How do you balance that this season?

He said, I won the Stanley Cup.

He said that was the best season, the most important thing.

And so that was our commitment to him.

Let's spend all of our time and attention to build the team and have it built for the playoffs.

This is a really, really big team.

This is a team with players in their prime and the young players that we've added, they fit, they bring some speed, they bring some skill that we didn't have in the last couple of years.

I don't know that anyone has done that ever.

How do you balance that this season?

He said, I won the Stanley Cup.

He said that was the best season, the most important thing.

And so that was our commitment to him.

Let's spend all of our time and attention to build the team and have it built for the playoffs.

This is a really, really big team.

This is a team with players in their prime and the young players that we've added, they fit, they bring some speed, they bring some skill that we didn't have in the last couple of years.

I don't know that anyone has done that ever.

How do you balance that this season?

He said, I won the Stanley Cup.

He said that was the best season, the most important thing.

And so that was our commitment to him.

Let's spend all of our time and attention to build the team and have it built for the playoffs.

This is a really, really big team.

This is a team with players in their prime and the young players that we've added, they fit, they bring some speed, they bring some skill that we didn't have in the last couple of years.

I don't know that anyone has done that ever.

And

then he got on the court and we knew he could score.

We knew he could, he could make his own shot whenever he wanted and, But the coaches said, you're going to play defense.

And he took that as a challenge, and he really was tough to play against.

He has such long arms.

He's so physically strong, and he's still so young.

And his intensity and enthusiasm and energy, and I'm always nervous during the offseason after the kids graduate from college and they're traveling.

What's a realistic expectation for this team?

I look at the boards as a frame more than anything else.

That's a really profound discussion that we could talk about.

I have a lot of time on my hands, Ted.

No, it's really true.

fundamentally, football, soccer, and basketball, and cricket, those are the three most participated, most engagement of the world's population.

It's shocking, nine billion people-ish on the planet, And 3 billion people saying they watch soccer, they play soccer, a family member is involved, they follow the sport.

And 2 billion in basketball.

Because they were more different than similar, that's why it worked.

[laughs]

It's, it's, uh, it really is ...

Um, we won the first pick in the draft this past season in the NBA, and we've got AJ D'Antson, and we've made some smart trades to add value around him, and we had a bunch of young kids.

I think we're gonna have a real good team as time goes on, but it's a ping pong ball.

I mean, it's so random.

And we, we over the last 25 years have been one of the most successful franchises in the NHL from a financial standpoint.

I paid $85 million for the team.

[laughs]

Any lessons, any takeaways for your leagues?

Yeah, I think something very subtle happened there.

The owner of the Dodgers... was approved to buy the remainder and 100% of the Lakers.

And so now in LA, there'll be a baseball team and a basketball team all under one ownership umbrella.

Toronto is a great series.

They're Rogers Communications, and Rogers will end up buying 100% of the hockey team and the basketball team, and they have the baseball team.

And I think what you're seeing is big platform companies run like they're big tech media companies are really stepping to the fore And they do it for the benefit of the fans, right? The more revenues that they're generating, the more they can invest in their payroll.

Why is it better when it comes to leveraging tech and AI, which I know is obviously core to what you're doing and your background?

You can put another chair in the room.

SPJ ought to do some studies and analysis on ownership groups and how reflective of the community are the ownership groups and also leadership.

We've been very, very conscious of that with women, African-American, Indian, Hispanic, you know, there's 40 million Hispanics in the country, right? I mean, the growth of the separate audiences in America, but that makes up our, the young people in those households are our fans, and so I really do think It's good business.

It's not just like the right thing to do for society.

It's what our businesses need to do to be better.

And so I think keeping that eye on that prize and it's shocking that you're the only chairman.

I'm on the board of American Express where you had Ken Chenault who was just iconic for We have a very, very diverse board, but that's a really interesting lead director kind of question.

And so we think that there, again, there's a lot of value there.

And so at what point do you say it's time now for us to take MSE? public is that going to be a time are you sure you want to take it public at some point or not necessarily

not necessarily but acting as a pre-ipo company is very important we've raised billions of dollars we're heading towards a billion dollar revenue run rate double digit growth And the revenue is very predictable.

That's why I say we look like a software company.

About 75% of our revenues are contracted for a decade.

And they have 3% to 5% escalators.

So we have predictable revenues.

The analysts love that.

So in the sports arena, who were some of your favorites?

You guys have a new announcement out today about Steve Miller, who's going to be coming in as your new CFO in October.

Well, we're trending towards a billion dollars in revenue, and we've brought in money from sovereign wealth funds.

We've brought in money from private equity.

We have some of the most sophisticated investors.

And the leagues are becoming very, very demanding in the means of how you bring in capital.

So we announced today a new CFO, Steve Miller.

Steve comes from Warby Parker.

I

Let's go on stage.

On the way down, I did a little bit of research.

I was going down Connecticut Avenue and, you know, it was designed by the French.

Washington, D.C. was designed by the French.

And there was a either fictional or real soldier, Nicholas Chauvin.

And he was wounded 17 times, disfigured terribly.

And all he did was extol the virtues of his country and nationalism.

So we need to take a hard look at how we need to redesign and reform, not the entire military, but chunks of the military in order to meet the requirements of the future so that we prevail and remain the number one military power, number one economic power, so American people can stay free and enjoy the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

What are some keys to starting and growing a successful business?

The best saying I ever heard in sports was, no one knows nothing.

And I think that's pretty much on business, that you can find a niche, you can find an industry, you can take a contrarian view and force of will.

When we started AOL, it was illegal to get on the internet.

The internet was owned by DARPA.

And we said, well, then let's build a private internet.

Crazy, right? We had a rollout in every area code so you could make local calls.

So you have a portfolio of companies you've invested in and is that through revolution growth with Steve Case or it's different?

What's the focus in those meetings? And from where you sit as someone in those meetings, what's the overall health of the NBA and the NHL? Yeah.

And I I take pride in saying that I think I've been a part of the strategy development with the commissioners and the league offices in that.

When I was at AOL and we were investors in companies like Google, Alphabet, and we did deals with Amazon and the like, you saw that those companies, we quickly got to scale in North America.

And North America, most powerful, richest market, but it's 350 million people.

And the world is 9 billion people.

So if you're going to be a major at scale tech media company, you've got to be global.

And if you're going to be global, you've got to be digital because the world is operated basically on mobile phones.

That seems like that would fit in to your portfolio.

that.

But we have to start to look at how we corporately develop and that we can reward our shareholders and we can grow the business.

I'm up here for the NBA owners meeting and it feels more and more like it's a $100 to $200 billion investment.

enterprise, where we have a strategic plan on how will we digitize every nook and cranny of the business, how will we globalize.

Today, we talked about, with enthusiasm, the expansion opportunities in, let's say, Europe, that there's not a professional basketball team in London or in Paris.

After we went to the Olympics, Adam came back, Adam Silver came back and said, There's unbelievable enthusiasm from fans, from sponsors, and that's a good growth vector.

As we changed our media partners and we started to be more looking at digital expansion, the Amazons, the Alphabets, the Microsofts, all of their growth is coming from outside the U.S. We have NBA Africa.

I mean, you understand, and you've long made the connection to a SaaS-type business and use that as kind of the model of how you think about yourself.

so what's the moment where you decide, you know what, I want to be in sports?

Well, I grew up in Brooklyn, New York.

My dad was a Greek immigrant and he, of course, became a waiter.

And I'm an only kid and my mom had to work and she was a secretary, a temporary secretary, which was a temp firm.

And I'd go to school and I'd get out at three o'clock and And they would get home about 6.30.

So there was that three and a half hours.

And you had to study and you had to play sports.

you see that naked guy with the axe? No, I