The Business Moguls Behind 2023's Super Bowl Teams (#417)

He paid $25K for the team. It's now worth something between $2 and $3 billion.

So today's episode is going to make me incredibly uncomfortable because I know nothing about sports. I was just informed yesterday when Sean texted me. He said— Last night. Last night. He goes, let's do a special on the Super Bowl. And it's this Sunday. And so that's when I found out that the Super Bowl was this Sunday. I know nothing about sports.

And how did you find out? Did I text you this?

Yeah. What do you mean? You texted me and you said, let's go.

I sent you a voice note. Your favorite thing to receive.

I hate voice notes. I'm not a fan of voice notes, but you sent me that. And that's when I learned it was the Super Bowl. Um, I know nothing about this. Look, I know what you're thinking. You're like, look, You're this macho man. You look like you're a descendant of Dennis the Menace. You're the— you're—

nobody says macho man since literally the Macho Man was a character in the '80s.

I know what you're thinking. You're this all-American hunk. You love sports. And you're partially right. I am an all-American hunk, but I know nothing about sports. I don't pay attention to it all.

So here's the problem. In high school, Sam looked like a nerd and hung out with a nerd and developed nerd hobbies. But then Sam now looks like a jock, but he still has the nerd hobbies. So you're the high school quarterback, you're the varsity QB, but you still go under the bleachers and smoke weed or whatever. I don't know what your crew was doing, but yeah, you fake like sports.

I looked like Napoleon Dynamite in high school. There's no way that I was like, I knew anything about sports. Sports. I don't know anything about, about sports, so I'm gonna be a little out of my element.

What clubs were you in?

Um, there was a history club that I, that I took part in.

You and Ben Wilson.

Yeah. I participated in the sport track and field, where I ended up getting a scholarship for, for college, and, uh, cross country. I was a cross country track and field guy. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I played the best sports.

A sport requires like a ball. And you played, you know, you played things that just require moving a little faster than normal. It's just a slight increase in pace.

I have said that I think exercise, you should work out so you can either kill and eat everyone in the room or be able to outrun them. Therefore, I only watch UFC, boxing, and running. I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to kill and eat or run away. That's all I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to like play with a freaking ball.

Yeah, you got fight or flight as your hobbies. But anyways, either way, we're doing the Super Bowl episode and we're going to do it a little different. So if you listen to this episode, here's my prediction. You listen to this episode, I guarantee you, I promise you at least 3 kind of like smart aleck, know-it-all comments when you're watching the Super Bowl with your family and friends on Sunday. Because we're just going to give you a couple little tidbits that you're going to be able to say, what did you know? Or, you know, actually, and, um, everybody will hate you, but they'll have to admit that you knew some good shit. So that's what you're going to get out of this episode. It's all the stuff around the Super Bowl. Um, and that's where we're going to start. So Sam, I know this was tough for you to do research. What were you able to pull out? Did you have to first look up the rules of the game or what?

I kind of know the rules. 4 downs, 6 points and 3 points.

Like when you called me, you said Super Bowl and I was like, that's not called the Super Bowl.

No, you said the Super Bowl was this Sunday and I think I asked if the Lakers were in it. No, I researched the more interesting things, which is the rich people who own the team. That's the part. Dude, the best part about sports is watching basketball and trying to guess who the rich people are in the front row and Googling them and reading their Wikipedia. That's the best part. That's basically what I did.

Yeah, one of these people does not belong. It's like, oh, here's a celebrity in the front row. Here's Jay-Z. Um, oh, this is 90-year-old guy with a 30-year-old wife. Oh, let me take a wild guess at who this individual is and how they belong here.

That's significantly more interesting.

So let's start with the owners because I think that is the, uh, the interesting place to, place to start. So the, the two, so I went through, I did this thing. I was kind of like a little over the top, but I went through and I created a spreadsheet. Um, it's not done yet, but I'm going to have it done by the end of today because I just got like really into it last night. Uh, of every owner of in the NFL. And I basically have all these columns like, did they inherit it? Are they self-made? How much did they buy the team for? What's it worth now? What does that mean in terms of its annual appreciation for how long they've held it? And there's a couple that, you know, that was a pretty interesting process. The two teams that are in this, right? They both of them were kind of like inherited wealth. Not self-made, but the Chiefs owner story is really interesting. Did you check that one out?

Oh, I could tell you all about it. I've known about them. So basically the, uh, the Philly guy, not interesting. Um, yeah, I mean, uh, basically the guy's grandpa started a movie theater, uh, it expanded, they bought other things and it's just like a nice story, but not like particularly that interesting. And now they own—

he was like, uh, the, the guy who owns it now, he was like a professor, professor of social, uh, social policy somewhere. And then was like, I'd like to be rich. I'm going to join the family business and join the family business. And like, you know, I guess the most interesting thing was took out a loan against the company's assets to buy the Eagles for $185 million. And it turned out to be a great, great buy, great, great, you know, bet that he took. So, you know, props to him for that. But this Chiefs story is kind of like, uh, like something from the Wild West or like some—

it is.

This is pretty—

that's exactly what it's from. And this guy's really fascinating. So the— basically the grandson owns it, but it all starts with the grandpa. So in the early 1900s Who gets the Billy of the Week?

Is it— it's the grandpa, right? A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool?

A billion dollars. The grandpa. Yeah, the guy who runs it now, he's fine. He just seems like a square. He's just like a straight edge, straight edge, like nice CEO type. But the, the, the, the, the, the founder, the grandpa, he's got the, the perfect name. So have you heard of— is it called the Wildcatter? Is that a band or Wildcatter?

Yeah, Wildcatter, I think. Wildcatter.

That's, that's the, it's a great name for what they used to do. So basically in the early 1900s, um, his name's H.L. Hunt. That was his name. And if you Google him, he looks like a crazy person. So he almost looks like the serial killer version of the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy. Like he wears like a bow tie.

He's got like Colonel Sanders was on season 4 of You. Yeah.

If Colonel Sanders liked to drink Jack Daniels, that's what this guy looks like. He's got like piercing blue eyes and he's got like a, like a shit-eating grin and he's a wild guy. But basically he started, he was born in the early 1900s and he was like a high school dropout. I don't even think he graduated elementary school, but he was this kind of math genius type and he was, yeah, math prodigy and he was a gambler and basically he ran for, ran away from home at the age of 15. Uh, drifted across the country doing odds and ends, like odd jobs. Eventually he had like $50 or $100. He gambles it playing poker, turns that into $100,000, which is something like $3 million, takes that money and he starts buying oil leases. So, um, it's kind of almost challenging to understand today, but in the early 1900s, right when like cars were getting popular, America was basically like the Middle East where we were finding all this cool, uh, all this oil here. And so people were like buying plots of land in Ohio, PA, Texas. In order to find oil. Well, that's what this guy was doing. He was trading oil leases and he was mildly successful, but at the age of 36, he was like, man, this oil business sucks because I make a little money, I risk it all. Sometimes I lose, sometimes I win. It's like I'm still gambling. I want out. And so he sells all of his stuff and he goes, fine, I'll do one last thing. And with the, uh, with the money he has from selling his stuff, he buys this plot of land in Texas and it turns out to be a lotto ticket where it's the largest oil reserve ever discovered. It's in Texas. And 20 years later, he becomes the richest man in the world. But throughout all of this, this guy's a crazy person. He ends up having 15 kids with 3 different women. Some of them were total degenerates, the kids. Some of them, like, like 3 or 4 of them died from like drugs, a plane crash. They crashed motorcycles, crashed cars. They're just like these crazy kids, but a few of them were awesome. So one of his daughters started the Rosewood Hotels. Have you heard of that? Yeah.

Yeah.

That's famous.

Yeah.

It's like a big thing. Another one, Lamar, which I think is the dad of the current CEO of the Chiefs. Uh, he's like credited as, uh, naming the Super Bowl. So like he was like pretty important in sports, but this guy's crazy. Uh, a few examples. He was like, he ends up being the richest man in the, in, in America, but he, uh, it was like the bad news here is he was like a crazy racist. And he believed in like, yeah, he's like really racist.

And he put no—

yeah, there's a big footnote here. So basically he would like— there is a— do you know how like, you know how like amongst the Black community in like the '50s and '60s, like getting into Islam was like popular and they would wear like Muhammad Ali? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was all because of what's the guy's name? Elijah Muhammad. He like started this like thing in America. I don't know everything what it stood for, but part of the thing was we need to take Black Americans back to Africa, to our homeland.

First of all, Shout out to history club in high school. Look at this, look at you.

It worked.

You're wheeling and dealing with history right now. Keep going.

Well, I know all about this. I know a little bit about this because Elijah Muhammad was homies with Malcolm X and I've read a lot about Malcolm X. So anyway, part of like Elijah Muhammad's deal, his shtick was like, we wanna separate the races. And this H.L. Hunt, this Southern white guy was like, hey, so do I. That's awesome. I also wanna do that. And so, you know, Elijah Muhammad was like, you know, we wanna go back to Africa and have our own thing. H.L. Hunt was like, "Great, I would like that." So he funds that. So, you know, he's definitely a little racist, a lot racist. He also is accused of being one of the conspirators behind the killing of JFK. This lady, like, at like a deathbed confession tells a story. She's like, "I was in the room with Lyndon B. Johnson and H.L. Hunt where they said, 'This bastard JFK, after tomorrow, he's no longer gonna be on our back. He's not gonna embarrass anymore. We're gonna take care of this.'" Of course it was, it's kind of nonsense, But this guy had his hands in everything and he was this, if you Google him, he looks crazy. Not crazy in a bad way, but like a wild man. He looks like a degenerate a little bit. And I don't know about you, Sean, do you know any of these like Southern Texas, uh, like entrepreneur types?

They, they, no, not personally.

So I know a few of them. I know this group of, know this group of guys and they call themselves Capital Men. And they're just like, they make a little—

that sounds powerful.

It's awesome, right?

They're just like, that sounds a little awesome.

Yeah, I'm going to steal— I'm a—

damn, we should now call ourselves— we're just a couple of— couple of capital men.

Yeah. What do you do? I'm a capital guy. Basically, like, there's this whole, like, industry of these guys that have, like, the Southern swoop and, like, that haircut, and they got a little, like, wild in their eyes, but they, like, are into, like, hedge funds and into, like, you know, because A lot of them, it's rooted in like buying and selling oil and being these like rough and tumble oil guys. And then once you get big enough, then it kind of like comes into like buying futures and options to oil. And then it's like, oh, let's do all this other stuff with money and start a hedge fund. So there's this like, it's like rooted in that. But some of these Southern rich entrepreneurs, they have this like, the thing about Silicon Valley tech people is although they're smart and rich, they don't know how to spend their money and they don't know how to have fun. And these usually my Southern friends that are like rich and successful, They don't have that problem. And so this guy, H.R.

Hunt— rich people at Silicon Valley call themselves venture capitalists. Come on, capital men is so much better. Like, goddamn, that, that could mean anything. That could mean— I could see that meaning politics. I could see that meaning money. I could see that meaning like, we got— we're the guys who got the money above the people who got money. And it's like, you know, like we're the real capital, the capital guys. It could also just be we're real men with a capital M. I'm like, this could go in any direction. And I am, I am kind of interested in all of them. This is fantastic. And also this guy's name, H.L. Hunt. People who do that, like initial, initial, cool last name. Like what's the name of that guy who did the, that big heist and like jumped out of a plane?

D.B. Cooper, baby. Yeah.

D.B. Cooper, H.L.

Hunt.

Like you throw a name like that at me. Like, I got— I wish I was SP Puri. Yeah. Like, goddamn, I just need one of these names.

LL Cool J. Yeah.

No, man. LL Cool J, man. That was one of the all-timers.

So to summarize this guy, he's a wild man. He— there's two quotes that he's kind of credited with saying that, like, you and I have probably heard of. The first is, uh, if you know how rich you are, you aren't very rich. I don't know if you ever heard anyone say that, but that's like one of the things he said.

If you can count your money, you ain't rich. Yeah.

And that's— and the second thing he said is money's just a way of keeping score. So those are like two phrases that—

dude, he also coined the term Super Bowl. His son did. Yeah. So it's like they also came up with the name and the branding around the Super Bowl. So that's pretty amazing. He paid $25K for the team. It's now worth something between $2 and $3 billion, which is a fantastic investment. You know, it did phenomenally well. You know, one thing that's really interesting, both these guys, uh, so both these guys, so he paid $25K, it's now worth, let's say, $2.5 billion. The Eagles guy bought it for $185 million, now worth also about, let's say, $2.5, $3 billion. That sounds like this incredible return, and it is for sure. But the math on this—

But put that into 10% a year. What's that at 10% a year?

Where are you going to be anyway? So these teams average, these teams that, you know, you hear these crazy stories, oh, he bought the team for $200 grand and now it's worth $3 billion. It's like, yeah, but he did it 42 years ago or whatever. And so the math on when I was calculating these for most of the teams, it's just 15 to 20% annual appreciation compounding. And it's like, wow, this is like Sam's way of life is just like slow steady compounding.

You give me 15% a year, I'm going to get weak at the knees. 15%.

That's your safe word, dude. Yeah.

Just whisper in my ear. 15 to 20% compounding and like, I'm going to collapse.

Yeah. That's a, that, and it's just really remarkable to just see it kind of play out that way. It's like, cause it's not this incredible hockey stick, like, you know, not this spike in value. It's just a, if you annualize it 15 to 20% a year for a long time, and it shows you how Warren Buffett's so rich. The guy's just been compounding 20% for like 60 years. And that's how you get whatever, $90 billion, something insane like that.

What year did they buy it? Um, they bought it, um, because I imagine there's a world where like back, you know, whatever year they bought it, it was kind of like buying a soccer team now where it's like, I don't know, man. It's like kind of got some traction, but I don't know if this is gonna be part of like the, the fabric of, of, of society.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, like Dana White buying the UFC in 20 years, we're like, So we're just going to get a bunch of big dumb gorillas in a cage and make them fight to the death. And like, it's going to be a legitimate sport. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. So these guys are rich though. They're worth like $15 billion now. So they're, they're a very rich family. Um, okay. So let's do some other things now. Let's zoom all the way in. I got a little niche business. That's kind of interesting. So when I was thinking about football, I was thinking about the Super Bowl from a, like a business point of view. You kind of, it's a different lens. You take a look at it from a different angle. One of the things I noticed when I was watching the playoffs this year, I was like, dude, all these things that I just take for granted because they're just a regular part of the game. I'm like, they didn't just happen that way. Somebody decided we're going to do this, right? We're going to sing the national anthem before every game and everybody's going to stand up and they're going to take off their hats, put their hand on their hearts, and we're going to do this. And then the jets are going to fly over the game. And it's like, why are these airplanes flying over the stadium? I don't know if you've seen this. They do the flyover, and it's like, again, these aren't just— they didn't just happen to happen. Somebody somewhere in some room was like, we're going to do it this way. And these things cost money to do, and they take time to do. So I'm like, what's the strategy here? And I read this article, and it kind of said it well. It goes, the NFL has draped itself in the flag. And, um, and it's so true, basically. Like, that from a branding point of view, the NFL, basically when you watch a game, the pomp and circumstance makes you feel like this is a patriotic event. We are all proud to be an American. Like, that's like the— like, they, they should just play that song at the beginning of the games. And in fact, and so I was like, where did each of these come from? And so I started looking into it. A couple crazy things. One, the military basically pays the NFL Tens of millions of dollars per year to do this stuff because it's basically a giant recruiting event for the military. So they, the flyover, they have to do these anyways as like part of their training missions. So they're like, yeah, it does cost, you know, um, between like, you know, $80K to $400K to do these flyovers, but we have to do these as part of routine training anyways. So why not do our training over the game? So we get this visibility and we get the sort of like badass thing. Because if millions of people are going to watch these games, like the Super Bowl is watched by 100 million people, um, that's super positive branding. It's a, it's, it's like co-benefits. Like, what is that like parasitic relationship where it benefits both? It's like the NFL gets this association with like true bravery, courage, patriotism, America, and the military gets like visibility with this, like, because everybody sat down and watching and it's like a free commercial for them. And so then I was like, okay, that's, those are interesting. What else?

Look, it's kind of like, it's kind of like when a white girl posts a picture on Twitter of her pimple and it's like, who rescued who? Oh my God, dude.

A Sam Parr special for me today. That is amazing. That is the funniest thing you've said in a long time.

Wow.

I'm going to ask you questions about that joke later because I'm so impressed by that joke. Dude, that was great. Nice tattoo, by the way. You want to show the tat? I don't know if you could flash the tat on your leg. Sam sends this— Sam sends a text message. We'll post this on the, on the YouTube of the reveal. So it's basically, it's like, like a napkin covering whatever the tattoo is. You can see there's a tattoo underneath, but you don't know what it is. And it's like wiping it and then it reveals Sam's dog, Sid, on his leg.

Huge pit bull's face.

A huge pit bull's face. It now takes up his entire right leg. And, um, and as that reveal was happening, I was like, I am prepared for this to be anything like this tattoo. You could have convinced me it was 15 different things. And I would have been like, yep, I guess that makes sense. I guess that's what the decision was today. Like, uh, oh yeah, it's a map of my favorite, you know, my favorite motorcycle trail through the Midwest.

Yep.

All right. Sure. Right. Like, uh, this is my favorite brand of beef jerky.

Cool. No, that's on my thigh.

Yeah, it's a portrait of Macho Man Randy Savage. Yep, got it.

It's Slim Jim. Like, uh, I just did— I got the Slim Jim logo.

Right, it's like, okay, flowers, but they're all just Slim Jims instead of flowers. Like, all right, artistic, nice one.

Um, yeah, dude, so do you know, um, the best part about the whole America thing in, um, the Super Bowl? My favorite— one of my favorite videos And I'm, I'm the type of guy, I cry during the Star-Spangled Banner if it's a good one. Every time it gets me worked up. And there's this one.

Yeah, honestly, I kind of feel that too.

I, I get worked up or at the medal ceremonies at the Olympics, I always cry. I always get worked up. Right. Um, the 1991 version of the Star-Spangled Banner with Whitney Houston. It's like one of the best videos of all time. Have you seen that?

Yes. I've gone down these compilations. Marvin Gaye at the NBA.

Also the Marvin Gaye one's awesome. The Whitney Houston one's the best. And it's so impactful that the Library Congress, they had this like compilation of like the 50 greatest moments in American history. And that Super Bowl thing, that her performance made the list, which is like a really big deal. So this whole— this partnership, they've done a really good job of making it a thing. And so now the NFL— that's a beautiful line. They've draped themselves in the American flag.

And by the way, if you're like a band that's struggling to make it, here's your hard pivot. Here's your sellout pivot. Just specialize in the Star-Spangled Banner and go perform an epic version of the Star-Spangled Banner and every college football game, basketball game, just go be like The Best Wedding Singer, the COVID artist of the national anthem, and just specialize in that. Have like the most badass performance of that, uh, because I think, you know, that's, that's one way to not be a, you know, starving artist. Okay, so here's, um, here's another crazy thing. You've seen at the beginning of the games, they're gonna have this giant flag on Sunday, and the flag is literally the size of the football field. It is a massive Massive flag. Again, somebody makes that. So your boy goes through and says, who the hell makes this flag? Sure enough, there's like one lady in Utah who is the, like, one of the biggest providers for this thing. It's called 50 Star Productions. Lady in Utah, and she has one employee who hand sews this thing, and he literally goes, yeah, I just do it in my basement. I don't even come into the office. So there's just a guy in a basement sewing these things.

If you Google 50 Star Productions, it comes up with a listing, like her Google page, is a picture of her garage.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, I am pretty sure my friend— this is his aunt, uh, because like it looks exactly like his aunt. And like, he has an Aunt Patty. I'm pretty sure this is Patty. So, wow, crazy thing. But she specializes in— she's like, yeah, I'm gonna just do this. So she was like, I'm gonna go for giant flags. And it's not like she just was like, you know, some cute old lady who was knitting and somebody happened to be like, oh, I'll buy one from you. No, this is a business. She was like, she started off by buying the flags. She would buy them for 40K and then she would rent them out for these events and like basically had a rental business. And then she's like, all right, these flags I'm buying, they're low quality. They have this big problem, which is that they, uh, like if there's a giant gust of wind, the flag turns into a huge sail. Like it's like a giant parachute.

Takes the people up who are holding it.

Exactly. It's like James and the Giant Peach happens at the NFL game. So They switched it. What she does now is they, um, it's like actually like 15 different pieces that latch together to create the flag. But when you zoom out, you can't see that it's latched. And so that makes it way easier to transport. It adds a little airflow so that the, that it doesn't make the people fly away or whatever. And, uh, she rents these out for $7,000 per event. And she does about 130 to 150 events per year. She does about $1 million in sales a year. With her and one dude who's her stitch guy. And, and that's their business. And then she has like these two competitors, Super Flag and this other guy that's like, no, no, no, no, our flags, our flags are the shit. And so they're like competing against each other to be the giant flag at all these games because now every game does this. Every football game does this. Basketball games do this. It is a, is a like a random niche that, that she is like number one in.

And what a sick gig. She probably gets to see all these stadiums, go backstage and like walks by Beyoncé when she's done singing the national anthem. I mean, this is awesome. This is—

yeah, Beyoncé said nice flag to her. Uh, she, uh, so she's my, like, this is my blue collar side hustle of the week. Cause I just think this is like such a smart little thing. And I also think that you could, like, somebody could compete with this. So I got a little idea here, which is, okay, she fixed the airflow problem and making it smaller so that it's not like this giant heavy thing that you have to like transport in and out of the stadium. But you still need 300 people standing around it to hold it taut so that it like— because they can't put it on the floor, can't— flag can't touch the ground. And, um, and so you got 300 people.

Why you need 300 people? Is it really just for that symbolic reason, or is there like—

I think you want to hold it so it's like straight, it's like tight, and so it looks good. But then also it can't touch the ground, as I learned. Dude, I don't know if I told you this in my— I have two embarrassing stories from elementary school. One of them is, uh, I got assigned flag duty.

Did you just set it on the ground when you're—

Yeah, I just put it on the ground when I was working on the clip. And then the person was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I was like, what? And they're like, you can't touch the ground. And I was like, oh, is this like a, you know, the floor is lava? Like, are we playing imaginary games here? And they were like, we have to burn this flag now. And I was like, dude, I'm already the only brown kid in the school and now I have to burn the flag? Like, Jesus, this is not going to look good for me at lunch today.

That is so funny. I can see you like getting, like holding it during the Pledge of Allegiance and then just not knowing what to do after. Just put it on the ground.

Everybody was looking at me and I had no idea. I was just fiddling with the clip trying to like figure it out. And I was like, what? Just what's the problem? And it made no sense to me. I was like, okay, look, yes, I did something wrong, I guess. But you guys are weird about this.

Dude, I think the symbolic stuff is a little funny. I mean, there's like people have American flags for like beach towels. Like, you know what I mean? Like if it could like rub against your crotch, we could set it on the ground sometimes.

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Some other things about the Super Bowl that I think are kind of crazy. Let's talk about ads. So Super Bowl ads kind of get a lot of attention. Um, there's a bunch of different ways we can go with this. I have some stats, I have some hot takes, but I'm curious. I want to hear your, your take first on ads. Do you have anything interesting on ads?

It's 6 million now.

Is it 6 million? 7 million for 30 seconds.

Plus it's the cost of actually filming it, which is typically involves like getting Will Ferrell or something. So that's like another million.

Easily another million if you, if you go that route.

Yeah. Uh, it seems worth it though. Like, uh, Coinbase did something cool. I mean, your internet traffic spikes right away. What's interesting is the, what I didn't realize when I was researching this is they test it a lot of times. So they'll, um, release multiple YouTube videos early on and just see like what's the traction and then go with the winning one. So that's kind of interesting, but it actually seems worth it in a lot of cases.

So, um, so I did some math on this last year with the Coinbase one. So the Coinbase one went nuts. So if you don't remember last year, Coinbase did an ad that was pretty funny. There's two, two ads I think were really interesting ads that, that people have done. So Coinbase did an ad where it was just a full black screen. So there's no branding on the screen and there was just a QR code that was bouncing around the screen, like the old DVD, like screensaver type thing where it would like, You're kind of wanting it to land perfectly in the corner, but it does never really does. And they just had that on the screen for 30 seconds or a minute or something like that with, with music. And it was just a flashing QR code. And, um, and they came out and said that 20 million people visited the site, uh, in one minute as that was happening. Like, uh, that's absolutely crazy. So you can probably assume that maybe like a little bit more than that eventually, you know, came. It crashed their app, which was like unfortunate for them. So, you know, Uh, it was so good that it crashed our app, uh, was kind of the thing. And, um, I did some math on it and I think maybe it's hard to estimate this stuff because you don't know how many people are just going to check it out and be like, okay, I'm not interested in signing up for crypto right now. Or like, I already know what Coinbase is. So you got to like discount, but basically let's assume for a second, 20 million people, um, go ahead and come to your site and you can assume some conversion rate. So I don't know what you want to see as conversion, 3%. Yeah, even 3% is probably a little high, but like, let's just say, let's just say 1%. So that's 200,000 people that sign up. And then for something like Coinbase, they have to like link an account. So let's say like, you know, another, uh, you know, let's even say 20% of people link their account afterwards. Now you got 40,000 linked accounts, but that's just during that kind of 1-minute time span. But let's just start there. Their average user is worth $45 to them per year. Um, and so that's $1.8 million of like, kind of like what an— if these people perform like an average user. So you get $2 million, $2 million back out, you've probably spent, uh, you know, $6, $7 million total on the ad. That doesn't work out great there, but then you think tier 1, there's all this PR about Coinbase and people talk about the ad and blah, blah, blah, things like that. Maybe the LTV is higher, maybe it's a little lower because they're less intent. I don't know. I think it's pretty hard to break even. I emailed somebody who, um, who was an investor in, um, Hint, Hintwater. And during the Super Bowl a few years ago, Hint bought an ad last minute and they emailed out to their investors. They're like, yo, by the way, check it out. I remember that we bought an ad. And so I asked them, I said, can you share, uh, like, like what did they say if it worked or if it was good? Here's what they said for what it's worth. They said, It was great in so many ways. We got 70% of the country because they bought like not the whole nation, but they bought like, you know, 3 of the top markets. They go, you know, the normal price would have been about $5 million. We got it for $1 million. So we got it at a huge discount because we got a last-minute buy. Um, they say, uh, you know, you never know. Uh, they go, when you buy that way, you don't know when you're going to end up. We ended up right before halftime, which is a golden spot. Um, direct-to-consumer numbers were good, but not off the charts. Um, on, in terms of sales, traffic was off the charts. And then it's like, yeah, but it builds awareness. And then my employees loved it. They were like, oh wow, your friends are texting you saying, I saw your guys' Super Bowl ad. Um, you know, overall, you know, it was great experience. And I think that's the thing is it's kind of a hand-wavy, it's kind of a hand-wavy thing. The top advertisers are always, you know, cars, beer, snacks, and then finance stuff. And, um, you know, those are the categories that I think take off. Now, did you ever see the Reddit ad from a while back? I thought this one was awesome.

Wait, what was it?

So what Reddit did was they bought somehow a 5-second ad in the Super Bowl. So it just flashed on the screen and it was just an image with text. It looked like a Reddit post. And it was a Reddit post from this subreddit, which I don't know if you've ever seen, called Superb Owl. No. It's the same spelling as Super Bowl, but somebody had created it Reddit, and it was like, oh yeah, this is a Reddit for superb owls, like just fantastic owls. And so if you go there, it's just pictures of these really majestic owls, and it gets all this traffic during Super Bowl weekend because it's r/superbowl. Um, and so they, they put up this image.

Oh, Super Bowl, I get it. Yeah.

And so I can share this, this image, but I'll read you what they, what they wrote. But it was really smart. They go, wow, this actually worked. If you're reading this, This means our bet paid off. These big game spots are expensive. We couldn't buy a full one. So we spent our entire year's marketing budget on 5 seconds of airtime. One thing we learned is, is that our, from our communities is that underdogs can accomplish anything if they come, come together around a common idea. So who knows, maybe you'll be the reason that finance textbooks have to add a chapter on tendies. Maybe you'll go to Superb Owl and teach about the magi— and learn about the majesty of owls. Maybe you'll pause this 5-second ad and take a screenshot. Powerful things happen when people rally around things they really care about, and there's a place for that. It's called Reddit. And so really smart that they kind of flash something, people like, what was that? And then it goes viral on social media as like, oh, that was a really smart thing, really cool. Here's what that text said. And so they saw this like traffic, you know, whatever, some crazy traffic spike. But here's what's, what's weird. Coinbase had said, uh, they kind of released this article like bragging about it. They were like, our downloads were up 300% over last week. And I was like, 300%, it was like 287%. I was like, 287%, that's it? Like you just spent millions of dollars on an ad push with 100 million people watching and you only tripled your downloads from the previous week when nothing was going on? That seems like really weak to me. But everybody, all the news articles promote that as like, incredibly successful campaign. And I'm like, that to me, that needs to be like 20x, 30x, 50x of a normal week.

This was last year when like there was a bull market and like Coinbase was already one of the top finance apps in the country.

No, it jumped from ranked 168th in the App Store to number 1 during the Super Bowl. And I was like, how is that? I don't even understand how these numbers work. So something might be wrong in these numbers. It doesn't make a lot of sense. Um, I think it's not worth it. What's crazy, by the way, there's about 40 to 50 minutes of ads in the Super Bowl and the game's only 60 minutes long. So the ad load on the Super Bowl is crazy. It's like 40 to 50% of the entire show is ads. So if you compare that to like, I think a TV, um, ad load is about 15%. So 15% in an hour, you're going to see 15 minutes of ads. Um, for this, you know, in an hour of game time, you're going to see, you know, for every hour of game time, you're seeing 40 to 50 minutes of ads, which is kind of insane. Um, YouTube, for example, is 3 minutes of ads for every hour of video that you're going to watch.

That's right.

Just to show you, like, as a comparison, how those things go, uh, which is pretty, pretty wild. Um, yeah, a couple, I don't know, a couple other things on ads real quick. Uh, Okay, so here's, here's my other part that I think is good on that. There's a bunch of ads that are not commercials, and, um, basically there's ad inventory that's not commercials. So have you ever seen, uh, you know, like at the end of the game they do the Gatorade bath, the way they, they, they dump Gatorade on the winning coach? So that just happened organically. That wasn't like a paid stunt. Um, but Gatorade was like, oh my God, jackpot. And so Every year that happens now, Gatorade doesn't have to pay for it. And they basically get 10 seconds of like a native ad of Gatorade in the winning moment. Like right when the team is like, you know, it's the peak of the peak, they're, they're about to win. It's confirmed. And Gatorade gets on the screen every single time. To me, that's actually the best ad in the Super Bowl because of how it's done. It's zero cost and they get everybody to watch that thing right when it happens, but they don't pay now. They don't pay that.

Of course. Well, they're sponsors.

They don't even sponsor the game. Are they sponsored just like the NFL in general to have that can there? But they don't sponsor, they don't pay anything extra for that moment. The better thing is the, you ever seen the thing where at the end they interview the quarterback? You just won the Super Bowl.

What are you going to Disneyland?

I'm going to Disney World. Do you know the backstory of this?

No, it's pretty cool.

It's pretty cool. So Michael Eisner, who was the CEO of Disney, He's at a dinner with George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, and it's Tim, it's George Lucas, and it's some couple that had just completed like the, the first round-the-world flight by, uh, by a person, like nonstop round-the-world flight. And so they're all at dinner and the food's taking a little time to come. So there's some dead time here and Eisner's like, okay, well, what a bunch of great stories that, that table would have. But for some reason there was a lull and at that lull, what do you do? He goes, he goes, well, now that you've accomplished the pinnacle of your aspirations, what could you possibly do next? And, um, and they go, well, we're going to Disney World. And they all started laughing and, you know, he's the CEO of Disney and he's like, yeah, he's like, that's a great answer. And his wife goes, that should be your slogan. And he thinks about that. And the Super Bowl was coming up, I think a couple of weeks later. So they call up the agents of the two quarterbacks that are playing in the game, John Elway.

No way.

And they say, hey, we'd like to make you an offer, which is that at the end of the game when they say, how does it feel? What are you going to do? You know, like, uh, you know, they ask you that question. We want you to say, we're going to Disney World. And, um, he's like, we'll pay you $75,000 and we'll give you a free trip to Disney World if you do this. He offers both, both the guys the same deal.

What year? What year?

This is '85, I think, something like that. Uh, or maybe '87. Um, so Phil, uh, so Phil Simms ends up being the winning quarterback. He, uh, and he at the time, he was like telling his agent, he's like, no, I don't even think about this shit. No, like, this seems like bad luck to start planning my, my victory celebration. And his agent's like, dude, come on, like $75 grand. Like, that was a big deal back then. He's like, uh, he's like, you know, this is a great bonus for you. All you gotta do is say this one line if you win. Uh, what's it to you? You know, and your whole family, they'll take you out to Disneyland, Disney World, no problem. And so there's this amazing clip. We can put the clip in the YouTube video, but it's a, um, it's a link to this. Uh, I'll put it in here anyways. You can see it, but it's basically the, he's like running away from the field and he turns back. It like, looks like it's from a movie basically. And the reporter's like, you know, what are you going to do now? And he goes, I'm going to Disney World. We're going to Disney World. And he goes, that became the thing. And so then every year Disney would approach whoever they think might get the interview at the end, and they offer them the deal. They say, hey, whether you win or lose, you're going to get this money. But if you are the winner, we want you to say this. And so they pay the loser and they pay the winner, and the winner's got to say it. And now it's become such a thing that Patrick Mahomes, one of the quarterbacks who's in this year's Super Bowl, says it probably. He tweeted out like years ago, he goes, man, it must be the best feeling to be that quarterback who gets to say, we're going to Disney World. I can't wait. And it's like, wow, that's the power of great marketing, right?

And it's also, A, it's awesome. And B, it's painful. Everything that I think is, this is, it's like learning that Sam Parr is not real. Nothing's real, bro. Yeah, it's all fake. Uh, that's wild. It's all fake. It's all nonsense, but that's awesome. That's crazy. What a smart move. That's a really wise move.

And so I have, um, I have prepared for you, you know, we have our drunk ideas. Podcast, which, uh, which we should do another edition of Drunk Ideas where I pitch you, you know, half-baked, bad, you know, kind of bad ideas that you'd only think are good when you're drunk. I have a new edition called Drunk CMO. So now I'm the drunk CMO and these are my drunk idea, drunk, my drunk marketing ideas for you. I want you to just rate them, uh, uh, you know, great, you know, okay.

Or terrible.

Um, Okay, so here's my first idea. Uh, I'm the drunk CMO. I come into you, I say, hey boss, I got an idea for the Super Bowl. You say, great or bad?

I say, let me hear your idea. Yeah, go ahead.

Thank you.

Whatever.

I don't hear your idea. All right, so here's the deal. Somebody's gonna score a touchdown and all eyes are on them. It's a celebration moment. If, you know, players in the NFL, if they celebrate too much, if they dance, they get fined like $20,000, $50,000. Here's what we're gonna do. We're going to go to all the wide receivers and we're going to tell them, look, not only will we pay your fine, we're going to triple whatever you get fined. You get to keep that. But here's what you got to do. You're going to have a branded celebration. So I don't know what our brand is. Let's say we're a beer brand. You're going to run to this. We have a fat guy in the seats right next to the end zone. You're going to crack open a cold one and you're going to chug that baby.

You're going to do a shooey.

You're just going to do a shooey. Right there on the spot. It's going to go crazy viral. You're going to be seen as Mr. Fun, as like, you know, this epic badass. And we're going to get our product placed in that.

Great idea.

Or, or, uh, you know, depending on whatever our product is, you know, if we're Dude Wipes, you're going to go take this and you're going to take this wipe and you're going to wipe, you know, right there, right here, whatever our product is. You're Slim Jim, you're going to snap open a Slim Jim. Um, that's the idea. We're going to brand the Super Bowl celebration. What do you say, boss?

Dude, how about that? Great idea. I mean, so I don't pay attention to sports. The things that I remember is the Rams doing the, what was their thing called? The, where they would like, uh, you know, like when they would celebrate the, the Rams, the Dirty Bird. I thought it was the St. Louis Rams where I'm from. They would like do like the, the huddle where they would do their stupid thing. And then also Randy Moss pulling out a Sharpie and signing the ball and throwing it out. These are like iconic moments. I'm on board with this.

This is whatever the brand is. I'm going to those guys. I'm saying, hey, we have a— we bought seats in the end zone. You just got to go grab the thing from this guy and do the, do the celebration. We got you in. Okay. Here's the next one. Hey boss. Uh, I know taco sales are down for us this year. Uh, but I got a big idea. I can save us. I could save us here in the fourth, in the quarter. Uh, our earnings are coming up. Earnings call is coming up. Taco sales are down. Say it with me, boss. Tacos for tails. During the coin flip, if it's tails, everybody gets a free taco. Anybody could go there and just say tails at the window and get one free taco. Everybody's now rooting. It's not 50/50, baby. We're going to have the power of America on our side rooting for tails. We're going to take that moment of the game and we're going to turn it into a marketing moment.

Dude, I would say drink more often. These are great. When I was a kid, when I was a kid, they had Big Mac Land, you know, the Cardinals, we had Mark McGuire. And if, when he was on his home run thing, if he hit his home run in a certain section, you got a big, everyone in the stadium got a Big Mac. And so his Big Mac Land was like the section. It was awesome. I loved it. And whenever he hit a home run in that section, they would have the spotlights over McDonald's. So everyone knew we got to run to Big Mac Land. Yeah.

In.

Also awesome.

All right.

Boston. Taco for Tails?

Tacos for Tails. Tails.

You're in, dude. If anything is alliterative like that, I'm automatically in. I love two Ts.

Okay, so here's another one. Um, hey boss, uh, you know that car companies like us, uh, we spend the most on Super Bowl ads, right? But we don't got the budget. Who's got the budget for that kind of thing? Where are we gonna spend $20 million this year on Super Bowl ads for our car?

Um, what are we, Kia?

Yeah, yeah, we're Kia. And so, you know, what are we gonna do here? Here's what we're gonna do. I don't know if you noticed, boss, but there's this new trend of when players arrive for the game, the cameras kind of show them walking out with their outfit as they're walking in with their Beats by Dre headphones and their briefcase, and they're like coming in for the job. And it's like in the pregame, there's nothing— there's just— they're trying to fill time. So, oh, Patrick Mahomes is here! Look at him, he's entering the building! Wait a minute, this whole entering the building thing— say it with me, boss— marketing moment. Why don't we put them in baller cars that are just tricked out beyond belief, and they're gonna— we're gonna film the actual arrival at the stadium. And I think actually it's Rolls-Royce who should do this, but they should— the Rolls-Royce needs to transport everybody in badass Rolls-Royces to the stadium, and the quarterbacks get the best, whatever, the Phantom triple whatever. This is for a luxury brand, Lamborghini, whoever it is. You got to, you got to get the players to show up in style because TV will pick that up of them showing up. There needs to be a freaking fog machine and it just needs to look crazy. And so we're branding that moment. And actually, I got my buddies here from Louis Vuitton. They're also going to just put, just drip everybody's outfit out because this, now this entrance is a red carpet entrance and we're going to, we're going to own that red carpet entrance from, from the moment they arrive at the stadium.

What do you think, boss? Look, the thing about classy is you can't try too hard, and now you're trying too hard. That's not classy.

I'm sorry, boss. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Okay. I'll do better.

That's not a great idea unless we're talking about like, what do I want, a souped-up Acura? I mean, like, what are we going to do here? Like, like I've learned enough. Like I've seen enough Hummer limos in my life. I don't think you can make those things cool. I'm out.

All right, boss.

Uh, listen, I don't know.

I don't know if it's, uh, if it's me, I don't know if it's my allergies. I don't know if I've been drinking too much, but I'm just, I'm stumped on ideas here. I, I, I'm a, I'm a CMO with no ideas.

Why does a writer with no ideas?

I just, I just can't. I got writer's block. I just got no ideas. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to go name MrBeast our temporary CMO for the weekend. And we're going to give MrBeast our entire budget. And we're going to say, MrBeast, you take our $10 million Super Bowl budget and you do a video on your own, you come up with your own Super Bowl marketing campaign that is different than whatever's going to be in the Super Bowl. This guy gets 100 million views per video and people love him. And he's not just— it is going to stand out. We're going to— instead, what we're going to do, actually, here's what we're going to do. We're going to buy airtime, the kind of like the 15-second or 30-second ad slot. And it's just going to tell people to go watch MrBeast's video. or it's going to be MrBeast on the screen and he's going to be clicking upload. And then you have to go to his channel to see what the actual video is. What do you think, boss?

I'm out. I'm out, dog. Too many steps. That's too— you're getting too creative for me. You're trying to win an award, not make me money.

I do like the awards. As a CMO, I kind of build my whole reputation not on sales, but on industry awards. Pure respect.

If I hear a marketing person brag about an award, I'm automatically out. I cannot stand those types of people. I really, really funny.

It's an award idea with the Coinbase thing. So they were getting a bunch of props for their ad. Do you remember what happened last year when the Coinbase CEO came out and was just like, people have been asking, so here's the backstory around the ad.

You know, he made up this whole story.

He said this whole story where he was like, you know, we just wanted something cool. Everything seems so cliché. We got all these pitches from ad agencies about celebrities. I never— he's like, side note, I don't even understand why people would buy a product because a celebrity says that. Never made sense to me.

And he just got—

programmer's thing to say—

dunked on. He was just— someone was just tossing up the basketball and this woman comes in and just dunks him right in his face.

And so he's like, you know, the team came up with this idea. It required no budget. It delivered this epic return because it was so different. No agency would have ever thought about this. And this woman comes in and she goes, except an agency did think about this. My agency. We presented it to you on 8/13. Slide 19 is our, is our idea for this. And then people, and then all the ad agency people were like, get him. They were like, we never get respect. And so they all were like, this is about client agency respect. And they made it like a bigger deal. Like they try to create like a BLM movement, but for agencies and it just didn't catch on. But like people tried and then he had to come back and be like, but the, the weak move. So, so all of it was fine. I actually have no problem with any of it up till this point. Uh, whatever he said, I have no problem with what she did. Cool. Great, great move on her part too. The small boy stuff was at the end. He comes back and he goes, oh, I, I'm so sorry. The team was working together so well with the agency. I just thought it was all one team. The, the collaboration was so good that it just seemed like it was all our own internal team. They were so integrated, dude. He got punked, bro. That's like me say That's like I walked in on my sister once when she— my mom was like, go tell your sister to study. And I walked in and she was sleeping and I go, Mom, she's sleeping. She goes, I'm not sleeping. I'm reviewing in my head. And I go, oh, she's studying in her head. It's like the world's worst excuse was I— the team was so, so cohesive. I just thought it was us. Yeah, that's why you give credit.

Dude, I like that guy, Brian. I'm a big fan of his. He got dunked on there. He— that was a— that was a— that was a loss on that on his part. That's the only, like, big loss I've seen him have. Few L's.

But we all take our L's, right? We got all, yeah, he got dunked on.

We all got a pocket full of L's.

Um, all right, here's, here's another one. Um, uh, let's see. Okay. So now the ad concept itself, if you had to create an ad that you think would work, what would you do to make a good ad for the Super Bowl?

Oh man. I'd probably just make a bunch of 'em and just run 'em on TikTok or YouTube and see which one is doing okay. And just do whatever that one is.

Yes. That's like good testing, but like, um, What do you think would actually make a good ad? What would make an ad that actually gets people to convert?

Matt Damon.

3 strategies.

Yeah.

Epic story. Matt Damon. Or what I think is, I think what somebody should do, this is not allowed because they reject these ideas, but I think you got to create some drama. So I think you want to have a sort of like a will it or won't it moment. And so like, you know, I want to see a mouse in a tank with a snake and there's just tension. It's like, what's going to happen here? And there's like one safe place the mouse can go. And it's like, this is a AAA ad and it's brought to you by AAA. It's like, is the mouse going to— what's going to happen to this mouse? Or like, there's a man in a box and he needs your help. I don't know. That's the premise. Let's go. Let's riff off of that. I think you got to have some drama. And I think maybe you run it at the beginning of this show. And then you have like the YouTube channel where it's live streaming. And you're like, oh my God, go to, go to YouTube and see what, see will it or won't it? What's going to happen?

I remember you create this will it or won't it concept. This is awesome.

It's a great concept. I remember going to a bar once.

It always will, by the way.

A great marketing thing that happened once was, uh, I went to this bar and the bar owner was like, dude, we need to come up with a way for people to buy more drinks or something. And I was like, oh, you could hire dancers. You could do this. You could do that. Make this club like— he's like, I don't get the money for all that. And so we went back like a month later and he had done the most genius thing. This is in Australia. Have you ever heard of a crab race?

No.

What they did—

Does the winner not get eaten or something?

Well, no, it's kind of like, it's just the most random dumb thing, but everybody got so excited. He took a giant bowl. He filled it with these like mini hermit crabs and each hermit crab, he just took a Sharpie and he wrote a number 1 through 50 on it. And then basically he's like, it's time for the crab race. Go buy a drink and pick a number. And so everybody gets to buy a drink, pick a number. And if your crab wins the race, so they basically put the crabs in a bowl. They put it in the middle of the circle. They remove the bowl. And there's an outer ring and whichever crab gets to the outer ring first wins. And that is the hero crab. He gets to like come back next week and like defend his, his championship. And anybody who bet on that crab gets like whatever, either some money or like free, you know, like free shots for like, you know, you and all your friends or whatever it is. And so it just created this hype. People start coming every week for this thing. I don't think he invented it. I think other bars do this, but he like, he brought that concept into his bar. It's the first time I had ever seen it. I've never seen an American bar do this. And I cannot tell you how much excitement this, this one simple thing drove.

We need that for this podcast.

The end of every episode.

Yeah. That's a, that's really awesome.

That's a great idea. People in the comments on YouTube should bet a number, pick a number. And then we just, and then at the end of the episode, then like every other episode or whatever, we like do the reveal and we, uh, we show who won.

Yeah. We should do that for this podcast. We should do something like that for this pod.

Call your crab guy and let him know.

You got a guy?

Yeah. Um, okay. I forgot one of my favorite ones, dude. You might, you'll appreciate this as a dog guy. Have you seen the Puppy Bowl?

I love the Puppy Bowl.

Genius idea that the, who's it? Animal Planet did. I think basically what happened was they were like the, like, you know, the head of programming. It's like, hey, what are we going to run this Sunday that we'll get ratings? And they're like, against the Super Bowl. Great. Yeah. Let me, uh, like, thanks for the impossible task. What can I come up with that's going to run on Sunday against the Super Bowl and still get viewers? And that's when they created the Puppy Bowl, which is kind of actually the same idea as the crab race. Basically, it's a bunch of puppies with toys and there's a ref. And basically, if any puppy randomly walks into the end zone with a toy, the ref is like, touchdown, this guy scored.

You missed one low-hanging fruit that I thought was pretty obvious. Super Blunt Sunday.

What are we going to do with that?

I know, I don't know yet, but Super Blunt Sunday, it all starts with the phrase, I like super blunt Sunday.

Surely we can work backwards from the name kind of guy.

I know. Yeah. Um, anyway, good pod. People are going to have some facts. Yeah.

You get to be a know-it-all this Sunday and just remember everybody loves to know it all.

That's where we'll end.