State of the Union: DAOing the X Games | Where It Happens

0:02special episode time state of the union buying the x games a lot has happened since friday want to bring everyone up to speed we're doing this in public what has happened what are some of the challenges and where do we go from here it's going to be a great one i'm really excited to talk you all through it so basically to bring everyone up to speed friday was a crazy day friday morning we released the episode where i pitched greg and apollo ono on my idea buying the x games and reimagining it completely and basically to put it simply all hell broke loose after that i'm sitting here

0:36i post it it starts to get a little bit of traction all of a sudden a couple of big athletes start reposting it the domikong soo jumps on it alexis ohanian jumps in there and then all of a sudden my phone just explodes lindsey vonn is in my dms i'm getting [ __ ] texts from dez bryant who by the way like was on my fantasy team for years look up to that guy crazy athlete insane uh salima masakaela who i grew up watching host the x games is super excited about it there's all these people going nuts i'm getting messages from red bull rockstar monster energy

1:08all these big agencies huge investor groups reaching out with interest basically all hell broke loose complete insanity totally unexpected but clearly the interest in the community was vibing on this idea of buying and completely reimagining the x games i was overwhelmed by it so basically had to spend the whole weekend diving into this figuring out what's the path forward what does it look like and what is the real opportunity here so i pitched an idea basically to web 3ify the x games to go and acquire it form a dow to go and buy the x games and then completely reimagine it both in a web 2 sense with uh more traditional

1:48media cultural moments uh creating the like drive to survive for the x games but then also bring these web three components nfts special access dow community so that you're really involving the athletes involving the community this fervent community who has driven this culture of these sports for so long involving them in the future of what the x games look like it's such an amazing nostalgic set of events one of the things i was really taken by when i posted this was all of the random people reaching out who you might not consider extreme sports fans or skaters that were reaching out with all of these memories

2:24of having watched the x games as kids experienced it these amazing memories they had of tony hawk or these other individuals sean white whoever it might be and these incredible moments that just rang true in their mind as memories and that is so cool to me because it tells me that it extends so far beyond the cultural centers of these sports into broader society i mean candidly what kid did not play tony hawk's pro skater as a kid every single [ __ ] kid played that game because it was dope it was amazing and it was very cool and so there's an opportunity here and i'm

2:57further entrenched in my belief now after seeing how this weekend went to go and rebuild this to go and completely reimagine it four sigmatic is the secret sauce behind the where it happens podcast you know how much i've been talking about that hot cocoa the one that's jam-packed with the reishi mushrooms it absolutely has been transforming my mornings i have it at night completely chills me out takes out all my stress and allows me to have a good night's rest after those long days of tequila on the set i'm sure that's helpful i mean it does help the sweet vanilla plant-based protein is the one that i've been going to after my

3:35workouts in the mornings it's been a game changer 18 grams of plant-based protein adaptogens jam-packed with mushroom goodness it's been a complete game changer for me so to go check it out go to 4sigmatic.com and use code the room at checkout greg why do you look so tired i look so tired because i did not sleep last night have you never slept well or is this a new thing it's not that i can't fall asleep i fall asleep like right away but i wake up a couple hours later and i'm just sitting in my bed and i look at the ceiling and i can't fall back to sleep and i don't know what to

4:17do so i was literally you and for the longest time i was this like hustle culture bro sleep when i'm dead didn't want to sleep didn't care about my sleep and then i honestly i started reading more of the research and realizing how impactful sleep is to your longevity to your health all these other things and as part of that i found eight sleep which has completely revolutionized the way i sleep i've heard of eight sleep can you tell me more about it think of it as like the future of sleep all of these mattress companies have created these mattresses they're just stuck they're stock mattresses eight sleep is technology

4:52plus sleep combined so the whole product is built around optimizing the temperature that you sleep at and so you read about sleeping cold is the key to sleeping and it's not quite true everyone has a different optimal sleep temperature and it changes throughout the night which is the crazy part about it so you might need really cold to fall asleep and then you might need it to be a little bit warmer to keep you asleep and the eight sleep actually transitions your temperature through the night to keep you at the optimal sleep sleep temperature at any point during the night it keeps you asleep it helps you

5:22fall asleep faster and i actually since i started using it have been sleeping better and feeling so much more energized during the day as a result sounds like i need innate sleep i think everyone needs innate sleep so if you're tuning in right now and you want to try out the 8 sleep to completely change the way you sleep rest recover so that you're ready to take on all of life's challenges check out eightsleep.com where it happens to get a discount on your first product here's a tip don't be like greg eisenberg be like saaho bloom so let's bring everyone up to speed on where we are what's happening and what

5:58are the next steps so basically there are unique challenges with buying the x games relative to say buying the constitution and i want to walk people through that because i've gotten a ton of excitement around the dow idea people are like already clamoring to send eve contribute to it get commitments going get a discord channel going all of that stuff and i think that's great the excitement's amazing but there are some unique challenges here that we have to think through and we have to be cognizant of prior to this prior to what i'm doing right now i spent seven years working in the investment world doing deals

6:31buying companies i'm on the board of a big company in the motocross space fox racing amazing company and i know what it's like to actually go and buy a business and it is messy uh there are so many layers of complexity here that go beyond what anyone would really imagine when you think about just buying an asset i mean there's employees employee contracts pension liabilities all the media contracts that they have legacy contracts things that are screwed up there's a bunch of liabilities that are sitting out there i'm sure so there are all of these layers of complexity that are so far beyond what like a constitution dow

7:07would have had to deal with we're not buying a piece of paper we're buying ip and a business that is really meaningful and really needs both a capital uh structure to go and actually acquire it but also an operating structure to go and do it and that comes with a lot of complexity so when i was having conversations over the weekend the biggest thing that jumped out to me was we need to be very very deliberate about the strategy here and what to me that means is that a hybrid approach to acquiring the x games is the smartest way to go about doing this what do i mean by a hybrid approach

7:43in a you know fully dow approach you raise 50 million dollars or 100 million dollars whatever the number is and you go and just buy the entirety of the x games why do i think that's challenging here um as much as i love that as a cultural moment for the future of web 3 i don't think it's a viable path forward to actually getting this done why first off this isn't like a christie's auction of the x games espn and disney bob iger is not going to be at a christy's auction saying oh 50 million i got who got 50 million 51 million i got 52 million here

8:14who going once going that is not how this deal gets done espn and disney uh believe in the legacy of this business espn incubated this started this it means something to them they know it means something to the community and so they're going to be very deliberate about who they sell to now what does that mean it means that the top dollar doesn't necessarily win you might have a dow bid at 75 million and if someone comes in at 60 but they're a very credible investor group they have an operating team and there's less kind of legal hoops to jump through because it's not a dow

8:47buying a company espn and disney are likely to go with that other bid and what that means to me is that the best path forward is this hybrid approach which is partner with um a very credible investor group investment fund who has executed against reimagination strategies in the sports and media space there are several of them out there there are a bunch of funds that everyone would know there's the churning groups of the world the reigns the um the people that did ufc sold it to wme all of these groups have done a ton in this space and are excited um you know would look at something like

9:24this would be excited about it and that is a really interesting thing because if we can partner with a group like that and do something that looks more like a joint capital structure maybe it's a dow taking a minority position in the future capital structure of this business that is really interesting and the reason i think that's interesting is because now you have an opportunity to actually go and get this done i think it's great to go and get excited about the full kind of dow bid to buy this i don't think it's realistic that you could go get that done and so if our interests are to go get this done

10:00and to go actually execute against the future of this and make it this amazing thing that we all think it can be i believe that this is the path forward to do it and so what i've been doing over the last several days is having conversations with a variety of investment funds and investing groups who reached out they saw this go out it reached a ton of people the thread did over 2 million impressions a lot of people saw it and i was contacted by a bunch of these groups why i think a lot of these groups realize that there is a huge opportunity to bring in a community bid

10:33athlete and community group uh to partner with them on a transaction there's a bunch of advantages to doing it that way beyond just the web three ification and people who really understand the web three angle of this the earned media that would come from having the community involved in this is immense you would have so much excitement around going and executing this transaction if there's a dow component if there is a community component versus just another private equity fund going and buying a media asset this becomes much more exciting for the media it becomes much more exciting of a transaction and the execution would generate a ton of

11:08interest and probably create a wave that you could really ride into the reimagination of all of this so i think there's a really exciting opportunity to do something there i'm having conversations with a bunch of these groups this week seeing who is most viable who's interested who's far down the path there are rumors swirling around in the space that somebody is getting close to a transaction here need to understand that figure out if there's an opportunity to collaborate to be involved to get the community to get the athletes to the table so that's really a big next step here is to figure that out and understand what

11:44is that path forward to getting something done and then once we figure out what that path forward is go out and actually execute my future vision of it is still i would say a little bit amorphous i think we need to figure it out but having a dow involved in the cap table in some way shape or form i don't know what the legality is of it yet i think we need to jump through the hoops on that front but to figure that piece out and maybe it's just that this dao the community uh the athlete bid that comes in as part of the capital structure is

12:12in charge of the web 3ification maybe that's kind of the core owned piece for this future you allow the investor group to kind of run the broader strategy with an operating team that's executing against the cultural moment the media side of it all the contracts all of the complexity there and the dow is in charge of reimagining the web three iffication it could be a very very real credible thing um to create so as i'm looking at it today that's how i'm thinking about it to me this is like a man on the moon moment for web 3 if we can go out and execute this and i don't

12:47really say that lightly i really do think that web 3 and having a dow or something that looks like a dow uh acquiring a share of a large operating business with the potential to be a billion dollar plus ip franchise is a huge huge step forward for the space i mean maybe man on the moon is dramatic uh call it the four minute mile moment maybe it's the four minute mile moment roger bannister breaks the four-minute mile suddenly everyone within within six months a bunch of other people did it within a year a bunch of other people did it because all of a sudden it was

13:20like oh the four minute mile is no longer this thing that holds you up maybe this is that moment for web3 maybe we can create that as a community we can come together go out and execute against something like this and really create that special moment that vaults the entire space forward that vaults the idea of community ownership community governance forward and participation from the athletes from the community from the fans and allow the future athletes to participate in the value that they create for this as well so i'm super excited about it i think there's a ton to do there's a bunch of athletes we

13:52haven't heard from a bunch of people i really want to get involved i mean tony hawk if you're out there if you're listening to this you got to get involved in this man this is a huge huge moment for the space you would be the perfect person to have involved arnold schwarzenegger i've heard you're interested would love to have those people involved sean white i mean all of these athletes that are out in the space that have been driving these extreme sports forward for so many years this is your opportunity to have more ownership for this and to create a legacy that extends well beyond yourself to

14:22allow the future athletes of your sport the legacy you guys created to persist in a really meaningful and in a beautiful way so i'm extremely excited about it i hope we can continue to push this forward i'm going to do this whole thing in public i said that from the get-go i'm going to add this episode to the tweet thread i'm going to continue to provide updates there as i learn more obviously there's going to be certain things that are confidential in the process who's involved but i'm going to share absolutely as much as possible and we're going to go do this thing and i actually

14:51think there's a real path to going and getting this done and i wouldn't have said that on friday when i put out the idea so it's pretty exciting that i'm sitting here on monday recording this and in the span of four days three days whatever it's been we've completely flipped this entire thing on its head and we have an opportunity to actually go and do something special here so stay with me super excited about this and to close out this episode i want to bring in a good good buddy of mine who is extremely credible to talk about this stuff it's my buddy sam shortstein he was in charge

15:22of the reimagination of the xfl so prior to covid vince mcmahon over at the wwe uh i think he put 500 million of his own dollars into uh restarting the xfl it took off it was totally insane if anyone watched it it was awesome the content coming out of it the virality was [ __ ] phenomenal uh unfortunately they only got like three or four weeks of games in before covet turned the world upside down and because of the stock market crashing vince mcmahon pulled the plug on the whole thing so sam was really in the trenches for a year and a half two years when i was starting to

15:53ideate on the x games idea i called sam um and bounced it around i was basically he was the guy i called to say tell me i'm an idiot um what what am i missing here so i want to pull them in we're going to riff for a couple minutes on how you might actually reimagine this and then we're gonna put this out to the community and we're gonna get it out and let's keep this thing rolling forward i will continue to provide updates as we push this thing and uh let's go buy the x games so i'm gonna pull sam in sam welcome to the show

16:21there he is sam shortstein the man the myth the legend uh sam i just gave you an intro um i hyped you up i gave you i gave you uh a good good plug i need you to tell the story very quickly of um bud light seltzer um and how you guys integrated that because i think it's a very unique story to think about as we think about reimagining the x games and the future of sports and media yeah absolutely um thanks for having me on sawho uh you know when we were at the xfl we had to reimagine everything that we were doing and we were looking at different spaces

16:52and how they do brand integrations right how do you mix the corporate with the culture right and people can tell it's almost like the uncanny valley when you're not doing it the right way so seltzer bloodlight seltzer came to us they just launched their competitor to the white claw business and they're like hey we want to we want to put the seltzer you know we want how do we get this in your players hands right um because that's really what they care about they don't want signs they want in players hands so we said we'll put in the locker room right i can't tell them to drink it but you know i can't

17:22influence them to drink so what i did is we just put it in the in the locker room and uh we've tried it out with the hey the winning team is going to get the seltzer the salt separation or whatever and uh this team time the away team won uh in our facility at ballpark in arlington that we had helped convert to a football stadium now and the couple of guys are looking at the seltzer like what is this like what are we doing here like it's you know normally a beer drinker guys are you baiting me are you trying to [ __ ] me you're trying to force me to drink this

17:51seltzer they look at me like what am i supposed to do with this i'm like do what you want with it and because of the connection to wwe it's funny you know taylor heineke who's now the starting quarterback for the washington football team he starts doing the stone cold celebration he didn't play it down he was the backup quarterback you know at least our stone cold celebration the other backup quarterbacks getting on it the kicker's getting in on it um and it was viral moment viral moment we had a bunch of players commenting on it former nfl players tori smith were commenting on it and it and it kind of brought this

18:22new brand integration um you know my my my buddy chris seglia he runs one of the largest esports streaming companies uh tenno media and he was like you gotta get in their hands get it in their hands get in their hands and that was a unique way of us like how is seltzer aligned with football well through that post-game celebration yeah it's crazy to think about all the opportunities that exist like that i love that story because it's basically just like go do something different and you create all these unique earned media moments that all of a sudden you're like replicating personality right everyone wants personality around these things

19:00that's what i said on the original episode when i released it was drive to survive was so great not because of the production value or anything they were doing it was because they put [ __ ] faces behind these cars it used to be a car driving around a track which is great formula one was a great sport but it was niche all of a sudden my wife is watching drive to survive and she's like oh lewis hamilton versus this guy and that personality and i like oh how's that guy doing i want to watch him because now you have a face like i've put a name to the face it's no longer a

19:28car and for the x games there's such a unique opportunity to do this exact thing you put personalities behind this because you and i have talked about this there has not been a really big face or name around extreme sports in a long time in the way that there used to be when we were growing up the tony hawk the sean white they were like cultural icons and you can go and recreate that by doing something unique on the media side here yeah you know i i look at um nigel houston is probably better than some of the guys that we grew up watching but and his clothes are even better than

20:03what tony hawk had but it's not the same type of getting people there it's the streets it's not as it's not as high flying as what we used to travis pastrana jumping over 50 monster trucks doing evil knievel stuff you know so yeah that's another good point though it's like the espn has focused so much i think disney and espn have focused so much on the like bigger faster higher stronger of the x games rather than on the personalities and the people and creating a face to it and it's always been like oh this guy's gonna do a you know 1080 you know flip mctwist whatever like it's

20:37some insane jump my eyes literally cannot process that number of spins like when i watch that um i remember when tony hawk did like the 900 and it was a huge moment beyond a 900 i literally can't process and at some point you can't spin like your body literally won't allow it to happen and so the spins are you can't keep getting higher and higher on that what you can do is create personalities around this create a face to all of this and basically create something unique that people want to engage with that they want to go spend money on in person that they want to share on social

21:08that they want to go put money behind merch nfts all of the web 3 components of it get access to these personalities i mean you can recreate cultural icons uh totally outside the context of the actual event you know another thing about it is the age of the people so ryan sheckler at 13 tony hawk was a prodigy it can steer younger traditional american sports like even in my league we had technically no restrictions we didn't have a collective bargain agreement uh but we still didn't go after players more than three years out of college right ryan scheckler was 13 when he hit the scene in skateboarding and there's a

21:43and the young guy just hit a 1080 right and he's like 14 years old it steals younger as we get younger and you can create stars that way versus traditional sports you have to go much older route and there's people waiting to identify you know ryan shukla had a tv show at 16 years old this these types of things can be recreated through different mediums now distribution the other thing that's come up to both of us is prize money and i think it's a brilliant point that i hadn't thought of but you can create this virtuous cycle if we buy this um you know if we partner

22:14with the right people and we can go start to reimagine it you can create a virtuous cycle that makes it more and more relevant for the athletes for the fans and that's around prize money right like the prize winnings right now are like 25 grand 30 grand someone wins if they win the x games and that's insane um that's like the olympics right like these guys are making no money for a lifetime's worth of work and there's a real opportunity here because if you create more media around it if you create these cultural icons more revenue starts coming into the business the ip is worth more the athletes are

22:43generating more revenue because they can do these web 3 things they can sell nfts for unique access they're able to profit from their likeness more than just like the instagram brand deals and the things they're doing now all of a sudden that prize money number goes way up uh you have more revenue coming through this thing it just creates an engine right all of a sudden you start having a quarter million dollar prize winnings you have a million dollar prize winnings and that's a moment now all of a sudden the athletes are like this is my goddamn super bowl um i'm really going to focus on training for that because this is a

23:09huge moment there's create much more culture around it there's much more excitement around it and you create this virtuous cycle that i think just just self-replicates it's a self-fulfilling prophecy for a lot of people that that really excites me you know i'm in the same boat because of the xfl we had a pay to play pay more to win right and so i paid my guys a thousand bucks a week and then every game they played and they got a thousand bucks but then they got a a bonus of two thousand dollars and or two thousand twenty one dollars why right because we're going to the 2021 season

23:40right like our 2020 season right and pay more to win and so that's why you know when there's a interview with taylor heineken that's why he's celebrating so much is he just made two thousand dollars right the grand scheme of things is not that big but when you add a prize money to the competition it makes it different the international for dota 2 their big tournament they are they do a really good job integrating uh units bought in the esports space in dota gets a revenue split with the championship the winner so they're the largest prize pool in esports not even the biggest game but they can get up to

24:1111 million dollars wow prize pool and that's the attraction there versus i think league of legends might be three million dollars for the team org that doesn't cover one player's salary but you know dota 2 you're going really high up in that price pool that gives a lot of people hey this is why i should be watching this is why i should be competing in this game versus another game and it really gives that opportunity we all can rally around money now yes there's going to be exposure opportunities here and hey you should come compete in the x games versus other action sports competitions because we're on espn that doesn't work

24:43anymore you need to get people in by people and then like you saying with community engagement it makes even more money uh impeccable for your fans when they can directly compensate the athlete instead of going through a middleman totally it also just as the athletes have direct ownership in these things as the community has direct ownership and so they all have a vested interest in seeing it continue to accelerate and grow that's so powerful and it's what web 3 i think is figured out in a big way is just this idea of community ownership and you know the progressive um decentralization the progressive kind of communitization of a

25:18lot of these spaces is really interesting because all of a sudden not only current athletes but future athletes have real skin in the game to see this continue to accelerate and grow and i don't think it's a zero-sum game of like you play in the you know you participate in the x games versus in something else i want this to be like totally open source you know um you know like interoperable with other events other series people are doing they should the athletes they should really want to participate in this because it accelerates their value they're given the resources they're given the tools to go and

25:51execute against um you know real brand building for them personally that they can extend anywhere i think one of the things that's you know the biggest disservice to athletes broadly is that they have these short shelf lifes as athletes and they haven't been given the tools and resources to really capitalize on being top point zero one percent in the world at something during that window there's a couple athletes and it's like survivorship bias thing you hear about the guys that make fifty million eighty million hundred million dollars you and i both have some friends that have done that um not that they're happier than other friends who have made less money

26:23than that but they were able to capitalize very few do that and so i think if you can create a world where these athletes have the tools and resources through the x games to brand build to extend the lifetime of their value and to really engage directly with the fan base and profit from that direct engagement with the fan base there's something beautiful and really brilliant that can happen here so i'm super fired up about this i'm also just really excited by how much community engagement came in since posting about it i'm excited about the athletes that want to get involved i'm also excited about the athletes that

26:59haven't responded yet that we should be able to go out and get because they should be on board with something like this so i think there's a really really interesting opportunity here i want to as i said earlier in the episode i want to go run down the traps on the investor groups that are looking at this i want to figure out who's most excited about the strategy who is most excited about you know having a uh dow involved having a web3 angle to doing this whole thing because if there's someone that's going in to do this and isn't thinking about it in you know the right way or in our view

27:28thinking about it in a you know in a truly inclusive way for the community i don't think that's an approach that we would want to take so partnering with the right people and trying to go get this done and you know showing disney espn etc that there's a vision to make this a really really bright future for the x games and for this ip that they incubated is a key part of it so i'm really excited about it i think there's a really bright future here and looking forward to seeing next step so appreciate you joining sam you're the man i'm going to continue riffing on this with you for sure

28:00because i think you're one of the brightest minds on on reimagining the future of sports and media and going to be involved no matter what here when we go get this done so let's um let's keep plugging along and uh let's go buy the [ __ ] x games awesome man let's arm the rebels as greg says let's do it arm the rebels i love it i love it all right man well thank you so much um as everyone uh who is tuning in will appreciate this was a uh pretty unique and quick special episode state of the union on buying the epis on [ __ ]

28:30now i'm getting too excited i'm going to blow this state of the union on buying the x games not buying the episode buying the x games uh you were tuning in here today and appreciate all of you and i will keep everyone posted let's go do it in public 4sigmatic is the secret sauce behind the where it happens podcast you know how much i've been talking about that hot cocoa the one that's jam-packed with the reishi mushrooms it absolutely has been transforming my mornings i have it at night completely chills me out takes out all my stress and allows me to have a good night's rest after those long days

29:08of tequila on the set i'm sure that's helpful i mean it does help the sweet vanilla plant-based protein is the one that i've been going to after my workouts in the mornings it's been a game changer 18 grams of plant-based protein adaptogens jam-packed with mushroom goodness it's been a complete game changer for me so to go check it out go to 4sigmatic.com and use code the room at checkout greg why do you look so tired i look so tired because i did not sleep last night have you never slept well or is this a new thing it's not that i can't fall asleep i fall asleep

29:46like right away but i wake up a couple hours later and i'm just sitting in my bed and i look at the ceiling and i can't fall back to sleep and i don't know what to do so i was literally you and for the longest time i was this like hustle culture bro sleep when i'm dead didn't want to sleep didn't care about my sleep and then i honestly i started reading more of the research and realizing how impactful sleep is to your longevity to your health all of these other things and as part of that i found eight sleep which has completely revolutionized the way i sleep i've

30:21heard of eight sleep can you tell me more about it think of it as like the future of sleep all of these mattress companies have created these mattresses they're just stuck they're stock mattresses eight sleep is technology plus sleep combined so the whole product is built around optimizing the temperature that you sleep at and so you read about sleeping cold is the key to sleeping and it's not quite true everyone has a different optimal sleep temperature and it changes throughout the night which is the crazy part about it so you might need really cold to fall asleep and then you might need it to be a little bit warmer to keep you asleep

30:53and the eight sleep actually transitions your temperature through the night to keep you at the optimal sleep sleep temperature at any point during the night it keeps you asleep it helps you fall asleep faster and i actually since i started using it have been sleeping better and feeling so much more energized during the day as a result sounds like i need a nate sleep i think everyone needs innate sleep so if you're tuning in right now and you want to try out the 8 sleep to completely change the way you sleep rest recover so that you're ready to take on all of life's challenges check out

31:22eightsleep.com where it happens to get a discount on your first product here's a tip don't be like greg eisenberg be like sahil bloom join our free community at trwih.com [Music]