The Sporting Class: Worldwide Leaders, Killer Apps, and Michael Jordan's Special Contribution

Can ESPN launch a streaming app built to last? Is Trump already sports-washing his shiny new Air Force One? And what the hell is the GOAT gonna do for the NBA on NBC? Pablo travels back inside the C-suite of sports business with John Skipper and David Samson. • Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson"https://www.youtube.com/@npds Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Pablo Torre?

  This episode is brought to you by apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach, and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools.

• 1:27Pablo Torre?

  It's used by sales teams of all sizes, from small businesses to larger organizations, and it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at apollo.io. That's apollo.io. This episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8. And look, I've chased down a lot of strange stories, but nothing quite like what's inside a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. It is 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it, with no artificial flavors, colors, fillers, or preservatives in the beef.

• 2:10Pablo Torre?

  The onions are hand-topped by someone who knows the perfect amount by memory, two slices of cheese and a star, and two pickles side by side, so every bite gets both. And every time one's ordered, a cowbell sound rings in the kitchen. That's the grill master's cue to put a fresh patty on the grill. My move: QPC, fries and a drink after a long day of recording. That is my happy place. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink, now $8 for a limited time only, only at McDonald's. For a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California. And for delivery, fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii.

• 2:54Pablo Torre?

  Offer not valid for delivery. Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. Today's episode is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings, the crown is yours. And today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  I get great cargo shorts and undies?

• 3:10Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  You're listening to DraftKings Network.

• 3:27Pablo Torre?

  Glad, David, that you're here and you're not complaining about anything yet.

• 3:33Pablo Torre?

  Well, you did clear up my hair, I guess, so.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  I don't think you complained about your hair. It was an observation. Observations are not complaints. I wish I had that hair. I wish I had that hair.

• 3:42Pablo Torre?

  Isn't "Observations are not complaints" the title of the David Sampson story? Just a series of observations, totally neutral observations.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  You, above all people, know that. I do observe a lot. I don't complain much. I don't like the dearth of snacks that exist right now in the office. I'm hungry. I'm grumpy.

• 4:03Pablo Torre?

  John, can you put your headphones on, I guess, is the other thing.

• 4:10Pablo Torre?

  Very good.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ. First time, John?

• 4:14Pablo Torre?

  We've been doing this, how long? When did we start doing this show? Coca, when did we start doing the show? Can you tell me in my ear?

• 4:21Pablo Torre?

  Because I have my headphones on. When we started this, when I started doing this with John.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  So the way I started, I started just with John. And we were missing a third piece. And when we asked you to host this.

• 4:31Pablo Torre?

  August 2023.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Wow. Do you remember what you said? You said, "Listen, I'm gonna listen anyway. I might as well participate, so therefore, it's the same hour that I'm spending."

• 4:41Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  It was sort of like Moe and Larry without...

• 4:47Pablo Torre?

  Curly? Curly.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Dan got upset that you chose to do this.

• 4:51Pablo Torre?

  Because I got to be curly?

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yes. So Dan wanted to be curly, but he couldn't commit to the necessary time to be curly. And then you stepped in and then off to the races. And he's commented from time to time like, "Hey, you know, I could sit in that chair." I said, "Yes, that's true."

• 5:09Pablo Torre?

  I mean, this chair, the structural integrity is is already a bit on the brink. It's good to see both of you guys, by the way. John, David. John, are you happy to be here? David is seemingly always, as himself, kind of conflicted. I'm very happy to be here, including with you, Mr. Sampson.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Thank you, John.

• 5:27Pablo Torre?

  Very nice to be here. And good, good head of hair.

• 5:34Pablo Torre?

  Are you crying?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  That was emotional for me. He's happy to be with me. I'm surrounded, you understand, I'm surrounded in this company by people who are not happy to have me around.

• 5:43Pablo Torre?

  Well, what we love is podcasting. We love the game, David. We love what we do together.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  I have a story before we start.

• 5:53Pablo Torre?

  No one asked you for the story.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  It's a funny story about this show.

• 5:56Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  It's a true story about the show. I was in an Uber on the way to the studio. And this had not happened to me yet. The driver of the Uber knew about, recognized my name and me, and didn't ask about Survivor, didn't ask about nothing personal, didn't ask about the Marlins. He was asking and mentioned that he listens to sporting class. That happened about 20 minutes ago.

• 6:21Pablo Torre?

  And what did he want to know about us?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Just, that's it. He just was happy to see us.

• 6:28Pablo Torre?

  He is captive to the radio. Yeah, he, maybe-

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Well, he's driving all day.

• 6:34Pablo Torre?

  He's got a lot of choices, though.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  But we have a lot of things to say.

• 6:36Pablo Torre?

  Maybe he saw David holding up the app and mouthing to him, "There's a tip at the end of this. If you compliment our sports business show."

• 6:47Speaker 02

  I have a set tip.

• 6:49Pablo Torre?

  What is it?

• 6:50Speaker 02

  It's basically between 15 and 18% depending on size of Uber, on how expensive Uber is.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Over $100, 15%, under $100, 18%.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  That's helpful.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Do you Uber all the time? You do not do it that way?

• 7:09Pablo Torre?

  I do the automated thing. I don't even look. Five stars and whatever the automated option is, I'm saying, give them that.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  It's a difference between me and you, right there.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  And the difference between the three of us is, I never have any interest in rating. You know, every time I make a phone call now, it says, "Rate your phone call." I'm like, "Well, I was in an argument." Does that mean it's a bad phone call? Or are you asking about the quality of it?

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Just hit the "not now." Hit "not now."

• 7:34Speaker 04

  No, I do. Every time. I never, I'd like to be able to hit a thing that says, "Please never ask me to rate, like, post, comment."

• 7:43Pablo Torre?

  Hold on. When I, when I say that we're podcasters, John, the whole thing is that our audience needs to know. Any Uber drivers out there need to know, like, subscribe, five stars.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  However, it would not surprise you to find that my reflex tip at all times is whatever the highest option is.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  So that's about, that's about 22% on, on top of everything. Although, do you now tip anytime you go buy a bagel at H&H? And I love the H&H, shouting out, even though they're not a sponsor, I shouldn't say it. But now, when you get a bagel, there's a place when you do Apple Pay for adding a tip, and I hit "no tip."

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, I feel funny.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  I don't normally tip when I get a bagel.

• 8:25Pablo Torre?

  I don't cosign David's "no tip" on the bagel strategy.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  You tip on, so do you tip on top when you go to a newsstand and buy, you know, a sticker?

• 8:32Pablo Torre?

  I round up.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Rounding up is different than tipping. Rounding up is you're too busy to wait for change.

• 8:38Pablo Torre?

  Well, that's a bit of a motive that you've assessed.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  For me, it's not about the not waiting. It's about, I do not want to carry a bunch of coins in my pocket.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't have coins in my pocket, but...

• 8:52Pablo Torre?

  You just have them in a pool that you dive into after work.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 9:14Pablo Torre?

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• 9:58Pablo Torre?

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• 10:43Pablo Torre?

  Head to dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 10:52Pablo Torre?

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• 11:34Pablo Torre?

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• 12:15Speaker 05

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• 12:45Pablo Torre?

  I think we need to start with ESPN, though. And I say that knowing that John Skipper, to my right here, former president of ESPN, who had to figure out something like the decision that has just been made around the direct-to-consumer product. That is the future of ESPN, a huge part of the Walt Disney Company, which is its app. Its DTC app. Do you want to give the fine print on this?

• 13:08Speaker 02

  I want to give the branding first because, remember, there was the talk of it being flagship, but they didn't like that. So what they announced is their new thing that they've been working on for multiple years, if not multiple CEOs and presidents, what is called the four letters that we all associate and love and associate with the worldwide leader. ESPN. Wait for it. That's the name of it. They called it that.

• 13:31Pablo Torre?

  It's a good name. It's a good name. But we've seen, just before we get into the brass tacks of the numbers and the pricing, like Max.

• 13:41Pablo Torre?

  We hardly knew ye. Like, the name has been messed up actively.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  One of the advantages we enjoyed at ESPN before I got there, while I was there, and since I am not there, is that we have a single brand. Remember ESPN took over the sports on ABC and called it ESPN on ABC.

• 14:07Pablo Torre?

  How hard was that?

• 14:09Speaker 04

  That was painful for the ABC Sports people, right? Great tradition, lots of, Ron Arledge. I mean, ABC Sports was a great branding, Wide World of Sports. But we had decided long ago, at the company, we had one sports brand. And it was highly advantageous as we were competing with the companies that owned AOL Sports and Sports Illustrated and CNN SI and, and this Turner. And this is, this, the idea of having multiple brand names for a single genre is baffling. And it usually has nothing to do with the fact of anything

• 14:49Speaker 04

  other than these Sports Illustrated people don't want to sublimate their name to AOL, nor does AOL want to sublimate their name. Somebody at the top of an organization needs to say, we have one brand name for sports. In our case, it was ESPN, and we were always fortunate to compete against people who had multiple brand names.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Let me talk for a minute about mergers and how that works. So when two companies merge, one of the things, there's two-

• 15:16Pablo Torre?

  When two companies love each other very much.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  No, they don't love each other. They're doing it to try to bolster both of their stock prices. But there's two major discussions that happen. One, which of the CEOs is going to run the merged company? Because you have two CEOs. And two, what's the name of the company going to be?

• 15:33Pablo Torre?

  And the name is how fraught an argument.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  It is major. So I'm going to mention Morgan Stanley very quickly. Morgan Stanley merged with Dean Witter, and it became Morgan Stanley Dean Witter for a minute. And then Dean Witter disappeared, and it's back to Morgan Stanley. Law firms do this where Proscara Rose, there's five names after it, but Proscara Rose. Federal Express became FedEx. People have a way of saying things.

• 16:02Pablo Torre?

  ESPN, to your point, that is what people say. That's what they associate, no matter what ESPN buys or who they merge with. ESPN would always come out on top of that discussion.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  We bought a soccer website in the UK back in, I think, 2000. It was called SoccerNet.com. And I had the great privilege to be in charge of it because I was running ESPN at the time.

• 16:26Pablo Torre?

  Because you love soccer.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  And I said, "Great, we're gonna call this ESPN FC or ESPN Football or ESPN Soccer." And they're like, "Oh, we can't do that. The people who know SoccerNet.com will be upset." They won't be upset. People, they will not be upset. They care about the content, as long as it's not confusing, they have trouble finding it, they don't know what they're getting. They, a better brand is a better brand. I, I, I, the very, my first appearance at ESPN was to start the magazine. They'd started a magazine, and it was called Total Sports.

• 17:00Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I didn't know this.

• 17:01Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 17:01Pablo Torre?

  As a former ESPN The Magazine employee, I didn't realize it was something else.

• 17:04Speaker 04

  It was called Total Sports, and the first thing I said was, "Well, why isn't it called ESPN", which is what we called the magazine. And they said, "Well, because people think of ESPN as a television station. They don't think we have expertise in magazines." And it was all, people want to have their own brand.

• 17:22Pablo Torre?

  Well, hold, I just, but hold on, though, just because I'm trying to now put the pieces together. So, John, is it true that what I am finding out today is that you are responsible for the name ESPN The Magazine?

• 17:33Speaker 04

  No, yes, but it was ESPN The Magazine.

• 17:37Pablo Torre?

  But I'm just saying, like-

• 17:38Speaker 04

  And that was-

• 17:39Pablo Torre?

  He did the comma.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Tongue-in-cheek.

• 17:40Pablo Torre?

  There was no comma. Is there a more, but, yeah, so the tongue-in-cheek part of it, it's just the most clear embodiment of the philosophy you're articulating is the fact that the magazine was [BLEEP] called ESPN The Magazine?

• 17:53Speaker 04

  But it was called by one and all, pretty much ESPN.

• 17:57Pablo Torre?

  Well, so.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  And by the way, ESPN.com, at one point, we took the dot com off. Right? It's a good decision, in my opinion, to call this ESPN. Why try to confuse people? And by the way, that's the marketing. You want ESPN? Here is the best way to get it. Buy our app, get everything, all the bells and whistles, which they keep saying. I'm not sure which bells and which whistles yet.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  I don't know who told Bob Iger what to talk about, but I was shocked at the way he described this. I understand why. They've been building to this and everyone in the market is petrified of CNN Plus. Petrified.

• 18:35Pablo Torre?

  Of what happened.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  They were open for a day.

• 18:38Pablo Torre?

  Of CNN Plus.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Right. And there was a huge bill of that. They were signing talent, there was going to be.

• 18:42Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, there was a lineup of, there was a lineup of shows.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  The whole thing. And I believe, am I wrong, that it was on for a day? Is it, it may be, I'll take the over on a day, but it was not a year. I don't even think it was a month.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  It was brief. I don't think it was a day.

• 18:56Pablo Torre?

  Launched March 29, 2022, shut down April 28, 2022.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  It was almost a month. That's pretty good. My memory is wrong. I thought it was like the next day.

• 19:06Pablo Torre?

  But the question of, and that was not even a reflection of the quality of the shows that they had lined up. It was this larger.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Well, the problem there too was it was a different entity. This new app, streaming service, is just an, is overwhelmingly an aggregation of content you can already get. Either on ESPN Plus or on your cable subscription. There are the so-called bells and whistles that will provide, oh, you know, if you round up, maybe 1% of the value here.

• 19:40Pablo Torre?

  But the difference, but the difference, to be clear, right? If you're a consumer, what ESPN Plus, which has always existed as ESPN standalone app.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  What it did not give you was the stuff that you get as a fan of certainly live events through your cable subscription.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  All the best, well, that's because they couldn't, right? You had deals with the distributors that had requirements as to where else you could put the content they were paying you a lot of money for. Clearly, at this point, they have moved to a place and the cable television universe has declined to a place where ESPN has no choice but to say, we still want to be in business with you, DirecTV, Spectrum, et cetera, et cetera, but we're going to make our content available to our subscribers, to our fans directly if that's the way they want to get it. Now, the compromise is, but if they already have a DirecTV subscription, they get this automatically.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  So they're using that, of course, to say to the distributors, we're not looking to disrupt your business at all.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  It's showing there is barely any business, though. It is showing that the shrinking platform that the commissioner of baseball talked about is true.

• 20:51Speaker 04

  But it's not de minimis. It's certainly not de minimis. Fifty million subscribers at somewhere, for ESPN, 120 million, or 10 times 12, $120 a year for 50 million subscribers is not de minimis. And by the way, that will be-

• 21:10Speaker 02

  But that's going this way.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  It is going that way.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  The graph is going down.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  But the curve of that going down will decline slightly, meaning it will go down slower at some point. Some number of people will just keep the cable up. They just will.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  They're all going to die.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  They will die eventually.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  So I don't view that as right. It's not like half-life and half-life.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  Well, but it would be interesting-

• 21:31Pablo Torre?

  But the steepness of the curve, though, John, is the question that informed, when do we finally launch the DTC option, which is something that you could have done, but clearly it took until 2025 to do it.

• 21:41Speaker 04

  Why would you do it when you have 90 million, 80 million, 70 million subscribers? It still would be an interesting mathematical- parlay to know when the lines cross that more people pay them directly than get their subscription through somebody else. I would argue this is not going to be this year, next year, or the year after. It will be several years before the lines cross and more people and more money.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  They've got projections. They've got projections. When you unveil an app like this internally, Bob Iger is not allowing this to happen without a financial plan of what's going to happen. How many people are going to pay $29.99 a month? How many people are going to pay for the whole year and pay the 300 bucks that it costs to get it? What are you getting? And what we heard from Jimmy Pataro and Bob Iger is, hey, you're going to get ESPN as though you had it through cable, as though you had it. It's actually ESPN. Well, I'm a Hulu Live guy. I get ESPN. I'm not sure why I need to spend. It's like to me, a venue where it's like paying extra for a site to have stuff that I already can get. Yeah, it's a little more convenient one place, but for $29.99 a month, I don't

• 22:51Speaker 02

  think I need it, which is why they went to the, hey, there's some bells and whistles. You get personalized SportsCenter and all such other stuff.

• 22:59Speaker 04

  Of course, I'm skeptical of bells and whistles. You know, you'll be able to sync up your bet, your bets you've made on this game and see on the screen whether you're winning or not. That is of fairly de minimis interest to most sports fans. Again, people have been talking about camera angles, special mega cast for a long time, and mostly people care about the game as it is played and produced on a linear network. I mean, that is the why sports retain so much of its value. Now, they may come up with some things eventually, but it actually, you also have the problem of every subscriber who cancels their subscription

• 23:43Speaker 04

  To Spectrum and buys, um, and buys the Disney app. I don't, I'd have to, you'd have to do some projections, but my guess would be those subscribers are, have less net income per unit than the subscribers who are on the cable system. On the cable system, you have no cost for customer service. You don't have to bill anybody. You don't have to have any bells and whistles. You just-

• 24:10Speaker 02

  You got the cable man who never comes.

• 24:12Speaker 04

  Well, they're not paying for the cable man.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess we are.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, you are. ESPN's not paying. It's a beautiful model to get 10, 12 bucks a month and it is pure profit.

• 24:23Pablo Torre?

  But the beautiful model, I keep on, it's just funny. There are still people out in the world who need to listen to this show we do together called The Sporting Class, clearly because what John said once is the thing that I keep on repeating to people and they're flabbergasted. The idea that ESPN, at its peak, made more than the rest of the Walt Disney Company, combined because of the beautiful model that John is describing. And so the question about the pricing schedule must be, in this era, by the way, in which we're just tossing around terms like venue, the ill-fated skinny bundle we've talked about previously, and Max, the ill-fated branding for HBO, which got just this week switched back. In that era, how do you price this thing? And so David alluded to some of the pricing of it, right? $299 per year in addition to a select plan,

• 25:08Pablo Torre?

  which offers all content available on ESPN Plus for $11.99 per month or $119 per year. There's some fine print there. But, you know, if you go with Disney Plus and Hulu introductory offer, all three services, $29.99 for the first year. We're getting into the language of, as I used to hear as a New Yorker, you know, the triple play is the deal, like these jingles from cable companies. We are in that era for DTC now.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Well, we're now, bundling is my favorite word because what we talked about was breaking the bundle and having people go à la carte and pay for what they want. That was the whole argument of why people were cutting their cord. I don't want to pay for a baseball game that I don't want to watch. Now, what all these companies are jumping over each other to do is to bundle and give the consumer an offer and the ability to get more than one streaming service. You put them all together and you pay a price per month and what it leads to is-

• 26:02Speaker 04

  You pay more.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  You end up paying more. And so it's been one of the great grifts. It it it makes me so happy be from a from a stockholder standpoint is that people have not yet figured out that they're paying more per month. And there we almost got caught just now with the NFL schedule release.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  Why?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Because it was announced where the NFL is going to have games on YouTube and games here, games there. Someone added up how much it would be to get every NFL game. And it became a lot of money. And I got nervous because if people start paying attention to that, there's going to be a bit of a kickback.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  And and this is from the league that said they were going to be free for as long as possible.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Well, that

• 26:46Speaker 04

  And they were, and they were, and that was a fine place to be at the time. But there's a reason it's 2995. The cable operators are paying probably at this point 11, 12 bucks for ESPN 10, 11, 12 bucks. 2999, by the way. Yeah, 2999. Four cents, very relevant. So they're already having to charge more money to get to the same economics on the customer. And get ready for something else which you will love, which is, and they've already done it on on ESPN Plus. If you want to, uh, if you want to watch the really high profile UFC match Yep, yep, yep. Or a high profile boxing match, you got to pay extra.

• 27:28Speaker 04

  I will bet you this app has the capability to say, you know, we would love to give you that Alabama Georgia game free, but we've decided this year we're going to charge an extra 499 for that game.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Well, that's called pay per view.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Pay per view. It's called pay per view, but it's going to be good business. But you're going to, people think pay per view has to be the Tom Brady wrote, well, it wasn't, but it ain't cost. It has to be a big boxing match, a big UFC match. We've talked on this show before that the Super Bowl will be a pay per view event. This is John's most longstanding take, is that the money there No, I got other longstanding takes that were wrong, so this could be as well. But I'm consistent in my The phone, ESPN the phone, another longstanding take. But you're going as as they struggle with delivering the growth.

• 28:17Speaker 04

  The to shareholders, they're gonna say, how else can we make money? Oh, we have these people captive. We have their information. We can send them something.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Can we talk about the information about about about data as well?

• 28:29Speaker 04

  Well, data is interesting and it will be. People will overestimate how valuable it's gonna be. You still don't get much data from having somebody on app. You can ask them to give you some. Who are your favorite teams? You know, where do you live? How much money do you have? Maybe you'll give it to them, maybe you won't. They can do implied data. They can take the outside data, put it against their files and find out where people live, where likely, what kind of cars they have. But then what are you gonna do with it?

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Sell it.

• 28:59Speaker 04

  I guess you would do better.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Pointed advertising.

• 29:03Speaker 04

  You'll go to more return on investment advertising. It will work somewhat, but it.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  That is everything, though. Everyone's trying to collect.

• 29:12Pablo Torre?

  It's what Netflix has.

• 29:13Speaker 04

  Everything when you have a lot of data. Data is not worth very much at all when you have a little data. And you have and it's worth a lot if you have a scalable and if you have a mechanism to deliver more personalized ads. Nobody delivers completely personalized ads. Everybody's had the phenomenon of talking about going to take a Greek cruise and suddenly you get ads. So there you're getting a personal ad.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Well, because your phone's listening to you?

• 29:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  I get that every day. Maybe I assume we all do now.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  But cut that off and you don't get personalized ads. You still get the same ads.

• 29:52Pablo Torre?

  You want that?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Oh, I get I get the best chargers for my devices. I got things to help with cords that are all tangled. I get great cargo shorts and undies. It is the ads that get pushed to me.

• 30:03Pablo Torre?

  I am so worried about David Samson's OPSEC, as they say in the Defense Department.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  I'm not at all. I would just also add that with the projections, I don't want to get off that if you don't mind, because when Iger pitches this, there's an investment here, quite a bit of infrastructure investment, there is an assumption that there will be X number of subscribers and there's then a growth rate that's implied right onto this first number. And you have to get back to analysts, you have to get back to Wall Street, you have to get back to your board. And if they don't get the crossover that you're talking about with people signing up for this flagship, that's how, and we're going to call it flagship even though it's.

• 30:43Pablo Torre?

  Well, let's not call it flagship.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  So we call it ESPN DCC? Is that what you're going to call it for short?

• 30:49Pablo Torre?

  ESPN the app.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  If not enough people purchase the app and become subscribers on a monthly and annual basis because they don't feel as though they're getting any incremental benefit to what they already have, this app is not going to work. And it will be gone.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, the app, in my opinion, the app will work. I mean, they will.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  How long would you give it? How long before you have to show your board that it worked?

• 31:14Speaker 04

  At least three to five years.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  I was saying two years in this day and age is where my head is.

• 31:19Pablo Torre?

  Let's walk through this because for me, it's very obvious that every company, it's the most obvious thing that ESPN was going to do this at some point, such that even John, I assume John, do you remember actually, because I want to give a bit of the logic behind the scenes here, do you remember when this was first presented to you as a possibility that, hey, this is something we should consider?

• 31:39Speaker 04

  The first year that cable subscriptions went down was 2012. So in 2012 would have been the first time that there began to be discussions about if this declines, what is going to replace it? And you were already having things that were starting as apps, right, as businesses, that we were aware that that's another way to do business. And I think that they are actually have made about the right call on timing, that doing it before this, they would have just given money away. But now they're, they have to because you've reached a point in the pay television universe, particularly when you look at it age-wise, right?

• 32:19Speaker 04

  So lots and lots of young people, the most valuable people that advertisers want are giving up their cable subs, so it's not just the-

• 32:27Speaker 02

  They're called never quarters now, actually. Because they never, they're not cutting their cords, they actually now never even had them to start with.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  But they're more valuable customers, and now there's enough of them that they have to do it now, but their timing is pretty good. And I think they will get a, this uptake will not be enormous. I don't think you're gonna see 5 million subs at the end of one year. The only person really who needs this is the person who still has a cable television subscription and wants to get rid of it. Or the never quarter, you call them never quarters?

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Never quarters. Did you, you've heard that before? Somehow I hadn't. Okay, I may have it wrong then. Because you're way cooler than I am.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  No, I think it's right, but, but they, you, you've got enough of those, they have to do it now. It will work over time. They're gonna be successful, the only question is how successful.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  And how quickly.

• 33:21Speaker 04

  And how quickly.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  And how big a runway did Disney give them?

• 33:24Speaker 04

  And how satisfactory is where they get to for the shareholders? And if they don't get to a place that they become a target for someone else to acquire them, right? Because it's judged that they would be more valuable in a different aggregation of assets.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  The reason why you started in 2012 is that what your company realized is that your revenue was going down and your expenses had no avenue to go down because leagues were not giving you a break on the rights deals, and you were stuck in long-term contracts. And if you have fixed expenses with declining revenue, that's it. That's how a business goes under. So those discussions have to start, and here we are 13 years later. So I would argue that ESPN, it's not the perfect time because they have had declining results in that area. Now they've made up for it.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  They've had declining results, they have not had declining revenue. The, the decline in subscriptions until very recently-

• 34:21Speaker 04

  Was under the increase in per subscriber rate. ESPN was getting 7% increases every year in what these cable operators were paying them. Until very recently, the subscriptions weren't declining 7%. The more important fact, which you just mentioned, was the rights fees, on the other hand, were going up. Now, rights fees in a long-term contract are only going up 2%, 3%, or 4%. So you're fine. Subscriptions go down 3%. Rates, your rights fees go up 3%.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Well, it's eating at your margin, though. It's eating at your margin. I mean, I understand you're saying you're fine.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  You're correct. And the margins were declining even back in 2012, 13, 14, 15.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  And that's what they'd say on Wall Street. I mean, that's when you talk about why stock prices are not going up the way they should, it's because what John just said, when you have declining margins, that means you have declining earnings per share.

• 35:28Pablo Torre?

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• 36:12Pablo Torre?

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• 36:41Pablo Torre?

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• 37:25Pablo Torre?

  and I am feeling ready to push through to the end of the day. For a better way to stay hydrated, go to instanthydration.com/ptfo and use my promo code PTFO for over 40% off your first subscription order. It's Instant Hydration's best offer available. That's instanthydration.com/ptfo, promo code PTFO. Cozy makes furniture for the part of life that nobody warns you about. Getting the couch into the room, making the room feel like you, then actually living on it. Spills and all. With Cozy, your home can grow with you by adapting to new spaces, new styles, and every era of your life. It's modular furniture, so you can actively adjust your furniture to fit any space. It's all built around making the entire home comfortable and easy

• 38:10Pablo Torre?

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• 38:49Pablo Torre?

  I think the way that I have come to understand how you guys see this in our perpetual quest to explain as rich guys only fans, what it's like in these board meetings is, is the arrow green or red? Is it growing or is it going down? And managed decline has been certainly like an undeniable phenomenon since 2012 is the date John gave us. But at the same time, when it comes to the, and this is now cleanup, I'll Samson, cord never's.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Oh, I got it opposite.

• 39:23Pablo Torre?

  Very, very.

• 39:25Speaker 04

  It's probably true that most of them were never cords either.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Never quarters?

• 39:29Pablo Torre?

  Never quarters.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  They were never quarters either.

• 39:33Pablo Torre?

  It's a funny old person thing to flip the term that describes a young person.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Guilty.

• 39:39Pablo Torre?

  But I, but I.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Thank you for that cleanup. Really important stuff there, Pablo.

• 39:44Speaker 04

  Even if ESPN has some decline, it still is a significant contributor to the bottom line. And the reason they build a theme park, which they, I think they just announced as well in the Middle East is because they believe that will allow them to show overall, because people buy Disney stock, there is no ESPN stock. So you really have to look at it. And I know you know this as a collection of assets, some of which may have a green arrow, some of which may have a red arrow. That may change year to year, right?

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Do you think Abu Dhabi is getting a Disney park because there's a lot of people in Abu Dhabi want to go to a Disney park? I'm, I read that news totally differently and we didn't talk about this, but I assumed that it was some sort of other deal involving the government, involving Disney, which gave them quite a bit of incentive to build a park.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  I would assume that, where are they building it?

• 40:43Speaker 02

  I thought, did I get it wrong?

• 40:44Pablo Torre?

  Abu Dhabi.

• 40:46Speaker 04

  I would assume the government of Abu Dhabi is paying them a very handsome amount of money to build a park there because they want the. The brand halo that they get from having a Disney park. You build a park there, you are basically giving the Disney uh, imprimatur to the government of that country and they paid for it.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Much like getting a plane.

• 41:10Pablo Torre?

  Well, speaking of the planes, right? Like, that's part of, it's part of the whole Middle Eastern strategy.

• 41:16Speaker 04

  It's a little different, I would say.

• 41:17Pablo Torre?

  Well, well, well.

• 41:17Speaker 04

  It's a little different, I would say. The, I would say that the president's job is not to grow his personal wealth. It is the job of a CEO to grow the wealth of his company.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  So this is a great point you're making, because therefore you're saying it's fine when companies are doing business in places where it is less than, shall we say, moral. You're totally fine with that.

• 41:40Speaker 04

  No, I didn't say I was totally fine. I just said, there is a, there is a hierarchy or a pyramid of egregious business. And an individual getting a plane when he exit office. If, if the CEO of the company was getting a plane from Abu Dhabi, that would become his personal plane upon retirement, which is what will happen no matter what the president says. He will get that plane. It will be part of his library.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Do you not think that Bob Iger will have use of a private plane? As part of his severance package?

• 42:15Speaker 04

  I, I expect that the consideration given from the Abu Dhabi, uh, from Abu Dhabi to Disney will not go into Bob Iger's pocket other than the compensation he gets for doing a good job.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Other than that?

• 42:29Speaker 04

  That's different than taking, yeah, you, you think Bob Iger get away with taking a plane?

• 42:34Speaker 02

  I'm not saying he's literally putting his pocket. I'm telling you that the deal with Abu Dhabi is not because Disney did market research around the world and said, oh, my God, I've got it. We need a park in Abu Dhabi.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  Right now, the world of all business is rushing to the Middle East because they will spend money for reasons other than seeing a direct financial return. And they have a lot of it.

• 42:58Pablo Torre?

  Well, we saw, by the way, the world of politics and business converge on the Middle East uh, as part of this whole week in which it turns out uh, that when, in this case at least, when the cable television ecosystem is drying up, you gotta find some places where there is ability to make profit, to increase earnings. And so the plane thing, what I was gonna say briefly is that, look, the premise of it is, uh, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, these airports which are very nice and have very nice planes, admittedly, right? That's part of the marketing for those regimes. And so they're saying, hey, you want to come from Shanghai? Hong Kong? To a Disney park? Guess what you can do?

• 43:41Pablo Torre?

  And this very beautiful, high-class, luxurious thing that also may or may not just not include, I don't know, some unsavory, let's say, less-than-American ideals that you're sort of like flying over, quite literally.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  I view Disney, I associate the brand. The reason this surprised me is my view of Disney is very much all-American. It's very Disney pure. Disney, they don't want it, they're upset with all the McAfee stuff, like they don't want any part of that. And then they're building a park in Abu Dhabi. It blew my mind until I started doing the math.

• 44:15Pablo Torre?

  Well, it's also just omnipresent. Like, we, again, we have to, this is a separate episode, truly, and we should do it. And I am doing episodes about this too, but just like the Middle East and its role as the bankroller of media, entertainment, sports. This is, Disney is part of this true week of stuff in which everybody is getting into business in a way that's obvious.

• 44:52Pablo Torre?

  I want to get to Michael Jordan. Can we do that? David is not interested.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 44:58Pablo Torre?

  You're not interested?

• 44:59Speaker 02

  No, I mean, listen, the NBA has made its bed with new partners. There's new TV deals that start next year. NBC has really played it up, that they're back in the business. They're calling out the 1990s with the round ball rock theme, which is John Tesh, my favorite guy. I love you, Connie Selica, but...

• 45:19Pablo Torre?

  What was that shout-out?

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Connie Selica is...

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Gil Gerard's ex-wife, who's now married to John Tesh. She was in The Greatest American Hero.

• 45:28Speaker 04

  That is-

• 45:28Speaker 02

  Hotel. Am I the only-

• 45:30Speaker 04

  The man has got some information.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Okay. Uh, that's just called puberty, but okay. And so-

• 45:38Pablo Torre?

  Google this person?

• 45:39Speaker 02

  You've never heard of Connie Selica? I mean, we can edit this out, because I'm so upset right now.

• 45:43Pablo Torre?

  I don't think we're gonna edit anything out.

• 45:45Speaker 04

  Let's move on. Michael Jordan?

• 45:46Speaker 02

  So, Michael Jordan got- he is part of the 90s, sort of-

• 45:50Speaker 04

  Well, wait, he's arguably, I would argue, the greatest player in the history of the NBA.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  And the second-

• 45:57Speaker 04

  Potentially the most popular player in the history of the NBA.

• 46:00Pablo Torre?

  And merely the second most relevant Jordan in the world of North Carolina. Um, these days, John. Notably, I'm sparing you from my own investigation there.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  And it's a coup to get him. Uh, how good he'll be, I don't know. But if you are sitting around a room going, "We now have the NBA. Who do we want on the air?" You'd say, "Michael Jordan?" The first thing you would get around the table is we're never getting.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  He's not gonna be on the air.

• 46:25Speaker 04

  Well, he's a special contributor. Isn't that what he keeps in a special contributor?

• 46:29Pablo Torre?

  What is that? So, I wanna get into the room, though, right? In which, okay, guess what? You've acquired this rights deal for billions of dollars, and you gotta staff it with, uh, you know, the-

• 46:40Speaker 02

  They're not staffing it with Jordan. They did a contract where he has to make several appearances. He taped something for the up-fronts. He didn't even show up at the up-fronts. They did a tape of unveiling that.

• 46:49Pablo Torre?

  That's a funny signal.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  So, to me, you have to manage expectations.

• 46:53Pablo Torre?

  We bought this hologram of Michael Jordan.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  Look, it's marketing. If, if nothing else, it will be successful marketing that they are getting associated. We just talked about the Abu Dhabi wanting to be associated with the Walt Disney brand. They wanna be associated with the Jordan brand.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Do you think his first contribution would be him giving an interview to somebody? Or doing the interview of somebody? If you're a special contributor, you're working on stories.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  It will be the former. They will, they will be interviewing him. We're gonna have something that Michael Jordan is gonna say about the upcoming game.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  I don't think Michael Jordan.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  Ten minutes on who he thinks is gonna win the championship this year.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 04

  Do I?

• 47:36Speaker 02

  He's gonna meet with advertisers? He's gonna be, it's part of the Tom Brady Fox deal. Well, I would assume, depending on the number. See, with Brady, we got the number, and part of the number was not just being the number one analyst. It was he had to do up front. He had to do ambassador work. We have to see what special contributor means. If he's getting seven million a year, that's one thing. If he's getting thirty million a year, that's a wholly different thing. Right.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  Uh, it'd be hard for me to understand why he would do it for seven million dollars a year. Isn't he a billionaire?

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Yep. You become a billionaire by making money.

• 48:09Speaker 04

  Well, I realize, but.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  Let's aggregate that clip. Ha-chu, ha-chu. I mean, why would you see? Someone offers you seven million a year, you're like, oh no, sorry. I mean, you're talking to the guy who, actually, yes.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  You're not talking to a billionaire. Uh, but if somebody said to me, you know, for, for, for ninety-six dollars a month, I would like you to do something, I would say no. And this is probably about, seven million would be about ninety-six dollars a month for Michael Jordan.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Oh, I love that argument. That's my favorite. The argument of, oh, when he gambles on ten thousand dollars on a golf hole, he make, he has enough money that's the equivalent of you and I on a weekend gambling five dollars. I get that math. It is the correct math.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  It is not how very well to do people think.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  So, I'm very well to do people. To do nothing, you would do it. Why would you turn down? That's like an Uber. Per month, free.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  Well.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  One, it's an interesting supposition that I'd be offered. If somebody would offer me ninety-six dollars to do nothing a month. And I know you'll be surprised, but I wouldn't take it. Why would I take money to do nothing?

• 49:10Speaker 02

  It's my goal.

• 49:14Pablo Torre?

  David would love to be a special contributor to any organization out there that wants a no-show contribution.

• 49:19Speaker 04

  You know what, I'd like to offer my services right now as a special contributor to anybody listening who is prepared to pay

• 49:28Speaker 04

  a thousand dollars a month for no contributors.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  So your number's not 96, it's a thousand. Now we're just quibbling.

• 49:33Speaker 04

  I've always said, you asked me about the Middle East one time, and I said, everybody is prepared at some number, mine is a trillion right now.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  So your number's a thousand though, you said it was a trillion.

• 49:42Pablo Torre?

  We have an ongoing chart, by the way. The way that people have stock charts is, what would we do to sell out to the Middle East? Currently, the bar is at one trillion dollars. That may adjust over time.

• 49:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  We already know he'll do something for a thousand dollars. 96, not, not good enough.

• 49:57Pablo Torre?

  There's a hell of a negotiation that's happening right now.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  My only point was to make the point that I wa- I always wonder why people do things that are not material to their lives.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  Cause you add up little things, they become material. That's like saying, why do something nice for someone that's not big gesture? Because a lot of small gestures add up and become noticeable to the person who's doing it.

• 50:20Speaker 04

  I would-

• 50:20Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't know this because I don't do those gestures, but I'm just saying that's what I've heard.

• 50:24Speaker 04

  Interesting philosophical theory, Tori. You have to balance it against the use of your ever-dwindling time. And Michael Jordan is not a baby. And to me, it would have to be a material amount of money for him to spend any time doing it.

• 50:41Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, Baby Jordan, Harold Minor, a different contract negotiation.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  He doesn't know who that is. What a great call.

• 50:47Pablo Torre?

  Come on, we don't remember Baby Jordan.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Number 45 for the Miami Heat, Harold Minor?

• 50:50Pablo Torre?

  Harold.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  I don't know if he wore 45, but it just feels like he wore 45. Though maybe that was Jordan's number when he came out of retirement.

• 50:56Speaker 04

  My name was Minor, I would take 49 as my jersey number.

• 51:00Pablo Torre?

  So perfectly, in the way that David Samson flip-flopped never quarters and cordnevers, Harold Minor is number 32.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  32?

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  That's funny. Not an accident.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  No. I'll withdraw.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Thank you. That's the thing you can do.

• 51:22Speaker 04

  Was a long time strategy of mine.

• 51:24Pablo Torre?

  Incredible restraint. The whole idea of we want to get our dream hire in here, and that would be Michael Jordan. I'm just curious, John, was there a white whale for you in terms of as the president of ESPN, the guy who made billion dollar decisions? Is there someone that you wanted to hire as a special contributor that you couldn't get? And he's already laughing.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  Well, I have to say at ESPN, we weren't big in, our problem was not, we didn't want special contributors. We weren't looking for headlines. We were looking for people to work and it was frequently why I could not get some of the best talent into ESPN, right? Mr. Barkley was the best in the business at NBA and we wanted to get Charles Barkley, but he would have had, by the way, he just complained the other day, this is in the news the other day, is Charles Barkley said, don't think you're going to get me in that ESPN car wash. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing SportsCenter. Nobody's going to tell me what to do.

• 52:32Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, so I get the quote as you keep on there.

• 52:34Speaker 04

  I'm trying to work less versus more, I believe you said. And yes, we had lots of people we wanted to get that we couldn't get. First of all, at the time, we were kind of cheap, right? We paid lower scale because we had a lot of people and we did, I tried very hard to get Shaq when he was available, tried to convince him that it'd be his show on ESPN. It wouldn't be, he wouldn't be the second fiddle to Charles Barkley. And David Levy, good friend of mine, went to him and said, you know, I'm going to pay you as much, probably more than John Skipper will, and you won't have to do anything except

• 53:14Speaker 04

  show up, start talking, and, and that's all you have to do. And by the way, Shaq, who was very funny about it, basically told me, I ran into him one time, he's like, I wasn't going to come over there. You were going to put me up. And he was right. We gave him an offer. It included SportsCenter appearances. It included whatever the early morning show at the time was appearances. It included, you know, post game, pre game. You got to show up, you got to rehearse. And he said, why would I do that? And by the way, he was right. I've not been able to get those kind of offers. I did not say I was immune to very material offers that did not require a lot of heavy lifting.

• 53:56Pablo Torre?

  To quote Charles Barkley on the record, quote, "They're not gonna work me like a dog and not pay me. They'll have me on ESPN 1, 2, 3, ESPN News, ESPN U, ESPN Radio, and then come up with that puny little check. They're gonna have me on ESPN DeBorto saying, 'Muy bien gracias.'"

• 54:16Speaker 02

  He really said that?

• 54:17Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  I would like to point out to Charles, because Sir Charles may not understand the concept of licensing. His contract will remain with Warner Brothers Discovery. A little nugget here for you, Pablo. He's not going to ESPN. He's not an employee of ESPN. He has nothing to do with ESPN. ESPN is licensing Inside the NBA.

• 54:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Licensing it.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  I think that that was clear.

• 54:38Pablo Torre?

  That was an earlier quote. That was an earlier quote by Barkley, by the way.

• 54:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought this was just this week.

• 54:43Speaker 04

  No, this?

• 54:44Pablo Torre?

  No, this? He's been saying this stuff.

• 54:45Speaker 04

  He did say it again.

• 54:46Pablo Torre?

  This was 2016 that he said that quote.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 54:49Pablo Torre?

  But he's been saying a version of that.

• 54:51Speaker 04

  He said it this week.

• 54:51Pablo Torre?

  Yes, this week.

• 54:52Speaker 04

  He said it this week.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  I'm sorry. I thought you were reading this week's quote. Why would you read a quote from 2016?

• 54:56Pablo Torre?

  Because he's been saying it for over a decade.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  But there wasn't a license deal. That's when he had not signed his big deal with Turner yet.

• 55:02Pablo Torre?

  But that was the Shaq story.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 55:04Speaker 04

  So he was also...

• 55:05Pablo Torre?

  David, stop trying to host the show.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  I'm not trying to host the show. I'm trying to understand what the hell you're talking about.

• 55:08Speaker 04

  So Barkley did say it this week, and he said it in the context of complaining that it had not been made clear to him what the relationship between Inside the NBA and ESPN. So he was basically saying...

• 55:23Speaker 02

  He lied. It had been made clear to him, by the way.

• 55:25Speaker 04

  That I'm not privy to, but I would not disagree. And what he was saying was, "I'm unhappy they haven't made it clear to me. And by the way, they haven't made it unclear what my obligations are to ESPN, and I'm not gonna do what they always do, which is do the car wash, go along all the shows, which is what people used to do."

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Can I help Sir Charles? His obligation is exactly as that is outlined in his Turner contract. Those are the obligations. It is not that his contract is being assigned to ESPN. It is not. I think he connected this week...

• 55:55Pablo Torre?

  Charles Barkley once said, "I got misquoted in my own autobiography." I don't think he's necessarily reading the fine print on anything.

• 56:00Speaker 04

  Well, whether he is or not, he also has a great reputation as a character...

• 56:09Speaker 04

  Nonconformist, non-authoritative. So he's just being true to his brand there. That he's not controllable. It's good for him. Even if he knows exactly what he has to do, it's good for his soul to say, "Nobody tells me what to do."

• 56:29Pablo Torre?

  Charles Barkley, beyond sounding like people that we may know or like and love in our own lives. He does play a game, Charles does, called "Who He Play For", in which he doesn't know the answer to any of those questions. And it seems like maybe David is saying that applies to his own employment.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  It is called what?

• 56:46Pablo Torre?

  "Who He Play For." They show him a picture of, or rather, a name or a jerseyless player, and they say, "Who does he play for?" And he does not know.

• 56:54Speaker 04

  I worked one time, for a couple of years at Us Magazine, and we had a game played, Alive or Dead, which is you chose somebody's picture, and it is shockingly hard.

• 57:06Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  I had Lorraine Bracco on that list until I watched the most recent Nona movie with Vince Vaughn on Netflix. And I said, "Oh, my God, I got that wrong."

• 57:15Pablo Torre?

  I just had to double-check. Connie Selica.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Don't say it.

• 57:21Pablo Torre?

  Alive and more than that, to quote the characters we've been talking about. I just want to apologize to Connie Selica. I was not familiar with your game.

• 57:33Speaker 04

  What?

• 57:34Speaker 02

  I don't want to surround.

• 57:35Pablo Torre?

  Withdrawn, as they say.

• 57:38Speaker 04

  Remind me who Connie Selica was.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  The essence of beauty.

• 57:43Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 57:44Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 57:45Pablo Torre?

  I think it's probably time to stop podcasting.

• 57:49Speaker 04

  Wow. And how was that manifested? Is she an actress?

• 57:53Speaker 02

  Yes. I listed the thing she was on. Pablo, you have a ding in your table and a mark. One of the shows that I've shown you this.

• 58:02Pablo Torre?

  If you've been listening and not watching on YouTube, you've made a mistake for lots of reasons. But David has identified what I now identify as a pockmark on the table.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  And a scratch.

• 58:13Pablo Torre?

  And a scratch.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  It's got to be repainted.

• 58:14Pablo Torre?

  Was that you, John?

• 58:15Speaker 02

  It's incredibly distracting. I don't think so. It looks like a scratch. Someone scratched it. One of your guests, I assume, on your award-winning show.

• 58:25Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  This is inexcusable right here, this mark, though.

• 58:28Pablo Torre?

  Yep.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  Anyway, we'll talk about it after the show.

• 58:30Pablo Torre?

  I feel like we just did it.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 58:33Pablo Torre?

  John?

• 58:33Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 58:34Pablo Torre?

  David?

• 58:34Speaker 02

  Happy to be here.

• 58:35Pablo Torre?

  Love podcasting.

• 58:39Pablo Torre?

  Goodbye.

• 58:51Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Rachel Miller Howard, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tumanello, and Juliet Warren. Our studio engineering by RG Systems. Our sound design by NGW Post. Our theme song, as always, is by John Bravo. And we will talk to you next time.

• 59:32Speaker 05

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• 59:56Speaker 06

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• 1:00:42Speaker 08

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