Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out The Sporting Class: Corrupt Union Bosses, the Dark Arts of Ownership & NBA Draft Abolition About this episode Is the MLBPA screwed because its (outgoing) leader allegedly had an affair with his sister-in-law? Is a salary cap a red herring? How much does winning a Super Bowl boost the valuation of the Seahawks? And can we ever stop tanking? John Skipper and David Samson return for our semi-regular panel on sports business — and taking down Big Pharma.
• Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson" https://pod.link/1483011704
• Previously on PTFO: We Followed the Money in the NFL Union Scandal. So Did the F https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/OTUzMzUyNzItODRkZC0xMWYwLWFjNDUtY2IzYmEzNzJkZjkw
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today you're gonna find out what this sound is.
0:08 Speaker 01 We're shaking in our britches, baby.
0:11 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
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0:22 Pablo Torre? Love the crown molding.
0:23 Speaker 02 Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.
0:27 Pablo Torre? Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet.
0:31 Speaker 02 No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.
0:34 Pablo Torre? No FiOS? Yeah, no thank you.
0:38 Speaker 02 Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.
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2:25 Speaker 01 Way too close to me.
2:27 Speaker 05 I'm too close to you, or?
2:28 Speaker 01 You're supposed to be in the middle of that place. I mean, I love you, but that was too close. Okay, thank you.
2:35 Speaker 06 It's a good start to a show.
2:39 Speaker 05 I think we should do a show like this.
2:41 Speaker 06 I don't think John's close enough.
2:42 Speaker 05 We should gang up on Pablo today.
2:45 Speaker 06 You know what? A rare, a rare treat that would be.
2:48 Speaker 01 I barely made it here. I'm happy to be here.
2:50 Speaker 06 Welcome.
2:51 Speaker 01 I'm in between errands, back and forth to Long Island City. Which is not...
2:57 Speaker 06 In Long Island?
2:59 Speaker 01 Strangely enough.
3:02 Speaker 01 But this works great, so I'm very happy to be here.
3:04 Speaker 05 This is just another errand for you. You're bringing the knowledge.
3:08 Speaker 06 Yeah, what's, what's, what are you, importing, exporting? What are you doing?
3:12 Speaker 01 There's special medicine for my daughter.
3:15 Speaker 06 Yes.
3:16 Speaker 01 That can only be made at a certain place. So I got into an argument with the insurance company. Like a loud argument, because they were not going to approve something. And I had to get it immediately today. But I missed the window because of this window, which I'd agreed to. So I was there, now here, now back to there. But it's all good.
3:39 Speaker 06 Are you?
3:39 Speaker 01 It's none of it's good, actually.
3:41 Speaker 06 That sounds terrible.
3:42 Speaker 05 We're glad you're here.
3:43 Speaker 01 No, I, I, I love you guys, but it's...
3:47 Speaker 01 Insurance companies are problematic.
3:49 Speaker 06 The sporting class is going to transition into a show where David Samson takes down the pharmaceutical industry.
3:53 Speaker 01 Well, I need them. And she needs them. But in order to accomplish things, and I don't want to waste your time, but it requires pre approvals to get certain medicines, which requires a lengthy list of checklists. And they want to be helpful, so they feign helpfulness. And I don't want to impugn them, other than to say, what do people do who are not willing to engage the way I am, or be as aggressive as I am?
4:24 Speaker 05 They suffer. Right? I mean, the insurance companies fundamentally have a conflict. They are built to make money. And their service is to help people with their health. And I think they probably...
4:40 Speaker 05 Generally want to do that, but they are required to make more money, particularly if they're public.
4:47 Speaker 01 But in the pharmacies, won't do things unless there's approval. And I tried to explain to the pharmacist in person that I will just pay cash. I need the medicine. It didn't work, which was amazing because normally cash can cover all sorts of ills.
5:04 Pablo Torre? Are you trying to do a $100 handshake at the CVS?
5:08 Speaker 01 It's not a CVS. It's a specialty type pharmacy that makes special things. It's not Advil and it's not $100, but it's briefcase worthy. So you just go with the briefcase. You're like, listen, I will cover this. I'm trying to be helpful. Anyway, I'm trying to lower my blood pressure at the moment.
5:30 Pablo Torre? And you know what? And I'm gonna not feign.
5:32 Speaker 05 There's a prescription for that.
5:35 Pablo Torre? I was gonna say, as John and I feign helpfulness, we can probably start the show.
5:58 Pablo Torre? David has to get back to Long Island City. He's already on his phone. But the point of view, David, on the MLBPA, the Major League Baseball Players Association story, which is blowing up across sports and directly links to some of the NFLPA stuff that I've been reporting on this show previously, it makes me think of you. I'll just quote the tweet, actually, from Jeff Passan. John, I don't know if you saw this. MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark resigned after an internal investigation revealed he had an inappropriate relationship with his sister-in-law, who had been hired by the union.
6:32 Speaker 05 He apparently was pinching.
6:35 Speaker 01 How do you know he's a pincher? He may be a biter.
6:37 Speaker 05 I don't know.
6:38 Pablo Torre? Jesus Christ. Who had been hired by the union in 2023? I want that clause to also be very clearly stated.
6:46 Speaker 01 That was the nepotism charge.
6:47 Pablo Torre? Well, according to sources who told Jeff Hassan and Don Van Etta, IDSPN, there's a lot going on here. There is a federal investigation, the Eastern District of New York, that is looking into this largely because of allegations of self-enrichment involving this company, One Team Partners, that I can describe at length if you want. The NFLPA is a partner with MLBPA in that enterprise. But I want the perspective of management. So you're an executive at a major league baseball team, or you're working for the commissioner, or you are the commissioner, and you know labor peace currently is the thing everyone's wondering about. Will there be a season? December, right, is when the CBA?
7:26 Speaker 01 December 1st.
7:27 Pablo Torre? Is up. And so you see that headline and your reaction as an executive of a baseball team is what?
7:34 Speaker 01 Christ. We almost had it. We almost kept Tony in position through this negotiation. We came so close. And now we may be screwed.
7:46 Speaker 05 So that is a question I was gonna ask you. As the owners, you're perfectly happy with mediocre leadership for the MLBPA?
7:59 Speaker 01 Encouraged.
7:59 Speaker 05 Or it's encouraged?
8:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:01 Speaker 05 Because you could make the argument you'd be better off negotiating with a smarter, reasonable person. I'm not suggesting anybody is unreasonable or not smart, just I'm asking philosophically, the owners generally think they would like to have an advantage in the arm wrestling.
8:17 Speaker 01 The advantage, though, in what the union wants. Tony Clark, as the only former player to be in that position, was very interested in player comfort. Very interested in when games were starting, when travel would happen, what food was like in the kitchen. He was interested in all sorts of things that were totally irrelevant and not important. And what was interesting is that Tony was trying to make players happy, he thought. And if you go back to the last CBA, people don't talk about this at all. The executive council, which is the subcommittee of eight players who have a vote to approve a CBA, they all voted against the last CBA.
8:58 Speaker 01 Little-known fact there, the only reason the CBA got ratified is that the player reps almost unanimously voted in favor of ratifying a CBA.
9:09 Pablo Torre? Mm-hmm.
9:10 Speaker 01 But the people who were controlled by Boris and the people who were on the subcommittee voted against it. There's always been this question with the union is how far can players go without getting paychecks? And what owners have always said is, "We can outlast them." And it's going to be tested right now. If Bruce Meyer continues to be in charge of the negotiation, and he is currently in charge, he's a litigator, he's a fighter, he's trying to make a name for himself, he is very difficult to deal with because he's not interested in player comfort, he's interested in fighting. And one of the things when you're trying to settle a fight, like a divorce or any sort of fight with partners, you don't want to hire lawyers who want to go to court, you
9:53 Speaker 01 want to hire lawyers who will settle, who will mediate. And Bruce Meyer is very difficult in that way.
9:59 Pablo Torre? You had raised an interesting issue, which is like Tony Clark being somebody that the league, that made league baseball, wanted in this position.
10:08 Speaker 01 Yes.
10:08 Pablo Torre? Right? This speaks to the larger crisis of confidence in sports unions right now. And this is what brings me to the NFLPA thing and what connects to the MLBPA, which is that at the NFLPA level, there has been turnover at the executive director position. Lloyd Howell, former leader of the union who came from finance, didn't have a sports background, was a pro-business candidate who immediately did things like, according to our reporting, suppress the results of this collusion arbitration ruling. That was a massive win, a partial victory if nothing else for the union that exposed all sorts of things that the NFL owners were doing secretly in an attempt to keep fully guaranteed contracts from existing.
10:51 Pablo Torre? That got buried because the NFLPA decided, "We're going to be a pro-business union."
10:58 Pablo Torre? Tony Clark was the counterpart. And One Team Partners, John, is a fascinating enterprise because it's the thing that they started, MLBPA and NFLPA, together to say, "We are going to find a way to fully monetize and leverage the name, image, and likeness rights of our players." Meaning, video game contracts, trading card contracts. This is a, according to the last valuation, multi-billion dollar company with a fun caveat, which is that it's run by a board whose chairs are the executive directors of the unions and the people they appoint. So, labor law intersecting with business.
11:40 Speaker 01 Do you have a fundamental problem with that? I mean, there's corruption. I will say this, and it will upset you, but corruption is not limited to the C suites. There is a long history of corruption at the leadership position of unions. And so, to say that anyone shocked that the NFLPA or MLBPA is involved in any nefarious activity, if you've been in the game long enough, you've been around it long enough, it's everywhere. And what the players are realizing, and here is the interesting business point, is you can have NIL and you can have big businesses that are done sort of on an ancillary basis. But what players really care about is not their licensing money, which is a percentage of money they get.
12:23 Speaker 01 They're interested in their contracts, they're interested in their careers. And what the union has done historically is kowtowed to the upper echelon of the union, which is a tiny, teeny percentage of the players' union. Patrick Mahomes, Shohei Ohtani, those are the exceptions, not the rules. The majority of people are the middle and lower class, and they tend to get ignored by their own union. And I assume players would like to stop that.
12:52 Speaker 05 When the heads of the unions came to see me, they were always excited about, "Let's do something together. Let's make some movies. Let's get some business going." But they don't really have the players' name, image, and likeness rights, do they?
13:06 Speaker 01 They do.
13:07 Speaker 05 They do?
13:07 Speaker 01 They do, but they don't have the marks of the teams. So we own that.
13:11 Speaker 05 But a player can't go out and do their own shoe deal? Of course they can.
13:14 Speaker 01 They can, but they can't be in uniform without our permission. So you'll see some commercials with players that look like they're in a uniform, but it's very much movie magic. They don't have permission. They don't have the right to use the marks. We want to get paid for that.
13:29 Pablo Torre? Yeah, that's the Zankys.
13:31 Speaker 05 Well, and they certainly don't have the rights, which is what you need to highlight the league controls.
13:36 Speaker 01 That's different as well.
13:37 Speaker 05 So you can't get footage.
13:40 Speaker 05 So is it really billions of dollar business? The NFLPA and MLBPA? What's the big business there?
13:47 Pablo Torre? So it is in who needs player images and likenesses and names in uniforms? And it's video game companies. It's trading card companies. And so, look, of course, this is a thing, as all startups are, that is projecting ahead, right? And so the NFLPA, their whole goal with the MLBPA was, "Everyone else in sports, these leagues, these teams are making money. We have contracts that you got to come to us for. So let's collectively use our leverage as these unions to drive up the price in what we charge." And the last bit of like, so where does it become a problem? It becomes a problem according to whistleblower complaints at the MLBPA
14:31 Pablo Torre? and now sources I've talked to at the NFLPA, who have raised this with the federal government, that on that board, these union leaders are looking to self-enrich via these...
14:44 Pablo Torre? Special equity programs and bonus points. And there's a whole episode we did about this from last summer. But the point being, people are saying people are profiting personally off of the capitalism that they're trying to use to build the war chest that would otherwise logically be used to sit out games and plausibly win a labor war.
15:07 Speaker 01 So that's what the war chests are for. And you read recently that Major League Baseball is withholding some revenue from owners in order to build up money to have in case of a lockout or strike. Very common. That is what the commissioner does and that's what the union does. Everyone keeps money, always management and unions. You are keeping money available to you to see how much you can withstand. And that's always been the question. It's not just sports. It's anytime there's management v. union. It's who has the ability to stick it out the longest and who's going to blink first? And it's always been players.
15:39 Speaker 05 Yeah.
15:39 Speaker 01 And the thing about the advantage we always felt? Players get older every year. Owners don't. Owners' horizon is much longer than a player's horizon. So you really have to get to the point of lost paychecks, which is why nothing much happens in December, January, February, March, because baseball players don't get paid till April. So everyone gets excited about a lockout in December. Players don't care. Owners don't care. It's not a big deal. It's when they start missing paychecks. And that's what the union secretes money away for is to distribute to players. But guess what? The rich players and the poor players, it's done in equal dispersments. So it's not as though that if you're making $80 million a year versus $1 million, that you get eight times.
16:23 Speaker 05 Really?
16:24 Speaker 01 It's done equally.
16:25 Speaker 05 Wow. Then what is the existential issue that the negotiation has to address?
16:34 Speaker 01 Right now is why younger players are not getting paid more and how quickly players can gain their freedom. It's funny, people think the issue is the salary cap and everyone's gonna talk about that on every other show. That's really not the issue. It is a total red herring.
16:49 Pablo Torre? Why isn't it the issue?
16:50 Speaker 01 Because at the end of the day, it's not that the players are so against the salary cap or that the owners are so in favor of it. It's actually simply about what can owners do to keep salaries lower? How do you lower the amount of money going to players? Owners actually don't care. If you have a payroll of 100 million and you have to pay one guy 99 million and everyone else makes a million, or you pay everyone equal, owners actually don't care. They're looking at the total outlay. But inside the union, there is such an interesting fight that happens where it looks as though Scott Boris and other powerful people are taking care of the Kyle Tuckers of the world
17:32 Speaker 01 who's making 60 million a year, but all of the other guys who never get to free agency are saying, well, wait a minute, how do we get as much money as we can? I just had an argument with Dominique about it on his show recently where I would grant players free agency every year and Dominique said, hold on, that's too much. We don't want that. And I always smile because that would be the ultimate freedom for players.
17:55 Pablo Torre? Right.
17:56 Speaker 01 But then you have to earn what you get paid and God forbid that happens.
17:59 Speaker 05 But the easiest way to keep payroll down is to play the incoming players a specified amount of money so there's very little negotiating leverage.
18:09 Speaker 01 The preference would always be to stop the bigger teams from spending too much and really help them help themselves, making it against the rules. Cause what we found is the cone tax was invented in the last CBA to stop the Mets from spending so much.
18:23 Pablo Torre? It was a Steve Cone Tax.
18:24 Speaker 01 Steve Cone Tax, the owner of the Mets, it was called that. But in fact, it's the Dodgers who were way over that number, more so than even the Mets. But we'd like to tell the Dodgers and the Mets that they can't spend all that money, even if they have it, let them pocket it, let them invest in companies or buy yachts. We just don't want it necessarily going to players. And that's not an anti-management or anti-union. It's merely pro-profit. And I've never apologized for that. And you're gonna be reading a lot about that over the next year. Is what is wrong with profit?
18:58 Pablo Torre? You have never apologized for that. Fact-check, true. It's interesting to consider the salary cap a red herring because what you're saying is all owners care about is that bottom line and aggregate. There are other ways to keep costs down, right? And you're saying the salary cap, sure, you can debate that, but we have these other goals and methods.
19:15 Speaker 01 There's so many other ways. There's retirement issues, there's ERISA issues. There's so many things that don't get any play because your eyes glaze over. But in a collective bargaining agreement, there's a thousand issues. What you do is you quantify each issue. You know this.
19:27 Speaker 05 I love that all these very, very well-to-do individuals who run lots of businesses, figure out how to make money. This is the one instance where they need help. They need assistance from not losing their own money, which actually, they have a right to lose their own money should they want to. But they want you to stop them from losing money.
19:51 Speaker 01 I likened it to a bowling lane where many owners need the fluffy bumpers.
19:58 Pablo Torre? Billionaire bumpers is kind of perfect. It seems like you're...
20:04 Speaker 05 Strike, strike.
20:05 Pablo Torre? Exactly. It seems like you're doing it on your own. But actually, there's a very, very helpful set of guardrails installed by the people that you pay to pretend like this market is free.
20:19 Speaker 01 That's it. And that's the guardrails. That's what a CBA is, if you think about it.
20:23 Pablo Torre? Of course.
20:24 Speaker 01 The entire document is actually guardrails in a bowling alley where everyone is trying to figure out what's the best way to get as many pins down as you can.
20:33 Pablo Torre? Yes, how can we privatize our gains and socialize our losses if possible? That would be ideal.
20:38 Speaker 01 I've heard that statement before. People love saying that when it comes to public investment. But that is, to me, a very fluffy statement in and of itself. Because it's oversimplified.
20:48 Pablo Torre? I understand. I understand your point of view on that. I want to get to what it's like, though, to be monitoring the union when you're at the league. Right? So the idea of like, ooh, we got a guy in Tony Clark that we would love to have this job for as long as possible. We got a guy in Lloyd Howell at the NFL. Yeah, we'd love to have him in this job for as long as possible. How much conversation is there around these useful opponents?
21:17 Speaker 01 You have to be careful, John, because when owners meet, there tends to be leaks.
21:21 Pablo Torre? Mm-hmm.
21:22 Speaker 01 And so you try to have it in smaller meetings, where you can try to contain the leaks as much as possible. But there are committees in baseball. There's labor committees, there's competition committees, and there's all sorts of meetings that happen outside of the committee meetings. And in these meetings is when you get the real juice. And the real juice is, how do we go far enough that we don't incur the actual wrath of players, where they won't want to do a hostile takeover or a coup and remove leadership?
21:53 Pablo Torre? Right.
21:53 Speaker 01 Like, how far can we go where we satisfy enough owners, we win clearly, but not so badly? It's like a regular business deal.
22:01 Pablo Torre? Or like the CIA. Trying to install a regime.
22:05 Speaker 01 So it's a great, I love that, actually, because if you install the wrong regime, which we've done so many times, you have to do it again. And then again, and you have to kill people. That's sort of what it is when you're thinking about the union.
22:18 Pablo Torre? Allegedly.
22:19 Speaker 01 When you were on the management side, and your employees weren't necessarily in a union, but you were dealing with thousands of employees.
22:26 Pablo Torre? Right.
22:26 Speaker 01 And you had to make decisions that were not in the best interests of all of them every time.
22:31 Pablo Torre? Of course.
22:32 Speaker 01 And that's just part of what being in business is.
22:34 Speaker 05 I was gonna ask the question of, we always talk about if rates are gonna go down, is there any possibility that players' salaries will go down?
22:44 Speaker 01 Only if revenue does. I am actually in favor of tie.
22:48 Speaker 05 But that's a pretty big conditional. Given the status of the regional sports networks.
22:56 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
22:57 Speaker 05 Lots of teams are losing, what, 50, 60 million dollars?
23:01 Speaker 01 Industry revenue is up, but individual team revenues are actually not necessarily climbing at the rate they were because they had counted on these TV deals that have gone away.
23:11 Speaker 05 But not likely that you would actually see a new salary cap that declined.
23:18 Speaker 01 It is incredibly unlikely that any league would have. Now, it happened in hockey after COVID. And you can fact check me on this, but I believe their salary cap not only didn't go up, but they kept it flat for a number of years after COVID to try to help with some of the losses the teams incurred. But in general, as if you tie revenue to payroll. Businesses, their revenue increases.
23:41 Speaker 05 Right.
23:42 Speaker 01 So caps, you know, the NFL announces huge increases in its cap every year, but it doesn't mean the union, the NFLPA, is whistling Dixie out of its keister. It just means that their, the salary cap of teams is higher, but there's still an issue with distribution of wealth.
23:58 Speaker 05 Yeah, we've talked about it a lot, and I know you and I differ slightly. They want to say they manage for profit.
24:08 Speaker 05 But a lot of the resultant profits in the last 25 years have come from selling teams. And it is two different kinds of management. We don't have to disagree about whether they should be maximizing profit. But in fact, it is different to manage to win games and to maximize profit. Those two things tend to be slightly at odds with each other.
24:34 Speaker 01 I've never had anyone answer this question, and I would hope you would tell me the truth. Do you know that when you are doing your earnings calls or you are meeting with Wall Street and analysts and you're looking at your stock price? Do you ever say to an analyst, you know, if we sold off all of our assets, the cash value would indicate that our stock price should be 10% higher? We'd be worth, you know, 50 bucks a share. Right now, it's trading at 40. How can that be?
25:01 Speaker 05 We, we, every. Every board meeting, we had a presentation in which the CFO and the CSO would present what the underlying enterprise value was of the individual pieces of the company that Wall Street did not give us credit for.
25:21 Speaker 01 And you can wipe your butt with that, like, no one cares. Jimmy Dolan's doing this right now. He may split the Nixon Rangers because he feels as though that as separate public companies, Wall Street will recognize each of their values more than they recognize today the combined value of MSG. It is this longstanding argument that happens inside C-suites where, "I don't understand why you're not recognizing our value. Look at how much we're worth." But that's not how it works. In teams, it's the same thing. So you're asking, "Why can't you just recognize what your team is worth and be okay with that?" That's just not reality.
25:56 Speaker 05 Yeah, no, no, I wasn't suggesting, but I am suggesting that theoretically, you could manage to a sale. It's not necessarily a good idea when running a business because it tends to be counterproductive to profits.
26:08 Speaker 01 So then why would you do it?
26:09 Speaker 05 Because it's a better way to make more money. For instance, buying a winning team is more expensive than buying a losing team.
26:17 Speaker 01 I've never seen that correlation, actually. I know they say that when you win a championship, the value of your team goes up, and when you lose 100 games, I, you know how many times potential buyers who I've come across say, "What was that record again last year? Like, what's, what, how, how did you guys do on the field?" Like, that's never even part of due diligence. It's not even in the diligence room, like, the record of your team over the past 10 years.
26:40 Pablo Torre? But it must help, right? The Seahawks being up for sale. I would presume you could find a way to increase profit based on winning a Super Bowl.
26:48 Speaker 01 Yes, increase annual operating income. Absolutely, winning helps because you can increase prices. But here's the thing, sports teams don't trade on regular revenue multiples or EBITDA multiples the way other industries do. When you're buying another company, you can say, "Oh, this sector is four times EBITDA." And you go into a negotiation and you argue over the assumptions on the P and L. Sports teams aren't like that.
27:14 Speaker 05 Four teams are worth one dollar more than what somebody else will pay for them.
27:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:19 Speaker 05 It's like a house, right? You can argue comparables, but if the person living in that house thinks they will sell it only for two million dollars, it's binary. You pay two million dollars and get it, or you don't get it. And with teams, because of the scarcity and the attractiveness of being a team owner.
27:36 Speaker 01 So what changes that? What changed that is bankruptcy. What changed that is when it's taken out of your hands, which is why the leagues no longer will allow teams to go bankrupt because they don't want to stress sales. They don't want to lose control of the sales process. If you want two million for your house, and that's a very relatable number, I'm sure to so many people, but whatever number it is that you want for your house, if the bank has it.
27:56 Speaker 05 Right.
27:57 Speaker 01 Or you can't afford to pay your mortgage or property taxes, then all of a sudden it doesn't matter what number you want.
28:02 Speaker 05 Right.
28:03 Speaker 01 It matters what number someone's willing to give you.
28:05 Speaker 05 Exactly. And it would be an interesting question, and I know we may get to the issue of tanking.
28:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:12 Speaker 05 In the NBA. When I look at it, I'm like, are they considering actually the detriment they're doing to their franchise? Are the Sacramento Kings actually important enough and big enough to withstand the fact that their fans are not going to go to games because they're losing? They're not the Lakers and the Knicks already, so all they're doing is damaging their brand, damaging their overall value for what? The unlikely chance of getting a 14% chance to get Cameron Boozer.
28:46 Pablo Torre? I want to get to tanking in full, and John, of course, taking it to his particular province in college basketball, all tracks. I want to get to just, I mean, look, here's a quote. When you talk about the economics here and the dynamics here, and it's Bruce Meyer saying about Tony Clark's resignation, quote, "Anyone that underestimates the strength and solidarity of the MLBPA does so at their own peril."
29:10 Speaker 05 Oh, boy. That's tough.
29:12 Speaker 01 We're shaking in our britches, baby.
29:15 Pablo Torre? And the thing I think about, again, in parallel to the NFLPA, as David legitimately is laughing at that, is that no one does solidarity like ownership.
29:26 Speaker 01 There's fewer, keep in mind, it's a smaller room.
29:29 Pablo Torre? But also.
29:30 Speaker 01 Easier.
29:31 Pablo Torre? No question, as opposed to a union of thousands of differently incentivized, differently talented individuals, players. But I also mean it in terms of coordination, in terms of strategy, in terms of the dark arts that I'm referring to when it comes to, are you guys really playing the game in the way that this could be played if you wanted to win it? And in this case, again, so you wish Tony Clark was there. You wish Lloyd Howell was there, because these are pro-business candidates who want to go along to get along and have personal self-interest here, right? It's very funny that Tony Clark resigned because of the sister-in-law thing.
30:08 Speaker 01 He did not, I'm not buying that for one second.
30:11 Pablo Torre? But also, there's a federal investigation that is bearing down, in which all sorts of other things are obviously also more damaging, I would say, to the solidarity and strength of the union that Bruce Meyer is now giving press releases about.
30:25 Speaker 01 It's so good that players would say, oh, everything Tony Clark did, all the ways he could be indicted, you know, I could live with that. Wait, he's screwing his sister-in-law, forget it, I'm over the edge, now I want him out. Can you imagine judging adultery when you're a player? It makes me laugh.
30:40 Pablo Torre? But the question of what is the thing that happened here that was beyond the acceptable threshold of, we can't have this guy leaving.
30:47 Speaker 01 Pocketing money, I'm gonna say, would be the one thing you can't do. When you are the chairman of someone, of a company, and you are found to be pocketing money, cheating on your expenses, somehow doing deals where you are getting stumped on the other side, that is something a board will not tolerate. They'll tolerate a whole lot of lack of stock of performance, they'll tolerate a whole lot of misfires strategically, but if you're doing stuff where you're making money that they don't know you're making, there's zero tolerance for that. That's my experience.
31:18 Speaker 05 Well, as you pointed out before, the money they're taking is part of the chest of money that allows the players to stay out. So there could not be anything more damaging to the solidarity than, oh, we need this to be able to have a position of strength with the owners, who by definition have the ability to hang on longer than they do.
31:41 Pablo Torre? That's, I think, perhaps the most important part of like, what is this union up to right now? Doesn't seem like they're prioritizing the membership.
31:51 Pablo Torre? Despite all the strength and solidarity that is being declared here.
31:55 Speaker 01 It's one of the great questions that I've always had when you think about unions and then leadership is everyone always raises their hand and saying, "I'm here for you guys." And that's what the union, when they're on the road trying to meet with teams, when they're trying to get a contract extension, "I'm here for you." Well, what are you doing each day? What is in your job description each day that helps us? And the way players define help is not by getting in at 1 a.m. instead of 3 a.m. after a road game or an extra off day. Help for them is maximizing their earnings during the course of their guaranteed short career. That really should be the only job, much like for a commissioner, it's increasing the value of the team is his only job, no matter what they say, that's the main job.
32:39 Speaker 01 And for a union leader, it's getting more money to players during their short windows of earning power, which Charles Barkley is one of the few examples where you can earn more money outside of the game. But he is, it's very rare that any player can go out and make 750 grand a year doing anything after they're done playing, and that's the minimum in baseball.
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34:50 Pablo Torre? I want to get to tanking. I want to get to this other issue that is really blowing up the NBA.
34:58 Speaker 01 Your guy's out of hand.
34:59 Pablo Torre? My guy? Who's my guy?
35:00 Speaker 01 Cuban. He's out of hand.
35:02 Pablo Torre? Oh, Mark?
35:03 Speaker 01 Have you seen what he's doing?
35:05 Speaker 05 I'm not sure I have, no.
35:07 Speaker 01 He just sits there tweeting about tanking now. He stopped tweeting about Pablo.
35:10 Pablo Torre? Mark loves to tweet.
35:12 Speaker 01 It's really incredible.
35:13 Speaker 05 Wait, you're talking about Pablo or Mark Cuban?
35:15 Speaker 01 Funny, both, but thank you.
35:18 Pablo Torre? Unfortunately.
35:18 Speaker 01 But Mark Cuban has been, and I assume you're referring to this.
35:21 Pablo Torre? Well, look, there's a whole debate that is ancient, but now at the forefront of what the NBA should do to punish and regulate tanking. And Mark Cuban, who was the majority owner of the Mavericks and then did not...
35:34 Speaker 05 He was the governor, I think.
35:35 Pablo Torre? Excuse me?
35:35 Speaker 01 He was that, too.
35:36 Pablo Torre? He was then the governor when they called the governor, and then he sold the team to the Adelson family. And he was no longer the governor, the majority controlling owner. But now he's back in some sort of role that says, oh, Mark's kind of running things again. And I don't really know how that came to be, but he is also tweeting. And so...
35:57 Speaker 05 And I'm assuming he's unhappy about other people tanking?
36:01 Pablo Torre? No, he's actually saying, quote, "Few can remember the score from the last game they saw or went to. They can't remember the dunks or shots. What they remember is who they were with, their family, friends, a date. That's what makes the experience special." He's on to say, "Fans know their team can't win every game. They know only one team can win a ring. What fan that care about their team's record want is hope. Hope they will get better and have a chance to compete for the playoffs, then maybe a ring. The one way to get closer to that is via the draft and trades and cap room. You have a better chance of improving via all three when you tank." We didn't tank often, only a few times over 23 years, but when we did, our fans appreciated it and it got us to where we could improve.
36:37 Speaker 01 What does that even mean?
36:37 Pablo Torre? Trade up to get Luca and improve our team. The NBA should worry more about fan experience than tanking. It should worry more about pricing fans out of games than tanking, and it goes on and on.
36:45 Speaker 05 I will say, the, one of the things that Michael Jordan said that I admire, I don't admire all the things he said, was, "I play every game because there is some fan in the arena who has never seen me play before and they came to see me play." When I went to see the Bulls play, I was not going, "Man, it's great to be with my friends." I was like, "I want to see Michael Jordan play. And if I go see the Knicks play, I want to see Jalen Brunson play. And I don't want to see time management on the night I spend hundreds of dollars for a ticket to go see the game."
37:22 Speaker 01 Are you guaranteed which pitcher's gonna pitch, or who's gonna be in the lineup?
37:25 Speaker 05 No.
37:25 Speaker 01 Or, it's all ridiculous. Mark Cuban, he sounds so sad with that quote because that's so old school. "Oh, it's all about fan experience." Ask Mark what the rundown is of revenue in the league and it's broadcast revenue that is a way bigger percentage than it ever has been.
37:41 Speaker 05 And you're talking about the league that has made the best marketing use of its players. The NBA is all about the top players. You go to see those players and you're not gonna be happy if they're being time managed on the bench.
37:57 Speaker 01 When you created Unrivaled, I don't want to take over, but I have a quick thing. You created Unrivaled, you purposefully said, "Hey, we're gonna have them play in a studio. We'll have a couple thousand people there, that'll be nice. We'll go to Philly once in a while and do a great PR statement that, hey, it's the largest crowd to ever see women's basketball." Whatever. The reality is, your business was, "Let's get a broadcast deal."
38:18 Speaker 05 Right.
38:19 Speaker 01 "Let's fund it with sponsorship and broadcast deals based on viewership, having nothing to do with the experience of being at the game." Do you regret that decision?
38:29 Speaker 05 No, not for the startup of the league. And the plan is over time to go to a city team-based structure. And because ultimately, what you care about is going to your, see your local team. I don't believe in these sort of roving bands of players that move around.
38:47 Pablo Torre? Why not? The Savannah Bananas are a multi-billion dollar.
38:50 Speaker 05 Savannah Bananas are sui generis. I don't think you would have a bunch of Savannah Bananas. But the guys who did that, it's brilliant. It's great. But that's not why people go see the Knicks and the Jets and the Giants and the Yankees and the Mets and the Rangers and the Islanders. They go to see the players and the team jerseys.
39:10 Pablo Torre? And the thing that Mark says to.
39:13 Speaker 05 It's a very expensive place to hang out with your friends.
39:15 Pablo Torre? Well, and this is, this is, this is what Cuban is saying. He's saying, quote, "Tanking isn't the issue. Affordability and quality of game presentation are," end quote. And what I just want to point out is that they could all be issues.
39:26 Speaker 05 They're all issues.
39:27 Pablo Torre? It doesn't need to be just one instead of the other. It's a yes and sort of a question. But the question of why do teams tank? I mean, I covered this as deeply and as manically as anyone could cover with the Philadelphia 76ers and Sam Hinkie. And the story then, when it was less obvious that this was, I guess, happening, was this is another version of fetishizing a championship. If all you care about is winning a title, and in the math of the NBA, a superstar player is the quickest way from A to B to shortcut, then that's why the incentives are there to do it. And so the question, John, you have already objections?
40:06 Speaker 05 But it, how did it work out for the Sixers? How many championships they win?
40:10 Pablo Torre? So they get.
40:11 Speaker 01 Not one since '83 is my recollection.
40:13 Speaker 05 Have they been to the finals?
40:14 Pablo Torre? It is, it is.
40:15 Speaker 05 Have they been to the conference finals?
40:17 Pablo Torre? I am not going to be baited into relitigating the process. But I will point out, they get Joel Embiid, they have a bunch of top picks, and they're, and it didn't work out.
40:28 Speaker 01 Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
40:29 Pablo Torre? And so the question is about.
40:31 Speaker 05 Wait, when does it work out?
40:33 Speaker 01 The Houston Astros lost 100 games three years in a row and then had a dynasty. The Chicago Cubs went into a rebuild, won a World Series. The L.A. Rams.
40:41 Speaker 05 Did the Astros tank and rebuild through the draft? Or they rebuild through their minor leagues and trades and?
40:48 Pablo Torre? All of it, all of it.
40:49 Speaker 01 But they drafted well. Now, they had a mistake. They drafted Markiplier, who was supposed to be good and didn't. But it's hard to get everyone right. But they generally, they did it right. I mean.
40:58 Pablo Torre? The Thunder are doing a version of trying to do everything.
41:00 Speaker 01 Fantastic.
41:01 Pablo Torre? Like, what are the edges available? And look, to John's point, right? There are many examples of teams that have tanked for a season to get the number one pick. And the number one pick sometimes is 11. And it is really hard to overcome that if the, again, if the roulette wheel doesn't spin in your direction. But the question of how to sever the incentive structure so that teams are not tempted to do this, as the Jazz are doing this and being fined $500,000. And other teams are being punished now in ways that they weren't before for doing this, at least because of the public perception that it's happening.
41:36 Pablo Torre? The solution has been abolish the draft, which is something that we've talked about sort of in sports media for a long time as like, clearly, the only way to fully sever that incentive structure is don't reward losing. If you reward it, then you're gonna tempt teams into losing. And so, John, your perspective as the guy who had the broadcast rights deal for the draft?
42:02 Pablo Torre? How did it feel to always have this TV show? What is being lost from a broadcast perspective? How big a deal was the draft when it came to being an NBA rights holder?
42:12 Speaker 05 It's a cool thing. It's not, it's pretty de minimis. I mean, it's a night of television. It's very successful. But nobody's life would be changed on television if the draft went away. The NFL draft would be harder. The NFL draft is several, is basically a week-long extravaganza. I personally would like, when I was there, I won't.
42:33 Speaker 01 You'd give it up for an extra playoff game, by the way.
42:35 Speaker 05 Yeah.
42:36 Speaker 01 The entire draft.
42:37 Speaker 05 Absolutely.
42:37 Speaker 01 If you could get one playoff game, you'd be happy to have never a draft again.
42:41 Speaker 05 Yeah, that's correct. Now, when, when there, I wanted the draft to be at least two nights, maybe three nights. Cause it's good television and it's fun and it's interesting.
42:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:51 Speaker 05 But, uh, it's not, David's right. You'd take one playoff game more instead of the draft.
42:57 Speaker 01 And you were programming 17 ESPN channels at that time, looking for tons of content. You can have ancillary content. Three nights can become three days. You do a week before. For crying out loud, at CBS, I love you CBS, they're doing mock drafts for next year, the night of the draft of this year.
43:11 Speaker 05 Yeah.
43:11 Speaker 01 It's, it's, it's funny and so it's content.
43:14 Speaker 05 Well, one thing you wanted was you wanted to have whatever people were talking about, right? Tonight, basically sports, the draft is on ESPN. Cause it's the thing that's most important. I don't know, it doesn't aggregate bigger than all of the games being played, all the hockey games and baseball games and basketball games. But you love the event where you control the narrative. But that, that's not a reason to keep the draft. The stipulated reason to keep the draft is to create balance in the league. You have a bad year, we're going to give you the league's best player. So to, to Cuban's point that he's right about, that theoretically provides hope. It very seldom works, just very seldom works.
43:57 Speaker 05 You have a generational transformative player like Wembiana. I still don't know if I would lose a whole season, damage my brand, damage my relationship with fans, get people used to losing, not coming to the stadium to get a 14% chance of drafting Cameron Boozer. This time, he's a very good player. Would I like to have him? Absolutely.
44:17 Speaker 01 If you have 14% chance, if I have to lose 60 games in one season to have a 14% chance of getting Victor, you bet I'm doing that.
44:26 Pablo Torre? But can we, can we, can we locate this conversation in 2026 though? Because tanking has happened forever. And the rule that I used to joke about was the first rule of Tank Club is you don't talk about Tank Club. Right? You just make it so that no one makes too big a stink of it and you can. Kind of do it and the league doesn't love it, but they.
44:43 Speaker 01 It's what Utah screwed up. Sitting the players in the fourth quarter is not necessary.
44:46 Pablo Torre? So I want to locate the punishment. And again, why is this happening? The, the view that I have is that it's happening because it's not just about tanking. It's because there's a portfolio of issues that are undermining fan confidence and trust in sports. It's the era of legalized gambling, plus this, plus the fact that there are all these conflicts of interest that teams are like, look, we just want to win. And fans are like, do you though?
45:14 Speaker 05 I gotta say, I'm not a believer in putting sports betting always at the center of what the issue is. Who gives a [BLEEP] if, if you bet on a team and they sit the player to it? It's your problem, not mine. I don't, I don't want.
45:31 Speaker 01 Yikes.
45:31 Speaker 05 Right? It's not my problem. If, it is my problem if I go to the game and don't see the players I paid to go play. See, if you go, if you go to a concert and they've decided to sit the lead guitarist and the drummer, would you be unhappy?
45:46 Speaker 01 Or they don't play the hits?
45:47 Speaker 05 Yeah.
45:48 Speaker 01 But, but I, I disagree with you almost 100%. Gambling is the center of the issue and it's of all issues because you're talking about people's money.
45:56 Speaker 05 But it's only a center issue if you let it be. I mean.
46:00 Speaker 01 That's circular reasoning. I, I, I understand what you're saying, but.
46:03 Speaker 05 But as a commissioner of a league, I'm not worried that the betters may be suffering. For I'm worried that the integrity of the league, the integrity of the relationship with the fans, they're, they're providing an entertainment product. I'm not being completely sarcastic when I say it is like, you know, if the Who played and the, these guys are all dead, so it doesn't matter, but the Who played.
46:26 Speaker 01 Two people dead, still two people alive.
46:29 Speaker 05 I got it.
46:29 Speaker 01 Killed off the entire band.
46:31 Pablo Torre? 50% of the Who is a, it's a real glass half, who glass, glass half full situation.
46:36 Speaker 05 But, but if during, but, but if during their heyday, they'd said, you know, tonight, we're time managing Keith Moon. He's tired from playing a couple of nights ago in Cleveland and the last night he played in St. Louis and we're playing again. We're gonna sit him so he has a longer career.
46:53 Speaker 01 It's not right. The show goes on without Keith Moon. If Daultrey doesn't show, then they don't. Bruce Springsteen doesn't come, they cancel the concert. If Steve Van Zandt can't play that night, they keep going. So it really depends if who is we're talking about.
47:05 Speaker 05 I'm talking about involuntary, there's no physical, there's no health reason. That you're just denying people what they are coming in to see, and people are coming to see the players. And and tanking is not a good look. Go back to the draft. The the draft, it's it's an interesting question. There is the most popular international league in the world does not care about balance in their conference. They want the same teams to win every year.
47:34 Pablo Torre? The English Premier League.
47:35 Speaker 05 English Premier League. They don't care. They want Arsenal and Chelsea and Man City, Man United to win and Liverpool to win every year. And they're okay if Brentford goes down, Brentford and Burnley and and West Bromwich Albion, they don't ever want them to win. And only one league I think in the world has ever successfully transitioned to really not caring about which team makes the final game, and that's the NFL. They can get away with it while the NBA has to pretend that it's okay if Oklahoma City and they and they can make a case and Minnesota Timberwolves make it. They'd still rather the Knicks and the Lakers and Celtics
48:17 Speaker 05 played every year in the final, but they spend all this time, I guess it's because they report to owners and they have to make all those owners happy, not just the owners of the Knicks and the Celtics and the Bulls and the Lakers, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't know if it's better for business. The business would be better if the favorite teams won every year.
48:38 Speaker 01 You're just making an argument for the super league? That means you sound like the president of ESPN. Give me the Yankees, Red Sox every day.
48:43 Speaker 05 The super league is a terrible idea because.
48:46 Speaker 01 That's all you're describing right now.
48:47 Speaker 05 No, I'm not. The La Liga is not a super league. It's a league in which Barcelona and Real Madrid win every year, the same as when there was the Big Eight, Oklahoma and Texas won every year. And I'm saying that's better for business.
49:03 Pablo Torre? John's saying he wants the guppies to be in.
49:05 Speaker 05 Profit. You want to, you want to increase your league's profitability? You want your most popular big teams to win.
49:15 Speaker 01 I wish I had more time.
49:16 Pablo Torre? I know.
49:17 Speaker 01 Because I just refute, I, I just can't even believe what you're saying.
49:20 Pablo Torre? There's, there's a lot that we just dumped on our audience so we'll pick up.
49:23 Speaker 05 So, wait, which, which league, what is the league that gets the most media rights revenue in the world?
49:30 Speaker 01 I was gonna say the NFL, but it, it could, I don't know the broadcast rights for the EPL.
49:36 Speaker 05 The EPL, if not first, is second, and then they're probably our second. But they get their money from the whole world, as opposed from the United States.
49:45 Speaker 01 Well, the NFL does international deals. That's part of why they're playing all these international games, but it's a tiny.
49:49 Speaker 05 And it's what percent of their revenue?
49:51 Speaker 01 Tiny.
49:51 Speaker 05 Is it?
49:52 Speaker 01 They want it to be more.
49:53 Speaker 05 Is it one percent?
49:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's more than, I'm sure it's more than one percent of the broadcast revenue. But you're, the reason why we don't allow super leagues, John, is that the, eventually the fans are not interested in the lack of selection. You don't want to see the Yankees and Red Sox play just each other every day for three months during the summer.
50:12 Speaker 05 Who doesn't?
50:13 Speaker 01 It wouldn't, the audience, the audience has shown.
50:16 Speaker 05 If the Yankees and Red Sox played 15 times, it would be 15 of the top 20 rated games in the league.
50:23 Speaker 01 They do play that many times, they play 18 times, but the question is, really, is what if that were the only games they played?
50:31 Speaker 05 I'm not suggesting that they only play those games. Attendance matters, but for television, the big clubs, there's a reason North Carolina and Duke is a big deal every time they play. The rate's better than anything else.
50:44 Speaker 01 But what if they played every day?
50:46 Speaker 05 You would end up with too much. If they played six times a year, it'd be great.
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52:38 Pablo Torre? There are a couple of things I want to point out at the very end, which is that the question of what fans think about the products they're watching seems relevant in ways that it hasn't been before because there have been these threats from, frankly, legalized gambling companies, as well as bad actors who don't seem to be prioritizing what the interests of fans are. But in the words of The Who, who I am told are still partially still alive.
53:05 Speaker 05 Half alive.
53:06 Speaker 01 Better than fully dead.
53:08 Pablo Torre? I do fear that David Samson got fooled again. You got fooled again, David. We kept you later than you wanted to. You have to go to Long Island City.
53:15 Speaker 05 I do right now.
53:16 Pablo Torre? Actually do important things.
53:18 Speaker 05 Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
53:23 Pablo Torre? Thank you, guys.
53:33 Pablo Torre? Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tubinello. Our studio engineering is by RG Systems. Our sound design by Andrew Bersik and NGW Post. Digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern. And our theme song, as always, by John Bravo.
53:56 Pablo Torre? We'll talk to you next time.
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