CEO and Founder Next 3 Carolyn Tisch Blodgett Talks Sports Investing

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Carol Massar (0:07)

Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, Governor and Lead Owner of Gotham FC, the football club, National Women's Soccer League team as well, founder and CEO of Next 3 Ventures. It's an investment firm in sports, media, and entertainment, co-owner of the New York Football Giants, member of the Tisch family that has long owned the team. I am a giant fan. My four brothers, my dad, we went to games all the time.

How are you? Good.

Tim Stenovec (0:29)

So happy to be here.

Carol Massar (0:30)

Thanks for having me. We love talking with you. Tell us about, I think the title of the panel was, The Future of Sports Investing. Let's just start there big and broad. How does it look? Like, how do you think about it? There's lots of money, increasingly a lot more players who want to be involved, investment, Wall Street. So how do you see it?

Carolyn Tisch Blodgett (0:47)

Yeah, you know, when my family got involved in the New York Giants, this was over 30 years ago, and it was really thought of as a hobby. You know, people thought that this was, when my grandfather bought half of the Giants, he paid $75 million. People thought it would be faster to burn the money, you know, than spend that on a sports team. And it's really, for him too, it was a hobby. It was not what you thought of as an investible product. Now we're sitting here at Bloomberg talking about sports investment. The landscape has changed. You're seeing much more professional investors come in, much more institutional capital comes in. And with that, obviously there's more liquidity, there's more investments you can make as a team, but it also raises the standard. The standard now is to run teams as professional products, which is different.

Carol Massar (1:29)

It raises the prices too of teams, right? There's a lot more. Is that a good or bad thing in your view?

Carolyn Tisch Blodgett (1:35)

You know, it's a good question. I don't know that I would characterize it as good or bad. I think people for a long time have said, is there a valuation in bubble in sports? And they've been saying that, and then the prices go rising. I think what you see is that with higher valuations do come higher standards. And so there is an expectation of how you're going to run the team and you're going to run it kind of in a more professional way. At the same time, I think as an owner, your responsibility is you are a steward of a community asset. And so the risk, I think, with the higher valuations, the risk with more money coming in is that you lose sight of that. What can't happen in sports is that teams are run as purely financial products.

I think that will change what it is. I don't think that's happening today. But I think as long as owners understand at its core, this is a community product. This is a product, as you said, you've been a giant fan of multiple generations. This is a product that brings people together. You can't lose sight of that.

Tim Stenovec (2:32)

Is it also a product that cannot be replaced by AI? And how has AI changed the conversation that you are having, along with members of your family, along with other owners? I mean, is this the thing that stays valuable in an era where it's just so uncertain what happens to everything else?

Carolyn Tisch Blodgett (2:49)

I do think that's the question of the hour. I think that's part of why valuations continue to rise, is that I do think it is, it's not, I don't want to say it's AI proof, but I think we're a long way away from seeing a moment where it's not interesting what the product is on the field, because AI has changed it. I think there's a lot that AI will do, will continue to do to maybe make the, make either from a scouting perspective, make it more efficient from a fan development perspective, make it more efficient. But the idea, I think part of what makes sports so special is the live nature of it, and I don't think that's going away anytime soon.

Carol Massar (3:21)

Carolyn, are we going to have AI players, robots? No, I think that the whole...

Tim Stenovec (3:26)

Please no.

Carol Massar (3:28)

I'm just thinking all of the videos that we've seen out of China as of late, I'm sure you saw them, and it's like players competing. And I know some of it's a little rough, but it does beg the question.