Yeah

... and the people who ran it, Alan Rothenberg, Don Garber, Sunil Gulati, did an unbelievable job.

It was a great tournament, but we were not [laughs] prepared to compete on the world stage.

Now, the country's embraced it.

Everywhere you go, everybody's watching the World Cup.

I'm going to my place I go get my protein shake after I work out, and these guys are, like, putting up a television in this little, tiny store.

I'm like, "What are you doing?" They're like, "World Cup.

And for those who don't know, John, what happened? How do you explain this at a party? [laughs] What happened?

We talked to John Skipper, who was president of ESPN at the time, and how he dealt with Jim Gray for the interview.

I think that the first time that I heard about the idea of potentially having LeBron announce his decision on the air was from a query in Bill Simmons' mailbag.

However, it was not a query that we really pursued in any significant way.

The trail to the decision really started through a phone call from Ari Emanuel, who said, "I was at the Laker game.

I was sitting, talking to Jim Gray, and we have a great idea for you, and that is LeBron should announce his decision as to which club he's gonna go play for on ABC." First thing I said to Ari was, "Yes, I'd be interested.

If you have LeBron, and he says he will do it, we'll talk about doing it.

But if we do it, it's gonna be on ESPN." And I have never actually understood why there was so much aghastness.

It's funny you should mention that, because John Skipper actually said that Jim Gray was kind of the biggest controversy in all of this.

We talked to John Skipper, who was president of ESPN at the time, and how he dealt with Jim Gray for the interview.

I think that the first time that I heard about the idea of potentially having LeBron announce his decision on the air was from a query in Bill Simmons' mailbag.

However, it was not a query that we really pursued in any significant way.

The trail to The Decision really started through a phone call from Ari Emanuel, who said, "I was at the Laker game.

I was sitting, talking to Jim Gray, and we have a great idea for you, and that is LeBron should announce his decision as to which club he's gonna go play for on ABC." First thing I said to Ari was, "Yes, I'd be interested.

If you have LeBron, and he says he will do it, we'll talk about doing it.

But if we do it, it's gonna be on ESPN." And I have never actually understood why there was so much aghastness.

It's funny you should mention that, because John Skipper actually said that Jim Gray was kind of the biggest controversy in all of this.

So can you explain, John, what this story is actually about, as you have personally negotiated these deals before with Goodell?

Well, I would first of all suggest Roger Goodell was never a punching bag.

Um, he's always had quite a bit of power.

It happens that in the existential transformation of media from analog to digital, that sports has become the most valuable content that there is, and the NFL is the most valuable sports content.

So I don't know if it's kissing a ring or punching a bag.

It is, "I want to get close to the people who will enable me to have some portion of this content that is the most valuable content in the world." And the NFL is in an advantageous position that they have way more bidders for that content than they do have that content, right? Other leagues have more content, less bidders.

So you of course, I guess it's a version of kissing a ring.

Why not?

Jim McKay.

But we had decided long ago, at the company, we had one sports brand.

And it was highly advantageous as we were competing with the company that owned AOL Sports and Sports Illustrated and CNNSI and, and this Turner and...

Uh, this is, this, the idea of having multiple brand names for a single genre is baffling.

And it usually has nothing to do with the fact of anything other than these Sports Illustrated people don't want to sublimate their name to AOL, nor does AOL want to sublimate their name.

(laughs) Somebody at the top of an organization needs to say, "We have one brand name for sports." In our case, it was ESPN, and we were always fortunate to compete against people who had multiple brand names.

But the difference, to be clear, right, if you're a consumer, what ESPN+, which has always existed as ESPN standalone app, what it did not give you was the stuff that you get as a fan of certainly live events through your cable subscription.

Well, all the best...