.' I said, 'Whatever you think, do it like 5x.' Those fans are...
It's insane. Every single Fanatics Fest, it's like a sports Coachella, right? Like it's just everything for everybody. I've been on a lot of those stages where you're hosting a lot of the big live podcast and live events. And even last year, was it Jake Paul Mike Tyson when you had the press conference over there?
First one. Which is pretty insane.
Which was absolutely nuts. Is it bad if I was rooting for them to get in a fight, right? You see Mike Tyson walking around amongst the athletes of our generation and he still has that aura. Like, 'Yo, that's still...' Like watching the top athletes still get starstruck from other athletes. It's the wild thing to see, you know? So, man, Fanatics Fest is going to be awesome. You bring back the Fanatics Games also, big here.
Yeah. We did that last year for the first time. People thought we were nuts. Someone said we should do a Fanatics Olympics. So we ended up getting 50 of the best athletes, artists, celebrities versus 50 average Joe fans. It was seven different sports you compete against. Last year it was throwing a football, getting hockey pucks into a washer and a dryer, WWE walkout, how hard can you punch UFC style. It's eight sports.
What was crazy last year... I went with Eli Manning and Tom Brady who were paired together. You go two at a time, you keep competing on your own, but it's two at a time. And Eli looked like Ohtani pitching. And Brady looked honestly not good.
So I went home. At the end of the night I'm like, 'Ah, Brady got smoked.' Brady hits me and he says, 'Yo, you see us in first place?' I'm like, 'Huh? How are you in first place?' He said, 'As soon as I left, he smoked everything.' He actually got first prize. Justin... the UFC fighter who just won the championship, got second. So Tom won a million bucks and ended up donating the money to everybody. Justin won a Ferrari, drove it out of there, $500,000 Ferrari. And then a gym teacher got third place. Beat out James Harden who was a hair behind in fourth place. He was salty, by the way.
What did the gym teacher leave with?
He got a quarter million dollar trading card which he sold on the spot and got a quarter million bucks.
Yeah. So there's like two million in prizes. It's crazy.
And by the way, this year people are like... Someone's got to give me the list of who's in it this year. I have a list of who's in the games. It is the craziest list of people. And it's going to be so fun to watch this. You're going to be able to watch it live on YouTube as we stream the whole time.
Serena Williams, Kevin Hart, Novak Djokovic, John Cena, Gronk, Cody Rhodes... What's his name, bro? Et cetera. Great job of having the list, bro. Yo, we got more with Mike Rubin after the break y'all. We got to pay some bills. You dig? Let's go.
You're still live on YouTube?
So that was my question. You said a gym teacher left with how much money?
So everybody could like sign up for this, right?
So thousands of people submit an application. There's 50 spots for average Joe fans. I think there were like three or four thousand people, then we picked and we kind of cast it. We find different interesting stories. Look, we're rooting for the average fans. Even though Brady's my brother, I'm rooting against him in this. I want him to get smoked. You already got Super Bowls. You're good. He talked serious about it. He's like, 'I'm the reigning Fanatics game champ. I'm getting this again.' And Novak's coming for him.
They're looking forward to it.
