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Joe Pompliano
#584 Joe Pompliano on Athletes Investors Buying Bitcoin
- Matthew Benham used predictive analytics models developed for sports gambling to revolutionize soccer club management, converting a $700,000 loan into a multi-hundred-million-dollar investment by applying moneyball principles to Brentford FC. - Russell Okung, Sean Culkin, and Trevor Lawrence are taking portions or all of their professional salaries in Bitcoin, signaling belief in cryptocurrency and influencing other athletes to explore digital assets. - Rich Kleiman and Kevin Durant's 35 Ventures has made successful early-stage investments including Coinbase and DoorDash, demonstrating how athletes can build venture capital portfolios through relationship-building with institutional investors. - Saquon Barkley and other professional athletes are methodically entering the investor community by learning from established VCs, leveraging their large fan bases to provide value to portfolio companies. - Celebrity sports competitions and attention-driven events (boxing matches, free-throw tournaments, dodgeball competitions) are monetizing large online audiences with high cash prizes at minimal production cost. - Dana White's UFC strategy of investing in media (The Ultimate Fighter), paying fighters to build Twitter presence, and understanding audience psychology transformed mixed martial arts from a banned sport into a multibillion-dollar enterprise.
#363: Joe Pompliano on the Business and Money Behind Sports
- Joseph Pompliano launched Huddle Up, a daily newsletter and Twitter presence focusing on business and money in sports, reaching 20,000 followers in just five weeks with multiple viral tweets. - Michael Rubin's acquisition and scaling of Fanatics: purchased for ~$275 million in 2011, integrated briefly into eBay's GSI Commerce acquisition for $2.4 billion, then bought back and grown into a $6+ billion business with exclusive league partnerships through 2030. - Junior Bridgeman's transition from NBA sixth man ($350k peak salary) to franchise owner: worked at Wendy's to learn the business, eventually owned 150+ Wendy's and 120+ Chili's locations, then sold them and became Coca-Cola's exclusive bottler/distributor in multiple states, reaching ~$600 million net worth. - The Silna brothers' perpetual media rights deal: purchased an ABA team for ~$1 million, negotiated one-seventh of four NBA teams' media rights in perpetuity when the leagues merged in the early 1970s, ultimately collecting $500 million by 2015 plus $300 million to exit, totaling $800 million. - Joe Burrow's dramatic stock improvement: projected as a sixth-round pick before his final college season, won the Heisman and national championship, then drafted first overall—the difference between $200k guaranteed as a late pick versus $30+ million guaranteed as the top selection. - LeBron James taking equity instead of cash: received 2% of Liverpool FC for $6.5 million owed by a marketing partner, now worth ~$45 million; also owns equity in Blaze Pizza (valued at hundreds of millions) and co-founded Ladder nutrition company with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cindy Crawford, and Lindsey Vonn.