Alexis Ohanian gets real about his TikTok bid, women’s sports and social media's future | NYNext

Yeah. Represent Fort Greene.

Look, yeah, okay, it's true. But I still spent a lot of time here. I love this city.

Yes.

During the Olympics last year, I kept getting so excited by these stories of track and field. And there's a legacy of excellence, especially among the American women in track and field. And these athletes are so captivating, so exciting. It's one of the most watched sports of the Olympics, and then they disappear for four years. And I was tired of that because I want to see this kind of excellence on display regularly. And so, we started Athlos last September here in New York at Icon. Three million people tuned in all across the world and we had a packed crowd of folks on a Friday night in New York under the lights, DJs spinning in between each meet and record cash prize money, Tiffany crowns for the winners and it's a spectacle. And so we're running it back again this year. We added a field event, the long jump, which is literally going to be in Times Square on Thursday night, open to the public. We'll have the best long jumpers in the world competing. And then the top three will then be showing up on Friday for the main event to get their crown. And this is all a prelude to launching a Formula 1 style team-based track and field version next year where we'll have multiple meets. I can't tell you how many. There'll always be one in New York, of course, but we're going to add a couple of major cities, major global cities, to the run. And I just can't wait for folks to see it.

That's exactly the reason. And yet, you watch the US Olympic qualifiers. Our Americans are so great. You could argue that the qualifiers that is just to be able to make it onto the US Olympic team for track and field is so competitive that it's almost more competitive than the actual Olympics. And so there's a ton of talent here in the US, but it's not really elevated outside of those Olympic games. And we want to put them on the biggest stages we can in prime time. We want to make it a spectacle. And I saw the same thing in 2019 when I talked about the rise of women's sports and how I was going to either buy or start a women's soccer team and it would one day be worth billions of dollars simply because every four years, every one of us is at least aware of the women's world cup. And even if we're not fans of women's soccer, we know the American women are awesome. And I can market awesomeness all day long. And so that obviously led me to start Angel City. And so fast forward, you know, four years, the Olympics were coming up and I'm just pattern matching like what is the next version of this thing? Like I said, track and field gets more views than almost any other sport during the Olympics. And then the falloff is so great. Our answer was, 'Look, these women don't disappear. These women are still being awesome.' And as much as I love sporting events like Formula 1, like I mean, the Kentucky Derby is going to do $150 million in profit. And look, that's a great event. It's a huge cultural moment. It's, you know, people from all the world go to Kentucky for this thing. But the average person doesn't know a single horse or jockey. And as much as I love car racing, as much as I love horse racing, if you were to explain to an alien, hey, you know, this idea of human going as fast as possible from point A to point B, which do you think is the most popular thing for our species? I assume you'd think, well, humans just doing it with their own two legs would be the most impressive. As impressive as the horses, impressive as the human-made car is, humans doing it should be the biggest one, right? And yes, it is the oldest sport. 776 coincidentally is named because that was the year of the first ancient Olympic games. 776 BC.

So 776 years before Christ, you had a bunch of people lining up. The first event was a foot race. It was like a 200 meter foot race. And so this is the OG of sport. And so while it has a tremendous legacy, it is the most accessible sport, even more accessible than soccer, right? You just need to be able to run. And it has this huge stage every four years that people love and then disappears. So, you know, I really feel like we can take our place among Formula 1, among the very best, you know, triple crown horse racing, among any other version of humans going as fast as they can because these athletes are absolutely worth it, if not potentially bigger.

You line up and these athletes are so great. The difference that separates them is, I mean, it's fractions upon fractions of a second, tenths, hundredths of a second in some cases and it's remarkable. So fun.

I was going for US Open night match energy. And so we were talking before we were rolling. You know, I grew up in a football household. American football, NFL was the only thing that mattered. That was the sport I played. That was the sport I watched. My dad would change the channel when tennis was on. Obviously, I've come around, but some of my favorite tennis matches once I got into the sport were here in New York at the US Open. Especially that night match energy. You know, Serena's always playing in those big moments. And you know, the crowd's got a few honeydeuces in them. There's just a different energy. It is an exhilarating thing in a sport that's traditionally very stuffy, right? Very conservative and stuffy and you know, New Yorkers are a special kind of sports fan. If you've ever been to a Knicks game, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The Liberty come through, those fans come through hardcore. Like there's something special about sport in this city when you can capture the energy of this town. And what we saw last year at Athlos, what we're expecting this year is just a different kind of energy that's almost as much a festival as it is a professional sporting event. So, what I tell folks is look, if I take you to an Angel City match, let's say Gotham since you're in New York, we're going to spend our time kind of watching the soccer match on the pitch, but also kind of talking and you don't really know when to pay attention because you never know when there's going to be a goal. And so, you're kind of the return on investment on your attention is sort of split between, hey, I'm trying to talk to my colleague or my friend or I'm trying to watch the game. What's so powerful, the dynamic at Athlos, you're showing up, there's already a DJ spinning. We got DJ Trauma this year spinning. You're having a good time. You're getting a drink. You're settling in and then all of a sudden the lights are going to go out and all of a sudden there's pyro, there's smoke because it's our first race and it's the walk out songs for our first six. And these six are the fastest ladies in the world pulling up to this track for the 100 hurdles, for the 100 meters, for the 200, the 400. And now you're kind of gassed up. Maybe you've placed some bets on DraftKings ahead of time. And you're having a great time.

You're having a great time. And now you know, especially from these shorter races, but even the mile, it doesn't take very long. So, your return on investment for your attention is phenomenal. You are locked in. You don't want to blink because you might miss these ladies. One of them wins, they get their Tiffany crown. This year, Cash App is making sure we paid them within three business days last year. Eligible athletes are going to get paid literally when the results come in. It'll hit their bank account. And this is the largest cash prize. We changed the game. It's sad as it was. Offering $60,000 for the top prize last year doubled the previous record. And so this is a sport that has tremendous upside where I think we can and these are the best in the world doing it. We can continue to improve their experience which obviously gets fans even more excited.

And my hunch is you come to this, you're going to come all right. You're going to have a great time watching this athleticism. You're going to see the winner of that race get her crown and then the beat's going to drop again and you're vibing and there's a world acclaimed DJ spinning and you're just having a good time with your partner, whoever you're with. And so at the end of two and a half hours, you get a Ciara performance. Not bad. And you're feeling like you've been to again as much a festival as you have a sporting event. And every moment we had your attention, you were getting a payoff because you're either watching a sport to try to figure out like, hey, who's going to win? And you know, did I win my bet? Who was I right? Or you're vibing and having a good time. And there's something very subtle about that that makes it so different from any other sporting event you could go to. And I think that's what's created some of this energy. And it's nothing we invented. It's just the nature of this sport that lets.

You nailed it. It is so important coming out of building Reddit and look that has obviously Reddit's public now. It has allowed me to do things like build a Formula 1 for track and field. But I still have this mindset of how do you win in the feed because every one of us, you know, our phones, our devices are getting so good at capturing us and everyone's felt that like, you know, where did that hour go, right? So in sport, our job is to capture attention. And what's so powerful about track and field is you can tell an entire story within a very short period of time. And whether that's 45 seconds about why you should cheer for this athlete because of all the things she overcame and all the stuff she stands for or maybe why you'd want to cheer against them. Like we want to tell these storylines that get people excited about these athletes. And then especially powerful is that you know the sport itself doesn't take very long and most of the highlights are the actual entire event so to speak and because it's so high protein it stops you in your feed and you're like oh hey what is this thing I want to know. And then for the folks who are there to create this atmosphere that again is an amazing fan experience. And you know there's this cliche about New York and making it here you can make it anywhere. You know we went head-to-head last year with the NFL. I think there was a Yankees game on at the same time and we still did phenomenally well. I'm excited for this year.

It forces us. I mean, that one's going to be, if you can make it out to Times Square Thursday night, like just get ready because nothing like this has been done before in the middle of the universe that is Times Square. And I mean, we're going to certainly stop traffic and suffering. Yeah. New York, as New Yorkers, we don't really delight in the idea of traveling through there or in there, but actually, you know, calling on fellow New Yorkers, please show up. I think you will have a good time. But part of the reason we chose a place that is such a tourist spectacle is because we want this stage. These, I mean, Tara Davis-Woodhall is a dynamo, these are literally the best people to do what they do. And just for reference the long jump they will jump the distance of a three-point line. So when you're just like processing just how far these humans are going. If you've ever shot a three-pointer imagine hurling your entire body that distance. And so we're putting it on display in the center of the media universe and we want it to be a spectacle because I want tourists from all over the world to stop and gawk and be like, 'What is this Athlos thing?' And talk about it and post about it on social and all those things.

Yeah. Human excellence. We should continue to be celebrating it.

It is all about the return. Yes, I have obviously proud girl dad, got two daughters, but and yes, it feels good to be right about things that are values that I have. Obviously, if my daughters choose to play whatever sport, you'll notice tennis is the one that actually has the parity, right? You look at the list of the most wealthy female athletes. Everyone knows they're girls tennis players. They're superstars. Yes, they are already superstars. They're making great money. Shout out to Billie Jean King for creating that pay equity. And then that's what galvanized two little girls from Compton to decide to play the sport and change the world forever. So it starts with that. But you'll also notice no one ever thinks of women's tennis as like a charity. No one ever thinks of women's tennis as like, shucks like they're not as good as the men. No. Why? Because the United States of America when the free market speaks people have to listen. And so if you came out and said no one cares about women's tennis, you would look stupid. You would look so breathtakingly stupid. Why? Because the dollars don't lie. And so the viewers don't lie. Look at ESPN even to this day will report that more Americans watch the US Open women's final than the men. And even if there's no Williams sister, even if there's no American woman, more Americans watch it. So the mic's dropped. Everyone knows women's tennis is as big a deal, as important, as relevant, as valuable as men's, but why not these other sports? And a lot of it was, you know, there wasn't a Billie Jean King or there wasn't all of these forces at play. And so yeah, you know, back in 2019 I'm rage tweeting about how undervalued women's soccer is. I'm saying I'm going to start a team now. Now Angel City, which will one day be worth at least a billion dollars. I'm always framing all the things I'm doing or now in Athlos with the capitalist vision of I believe in these athletes. I believe in the business of these athletes and we're going to work with them. You'll notice our biggest stars in Athlos are shareholders in what we're doing. They're stakeholders just like everyone else who's working on it. And that alignment is what can create outsized returns in tech. I'm so grateful that I had, you know, admins at Reddit who became millionaires at the IPO. Right? Equity is a powerful thing. And what's so powerful is that when you talk to these athletes, they all want to be treated this way. They don't want to be thought of as a charity case. They want to be thought of as a business because that's why they're in this, they're playing the real zero sum game because if you're not good enough as a female athlete outside of tennis, you are out of work. And if you are good enough, up until very recently, you probably still had to have another job because the market wasn't there. Soccer players. Five years ago, professional soccer players had to have second jobs in addition to being full-time athletes. There were plenty of women basketball players playing overseas to pay the bills despite of playing in the United States. And so once the free market shows up and folks can correct this with some investment, with some real vigor about saying, 'No, no, this is for profit,' boy, does it change quick. And the follower counts don't lie. For me as a social media guy, I didn't care what the TV ratings of these sports were because those were all lagging indicators of where people thought the value was. I was looking on the free market of the internet where Instagram, like it or not, is the biggest market for attention. And if you have five million followers on Instagram, you have value. And if you start looking at the college stars, even five years ago, I was tweeting about this in basketball especially, you could already see that they crushed the men in college basketball. And so all it took was that catalyst. And obviously Caitlin, but also Paige and Angel and all these stars that people again follow, they talk about, they care about. If you were just based on the lagging indicators, you would say, 'Oh, no one cares about the sport.' But if you're looking at the leading indicators like social media following, you'd realize real quick, as I did, that there's a ton of interest. So, it's going to continue to grow. And not every sport, not every women's sport will reach parity with the male equivalents, right? There's only so much attention in the world. But I do think you will see plenty here in the United States that get to parity, and I think some will exceed. I think soccer in the United States could very likely become, you know, as successful as the MLS has been, and no shade against the MLS, I don't see any reason why the NWSL can't be even more popular because of that legacy of American excellence among women. Because of the fact that for many Americans, soccer is already a women dominated sport. And in our case with Athlos, like we obviously started with women. At some point, we will add men to our league. But the only reason we didn't was a business decision. The followers, the brand value of the top women of athletics is just greater than the top men because there are fewer stars. They just don't have the same weight. But don't get me wrong, I would love to announce Athlos as not just this first of its kind Formula 1 women's track and field league, but also one day the first of its kind women's first league to then add men to it.

Not too soon. But look, we want to stage this out to keep underpromising, overdelivering. We want, again, this has to be a great business. And the good news is all these athletes want it too. But the north star is to be something so that when you know LA 28 happens and we're all riding high off the Olympics, I can tell you these athletes won't disappear. They'll actually be here competing year round in our league.