Joe Tsai on US-China Rivalry, AI's Future, Owning the Nets/Liberty, Caitlin Clark's Major Impact

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:01)
For people who don't know who he is, please give us an introduction to Joe Tsai. He's the owner of the Nets, and he's now chairman of Alibaba.

**Joe Tsai** (0:09)
We like innovation from the bottom up.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:11)
Alibaba just dropped their secret weapon, Quinn 2.5 Max.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:15)
Alibaba served 14.5 percent overnight, beat estimates on nearly every metric.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:20)
A massive rally alone this year, adding about 100 billion to the stock value.

**Joe Tsai** (0:24)
You have to have a growth mindset when you compete.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:30)
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Joe Tsai. Hey, my man.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:43)
Good to see you.

**Joe Tsai** (0:43)
Good to see you.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:44)
Good to see you, brother.

**David Friedberg** (0:45)
Nice to see you. How are you? Good to see you.

**Joe Tsai** (0:47)
David, how are you?

**Jason Calacanis** (0:49)
The Brooklyn Nets.

**Joe Tsai** (0:52)
Brooklyn Nets. And the New York Liberty.

**David Friedberg** (0:54)
And the New York Liberty, exactly.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:56)
It's not easy running a team, is it?

**Joe Tsai** (0:58)
It's not easy at all.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:01)
Not easy at all.

**Joe Tsai** (1:02)
Because a basketball, any professional team is both a business and also it's an institution. And you need to keep the fan base happy. So there's sort of this church and state element. It's almost like running a news organization.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:18)
Yeah. There it is.

**David Friedberg** (1:19)
Can we maybe start with the WNBA and we can shift to business and we can shift to basketball. But I think Caitlin Clark is out for the season and there's just been a lot of controversy and attention that the WNBA is getting. What has it done right? What has it done wrong? Has the league been doing enough to protect her as a star in the face of the league? It's been almost a microcosm for just a social discussion. Do you want to just talk about that as what you see?

**Joe Tsai** (1:43)
Caitlin Clark definitely had an effect on the WNBA. All the metrics went up. So this was last season when she first came into the league from college. And we've seen all of our metrics from viewership, ticket sales, sponsorship. Everything went up almost 4X. 4X. 4X.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:06)
Right.

**David Friedberg** (2:06)
I mean, that's incredible.

**Joe Tsai** (2:07)
That's incredible. So the economic impact that she's made to the league is extraordinary.

**David Friedberg** (2:13)
Undeniable.

**Joe Tsai** (2:14)
Undeniable. But because of who she is, she's a little bit of a different kind of player.
She's a point guard. She's a smaller player. The knock on her was, was she going to be able to withstand all the physicality of the league? And she's proven that she's able to do, to do that. Unfortunately, there's been, I think, I think it's always good to have rivalries, right? You know, she, she has this rivalry with Angel Reese that dated back to college. But some people would like to pit it as a kind of a racial thing or is it, you know, this or that. I, I think we need to look past that and just look at the skill set that's being brought into the league. Now we have so many great college players. I mean, the, the, the rookie of the year potential candidate is Sonia Citrone. Have you ever heard of her before she came into the league? I mean, she, I think she just broke the record for the highest three point shooting percentage in the league. So, you know, you see tremendous amount of talent and I think you, you ask what have, what have they done right? I, I don't, I think it's a matter of just a, a confluence of good things coming into the league.

**David Friedberg** (3:32)
And what about the NBA? So you guys did just an enormous.

**Joe Tsai** (3:36)
Yeah, just let me, but, but the one thing that's really changed that is prior to the Caitlin Clark season, your average fan base that watches ESPN, basically you guys are not watching women's basketball. Maybe some, some of them followed college, but certainly not the WNBA. But now your average ESPN fan base, they are watching the mainstream sports fan base are watching the WNBA.

**David Friedberg** (4:04)
I think she's a phenomenal.

**Jason Calacanis** (4:06)
I have an observation about this. And you and I are old school basketball heads, you know, watching, having watched the 80s and 90s and Patrick Ewing and Charles Barkley. It's more physical. They're tougher in the WNBA. And every time LeBron goes up and he gets fouled, and he's flopping all over the place.