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Hey, we got a very special guest joining us, good friend of the show, co-founder of Reddit, founder of Athlos. Here he is, Alexis Ohanian. Lex, what's going on, bro?
I'm good, man. Chad, pleasure. Absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me, guys.
Thanks for coming on. We know you're one of the biggest advocates of women's issues. What went into the thought process of creating this women's only track meet, certain events, and say, you know what, I want to do something special to highlight these great women athletes?
You know what? Look, I'm obviously married to the GOAT. We can get that out of the way.
Serena Williams. You think about it though, right? It's funny. I grew up in a household, NFL was the only thing that mattered. Football was the sport I played and I loved. I didn't think about any other sport. Didn't watch tennis. I didn't know anything about it. Now, I got smart. I'm a big fan, obviously. But at no point did I ever think that women's tennis was less than men's. And if you talk to any sports fan today, they'd sound crazy if they said that women's tennis was less than men's in America. Frankly, women's tennis is as popular, if not more popular than men's tennis. Look at how much money these ladies get paid.
And obviously Serena and Venus, they were the ones who brought that to the world. But tennis is the perfect example where with investment and Billie Jean King made sure those ladies got paid, that made it possible for two little girls in Compton to say, 'I'm going to change my life by playing this sport because I know I can be excellent and get compensated for it.' And then with the generational talent, you blew up the sport, made it bigger than ever, and look where we are today. And so it happened in tennis. And I just realized here is another sport. Track and field. I know y'all are fans of it. It's the biggest, most played, most active, most engaged sports. We have a legacy of greatness, especially in the American women, historical and present.
Melissa Jefferson, we had Anna Hall.
Tremendous talents, all of them.
And you know, every four years, these ladies are superstars. We tune in during the Olympics. We cheer for them. It's one of the most watched sports and then they disappear. And I'm just a businessman. All I want to do is see greatness continue to get celebrated because if there are eyeballs, there are dollars. And do it every four years. And it's not about charity. It's about supporting these amazing athletes. And I saw you all during Paris offering bounties, which is really gold medals. God bless.
Yeah. $37,000 for winning a gold medal. Come on, man.
Love that. Love that. And so, you know, this is, I think, post-Reddit, I've been really blessed to do some things in women's sports, starting Angel City, this women's soccer team 5 years ago, and now I think Athlos is going to be a huge part of my legacy, and I'm just grateful to be able to hear talk about it.
Yeah. This year, you added the long jump. It's in Times Square. Will you be looking to add more events in the coming years? Obviously it's only a handful of events, and I get that, but that's a start. But in the long term, your goal is to have how many events you think?
Oh, you know, look, every time we've added an event, it's been with an anchor star because again, for me, social media tells the story. Obviously, as a Reddit guy, I look at follower counts. And I was totally naive when I got into the sport. So, obviously, I knew the sprinters. I had a bias for the sprinters because that's a quick story. You don't have to ask a fan to pay attention. They don't have to watch for very long and they're getting an amazing show. And the longest race we've got right now is the mile, which still keeps a pretty short attention span. Obviously if Kipyegon was going for the world record, you got the GOAT running, so you're good. Special. And Tara Davis-Woodhall, who I'm repping here, I invited her. She's got millions of followers on social media. She's a long jumper, gold medalist for the United States and the world champion. And I said, 'Why don't you come to Athlos?' And she said, 'I won't come unless I'm competing.' I said, 'Okay, challenge accepted.' So, we put her on actually tonight in Times Square. So, I'm still coming off the high. I can't be too loud here because my babies are asleep in the hotel suite, but we had an amazing night in Times Square. Look at the clips. We had the best long jumpers in the world. We shut down Times Square and these ladies were running. The top three are going to now compete tomorrow. There's the photos. The top three are going to compete tomorrow at Icahn, to which you all are both invited. Please come trackside, sweet suite. I'm waiting for you. We got Sara performing. DJ Trauma spinning in between the races. We're going to have the fastest ladies in the world. It's going to be a lot of fun.
You got Faith Kipyegon in the 1500 meters. You got Keely Hodgkinson, the 800 meter Olympic gold medalist. You got Masai Russell, the 100 meter hurdles Olympic gold medalist. You got Marileidy Paulino, the gold medalist in the 400 meters. And you got Alexis Holmes, who's a 4x400 world champion and mixed relay world champion. Much of the complaint from the track community, Alexis, has been the lack of visibility because like you said, the big events only happen once every four years. So it's like they go dormant. It's like we hibernate. So we get excited 2020, 2024. Yay. And then I got to wait all the way to 2028 to do it again. And we want to get behind you. We like baseball and football and basketball players because guess what? We see them every year. I've been able to root for LeBron for 23 years. I got to root for Kobe for 20 years. But I got to wait once every four years to see my favorite athlete compete.
No, it's ridiculous. And you look at the numbers. Again, don't ever get this twisted. None of this is about charity. You look at the numbers. Track and field is one of the most viewed sports during the summer Olympics. Millions and millions of people. And so, we were quite happy last year. We had three million people on broadcast tune in. We're expecting more this year. And then our plan for next year, we've announced so it'll be a team-based track and field league. So, instead of just one meet, we're going to have multiple meets in major cities. Think of it like the Formula 1 of track and field. Companies like Mercedes and Ferrari, they have F1 cars. They spend tons of money basically for marketing, right? So you could think of some great apparel brands I wouldn't, you know, could point to a few might think of that want to be associated with speed and excellence. So imagine those as teams. And then imagine now you have a way to see the very best do it in this team format similar to like NCAA. And so you can imagine, if we just say there's a hypothetical Nike team, you've got Tara Davis-Woodhall, you've got so many of these champs that now get to share a team not just around the Olympics around a nation but around a brand. And it starts to change the economics. Because if I'm one of these shoe companies, one of these apparel companies, just like Mercedes wants to be associated with speed and excellence and hold that trophy, the Constructor's Cup, at the end of Formula 1, you're also going to be able to test new technology on the track with the fastest athletes. And you're also going to start telling a story which is, look, if we're spending this kind of money on a team, Lewis Hamilton knows what he's worth because he knows what it means to Ferrari to have the best do it. I think this starts to have a very positive impact in the way that we value these athletes. And as soon as they're valued that way, they're going to get marketed more. Their stories are going to get told. And I want to buy her jersey. I want to buy a Tara Davis-Woodhall t-shirt with her name and her number and her team on it, right? I can buy an Ohtani jersey. I can buy a Shannon Sharpe jersey. I can't buy a jersey for any track and field athlete because it doesn't exist. Not yet.
So, let me make sure I'm hearing you correctly. So, you'll have teams and these teams will be made up of men or women from all across the world. So you might have Keely Hodgkinson being a teammate of Melissa Jefferson who might be a teammate of Faith Kipyegon. So it would be something like the Unrivaled League? You see how Unrivaled, they got teammates on one team like in the WNBA but they're on different teams when they play in Unrivaled. So you're talking about something like that, those kind of teams?
For sure. And we love the Unrivaled folks, Phee and everyone, they've done a great job. The difference would be our teams would be more than likely built around a brand.
Oh, okay. So, Adidas, Nike, New Balance, Puma...
Announcing anything, but imagine that scenario. Exactly. And so, now if I'm sitting here, obviously Nike's got a great roster, but you can't sleep on New Balance with Syd and Gabby. There's lots of talent. And so now imagine if you were any of these other brands, you want to win because just like if you're Ferrari, you want to make sure you're holding up that trophy at the end of the season. And so it'll mean, let's say we added a couple other sports, maybe even throwing, a thrower. You start now seeing a broader team composition and these brands are incentivized now to build out that roster and to support those athletes in marketing as well as in physios and sport science and all this other stuff. And I think really level up the way we think about what these brands can do. And now you better believe, just like if I watch Mercedes win a Formula 1 race, it incentivizes me to want to buy a Mercedes sedan. So imagine if I'm a sneaker company, how much it would mean to me to have the top team and what that means to move sneakers to everybody else. Whether you're running your 100th marathon or you're doing your first 5K, you want to feel like the best to do it. And so why wait four years? I think you're absolutely right. We shouldn't. There's still great athletes even outside the Olympics.
Let me ask you something off topic.
You and Serena competitive?
Extremely. Thankfully though, not in tennis. I've never picked up a racket. And you know, thankfully both of our daughters inherited most of my wife's athletic genes. Although, big fella, I'd like to say I contributed some height to the girls.
Yeah. They going to be tall like the pops, huh?
