The Future of Sports and Search

In today’s episode, I sit down with Todd Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs and co-founder of FreeSpoke, to talk about sports, technology, and the importance of informed conversation. Todd shares how his family approached rebuilding the Cubs around winning, preserving Wrigley Field, and supporting the Chicago community. We also discuss how FreeSpoke presents information from different political perspectives while prioritizing privacy and helping users break out of online silos. Todd explains how technology is changing the relationship between fans and athletes, why live sports remain so powerful, and how teams are turning game day into a complete entertainment experience. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to Entrepreneurs Playbook. I'm David Meltzer and we are blessed again to have another owner of a franchise, one of my favorites, by the way, the Chicago Cubs, also the co-founder of FreeSpoke Search, the incredible Todd Ricketts has joined us on the playbook. Welcome to the playbook, Todd.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for having me here. Happy to be here.

• 0:19Speaker 00

  You know, I am now a minority owner of the Oakland A's and that's really changed over the years. When Warren I, Sidney Kimmel, offered us 2.5% of the Heat years ago, we had to get approved by the NBA. They wanted a black owner of the Heat when LeBron was there. And when I found out I could be owner today for like 0.002% of the team, even though the prices have gone way up in the past, I jumped at the ego and emotional and marketing capability of telling people I'm a minority owner of Las Vegas A's.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  But what a great opportunity to be such an influential person to impact the entire community. And I think that's what inspires me most when I get to talk to owners is that most of them, it's not about money at all. It's about the impact, the business development, the social economic development and impact that, you know, an iconic team like the Cubs has on a city that really needs a lift right now. The Chicago, the Chicago community needs the Cubs to win.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, so, I mean, when we, when we bought the team back in 09, we felt like we were walking into an amazing opportunity. The Tribune Company had, had run the Cubs as a, you know, TV content. And they also own WGN. And so they, they looked at it more from like filling the TV air and selling that ad space on TV and not focusing on, you know, keeping Wrigley Field up to date and necessarily putting a super competitive team on the field because they didn't have to. They had a lot of viewers, whether they had a good team or not. And so when we bought the team, we felt like we had this great opportunity and we said, we're going to base it on three pillars. We're going to win a World Series. We're going to save Wrigley Field and we're going to be

• 2:10Speaker 01

  a contributive member of the community. And I think we've kind of hit on all those things. We started on a, we started building the team again, probably like around 2011. It took us a couple of years to get sorted and get everybody in place. Started building the team in 2011, started renovating Wrigley Field in 2013, 14. That was a five-year renovation to save the field. And, you know, it's kind of culminated in a, a World Series in 2016. And which, you know, as a fan, you know, everybody loves that, but as a, as an owner and a fan, I'm like, okay, let's, let's win another one and prove it's not an accident. And so hopefully our team can pull it together and get us across the line this year. And, you know, and when you talk about Chicago,

• 2:52Speaker 01

  I think one of the great things that's actually happening in Chicago right now is there's this resurgence of, of sports. You know, if you look at like Connor Bedard of the Blackhawks, they looked like they're going to have a really good team. You have Caleb Williams, another young star, like taking, you know, that's, you know, who knows what, what his upper limits are, right? And then you have Pete Crow Armstrong. And so I feel like we're getting into this, you know, Jim McMahon, Michael Jordan, you know, sort of era of Chicago sports that, you know, it's going to be great for the city all around.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's one of my favorite cities. My daughter lives there and so I get to frequent it often. The culture, the food, the sports, it has every single thing. I just wish they didn't have that wind and you'd really have a place that everybody would want to visit all the time, all year long. That'll go right through you. But I also want to talk about business, you know, FreeSpoke and freespoke.com provides the, these results to people and it is labeled with political leanings, but it gives users privacy and of course gets away from the interfering access of things like pornography

• 4:03Speaker 00

  and other things that we want to keep outside of our content. What inspired you to co-found FreeSpoke?

• 4:12Speaker 01

  You know, I, as I, as was looking through, you know, like the technology offerings that were out there already, I was just seeing, you know, a slant or a bias on a lot of, a lot of the news that was coming through. And I, I said to myself, I'm like, you know, informed people make good decisions. So let's try to give people good information. And so we set out to build the search engine and we put a news aggregator on top of that to kind of draw people in. And really what we do is just try to cut through the noise, right? We try to gather as much information on any of these news topics and searchable topics from both sides. And then label it if we can to say like, okay, well, they, they have a slant coming this way. They have a slant coming from this way. And then what's the big jump is what, with the onset of AI,

• 4:58Speaker 01

  we were kind of able to take in all that information and put out our perspectives, not FreeSpoke perspective, but like if it's a political issue, here's where the left is coming from on this and here's where the right is coming from on this. And here's a little bit of the consensus and the overlap, which is where, you know, you can find a lot of the truth is, you know, where do both sides agree? Then we can, we know that's true, that's true for sure, right? And, you know, getting back to like, we want to make sure it was private because I feel like there is going to be a privacy event at some time in the future, which will get people to pay a little more attention to the, like protecting their privacy online.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  I don't know what that's going to look like, but I feel like people should be cognizant of their footprint and, and what other companies are tracking about them. And the third thing was that the pornography, you know, I've had this conversation a thousand times and people say, well, well, if you're all about free speech and so on, why are you anti pornography? And I'm like, well, there's, there's thousands of people going to bat for the free speech rights of the pornography industry every day. And I'm like, I just, I don't need to be one of them. FreeSpoke doesn't need to be one of them. So we're trying to, you know, put out this content that helps people get informed, cuts through the noise. And, and really the shift that I think that makes us unique too, is that we crawl and transcribe all these podcasts because so many more, so many people are shifting away

• 6:20Speaker 01

  from like the traditional news media and getting their information from, you know, podcasts all across the spectrum. And so we're, we're able to, we crawl those, we transcribe them, and then we put them into our AI engine to try to create this kind of complete, complete resource on these different topics. And, and people have really responded very well to that too.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm one of them, by the way, because being aware of social siloing where, you know, family members and friends of mine are caught into a feed. And I've used it for my own branding and marketing as an individual who never thought more people would know my name over Warren Moos, Steve Young, or Troy Aikman. It's this weird thing that you build your own community. And the more you get people to go down the Dave Meltzer rabbit hole, this systems all feed David Meltzer and that becomes their reality. And when it's politically driven, it's really dangerous because we lose something that I had and you had when we were kids or younger.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  We lose the appreciation of differences and we just, because we have a separate reality, it's almost offensive to us that you don't believe the truth. And the truths are so different today. Instead of this idea that you have provided on FreeSpoke of here's the information uns�ued and here's the opinions around it. Now let's see where the common ground stands so we can appreciate the differences once again. And I really wanted you on the podcast because as much as I'm a huge sports guy and I love the Cubs and, you know, I think it's one of the greatest, if not best, sports cities in the world.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  And of course I'm a kid who grew up in the eighties, so I was there with Michael and everybody else with all the teams and Eric Harris late in his career. But that means nothing to me compared to FreeSpoke because it's the only platform and search engine to me that is truly enthusiastic about appreciation. And this idea of let's figure out where we disagree so we can appreciate why. This danger of social siloing though, is there any aspects of FreeSpoke that helps to get people out of their feed and start to explore a proactive methodology of finding differences and appreciating them?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, 100% yes, because anytime you come to FreeSpoke, you're going to see information from both sides of a political issue. And I kind of always come back to this idea, you know, like you said, like when we were kids, people would go vote and on election day and not talk about it all that much. And if politics were as part of the conversation, it was maybe just a few days before the election. And now we just, you can't escape it. And so I kind of came to this conclusion like, well, if we can't escape it, let's at least put a framework that allows for conversations and allows for people to, you know, stay friends as neighbors, even when they disagree on the, on the politics and the direction of like the government or, or the politics of the day. So yeah, so like that's specifically what we're looking at

• 9:29Speaker 01

  is like getting out of your silo, seeing the other side. You know, I can't make people read things, but it's always kind of put up there. And just to acknowledge that there's two sides to every, every sort of issue that we're facing today.

• 9:43Speaker 00

  And obviously you've had a political background and relationships in your own family. I think brothers, is your brother's currently a senator still in Nebraska?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  He is, yeah. He's still a senator in Nebraska. He's up for reelection this year.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Jackson is now an eight-year-old Ewing sarcoma survivor, two years cancer-free. The chemotherapies that he received, they are all, except for one, older than my husband and I. There has been no new treatment for Ewing sarcoma that has been successful.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  Millions across America are waiting for new breakthroughs.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  So we're waiting for an MRI right now, hoping that it's going to come back normal.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  Is curing childhood cancer allowed by OMB, by the Office of Management and Budget? Help protect research that Congress already funded. Go to unitedforcures.org today. Paid for by United for Cures.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  And to that end, you know, that influence from your father and your brother of being involved in politics has seemed to move you to be a middle ground, a free spoken place where people can express their opinions and we can see every side of that opinion. What is your family's opinion of free spoke? I'm curious, your brother, especially as a Senator, I would think that he would be very enthusiastic about free spoke.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. They're all, they all, they all love it. And I, so, you know, Pete's a Republican. I, you know, I'm admittedly, you know, pretty Republican. I'm conservative, but I consider myself liberal in the classic Greek sense of debate and conversation and, uh, and articulating points of view. But my sister, my sister's a, a pretty strong Democrat and, and we just lived down the street.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  That's a normal, that's a normal family and that used to be cool.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It used to, yeah, exactly. And people are always like, oh, what is Thanksgiving like in your house? I'm like, I think it's just like Thanksgiving at your house. Like, you know, we, we, we understand that we don't agree on everything, but we can appreciate the other points of view and still love each other and treat each other like family.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, and more people should do that as well. There's some aspects of free spoke to no hidden filters, for example, or, or silent bias. Technology allows you to do that, I assume, today to be able to allow that to actually happen?

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, for, for sure. If you, if you look out at the other search engines, they definitely are filtering in the information you, you see. And we've specifically gone out of our way and it's, and I'm, when I say like, you know, we're searching for information now, it doesn't just include like Bing and Google. It's really, you know, it's chat GPT and it's Claude and, and it's Gemini and all the other, the other AI offerings that are out there because they're still drawing their information from those same sources, right? So like, when you put something in to chat GPT looking for answers, you know, it's, it's looking at Google, it's looking at Bing and it's also looking at Substack and Reddit and some other things, but it's still kind of coming from that same, that same internet index of information.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  And, and what we've seen is that there's just like a slant to sometimes the, the information that they put out. And so we, we specifically designed our AI to be just the facts, man. That's our mantra. We don't try to get into like anything that's like a little bit too deep in the weeds. It's like, what are the facts? What are the bullet points that can help people make up their minds? And really just, you know, like I come back to this idea of an informed, an informed population is, is good for democracy.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And that information unbiased is a must, I think, for, for our future. Now, the integration between sports as a platform and the search engine, as well as interesting, uh, teams, their values have exponentially risen in the last 14 months. And I think will continue because of what I call post-production content. We've always seen, uh, the content itself and the, uh, live distribution of the content to be a core value. You mentioned the original owners of the Cubs. That was all they really were concerned about. How important is the post-production content, not just for the, the team, but even for the content that you guys are creating?

• 13:57Speaker 00

  We can have a limited, immediate response to what we're creating, but the post-production content seems to be where the money and the attention and the intention lies today.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Well, I, I mean, when it comes to the sports world, what, what you're seeing is this, it's everything is a bit in flux, right? The world, the world is changing. People started cutting the cord on cable. It kind of put like the, the sports, the TV sports into flux. And so people, you know, all the different teams and different leagues are trying to figure out, okay, how are we going to deliver our games to people? Whether it be through like, you know, Netflix or Amazon Prime or, or, or traditional cable companies. And, and that everything in this, in this world is up in the air. And at the same time, on the fan side, I kind of feel like

• 14:48Speaker 01

  technology and really AI is going to accelerate this, but like technology of just like windows over the last 30 years, 35 years, people have become much more productive in their jobs. And they're finding that they have a little more free time. And then when they have free time, they want to, they, they look at sports and that now, you know, they don't want to, they don't want to just see Ian Happ's stats in a box score. They want to hear him on his podcasts, talking about what happened in the game, what was going through his mind. And there's a much more familial relationship between the players and the fans today than there was even 20 years ago, right? And so that's, I think there's that expansion of, you know, fans have free time, they're paying attention to sports.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  The, the sports teams are trying to figure out how to deliver their games and along with the games, they, they, they find they have time to put in other content. And then it's just this kind of like, you know, fluctuation where there's just so much more information out there and it's, it's really amazing. I might, my joke is like, when I go to Cubs games and I run into a fan, they're like, hey, did you see that kid that like, you know, Low A hit four home runs last night? And I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to wait till he gets to Iowa before I'm going to learn his name.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  We've got so much going on. I'm like, I can't, I don't get into the details of like what's happening in every minor league game, but a lot of our fans do and they, and they pay attention to it. It makes it, you know, it's kind of fun.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  It, it does. Yesterday I have a studio at the wind in Las Vegas, which we're definitely going to invite you out to. It's so, it's so much fun, but we had Sammy Hagar and, uh, the younger executives in my company were like, are you sure you want to promote, uh, Sammy Hagar on, on the show? You know, does anybody know who he is? And I was like, almost about 80% of my audience, uh, the, the 80% of my audience is going to show up. And sure enough, the lobby of the wind was, uh, you know, filled with people with license plates, Red Rock on their jerseys and pop-ups and, you know, Cabo Wabo. It was, it was amazing, but you know, it, it's so interesting. Who knows who and what information? It's impossible to keep up with it.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  You know, last question real quick. One of my friends who I work with, uh, Gary V, Gary Vaynerchuk and I, we're on an analog kick. We believe, and this is good for the Cubs, by the way, we believe more people will continue to show up live, not only because they have more time, but I'm seeing a trend that people are sick of Zoom. They're, they're sick of seeing things on their phone, as cool as it is, and they won't stop. But there's such a difference in energy and experience and awareness, uh, to go to a Cubs game in person, uh, for example. And you see this even in movie theaters that have been empty for, for years now, Spider-Man, Odyssey, they're selling out, uh, because people don't want to see the, that content on their phone.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  They don't want to see it on even their humongous TVs at home. They, they want to feel the, the sound and be there. What do you see as the future of the true experience of showing up to a game?

• 17:47Speaker 01

  So I, what I've, this is actually what I've seen to this point is first of all, I, you know, we have, fans are still coming out in droves and you know, Wrigley Field's a magical place. So we, we sell our tickets pretty well. And you, and you know, you put a few wins in there and we get more sales and you throw in a player like PCA who hits a homerun every other day or every day. Who he's like, he's not going to get to 4040 because he's not going to hit enough singles to give him a chance to steal a base. Right? That's the big risk right now. So we, but, uh, which is really fun to be around. It's just electric to be around. But I, I, I see it like the difference in baseball and what we're going to see, I think in, in more of these places is that when I was a kid, when you were a kid, you went to the game, you parked your car, you walked in the ballpark, you watched the game, you

• 18:32Speaker 01

  walked back to your car and you left. And what we've done around Wrigley and what a lot of other teams are doing are creating like these entertainment zones. And so you go there, you're going to go there and have your dinner before the game or have a few beers with your buddies and, and, and have like, maybe there's a live show, like we do like small live shows right outside of Wrigley before games and after games. And, and so it turns into a whole day experience. And I think that's going to be a big part of the draw for sports fans is that, yeah, I can watch the game on TV, but I can go have that full experience if I go to the ballpark a few hours early, or I stay an hour or so afterwards to like, kind of have that whole entire day of, of entertainment. And, uh, I think you're going to see that a lot more at a lot of different places over the next few years.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  Well, Todd, my mission in life is to empower others, to empower others, to empower others, to make a lot of money for the sake of helping others and having fun, because I believe I've never met anyone like you who makes a lot of money for the sake of helping others and having fun, that isn't happy. And I have a mission to empower people to be happy. And I am just so appreciative that you took the time and your efforts, not only being a co-owner of the Cubs, a much more significant co-owner than I am of the Las Vegas A's, by the way, and co-founder of Free Spoke Search Engine, uh, just providing people more of a, a capability of appreciating each other and building community, uh, from each other.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  And maybe we do need to take a couple of steps back with all the free time that we have, uh, to enjoy what I think is one of the most important aspects of being healthy, which is community. And you certainly have done that. Go ahead.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  There's no question about that. You know, my simple way of saying that is a rising tide lifts all boats. So if we can raise the tide, we all do better. And I think that like, you're going to be so happy with, uh, your, your investment in the, in the athletics there. I mean, what, what an exciting time for Vegas. I mean, it's, it was a city that was taboo because of gambling and now, you know, there's a football team and there's going to be a baseball team and I, there's a hockey team and I, you know, the NBA is looking at me out there. And I think like you, a franchise in Las Vegas, it can't do poorly because whoever you're playing, you're going to get 10,000 of their fans coming to Vegas just to go to Vegas to, you know, to catch a, to catch an A's game. And then, uh, and then go for, you know, all the entertainment that Vegas has to offer.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's the only place where the visiting team always has more people in town. Maybe even the, the home team, although the home team, if you look at the Golden Knights, I've never seen more fanatical.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  Those are merchandise freaks. Everybody has to have something Golden Knights, uh, which is great for the ownership there. We are blessed to understand and see the playbook to success of Todd Ricketts, uh, co-founder of Free Spoke Search and of course, co-owner of the incredible franchise, the iconic Chicago Cubs. We look forward to having him at more of our shows and more of our events. What a great philanthropist, uh, giving great impact to change the world. Thank you, Todd, for everything you do and thank you for being on my show.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  No, thanks for having me and I really enjoyed it.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Amazing. The incredible Todd Ricketts. I'm David Meltzer. This is Entrepreneurs, The Playbook.