The Sporting Class: How the NBA's Masters of the Universe Box Each Other Out

Franchise valuations are going up, up, up — and the first $10 billion team can't be far away. But inside the owners' meetings, though, generational warfare is underway: Can A-Rod snag the Timberwolves from the iron grip of an 83-year-old billionaire? Will the Celtics make private equity sexy? And how long until every NBA game is on national TV? Pablo Torre & The Expiring Assets (aka John Skipper and David Samson with a cold) are back to appraise Gollum's ring and stare into James Dolan's all-seeing Eye of Seventh Avenue. • Previously: How the Billion-Dollar War to Own the Timberwolves Went Nuclear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmOkcQwZ-s8 • 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.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  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. 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?

• 0:42Pablo Torre?

  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. Offer not valid for delivery.

• 1:09Speaker 01

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• 1:54Pablo 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. It's used by sales teams of all sizes, from small businesses to larger

• 2:39Pablo Torre?

  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. 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 going to find out what this sound is.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  It's Pablo Torre and the expiring assets coming to your club now.

• 3:16Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  You're listening to DraftKings Network.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  How you feel, David?

• 3:37Speaker 04

  I feel okay, John, thank you.

• 3:40Pablo Torre?

  That's it? Just a flat okay, John, thank you.

• 3:43Speaker 04

  Negative, so I'm happy to be, I'm happy I'm not on antibiotics. I just live in a Petri dish.

• 3:49Pablo Torre?

  David Samson has a cold, John, as Gay Talese once wrote.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:54Pablo Torre?

  And all must bend to his, to his will.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Though.

• 4:00Speaker 04

  It's not the cold issue, guys.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  I believe Frank Sinatra was quite grumpy about it. And our friend David is not grumpy.

• 4:08Pablo Torre?

  Oh, there is a smile. There is a smile.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  No, I'm not grumpy. I have a, I have a golf ball in my throat. I'm not grumpy and I don't like being swabbed. I don't know if you've ever been swabbed. It is extremely unpleasant, uncomfortable, and requires a pre-Listerine situation. I just don't like it.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  So you mean swabbed on your throat?

• 4:29Speaker 04

  On your tonsil.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. When I was a kid, um, we would go to Dr. Jacob Leonard. And Dr. Jacob Leonard could cure your sore throat immediately. I do not think it's legal anymore. He would put what was called paragoric, which is an opiate, on a swab and swab your throat. And you'd be like, damn, I'm well.

• 4:53Pablo Torre?

  Did your country doctor take this out of a suitcase that he carried around?

• 4:58Speaker 02

  I do not know. I believe paragoric was legal at the time. Uh, and in fact, it was not unusual.

• 5:06Pablo Torre?

  Okay, I've, I've, I've found.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  If you found paragoric, it was legal at one point and I used to, you'd get, it is, my mom would get, put it on my thumb. Uh, when I was a little tiny baby, so I'd go to sleep.

• 5:19Pablo Torre?

  So, so paragoric, for, for those not familiar, as I am unfamiliar, a mixture of opium powder and ethanol.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  You put that on your throat, man, you feel great.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  Dr. Jacob Leonard Sackler, family practitioner.

• 5:38Pablo Torre?

  I, I, my, my, my Google first, uh, hit on paragoric legal question mark brings me to the North Carolina General Assembly's website. Um, and here we, here we learned together that paragoric may be dispensed at retail as permitted by federal law or administrative regulation without a prescription only by a registered pharmacist and no other person, agency, or employee may dispense paragoric USP even if under the direct supervision of a pharmacist. Um, so, you know.

• 6:09Speaker 04

  It explains almost everything.

• 6:11Pablo Torre?

  Feels like an active investigation continues.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Well, this is a long time ago.

• 6:16Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  I haven't sucked my thumb since the 50s.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  I sucked my thumb last night, actually, in the fetal position.

• 6:27Pablo Torre?

  Relatedly paragoric is used to relieve diarrhea.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  There you go. Get your throat swabbed. It feels great. And get rid of your diarrhea. So I'm surprised to find that the topic of torpedo bats is not on the agenda today.

• 6:45Pablo Torre?

  Oh, David, I can only imagine the torpedo bat sized lump in his throat upon learning what he'd not get to discuss with us.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Well, I'm totally fine. There's plenty of other outlets at Metal Arc Media, thanks to the great company you all have. There's plenty of places. We did it on Dan's show, did it on Nothing Personal. I wouldn't expect to discuss torpedoes with you two, but I'd be more than happy to. I did get caught this morning, I should say, and I was trying to do many things at once while driving. It's a terrible idea. But there was a segment where it was said by two very reputable journalists for a worldwide leader of sports network. And the segment was the torpedo bats have been banned by MLB. And so I felt I needed to pull over, knowing I had a time issue with this show, because if that's true, that is immediate news, like breaking news immediately. And it turns out it has to be true.

• 7:39Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, what David is referring to there, which I just realized now, is that he was probably scanning his timeline, came across the PTI April Fools A Block, in which they declared that the torpedo bats were banned. A thing they do on April Fools.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  Pablo, I pulled over driving back from the swab doctor, because I thought that I would have to get prepared to do an immediate show. Because they are absolutely worthy. They're not going to spread misinformation. These are your guys, Tony and Michael. And as I was preparing the show in my head and getting ready to call Coka, I called my friend at the commissioner's office and I said, have I got to go live on this?

• 8:28Pablo Torre?

  You can't.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  By the way, if there's anybody on April the first you should be careful of on the Worldwide Leader, it would be Tony and Mike.

• 8:39Pablo Torre?

  They've only been doing it for 20 years, but you know. John, the more that David Samson being alive is a prerequisite for many of the things I want to accomplish in my life, the more I worry that I've hitched my wagon in any way to a guy who pulled his car over because he couldn't distinguish between April Fool's joke and reality.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  So you're happy you hitched your wagon because I'm not gonna text and drive and I'm not gonna, I wanna focus.

• 9:10Pablo Torre?

  I would just like my wagon to not have to take pit stops because the wagon is driven by a total fool.

• 9:16Speaker 04

  Thank you. That's great.

• 9:19Pablo Torre?

  Hope you're feeling better.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Get some paragoric on that throat. I'm telling you, you'll feel great.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  Happy April Fool's Day, gentlemen.

• 9:45Pablo Torre?

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• 10:26Pablo Torre?

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• 11:09Pablo Torre?

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• 11:24Pablo Torre?

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• 12:07Pablo Torre?

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• 12:46Speaker 05

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• 13:17Pablo Torre?

  I am glad to be reminded occasionally why I am needed in the host chair for this show, not merely to fact check David Sampson, but also to bring us together under the guise of a sports business show that has actual imminent matters of sports business to discuss. And the NBA, John, a lot is happening right now when it comes to the country club that is these 30 governors, a term we will unpack here today on the show. But I want to start with something that David and I have been talking about in our respective shows. The Minnesota Timberwolves, that ownership saga has drawn to a close. Finally, officially. Glenn Taylor, the longtime owner of the Timberwolves, the governor, excuse me, of the Timberwolves,

• 14:01Pablo Torre?

  a guy who has owned that team for three decades, one of the longest tenured owners in the league, has finally surrendered the team after a protracted legal battle, which I covered on Pablo Torre Finds Out to a degree that is arguably manic. But I will summarize it merely to say, $1.5 billion, guys, is what Alex Rodriguez and Mark Lorry paid for the T-Wolves in 2021 in a step transaction that went haywire. Too long to summarize here, but that is the price for a team now valued at, what, David? What's the last back of the envelope estimate?

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Well, I would say two and a half to three, but I would also tell you it's not over. Mark and A-Rod have to get approved by basketball. That's so, you cannot finish a transaction prior to approval by the other owners. So there'll be a vote, and I know that Adam Silver would like to get this vote done as quickly as possible. So you can do it in a regularly scheduled quarterly owners meeting. Or by unanimous consent, you can add an owners meeting. And then with further consent, you can even do it by phone. And they'll try to get that approval done. And now what Alex and Mark are doing is they're vote hunting. And I do not think they will have an issue at all getting a unanimous approval.

• 15:17Pablo Torre?

  Right. A fair procedural clarification. And I, I also want to start saying, uh, Mark and Alex to flip flop the proper nouns. Because Mark Laurie will be the governor, John, the guy who goes to the meetings. And the guy who goes to the meetings is very different, it turns out, behind the scenes from the guy who doesn't go to the meetings.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm trying to figure out, uh, explain to me, David, what it means to be, is this a nomenclature they use in all the leagues? Is that you are a governor?

• 15:46Speaker 04

  Well, that's if there's a board of governors. Baseball doesn't have that. They have control people. And so there's one control person. But I would say that Alex Rodriguez will be at every owners meeting. It's not set with just one person like John Henry and Tom Werner own the Red Sox. But John Henry's the control person, but both go to meetings. But what Rob Manfred does, and, and you can call Adam Silver and see if he does this. Rob will do one per club meetings where you only meet with the control people. No substitutions allowed. So that one, only Mark would be able to go to and not Alex if Adam is extremely strict on that issue.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  But is the, the governor is the voting member? So if there are league issues, is that the sole, uh, prerogative and the sole thing that a governor gets to do is he basically is the voter for that club?

• 16:45Speaker 04

  Well, you actually can bind that club when it comes to league matters. And then if you really want to go into detail, we can talk about partnership agreements, where the agreement between Alex and Mark most assuredly discusses what rights the governor has. When the governor has to go back to Alex and talk about what Mark would vote for to bind the Minnesota Timberwolves. That's part of a partnership agreement where they discuss and figure out their own governance. But in terms of the NBA, when votes are taken, or MLB or the NFL, it's one person voting one time per club for every vote to approve a CBA, to approve a broadcast deal, to approve a rule change.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  You name it, when the vote happens, one person per club gets to make that vote.

• 17:34Pablo Torre?

  Now, it is worth reiterating, though, that Glenn Taylor is a bit of a legendary and infamous figure in the NBA. And a lot of my reporting into this did establish that the guy, when it came to trying to pry away his team, held it with a grip that can only be described as, yeah, ironclad. I mean, the guy bought the team, the T-Wolves, for $88 million in 1994, John. $88 million. Then, again, 2021, agreed to this three-part sale with these tranches, which were then delivered, but then disputed, whether they came in on time. And this was a big crux of what had to go eventually.

• 18:15Pablo Torre?

  After a dispute that was made public on my show, in large part, had to go to arbitration. And arbitration happened, and there's a whole backstory there that I cannot wait to fully report. But all you got to know for now is that February, there's arbitration in Minneapolis. It is a three-judge panel. Two judges rule in favor of Mark and Alex. The one votes in favor of Glenn. And so now we're at this point where I am told reliably that one factor that determined whether Glenn Taylor was going to appeal or not, appeal that arbitration ruling, was the fact that the NBA's tax bill, the luxury tax bill that you got to pay as an owner of the team for your roster, is due at the end of June.

• 19:00Pablo Torre?

  And so Glenn Taylor had to do the math. If I do a hail mary here to appeal, is it possible that I could wrest control back into my Iron grip? Or am I better not risking what is it seems according to last check? A and again, I can't define second apron right now because I frankly don't understand the the fine details, the finer points of it. But I load of money that the T Wolves would have to pay Glenn Taylor's like Mark and Alex. Guess what? Congratulations also you get that now.

• 19:31Speaker 04

  He didn't appeal because he had no chance and he might as well take the money to lawyers to do the appeal and burn it or give it to charity or put it into his printing company. But to appeal an arbitration decision, you're gonna lose.

• 19:44Pablo Torre?

  But the NBA right now, we are gonna zoom out here, David, if that's okay with you. Because it's not just the Timberwolves, the Boston Celtics. Can you guys update me on what the hell is happening with the other, by the way, step transaction, which is to say payments in phases, right? The NBA, John had said, or at least the belief was the NBA would never do a step transaction because of how disastrous the T Wolves sale has been. This is now years just being resolved or almost resolved now. But the Celtics, not coincidentally, have also orchestrated something that's like this, but not exactly like this.

• 20:23Pablo Torre?

  And you have a team led by, again, a governor who's like, I don't want to leave just yet. Which is amusing to me.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Being a governor that much fun that you'd want to sell your club over three years as opposed to right away? I mean, is the step transaction intended to do what? I mean, why have a step transaction?

• 20:45Speaker 04

  It's intended to keep the person in charge in charge. So if you win a title, you get handed the trophy by the commissioner. So that is what the control person gets to do. And Wick, as the owner of the Celtics, he wasn't ready to leave while his family wanted to sell. He said, I still want to run this thing and I like the glory of having the second best team in the conference. Let's see if we can defend our championship. So he didn't want to really go anywhere. And Mr. Chisholm said, that's fine by me. I'm happy to let you run the team for three years and then I'm guaranteed to take it after that.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  And the step transaction here is fairly significant, right? The first payment is proportionally based on evaluation of 6.1 and the third is based of an evaluation of seven. Point three, do I have that right?

• 21:35Speaker 04

  So that's what's being reported and the interesting part is that's the biggest difference between the T Wolves deal and the Celtics deal. The T Wolves had the same valuation each step of the way, whereas the Celtics valuation continues to increase, therefore helping Wick and his family realize value over years, but also helping the NBA get a number that is really an outstanding number tomorrow. They get to have that on the books today.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  That's a fairly significant increase on the valuation of a team over two years. It's about a 20, it's about a 20%, suggesting that the team will be worth 20% more than than the, is 6.1 the most ever, if it happens, I realize there's some, some obstacles right now, but if it happened, is 6.1 the most ever paid for a team?

• 22:24Pablo Torre?

  The most in any sport, actually.

• 22:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  And internationally, more than a soccer team?

• 22:29Pablo Torre?

  We'll check that. Certainly the case domestically.

• 22:32Speaker 04

  It's the most by a hair. The commanders were in the lead and it's not a coincidence, quite obviously. The commanders, I believe Pablo were 6.05.

• 22:41Pablo Torre?

  Yep.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  And so the Celtics initial deal was 6.1, like, oh, we examined the numbers and we did a stress test and we have 6.1. Give me a break.

• 22:52Pablo Torre?

  So, but this is why I love sports business, right? So just to recap here briefly, so William Chisholm is the new owner of the team, the would be governor of the team. The governor, as David said, it is about like, who is first? Who is the guy who gets to literally hold the trophy? Like, who gets to hold the thing, who gets Gollum's ring before everybody else? I mean, this is what we're talking about, always measuring egos, always measuring among people who cannot necessarily buy the thing they want the most.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  You gotta give credit to the guy who gets to, let's just assume is a third, a third, a third. I don't know that it is, but if it's a third, a third, a third, I like being the guy who gets to hold $2 billion of somebody else's money and I still get to hold the trophy the next year. In fact, the year after that, I could hold. Four and a half billion dollars of somebody else's money and still get the trophy. Does he get, how about year three? Does he get to hold the trophy the third year?

• 23:52Speaker 04

  I promise you that they will close the transaction at the end of a season, not in the middle of it. In order to see whether or not the Celtics do well. But don't think that Chisholm won't be involved. In a step transaction, and we saw it with the Timberwolves and Mark and Alice and their involvement. Chisholm is not sitting there, you know, on Pablo Torre finds out, trying to figure out what's going on inside the Celtics organization. He will be a very involved part of the governance of the team. Contracts, extensions, TV deals, tax payments, all of those things. It's not like he just hands him four billion dollars, two billion four, and doesn't have any say whatsoever. That's not the case.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  It's, it's good to hear that four billion dollars still has value in the marketplace and will allow you to understand what trades your team may be making. What's the threshold?

• 24:45Pablo Torre?

  You can sniff the trophy, John. You're allowed to smell the trophy. You can't touch it. You can just get a whip.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  I bet he gets to touch it. I bet he gets to touch it.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  John, it's so great that you asked that because in these transactions, and I have them behind me here and they're this thick. So I'm holding my hands like eight inches apart, if memory serves.

• 25:05Pablo Torre?

  This is a real loaded.

• 25:07Speaker 04

  These transactions have specific details about what a current seller can do during the period, both prior to approval, during the step, how it works. And you have to choose a number. And it's sort of like a CEO of a company, hey, you can do a million dollar deal and don't bother me. But if it's going to be a 10 million dollar deal, you have to go to the board. So there's certain transactions, prices, that you have to go to Chisholm. And I'm sure that exists in this deal. So for example, it could be, you can not add anyone to the roster without speaking to Chisholm. Or it may have been negotiated, you can't sign anyone to more than a two-year deal without going to Chisholm.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  It goes on and on and on.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Isn't Chisholm like a character on Yellowstone? William Chisholm, that just sounds like the next cowboy to walk into the tack room.

• 26:04Pablo Torre?

  If the characters in Yellowstone loved private equity, I think there might be something there.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:09Pablo Torre?

  So, but part of this story, though, is, by the way, so just again, to connect all of the dots here. T-Wolves sold for 1.5. Celtics now 6.1 and rising, right? So we are, we are in rarefied and increasingly dizzying air when it comes to just the speed at which these transactions are happening, which brings private equity to the table. And we've been talking about this on the show forever now, it feels like. But, but David, I just want to read out the NBA standard for how much private equity you can bring in. I'm just going to read this off of the old Google Doc here. A private equity fund can have the lesser of 20% or below the percentage held by the

• 26:52Pablo Torre?

  control owner, who must hold a 15% minimum stake. So a max of 20%, but you still have to be below the percentage owned by the majority owner, who has the control, who is the governor, not always the same thing, but just to clarify, the guy in charge. And this has been a snag, it turns out, in this Celtics step transaction.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  So this is a major issue that all the leagues have as these prices go and continue to rise at the level that they're getting to. Part of the Celtics transaction involves another private equity firm called Sixth Street Partners. And they've circled the billion dollars. That means that they're willing to put in a billion dollars into the Celtics deal. Because when a team is worth 7.3, you're not spending 7.3. You're spending 7.3 minus the debt that is associated with that team. So just pretend they've got half a billion dollars in debt. That means a buyer has to come up with approximately, just call it 6.8 billion dollars. So you go out and you put a group together, a syndicate. And if you go to a private equity

• 28:04Speaker 04

  Firm and they agree to put a billion dollars in. The NBA rule says that the control person, the governor, William Chisholm, has to put in a billion dollars at least of his own money into the deal. That's the rule. The problem is these rules are gonna get broken soon as these numbers keep going higher. So Adam Silver is gonna have to figure out what exceptions he's gonna be willing to make.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  The only though, the relative to sports business, what this continues to mean is that the valuation of clubs is going up, up and up. And just for fun, what year would you assume will see a team be sold for $10 billion?

• 28:49Speaker 04

  Well, it depends what team. I would tell you that if the Yankees or the Cowboys decided to sell now, or if there were a death in the family or something that caused a sale or a divorce, like happened with the Dodgers, I think it just depends on which team. Cause you're conveniently forgetting that the Mavericks just sold for a value of only 1.75, I believe, and that was a pretty recent transaction. So the Celtics are truly in rarefied air, not just in number, obviously, but also as an asset. Pablo, I may have the number wrong, but I think I'm close.

• 29:21Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, so Cubans sold 72.3% of the Mavericks to the Adelson family for 3.5 in December 2023. If you're to break that down into its component parts, I don't know what the Mavericks alone would be. I assume there's other stuff in there. Coco will help me figure out. Cause buildings and land, of course, are always in these deals. They get sort of like flattened into a basic purchase price. But you were under. You were under is what I think it's safe to say.

• 29:49Speaker 04

  Well, it's the same as the Dolphins, though. When we, when we assigned a number to the Dolphins, Steve Ross got private equity investment, but it wasn't just the Dolphins. They got, I was gonna say Landshark. They got Hard Rock Stadium. They also got the Grand Prix, the Miami Open and other things that Steve Ross owns. So what they do is they can pin a value to the team if they'd like, and that may have been the case in the Mavericks transaction.

• 30:13Pablo Torre?

  All of it is to say that when it comes to how to get those prices up, John, private equity, they're thirsting to get those prices up. And so what David's referring to in terms of like what Commissioner Adam Silver could do. In the reporting of this, I'm reading that there is an option to seek a waiver potentially from the league office. And the implication there is that team owners would be unwilling to reject a deal that's this high, again, a new high, beating the commander's deal by .05 billion. They would not want to avoid the chance to reset the market like that. And so what's, why are we so worried about private equity? And so my question now is, why are we so worried about private equity?

• 30:58Pablo Torre?

  Guys, what's, what's, what are the concerns here from your, from your points of view?

• 31:04Speaker 04

  I have no worry except that private equity generally requires a rate of return on their investments. And as these numbers get higher and higher, it's hard for me to imagine what the return will be, but I'm always surprised because franchises keep going up in value, most of them, some of them. The Celtics in theory, if they're worth 7.3 in three years, will they be worth 10 in six years? I don't think I'd argue against that, John, but at some point you, I think, reach the point of no return, at which point the private equity firms don't get the return they want, and then they stop investing at those valuations. But I don't know that that is happening anytime soon.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Doesn't feel like it is. I agree with you that, of course, it depends what team, but I would assume if the Yankees were sold, you would be close in a step transaction to $10 billion at some point.

• 32:00Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  I would think the same thing's true of the Knicks at some point, and the Dodgers, and the Cowboys. So I don't actually see for the major franchises in the major leagues in this country, I don't see, has there been anybody sold for less money than anybody paid in the last 30 or 40 years? Has anybody lost money on the team?

• 32:25Pablo Torre?

  That is a really good question.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 32:27Speaker 04

  Two different questions, though. Have they lost money or have they sold for more? Back in the day, where you didn't get the huge increases, let's say you bought a team for 10 million and sold it for 90 and held it for 10 years. In theory, you could have had 80 million in operating losses. We'd have to go back and actually find that out, but if so, it's very, very few where you don't get a good investment return on owning a sports team.

• 32:54Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I'm not going to suggest that a sports team has the same growth curve as like a meme coin. But it is staggering that like this is the product that does so far only go up. And so we tempt fate, I guess, at every turn. I mean, one of the things about private equity, by the way, just to be the cynic here, is that it is one thing when the rich guy who buys the team really, really, really wants to hold the trophy. He wants the trophy. That's one thing. But when you have the money manager whose goal is not the trophy, but to maximize profit, shareholder return, that's where I'm like,

• 33:36Pablo Torre?

  that is what I believe the NBA's rule is meant to guard against. That conflict between profit and, again, the team actually winning.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  I think you have to add, though, that index funds only go up too if you have a long investment horizon. And one of the things that media and business reporters get wrong is that somehow the IRR, the internal rate of return on a sports team, always surpasses the market. But over a course of 20 years, there was a big misunderstanding with the Marlins transaction. It was better than the indexed funds, but not by the number that was was surmised and was extrapolated by so many critics of the deal. So I just would point out that you don't have to own a sports team to get a multiplier on your money. You can simply invest in an index fund. I'm not giving investment advice. I'm merely saying that there are other ways to get a healthy rate of return.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. I would suspect that, I would suspect, I agree with David that there is going to be a place where there is.

• 34:38Pablo Torre?

  David Mutual Fund Sampson, David S M P Sampson over here.

• 34:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  I would suggest to you that there are bet is a correlation between the funds that invest that have sports fans in them.

• 34:55Pablo Torre?

  Interesting.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  I don't think they're immune from the sexiness that owning a team brings, right?

• 35:02Speaker 04

  I agree with you, John. Of course, there's, there's a lot of ego involved. It's not sexy to buy an index fund and check the, the, the paper every day to see where it is when you can go watch a game, sit in the first row and get tons of adulation and public scrutiny, if not a whipping. So I totally understand the difference. I'm merely pointing out the investment side of it.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, and I think, I think there will be at some point.

• 35:26Pablo Torre?

  Can't handle Dave's, David's John Skipper impression, which is what you've been hearing over and over again, as he plays himself like a squeeze toy.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Uh, we, we should do the over under on when the first Sixth Street fund executive will be in the front row of a Celtics game.

• 35:46Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  I predict it will be the opener next year.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  I will point out that limited partners of sports teams have the ability to buy season tickets. They do not get season tickets.

• 35:59Pablo Torre?

  And again, always parsing, what is actually the innermost circle? What do you get for being a governor of a team that might be worth $10 billion?

• 36:10Speaker 02

  You mean, you don't, if you're, if you bought, if you put a billion dollars in, you can't get a couple of season tickets? Is that like a rule of the league is you can't give away season tickets?

• 36:21Speaker 04

  No, it's the rule of a, of a, of a governance document. Pablo, I will, I would love you to do this with your vast resources. Find out if Sixth Street gets free season tickets at the Boston Garden and I, I will eat crow if you insist I do, but I, I believe I will be right.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  I, I don't really care. I'm just interested in why that, why that would matter? Why that would matter? So what, what are you protecting by not saying, oh, uh, I, I used to suggest that I had the, the most expensive season tickets in the world because when ESPN bought rights, we did often call up and get some free tickets. Never a free season ticket. Just want to be clear. Never a free season ticket.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  John, the way it worked when you were at ESPN is we get a call from MLB saying, John Skipper would like three tickets and he will only be in the owner's suite.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  I never, I never said that. It couldn't be me.

• 37:23Speaker 04

  John, where were you during the World Series in '03? Were you sitting like in the dug? Were you sitting in the outfield?

• 37:29Pablo Torre?

  We're back to Frost Nixon.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  No, no, I, I suspect that the,

• 37:33Speaker 04

  Just admit that you wouldn't sit with the schnucks.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  I suspect that the magnanimous owners and management of the Florida Marlins would extend me the invitation to come up and say hello to the owner, which I would just enjoy doing. But I actually prefer to watch the game from somewhere other than a suite. Almost anytime, I would rather sit in the stands.

• 37:57Speaker 04

  You can deny as you wish. But people would call and say, John Skipper's coming to a game. You must do the following. It was parking. It was dealing with when you're being dropped off by a driver. We knew when you were in the building. We had like, people would, it'd be an alert, like, Skipper's here.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Think how much easier it would be now. You could just put a GPS on me and track me at all times.

• 38:22Pablo Torre?

  I want to do a bit of cleanup on Isle Sampson. So it is now the TD Garden, not the Boston Garden anymore. It is also true that we have proof as always of,

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Are we required to use the titles of the garden?

• 38:37Pablo Torre?

  I mean, I've never called staplescrypto.com, so I don't really care. I'm just trying to be the fact checker on this program.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:43Pablo Torre?

  And the second fact is that of course, we can verify that John Skipper does prefer to sit out among the cold, you might even say, because we know that from Trump's inauguration. We have this photograph that we always refer to, zoomed in to prove that John is not with, not with the most powerful people. He's right in the back plotting an insurrection.

• 39:14Pablo Torre?

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• 40:11Pablo Torre?

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• 42:01Pablo Torre?

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• 42:35Pablo Torre?

  I want to pivot, by the way, to the hypothetical team that would be worth $10 billion and the hypothetical governor who may not feel like he's getting his money's worth by being the control person of that franchise by getting to the New York Knicks. So this story I want to talk about with you guys because it is a bit of a case study that explains so much of the stuff we've been talking about with the Timberwolves and the Celtics. And it begins, this story, most recently cited by The Athletic, but something that I've been monitoring for a long time, which is that Jim Dolan, owner of the Knicks, goes to these governors' meetings, the meetings of the most powerful people, these billionaires, in the NBA.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  I assume he's the governor of the New York Knicks?

• 43:23Pablo Torre?

  Well, what's been happening, I am told... Is that James Dolan no longer goes to these meetings? He is, of course, the control person, but he sends an emissary in his place who works for MSG and for him in a legal capacity. And that owner, well, and that owner's representative, David, has been instructed to, it seems, vote against all of the stuff that everybody else wants to do. Like, there's, there's just reporting by me and now The Athletic indicating that James Dolan, what is the term for how he is functioning at these meetings?

• 44:07Pablo Torre?

  I want to say he's, he's an obstacle, but what is the actual better term in your guys' view?

• 44:14Speaker 04

  An annoyance?

• 44:16Speaker 02

  He's the dissenter.

• 44:18Pablo Torre?

  He is, his emissary-

• 44:20Speaker 02

  He's at the center of attention.

• 44:22Pablo Torre?

  Habitually dissents, I guess, is the reporting we can offer here.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  A dissenter is someone who does it with thought. And to me, what, what Dolan does is what's time runner. George Simon was famous for this, John and Pablo. He would not go to owners' meetings. He only went to when Bud Selig would get his extensions. And the vote for his extensions, he would show up, vote, and that's it. No other meetings would he ever go to. And the Yankees were famous back in George's day for voting no on everything. We do a motion on the floor that we're going to approve something so ridiculous that it, that there's no way there's a dissent. Like, we're gonna, we're gonna approve the fact that Thursday comes after Wednesday, or that we're gonna do an owners' meeting in Milwaukee, let's say.

• 45:08Speaker 04

  And there'd be a vote, and Yankees either no, or they'd abstain. So we'd have to announce that it's 29 to 1, or when Bud got really angry, he would just have the Yankees abstain, and it would be 29 to 0 with one abstention. But it means nothing. It's such a joke. Because there's no difference in baseball or basketball between 23 to 7 and 30 to 0. They, they have the same exact impact on your business. Now, if it's 22 to 8, and Jimmy Dolan can find seven other clubs to vote with him in order to change how the NBA central office spends its money, or to change how RSNs are treated, if you can get eight teams, you can actually make a difference.

• 45:53Speaker 04

  But Dolan can't get anyone to work with him.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  I would argue that he still is a dissenter. You said that the requirement for that was is that he puts thought into it. He is, he is voting his own interest. It may not be aligned with the league's interest, but he has a, what has traditionally been a very lucrative regional sports network. It is one that is likely to survive significantly longer than most other regional sports networks. And he is simply, in this case, I'm not discussing any vote because I'm not familiar with all the votes at the NBA, but at this case, he simply is at odds with what the rest of the

• 46:39Speaker 02

  league has decided is good for it. Right? And that is the, so the, the NFL is a national league. Everything is national. Right? And that has been good for the NFL. The NBA has clearly decided they want to be a national league. And I, I believe, said on this program before, that they are the league after the NFL most suited to have everything become national. So that's where they're headed. But that means they have to take games that have previously been regional games, local games. On MSG. And make them national. Yep. And in most cases, those regional sports networks have disappeared.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  They're no longer significant drivers of revenue. And Adam appropriately knows that he can make his league a national league. And they're going to move to at some point, every game being national. And that will, of course, hurt some franchises, but it helps most of the franchises. And I think likely at least 22. So I think it unlikely that he's going to move from being a dissenter to being a minority voting block that gets to change what they're doing. And remember, John.

• 48:01Speaker 04

  I'm sorry, I was gonna say, don't forget that when they met with Wall Street analysts, you say that MSG Network would last forever and survive all this. They are threatening to bankrupt MSG because the economics have changed so much, the network. Because it's actually pulling down the stock price and analysts are requiring an explanation as to what they're gonna do here. And that James Dolan is using in his fight with the NBA, but he fights with them about other stuff too. He wants to understand how many people work in the NBA front office next to Adam, saying that I don't want to pay one thirtieth of your assistant to the traveling secretary.

• 48:37Pablo Torre?

  Well, just that context, though, what John is gesturing at, which you're now bringing full circle here, is the idea that James Dolan, as a large market team, sees that there is, in his mind, a welfare state for all the small market teams funded by the Knicks. And so when he says that you guys are overspending in the Central League office, it comes from that place, it seems. And also, just to now cite a larger gripe here, David, revenue sharing. The principle of actually distributing your revenue in this way is offensive to the very essence of who James Dolan seems to be.

• 49:19Speaker 04

  This has been going on, think about it in college, John talked about this on a previous show, you had two schools in the ACC who were trying to get a bigger piece of what used to be an equal pie. This has been going on in baseball with revenue sharing and the teams like the Dodgers and Yankees not wanting to share as much revenue to teams that then beat them in games. And remember, the Knicks have not won a title ever under Dolan. They haven't won a title in fifty-three, fifty-two years since the seventy-two, seventy-three season.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Well, they haven't lost yet this year, so just fifty-one so far. If they lose this year, maybe, I know, they've had a tough time beating the very best teams in the league, but they're still gonna make a playoff run.

• 50:02Pablo Torre?

  It's been a long time since seventy-three.

• 50:04Speaker 04

  So at the end of the day, what Dolan is holding on to is a vestige of a business that is that is past. And I think MSG Networks will eventually go bankrupt and get lopped in as part of the national product. Because Adam Silver has the power and there's more than 22 teams with the power who recognize going national is the smart way to go for everybody. And it's not going to really hurt his franchise value. As a matter of fact, it'll help his franchise value. He'll just have to write off some serious, serious expenses for MSG Networks.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  That sounds accurate because if we were back to the what team will eventually command $10 billion? The Knicks, I think, would be a candidate.

• 50:49Pablo Torre?

  Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  I realize the Celtics win more titles, but the differential and economic value in New York and Boston is pretty dramatic. So if they're worth 7-3, the Knicks are worth, you know, they're gonna go for $10 billion at some point.

• 51:08Pablo Torre?

  I mean, the Knicks, part of the legend of the Garden, right, is that the Knicks can be absolute dog bleep. You're welcome, Coco, for saying bleep. Absolute dog bleep, but they sell out. It's, it's, it is the thing you go to in New York. It is unique in that way because New York is unique. But what Dolan is fighting to now phrase it in a way, David, of course, look, David Samson, by the way, as a New Yorker, but also a small market Miami guy, even though Miami is also its own tortured psychology of like, ah, we're a small market, but also Miami, ah, we want money from the bigger teams.

• 51:44Speaker 04

  So wait, when did Miami become? That's not what I'm doing, Pablo. What I'm telling you is that I'm a Knick fan above everything in my life. And when I went to the Garden when I was younger, like through high school, the only thing we could see across was all the pot smoke into the empty blue seats. And some people will remember this. The Garden was not always sold out the way it is now. And I think that it's silly for Dolan to think that it will always be that way. There's certainly in a stretch where it's working now from a revenue standpoint, no doubt. But I wouldn't assume that it's perpetually gonna be that.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  I assume it will perpetually be that at this point, though I was the beneficiary of the $3 blue seats. I moved to New York in 1978.

• 52:30Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  And you're right, David, I could go, I could come into the garden, not having purchased a ticket before, pay three smackaroos and go sit in the blue seats.

• 52:43Pablo Torre?

  And get stoned the whole time.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  And then you didn't have to buy marijuana to do it. Because you could just sit up in the blue seats. They should have been called the blue smoky seats.

• 52:53Pablo Torre?

  Now I'm jealous. Now I'm jealous.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  We're not exaggerating, Pablo. You couldn't see across the court.

• 52:59Pablo Torre?

  That's unfathomable, unfathomable to me.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  But you could still smoke in those days.

• 53:04Speaker 04

  John, back me up. He thinks I'm a little hyperbole.

• 53:06Pablo Torre?

  Well, look, but the point being that you walk into James Dolan's garden now and you're greeted by artificial intelligence surveillance systems that are banning people at the door because allegedly they made a T-shirt mocking James Dolan once. Or because they worked for a law firm at a certain point that had litigation with some entity that James Dolan owned. And then you get into the garden and of course, you are watched by the all seeing eye, which is to say, not 420 friendly.

• 53:49Pablo Torre?

  But I merely want to point out, at this point in the show, which is winding to a close, the next several minutes, shockingly, the league is trying to centralize its media ecosystem, is how this has been reported. And James Dolan is fighting that to the point where he is, yes, sending an emissary to vote against the league at large, and also has personally resigned from its finance and media committees as of the summer of 2023. And so I bring all of this up to say that when I imagine these meetings, the board of governors meetings, they're hilarious. Like, this is so funny to imagine all of these titans of industry, these masters of the universe, again, trying to box each other out

• 54:34Pablo Torre?

  because they don't- Actually have the same interests.

• 54:38Speaker 04

  They put the P in petty. One of the great things is at.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  I thought that was Tom that did that.

• 54:44Speaker 04

  There's, there's, thank you. There's dinners and it's always, it's assigned seats both at meetings and there's assigned seats everywhere. And they're very careful. They will not put two owners next to each other who are playing because owners meetings happen during the season. And there, there are games happening the night of owners meetings and you never sit near the team you're playing during an owners meeting. Because they don't want to have that sort of level of angst that happens. And all these owners have all these gadgets that they're following games. It used to be like little beepers. It used to be the BlackBerry with the dashes on bases. You may not remember that. Now, of course, you can watch the game on the MLB app.

• 55:24Speaker 04

  But all the owners sit around and they're all watching their game and following it, pretending that they're not competitive, but they're so competitive.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  Well, you'd kind of hope if you spent $7 billion for a team, that you really would root for them. So.

• 55:41Speaker 04

  Private equity, I don't think we use it that way, actually. Do you think that Sixth Street is looking at the record of the Celtics? Or looking at what the rate of return will be for the Celtics investment?

• 55:52Speaker 02

  I think they'll be looking at both. I have the feeling that the Celtics, uh, partisanship at Sixth Street will be pretty significant.

• 56:04Speaker 04

  The same way they will only eat Special K if they invest in Kellogg's. That obviously I agree with. But I, I don't think that it all of a sudden means that they'll be despondent beyond repair if the Celtics go, you know, 15 and 55.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  Well, well, if they're only given one wish, they will wish for the valuation to go up. They're given two wishes, they would wish for the valuation to go up and that they win a championship.

• 56:25Pablo Torre?

  Right. You hold the trophy first. I'm not gonna re-sign Jalen Brown. Like that's, I mean, by the way, the brass tacks of this in Minnesota, in Boston, in all of the, with the Knicks. When rubber meets the road and you have a decision to make, that's an edge case between winning and your revenue and that margin. Do you take the chance on the player or on the, the graph on your bottom line? And that's where we're beginning to only taste what private equity's conflict. of that interest is gonna be.

• 56:56Speaker 04

  Players are expiring assets.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Well, that's just the human species, right? We're all expiring assets.

• 57:06Pablo Torre?

  I hesitate.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Isn't that true, literally?

• 57:09Pablo Torre?

  We are.

• 57:10Speaker 04

  Literally true.

• 57:11Pablo Torre?

  We should rename the show to that. Three expiring assets.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  It's Pablo Torre and the expiring assets. Coming to your club now.

• 57:24Pablo Torre?

  On that note, this episode of The Sporting Class has officially expired. John Skipper, David Samson, feel better and thank you.

• 57:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:35Pablo Torre?

  God. David, discovering an impression is a dangerous thing to have happen on this show.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  I have to say, if he was, were you doing an impression of me?

• 57:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:54Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

• 58:00Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

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