What Really Happens at Billionaires' Private Parties (Michael Rubin)

Everyone who comes to that party knows they're going to meet people around them that are really good for them in business. You have the most important people in culture coming together and we've got multiple marriages.

I'm trying to think what I can say and what I can't say. People think, 'Oh, it's Michael Rubin, Fanatics. He's built this company worth $40 billion. Like, oh, it's easy, man. We grind every day.' People said like, 'Michael, you have no chance.'

Forget about my business. Relationships are everything in every business. Okay? And people who don't understand that are completely missing it. Let me tell you something. Relationships don't matter during good times. When they matter is during tough times, when you're getting punched in the face, when things aren't going the way you want them to go. So for me, like we all have strengths and weaknesses. One of my strengths is like I have pretty good relationships and I build these authentic relationships over a long period of time. So when guys like you call me and say, 'Hey, come on do my podcast.' Here I am. Might have taken us a year to get here, but we're still here. So I think relationships are undervalued by most people. I think people don't understand like again, if things are going great, you don't need a good relationship. But shit goes wrong all the time. Every day for us, shit goes wrong. Like people think, oh, you know, it's Michael Rubin's Fanatics. He's built this company worth, you know, 30 or 40 billion. He's got 13 billion in revenue, 22,000 employees. It's like, 'Oh, it's easy, man. We grind every day. We do this shit 18, 19, 20 hours a day.' I got 22,000 people that wake up saying, 'How do we relentlessly enhance the fan experience?' We go to bed thinking the same thing. Without the relationships of the biggest stars in the world, the sports properties, and most importantly, sports fans, we got nothing.

You know, the most interesting thing, and you guys probably know the Meek story. Whenever someone would ask me to help with a charity before, I was the greatest person to ask because I would just want to give away money to have them not to like finish the conversation as quickly as possible. Someone said, 'Hey, Michael, I'm doing this thing. Can you come?' Let me just write you a check. No, I can't. No, you can't honor me. No, you can't do this. No, but I'm happy to write you a check. Okay? And I was always a pretty charitable person financially, but I never put my time into it. The thing with Meek that changed my life and changed his life was, as everyone knows, Meek got sent to prison for two to four years for popping a wheelie on a motorcycle for the most simple probation violation because she had a crazy judge who was power hungry who wanted to control him. And she sent him to prison for two to four years for literally getting a ticket for popping a wheelie on a motorcycle. What changed my life and what changed Meek's life is he said to me, call me on Friday. He's like, 'Yo, Rub, can you come to court with me on Monday?' I'm like, 'For what?' He's like, 'You remember I told you that probation hearing?' He's like, 'I really want you to see what happens when a black person goes to court.' I'm like, 'Do you really want me to come?' And like, he had always told me all these stories and like you hear them, but you don't fully appreciate it. To be honest, I think it's hard to believe because they seem so unbelievable. So, do you really want me to come? He was like, 'Yeah.' I'm like, 'No problem.' I live 20 minutes away. I think the court hearing was like at maybe 1:00. I get there and I watched this probation officer get up and said, 'You know, Robert Williams is a model probationer. He's done everything we've ever asked. We suggest no sentencing.' Sits down. The DA gets up and says, 'You know, we agree. We recommend no sentencing.' And the judge starts screaming at the DA and the probation officer in front of me saying, 'You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know the problem he is.' Screams at them. Then they asked me like impromptu, 'Can you get up and speak about your relationship with Meek?' Can I get up? I was really honest. I'm like, 'Look, you know, this is a guy. I've been around my kids, my mom. Like, you know, I love the guy. Is he perfect? Hell no. But I'm not perfect. Does he deserve to go to prison for popping a wheelie on a motorcycle? Nothing makes less sense. He's employing people. He's paying taxes.' And I was like giving this great impassioned speech and like, you know, when someone's paying attention when they're not. I looked at this woman and she didn't hear a word I was saying. She didn't care. She tuned me out. She sent him to jail for two to four years in front of me. That was the most powerless I ever felt in my life. I remember leaving there and I called the now governor of Pennsylvania. He was the attorney general there, Josh Shapiro. I said like, you know, how do we get him out of prison? And then I called the mayor and I called the then governor and like I didn't realize it's pretty hard to get someone out of prison, right? Like there's not just like some powerful person call says, 'Hey, can you get him out?' It doesn't work that way. So, that was a wakeup call for me. And I was so shaken that myself and Jay-Z's partner, Desiree Perez, who runs Roc Nation, the two of us kind of spent the next five and a half months working to get him out of prison. And it was like her mission and my mission. And we talked, you know, 10, 20 times a day. And by the way, there were times you just felt like giving up. You're like, 'Fuck that. I'm not giving up.' And he had a two to four year sentence and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ordered his release five and a half months later. It turned out that the original thing he was arrested for, which is why he was on probation, the cops had made up the story and lied and they all came forward and admitted it was like a scene out of Training Day of the movie. And so ultimately, he got out of prison five and a half months later, but the important thing was the now governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, said to me like, 'Michael, shit always happens for a reason. Like Meek is your special friend. You got to fix this for the everyday person.' And that's how we created the Reform Alliance. Myself, Jay-Z, Robert Kraft, Meek got together and started the Reform Alliance and we've done some pretty powerful work. We started in 2019, got more than a million people off of probation and parole who shouldn't have been on it. Mathematically proven that like a longer sentence actually hurts you, doesn't help you. And by the way, I'm like a really logical person. Like someone goes out and commits a bad crime, they should go to prison. But if someone like pops a wheelie on a motorcycle, they shouldn't get sent back to prison for two to four years. That doesn't make a lot of sense. So, yeah, my passion is business and that's what I love to do, but actually making a difference in this world is really freaking important.

Yeah, look, I think a lot of charities operate like charities and I think, you know, a lot of governments operate like governments. I think if you want to run a nonprofit, I think you got to run it like a business. So, I think we try to be more effective. I think we try to count every penny. Like, you want to make sure, hey, just because we raised this money, like we went out and you guys have been to the two casino nights we've done and we raised I think like 22 and 24 million each of those two nights, which is incredible how giving people were, but we got to value that money. We got to treat it like it's the money you just raised for your startup. You got to make sure that you're not wasting that money. So, I think a lot of charities don't act that way. So, I think the proof is in the results. You know, we've spent less than 100 million in the seven years we've started this cumulatively and we've got, you know, more than a million people off of probation and parole that shouldn't have been. I'll tell you the best thing I can tell you about running this like a business without giving you the names of the people involved here. It's a great story. So, when we decided to start Reform, someone said, 'We need a goal of how many people we're going to get off of probation and parole.' So, I called somebody who was really smart and they said, 'Michael, you should go with 10,000.' I said, '10,000?' I said, 'There's four at this point there were 4.2 million people on probation and parole. Probably half should be on probation and parole. So, probably the pool's two million, two and a half million.' They said, 'What do you want to go with?' I said, 'A million.' They said, 'How you getting to a million?' I said, 'Half the people I think should get out.' They said, 'Well, what kind of analysis have you done?' And I said, I haven't made up the number. We're going to go for it. By the way, we got a million people out of the system in seven years that shouldn't have been in the system. So, like that's operating like a business. Come up with a bold goal. Go for it and don't take no for an answer. Okay. And so, that's how you operate. And that's how entrepreneurs operate. And again, so many things have gone wrong on that journey. But like we've got it right a lot more than we've got it wrong.

I don't think this is one that needs billions of dollars, which is pretty cool. I think what we did here is we fixed the underlying laws. The problem with the laws is that they were so illogical. So, you could have one state like in California we were able to get the laws changed to where you couldn't be on probation for a felony more than two years, for a misdemeanor more than a year. That was logical. In Pennsylvania, Meek had a felony. He was on probation for between the sentence he served and the sentence he left, it was like 20 years. Okay. By the way, you put any of the three of us on probation for 20 years, one of us going to jail one night for sure. Like it's every people make mistakes. That's just life. By the way, you imagine, do you know it's a rule that you can't be around another felon? Okay. Well, guess what? You grew up in a tough neighborhood and a lot of people you grew up with have felonies. So, it's actually illegal just to live with somebody or walk outside the street with somebody. So, the system is made to it's just a broken system. So, we're fixing the underlying system. So, it doesn't need billions of dollars. What it needs is logic.

You know, it was a much simpler decision than people would think. I bought a house in the Hamptons in 2020 and literally my buddy Will Mroser, I think you guys have met, is like we should do a fun party in the summertime. And like I had done the Super Bowl party which was like our Super Bowl party had become the most important party of Super Bowl weekend and it gets the athletes that are most important to us, the stars that are most important to us, the owners, the league executives, our business partners. So it brought up all the people that were most important to us. So, it was a really good way for us to bring people together that really benefited our ecosystem. So, when Will said that, I was like, 'Yeah, let's fucking do it.' And, you know, I think one of the things because relationships are so important to me, it was kind of funny because I remember the first year doing it. You're calling people and say, 'Hey, man, I'm doing this.' And we just I don't know how we've been named the White Party. I think we just like whatever. It's the summertime, so it's like you go white. And we just started calling people and say like, 'We're doing this party. We're going to keep it super tight.' And you know, I remember the first year like everyone showed up and for me the capability that I have that a lot of people don't have is that I'm very comfortable to really curate something really tightly and so that everyone knows when they walk into the party, everyone who comes to that party knows they're going to meet people around them that are really good for them in business. I think, you know, for us, the amount of great business things that have come out of that party, the amount of deals that have come out of the party, by the way, marriages and we've got multiple marriages in the party.

Well, there's been multiple. I'm trying to think what I can say and what I can't say. Let me just tell you, people have met there. Megan Thee Stallion and Klay Thompson met there. Okay, they're not married, but they met there. Which I remember that night distinctly. We could say it, Coco and Don Mitchell met there. Yeah. Mo Bamba and his wife met there. So, like we...

Well, there's been four parties. I think it's three strong relationships. By the way, this is just something to think about. So, we've created some great relationships, way more business opportunities than relationships. I'm much better creating the business opportunities than the relationships. But, it's been like look, I love bringing people together. It's a fun thing to do. Obviously, we're doing the big party for Reform that we do every other year. I decide to rotate them. I actually decided at the end of this year that Reform is such a great cause, but we've raised enough money for it now. We're just going to go back to the White Party every year because I actually like giving money. I don't like asking people to give money. So, we're just going to go back to the White Party every year starting this July. But it's a fun party to do. Why is it so look, you have the most important people in culture coming together. And so, I think that makes it super interesting. And I will say it's a little weird when you look outside your house and there's like hundreds of paparazzi, you know, with crazy cameras all outside. But it's like people love the party. It's so fun. It's, you know, it's one night to let loose here. I think people also feel safe there. Like I think the biggest stars in the world know they can come there and feel safe.

Maybe like two or three. That's respectable. I think it was a festival.

Oh, that was so bad.

Yeah. Wait, so...

I took a video. Yeah, for I was going to say...

For anyone who didn't see it, I was at Reform, which is you have a casino night party. So I was at the casino night party.

For the Reform charity. And so there's a gigantic spiral staircase and obviously I'm a little lit. So I'm walking down and I trip. I fall. I tumble down the stairs. So embarrassing. Literally my leg is bleeding. And so I'm dazed and I'm getting up and I think Phoebe is right in front of me. So I'm giving her my hand. And instead it's Jay-Z and he's like, 'Are you okay?' And I was like, 'Oh fuck.' Like this is so embarrassing. And I was like, 'Oh, I'm totally fine.' Right? Like my leg's literally bleeding. I'm very much in pain. But I'm like, 'No, no, no, sir. Don't worry. I'm so fine. Thank you.' And then he was like, 'You're a little embarrassed, aren't you? It's okay. Don't be.' And he was so nice. And I was like, 'That's really nice of you. Like, thank you.' Like, 'No, don't worry.' And then Phoebe's like in the corner horrified. To be fair, my hand was also extended. My hand was not taken, which was hurtful.

It's a fun look we look I do three big events a year. I do the White Party which is you know kind of the most intimate, you know, bringing people that are so important to us in one way or different together. I do the Super Bowl festivities which is like look the NFL is our biggest business and you know we have the best party of the weekend there and we bring so many great people together. And then we do Fanatics Fest which is actually for the fans. We're going to have 200,000 fans at Javits. You guys came to that, right?

Yeah. Which is And by the way, each like this year is going to be so crazy. Like each year we've done it now, this will be our third time. That's probably the most humbling thing to me is to see every big star coming out, you know, to support their fans, to support Fanatics, to do great things and kind of, you know, have the best relationship they can with the fans. It's so fun. So to me, those are the only three events we do. It's funny. People are like, 'Oh, Michael. Like, you throw so many parties.' I do three parties per year. I do Fanatics Fest for 200,000 fans. I do the White Party and I do Super Bowl and that's it. Those are my parties.

Shy crew. Yeah. Very, very introverted, you know, trying to come out of their shell. Just kidding.

I think that's the way I learn. And so for me know like I still I really can barely read like people don't believe that. I was watching somebody a day or two ago who had a book. They had the Andrew Ross Sorkin's book 1929 that he just wrote and they're like, 'Hey,' I'm like, 'Oh, how's the book?' They're like telling me it was really good. They're like, 'Have you read it?' I'm like, 'I haven't read a book since 9th grade.' Literally, like the last book I read was the unauthorized story of Phil Knight in ninth grade. Okay, that said, I learned differently. I learned by talking to people, by bringing people around me that I can learn from, that I can help. And so, everyone's always like, 'Oh, Michael, you're so gracious. You know, you're trying to help me.' But if I sit with you guys, yeah, I'm going to try to help you in every way I can, but I'm also going to learn from you guys and the things that you're talking about. So that's my process. So for me, I think we are very thoughtful about making sure that everyone that we put into a room at the White Party or at our Super Bowl party is someone that is mutually beneficial for the people there. So when you come to the White Party, I think you could ask the biggest stars in the world or Reform when Jay helped you from your traumatic fall. You know, I think what people would say is they know whoever's there is someone they want to meet because they're a special person. And I do love identifying young talent. That's how I learn. And I can think back to so many people. You know, just give you an example of people who some people love and some people hate. But I remember meeting Jake Paul as a 15-year-old or a 16-year-old. I look at this guy. He was this YouTube star and now he's developing himself as a real boxer. And like I look at that and I look at what a great marketer he is. I look at his brother. I'm like, 'These guys are some of the best marketing celebrities that you think about.' But like we're all always learning from each other and that's you know the same thing with I think all of my relationships.

And it generally starts very authentically like you know...

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the D'Amelios came from Kylie because Kylie was like Kai K my daughter Kylie was like when she was say 12 or 13 and you know Charlie and Dixie were at the absolute top of the TikTok craziness. Kylie's like, 'Oh, I really like these guys. They're cool.' And their dad, believe it or not, worked for a company that I subsequently bought, Mitchell & Ness. Okay. And so, like, we just all got together and we were all excited to spend time. And but I do like learning from all types of people. And I can tell you often as you get bigger, you can get set in your ways. And what you can be really smart is who's the young disruptor? Who's the person who's going to take out the business model you created? So I love learning from people and I love giving to people and they can learn from me. So I do spend more time like I'm very conversational and it's the way I learn. I mean I was as bad as a student as you could possibly imagine. Definitely the opposite of the two of you. I was and I did have every learning disability. I mean I couldn't read. I did have dyslexia. I had a speech impediment. And I was just generally terrible in school and bored by it. And as much as I talk about how bad of a student I was, I was really that bad of an athlete. Like I just was always the guy get picked last on a team and like just wasn't, you know, didn't have good hand eye coordination. And for me, like I loved working from when I like as long as I can remember, I can remember loving working. So like when I was an eight-year-old, I had like five, you know, side hustles. I was, you know, selling snow shoveling, you know, driveway to driveway and going out hiring kids and paying them, you know, a buck an hour, whatever it was for, you know, 45 years ago and, you know, selling them for 20 bucks a driveway and, you know, I was selling vegetable seeds door to door and making stationery on the computer and like I just love to do that. So, for me, you know, I think you gravitate to what you're good at and that's something I was always good at and really always loved from as long as I can remember. And I've been in business non-stop since I've been, you know, legitimately 11 or 12 years old. So I'm now 53. I think I've been doing this for 41, 42 years as like my obsession.