Alexis Ohanian joins us LIVE | Talks Athlos

Thank you for having me back, y'all. Very, very happy to be here. I had a blast doing it in person, but you know, this will have to do. But I'm excited to spend some time with y'all again here soon. But yeah, no, very very happy to come on.

Yeah. Well, we're going to have multiple meets, right? So this next year will be the official launch of the league format, the team-based league format. So we're not just going to be in New York next year. We're going to have at least one other, maybe two, maybe 10. We won't go that big. Not that soon. But we'll have location. I can tell you we'll have multiple locations to do this for the AFL league next year.

Well, okay. And to be clear, we're never leaving New York, right? I'm a Brooklyn boy, made in Fort Greene. Like, I'm never, this is always going to be the sort of, this was the day zero. This is where it all started. New York's always going to be a big part of what we build with this league. We knew we needed to grow from last year, right? We had three million people tune in for Athlos last year all over the world. Amazing brand partners, Tiffany, Toyota, many others. Packed house, lots of fun, great vibes. I think you'd agree. It was great energy. And most importantly, these ladies said it was the best meet they'd ever been to. And you know what? They had record prizes, Tiffany crowns. We paid them all within three business days. And we said, 'Okay, how do we outdo ourselves now, next year?' And Tara Davis-Woodhall, you know, she is a spark plug. And I tried inviting her to the meet and she told me in very simple words, she was like, 'Look, I'd love to go, but I'm only going to go if I'm competing.' And I said, 'All right, challenge accepted, Tara. Let's figure out how we bring the long jump in.' And I was like, 'You got any ideas? Like, I want this. It needs to be big. It needs to be spectacle.' And she was like, 'How about Times Square?' I said, 'All right, all right. Let me see what we can do.' And Kayla and Chris on the team here to their credit were able to get it worked out with the city of New York. We got a great relationship with the city and you know it was just a process but everyone got it done and so we're bringing the long jump, best long jumpers in the world to Times Square Thursday night as a preview, as a showcase in the center of the media universe for the main event Friday night under the lights at Icahn. And so the best three jumpers, those ladies are going to then compete for the crown for the grand prize there at Icahn. And you know, Tara's going to come correct, but she's got some great competition, too. So, we'll see. You know, it's going to be a very different environment for them in the middle of Times Square, like a giant spectacle in front of all those tourists and in front of all the New Yorkers who are going to roll up. And so, we're excited and we need to push ourselves even more this year. So, thanks to a great partner in Cash App, our athletes are actually going to get paid, the applicable athletes. These are more than likely the American citizens because of banking laws and all that stuff. It's not just going to be pay them in three business days. We're actually paying them instantly. As soon as the official ruling comes in about where they place, that money is hitting their bank account thanks to Cash App. And we did, we was like that's not enough. So there's also, you know, on the chances someone sets a world record, there's a quarter of a million dollars again cash on the line here at this Athlos. But again, we want to keep building and the number one priority is making sure these athletes are being treated like the superstars they are and we know they showed up big time last year. We're expecting big things this year.

You know what? To the credit of a lot of people much smarter than me and folks very experienced in the building of these sorts of, everything from the runway track to the sand pit, all that stuff, like it's getting assembled. And one of the nice things coming from the tech industry is you know we default to this mindset of sort of why not, right? We want to ask the question of like well how has this been done before and why can't we do something else a little bit more ambitious. And if we ever hear 'oh well that's the way it's always been,' it is the worst possible answer for me to hear as an entrepreneur, but it's also the best because it means no one's really asked that question before and people are comfortable just saying, well, you know, it's the way it's always been done. But when you start to ask why, fun things happen. And in this case, you know, we've always had some great folks in our corner, Mark Whitmore, I got to give him his flowers. He really helped us get introduced to a lot of the sort of 101 of putting on one of these events and again making sure these are World Athletics sanctioned meets. So last year athletes was silver status. That means all those ladies got points towards their ranking. This year we're actually gold because we added the field event. And so we've had great partners in World Athletics. And again this is, yes we make this a spectacle. Yes we make this, you know we've got A-list celebrities in the crowd. We've got A-list talent performing. We also have A-list athletes who are competing in a very very real competition. And so they help us, you know, solve interesting problems like how do we put a sand pit in the middle of Times Square and how do we build that runway? How do we make it all, you know, performance grade, totally professional, totally sanctioned, above board, and also in a place it's never been before. And it turns out, you know what, this stuff, I don't want to say it's not hard. There's a lot of work that goes into it. But, for a lot of these folks, they rise to the occasion because they're like, 'Wow, I've never been asked to do something like this. This is so exciting. I can't wait to prove that it's possible. I can't wait to do it.' And so I think it's been really fun seeing folks rally around it. And look, we still got to pull it off. Not doing any victory lap right now, but our site is set. Things are getting built and I can't wait to see it Thursday night.

We look, we were very fortunate. You got to remember so we announced this with Gabby at the Business of Women's Sports Summit in April of last year. Five months later we put on the event, five months. And I have to give credit to those day ones and the Tiffany and Co. and the Toyotas, like we, you know they knew a few months in advance that we were going to announce this thing in April but still like they turned around very very quickly to be partners. And what we did was we said to them listen, you know we're going for reach here. We know you spend a little bit of time on track Twitter, you see how much people want to be able to watch these competitions and how difficult it is through you know the technology that exists and the costs associated with it, won't name any names. But it's a, you know for such an accessible global popular sport it's very hard to watch the damn thing. So we're just sitting here saying okay well let's make this as accessible as possible. And what is helpful about making it as accessible as possible and having non-exclusive deals with ESPN Plus, DAZN, YouTube, X is that we can get to 3 million plus viewers for our first ever event. And then if you're talking to brands like a Toyota, like a Tiffany and Co, and like the others who came with us from day one, or day zero, I should say, they love hearing that they're going to have this kind of wide exposure and reach. And so, look, we didn't make any money on broadcast deals for last year because we said, 'We don't want exclusivity. We want reach.' Because you aren't going to make that much money as a brand new league anyway on media. You got to earn that with the viewers. And it's the cycle. So, yeah, you know, fortunately, all of our original partners came back and then we added new ones. You know, Essential Water, being a water sponsor, Cash App, Instacart, all folks, and there's a couple more coming. All folks that want to be associated with excellence, with greatness, with speed, and they're not endemic to the sport as well, right? Because that was also a goal of ours, right? How do we broaden? You know, no one has any trouble. People are fighting over being an Olympic brand partner and what is one of the biggest events and sports in the Olympics? Well, it's all things track and field. You guys know this. So again, we're just trying to create something that fulfills a need that already exists in the market and say, look, we are going to be this Formula One of track and field that is going to take all the very very best in the same way that you know the TGL pitch was, hey, here are the best guys on the PGA Tour and you're going to see them in team format. You're going to see them miked up. You're going to see them in prime time and their personality is going to shine. If you want to advertise to the Masters, you can't. But here is something that's actually going to reach a much broader audience, much more exciting and sort of modern in the way we tell the story. And you know, credit to the brands. They responded and so it has been a lot easier this time. We still don't take any of it for granted. You know, it was great having ION step up and say, 'Hey, actually, can we help broadcast this and extend the reach?' We added ION to the broadcast side and we just want to keep building. There's I think one other thing that I know Kayla will want me to mention, she has been our CMO with Athlos, but also did it with us for LA Golf Club and then Angel City back in the day. You know, we also have directed dollars to our athletes and that's really important, right? And so what does that mean? So you know when for instance Cash App came to us and they were talking about this Times Square event. They're really excited by it. You know we could turn that into a relationship for Tara that and you've probably seen some stuff with the collabs that they did with some merch and campaign. Again that's her business. I can't speak to it but I know there's real money that's now gone into her pocket because of a partnership that started at our league level with Athlos that said hey this is great and can I double down with one of your stars? Of course please. And there have been I think a half dozen, there were a couple last year with like Rio and a couple other brands, but there's I think a half dozen now this year that Kayla's going to want to do some more talking around because again we know these athletes are just starting to get the earning potential that they deserve. And so if we as a league can create a win for them and again you know Tara is a shareholder right this is an important part of as we build this out every woman who competes in the league and you know every person at some point who competes in our league is going to be a beneficiary of its growth they're going to be a shareholder and a stakeholder in it and for now you know Tara can celebrate the fact that Cash App is a proud league partner and she wins there in the long term right as an equity holder but now we can also direct a more immediate benefit to her in her capacity as an individual athlete. And there's more of those stories that I want to keep compounding because I think that's how we grow not just our chances of success, but the entire industry, this entire sport and it's exciting. It's great. That's what we're trying to do here. And it makes our athletes even more committed to helping grow what we're building.

So, okay. So on the brand front, a lot of credit to the team like you know we have targets that we look at where we say okay we know, remember I've been investing in women's sports now since I started Angel City in 2020. So, as I've been adding more teams to my portfolio, I'm just getting to know more and more CMOs, chief marketing officers who are like, I want to invest in women's sports. And in many cases, they come to me and they say explicitly like when I started this TGL team in LA, they were like, look, yeah, you got the best golfers in the world, but they're all guys. And I'd actually much rather partner with any of your women led teams or leagues because that's, it's shocking. Five years ago, this is not the case. And in the last few years in particular more and more brands are saying hey we see this huge opportunity we want to invest but specifically in women led things. That's at the end of the day it's a big reason why we launched with women athletes we talked about this last year and track and field is a unique sport where the women actually can draw and do draw more followers on social that's the free market of attention and more brand dollars and so it was a business decision. Now it won't be that way forever but we wanted to start to give the league the best opportunity possible and again with all the success that I've had building buying women's teams. It just made a lot of sense. And so we know there's a bunch of brands that are really excited to just be supporting women's sports, etc. But then we also, this is not going to sound, it's not that sophisticated, you know, you spend a little bit of time with ChatGPT brainstorming literally and thinking, hey, what are the brands, especially tech forward and especially that are trying to reach audiences with a message around speed? And Cash App and Instacart are incredibly tech forward, incredibly culture forward and trying to send a message about speed. And this is something else that I think it's the benefit of being an outsider is I come at this from first principles by default because I don't know any better, right? I build tech companies for a living. And so I'm just thinking, okay, what are the values of this sport and these athletes that brands want to be associated with? And the good news is there are a lot of companies that want to be associated with speed and excellence. And so that's made reaching out to partners like Instacart or Cash App actually really straightforward because they understand where we're coming to meet them. They understand the event-like nature of what we've put on and they see that it's bigger than just the sport. And it also doesn't hurt, I mean look to the music entertainment side. Look, running and music, you don't have to be the smartest guy in the room to think like, hey, maybe music and running go well together. Like and you have something that and this is a part of the storytelling to brands and partners is like look, you know, the average, I'm a big NFL guy. That was the only sport that was on TV in my household. It was the only sport I played. It's the only sport I really loved for most of my life. And you know, the average NFL fan, we don't play football very often. I mean, I haven't put on pads since senior year in high school, okay? Very long time. This is a sport in athletics, track and field, right? Where you have people, Run Clubs are one of the most popular trends right now among digital natives, you know, just the action of jogging, of getting up and trying to train for a 5K. Like there are so many human beings who are active participants in a version of this thing. And this is the purest expression of it that is the very best in the world doing it. Damn, if I can't make a whole new generation of fans of this sport, I'm really screwing up because it's the most basic sport in humanity and there are so many people and growing doing it. And so I'm hopeful and I think you know DJ D-Nice has been a friend for a long time and he was very kind to come spin in between the races at our meet and you know again none of us invented this, this intersection of music and culture and track meets has been around for a very long time. But one of the things we really leaned into was the fact that as a storyteller, you know, we've got your attention for two and a half hours, three hours, you come to Athlos. You know, if I take you to an Angel City match or a Chelsea women's match, you're watching football for about two and a half, three hours, and you know, we're sitting next to each other. I'm talking to you, but we're also kind of watching the pitch. I'm talking to you. We're kind of watching the pitch. It's tough because you never know when not to pay attention because at any moment something dramatic could happen, but you could be watching for 20 minutes and nothing happens. And you could say that about NFL, basketball, you say about any other sport. What's so powerful about this format is and this was I think I noticed this must have been at Eugene when we were scouting. It was one of the first real like track meets I'd ever been to. It was qualifiers and obviously it was very dramatic and very interesting, but there wasn't a lot of storytelling, right? There's field events going on at the same time as running events, what have you. And what I realized was my god like if you've got these vibes and you've got the DJ spinning and you're having your drink and you know the sunset and you had a long week and now you're thinking hold up lights go out pyro smoke walkout songs right WWE or UFC style intros for these athletes. I'm now promising you as a viewer, pay attention for the next five minutes. Right? These ladies are fast. And you won't blink. And I promise you, it's a high protein five minutes of sport because you know there's a payoff here, right? And then as soon as that lady gets that crown, the beat drops and now they're spinning again and you're back to talking to your people and you're talking about that race that just happened and you're placing your bet for the next one. And as a from a storytelling standpoint showing up this format this sport is so powerful because I can promise you you spend three hours in an Athlos meet and you are going to get high return on investment for your attention because when the sport is on you're going to be unable to blink and then when the sport is not happening you're having a good time you're getting another drink you're vibing and there's a dynamic there that as soon as I saw it for the first time myself I was like oh my god this has the chance to be one of the best fan experiences in professional sports. And by marrying the two, I'm telling you, it just works. And certainly to have it finish with a performance from an acclaimed artist. You know, last year was Meg. She just had an album drop. This year SZA's got her album and we're excited to see it. And you know, I think it's just the start.

No, I want to look, let me again, full disclosure, you guys know this, I am still very much an outsider of the sport. What really impressed me as I spent more time talking to these athletes was because I'm trying again, I want, what I like about the team dynamic is if we can really create this Formula One of track and field you already have brands that are so heavily invested in the future of car racing let's say Mercedes, Ferrari, Mercedes is a good one I mean Lewis left but Mercedes is going, they just, Russell just won. Right. The Mercedes brand is invested in making sure those cars in F1 go as fast as possible. And they use that technology ostensibly to make the sedan that they're selling, the middle-aged guy, feel like a high performance vehicle, right? So, it all kind of trickles down and the aura of Mercedes winning F1 makes, you know, the middle-aged dude they're trying to sell the Mercedes to feel compelled to do it. They're not going to ever drive as fast as those guys, but they, you know, they dream of it when they get in the car. What gets me excited about the Formula One for track and field is that we know there are these brands that exist in this sport where you could apply that model and choose your favorite sneaker company and very quickly start to imagine a way that this sport starts to look and feel different for the casual fan in the same way that like and we lived it, we lived it in golf guys. Everyone told me I was going to lose all my money with TGL. They said no one cares about simulator golf. This is going to be boring, right? And you know, after one season, we doubled all of ESPN's numbers in terms of projections and a team sold to the Ford family in Detroit for two and a half times what I paid buying the first team after one year. The expansion fee, literally just the fee to buy a team. So, it was a huge success. Why? Because you could put the best golfers in the world in a format they had never been in before, teams outside of like Ryder Cup, and then mic them up and it was exciting. It was different. It was new. Now look, these golfers, man, they don't have the biggest personalities. I love Tiger. You know, he's got guys like Max Homa on his team to kind of, you know, gab and whatever. These guys have been forced by the sport to not have big personalities, but by the end of one season of TGL, man, they're talking trash. It's incredibly entertaining content. And I'm looking at this, that's the issue with our sport, though. That's the issue with our sport. Our sport is supposed to be acting like it's white glove, golf, tennis, where you know the athletes have to be able to be reserved like a tiger. And these are young 20 year olds, teenagers now who have big personalities and they have to be shown the right way, man. They have to be shown that they can be able to step up and say who they are. And what I think and what we saw in just a few months in TGL, I cannot wait to show the world with our team-based league because I know these athletes have huge personalities, right? And a few of them, you know, Masai is one of my favorites on social. Like, a few of them are very, very good storytellers online. They obviously deliver on the track, too, but they're great storytellers online. I can't wait to create a format where they're in teams. Imagine, you know, we're taking a lot of inspiration from the NCAA. Once I learned that a lot of these athletes had, because they even if they weren't Americans, right, they spent time here in the States, they're training at some of the top universities here and once I started to see some of the, you know, I'm watching YouTube and I'm like, 'Oh, wow.' Like, they take these championships really seriously in college and you've got men celebrating with women across all these different disciplines of track and field. And again, as the storyteller, I'm like, 'This is incredible. This is so good.' And so the vision of Athlos then grows into this team-based league using a point system. So let's say we have, let's hypothetically say we have three meets next year in major capitals all over the world. And we say look ladies, y'all are going to be running for your personal scores. You'll have personal prize money. You place first, second, okay, fine. But the biggest prize money at the end of the season is for your team. And so you're still going to get paid real well for racing well yourself, but now you've got a real incentive at the end of that season. So again, the story that I'm imagining is even for some of the, let's imagine like the longer distance events. The longest thing we do right now is the mile. And I was even nervous about that. And then I learned about how great Faith was and I was like, 'Okay, we got to have the mile.' This was Chris on my team who pushed it. He was like, 'You got to have a distance.' I was like, 'Dude, I got a short attention span. Like we need shorter races.' And he was like, 'No, no, no. You got to have the mile.' Very grateful we do. But now you can start to imagine what do the storylines look like in the mile or even some of the longer races where you can cut back to the team that's miked up, that's cheering. Maybe one of the athletes is still pissed about the race she just had and someone's trying to cheer up. Or maybe they're screaming their faces off because they just saw something happen because so and so on their team just passed so and such and such who they know has beef. Like there's I have no doubt that in this environment if we could get golfers to be engaging and entertaining, these athletes are going to be awesome and it's going to bring even more layers of story to races that again for an outsider becomes really easy to understand. This sport is so incredibly easy to follow as an outsider because you just need to learn, okay, person who comes in first, person who jumps the furthest, person who throws the thing the furthest wins. But then there's all this nuance that as outsiders we, I don't have a clue. I just know at the end who wins. So that's good. I don't have to, I got to explain to people every time I take them to a soccer game what offsides is. And I still barely understand what offsides is. But thankfully like here we have a sport in its simplicity and its elegance that is very easy to understand at first but then has a depth once you start to learn all the subtleties. And I want to bring more of that out. And I think in this team based format, we get it and then we get to see, you know, potentially brands duke it out over who truly has excellence in the Formula One of track and field. And what is that worth? What is that worth to hold the constructor's cup of our version of the league and trophy for the winning team? There are some brands that are much more let's say up and coming in this sport that would love to be able to say, 'Hey, we've got the best athletes in the world.' And there are others that we know are like the Titans that would love to drive home the fact that yes, they truly objectively have the best. They don't have to wait four years for the Olympics to prove it. They could do it every year. And I'm excited to see it unfold.

Yeah, okay, so one, it feels amazing. I am again I'm grateful. I get to spend a lot of time now here in sport, you know, buying teams, building teams, and I really thought, I mean look I still think the world of soccer, especially women's soccer, very fired up about golf there. There's other stuff we're going to be doing in and around sports. I feel so lucky that this has been not just as successful as it has been so quickly. I feel we have been so well received by the community which has meant the world to me. These athletes I feel so indebted to them because at the end of the day, you're right, this is the oldest damn sport in the world. Poetically this was not intentional. 776 is named after my daughter Olympia because it was the year of the first ancient Olympic games 776 BC. And you know the first event of the Olympics was a foot race. It was like a 200 meter I think foot race give or take. I don't know if they were using meters back then. But you know there's a weird wild almost kismet history to the fact that we're now innovating in this space. And I don't think I will ever get an opportunity to build from zero with as much momentum as we have here. And part of this is because you're right. It's the oldest sport. It is the most accessible sport, sorry, football or soccer. And it's a sport that every four years captures the world's attention. And it's a sport that for hobbyists, if you just extend it to just running or just jogging generally, is the sport of people. Like we have the chance to build something that is already imbued with so much history and so much awareness and so much simplicity and elegance and yet has just never gotten this kind of investment before. And it feels special and I realize how special I am and lucky really I am to be at this place at this time building this way. And it's got me fired up because you know five years ago I left the board of Reddit. I said look I've made enough money. I'm going to use my resources my experience my dollars to build businesses that are going to really be my legacy. Things that will generate tremendous windfalls for my kids. Sure. But also things that I'm really really proud of. And I'll be damned if this Athlos will be I really think one of the biggest parts of my legacy 5 years from now, 10 years from now and especially with an Olympics coming up in LA, I think we can come to this with a running start. The audience in the United States, and this gets your other question, look, we this should be on a professional level so much of a bigger sport in terms of popularity here in the US. And I'm not the first to say that, right? I mean, Eugene's a tough place to go to a meet and having it be my first one was actually really instructive because, you know, flying into Eugene, even if you're flying private into Eugene is still you're like, 'Where the hell am I?' Like, you're in the middle of nowhere now. It is track Mecca, but you know, for a casual fan, like it's not even on the radar. You're not even aware. And yet, it's such an engaging show. Because again, you know, the Americans are just so damn good. So I think without a doubt we have at least one city next year in addition to New York in the United States. You know, there's been a long, we've had, you know, other team owners and whatnot have been really great about leaning in and saying like, hey, let me make the case for bringing it to, okay, Atlanta, Toronto, Philly, Miami, Austin, Vegas, LA, to name a few.

Well, I mean, look, those are sort of in contention. Yeah, options. Yeah, those are options. I think the most important, I think we want to make sure we're growing intentionally. My hunch is we don't go anywhere too far west for next year. We keep it within a like a time zone or two of New York since that's, look I'm based in Florida. Spent a lot of time here in the city. Just for simplicity, right? How do we again we want to underpromise overdeliver for every one of these. So, I think it's going to be, I don't think it's on the West Coast next year. But then I still want to stretch the team a little bit. And the other thing that blew me away was going to Europe and I saw Diamond League meets in Paris. Obviously saw the Olympics in Paris. I saw Diamond League meet in London and Europeans turn up and then I'd be asking almost all of our athletes, hey, what are your favorite meets to go to places in the world to go to? And it's crazy how often it ends up being in Europe. I've heard some wild ones like some of the Nordics. I think a couple of our runners are huge fans of like...

And so I get I love everyone in the comments about Eugene. No, it wouldn't be Eugene. Also, Eugene is like sacred. I'm not trying to mess with that. Our goal is right. I want if we're the Formula One of track and field, you can already kind of get a hunch of how I'm thinking, right? So, think of the places where there's already Formula One and there's probably some good indications. These are marquee cities. Monaco's on the list, don't get me wrong.

So, I don't think this is he won't care. So, the prince of Monaco is a huge fan of the sport. Loves athletics, loves track and field. There's been conversations with folks there. I think at the end of the day, it's first and foremost always a business decision, right? How do we put these next couple of meets in the best position possible to be as successful as possible. It doesn't hurt that I now have, you know, 10% of a team in London, in the Chelsea women. But like I said, I also spent a lot of time in France. I'm technically a German citizen, so I got some connections there. I'm just trying to keep you all on your toes, but I would like to do something ambitious that crosses the ocean where we know there's a big fan base already that's going to show up for our athletes and also can start to break into the mainstream. And I think that's the other big part of it is how do we create something that the true fans, the track and field fans like yourselves, like I'm sure most of these folks in the comments will respect because again we are world athletics approved like a sanctioned event. These ladies are getting points for this. This is a real professional event but also brings in the spectacle, right? No one sees a Super Bowl halftime show and thinks like well that's not a real sport because they've got Bad Bunny performing. No, it actually brings legitimacy to the fact that this is the highest profile sporting event in the United States and so why not track and field? I mean, everyone looks at the Olympics and they see what was it Lady Gaga was singing everyone was there in Paris and you just take for granted of course world-class sport is going to have world-class entertainment. I don't know if we'll do performers at every one of the events. Maybe we'll just finish it off in New York. We'll see. But to be determined.

So, I got to spend a little bit of time in Tokyo. The World Athletics folks brought me out for the championship and it was cool to see in particular the fact that you have I really believe I'm going to get into trouble. Serena does not agree with me on this, but I stand very solid. I think mixed doubles in tennis feels like an exhibition. When a man and a woman are playing in tennis together, it just it's cool to watch, but it just hits different. Okay, she doesn't think so. Whatever. As again outside of the sport, I just think it's different. What's so dope about mixed relays is that it actually feels like it to me again as an outsider feels just as real as when four women or four men are running it. And that's one of the again I think through it in like the storylines. What's so compelling about the sport is that you have a format where you can have men compete against women, but they're still technically competing against men, if you know what I mean, for their sections, right? And you have men working with women, but again, you still have this you basically acknowledge the fact that men and women are fundamentally different. Men's football, soccer is different from women's football, even though they're playing the same sport. It's just a different sport. And in so many other sports when you try to mix it comes off just not feeling all right, some of y'all agree with fine, agree with my wife. She's the goat. But still, I watch those mixed relays and I'm like, 'Oh, there are some really dope storylines here.' They're just as I agree with you. thing that breaks the feed, right? This is because I come from the internet, I can only think about what is the stuff that gets someone to stop in their feed and be like, 'Huh, what's that?' And I really think we have unique sport here that can allow this to happen. And so now I'm letting you in to think a little bit more. So, as again, we started with women because it was a business decision. At some point, we will add men. And I've had this conversation with no. I've had this I mean, I'm very upfront about it. At some point as we add that out. One of the things I'd love to see is that mixed format in addition to sure we'd probably have those sprinters doing their thing as well. But there's something exciting about that that I think those storylines haven't happened. And again, if you imagine the rest of the team is there cheering a bunch of those folks on, right? And in our F1 style format, you'd have like you'd have a long jumper. Don't worry, Tara. You'd probably have a thrower. Maybe there's a little alpha in there. So there's a thrower in there. Maybe a heptathlete. Once I learned about the heptathletes, I was like, 'Wait, so they do everything?' And it's funny because like they're like, so again, I come from coming from a team sport format. I'm just thinking, okay, so that's like your role player, right? That's the guy or gal who's on the bench who can kind of fill in do whatever you need type thing. Like they can play multiple roles. Okay, so in the storyline of this team, right? If someone doesn't feel if one of your whatever your middle distance runner doesn't feel great, great. Tag in the heptathlete, like you've got some interesting ways again to keep it honest, right? Have it feel still like real sport. But create these storylines that help normies, you know, outsiders understand like, okay, there's a different interesting format here.

Oh, I love that it's published. Everyone sees it. That's great. And then fans can debate it.

Oh, cool. Okay. And so what's the steel man? What's the best argument? Why would they change it?

Or why did they change it? What was the reasoning?

So they didn't like

But it would still I mean if you have if you by definition if you've got a man running that one leg against a woman at some point you're going to have one of your women running against a man but I hear you in that moment it looks off I don't know I love the strategy because I hear that and the way you all are proposing it I'm thinking great you publish that now you've got obviously the teams can strategize but now all the pundits get to talk about it and debate it and we know folks in the chat get those Twitter fingers out like you want to be talking about it and having an opinion about it and then, you know, Monday morning quarterbacking it afterwards like, 'Oh, you should have run this order or that.' Okay, this is why I need you guys. I need this again. We haven't made any decisions yet, but this is the way.

Yes. Okay. That see that is a great compromise, right? Why? because then you're still getting some of the payoff of because I understand if the meet started out one team woman woman and another team man man it's gonna feel really bad for the first bit of that storyline because the men's team is obviously going to be faster but you're right have some rules because that okay this is another thing too that I love the you get enough folks who deeply understand this sport and then you get the outsider who just asks a lot of dumb questions whose only goal is do something that the best athletes think is great because if the best athletes love it, everyone else wins. The fans love it. Everyone like it wins, right? It honors the sport and keeps it legit. But remember, every rule, and I have to remind my team of this all the time, like the NFL is a great example. Again, I take those rules as sacred because it's the sport I grew up with. It's the sport I played. They're all made up. Like someone at some point decided like the two-point conversion was invented at some point by someone who was like, 'Hey, you know what? Instead of after a touchdown, they can kick the ball through the uprights. Let's give them a chance to try to score a touchdown and if they do, let's make it worth two points.' We in sport, we often take for granted that these things have been like written on stone tablets. They weren't. They were just made up by someone at some point. And so the best part about being able to innovate in sport, especially with these emerging leagues and building new leagues, is as again as long as you're keeping true to the sport and the people who like enough people who do it and have made their whole livelihood on it say like, 'Okay, that's a great idea.' Then you can be innovative with it and still find this way to push the boundaries to make it even more compelling for the fans, but still be true to the core product. So look at this. You guys, chat agrees. I think there's definitely there there. And I personally love the fact that it brings strategy into it and coaching into it and it gives people something to debate and talk about and again, we're going to do our job. UFC is one of my role models here where they do such a good job on YouTube telling the stories of their fighters and again, some of these guys are my friends, but they're a little one note, right? I like to hurt people and they're not very telegenic. Again, great guys. Very few of them have personalities. And here we are in this sport where, like you said, so many of these athletes actually have really dynamic personalities. And part of our job is going to be how do we tell those stories? How do we tell the stories of them off the track when they're traveling with their team? And that kind of like the behind the scenes again, nothing toy, nothing cheap, but actually helping people understand like there's a lot to being a professional athlete. We did a version of this with women's soccer the show called the offseason and you know we put a dozen professional soccer players in a mansion for a few weeks during their offseason and just ran tape on their lives and then their training and they weren't even in season and this thing ended up doing a couple hundred million views. We're now launching shows I'm not allowed to say but we're doing like two or three other sports here imminently. We're obviously going to have that crew working on Athlos here and what people realized was we showed the world and Sprint did a really good job. Don't get me wrong, but at least in my opinion, Sprinted, I'll be curious what you all thought. Box to Box buttered their bread on Drive to Survive. And you think of all the sports docuseries that have followed since, they're almost all featuring male athletes. And look, those editors, the guys of F1, I mean, there's a couple personalities, but like most of them are not the most telegenic, but those editors did a great job. They told a great story. It's a great show. Why when every reality show that exists is anchored around women, why this took so long to focus on women's athletes is shocking to me. But what we found was, you know, the life of an athlete is already a really stressful dynamic, like fascinating one. And then because you have this different team dynamic where you're kind of forcing them, like some of these folks will train together, others won't. We were trying to make a thing that is not natural but in that is a little bit of discomfort which is good which is good storytelling. Again, we'd never do anything to harm these athletes or their careers or everything like it's not going to be invasive or toy or Real Housewives crazy. But I No, see, I see what the No, no, no. Trust me, watch offseason, you'll see. We didn't You don't need any of that stuff when you're dealing with athletes because the life of the athlete is already just so stressful and it makes for such a good format. And because so many of these athletes are already used to creating content by nature, you just end up having it's just a whole different storyline. So, And that's going to be a big part of our job too is making so many of these athletes and even bigger stars. Melissa's a great example of one where I'm just like, 'Oh my god, like how do we do everything we can to tell this story? I'm obviously bummed.' She's coming for a meet and greet here at Athlos. But very excited to see her racing in our league next year and so how do we find ways to just keep elevating her story? We saw her in Jennifer Hudson recently which was great.

You know, Melissa, she is hilarious. She's actually and I want to see more of that of her. You know what I mean? So, hope could be able to show that next year for sure.

Shout out to Nef. Nef on my team was like, 'We got to have Dawn here.' And I was like, 'I trust you.' Nef's behemian. Nef does not play.

Yes.

Yeah. Well, okay. So, yes, last year we had DraftKings. This year we have DraftKings is back. So, you know, this is where the disclaimer goes about like responsible betting and if you're a gambling addict, blah blah blah. But yes, we had betting last year, we have betting this year. Bet responsibly, have a great time. And yes, so it'll be back. And I think the, you know, when I if I abstract away the sport of people going fast from point A to point B, whether they're running or whether they're on horses, whether they're in Formula 1 cars, you know, there is a culture and a dynamic to it that makes it exhilarating to be able to have, you know, something on the line. We'll more than likely in our league app have a what I'd call like a family-friendly version of it, which is just for points. So, it's not for money, but if you're good at predicting who's going to win, sure, you get a bunch of points, which you can redeem for merch and other fun things. But the really crucial thing there is and I've seen it Lord I've seen it in tennis some of the worst most vile trollish behavior online and I've again I've certainly seen it on tennis comes from this like very degenerate betting community and so look you know the reality is the vast majority of folks who are going to do betting perfectly reasonable having a good time and so it's our job to build a league and a structure and environment where you can get again if you're an adult do what you're going to do. Good luck. But at the same time, you know, mitigate the most sort of destructive worst parts of it. And thankfully it's a minority, albeit a very toxic one, but I think it'd be silly to say that it's not a part of helping it continue to go into the mainstream. Like the shocking stat most folks don't realize $150 million is roughly is what folks you can do a little bit of math on it but it's like about $150 million is what the Kentucky Derby makes total for Churchill Downs. So this is a highly highly profitable. It's 150 million in profit every year. That is a very profitable race and you know the sport of horse racing not the most culturally relevant these days. The average person cannot name a single jockey or horse. And yet it's like a cultural destination and part of it's because of the vibe, part of it's because of sports betting, lots of this other stuff. But in my mind, I really think of that as like the bare case of what we could build because it's my contention, you know, these athletes are way more compelling. The sport is way more popular and the connection to the modern culture is a much more obvious one than, you know, what goes on down in Kentucky.

I'm trying. You know I'm not betting on anybody. Come on. Come on. Yeah, that's a trick question. I don't I man. Sorry, bro. No inside trading over here. I can't even I own too many teams now. I won't even I'll still get pitches for sports betting apps like tech startups and I still I have my team do all the downloading and practicing because I don't like even beta testing it because I'm not even trying to you'll never catch me placing a wager like I just can't again I used to enjoy it but I can't touch any of that stuff. Come on. Especially with my own league like no.

I like look and I think there's definitely a conversation we had with Jason. So Jason's the CEO of DraftKings. He's a good friend, smart guy. I think so. I think there's stuff we can do for our league format to just make it more user friendly. And he'd be incentivized for that too, right? He has a business incentive to have more people on. And then, like I said, within our league app, we'll have a version of this that is really designed to be more way more user friendly, right? To get someone who's a fan of the league. Think of all the fans of the NFL, the NBA, who have no interest in betting whatsoever, but maybe they played I'm dating myself, Farmville, right? There is a huge overlap few folks don't realize the biggest demo for mobile games is actually women. So if you include in the world of gaming when we think of gaming we think of guys right we all grew up playing video games. If you broaden the definition of gaming like video games to mobile actually it becomes women because there are so many people with mobile phones and so many women that play some type of mobile game. Ask your ladies. They're playing at least one or two, right? And so I look at that again as an entrepreneur and I'm like, okay, so we have this opportunity to take the exact same audience that's very happy to do some kind of mobile gaming type thing where, you know, stakes don't really matter and actually apply it to a thing that they would enjoy, which is the sport. And I so I think there's some good ways that we can pinpoint it to create that kind of experience that makes it super user friendly. Again, in our case on the League app, it wouldn't be literal betting, but again, rewarding. I mean, people again, look at all the time people spend trying to get, you know, fake gems in these mobile games. You know, what is our Athlos equivalent? I think we've got some fun ideas for that app. And again, I want to serve every customer, right? If you're the gambler, great. You got that option. And if you're not, we got something for you, too.

I'm texting Jason right now. Anybody know that's my coin. I need my 10% on any We're gonna I'm gonna make sure you know here's what we'll do. Okay, again, I have to be very careful as a league owner talking about sports betting. Let's have a conversation and you know, I'm a man of my word. We'll have a conversation offline and who knows, y'all might see Ready, Set, Go and DraftKings Green for a month or two. So, we'll see.

Fantastic.

That's hilarious. You know, you guys know I was like one of the earliest investors in that company. So, I love seeing the role promotion. I'm on the board. Full disclosure. So, thank you for the

Oh, no. No. Thank you.

Yeah. Gosh, I can't give you guys everything. I already told I haven't told anyone we were going to add throwing, so you guys already got that one. Okay. How about this? Like, I'm very transparent about this stuff. I love There's this great Vince Lombardi quote. I think it's Vince. Where it's like, you should literally be able to tell the other team what offense you're about to run because they shouldn't be able to stop it. Like it's you want to be that great. So, I have no problem helping you all think like helping you all understand how I'm thinking and I would love the feedback and you know, I guess we don't really have competition, but like I want to be as transparent as possible, but still keep some surprises because it helps with promotion, right? I want to drop every You can tell I'm from the internet, right? I'm thinking how do we, you know, drip out various announcements and launches and different things to maximize the exposure for the league, for our players, for all this stuff. But the way I think about it, why would we do long jump? Well, so yes, Tara did respond to my DM and say, 'I'm not going unless I'm competing.' Okay, touche. But the way we looked at field was simply, 'Where's the biggest following?' Again, y'all, like this has always been a business decision. And the women of track and field, again, just look at the follower counts. They have a bigger social media following. We might be like, 'Oh, well, this guy is just the guy who made Reddit, so of course he's biased towards internet following counts and engagement.' But the reality is it's a free market of attention, right? Every day we all decide what to swipe, what to follow, what to like. And you may not like the fact that these athletes, these women have more followers than the men. But that's the free market. And if you're mad at the free market, that's okay. But like you're the old guy shaking your fist at the sky. Like this isn't because of feminism. This is because the free market says these athletes have a bigger social media following and so it is an easier business bet because they have attention and attention is what makes all the difference in sports. It's why people fill the stands. It's why three million people tuned in for the Athlos broadcast. Like it's the power of attention. So when we expanded to field, the reason we started with the long jump is because Tara is the biggest name in field on the women's side who is active and who is already leaned into what we're doing. So it was an obvious fit. I did finally get to meet Mondo who's awesome when I was in Tokyo. And I told him I was like, 'Dude, man, you're going to be the reason we add pole vaulting.' And again, why? Because he has the following.

He's got that aura. He's got a vibe. Yes. And so, and again, we're not adding men's pole vaulting yet, but this is the way I would think about it. Again, I'm very transparent with these guys. This is the same thing to Noah. I'm like, you have that following. You are that guy and like if we expanded to men or I guess when obviously we want to make sure we get you involved. And so on the women's side, if we think about throwing, I guess the way I would say think about it is like look where the biggest following is. Now, Tara is definitely in a league of her own on field. That's why we started with long jump. It's on the ladies side. Look at some of the best throwers. And look at those following counts. And that is where you have the wedge in because and I think this is where other I think where folks miss on sport historically is okay, building Reddit. I spent 15 years of my life trying to make sure you tap the little button on your phone for our alien instead of all those other buttons. And thousands of people made it their job at Reddit to make sure you push that little button first and not some other button. Our job was to make sure you push that button and like don't talk to your wife and don't pay attention at work. Like we were competing with your attention for everything in your life and we had to win and we did. It's a $40 billion company today. So all of us and you know my team here at 776 we're all this is the exact team at Reddit. These are all folks that I've curated and gotten to work with and it's been so awesome. We come into this so humbly because we know we have not earned a single person's attention. No one gives a damn about what we're building every day. We have to reearn their attention every single day. And so when your job is to earn attention every single day as you're building a league, you have to be ruthless about where you're investing your time and understanding why people care. No one's ever going to tune into Athlos. No one's ever going to tune into our league because of me. No one cares about me. If I think for a second this league is about me, we failed. The only reason people are going to tune in is because of our athletes. Why? Because people care about them. The athletes who have the biggest following are the easiest way for us to earn some of their fans attention and start to build brick by brick by brick by brick to earn the right for people to actually care about our league and what we're doing. And so that's why we've taken the approach we've taken and if we do right by those athletes and we keep building brick by brick, I think we can build something that really can stand up as a Formula One of track and field. But we don't want to grow too fast and we want to be intentional with every way we grow. And so I can't tell you which throwing event we're going to do, but if you just check the Instagram followings of those top ladies of throwing and you'll probably have a good line of sight in where we're going.

Bring it.

No, took a loss.