Alex and Bobby try and parse Amazon’s rescue of Diamond Sports Group and what it means for the future of broadcasts, then discuss Jerry Reinsdorf’s quest to make his mark on the South Side with a new stadium, and dive into what Sports Illustrated’s untimely demise means for the future of the media landscape (it’s not great!).
Links:
Amazon investing in Diamond Sports Group
White Sox in “serious talks” for new stadium
Matthew Trueblood on Jerry Reinsdorf’s stadium dreams
Join the Tipping Pitches Patreon
Songs featured in this episode:
The Mother Hips — “White Falcon Fuzz” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”
Transcript
Tell us a little bit about what you saw and be able to relay that message to Cora when you watch Kimbrel pitch and kind of help out so he wasn’t typical pitches. So tipping pitches we hear about it all the time. People are home on the stand what tipping pitches all about? That’s amazing. That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, you’re the second— you’re the second person in two days to open up by commenting on the beanie that I’m currently wearing.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I’m wearing a beanie inside, not because I’ve leaned all the way into my Brooklyn stereotypes, but because my heat is broken. So this might be a 20-minute podcast, because this is the coldest room in the house. This is the coldest room in the apartment that I record in.
ALEX: I will say, I don’t— I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but whenever I record, my body temperature raises, like, 15 degrees. There’s something about just sitting in a chair, getting animated.
BOBBY: It’s the exact opposite for me.
ALEX: Oh, yeah.
BOBBY: My body temperature lowers. My hands get cold, you know, too stagnant. Like, you gotta get up, gotta move around.
ALEX: I wake up and I— I— I get up from my chair and I need to like change my shirt. I’m like— I’m like clammy.
BOBBY: Well, sometimes, yeah, when you like sit at the exact same position and you don’t move at all. You realize at the end of that 90 minutes where you’ve just been churning out content, that like, “Oh, you’re a little sweaty.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: That happens to me sometimes, but my hands always get cold when I record. Like, I typically like either have to sit on my hands, or put my hands in my pockets while I record. So I hope that people picture that, at home, just me like sitting hands in pockets—
ALEX: Well, that— I mean—
BOBBY: —getting out these takes.
ALEX: —that tells me that these takes are not getting your blood flowing enough, that the takes are too cold.
BOBBY: I don’t agree. I— see— the way I see it— it’s not the way I see it, Alex. Here’s how I see it.
ALEX: Okay. Tell me how you see it.
BOBBY: I let all the heat out and my body gets cold.
ALEX: There it is.
BOBBY: It’s thermonuclear physics.
ALEX: [02:02]
BOBBY: You know, heat has to go somewhere. It’s all a closed circuit.
ALEX: If you say so.
BOBBY: Do you wanna hear about the— the other time that someone commented on my beanie?
ALEX: I do, I’m curious.
BOBBY: I went to the cinema on Friday, as I do.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And I sat down— preview hadn’t even started yet. It was just like the— the— the blank screen before the movie started— well, it wasn’t blank, but it was like, “Here’s what’s coming up this month at Metrograph. And the man sitting behind me didn’t— he like— didn’t get my attention directly. He didn’t tap on my shoulder. He didn’t say, “Excuse me.” He just started talking, and I could tell by, like, how loud he was talking that he was not talking to someone who was, like, with him. He was trying to get someone’s attention in front of him. I pretty quickly realized that that person he was trying to get their attention was me.
ALEX: All right.
BOBBY: And he was like, “Could you take your hat off? It’s sticking up and blocking part of the screen.” I was like, “I’ve never had this happened before.” What if I was taller?
ALEX: Fascinating.
BOBBY: What if he was shorter? Would he have said, “Can you slouch down for me? Your head is blocking the screen.”?
ALEX: Well— and that’s because you wear the— the beanie as most guys in Brooklyn do, right? Just perch—
BOBBY: Just like [3:12] yeah.
ALEX: —atop your head, not covering the ears, not covering the forehead or anything like that. Right now, I’m looking at you and I’m a little worried it’s gonna fall off.
BOBBY: It’s literally held down by my headphones.
ALEX: Well—
BOBBY: This is kind of a good look for me, beanie and headphones.
ALEX: I think, yeah.
BOBBY: I look like a white rapper. That really got you?
ALEX: That’s—
BOBBY: Do you think we should pivot to that? I like your hat today, by the way. This— this podcast is no longer about baseball. It’s about describing each other’s hats.
ALEX: It’s about fit— fit checks. Yeah, this is— it’s a little— my silk corduroy hat.
BOBBY: Oh, corduroy. Where it’s from?
ALEX: It’s from Bageled NYC which is like a tennis-oriented merch brand.
BOBBY: Oh, interesting.
ALEX: They sell like griptape and— and corduroy hats, evidently.
BOBBY: You’re such a hype beast. People don’t know this about you. You’re a little bit of a hype beast, a little bit. Mostly with hats, honestly.
ALEX: Mostly with hats. I have a— I’m— I have an obscene amount of hats.
BOBBY: When would you say you became a hype beast? What age?
ALEX: You know, I think I was ahead of my time. Like, I— for a long time, I— I— I rejected skinny jeans. You know, I was big, like— like loose jeans that kind of, like, dragon the ground. And those are coming back right now.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Skinny is out.
BOBBY: But you— but you would lean into the skinny, though.
ALEX: Yeah. Well, it’s— see now, I’m behind the curve.
BOBBY: No. Your— you jeans fit well, I would say. They’re not too skinny. They’re not, like—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —cutting off the circulation. After the episode ends, we’re gonna tweet out some photos of Alex and his jeans.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You guys let us know what you think, you know? Notes. How do they fit?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: How about the hips?
ALEX: I want you to go menswear guy on me. Just critique the fit, top to bottom.
BOBBY: I just— I don’t have anything against menswear guy. I just wish that he didn’t dominate my entire social media presence.
ALEX: I— I agree, but I should probably unfollow him if that’s the case.
BOBBY: I don’t follow him.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: He’s one of those people who is— just constantly— everybody that I follow is just replying or quoting him.
ALEX: I— after, like, two weeks of seeing him pop up on my feed, I was— I was like, “Okay, you got me. Fine. I’ll just— I’ll just do it.”
BOBBY: Here’s— I have a question. What is like the consensus on menswear guy? He seems like too— like really divergent paths. Some people really hate him, some people really like him. And I can’t— usually, when there’s a person like that on Twitter, it’s like he’s a secret conservative.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know? And that’s why people that I follow are dunking on him all of the time.
ALEX: No—
BOBBY: I can’t— I can’t make heads or tails of it.
ALEX: The sense that I get is that he’s a cool dude. I— I— one of my favorite bits is when he, like, quote tweets like, you know, millennial conservatives who are like— have the Donald Trump pose in their ill-fitting suit with, like, the thumbs up and everything like that. And he does like a 14-point thread on why the— the taper is like a quarter inch off, you know? Just absolutely destroying any idea that these people have, that they, like, know how to tailor themselves or whatever. I really— I respect his grind. I just am not interested enough. Like— like— by, like, tweet seven or eight in the thread. I’m like, “All right.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: We’re— we’re talking like 1800s—
BOBBY: Here’s how we can tell it’s not being tailored—
ALEX: —like— right. Exactly.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I’m like— I— like, I respect that this is for you. It’s not for me.
BOBBY: Am— am I, like, leaving money on the table here? Should I be doing this with, like, conservative podcasts and radio stations? Should I be like, “Wrong microphone to use for this kind of show.”?
ALEX: Yeah, become an adviser.
BOBBY: Or should be like, “Terrible microphone placement for Charlie Kirk here. He needs to move back at least three inches if he’s gonna yell that loud.”
ALEX: Jesus Christ.
BOBBY: Should I do that?
ALEX: I think you could. Certainly.
BOBBY: Not enough compression on this track.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: Would’ve helped this Alex Jones rant if I could hear the lows and the highs a little better.
ALEX: I’m— I’m— I’m— I’m trying to figure out what the— what the grift is there? Because it sounds like you’re just becoming a producer for Charlie Kirk for, like, Talking Point— Turning Point USA.
BOBBY: Well, you know, I have been moonlighting there for a couple years.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And I’ve enjoyed my experience, they pay well.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: You don’t actually know this, but that’s where all of the money has been coming from. We don’t actually have a Patreon.
ALEX: Oh.
BOBBY: I’ve just been keeping that bit going for a while so it would explain the thousands of dollars rolling in.
ALEX: You’re laundering money through the Tipping Pitches Podcast.
BOBBY: I’m not laundering it. I’m just lying to my co-founder.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Is that racketeering?
ALEX: I don’t know. We did a whole episode about the legal definition of racketeering as it relates to A-Rod a year ago. And I still don’t—
BOBBY: I think maybe we should—
ALEX: I still don’t know what it is.
BOBBY: That was, like, four years ago, but yeah.
ALEX: If you say so. I don’t even know we’ve been doing the podcast for that long. So—
BOBBY: 2017, man. What a year.
ALEX: What a year.
BOBBY: Name three of the things that happened to you in 2017. Go.
ALEX: I think— I think that was the year I went to Russia, wasn’t it? That’s, like, the only other defined—
BOBBY: Like the— the first thing that comes to your mind?
ALEX: Like—
BOBBY: Like Lee Harvey Oswald, like the only thing you can remember is being taken to Russia, and everything after that, you’re just a psyop?
ALEX: Like, I don’t know.
BOBBY: They MK-Ultra-ed you.
ALEX: They really did.
BOBBY: It’s like all I could remember since then is doing this podcast. Okay, that’s one, you went to Russia. Anybody listening who doesn’t know the story, Alex came to visit me when I was living abroad in Italy. And for some reason, I had a layover in— which city?
ALEX: I’m— I’m— I would have to assume Moscow. It’s just— I’m—
BOBBY: In Moscow.
ALEX: Right. This is what happens when you are a college student—
BOBBY: Natural flight— totally natural flight path.
ALEX: —and you’re like— you’re supposed to leave on a trip for two weeks. And you’re like, “I should probably buy my tickets.” And so you download one of those apps that, like, gets you the best price, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: By like doing the weird routes or whatever. And then you just say, “That sounds good to me. The first one.”
BOBBY: The first— yeah.
ALEX: The cheapest one.
BOBBY: Have you ever considered that that trip is part of your CIA profile? Like, that— you stopped over in Russia for a little while, like that’s a footnote in your portfolio on you—
ALEX: Right. That is— that is— that is in there.
BOBBY: —at the Central Intelligence Agency.
ALEX: There is some agent who’s just like, “This is an interesting wrinkle. I don’t know how to contextualize it just yet.”
BOBBY: Okay. Stopped in Russia, 2017. Alex’s 2017 at a glance, Russia, founding Tipping Pitches. What else?
ALEX: I— I really don’t know. I moved in with you, I think, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: That was that year.
BOBBY: Yup. That was that year.
ALEX: I mean, we’d already— we lived together in the dorms. We got our first big boy apartment.
BOBBY: Right, 900 flush.
ALEX: Yeah. It was not really a big boy apartment.
BOBBY: It was a railroad style apartment on the first floor with no natural light.
ALEX: With— and— and light bulbs that we— we refused to replace.
BOBBY: And a smoke detector that was very sensitive—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —in retrospect. It’d be like you would make toast and it would go off.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, that’s two. You got one more to go.
ALEX: I— Tipping Pitches doesn’t count?
BOBBY: No. I gave that—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —one to begin with. I said name three other things that happened.
ALEX: I— like, I’m not— I’m not doing a bit right now. I genuinely don’t remember anything else that happened to me that year. I was still listening to Blonde by Frank Ocean probably. Like—
BOBBY: You turned 21, there you go.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I’ll give that— I’ll give that one for free.
ALEX: Oh, that’s it. There you go. That’s a good one.
BOBBY: Great birthday, great birthday party. Nice, little bar crawl.
ALEX: I— I— I also don’t remember that. Although, that maybe has less to do with my overall declining cognitive ability, and more of the circumstances of that particular evening.
BOBBY: That’s the name of our first Midwest emo album, Overall Declining Cognitive Ability available on all platforms, so please support it on— I guess not Bandcamp anymore.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Okay. We are going to talk today— it’s been— it’s been a while since we had a normal episode of the podcast, however, you’d find normal after we just spent the last 15 minutes recapping Alex’s 2017. It’s been a while since we— our last episode was with Michael Baumann talking about the state of— 2024 state of labor in baseball. And we’ve got some— we’ve had some Tipping Pitches adjacent news since then. Mainly, a lot of updates on the Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy trial.
ALEX: That’s right, baby.
BOBBY: Strap in, it’s bankruptcy liquidation court time.
ALEX: We’re talking leveraged buyouts, I think. I don’t— I don’t know.
BOBBY: We’re talking Amazon Prime. Get ready. There’s a couple other things, you know, the White Sox want to do a real estate scam. The Orioles want to do a payroll scam.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: A few other things. You know. we’re gonna get into it. But before we do, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: And I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to tipping pitches.
[theme]
BOBBY: Thank you to this week’s new patrons, Neuron Jimmy, SK Greg, and Richard. I think I forgot to do that last week, so I— I hope I got everybody in there. Diamond Sports Group, Alex.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Anything you want to just get off your chest before we start talking about bankruptcy— bankruptcy court. Is this a good time to announce that we’ve bankrupt— bankrupted our company and we will be liquidating it? So for anybody listening who would like to purchase any of our assets, please get in contact tippingpitchespod@gmail.com.
ALEX: That’s good, actually. Could we just fake bankruptcy? I mean, we may not have to fake it, like— there’s— it’s a small margin as it is, but I don’t know. If Amazon is looking to scoop up more properties, Jeff, the DMS are open.
BOBBY: What would you do if Jeff Bezos reached out directly and was like, “I love what you guys are doing. I’d like to offer you $50 million to acquire your company.”?
ALEX: If Jeff Bezos said he loved what I was doing, I’d probably kill myself. The— I’ve— like, this has all been for naught.
BOBBY: 50 million, though.
ALEX: I guess. Is that the— is that the price that you’re— that you’re willing to— to put it all aside for?
BOBBY: Well, that’s what I’m asking. 25 million each, that’s retire money.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We wouldn’t have to sit here grinding away in the— my cold apartment.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: With a beanie on and doing takes about Diamond Sports Group.
ALEX: I don’t know, man. Diamond Sports Group, what— can you illuminate for me a little bit what’s going on? Who we’ve talked about this so much, like ad nauseam over the last year, and the associated, you know, popping of the bubble that have been RSNs. But this latest development just feels like such a strange wrinkle and like inflection point for the state of the sport going forward. And I wish we didn’t have to talk about this. Like, I— I wish that baseball fans were not required to have this information in our brain.
BOBBY: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know how much we’re required to. So I’m going to try to do my best to explain this. I— I told you before we started recording, I’m trying to become conversant in bankruptcy court.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: But I’m not— I’m not— not a lawyer. Not yet at least. Mid-career pivot coming, maybe, yes, no? I don’t know. Out on pods.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: In on the bar.
ALEX: Dawg, my lawyer rolled up in a Carhartt beanie. I’m going to jail.
BOBBY: Carhartt beanie and an Everlane [14:56] I have to get rid of the moustache if I was a lawyer, I think. I don’t think it carries as much clout as it does in sort of the movie dirtbag world.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay. So Diamond Sports Group, first of all, Diamond Sports Group, probably you know more as Bally Sports because that is— Bally lended its naming rights for an undisclosed amount of money. Bally the casino lended its naming rights to a group of TV channels which— here’s another funny part of this that I— I tend to forget when we don’t talk about it for a couple of weeks or whatever. Diamond is the— the live sports broadcasting subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcasting group. Now, Sinclair Broadcasting group is— I don’t know. How’d you say it? A— a fascist corporation that streams news.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Or the broadcast—
ALEX: Work— working uniquely hard to take down democracy.
BOBBY: Yes. They are a telecom conglomerate that owns a lot of your local stations, local news stations affiliated as Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, whatever, they operate them. And when Sinclair, I believe, took over part of Fox, Fox’s broadcasting arm, they also got the rights to a lot of these regional sports networks, which had been previously branded as FSN, Fox Sports Networks. And then Sinclair decided that over— I think between seasons, one year, they were going to take those Fox channels and they’re going to rebrand them. And I remember we talked a lot about the rebrand to Bally, and how bad it looked, and how everybody kind of did not like it. I seem to— I have a very vivid memory of everybody being like, “Why is there one pixel of black—”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “—underneath the score bug and the bottom of the screen?” Like they couldn’t actually put it to the bottom of the screen.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And that always sticks in my mind as like these people are not people who broadcast sports.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: They do not know what they’re doing. So they became Bally overnight. Now, it didn’t really disrupt very much about the actual broadcast teams themselves, really. Like a lot of the— a lot of the crews, a lot of the announcers, like, they carried over from Fox, so it seemed like— it was just like a rebrand, more or less, and a different corporate structure. Along with that came Sinclair folding all of these things into a new holding company, which is where Diamond Sports Group comes into play. It turns out that they didn’t do a very good job running that company for a number of reasons, which I think actually might be distracting from the point here if we try to spend too much time talking about why they went bankrupt. But I think the general consensus is that it’s a combination of the cable rights, the cord cutting came at the same time that Sinclair was maybe overdrawing the bank accounts of Diamond Sports Group, siphoning the funds a little bit too aggressively from the profits in the early years and not setting themselves up to be successful in the long term, as people were also cutting the cord. And they were making less money from live television broadcasting through regional sports networks. This resulted in many of these RSNs going out of business. And this started to happen, I would say, at the beginning of last year, where it was like the Padres are out of business, the Twins contract is up, the Rockies are out— you know, I— I don’t actually remember exactly which teams in which order, the Diamondbacks— like there was a handful of teams where it was like, “Oh, Diamond Sports Group has stopped paying these clubs. They’ve stopped paying the Major League Baseball teams.” And because they’ve defaulted on their contract, these— the teams can opt out. And a few of them did, instead of taking an IOU from Diamond Sports Group while they figured out what the hell they were doing on the business side, on the money side. You know, the Padres, for example. They opted out and they had their broadcast taken over by MLB’s central broadcasting agency. And then MLB just started charging people directly for the right to stream their games. Eventually, Diamond officially filed bankruptcy, like as a whole conglomerate, as part of, I think, Chapter 11— I don’t know what book that’s a chapter in.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You know? Just Chapter 11, Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Court. When a company like this files for bankruptcy, you have to go to court and sort through all of the different, you know, legal obligations that you have to paying different people, whether that’s like employees, or whether that’s other companies, or banks, or credit holders, or any of these things. So, that’s what’s going on right now, is they’re in these bankruptcy courts, trying to determine who owes who money and how much and how much Diamond should be responsible for versus how much did they already pay out, versus can someone come in and take over the company and take over these financial responsibilities? So, in this bankruptcy court, they’ve arranged a $450 million package with creditors that would allow them to continue to run the company. I don’t really know what goes into that. I don’t know if that we know all the details of that. I don’t know if it’s relevant. Part of that $450 million is $115 million from Amazon, yes, that— that Amazon, which wants to broadcast the group of Diamond Sports Group RSNs channels. They want to digital broadcasting rights, so the streaming rights to put directly on Amazon Prime to attract baseball fans to watch on their platform. I think that’s everything. There’s also like a $15 million kicker clause where Amazon can take over more of Diamond Sports Group’s operations, if they like how it’s going over the next couple of years or something like that. So— but basically, Diamond is getting $450 million, a 115 million of— of which comes from Amazon, the rest comes from probably like JP Morgan or something like that, to continue to be able to operate the Bally Sports regional networks brands for the next, I don’t know, three years or whatever. Having said all that, as a baseball fan, the only thing that this changes, I think, is that you can still watch the linear TV RSNs as they were before, they just went bankrupt. They got floated by banks and Amazon. And now, you also need to have Prime to watch them on digital if you want, or you can still get it on MLB.TV, I don’t know. Do you know?
ALEX: Not exactly, which makes it particularly funny that we’re— we’re doing a whole— a whole segment on this. But this is kind of what I was alluding to and that— it’s— yeah, at the end of the day, when opening day comes around, you’re going to be able to watch your favorite baseball team, somehow. There’s a little bit of like a weird— where, like, they— they have the linear TV rights to all of their, like, 37 teams, you know, across the NBA, and MLB, and NHL. And then they have the, like, direct-to-consumer rights for all of those except for a handful of the baseball teams. So not all the baseball teams that they, like—
BOBBY: Yeah. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just leave those teams out. I think it’s like the Twins and the Guardians, right? They don’t have the DTC rights for them.
ALEX: Right. Right.
BOBBY: I think that essentially what this means is that if you live in the market of one of these teams— also, I think that the Padres are going to continue to be broadcast by MLB, so I think we can leave them out, too. But if you live in the market for one of these following teams, the Angels, the Brewers, the Braves, the Cardinals, the Marlins, the Rays, the Reds, the Royals, or the Tigers, nine teams, you either still need to have cable, and you will be getting it the same way that you did before, the Bally Sports regional network. It will be branded the exact same before, just under a different corporate restructuring. Or if you don’t have cable, now the only way to get the— the streaming in market would be to have Amazon Prime and watch it local. Is this weirdly, like, a simple solution? Like, is this the most simplistic version of the solution that we could have expected out of all of this nonsense? Like, we kind of knew some streaming behemoth was coming. And you couldn’t watch your team in— in market on MLB Network before anyway. So you would have had to either have some like a la carte direct-to-consumer thing, or cable. Like that— those were the only options, and it— it was— it varies market to market as to whether there even is a blackout-free streaming option in that market. Like in New York, for example, there is not. You can’t watch SNY on the internet—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —if you live in the New York area. So is this like as simple as we could have expected?
ALEX: I don’t think it is, because the simple solution insofar that any of this is simple, and the one that Major League Baseball was pulling for, I think, was that Bally, Diamond Sports Group, Sinclair, whatever, would not be able to reach a deal with a downside investor and Major League Baseball would be able to claw back the rights to all of these teams and start working to create their own streaming service, right? Their own sort of one that’s housed under one roof. Now, that would come with a whole host of idiosyncrasies, I am— I am certain, but this does— does feel like treading water a little bit. Like it still is kind of unclear what the long term outlook for Bally Sports and RSNs more broadly is. But, like, Major League Baseball getting back the broadcast rights to half their teams is the pathway to, say, ending blackouts, right? Like— like all of these clauses that impact fans’ ability to watch, the games have been negotiated with the, you know, cable distributors, and the RSNs, and all of these various parties who have a vested interest in kind of maintaining control over their market. This prevents Major League Baseball from maneuvering their way out of that, at least for the time being. And they have at least paid lip service to the idea that they do want to end blackouts eventually, you know? I— I— I don’t know if they want to do it for the sake of fans. I think they may just like having these rights back and being able to
keep it in house.
BOBBY: And set the price.
ALEX: And set the price. But it, again, doesn’t clarify anything long term. And that’s— especially it becomes relevant to fans when you have teams who are using this uncertainty as justification for, say, not spending on their teams, right? Teams like the Rangers—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —and the Twins, and the Guardians, whose off-seasons have now, in theory, been kind of thrown up in the air, right? Because they’re like, “We’re not getting the— the fees that we need.” I— I don’t think it provides the level of certainty that fans are looking for, or even that the league is looking for. But Jeff’s gonna make a pretty penny, so— and— and, like—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —it’s still indicative to me that like there’s value in this. Like— like Bally is, like, $8 billion in debt or whatever. I didn’t even know you could be that much in debt.
BOBBY: No, Diamond $8 billion in debt.
ALEX: Sorry, Diamond is—
BOBBY: Bally is a different thing entirely. So, yeah, we gotta leave Bally out of this, otherwise, they’re gonna sue us. Of note, so Amazon is paying $115 million and they will get a 15% stake in the new— whatever the new Diamond Sports Group is called, whether it’s like Diamond Amazon Recreation Group or something like that, I don’t know. It’s going to be something stupid.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And they can invest an additional $50 million within nine months from now, if they like how it’s going and they think that their restructuring is suitable to them in— in the slightly more long term. Of note, in the— so in the bankruptcy hearing, they had to share company projections through 2026. This is fascinating to me, because it’s mostly just probably lies, but we’ll see. Diamond is projecting the direct-to-consumer revenue, so the revenue that Amazon will be most interested in because they are handling sort of the direct-to-consumer portion of this new business arrangement via Prime Sports. Which, by the way, is Prime Sports— like you could just get that through any Prime or do you have to have like an additional thing?
ALEX: Oh, I don’t—
BOBBY: I think you just get it, right?
ALEX: Do you— I would assume so.
BOBBY: Like, I think I could have just— not that I would have ever done this, but I think I could have just turned on like the Thursday night NFL games—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —this past year.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, how— the question is, how long before it’s— it’s like—
BOBBY: They, like— yeah. It’s like 39.99 extra or something like that?
ALEX: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, it’s— oh, yeah. You can add to your Prime membership for an extra 10 bucks a month.
BOBBY: “Diamond is projecting the direct-to-consumer revenue will grow from 49 million in 2023,” which is low. That’s not very much money, 49 million for the— across the entire 15 teams of direct-to-consumer revenue. But they weren’t offering this for very many teams, in very many instances. “To 658 million in 2026. According to projections the company’s shared Wednesday morning. In a summary issued Wednesday, Diamond said that its projections assume the company’s existing rights portfolio is shrunk to reduce projected losses associated with certain teams rights contracts.” So they were basically, like, pricing in the fact that they were going to lose teams into what they were— into what they expect to be making over the next couple of years. But that in three years from now, I guess, which is when this new restructuring will be reassessed, they expect to be making $658 million from direct-to-consumer income, which means that, like, more teams will be available via this model. I don’t really know how you price that out if it’s like part of people’s Amazon Prime accounts. Like, how do you really say this is how much money we’re making from this—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —when people already have this service to watch Marvelous Mrs. Maisel or whatever? Or they just have the service they don’t even know about it because they just have Prime two-day shipping, you know? Like this is all— now, the more that I talk about it, the more I feel silly for calling into, like, the simplest possible outcome from all of the mess that we’ve been experiencing over the last year. But really what I meant was that, like, the business disarray of the live sports bubble, was always going to open themselves up to either MLB taking back the rights or like a tech company coming in and being like, “We have $120 million to throw around. This is— this is easy for us. We spend that on, you know, a new office or something like that in Moscow.” So, like, why not increase our foothold into the game? They probably gave this much— way more money on like a per game basis to the NFL, just to try to attract NFL fans to the idea of streaming things because, you know, an NFL fan is even dumber than a baseball fan. No— no— no shade, but it’s like an NFL fan for their whole lives has only had to turn on basic cable and there’s the game that they want to watch.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: All NFL games on television are on CBS, NBC, or Fox. You know, like, it’s— that’s it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They’re just all there on your local cable channel with basic cable. You could watch them for free. Now, they’re funded via the fact that, like, 100 million people watch every NFL game, and they just sell the shit out of the— the ads on those NFL games. And then over the last, like, five or 10 years, you know, it’s like— it’s— ESPN has come in, and Amazon has come in, and NFL Network has come in, and they’ve gotten games back here and there via these more creative business dealings. Ultimately, like, I don’t— I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t like the answer being like Amazon controls all of the streaming of Major League Baseball. But I feel like the owners— again, they’ve always valued seemingly in like the last 20 years, the diversification of revenue streams, but that’s— it’s really been bumping up against this notion of exclusivity that has always been the linchpin to broadcasting money, the thing that exploded team values, that thing that exploded the money that was coming into live sports, and specifically, Major League Baseball was— people want to watch it. If you make it exclusive, they have to pay a lot for it. And it works when that was just linear television. And now in this world, where like people don’t have linear television, people have cut the cord, people are getting things from different places, people are sharing accounts. Streaming has become the new thing that, like, corporate behemoths have gotten interested in, even though it’s, like, tanked the stock prices of like half the companies on the fucking Dow Jones or whatever. I— there’s, like, philosophical differences amongst the business side of MLB that are playing out in a wildly public way, and are having a— a notable impact, like on the year-to-year experience of fans who are just trying to watch the games. They’re trying to keep, like, the financial boon of the concept of exclusivity in a non-exclusive world—
ALEX: Right,
BOBBY: —essentially.
ALEX: And— and like this works, right? Like this works for teams, for owners. You keep the money coming in, your games continue to be broadcast to people who want to see them. And you gain a greater foothold in that DTC streaming world by partnering up with the biggest company in the world. Maybe the third biggest company in the world, depending on your valuation of Microsoft, Bobby. I know you have strong thoughts.
BOBBY: How’s your Microsoft stock doing?
ALEX: It’s doing great, bro. ChatGPT, OpenAI. We’re popping off over here.
BOBBY: I have a lot of thoughts about AI.
ALEX: I’m sure.
BOBBY: I’ll share them on the next episode, though.
ALEX: Okay. Right, you got to stay warm.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: Take the heat off in the apartment. You can’t let all the takes out.
BOBBY: Uh-huh. I’ll tell you one thing. You know what’s hard? Collective Bargaining language over artificial intelligence.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s all I’ll say.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. I think the only thing that this doesn’t resolve is like what this looks like long term. More and more people are cutting the cord. There are— I mean, Prime has far more subscribers than most of the other streaming services.
BOBBY: 220 million prime subscribers globally.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. That’s a good amount. So I mean, like, this year—
BOBBY: I don’t think that they could watch— I don’t think that they get these rights in, like, India.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: You know? Like, I— I think that there’s probably some sort of exclusivity, but 100— according to explodingtopics.com, 167.2 million of them are in the United States.
ALEX: Wait, what was the— that was exploding topics?
BOBBY: Exploding topics, yeah.
ALEX: Oh.
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah.
ALEX: They’re the first thing I read.
BOBBY: “According to statista, they’ll have about $180 million— or 180 million users in 2024.”
ALEX: In?
BOBBY: In the US, in the US.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: That’s statista, by the way. If exploding topics wasn’t good enough for you.
ALEX: Statista, I think I’m— I think I’m familiar with.
BOBBY: Yeah, me too. In that, I’ve Googled questions like this before and they seem to be the place that comes up. Not in that in, like, know the people that run it or ,like, not that in, like, I read their website regularly. Like, it’s just— like they come up more often than explodingtopics.com. What a bad name for a website.
ALEX: It’s hard to parse. For most fans, the— the upshot is that, like, things aren’t going to change for you.
BOBBY: Right, if you have cable.
ALEX: If you have cable.
BOBBY: It’s all the same.
ALEX: You’ll continue to watch it. I— I still am kind of curious— you know, as you kind of alluded to, Amazon has brokered deals with the NFL to, like, exclusively broadcast Thursday night football games, which is a fascinating choice. And does make me wonder, like, what the future of accessibility to live sports is like? Cable kind of— kind of worked, kind of had a thing going. Like if you had a device on which you could watch anything, you could put a little— put a little wire up next to the TV, and it was just gonna pick up the stuff that was floating around the air, right? I— I’m— I think that’s how cable TV works.
BOBBY: Doesn’t it feel like we’ve been having this conversation for, like, actually four years?
ALEX: Yes, it— it has. And remarkably, we haven’t gotten any more well versed in talking about it.
BOBBY: Well, it’s like the bill is gonna come due at some point, right? You can continue to just like refinance, refinance, refinance.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Which is what Major League Baseball is doing. But at some point, they’re gonna have to stop riding off the coattails of the live TV bubble, and actually reckon with how interesting is our product and how many consumers can we go directly to? This is the dirty little secret about Major League Baseball, and, you know, live sports, is that they don’t actually know the answers to these questions. They don’t actually know how many people— like they know how many people watch their games, but they don’t know how many people watch their games because they care enough to pay directly for them. And they’re really afraid of finding out the answer to that question, because for a long time, they’ve coasted on the fact that regional sports networks are a fucking Ponzi scheme that charge people money to have a channel that most of them don’t actually watch. Because it was just thrown in to the basic cable packages, and Verizon, and Comcast, and Fox, and— not even Fox, because they’re not a— a cable provider. But cable providers in general, Spectrum, whoever—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —you get your cable for. They’re all in cahoots over this. They’re all like, “Yes, we will charge our consumers eight more dollars a month, and we’ll call it the— the live entertainment premium package.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And everybody will just pay it because they’ll be like, “Well, here’s 22 channels for $8. Great. And then we’ll give six of those dollars to MLB and make 30 billionaires really rich, and Rob Manfred really happy, and then we’re just getting two extra dollars for free from fucking Aunt Joan over there.”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: You know? Like it’s— it’s a scam. It’s a scam. Sorry, it’s—
ALEX: No, you’re— you’re not wrong.
BOBBY: Like, I— I— I don’t like to say that’s literally a Ponzi scheme because I know that there’s like a legal— legal definition of a Ponzi scheme, but it’s practically just a Ponzi scheme.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: They’re just signing more people at the higher thing because they don’t know what they’re signing up for.
ALEX: Yeah, I don’t really know where we go from here.
BOBBY: All right. We have to move on.
ALEX: We’re in— we’re in such a cooked place.
BOBBY: Yeah, we are. We really are. It’s— it’s a little bit somewhat refreshing, though, that in these— in these modern times, where there’s so much streaming uncertainty, and we’re all trying to figure out how to distribute the money that is coming in and going out of Major League Baseball and its broadcasting rights. There is one man who is committed— well, there’s several men but there’s really one man right now in the moment who is committed just as being like— committed to a real estate scam. And that man is Jerry Reinsdorf. He’s like, “You guys figure out the streaming thing. You know, I’m gonna create the battery on the Southside of Chicago.”
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: What’s— what’s old Jerry up to these days?
ALEX: That’s a great question, because he’s been a little quiet for a few months. It’s been some time since he said he doesn’t have any other hobbies. This is just— owning a baseball team is— what he does full time for enjoyment.
BOBBY: Me, too.
ALEX: And I get the joy in— in wanting to build an— a real estate entertainment center. So he’s looking for new ways to— to keep it fresh. You know, stay innovative, be on the cutting edge. Some might say, “Well, the White Sox current— current ballpark, New Comiskey Park, Now Guaranteed Rate Field debuted in— in 1991. That’s not that long ago. They’ve made a lot of improvements in recent years. The ballpark is an okay place to be. I love hanging out at the Tony La Russa Lounge, for example. And— and my response to you is if you can— if you can build an— an entertainment real estate district around your baseball park, why would you not? What is the good argument for it? And— and that’s the question that Jerry Reinsdorf is asking right now. They want to— they are in, quote, “serious talks,” according to the Chicago Sun Times about building a new ballpark in Chicago’s South Loop. This is a downtown area that’s colloquially referred to as the 78, because there’s 77 neighborhoods in Chicago, and this is like the up-and-coming one, you know?
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: It’s like the next— like the next big thing.
BOBBY: Yeah, that’s—
ALEX: The place you want to be.
BOBBY: That’s right.
ALEX: And as you— as you mentioned, the— the White Sox proposal for this specifically cited the battery as one of their inspirations for this idea.
BOBBY: It’s so— so easy to see this coming that every team is going to be like—
ALEX: Of course.
BOBBY: —”The battery, that’s it.”
ALEX: Of course.
BOBBY: “We did it. No longer are we going to have the downtown ballpark, we’re going to create the downtown.”
ALEX: Matthew Trueblood over in Baseball Prospectus does a really good job laying out how the White Sox are kind of trying to toe the line between, like, turning themselves into this flashy organization with a— with a booming ballpark district around it, while not losing that, like, quote-unquote, “southside identity.” Link to that article is in the description. I encourage you to go and— go and read it. But like you said, this is only a matter of time for pretty much every single baseball team. We’re— we’re getting to a point where the shelf life on baseball stadiums is like 20 years or so. We— we used to be a fucking country, man. We used to build ballparks that were, like, monuments to, you know, American spirit, innovation, longevity.
BOBBY: Now, we build ballparks that are just planned obsolescence.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: We build ballparks to fail.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: So I— I— I went down the rabbit hole of all rabbit holes while you were explaining all of that.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Jerry Reinsdorf, so excellent work. You did great. I was reading the South Side Sox’s article about this by Leigh Allen. And it was about just like Jerry’s grifts— grift and— and how, obviously, you don’t put forth a proposal like this without, you know— we’ll say— how— how do you say, Alex? Compelling— compelling local officials to give you some money that maybe you don’t deserve?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: We use the word compelling, asking, requesting, desiring some money from local officials in the form of public funds. And this article makes note of the fact that the— the 78, the area of the— of Chicago where they want to build The Battery 2.0 It’s like a— an old railroad yard, essentially, is what it was. So— but now, it’s basically just like a plot of— a— where the stadium would be going is like a plot of semi-undeveloped land.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Right? And it’s owned by a company called Related Midwest, which is part of a national real estate conglomerate called The Related Companies, which is owned by none other than Stephen Ross, who is the owner of the Miami Dolphins, who is a large fundraiser for Donald Trump and the noted VIP alumni of yours and mine, New York University. I was reading— literally while you were explaining this, I was reading a Q&A from NYU Law news about how he’s a graduate of NYU School of Law in 1966. And he talks lovingly about how he remembers the tax code section, pertaining to collapsible corporations that guided him in his early career as an associate, advising clients in real estate transactions. This is Stephen Ross, by the way. This is not even Jerry Reinsdorf.
ALEX: Right. Right, right, right.
BOBBY: We’re like several degrees removed, but I’m just like reading articles about Stephen Ross remembering that, like, all the world’s most evil people went to our alumni.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: It’s so sick. It’s so sick. I thought he was on the board of NYU, and then I was, like, reading the descriptions, the people who are on the board of NYU, and then I got really distracted, you know?
ALEX: That is— do you want to talk rabbit holes?
BOBBY: Oh, my God. Yes. Martin Lifton, [45:47] that guy is doing all the good stuff.
ALEX: Uh-huh. They were— they were criminals.
BOBBY: Allegedly.
ALEX: They were slumlords.
BOBBY: Allegedly.
ALEX: Allegedly. So why—
BOBBY: There’s so many people— there’s so many people on the NYU’s board. Wait, did I miss it? Is he on there? He’s not. He’s not. Larry Silverstein, come on. Come on. All good stuff here.
ALEX: The White Sox are trying to compete with the Cubs, right? I mean, like they are—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: —obviously, their Northside analog. And they have done a great job over the last few years of turning the area around their stadium into an— a bonafide entertainment district that—
BOBBY: An amusement park for adults with extra cash in their pockets.
ALEX: Yes. Yeah. Quite literally. But, famously, the Chicago Cubs also went through a whole period of building a good baseball team, and then winning a World Series, which at least to some baseball fans, is a meaningful proposition, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I mean, it’s—
BOBBY: I’ve heard it here on this podcast first that I said Cubs, out of the woods.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I give them a B plus. You gave them [46:57]
ALEX: I mean, it’ll pass. They’re doing— they’re doing all right.
BOBBY: The Ricketts, okay in my book, you know? Just a good, old American family.
ALEX: These— these guys are all in a group chat, right? Like— like the Ricketts know— have a direct line to Stephen Ross.
BOBBY: I don’t— I don’t know. Oh, well, Stephen Ross maybe, but they would never text Jerry Reinsdorf.
ALEX: No, no, no, no. Not— not Jerry Reinsdorf.
BOBBY: And that’s— you can kind of explain Jerry Reinsdorf’s whole life and career by the fact that the— you know, like a family like the Ricketts would never text him.
ALEX: Yes. That is— that is true. He just wants a seat at the table.
BOBBY: Are you aware that Chandrika Tandon who sits on NYU’s board? They gave $100 million donation to NYU a couple years ago to have the School of Engineering named after her—
Alex. Right.
BOBBY: —along with her husband. Has recorded four albums and has been Grammy nominated.
ALEX: Bro, where are you right now?
BOBBY: I’m on the NYU’s board page.
ALEX: All right. Well, we have the needle drop for— for this episode.
BOBBY: She’s a business leader, Grammy nominated artist and humanitarian, former partner of McKinsey & Company, and co-founder of Tandon Capital Associates.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. I’ll never forget the day that— that they made that investment, I’ll just say.
BOBBY: Never, never.
ALEX: Never.
BOBBY: Never. Never. Never. I remember the headline of the article in the opinion column that we ran.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Don’t look 100— 100-million dollar gift horse in the mouth.
ALEX: That’s right. I left the— the student newspaper office early that night. And—
BOBBY: And then you came back—
ALEX: —started— started the rest of my night and then came back.
BOBBY: Oh.
ALEX: Oh, boy.
BOBBY: Sorry. That was like the tangent to end all tangents, I’m sorry. I just [48:36]
ALEX: No, it’s— it’s— you had to do it. That’s— that’s what this is for.
BOBBY: Four studio recorded albums. Where did she find the time?
ALEX: Did you— did you say Grammy nominated? Did I— did I hear that?
BOBBY: Grammy nom—
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: That could be like, you know, the daytime Grammys or whatever.
ALEX: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: Like the fucking genre Grammys. I don’t know.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: There’s a lot of Grammys. Everybody gets a trophy.
ALEX: It— there’s just a new— there’s just this idea that is circulating through baseball’s ownership, but beyond as well, I think. Although baseball is one that’s trying to capitalize off of this right now. That the new stadium, the downtown stadium, and creating a space for fans around it to stay and spend money, is the silver bullet to creating a successful long-term franchise that has consistent revenue streams.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And the thing is it’s not entirely incorrect, necessarily. We’ve seen that there’s money in this. We know that there is money in this, but it certainly is not going to solve your organizational woes. It is not going to create a new loyal fan base. You might appeal to the tourists who are staying in that new area.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: But it just feels like baseball owners are looking for legacies in all the wrong places right now.
BOBBY: I like that framing. It’s not lost on me that we spent the first 45 minutes of the show talking about the kind of ambient uncertainty of revenue streams are— that they’ve relied on in the last 20 years, and now we’re spending the last 20 minutes talking about MLB’s desire to get back to, like, owning the real world, you know? Whereas, like, something about TV rights, and like streaming, and all this stuff, it was, like, nice while it lasted, you know, but it felt ephemeral. It felt fake. And now, they’re not going back to, like, the old, “Okay, let’s price these tickets in these concessions in a way that we fill the stands every game, and that’s how we make money.” They’re not going back to that sort of [50:50] in the 25th century, I would say. Like, mid-mid to late— you know, like the ’70s, I guess.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: It’s like when that stopped being the case and when baseball has started just becoming just like a television product.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But they are going back to something that is slightly more real world and— and no pun intended, but like real estate-based, which is something that a lot of these guys understand. You know, it’s something that a lot of these guys, with the amounts of money that they have, they understand the longevity, the cultural significance of like owning part of a city, or own— or owning like a lar— like a district of a city, and they understand the ways in which they can leverage that into political clout, into, you know, public funds so that they can alleviate some of their own expenses and risk on the front end. And they understand the ways in which fewer and fewer things feel definitive in how you can make money. And like real estate is something that, to them, is always going to be a place in which there’s value in this. And I don’t— I don’t know what a world looks like in which there are 30— or if you want to make— if you want to assume that this philosophy that the Braves have sort of put into hyperdrive, but really that, like, the Cubs are the poster boy of. If you want to assume that this philosophy is going to expand to all sports leagues. I don’t know what a world looks like in which our cities are just like— there’s 120 Disneylands and sports are just amusement parks. Like, we already have amusement parks. You know what I mean? I’m sure every sports team would like to do it like Disneyland does it, where, like, they have so much power and control that they’re basically like a sovereign nation within Orange County. But there’s diminishing returns on that, you know? Like, there’s only— Disneyland is Disneyland for a reason and, like, it’s because they are—
ALEX: Woke.
BOBBY: Right. Because they’re woke. And everybody loves wokeness. No, it’s because they have, like, 100 years of intellectual property to weaponize to the point where they— kids make their parents take them to Disneyland.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like the— baseball is not doing that. Baseball is not cultivating that. It’s not building that. It’s just relying on the fact that, like, the— the people who are between the ages of 30 and 70 have a little bit of extra money and still like baseball enough nostalgically to go to the ballpark. And they’re not doing everything that should be coming along with trying to wrestle baseball back to being like an in-person event highest experience, you know? Like they are basically just expecting rich people to want to go. Like, that’s what The Battery is, right? The Battery is just a place for rich people to go on a Saturday. It’s not like a place specifically to see a ballgame. The things that people praise about it are not, “I had a great time and— and my whole family saw a great baseball game for an affordable amount of money.”
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: Which is what we would hope that comes along with this re-shifting of focus back towards like the in-person, the experiential element of baseball.
ALEX: I have often come back to and thought of the quote given by— by a coked out Phil Castellini. Sorry, allegedly.
BOBBY: Spiritually.
ALEX: Yeah, right. Where he went on his sort of rant against Reds fans, right? This is the son of vegetable king, Bob Castellini of the Cincinnati Reds.
BOBBY: Play that funky music, baby.
ALEX: Drop it.
BOBBY: Play that funky music.
SPEAKER 3: He’s got carrots, and lettuce, and mushrooms porcini. The vegetable king Bobby Bob Castellini.
ALEX: And he asked fans, who were upset about the team, he said, “Where are you gonna go?”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And I think about that a lot, right, as— as there being no viable alternative to watching professional baseball in major metropolitan areas. I suppose if you’re in Chicago, you could go to the North Side, but allegiances run strong. And so if you want to see the baseball game, you’re gonna bite the bullet because you have a romance towards the game, maybe a relationship with the game that you share with your kids. Maybe it’s something you shared with your parents, or maybe it’s something that you came to on your own, right? But you have a romance that can be exploited for the betterment of these people, because for better for worse, we fucking like this game, and think about it quite a lot. And as a result, expend a lot of money so that we can go and feel that enjoyment. And it feels like for a while maybe there was not an ulterior motive there on the other side of the table, where it’s like we’re trying to extract profits from you. And that’s just not the case anymore. You’re not a baseball fan. You’re a consumer with money in your pocket.
BOBBY: Well, it’s been like that for a long time.
ALEX: Yes— no. A few—
BOBBY: At least since we’ve been alive.
ALEX: Oh, no. A few— a few decades, yes.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: This is not a recent phenomenon. But the days of Charlie Finley—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Not— not— not that I’m going to hold him up as any sort of— any type of owner who like—
BOBBY: Who did it.
ALEX: —be emulated.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: But we’re so far gone past the idea that, like, owners own these teams because they love them and have allegiances to them, and the fan bases.
BOBBY: It strikes me as like— so, you know, I’ve— for years, obviously, there’s two main pop cultural things that I care about, are baseball and movies. I don’t think that’s a surprise to anybody. And— and live music, too. We can [57:05] live music into this, too.
ALEX: Yeah. Risk analyst.
BOBBY: It strikes— it strikes me— Alex Rodriguez. It strikes me as— by the way, did you listen to the A-Rod interview?
ALEX: I did, I did listen to the A-Rod interview.
BOBBY: Oh, my God, over an hour into the pod.
ALEX: I—
BOBBY: But it’s amazing, right?
ALEX: It’s actually the most illuminating piece of media I’ve ever consumed about Alex Rodriguez. I say it unironically—
BOBBY: Yeah, I hear you.
ALEX: —it was the closest to, like, no filter A-Rod I’ve ever seen.
BOBBY: I think that what it revealed is that there truly is not a no filter A-Rod, but that this is the closest version. This is the—
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: —version of himself that he tells us the real A-Rod. You know?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: When he said that he— his therapist and him stared at each other without saying a word for three straight hours. I lost it, lost it. I was like, “I would pay $1,000 American dollars to be in that room. By the way, we’re referring to an interview that A-Rod on South Beach Sessions with Dan Le Batard, which is a podcast so you can go find, whatever.
ALEX: I— my— my favorite part was how much he loves, quote, “old school conversations.” He said that a few times.
BOBBY: [58:18] conversation.
ALEX: He’s like— he’s like, “Yeah, like no— no phones. You know, no electronics.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like— like just— just— just old school conversations, two people sitting, they’re chatting with each other.
BOBBY: The way that I knew that I’m getting old is that when he said that about— about how he has a no phones at the table rule for breakfast for his family. I was like, “That’s a good rule.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s why I know I’m getting old.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. You’re like, “All right. That tracks.”
BOBBY: I just— it’s not even for other people. Like, it doesn’t quite bother me as much when other people like have their phone there or whatever, they, like, answer or text message. It just bothers me to have my phone there.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like it just— my brain is no longer functioning at a capacity in which I can multi— multitask in that way.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: It just ruins my whole experience if I’m like— if— like getting a Twitter notification from— no shade to him, but I Evan Drellich, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like I don’t need to be— seeing about Diamond Sports Group while I’m trying to be present. Anyway, back to my point, for a long time I’ve been trying to win these two worlds together. Like what’s happened in the movie industry and what’s happened in the baseball industry is that, like, you— you run a seriously dangerous risk when you put all your eggs in one basket. Meaning, like when the only show in town is MLB, when the only show in town is, like, two theater chains, and superhero movies. It’s fine when you extract the nostalgia out of that. It’s fine when you extract the fervent fandom out of that. But like five years from now, if the team’s not good, if the Marvel movies are bad, then there’s nothing there to fall back on.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yeah.
BOBBY: And then it reinvents itself over time, but it has a deleterious effect on people’s relationship to the— to the art form. People’s relationship to the experience of going to the movies or going to baseball games. Like if you spent hundreds of dollars, just hypothetically, if you were a guy, just a guy who spent hundreds of dollars going to, we’ll say, New York Mets games—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —in the year 2022. These are all hypothetical things that you might have done.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And—
ALEX: I don’t— I don’t know anyone like that.
BOBBY: —the team was good, however, you felt in real time, “This is a lot of money to be spending, but maybe it’ll be worth it.” And then hypothetically speaking, if you actually went to your first live playoff game, and the pitcher that you had signed, who many people were worried, was a little bit too old to be doing this deep into October, gave up several homeruns in the first inning of that game, hypothetically speaking. And then they got eliminated two days later, in embarrassing fashion, while asking a guy to check his ear for illegal substances. If any of these things were to happen to you, perhaps maybe the next year, you wouldn’t spend as many games— spend as many— you wouldn’t spend as much money at Mets games, hypothetically speaking. So—
ALEX: Unless there was a casino next door, right?
BOBBY: This is what I’m talking about. No. This place is not attracting anybody bad.
ALEX: I know. No, I know. Right. It’s like they are not holding up their end of the bargain, basically.
BOBBY: Exactly. They’re not like— and this is why— this is why, like, honestly, like, movies are, whatever, has an advantage, because there’s like a whole— a hundred year history of movies that you can play old movies in theaters, and people like me will show up to sell out a screening of Eyes Wide Shut on a Thursday night at 9:30, you know? Like, baseball doesn’t have that. You’re not playing the 1999 NLCS on a— on the Jumbotron at Citi Field and selling it out.
ALEX: Right. Well, you— you also, once again—
BOBBY: It’s simple. It’s like live music.
ALEX: —don’t have an— don’t have an alternative, right? There has been— the— there’s no meaningful competition—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: —to Major League Baseball. So if you love this game, quite literally, where are you going to go?
BOBBY: But I think what they’re underwriting, though, is that you’re gonna go, like, just away from baseball at all.
ALEX: I mean— I mean, yeah.
BOBBY: You’re gonna go to— I don’t know, where to get that fix, you know? Gonna go to the NBA. You’re gonna go to cricket. Gonna go to tennis.
ALEX: I don’t know.
BOBBY: Tennis is— tennis is happening right now.
ALEX: Tennis is happening. I enjoy tennis.
BOBBY: I was watching a little Australian Open last night.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: It’s great, because the Australian Open is just on a deranged hours.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Because it’s literally in Australia.
ALEX: Yup. Yeah. And 9:00 PM are like 4:00 AM.
BOBBY: Australia is like a— it’s the time zone difference. I gotta say, I still don’t really— can’t really process it. They’re, like, 19 hours ahead, so you’re like five hours— like five hours behind, but they’re in a different day? It’s very hard to understand.
ALEX: Yeah, that shouldn’t be allowed.
BOBBY: I agree. So what you’re saying, we should ban time zones?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Universal Time.
ALEX: Universal Time.
BOBBY: I don’t think we should go that far. Anything else to say about Jerry Reinsdorf? Or, you know, Chandrika Tandon’s four studio albums and Grammy nominations?
ALEX: Should we get her on the pod?
BOBBY: Do you think she would do it?
ALEX: She— if we said, “Hey, we are NYU alumni. We covered—”
BOBBY: Your studio albums.
ALEX: Yes. Your studio albums, yeah.
BOBBY: Oh, I have one more thing before we go. I would like to say that I think that we need— that I would vote for a president whose single issue was banning venture capital from being invested in media.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Just any media, anywhere. I think we need to just, like— venture capital people, like— first of all, we should—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: All venture capitalists, you know?
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yeah, I agree.
BOBBY: But like the fact that VC has come in and scooped up all of digital media more or less, and then they can do something like they did to Sports Illustrated, which yesterday, they announced that they are laying off all Sports Illustrated writers, just all of them, just done. Sports Illustrated is done.
ALEX: We— we got— we got finished recording— we got finished wrapping the— the special Patreon episode out now. You can go and listen to it. Expanded State of Labor with Michael Baumann. And— and we talked at some length about the death of Pitchfork. And— and— and two seconds after finishing recording, it was like, “Sports Illustrated as laying everyone off.” So if you listen to that, mentally, you can just go and swap in everything we said about Pitchfork with Sports Illustrated, because it’s all the same fucking game. It’s all dying the exact same death.
BOBBY: What’s even wilder is that like the people who were working in Sports Illustrated were still doing good work right down to the wire, and the people who were running just didn’t care.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know, it wasn’t like there was anything any of those people could have done to prove that Sports Illustrated still has a voice in these modern times, you know? It’s hard. It’s hard when you have a magazine with that much history to adapt to the times. And you either like remain an institution and people dislike you for that reason. Or you— you adapt and you change, and maybe it doesn’t work out quite as well as you expected, but it was working out at Sports Illustrated. People were doing good work there. It’s just every single thing they were doing, they were fighting against the people running the business, because the people running the business didn’t want it to succeed. They just wanted—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —to license it out to tote bags or whatever, and get the return on their investment, and then be out of the game. Because guess what? It’s hard to be in media. It’s hard to run a successful media company, which is why we should not put capitalist incentive structures on certain tent poles of a— of a healthy society.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And that there should be some sort of authority to come in and say that we can’t do this. It’s like— it’s not even just capitalist incentive structures, too. It’s like, it’s venture capitalists, like this is all they do.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They don’t actually have any other purpose. They’re literally, self-admittedly leeches. They’re leeches. That is what a leech is. You can’t leech a media company because it’s not like there’s that much inherent valuation to it. It’s just like we’re doing what we said we were going to do, you know? Why not just let us do that? And that’s what happened with— with Deadspin. That’s why Defector is what it is. It’s like, “We are taking what we said we were going to do, and now we’re just doing it in a semi-sustainable way, because we’re not trying to get rich. We’re not trying to go to the moon, you know? We’re just trying to write blogs. We’re just trying to do pods. We’re just trying— whatever it is. We’re just trying to make videos, explain our essays. We’re just trying to do hard journalism. Whatever your form of media is, it’s just— it’s— it’s— it’s ghoulish.
ALEX: Yeah, I’ve— I’ve been thinking a lot about, like, you know, my existence—
BOBBY: Same, brother.
ALEX: —and— and— and an engagement with the internet over the last few years, you know? And what it means to sort of be a young millennial who grew up with the internet. Although with— with some of these outlets were— you know, I was probably a little young at the time of their inception, to grasp their importance. You know, you mentioned Deadspin, which is one that comes to mind, Pitchfork as well. You know, these places that, like, were cornerstones of a certain subculture. And by the time I— I got to a point of, like, realizing how cool and important they were, and how much they spoke to sort of the things I was interested in, they died.
ALEX: You know, it’s like a— it’s like a few years after you— you come across a— a sick website that has great writers and takes you don’t see anywhere else. Someone says, “Well, what if AI wrote that? What if AI did the exact same thing? What if you just pulled up ChatGPT and said write me a 500-word take about Blake Snell.” And then you built the brand off of that. You— you kept the name and wiped the slate clean with everything else. I just— like, it’s— feels like such a bleak time to— to be a consumer— I mean, to let alone be like a laborer who is like within these industries, right? But as like a consumer who is looking for uniqueness and something that stands out and cuts through the noise of just SEO optimized garbage that’s pushed to the top of Google these days.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: There are just fewer and fewer places left for that sort of thing. Remember StumbleUpon? Did you ever use StumbleUpon?
BOBBY: I did, yeah. I did.
ALEX: Or, like, you would just, like, find websites. You remember websites that you would just, like—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —go to, to have fun on?
BOBBY: Yeah. You remember when, like, if AWS went out, you actually could still use some websites. But now if AWS goes out, the entire internet is down.
ALEX: You’re locked out of your home. Yeah, bro.
BOBBY: Your car doesn’t start.
ALEX: Literally.
BOBBY: I— you know, it’s tough, though— it’s— it’s— it’s really tough, because like, not only has venture capital just, like, decimated the entire media world, but the— but the specter of venture capital and their, like, just frankly fraudulent nature with which they’ve tried to con into this industry. And, like, scoop up certain grifting content people into starting new ventures, has now just eroded consumer trust, like reader trust, listener trust, viewer trust, whatever it is, whatever you’re trying to create, to the point where, like, if a person authentically was like, “I’m starting a new thing. I don’t know that I would even trust it, because it would be like semaphore or whatever. It’d be, like, incredibly VC leverage, or it’d be like [bleep] you know? Maybe that’s too spicy to say, maybe I’ll cut this out, but like— it’d be like there’s so— the return on investment is never going to be what the people running— the money side of these operations is going to be when they invest in it. They want a three-year return and they want Uber. They want, like— they’re like the characters from Parks and Recreation that are like, “Money, please.” You know, like, the— that’s the people who are running these operations. And it’s like, “Well, what about this article that I wrote, you know, that, like, won a fucking Pulitzer? You know? Or what about this podcasts that I created that won an award, like, that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter. Or, like—you know, what about the slow steady growth that we’ve had? Not good enough. Not good enough.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I could get that times 10 by just acquiring a public utility because it went bankrupt, because the far right city council decided to defund it. You know, now I acquired it, now I own water in Michigan. These are the people that we’re dealing with, man.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: The same people who are closing Pitchfork probably have a stake in the Dakota Access Pipeline. Like these are not— these— it’s all one world.
ALEX: Anna Wintour, watch the fuck out. Yeah, man, I don’t— and, like, Defector is such an interesting case study because it has succeeded in spite of everything that happened to the brand that preceded it. And also precisely because of how established and unique that voice was, that there was like a market for that sort of thing, right? And no people were— have— have— I feel like every time an outlet shuts down, you know, that conversation kind of bubbles up of like, “Can we do like a reader-funded thing or something like that?” And I think these are great initiatives, but it’s fucking hard to do, man.
BOBBY: What’s— also like the promotional channels for these things are dead.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They’re like on fire.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like your reader-funded, but where did your readers reverse find you? Because, like you said, the internet doesn’t exist anymore.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And social media is dead and owned by the people who want to send rockets to the moon or whatever.
ALEX: There is a really—
BOBBY: Or spend the United States money to send rockets to the moon and pretend like they’re innovating, because NASA didn’t land on the moon, you know, like 50 years ago.
ALEX: There— there is a cool new collective, Flaming Hydra. I don’t know if you— you’ve heard of this, that has been in the works for the last couple months, that is— has collected a fucking all-star roster of writers from Defector, and The New Yorker, and Pitchfork and, you know, Gawker, the New Republic. And like all these— Teen Vogue, some really— some names that, like, I follow incredibly. And so I’m like, “Absolutely.” Like, I’m going to sign up for the newsletter, the blog, whatever it is. But I just— I— I wish it didn’t have to be this way. Like, I—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —I wish we didn’t have to sort of reinvent the wheel every few years to find an outlet for all of the incredible writing and creating that is happening and— and being killed on such a regular basis.
BOBBY: Maybe it does have to be this way, though. Like maybe this was the only way that people were ever going to forced— were ever going to be forced to leave a place that seemed somewhat stable, even though none of these places turned out to be stable. To create things that are— that are more equitable, to create things that are worker-owned, to create things that are actually for the readers and not just like— for— for the readers on their face, but actually just for the— the money people, to make sure that we can still sell ads for Hot Pockets or whatever. Like, it’s just— I find the resilience of people who work in these industries to be the last and only inspiring thing left. The— the creativity which— which— with which things like that have cropped up, with which new companies have been reformed with new publications like Hell Gate for— is another example. It’s not just—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —like Defector and— and—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —the flaming Hydra. Or, like, it’s not just these other places. It’s like— there are— there are people who are succeeding in small ways, and maybe small successes is the only success that we should have. You know, maybe big success is inherently evil and— and, like, not sustainable, not long term.
ALEX: Right. Well, it’s like—
BOBBY: Maybe, like, success was the problem in the first place.
ALEX: This is what we’re learning, right? It’s like all these outlets that are— that are being shut down, succeeded because they didn’t try and create like a global powerhouse. They were firing off their shitty, little blogs that resonated with people right? You— they didn’t need to be monetized to death.
BOBBY: Yeah. I don’t know. Anyway, now to go to read ads for Athletic Greens. One thing that you can always rely on is that big success is not coming for Tipping Pitches. It’s all about small successes here, sustainability, community. And we rely on your devoted listenership, and support, and feedback. And, you know, if you— if you like the show enough, and you want more of it, your support on a little platform called Patreon, which by the way, you know, is probably also venture capital funding. I don’t want to think about that, though.
ALEX: Yeah. It’s all owned by Sinclair [1:15:41]
BOBBY: It’s patreon— it’s patreon.com/tipping pitches. And there are three different tiers to support us $5, $7, and $12. The $12 tier does get you two extra episodes per month. We have a really exciting addition of those episodes coming up that we’re recording later today, Alex, no spoilers. But it’s with a very fun guest to talk about a very fun piece of media. And that’s all I will say.
ALEX: I’m— I’m— I’m so hyped. I’m so hyped.
BOBBY: I’m— I’m unbelievably ready. I have some questions. I have some conversation starters.
ALEX: I know, I know.
BOBBY: I just— I’m— I’m really ready to get— to get into it. But more of that in the near future. And aside from that, you can expect a newsletter before the end of this month. It is my turn, and I don’t know what I’m going to write about yet, but inspiration will strike at some point. Maybe I’ll write about Pete Alonso. Maybe I’ll just, like, do, like, straight baseball content. What do you think of that?
ALEX: I think you should.
BOBBY: Instead of just like [1:16:33] pieces.
ALEX: Drop your— drop your prospect rankings.
BOBBY: I really don’t love Luisangel Acuña’s—
ALEX: Swing plane.
BOBBY: Yeah, swing plane. I don’t love the way that he takes it the other way. Anyway, thank you for listening. We will be back in one week’s time.
SPEAKER 4: Hail, hail, white falcon fuzz! It’s because of you I’m standing here. Hail, hail, white falcon fuzz! I was thus transfigure.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Hello, everybody. I’m Alex Rodriguez. Tipping Pitches. Tipping Pitches. This is the one that I love the most. Tipping Pitches. So, we’ll see you next week. See ya!
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