This week’s offering of “Podcast Picks” looks back at the Black Friday game on Amazon and the strategy behind that initiative for the NFL, followed by how FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried tried to launder some of the billions in fraud money he acquired into sports naming rights, celebrity endorsers and sponsorships to give his company some degree of legitimacy. Finally, UFC President Dana White in some colorful language discusses a variety of topics, including why he decided to sign a sponsorship deal with Bud Light despite the company’s “wokeness.”
NFL EVP Hans Schroeder sat down on “The Season with Peter Schrager” to discuss the league’s new streaming strategy, playing on Black Friday this season and its relationship with its broadcast partners. Schroeder noted the league “allows a lot more flexibility in the scheduling process because those games can go to a number of outlets.” In addition, Schroeder said with the Black Friday game “we’ve got the biggest commerce platform” in Amazon and Black Friday is “their biggest day of the entire year. These things seem like they fit pretty well together.” Schroeder: “This is something that could be really transformational for both sides.”
NAME GAME: Authors Michael Lewis and Zeke Faux spoke with “Pablo Torre Finds Out” about how Bankman-Fried “sportswashed” billions of dollars in a huge crypto currency fraud that ensnared some of the biggest names in sports. Lewis said Bankman-Fried “started to look at what people cared about and he saw that in Europe when you put the names of companies on the jerseys of players everybody noticed the name of the company and no one cared about the names that were on the stadiums,” but in the U.S. the “announcers every time they talked about a stadium they mention” the naming rights name and stadium name. Lewis noted the Miami-Dade County government had to approve the Heat naming rights and FTX “thought that was really valuable because it would just create trust.”
DEFENDING THE DEAL: White settled in with “Bussin’ With The Boys” where he talked about the recent sponsorship deal with Bud Light, saying if he made the decision to sign with Bud Light “there’s a damn good (EXPLETIVE) reason.” White: “I know the inner workings of the beer business better than these fans and all this shit.” Anheuser-Busch employs 65,000 Americans and a “lot of them are vets.” White: “That alone should be enough reason for you to not try to put a bullet in Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch.” White said Bud Light is “my partner for the next six years” but Anheuser-Busch “didn’t pay me some (EXPLETIVE) crazy number that made me say, ‘You know what, I’m going to throw ... all the values that I believe in right out the window because I’m going to take this money.’”
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