Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out The Sporting Class: Cooperstown Prom Kings, WNBA Protests & What Owners Want About this episode Our semi-regular roundtable on sports business reconvenes for expertise from the boardroom: David Samson takes Pablo behind the scenes of Ichiro's viral joke about him at the Baseball Hall of Fame, then John Skipper translates the math from the ESPN negotiating table to the Unrivaled cap table the looming strike over WNBA salaries — and team valuations at large. Plus: foreskin, poppycock, psychedelic pastel paisley, pandering to the people, talking with your eyes... and a haberdashery version of pre-determinism.
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Transcript 9,723 words · 11 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone. And including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
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2:05 Pablo Torre? I'm Pablo Torre and this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly because today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.
2:23 Speaker 05 Your whole career, your whole wealth is based on capitalism and the way you made money for yourself and other people. And now you sit here and say, you know, losing $11 million a year, big whoop, your asset went up by more.
2:37 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad. People are wondering where we've been. It's been a while. Hello, John. Hello, David.
2:50 Speaker 05 Hi Pablo.
2:53 Pablo Torre? Really? That's the timing we're gonna have today?
2:55 Speaker 05 Same sweater.
2:56 Pablo Torre? How many Mississippi's was that before you say hello? Yeah, you're making fun of my sweater?
3:00 Speaker 05 I'm not making fun of your sweater.
3:02 Pablo Torre? Can we visually describe the scene here right now? Am I going crazy?
3:06 Speaker 05 Well, John's in an old navy striped shirt that I assume he wore in elementary school.
3:11 Speaker 06 And it fit me.
3:12 Speaker 05 It's the best I can come up with.
3:15 Pablo Torre? John looks European. He looks like he should be pedaling a bicycle with a baguette in the basket.
3:20 Speaker 05 And a beret.
3:21 Pablo Torre? David looks like what I see when I'm on mushrooms.
3:23 Speaker 06 Wow, that's a bad trip.
3:26 Speaker 05 I think it's a great trip.
3:29 Speaker 06 It's a good coat.
3:30 Pablo Torre? But a bad trip.
3:32 Speaker 05 Just to see me on mushrooms is a bad trip?
3:33 Speaker 06 Just suggesting that when I take mushrooms, I'm not looking to have visions of my friends.
3:39 Pablo Torre? Well, if you look deeper into this, you might see childhood.
3:44 Speaker 05 So this is a blazer that is, I have not worn yet.
3:48 Pablo Torre? How do you describe the pattern for people just listening to us?
3:50 Speaker 05 It's paisley.
3:51 Speaker 06 It's pastel paisley.
3:54 Speaker 05 It's a pastel paisley.
3:55 Pablo Torre? Psychedelic pastel paisley.
3:57 Speaker 05 Well, those are all words that you could use to describe it. It's just, this is an important show. Since we've last been here, you're a top 100 podcast of all time. Of all time.
4:08 Pablo Torre? All time.
4:09 Speaker 05 And this is.
4:10 Pablo Torre? John doesn't even know.
4:11 Speaker 06 I would assume.
4:12 Pablo Torre? John was literally somewhere else.
4:13 Speaker 06 I would assume with a bullet.
4:16 Pablo Torre? John has been traveling the earth. And I have not seen him since the last show we did. And yes, I am.
4:22 Speaker 05 He looks happy.
4:23 Pablo Torre? I know. He looks refreshed, rested.
4:24 Speaker 05 You have no anything, you have no bags under your eyes. I just think we should get down to business because we have two months worth of stuff to talk about. And we only have one episode.
4:34 Pablo Torre? I know.
4:35 Speaker 05 And I just feel it's important to get John when we can get him.
4:38 Speaker 06 I do want to point out that that jacket I think is a haberdashery version of predeterminism.
4:50 Speaker 05 I resent and do not resemble anything that says and means haberdashery. I don't view it that way.
4:57 Pablo Torre? I was focused on the...
4:58 Speaker 05 It's actually, the model who wears this on the Robert Graham website is extremely good looking.
5:07 Speaker 06 I was simply pointing out that before you attribute any motives for wearing this particular jacket, you have told me multiple times that it is complete happenstance.
5:21 Speaker 05 This is new, though. So when you buy a new jacket...
5:24 Speaker 06 It goes to the top of the queue.
5:26 Speaker 05 No, I get to put it anywhere I want. So I put it in the...
5:29 Pablo Torre? Wow, see, I didn't know that either.
5:31 Speaker 06 Well, so you're God. You're predetermining when it's coming up.
5:35 Speaker 05 When it's a new blazer, it's not in the rotation. Therefore, it gets put into and I get to place it. It's sort of like the choice you make when you play a game, like when do you drop like the third ball? Or like in a pinball, when do you do it? When you have multiple pinballs? And I want to do it because Pablo's show is one of the best podcasts of all time.
5:54 Speaker 06 Well, top 100, I hear.
5:55 Speaker 05 I heard that, too.
5:56 Speaker 06 Yeah. So...
5:57 Pablo Torre? Thank you.
5:57 Speaker 06 So you put that in the queue to correlate with this day?
6:02 Speaker 05 With this recording, yes, I did. Yes, I did.
6:22 Pablo Torre? This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.
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7:32 Pablo Torre? As you guys fist bump each other, I want to acknowledge that when it comes to all-time greatness, I'm not the only person with an update on the immortality front. Because David, John, while you were somewhere Gallivanting. Gallivanting in a foreign land, and I was in the mines podcasting. David was in Cooperstown, and someone else noticed.
7:58 Speaker 07 And to the Miami Marlins, I appreciate David Samson and Mike Hill for coming today. Honestly, when you guys called to offer me a contract for 2015, I have never heard of your team.
8:22 Speaker 05 Fantastic.
8:23 Pablo Torre? Oh my god.
8:25 Speaker 06 I was gonna ask whether the Marlins had won a World Series.
8:29 Speaker 05 We had.
8:29 Speaker 06 So he had never heard of a team that had won the World Series.
8:33 Speaker 05 He had also, at the time,
8:34 Pablo Torre? That happens.
8:35 Speaker 05 had been 8 for 41 against us. Just throwing that, I mean, just in case there was any question.
8:40 Pablo Torre? Were you holding a counter rally for one of the most decorated and no doubt Hall of Famers in the history of sports?
8:46 Speaker 05 I love Ichiro, and here's what I was warned. I did not know what he was gonna say, nor did I know he was going to actually say my name. What I did know from Ichiro is, "Hey, I can't wait for you to tell me whether you like my speech." And that was the only clue I had. I thought of calling you to see if you could find a copy.
9:08 Pablo Torre? Oh yeah.
9:08 Speaker 05 Because getting the copy prior, you would have known it's all English, except for one Japanese sentence said to Hideo Nomo, but the rest was all in English. And maybe you would have found out what the joke was going to be, because there were many jokes, because he's a funny guy. After the ceremony, we're taking photos, and I look at Ichiro.
9:29 Pablo Torre? You're a special guest of Ichiro. We should spell this out.
9:32 Speaker 05 Yes.
9:33 Pablo Torre? For all of the insulting, like with us on the sporting class, we actually invite you to do this with us.
9:39 Speaker 05 I don't, yes, thank you. I don't just show up. This is not exactly convenient to just show up, Pablo. Although, maybe in the future, you'll make it even less convenient than this, but I don't know how that's possible. So, yes, I was a guest of Ichiro, and I was there with Mike Hill, and he and I were instrumental in extending his career, because he played three years with the Marlins, John, after his career may have been done. And we ended up striking a great relationship. And after the ceremony, after this, which became the hit of the...
10:11 Pablo Torre? Viral immediately.
10:12 Speaker 05 Immediately, Ichiro looked at me, and I looked at him, and I did one of these, I don't know what to do, because I do a lot of bowing, there's a lot of talking with your eyes to Ichiro, and I just looked and I went... I gave a little wink.
10:25 Speaker 06 You're talking with your eyes? This is this like a
10:29 Speaker 05 Haven't you ever done that?
10:30 Speaker 06 What does Newt say in Bull Durham? He's doing the lizard thing with his eyes?
10:37 Speaker 05 I just think it's important to communicate however you need to communicate. And I wanted him to know because he didn't want me to hear it before, but wanted to make sure that I was good.
10:45 Speaker 06 It was lovely.
10:46 Speaker 05 And I was very good.
10:47 Speaker 06 Good.
10:47 Speaker 05 My name was called out in a Hall of Fame acceptance speech by the greatest player maybe ever.
10:52 Speaker 06 It came with a strong, strong hairline.
10:55 Speaker 05 Ichiro?
10:56 Speaker 06 Ichiro, what a hairline.
10:57 Speaker 05 He's ageless.
10:58 Pablo Torre? He is a style icon.
11:00 Speaker 06 Well, he's not ageless, he's gray. It's a strong gray.
11:03 Speaker 05 Distinguished. Distinguished, that's true. He could still play. I told him that this weekend. That if I were still running a team, he'd be one at 26. He prepares as much as anyone else.
11:13 Pablo Torre? I feel like that is both a great compliment to Ichiro and a great insult to your general managing abilities.
11:19 Speaker 06 He won a World Series.
11:21 Speaker 05 It was a great weekend, being surrounded by greatness, which I sometimes feel like in this room I am as well, but I like being surrounded by greatness. And when you see Sandy Koufax, when you see Juan Marshall or Tony Perez, Carlton Fisk.
11:34 Pablo Torre? Did you wink at Carlton Fisk?
11:36 Speaker 05 You don't really talk to Carlton Fisk.
11:38 Speaker 06 You don't talk to him with your eyes?
11:39 Speaker 05 There's certain rules with Carlton Fisk.
11:41 Speaker 06 Cause he had that mask on the whole time? So you really couldn't communicate with your eyes?
11:45 Speaker 05 The way you can talk to Wade Boggs, easy, easy. Very easy to talk to you, you just have to bring a beer. You bring a beer to him?
11:51 Pablo Torre? Or a 70.
11:52 Speaker 05 You can, he was.
11:54 Pablo Torre? Who was the MVP of Hall of Fame Weekend?
11:58 Speaker 05 How do you not say Ichiro, but in terms of appearance?
12:01 Pablo Torre? The prom king of All-Stars?
12:02 Speaker 05 Having Sandy Koufax there. 89 years old. And he's, you know, and also the specter of Ryan Sandberg passing away very soon after. He ended up dying the next day.
12:14 Speaker 06 Was it well known, was it known that he was very ill?
12:17 Speaker 05 Yes.
12:18 Pablo Torre? The idea that this is, and I was, when you told me that you were going, I was very, as a fan of baseball, jealous because it feels like a fantasy camp kind of experience. But then you also realize that it's like the thing that all of the Hall of Famers actually genuinely want to go to? It's kind of part of the point of being in the Hall of Fame? It makes me laugh even more at the idea that there you are just winking at people.
12:43 Speaker 05 Well, Ichiro, the others I spoke to, and I got to introduce, I got to have a father moment that I don't know if it works.
12:49 Pablo Torre? What does that mean?
12:50 Speaker 05 That I brought my son, who grew up around baseball, but then I was introducing him to Hall of Famers who we had not had the chance to meet, who weren't playing necessarily when he was, when I was in baseball. And he brought a friend, the friend was very impressed. My son seemed less so, which may have been more a function of my fathering in general versus that specific weekend, though I don't know the answer.
13:11 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
13:11 Speaker 05 And I can't ask him.
13:12 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah.
13:13 Speaker 05 I just let it go. But it was a special weekend, and I would only tell you that if you have an opportunity to go to Cooperstown and to witness, the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, to me, shows the history of our sport, and I've been to other Hall of Fames, it's just a better Hall of Fame.
13:28 Pablo Torre? You're saying if you have a chance to get shouted out personally by Ichiro Suzuki on Hall of Fame weekend, you should take it?
13:32 Speaker 05 If you can.
13:33 Pablo Torre? As always, very relatable advice from the sporting class.
13:48 Speaker 01 Mr. Monopoly here. Miss me? Monopoly is back at McDonald's with millions of prizes, a 2027 Jeep Charity, a Carnival Cruise Vacation, gift cards from DoorDash, and Best Buy. Feel free to play in the McDonald's app. Get your bag!
14:06 Speaker 02 No purchase necessary. 50 U.S. and D.C. Age 18+. See PlayatMcD.com for rules and PlayatMcD.com/amoe for info and playing without purchase by mail by November 2nd. Chance card game ends November 8th. Game ends November 22nd, 2026. See rules for prize details. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro.
14:18 Speaker 00 At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone, and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage, HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
14:54 Pablo Torre? What we do here is something that I've genuinely been looking forward to, by the way, in a predetermined fashion even. Because there is a topic that I think of you guys specifically about as I'm watching another topic course through the internet discourse. And this was about another special event in the summer sports calendar. It was WNBA All-Star Weekend. And the story there, John, was essentially player protest, player complaints about "bleep you pay me." I mean, that was not literally what the shirt said, but it was basically what the shirt said. A lot of players saying amid CBA, essentially pre-negotiation, that "we need more money.
15:38 Pablo Torre? It's finally time."
15:40 Speaker 05 Has there ever been a negotiation where one side doesn't say "we need more money"? I think that's the baseline of a negotiation. Well, actually, it's both sides saying they need more money. It's true. I want to give you less so I can keep more. Yeah, the players were out of hand during that All-Star Weekend.
15:55 Pablo Torre? But the fans were also chanting "pay them" throughout the arena. And that's, by the way, also a bit different, right? And so this is a story we have talked about fairly glancingly in the past. But I want to set up who we have here to talk about it because John Skipper was the president of ESPN when they were negotiating the media rights deals for the WNBA, which is sort of like Russian nested doll, Russian nesting dolls inside of the NBA rights deal, as we've established before. John now is a part-owner in Unrivaled, which is a key player in the whole question of leverage that the players have against the WNBA. And David has always been a skeptic of all things labor.
16:35 Speaker 05 That's incorrect.
16:36 Pablo Torre? As management.
16:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, I'm not skeptical. I'm just aware of what it is that both sides are trying to accomplish and the ways in which they do it.
16:45 Pablo Torre? So, John, this argument, this seeming consensus among the players with the fans noticing, oh, wait a minute, hold on. So the league's highest-paid player is on a three-year deal worth about $700,000 total? I mean, this is part of why Unrivaled was formed. I want to disclose that again. This is not immaterial to the debates. So how do you begin to think about this out loud?
17:09 Speaker 06 Well, I think it understandable and comprehensible why the WNBA players are anxious to get paid more money. What they do, only 300 people in the world can do, right? They play at the highest level. They look across the arena, across town, and see their male counterparts making 60 million dollars a year, an individual player, contracts four or 500 million. They then use faulty reasoning to look at their attendance, to
17:50 Speaker 06 look at their number of fans, social followers, and go, well, we're a substantial minority fraction of what the NBA is, so the salaries should correlate to that. And it has almost nothing to do with the ratings. That is the most specious logic going on. Oh, our games get, I make it up, a million viewers. The NBA games get two and a half. Well, there's two and a half to one, right? The answer is no. That's wrong. It doesn't work that way. What matters, these are businesses, right? They are, in the WNBA's case, it's
18:34 Speaker 06 an aggregated team business. But they have revenues. They can only pay the players salaries from those revenues. In many cases, they don't have-
18:46 Speaker 08 They've taken losses, John. They haven't even paid them from the salary.
18:48 Speaker 06 Well, I was gonna make the distinction between gross revenues and net revenue, because many of these teams still lose money, even paying only 70,000 dollars for a rookie, only 700,000 dollars for the best player in the league for three years. So I get it emotionally, psychologically, I even get it logically. It's just the delta between what the WNBA-
19:18 Speaker 06 Owners, including the league, and what the players think the next CBA is going to uncover is huge. Everybody does the math of, oh, you used to have $60 million of media rights. Now you have 200 and somewhere between 200 and 250. Oh, salaries are going to go up four times, right? And they don't even, I would assume that most of the players would not consider a $2.8 million over three years or a $210,000 rookie maximum as where they would like to be.
19:54 Speaker 05 They'd like to be even higher.
19:55 Speaker 06 Yeah, dude.
19:55 Speaker 05 And by the way, the shirt said, "Pay us what you owe us," is my recollection. And that always made me smile because that is a term of art. When someone says, "You owe me money." That's got to be the basis of an agreement where someone has not done their side of the bargain. Because there is no way in the history of labor and management where there is a systematic way at a bargaining table where you say, "By the way, you owe me this, so give me this in this agreement because you owe me from last agreement." That is not in the history of how it goes. I would love to have gone to ESPN during negotiation and say, "John, you owe us because you underpaid the last deal, so please do better than you need to for this one to make it right."
20:38 Speaker 05 It's literally ridiculous. That's only the first part of the position.
20:43 Speaker 06 I did hear that about 683 times.
20:45 Speaker 05 How'd that go? Did you give in?
20:47 Speaker 06 No, I ignored it.
20:48 Speaker 05 Right, so.
20:49 Pablo Torre? But, okay, hold on. I want to parse, I want to parse the saber rattling, the shirt rattling, right? Which is trying to frame the debate in a way that, of course, the fans who are chanting "pay them" might be able to jump on alongside them with. I want to get to just the question of how the math actually works, right? So what is clear to me is that, of course, you're not looking for a dollar-for-dollar equivalency with the NBA. That would be insane. But I believe-
21:12 Speaker 05 It's not insane. The tennis players, they're doing, they have the same prize money in tournaments. They fought for equality. So the thought is, why aren't we fighting for equality in women's basketball and men's basketball? They do it in tennis. So it's not insane, it's just, it's not realistic.
21:25 Pablo Torre? So I suppose that I am here to put my thumb on the messaging scale. I would say, do not argue for that. That's very unrealistic, borderline insane. But instead, as a matter of percentage-
21:37 Pablo Torre? Like, let's talk about just percentage, right? Not raw total dollars, but just what would be fair for the players to request as a matter of a percentage of the pot? So where does that bring us when, you know, again, the landscape of women's basketball is now quite different, right? Before, WNBA players in the offseason, if they needed to make more money, they'd go to Russia, or Turkey, or wherever, overseas, wherever John was hanging out in the last couple of weeks. Now- Scavenging in Russia. Now they go to Miami. They go to Unrivaled. And here's just some of the basic math on that is, John Unrivaled was paying Paige Becker's, you know, $350,000, $400,000 for a single season?
22:20 Pablo Torre? A season that's way shorter, eight to 10 weeks, right? Are you chewing ice? John's chewing ice. This is a negotiating technique. What are you doing?
22:29 Speaker 06 Can you hear it?
22:30 Pablo Torre? ASMR, ice chewing. Do you not like ice chewing? We're in the middle of a show.
22:35 Speaker 06 Sorry, I was trying to step back. And Matt Koka kept saying, "Get closer."
22:40 Pablo Torre? The-
22:43 Speaker 06 I am an ice chewer. If I have ice in a glass, I chew.
22:46 Pablo Torre? We're doing a show. The financial-
22:48 Speaker 06 I just think of this as a conversation among friends.
22:52 Pablo Torre? I don't mind the ice. I do want to get back, though, from the ice crunching to the financial crunching. What does this do, right? So, okay, the players can say, "We're gonna go to Unrivaled. We're gonna go to this operation in Miami. I play 10 weeks. I get more than I would make in a year for a fraction of the time." So now there's a plausible threat, right? And Athletes Unlimited is out there too, but they pay way less for a shorter, even shorter season than Unrivaled. So anyway, I'm saying, like, they go to the bargaining table in real life. And what's the actual debate here, do you think?
23:25 Speaker 06 Well, first of all, I do, as you, I appreciate your pointing out the conflict I have. The salaries, we pay them, make sense within our business model. The greatest differential is, we don't have arenas, we don't have big office running the league, we don't have but 40-some players. We're not paying for 15 players. We're paying for six for six teams. So- The WNBA collective bargaining agreement has to follow the same rules we followed, which is they have to look at their business and figure out what is a reasonable amount
24:09 Speaker 06 of that money to pay your players. If I were there, I would be thinking about trying to tie it to a salary cap to league revenues. Then you can say, we're all in this together.
24:22 Pablo Torre? A percentage of league revenues.
24:24 Speaker 06 Yeah. And I believe the percentage of revenues that the NBA players get is 51.
24:33 Speaker 05 Call it anywhere between 48 and 51. But here's the problem, and we cover this on Sporting Class. What exactly is the revenue for the WNBA? Because the argument that the owners are gonna make, and they're gonna make it correctly, is that that TV revenue that you're trying to count all in as just for you, that was a gift. And you and I can disagree about this, but it was a double-edged sword when it was announced what the WNBA deal was gonna be.
25:01 Pablo Torre? The Russian nesting doll of WNBA living inside of the NBA.
25:05 Speaker 05 There was no separate WNBA broadcasting deal. It was part of the NBA broadcasting deal. We talked about it on the show. The reason they pinned a higher number to it is that you wanted everyone to seem like, oh, the WNBA is healthy. Everything's looking good. There's momentum. The downside of overestimating what the deal was, which you disagree was overestimated, but I don't. The downside's this, that the players now think, wait a minute, where's all this money going? And the answer is, John touched on it. There's tremendous overhead for the WNBA. There is no profitability. And on top of that, any profitability that comes, the owners want to use it to pay down debt that was accrued to support the league for the decades when it was at a loss position.
25:48 Speaker 05 So you don't want to take the money that you get in and give it to your employees. You want to take it and give it back to the banks in order to lower your debt and try to make your money back.
25:58 Speaker 06 Well, hopefully you don't want to give it to the banks. You may have to.
26:02 Speaker 05 You gotta pay banks back.
26:03 Speaker 06 You should keep in mind that the nesting doll.
26:09 Speaker 06 Occurred in an environment. Do you know when David Levy and I negotiated the NBA deal in 2013, give or take for 2015 through 24? You know how many bidders for the WNBA there were?
26:25 Speaker 05 Hold on, let me count. Let me see if I have any fingers and toes. I'm gonna go with zero.
26:30 Speaker 06 No, there was one.
26:31 Speaker 05 You?
26:32 Speaker 06 Yeah.
26:32 Speaker 05 Okay, so.
26:33 Speaker 06 No, no, I would have paid the money and more if I had to bid for it separately. So I do not believe, I think the nesting egg thing has been good.
26:43 Speaker 05 Would you have taken it if you didn't get the NBA?
26:47 Speaker 06 Yeah. Sure, I would. We were in the business of having a lot of sports and a lot of hours. We had the women's college basketball tournament when we did not have the men's college basketball tournament. So yeah, we would have taken it and we would have paid at least as much as we paid within the NBA. And while the NBA, NBC has it within their NBA deal, there are other deals made that are outside and only have a women's component. I do know that several people have suggested that Adam and I suppress the price. It's wrong. They would have, in the free market, they would have, they had no bidders. That is how much the league has grown and gotten there.
27:32 Speaker 06 I do think that the NBA establishment, because remember, the league owns a piece of all the teams. So they're, oddly enough, could be considered to have a bit of a conflict in this.
27:46 Speaker 05 Yes, and by the way, they own buildings, they own teams. These are all the entanglements that are really hard to isolate.
27:52 Speaker 06 Even if it means that they don't solve all of their making money problems, they should solve their equality problem by saying, you're gonna make the same, over a certain amount of years, you're gonna get the same dispersment of revenues the men get. That's how we can be equal.
28:13 Speaker 05 By percentage.
28:14 Speaker 06 By percentage.
28:15 Speaker 05 How do you say what the revenues are? In the NBA, it's far easier.
28:20 Speaker 06 It may be far easier.
28:21 Speaker 05 Well, hold on, we should explain this.
28:23 Speaker 06 I have a, I have a business solution. Get, get a [bleep] math genius.
28:29 Speaker 05 An auditor would work.
28:30 Pablo Torre? Hold on, let's drop that LinkedIn posting. We need a [bleep] in math genius.
28:33 Speaker 05 Need a math genius to help the WNBA. I just think that the reason why you're in for a labor stoppage is the expectations of the players, not unlike in baseball. It's just unrealistic in terms of what they're hoping for.
28:44 Speaker 06 Well, it's the, it is the expectations of the players with the short sightedness of the establishment, which is gonna try now to make all the owners solvent, get them making money. The money owners.
28:59 Speaker 05 The horror.
29:00 Speaker 06 Forget the horror. People are paying lots of money for the valuations. And that's how the WNBA owners are eventually going to make money. So they're sitting there complaining about, I lost $11 million last year. Boo hoo. There's not any poor guys who own teams, first of all. And they are already getting 400, 500, 600 million dollar valuations. So they can lose $11 million a year, the way Mark Cuban did, for a long time, and still be in a revenue producing business. And that is buying your team, holding it and selling it for a huge multiple.
29:42 Speaker 05 It's really amazing that you were ever in the corporate world. Because if you went to.
29:47 Speaker 06 Well, I kinda never was.
29:49 Speaker 05 You kinda really were.
29:50 Pablo Torre? Have you not listened to the show? He's the most socialist capitalist in sports business.
29:53 Speaker 05 If you went to Bob Iger and said, listen, I, I understand that my division is getting crushed. And we're gonna need a distribution here from your division. But don't you worry, we're buying stuff that if you sell it, you're gonna get all your money back. How would, what would Bob Iger say to you?
30:08 Speaker 06 Well, the Walt Disney Company is not analogous as a business to a sports league at all.
30:16 Speaker 05 I don't agree.
30:17 Pablo Torre? Damn, there was some spice on that at all.
30:19 Speaker 06 No, no.
30:19 Speaker 05 Well, that's.
30:20 Speaker 06 If you, at this point in the world, if you buy a sports team.
30:25 Speaker 05 You're so anti-rich people.
30:27 Speaker 06 To live on the money you make from that team?
30:31 Speaker 05 You dress like a schlep on purpose so people can think you're some sort of plebeian? It really makes me... The reason I'm tired of it, Pablo, is that people may get the impression that John has the best interests of the man in mind because he's so concerned. Wait, which man? Exactly. And so, my issue is that your whole career, your whole wealth, is based on capitalism and the way you made money for yourself and other people. And now you sit here and say, you know, losing $11 million a year, big whoop, your asset went up by more.
31:04 Speaker 06 Yeah, I don't have any concern for the billionaires who own teams and are losing pocket change on a WNBA team.
31:14 Speaker 05 It's fun to count other people's money. I've never met a billionaire who looked at his losses as pocket change.
31:20 Speaker 06 No, I didn't, and I find it astonishingly...
31:23 Speaker 05 Have you ever met one?
31:24 Speaker 06 No, and I find it astonishingly obnoxious.
31:27 Speaker 05 Until you were a billionaire, and then you wouldn't find it obnoxious?
31:30 Speaker 06 It is obnoxious.
31:31 Speaker 05 Okay. I can't argue with you. Do you know why casinos make more money on poor people? Because the richer you are, the less you gamble.
31:40 Speaker 06 I don't gamble at all.
31:42 Speaker 05 Exactly.
31:44 Speaker 06 No, I just, I don't have any... It's the same as when rich owners want the government to subsidize their stadiums.
31:53 Pablo Torre? So, this is the point I think...
31:54 Speaker 05 I can't debate all this.
31:55 Pablo Torre? I know, this is where we're debating literally the fundamental tenets of sports business, which is to say, it's always the unholy amalgamation of rank capitalism and also socialism when convenient. This is the whole point of how you protect yourself as a very rich, wealthy person with lots of power in a club that you need to buy into. That's how this goes, and so, of course, these tensions exist.
32:18 Speaker 06 Anytime you have a business, you have to understand the nature by which you're going to make money. And there are different ways. You're not buying a sports team at this point to make money on the earnings every year. Mark Cuban famously said, "I'd rather lose money and win than make money and lose."
32:41 Pablo Torre? I introduce you now to the Miami Marlins.
32:45 Speaker 06 Who?
32:45 Speaker 05 That is not, no. We ended up losing money way more years than we made and we didn't win, which is the worst plan ever.
32:52 Speaker 06 And did it change the owner's lifestyle?
32:56 Speaker 05 Yeah, what'd you sell that team for, David? So the answer is it did not change his lifestyle.
33:00 Speaker 06 And did you make all of that money back from the sale?
33:04 Speaker 05 You bet your sweet bippy he did.
33:06 Speaker 06 So who's to feel bad for them?
33:08 Speaker 05 I, you don't understand, I'm not asking for the violin playing. I'm not, I'm asking you to not pander to the people thinking that you are them. That's all I've ever asked of this show. Is for you actually to acknowledge that you're not, where have you been for the last six weeks?
33:26 Speaker 06 So I have to be heinous in order to?
33:28 Speaker 05 Heinous, that's the word. Let's talk about the WNBA, cause I'm losing my mind.
33:33 Speaker 06 Keep loyal to my class.
33:34 Speaker 05 I kinda like this, actually. Keep loyal to your class.
33:36 Speaker 06 I didn't grow up in that class, well, that will make you angry. I did not.
33:40 Speaker 05 No, but you spend more time talking about how you grew up, you know, I, the way I grew up, an SAT tutor, that was for the rich people.
33:48 Speaker 06 Okay.
33:50 Speaker 06 I did.
33:50 Speaker 05 We finally got the David Gibson OK out of John.
33:53 Speaker 06 I am guessing you had a tutor. I did not have a tutor, and you may think that's posturing, but I did not.
33:59 Speaker 05 Cause you couldn't afford it.
34:00 Speaker 06 Right.
34:01 Speaker 05 I know.
34:02 Speaker 06 And I continue to hold those values that.
34:05 Speaker 05 Your kids didn't have tutors?
34:06 Speaker 06 No.
34:07 Speaker 05 Nice.
34:08 Speaker 06 Cause the SAT doesn't matter.
34:09 Speaker 05 Oh, sorry.
34:10 Speaker 06 It doesn't. It doesn't.
34:13 Speaker 05 The answer for everything, in order to keep the lie alive. I love this. I know you better than the audience does in this instance, and you continually trying to trick them with your positions. Today, it's bothering me because, A, you're conflicted, and we can talk about unrivaled and the conflict that exists with the labor negotiations, and that there are people from unrivaled who are negotiating with the WNBA's players, and what a great position that is, and the nightmare that could be if Adam Silver wakes up one day and says, you know what? I don't really want unrivaled to be around, and what would happen then? Which isn't gonna be an interesting part of the negotiations.
34:53 Speaker 05 Oh, boy, that is the, that is the, the Fifth Amendment gesture we're seeing on YouTube. It's the cover the mic while he chews ice move. Oh, excuse me, excuse me, a very different, a very different amendment.
35:17 Pablo Torre? Look, I want to get to that, though, because something that Gabby Williams, who is a WNBA All-Star, was saying at All-Star Weekend was, "The WNBA wants to box out Unrivaled and Athletes Unlimited and these competitors, and they still don't want to pay us what we deserve." Right? And so, two things are happening that I want to sort of merge in terms of the argument here. One is, what does team valuation mean when it comes to what you pay the players, who arguably are responsible for a lot of the value that is increasing in those valuations? That's one argument we're having. The second argument is, if you're the WNBA, what do you think of the fact that Unrivaled is around? And trying to, you know, basically, take advantage of the fact
36:02 Pablo Torre? that all these players feel like they're vastly underpaid and objectively have a pretty strong argument? So...
36:10 Speaker 06 What does that mean, objectively, they had a pretty strong argument?
36:13 Pablo Torre? I think that if you were to show anybody what a WNBA player makes, forget that. If you were to ask them, "What do you think a WNBA player makes?" They would all imagine a number that is over the reality.
36:28 Speaker 06 So what? I mean, you say objectively. Now, you're back to the, because ratings are up, because there's a lot to do. In this case, I have a fundamental agreement with my friend David, which it has to be in the context of the business. It's not, you don't deserve... Like, I would say, given my politics, teachers deserve to make more money. Do they? Yeah. Are they going to make more money? No. So, I don't know what this concept of "deserve" means. You deserve what you can negotiate. Right?
37:06 Pablo Torre? And that's all you get.
37:08 Speaker 06 I'm simply saying that the owners and the league should have the foresight to understand that they're all got a payback coming. When this works, these teams will be worth a billion dollars. So I may have a dismissive manner, but it does not come from my dismissing anybody. It comes from wishing that those people could have more foresight beyond the, oh, I'm losing money right now. Did it change your life? Jeff Bezos, does sucking up to Donald Trump change his life if the Amazon stock goes down because of the Washington Post? It does not.
37:51 Speaker 05 That is so mischaracterized. His responsibility is to keep the stock going up, not just for him, but for all the institutional investors, for all the individual investors. That is what they, they're investing their money. His job is to increase the stock price. Of course, it benefits him, but it's a public company. You're benefiting the investors.
38:11 Speaker 06 It may be a public company, but even as a public company, you should have the foresight and the responsibility to go, there are things that are more important than my next quarterly earnings report. The fifth, the, the First Amendment should be one of those.
38:28 Speaker 05 Should Disney not have done layoffs?
38:30 Speaker 06 No, it's not.
38:31 Speaker 05 Were you against Disney layoffs, which were, there was a quashing impact on stock price? The company was losing money, therefore they did layoffs.
38:38 Speaker 06 No, I was not against layoffs. I am against the Walt Disney Company doing a settlement on a frivolous lawsuit by this president in order to curry favor because they think that'll be good for the stock. You, I don't think that's good for the country and you're supposed to have something, some things that rise above your ability to have money you can't spend.
39:04 Pablo Torre? Well, this is kind of where we can take our Thanksgiving dinner argument back to the rundown of the show, right? The question that all of these teams are facing, that these unions are facing, is what leverage do we have? Is it an emotional, moral appeal? Which it feels like certainly.
39:25 Pablo Torre? Underpayment to many? Or is this the cold, hard math in which, by the way, you risk a further rift?
39:32 Speaker 05 Why does the WNBA want unrivaled to go away? And if you spoke to Adam, forget the fact that they're friends, forget the fact that John's involved. Why do you want your competition to go away? Because competition, when it's good, can have a negative impact on your ability to do business in the way you've been doing it and to have the margins that you've been having. If unrivaled, or when unrivaled, becomes a true competitor to the WNBA, true, there's a different cost structure, true, they're not unionized, there's A to Z differences. However, if you're the WNBA, or really the NBA, you don't really want unrivaled around. Because it has a deleterious impact on your business and on the way your business is perceived.
40:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, I would argue that's wrong. It actually has increased the visibility. Look what it's done for Nafisa. It's increased the visibility of the players. It's made more people, women's basketball fans. We don't play during the same season. We're not competitors to them. These two leagues can coexist forever. And it's fine. I don't see any problem with that. The problem here is a lack of vision on both sides to say, "Let's actually use this moment of momentum to build something, and let's build it together." You're not going to get your magic overnight 10x salary,
40:54 Speaker 06 but you're not going to get to abrogate your responsibility to pay these amazing athletes by pretending that you bought the team to live on. And if you look at the math, they should all be building team valuations. Because that's where everybody gets paid. You think anybody who owns an NFL team, there's a few...
41:19 Speaker 06 Owners who still are sort of hanging around. But for most of them, it's a trophy that they bought after making a lot of money doing something else. And they enjoy it so much more than whatever else it was that they were doing making money. That it's worth it to them. Nobody does. I go to all these conferences where they try to do valuations for sports teams and based upon X times earnings. And it's just bull. It's not how anybody makes money. You have an example here, though we will not admit it, which is a woe begotten franchise down in Florida.
41:57 Speaker 05 Aatrox, I've never heard of.
41:58 Speaker 08 How dare you.
41:59 Speaker 06 That always struggled despite great management. It struggled in that market.
42:06 Speaker 08 Beautiful gowns.
42:06 Speaker 06 With that sport to make money. And if the collective bargaining agreement cannot be so that the most difficult franchises in the league can solve their financial problems. It's got to be a vision of how do we make this a billions of dollars franchise? If they don't have that in mind, they're going to set themselves back. And the league is trying to protect these semi owners. And they want it both ways. Everybody would like to be the NFL. Teams make money and the valuations go up. That's the only sport, I think, where that's pretty much the occasion.
42:47 Speaker 06 Lots of English Premier League teams lose money. And they don't care because they want to win.
42:55 Speaker 05 They care tremendously. Earlier this week on Nothing Personal, Pablo, I did a segment on Steph Curry, who did an interview and talked about that he wants a piece of the pie. He wants equity because the valuations have gone up during his career. And I wanted to respond to him, which is that how come you all have a collective bargain agreement where your salaries are tied to revenue, not valuation? If you're so interested in valuation as a concept, then why didn't you bargain that? Why didn't you negotiate?
43:25 Speaker 06 Well, I haven't thought about this before.
43:26 Speaker 05 And the reason nobody does is because it's total poppycock. You would never have an agreement where in the history of business, forget sports, where, oh, there's an enterprise valuation that could be based on myriad factors, including irrationality and ego, and we're gonna tie cost of labor to that? It's crazy to me, but John's arguing WNBA teams are now worth $600 million, maybe a billion dollars. Have the foreskin to pay him. Foresight.
43:53 Speaker 06 Well.
43:54 Speaker 05 Edit that out, please.
43:55 Speaker 06 No, we're keeping that in. That feels like a beyond Freudian slip. The...
43:59 Speaker 05 Foreskin.
44:00 Speaker 06 Look, the...
44:00 Speaker 05 I was just talking about a bris before it started, which is why that was in my head.
44:03 Speaker 06 When he said "hara," I was like, "hora?" By the way, it's a good question to ask Steph Curry. The answer to his question is, he's not willing to forego his earnings. He wants to get paid today, and that's his right, but if I was the league, I'd say, "Fine." If any players would like to take half of their money, or give up half of their salary, and take a piece, we, the league, will have a... We'll take 10... I'm making it up. I know it's not feasible. We'll take 10% of all sales, profits, and we'll distribute those to the players who decided they want to be in that business. Sure. They don't want... Yeah, senior employee incentive program.
44:47 Speaker 06 Nor need to be in that business. They don't need to be in that business. And by the way, I wouldn't do that if I was one of them. I'd take the money, invest it in something else, but why would I wait for it to happen? But to ignore the fact that that's there and just pretend they have to operate like businesses, like all other business, they have a specific... Part of their economic reality, which is unlike almost anything else other than art and a few other sort of esoteric things. By the way, art, they don't tie it to the labor to art. You don't go to a painter and say, we'd like you to take 50% of all the...
45:26 Speaker 06 It's just a different business to pretend that that shouldn't enter into a smart discussion you're having with the players, which is, they should say, they're not going to, because I know how they work. They'll say, and they already did this clearly and pissed the players off. They went and said, well, you need to understand how hard it is for the owners. They've invested, they're still not making money. They should say all that, but they should say, guys, we have to take a long-term view of this. You're not going to get what you want right now. We're not either. We're going to give you more money than the math would conjure.
46:02 Pablo Torre? Yeah, than the [bleep] math genius might suggest.
46:04 Speaker 06 Yeah, exactly. Got to cut that out.
46:06 Speaker 05 There's three swears in this show. What are we doing?
46:08 Pablo Torre? I assume we're not bleeping poppycock. That feels, at least half okay.
46:13 Speaker 06 I'm assuming we're not bleeping ice. But, but that is, it is so much an important part...
46:20 Pablo Torre? I was like, are we going to Trump thing again? No, that was literally the ice.
46:23 Speaker 06 By the way, if you had a secret poll and asked all the owners why they bought a team, there would only be two answers. Trophy, and I'm going to sell it someday and make a whole bunch of money. You think people buy a team...
46:37 Pablo Torre? I want David's thoughts on that.
46:38 Speaker 06 And go into an analysis of, nobody buys a team who can't afford not to make money on it.
46:44 Speaker 05 It's just not accurate. It's really not. So especially now with the valuations that you're seeing. So let's just talk about the Washington commanders. When you have a base that you're now in at $6 billion and you have private equity money in, and you've got other people who are interested in ROI, you cannot run it irresponsibly on an annual basis. You just don't have the capacity. You don't have the debt capacity, and you certainly don't want to pump in cash. Josh Harris is not calling his investors and saying, hey, we need 20 million from you because of losses this year. He's just not doing it.
47:19 Speaker 06 I don't believe I've suggested they should be run irresponsibly.
47:23 Speaker 05 Therefore, they should be run responsibly, which equals profitably.
47:27 Speaker 06 Not necessarily.
47:28 Speaker 05 I I view those as synonymous when it comes to a business. It is it was irresponsible to be operating at a loss.
47:35 Pablo Torre? But to be clear, though, right, beyond sports teams, there are many businesses, certainly in Silicon Valley, that are being run at a loss because there is some vision for a long term.
47:45 Speaker 05 But they have seed capital. You say at a loss, they've got a sources and uses of funds. They've raised money with an understanding that for the first three years, you need a runway for R and D. You're gonna lose money and then either we're gonna write off the investment, the company goes away, or we're gonna find the cure to cancer and we're all gonna be rich. It's all part of the original plan. No one, have you done a business plan, Pablo, where you say, hey, we have no path to profitability? I mean, other than.
48:11 Pablo Torre? Well, other than the one we're sitting at. I would like to compare myself to OpenAI, by the way, which is absolutely explosively growing revenue while also struggling on the balance sheets.
48:25 Speaker 06 So I must point out.
48:26 Pablo Torre? David is so proud of himself.
48:28 Speaker 06 David has given me like a pitch down the middle.
48:31 Pablo Torre? I know. All right, I'm gonna clear up.
48:33 Speaker 06 He said, he said, he said, you discover the cure for cancer and get rich.
48:41 Speaker 06 So that is, that is a capitalist who thinks that the motive for curing cancer is to get rich.
48:50 Speaker 05 Wait, what's the other reason again? I can't remember.
48:52 Speaker 06 Save lives.
48:53 Speaker 05 I forgot about that one. Thank you. Thank you. Like, I've never had anyone in my family die of cancer.
48:58 Speaker 06 I didn't say that. Again, it's like, it's like a Freudian. It's like a Freudian slip.
49:04 Speaker 05 Hit the pitch and move on, John. That's the key to great entertainment. Just hit it and then move on instead of talking about hitting it.
49:11 Pablo Torre? I would like to brush both of you off the plate for a second.
49:15 Speaker 06 That's the difference between sports media and sports. We talk about the pitch.
49:20 Pablo Torre? That's true.
49:22 Pablo Torre? The question of valuations, God, there's so much happening right now and I'm trying to keep all the threads in order.
49:28 Speaker 08 You got this.
49:29 Pablo Torre? Do I? The question of whether team valuations are just bullshit, right? So you're describing, like art to John's analogy, you're describing a very precious thing that everybody deeply cares about, in which the full monetary upside can only be realized at a point of sale, right? And that could be driven by all sorts of things. Who sold right before you? Is some other external thing happening? Is there a asteroid? Many things can impact.
49:56 Speaker 08 State planning.
49:57 Pablo Torre? State planning?
49:59 Speaker 08 Kids arguing.
50:00 Pablo Torre? It's not, as much as a math genius might say, this is the formula. There are many variables that cannot be controlled, is the reality of the sports valuation business. So when it comes to trying to price it out at a CBA negotiation, is it the question of agreeing on a math genius? A fucking math genius? What are we doing here?
50:21 Speaker 08 It never comes up, John. It just never comes up.
50:24 Speaker 06 It never comes up.
50:25 Speaker 08 In a bargaining, in a bargaining table.
50:27 Speaker 06 Of course it does not, because the one side is worried about getting paid now and the other side is trying to hoodwink the guys on the other side of the table that, oh my gosh, we're having a tough time.
50:39 Speaker 08 Both sides have the audited statements, John. I don't know what world you're talking about. The players' union has the audited statements of the teams. It's right there.
50:49 Speaker 06 I'm suggesting that the core economics of a sports team are no longer about annual earnings in a report. They are about the valuation of teams.
51:03 Speaker 08 Is Unrivaled about annual earnings and profitability? Or is part of your business plan saying profitability? When we sell Unrivaled, whether we sell privately, whether we take it public, that's when we'll get paid.
51:15 Speaker 06 Like lots of startups, we are not investing money to take profits out of the profits. We are taking money, we are putting investments in.
51:26 Speaker 08 That's what I'm saying.
51:26 Speaker 06 In the hope of a financial transaction that we'll benefit from.
51:30 Speaker 08 So you have no path to annual profitability?
51:33 Speaker 06 We broke even this year and we'll make money next year, but nobody would have put the money in to take a division of the dividends. And we are planning for a financial transaction.
51:47 Speaker 05 I understand the word salad and I think it's great. I'm asking a separate question. Are you telling me that you would have been able to raise money for unrivaled with pro forma financial statements that showed annual operating losses?
52:00 Speaker 06 Yes.
52:02 Speaker 05 And for a extended period of time?
52:04 Speaker 06 We have actually done better than that.
52:05 Speaker 05 For an extended period of time? It wasn't part of the initial raise?
52:08 Speaker 06 No, we had a short business plan, not a long business plan. People bought into the vision. People bought into the vision.
52:16 Speaker 05 It's an amazing thing, what he's not saying, which is that when you raise money, you have a cap table and you have a certain amount of money that you bring in and then that money, there's sources and uses. The sources of the money is investors. The uses of the money is we're going to use it to fund operations. We're going to use it for a capital investment by renting or building a stadium space or a studio. We're going to have this much in equity we're giving away. It's all got to be part of a financial plan.
52:41 Pablo Torre? You're paying and attracting players.
52:42 Speaker 06 So you believe Bob Igram Willow Bay bought a women's soccer team at a valuation of a billion dollars based on a ROI of running that club and passing that along to their...
52:57 Speaker 05 I actually believe Willow Bay responded to that and said that they bought it because it was in short commuting distance from her house.
53:04 Speaker 06 That doesn't sound like a hard financial, hard financial calculation. It's my point.
53:10 Pablo Torre? I don't even know, it's not a joke, I don't even know.
53:13 Speaker 06 And there, and there, I believe you are dealing with enlightened donors who understand they're one, doing good, two, they can afford it, and three, they're going to sell it for profit someday.
53:25 Speaker 05 Okay.
53:25 Speaker 06 And that's all they care about.
53:29 Pablo Torre? Are we going to frost nicks in each other anymore or are we back to hanging out?
53:33 Speaker 05 There's nothing but love.
53:35 Pablo Torre? How much you sell Marlins for?
53:37 Speaker 05 They were sold at an enterprise valuation of 1.2 billion dollars.
53:40 Pablo Torre? Nice.
53:41 Speaker 06 Based upon revenues, past revenues?
53:45 Speaker 05 Certainly not.
53:45 Speaker 06 Based on, so based on nothing to do with the brilliant job you did running the team.
53:51 Speaker 05 A-
53:51 Speaker 06 Yeah, no, it did have something to do. You won a World Series.
53:54 Speaker 05 No, that had nothing to do with-
53:55 Speaker 06 No, it had to do with-
53:56 Speaker 05 It had to do with supply and demand.
53:58 Speaker 06 Yes, exactly.
53:58 Speaker 05 Which is why I wouldn't pay a banker to sell the team, because anybody could have done what I did. I take no credit for selling the team for one, too. You've noticed publicly, I've never taken credit for it. I laugh about it, but I don't say that I'm a genius banker. I say that we had an item that other people wanted, and when you have more than one buyer for something, the price tends to go up.
54:17 Pablo Torre? Which brings us back to the difference between WNBA negotiations before and the ones that are about to happen.
54:23 Speaker 05 And they are happening.
54:24 Pablo Torre? Well, excuse me, the ones that are actively happening privately and publicly. But I suppose, near the end here, much like the business plan that John described, we are not here for a long time, but we are here for a good time. And so, uh, thank you both for doing-
54:38 Speaker 06 And none of us made any money.
54:42 Pablo Torre? Not with that attitude!
54:55 Pablo Torre? Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lowman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by NGW Post, theme song, as always, by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time.
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Previous PTFO Exclusive: We Followed the Money in the NFL Union Scandal. So Did the FBI. Next Why Jesse Owens Saved Hitler's Mysterious Trees (PTFO Vault) Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated