Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out The Sporting Class: Worldwide Leaders, Killer Apps, and Michael Jordan's Special Contribution About this episode 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.
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0:45 Pablo 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.
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2:10 Pablo 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.
2:54 Pablo 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.
3:08 Speaker 02 I get great cargo shorts and undies?
3:10 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
3:13 Speaker 03 You're listening to DraftKings Network.
3:27 Pablo Torre? Glad, David, that you're here and you're not complaining about anything yet.
3:33 Pablo Torre? Well, you did clear up my hair, I guess, so.
3:36 Speaker 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.
3:42 Pablo Torre? Isn't "Observations are not complaints" the title of the David Sampson story? Just a series of observations, totally neutral observations.
3:51 Speaker 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.
4:03 Pablo Torre? John, can you put your headphones on, I guess, is the other thing.
4:10 Pablo Torre? Very good.
4:13 Speaker 02 Jesus Christ. First time, John?
4:14 Pablo 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?
4:21 Pablo Torre? Because I have my headphones on. When we started this, when I started doing this with John.
4:24 Speaker 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.
4:31 Pablo Torre? August 2023.
4:33 Speaker 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."
4:41 Pablo Torre? That's right.
4:42 Speaker 02 It was sort of like Moe and Larry without...
4:47 Pablo Torre? Curly? Curly.
4:48 Speaker 02 Dan got upset that you chose to do this.
4:51 Pablo Torre? Because I got to be curly?
4:52 Speaker 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."
5:09 Pablo 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.
5:27 Speaker 02 Thank you, John.
5:27 Pablo Torre? Very nice to be here. And good, good head of hair.
5:34 Pablo Torre? Are you crying?
5:35 Speaker 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.
5:43 Pablo Torre? Well, what we love is podcasting. We love the game, David. We love what we do together.
5:50 Speaker 02 I have a story before we start.
5:53 Pablo Torre? No one asked you for the story.
5:54 Speaker 02 It's a funny story about this show.
5:56 Pablo Torre? Okay.
5:56 Speaker 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.
6:21 Pablo Torre? And what did he want to know about us?
6:24 Speaker 02 Just, that's it. He just was happy to see us.
6:28 Pablo Torre? He is captive to the radio. Yeah, he, maybe-
6:32 Speaker 02 Well, he's driving all day.
6:34 Pablo Torre? He's got a lot of choices, though.
6:35 Speaker 02 But we have a lot of things to say.
6:36 Pablo 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."
6:47 Speaker 02 I have a set tip.
6:49 Pablo Torre? What is it?
6:50 Speaker 02 It's basically between 15 and 18% depending on size of Uber, on how expensive Uber is.
6:58 Speaker 02 Over $100, 15%, under $100, 18%.
7:04 Speaker 04 That's helpful.
7:07 Speaker 02 Do you Uber all the time? You do not do it that way?
7:09 Pablo 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.
7:16 Speaker 02 It's a difference between me and you, right there.
7:19 Speaker 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?
7:33 Speaker 02 Just hit the "not now." Hit "not now."
7:34 Speaker 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."
7:43 Pablo 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.
7:54 Speaker 02 Thank you.
7:55 Speaker 04 However, it would not surprise you to find that my reflex tip at all times is whatever the highest option is.
8:05 Speaker 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."
8:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, I feel funny.
8:24 Speaker 02 I don't normally tip when I get a bagel.
8:25 Pablo Torre? I don't cosign David's "no tip" on the bagel strategy.
8:28 Speaker 02 You tip on, so do you tip on top when you go to a newsstand and buy, you know, a sticker?
8:32 Pablo Torre? I round up.
8:33 Speaker 02 Rounding up is different than tipping. Rounding up is you're too busy to wait for change.
8:38 Pablo Torre? Well, that's a bit of a motive that you've assessed.
8:42 Speaker 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.
8:50 Speaker 02 Yeah. I don't have coins in my pocket, but...
8:52 Pablo Torre? You just have them in a pool that you dive into after work.
8:55 Speaker 02 Exactly right.
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12:45 Pablo 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?
13:08 Speaker 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.
13:31 Pablo 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.
13:41 Pablo Torre? We hardly knew ye. Like, the name has been messed up actively.
13:47 Speaker 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.
14:07 Pablo Torre? How hard was that?
14:09 Speaker 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
14:49 Speaker 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.
15:10 Speaker 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-
15:16 Pablo Torre? When two companies love each other very much.
15:18 Speaker 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?
15:33 Pablo Torre? And the name is how fraught an argument.
15:35 Speaker 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.
16:02 Pablo 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.
16:12 Speaker 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.
16:26 Pablo Torre? Because you love soccer.
16:26 Speaker 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.
17:00 Pablo Torre? Oh, I didn't know this.
17:01 Speaker 04 Yes.
17:01 Pablo Torre? As a former ESPN The Magazine employee, I didn't realize it was something else.
17:04 Speaker 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.
17:22 Pablo 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?
17:33 Speaker 04 No, yes, but it was ESPN The Magazine.
17:37 Pablo Torre? But I'm just saying, like-
17:38 Speaker 04 And that was-
17:39 Pablo Torre? He did the comma.
17:39 Speaker 04 Tongue-in-cheek.
17:40 Pablo 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?
17:53 Speaker 04 But it was called by one and all, pretty much ESPN.
17:57 Pablo Torre? Well, so.
17:58 Speaker 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.
18:23 Speaker 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.
18:35 Pablo Torre? Of what happened.
18:36 Speaker 02 They were open for a day.
18:38 Pablo Torre? Of CNN Plus.
18:39 Speaker 02 Right. And there was a huge bill of that. They were signing talent, there was going to be.
18:42 Pablo Torre? Yeah, there was a lineup of, there was a lineup of shows.
18:44 Speaker 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.
18:54 Speaker 04 It was brief. I don't think it was a day.
18:56 Pablo Torre? Launched March 29, 2022, shut down April 28, 2022.
19:02 Speaker 02 It was almost a month. That's pretty good. My memory is wrong. I thought it was like the next day.
19:06 Pablo 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.
19:12 Speaker 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.
19:40 Pablo 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.
19:47 Speaker 02 What it did not give you was the stuff that you get as a fan of certainly live events through your cable subscription.
19:54 Speaker 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.
20:38 Speaker 04 So they're using that, of course, to say to the distributors, we're not looking to disrupt your business at all.
20:45 Speaker 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.
20:51 Speaker 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-
21:10 Speaker 02 But that's going this way.
21:11 Speaker 04 It is going that way.
21:12 Speaker 02 The graph is going down.
21:13 Speaker 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.
21:23 Speaker 02 They're all going to die.
21:24 Speaker 04 They will die eventually.
21:25 Speaker 02 So I don't view that as right. It's not like half-life and half-life.
21:29 Speaker 04 Well, but it would be interesting-
21:31 Pablo 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.
21:41 Speaker 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.
22:08 Speaker 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
22:51 Speaker 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.
22:59 Speaker 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
23:43 Speaker 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-
24:10 Speaker 02 You got the cable man who never comes.
24:12 Speaker 04 Well, they're not paying for the cable man.
24:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, I guess we are.
24:15 Speaker 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.
24:23 Pablo 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,
25:08 Pablo 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.
25:33 Speaker 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-
26:02 Speaker 04 You pay more.
26:03 Speaker 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.
26:21 Speaker 04 Why?
26:22 Speaker 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.
26:40 Speaker 04 And and this is from the league that said they were going to be free for as long as possible.
26:46 Speaker 02 Well, that
26:46 Speaker 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.
27:28 Speaker 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.
27:42 Speaker 02 Well, that's called pay per view.
27:43 Speaker 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.
28:17 Speaker 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.
28:25 Speaker 02 Can we talk about the information about about about data as well?
28:29 Speaker 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?
28:58 Speaker 02 Sell it.
28:59 Speaker 04 I guess you would do better.
29:01 Speaker 02 Pointed advertising.
29:03 Speaker 04 You'll go to more return on investment advertising. It will work somewhat, but it.
29:09 Speaker 02 That is everything, though. Everyone's trying to collect.
29:12 Pablo Torre? It's what Netflix has.
29:13 Speaker 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.
29:42 Speaker 02 Well, because your phone's listening to you?
29:43 Speaker 04 Yeah.
29:44 Speaker 02 I get that every day. Maybe I assume we all do now.
29:46 Speaker 04 But cut that off and you don't get personalized ads. You still get the same ads.
29:52 Pablo Torre? You want that?
29:53 Speaker 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.
30:03 Pablo Torre? I am so worried about David Samson's OPSEC, as they say in the Defense Department.
30:10 Speaker 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.
30:43 Pablo Torre? Well, let's not call it flagship.
30:45 Speaker 02 So we call it ESPN DCC? Is that what you're going to call it for short?
30:49 Pablo Torre? ESPN the app.
30:50 Speaker 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.
31:06 Speaker 04 Yeah, the app, in my opinion, the app will work. I mean, they will.
31:10 Speaker 02 How long would you give it? How long before you have to show your board that it worked?
31:14 Speaker 04 At least three to five years.
31:17 Speaker 02 I was saying two years in this day and age is where my head is.
31:19 Pablo 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?
31:39 Speaker 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?
32:19 Speaker 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-
32:27 Speaker 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.
32:33 Speaker 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?
33:02 Speaker 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.
33:11 Speaker 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.
33:20 Speaker 02 And how quickly.
33:21 Speaker 04 And how quickly.
33:22 Speaker 02 And how big a runway did Disney give them?
33:24 Speaker 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.
33:41 Speaker 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.
34:12 Speaker 04 They've had declining results, they have not had declining revenue. The, the decline in subscriptions until very recently-
34:21 Speaker 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%.
34:58 Speaker 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.
35:02 Speaker 04 You're correct. And the margins were declining even back in 2012, 13, 14, 15.
35:08 Speaker 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.
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38:49 Pablo 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.
39:21 Speaker 02 Oh, I got it opposite.
39:23 Pablo Torre? Very, very.
39:25 Speaker 04 It's probably true that most of them were never cords either.
39:28 Speaker 02 Never quarters?
39:29 Pablo Torre? Never quarters.
39:31 Speaker 04 They were never quarters either.
39:33 Pablo Torre? It's a funny old person thing to flip the term that describes a young person.
39:38 Speaker 02 Guilty.
39:39 Pablo Torre? But I, but I.
39:40 Speaker 02 Thank you for that cleanup. Really important stuff there, Pablo.
39:44 Speaker 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?
40:18 Speaker 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.
40:38 Speaker 04 I would assume that, where are they building it?
40:43 Speaker 02 I thought, did I get it wrong?
40:44 Pablo Torre? Abu Dhabi.
40:46 Speaker 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.
41:08 Speaker 02 Much like getting a plane.
41:10 Pablo Torre? Well, speaking of the planes, right? Like, that's part of, it's part of the whole Middle Eastern strategy.
41:16 Speaker 04 It's a little different, I would say.
41:17 Pablo Torre? Well, well, well.
41:17 Speaker 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.
41:28 Speaker 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.
41:40 Speaker 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.
42:10 Speaker 02 Do you not think that Bob Iger will have use of a private plane? As part of his severance package?
42:15 Speaker 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.
42:29 Speaker 02 Other than that?
42:29 Speaker 04 That's different than taking, yeah, you, you think Bob Iger get away with taking a plane?
42:34 Speaker 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.
42:46 Speaker 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.
42:58 Pablo 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?
43:41 Pablo 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.
43:56 Speaker 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.
44:15 Pablo 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.
44:52 Pablo Torre? I want to get to Michael Jordan. Can we do that? David is not interested.
44:57 Speaker 02 Okay.
44:58 Pablo Torre? You're not interested?
44:59 Speaker 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...
45:19 Pablo Torre? What was that shout-out?
45:21 Speaker 02 Connie Selica is...
45:24 Speaker 02 Gil Gerard's ex-wife, who's now married to John Tesh. She was in The Greatest American Hero.
45:28 Speaker 04 That is-
45:28 Speaker 02 Hotel. Am I the only-
45:30 Speaker 04 The man has got some information.
45:33 Speaker 02 Okay. Uh, that's just called puberty, but okay. And so-
45:38 Pablo Torre? Google this person?
45:39 Speaker 02 You've never heard of Connie Selica? I mean, we can edit this out, because I'm so upset right now.
45:43 Pablo Torre? I don't think we're gonna edit anything out.
45:45 Speaker 04 Let's move on. Michael Jordan?
45:46 Speaker 02 So, Michael Jordan got- he is part of the 90s, sort of-
45:50 Speaker 04 Well, wait, he's arguably, I would argue, the greatest player in the history of the NBA.
45:56 Speaker 02 And the second-
45:57 Speaker 04 Potentially the most popular player in the history of the NBA.
46:00 Pablo 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.
46:10 Speaker 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.
46:23 Speaker 02 He's not gonna be on the air.
46:25 Speaker 04 Well, he's a special contributor. Isn't that what he keeps in a special contributor?
46:29 Pablo 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-
46:40 Speaker 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.
46:49 Pablo Torre? That's a funny signal.
46:50 Speaker 02 So, to me, you have to manage expectations.
46:53 Pablo Torre? We bought this hologram of Michael Jordan.
46:55 Speaker 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.
47:10 Speaker 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.
47:20 Speaker 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.
47:29 Speaker 02 I don't think Michael Jordan.
47:30 Speaker 04 Ten minutes on who he thinks is gonna win the championship this year.
47:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:35 Speaker 04 Do I?
47:36 Speaker 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.
48:00 Speaker 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?
48:06 Speaker 02 Yep. You become a billionaire by making money.
48:09 Speaker 04 Well, I realize, but.
48:10 Speaker 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.
48:20 Speaker 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.
48:34 Speaker 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.
48:46 Speaker 04 It is not how very well to do people think.
48:49 Speaker 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.
48:56 Speaker 04 Well.
48:58 Speaker 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?
49:10 Speaker 02 It's my goal.
49:14 Pablo Torre? David would love to be a special contributor to any organization out there that wants a no-show contribution.
49:19 Speaker 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
49:28 Speaker 04 a thousand dollars a month for no contributors.
49:30 Speaker 02 So your number's not 96, it's a thousand. Now we're just quibbling.
49:33 Speaker 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.
49:40 Speaker 02 So your number's a thousand though, you said it was a trillion.
49:42 Pablo 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.
49:52 Speaker 04 Yeah.
49:53 Speaker 02 We already know he'll do something for a thousand dollars. 96, not, not good enough.
49:57 Pablo Torre? There's a hell of a negotiation that's happening right now.
49:59 Speaker 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.
50:09 Speaker 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.
50:20 Speaker 04 I would-
50:20 Speaker 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.
50:24 Speaker 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.
50:41 Pablo Torre? Yeah, Baby Jordan, Harold Minor, a different contract negotiation.
50:45 Speaker 02 He doesn't know who that is. What a great call.
50:47 Pablo Torre? Come on, we don't remember Baby Jordan.
50:48 Speaker 02 Number 45 for the Miami Heat, Harold Minor?
50:50 Pablo Torre? Harold.
50:50 Speaker 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.
50:56 Speaker 04 My name was Minor, I would take 49 as my jersey number.
51:00 Pablo Torre? So perfectly, in the way that David Samson flip-flopped never quarters and cordnevers, Harold Minor is number 32.
51:09 Speaker 02 32?
51:11 Speaker 04 Wow.
51:12 Speaker 02 That's funny. Not an accident.
51:15 Speaker 04 No. I'll withdraw.
51:17 Speaker 02 Thank you. That's the thing you can do.
51:22 Speaker 04 Was a long time strategy of mine.
51:24 Pablo 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.
51:48 Speaker 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.
52:32 Pablo Torre? Yeah, so I get the quote as you keep on there.
52:34 Speaker 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
53:14 Speaker 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.
53:56 Pablo 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.'"
54:16 Speaker 02 He really said that?
54:17 Pablo Torre? Yes.
54:17 Speaker 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.
54:36 Speaker 04 Yeah.
54:36 Speaker 02 Licensing it.
54:37 Speaker 04 I think that that was clear.
54:38 Pablo Torre? That was an earlier quote. That was an earlier quote by Barkley, by the way.
54:41 Speaker 04 Yeah.
54:41 Speaker 02 Oh, I thought this was just this week.
54:43 Speaker 04 No, this?
54:44 Pablo Torre? No, this? He's been saying this stuff.
54:45 Speaker 04 He did say it again.
54:46 Pablo Torre? This was 2016 that he said that quote.
54:48 Speaker 02 Oh.
54:49 Pablo Torre? But he's been saying a version of that.
54:51 Speaker 04 He said it this week.
54:51 Pablo Torre? Yes, this week.
54:52 Speaker 04 He said it this week.
54:52 Speaker 02 I'm sorry. I thought you were reading this week's quote. Why would you read a quote from 2016?
54:56 Pablo Torre? Because he's been saying it for over a decade.
54:59 Speaker 02 But there wasn't a license deal. That's when he had not signed his big deal with Turner yet.
55:02 Pablo Torre? But that was the Shaq story.
55:03 Speaker 02 Okay.
55:04 Speaker 04 So he was also...
55:05 Pablo Torre? David, stop trying to host the show.
55:06 Speaker 02 I'm not trying to host the show. I'm trying to understand what the hell you're talking about.
55:08 Speaker 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...
55:23 Speaker 02 He lied. It had been made clear to him, by the way.
55:25 Speaker 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."
55:43 Speaker 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...
55:55 Pablo 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.
56:00 Speaker 04 Well, whether he is or not, he also has a great reputation as a character...
56:09 Speaker 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."
56:29 Pablo 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.
56:45 Speaker 04 It is called what?
56:46 Pablo 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.
56:54 Speaker 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.
57:06 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah.
57:06 Speaker 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."
57:15 Pablo Torre? I just had to double-check. Connie Selica.
57:19 Speaker 02 Don't say it.
57:21 Pablo 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.
57:33 Speaker 04 What?
57:34 Speaker 02 I don't want to surround.
57:35 Pablo Torre? Withdrawn, as they say.
57:38 Speaker 04 Remind me who Connie Selica was.
57:41 Speaker 02 The essence of beauty.
57:43 Pablo Torre? Okay.
57:44 Speaker 04 Wow.
57:45 Pablo Torre? I think it's probably time to stop podcasting.
57:49 Speaker 04 Wow. And how was that manifested? Is she an actress?
57:53 Speaker 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.
58:02 Pablo 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.
58:12 Speaker 02 And a scratch.
58:13 Pablo Torre? And a scratch.
58:13 Speaker 02 It's got to be repainted.
58:14 Pablo Torre? Was that you, John?
58:15 Speaker 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.
58:25 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
58:26 Speaker 02 This is inexcusable right here, this mark, though.
58:28 Pablo Torre? Yep.
58:28 Speaker 02 Anyway, we'll talk about it after the show.
58:30 Pablo Torre? I feel like we just did it.
58:32 Speaker 02 Okay.
58:33 Pablo Torre? John?
58:33 Speaker 02 Thank you.
58:34 Pablo Torre? David?
58:34 Speaker 02 Happy to be here.
58:35 Pablo Torre? Love podcasting.
58:39 Pablo Torre? Goodbye.
58:51 Pablo 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.
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59:56 Speaker 06 Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market. Love the crown molding. Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile. Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet? No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen. No FiOS? Yeah, no thank you. Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.
1:00:21 Speaker 07 Get Verizon FiOS because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.
1:00:25 Speaker 08 State Fair food is getting smaller and pricier. We'll have room for fried cookies. Okay, you never overspend on food. What's your deal?
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1:00:42 Speaker 08 Free phone? Oh, sign me up.
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Previous Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil Next The Long Goodbye: Tony Reali and the End of “Around The Horn” Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated