USC & UCLA to the Big Ten will forever change college sports

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Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. We in the process, sir. Oh, I hear the whirring. Does it hurt?

No, actually doing okay. You just get used to it after a couple minutes. Dennis Cox, who is getting some sort of superhero tattoo on his forearm. He's also an adult, shockingly, but he's going to do that and he'll be in tomorrow and we'll all look at it. There'll be colors on it and he'll have superhero powers.

This is the Adam Gold Show. I appreciate the shade that was thrown there. What do you mean?

What shade? Oh, he's just an adult. Shockingly, go figure. Hi, it's the Adam Gold Show.

I actually listened to that yesterday as it led off one of the best of podcasts. Okay. It made me laugh. I was chuckling. My wife walked by and I go, why are you laughing? I'm like, nevermind. I said something that made me laugh.

Anyway, it's the Adam Gold Show. It is a getaway day. It's Friday. First front of the Memorial Day. What day is it? July 4th weekend.

We got three days off. Well, sort of. We'll be here for a best of the Adam Gold Show on Monday. But we won't physically be here. But look, you know what? You know what we shouldn't do today? We shouldn't waste a lot of time. I am Adam Gold.

That's Dennis Cox. We're going to tell you all about all other things. But my gosh, there is so much news.

At the beginning of the week, I wasn't sure what we were going to talk about. I didn't want to spend all week talking about live golf. I know you're sick and tired of it because you don't care about golf, right?

It's not just that. I'm just also sick and tired of it. You don't care about it and that's fine. You're not supposed to care about it. I care about it.

But I am sort of sick of talking about it because it seems like it's the same conversation. You know what we really need? We need the college sports world blowing up. So we got it. So let's go. I mean, nothing really happening other than the implosion of college football traditions, a cataclysmic run of NBA player unrest and well over a billion free agent dollars doled out. Nothing else is going on.

We're all good. So many issues tied to yesterday's bombshell that Southern Cal and UCLA are headed to the Big Ten. It will make your head spin. Will the Pac-12 survive? I don't think so. Is the Big Ten done making moves?

I don't think so. How did this happen so quickly? Adam Rittenberg of ESPN on how? It really accelerated here. The sources told me the Big Ten wasn't necessarily pursuing new members, but that USC and UCLA looked at their positions in the Pac-12 and certainly the financial realities of being behind the Big Ten and the SEC and wanted to be part of it. And this is what we've been hearing in college athletics for a while, that it's trending towards two super conferences just because there's going to be such a big revenue gap between those in the Big Ten and the SEC and everybody else. USC, which is a top brand in college football, UCLA, which is, I would say, still a resonant brand in athletics, wanted to be part of it and now they're going to be. So this is UCLA and USC selling themselves to the Big Ten.

And nobody should be surprised that this is the way it went down. So how can the ACC respond? If the ACC cannot, and it's probably more likely that they can't, what happens to the 14 members? Can the grant of rights save the league? For those people who don't understand what that is, grant of rights means that all schools have signed away their media rights to the conference. Now, what this means is if you decide to try to leave your future media rights within the framework of the existing contract with the ACC, which is, I think until 2036, actually belongs to the ACC. It's not a current number.

It's a future number. We'll find out if it's ironclad. We will. If grant of rights can't save the league, what happens? Can the ACC add teams? Can they convince Notre Dame?

Mmm, gonna have to. If they can't and the ACC goes the way of the Edsel, what does it mean for UNC, for State, for Duke, for Wake? What about Clemson, Miami, Florida State? The schools that need to compete at the highest level of college football. It's already a bit of a challenge when the league, this league is doling out about $35 million in shared media revenue, and the SEC is doling out $20 million more per school. And this is before the SEC deal with ESPN kicks in. This is before if we go to the Big Ten, they're about to renegotiate their deal. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. I said this before. I thought the Big Ten was always going to go ahead of the SEC. I thought the Big Ten was going to pass the SEC in terms of revenue.

Now? Yeah, it's supposed to be at the second biggest media market. I think, I think that we are headed for in excess of $100 million a year per school.

Goodness. That's where I think we are headed, and the ACC just doesn't have any room to go unless they convince Notre Dame and others to come along with them. We don't have enough time to get into all the other things.

We're going to have to pick it up as we go along because there's other news going on. Meanwhile, all's quiet in the NBA as we mosey towards free agency. And when I say all quiet, I really mean leaning against the speakers at a Clash concert in 1983 quiet, which happened to me. Not quiet.

That is not quiet, although I wasn't feeling anything, so it didn't really matter, I guess. Kevin Durant has demanded a trade from the Brooklyn Nets. That's right. Kyrie Irving opted in, and what that really means is it's about to get blown up. Kevin Durant now wants out. Bruce Bowen left. He signed a deal somewhere. It doesn't even matter where.

Denver, I think. But Kevin Durant has demanded a trade. Brian Windhorst to VSPN on some potentials. So DeAndre Ayton would be part of a package that would also include draft picks. The parameters that Sean Marks talked about at the beginning of this whole process, when they basically set these dominoes in motion, they wanted available players who were selfless and team first. The Suns have those types of players. Specifically, Mikael Bridges, whose contract at 6 o'clock flips over to being worth $20 million, which makes him easier to be part of a trade package.

Cam Johnson, Landry Shammet, who they've also had in their organization before. They have a lot of options to trade where they wouldn't have to touch Devin Booker or Chris Paul that could potentially entice Brooklyn. Yeah, Devin Booker can't get traded now because Devin Booker just signed a max deal. But yes, Durant wants to go to Phoenix. Kyrie wants to go to L.A., by the way. I don't know what's going to happen. But here's Stephen A. Smith on Durant's wishes.

Either way you slice it. Kevin Durant, when healthy, I believe he's the best in the world. And every team in the league will knock down their door to get him, but he wants to be in Phoenix.

That's his number one choice right now. And so if Phoenix can come up with the assets that will satisfy Sean Marks, Kevin Durant will be a Phoenix Sun. There's going to be so much, man. The next two weeks in NBA news, it's going to be like Showcase Showdown.

Spin the wheel. That's what's going to happen. All right, Nikola Jokic, Devin Booker, Karl-Anthony Towns each signed supermax deals to remain with their teams. Jokic is like five years up to $270 million. Karl-Anthony Towns in the final year of his deal is going to make like $62.5 million. I can't think of a bigger waste of $62.5 million, but that's fine.

Go get the bag, Kat. John Moran, five years, just shy of $200 million. Bradley Beal stayed with the Wizards.

Oh, okay. A little bit more than $250 million over five years. I guess that'll get you to stay anywhere. Jalen Brunson going to get $110 million over four years from the Knicks. PJ Tucker's going to Philly.

It is bananas. All right, one more bit of news before our first guest of the day. A great day for those of us who never walk alone.

A great day. Mo Salah has signed an extension to remain with Liverpool. He was entering the final year of his contract. It was up basically a year from now.

And there was speculation that he was going to move on, but speculation is over. Mo Salah, we don't know the parameters. We don't know what the wages are, but I will bet you it is at least $500,000 a week. That's a lot of money. $500,000 a week.

Awesome. That's Neymar money. Almost.

It's actually not quite Neymar money. Oh, nothing happened yesterday. Just the latest domino in the potential upheaval of college sports, really college football. Dan Wetzel, Yahoo Sports national columnist, cohost of the College Football Inquirer, a great podcast you should check out every single week. And in fact, an episode dropped last night.

He and Pat 40 recorded it. I haven't even had a chance to get to it yet, Dan. There has been too much going on in my life. What is Southern Cal and UCLA mean just for college sports in general? Well, I'm not a romantic, it's business.

But if I'm going to be a romantic, it's terrible, right? I mean, college sports, football and basketball is better when it's, if you're just a general fan, I think everyone has a favorite team and then you're a general fan. But it's the circus that's fun. It's 120 football teams. It's rivalries all over the place.

It's games wall to wall. Same basketball, it's 330 teams. You want everyone to be relevant. You want Boise State to matter or Washington State or St. Peter's in basketball. That's the stuff that makes it something other than the NBA.

And you want to know that all over the country, all this is going on. And as this was the most dramatic move to the creation of just two super conferences, the Big Ten and the SEC, and everybody else being everybody else. The gutting of a league, the Pac-12 that's existed since 1913, and in all different sports have won so many things. And now, you don't know that there will be a Pac-12 in 2025. Like everybody wants out, everyone's looking for a higher ground. It is not out of the question that the Big Ten has, you know, two or four more teams from that league, and everyone else jumps the Big 12 or the Mountain West and it's just over. And that is not, that's just not good. That's, you know, nobody wants that, but that's where we're at. Right now, there are two, there is no more Power Five or anything like that.

There is the Big Two and only the Big Two, and they are going to run everything at this point. The SEC made the first move getting Oklahoma and Texas. That was not great, but it looked like, you know, maybe kind of weather that. I don't know how you weather this, especially if there is additional moves in the Pac-12. Well, that's all Yahoo Sports is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. I guess Jim Phillips was misled when he looked into Kevin Warren's eyes last year. Alliances don't mean the same things these days.

Yeah, I mean now, you know, there's a reason we all reacted like we did then. Yeah. And I don't know what Jim Phillips was thinking or George Kliacoff or anybody else, but when they created an alliance and we said, was there any contract? Just like a contract? Oh, we don't need a contract. Like, have you been involved in college athletics the last 50 years? Unbelievable.

I mean, they will napalm each other for a dollar. And it's just, yeah, the alliance lasted, I mean, in January, in January, the ACC and the Pac-12 blocked a playoff proposal in college football that would guarantee them, all but guarantee them an automatic bid in the postseason to link up with the Big 10, who less than six months later backstabs the Pac-12, may put that out of existence. And there is, when they go, whenever playoff is created, highly unlikely there's going to be automatic bids. The ACC kicked its automatic bid away. The Pac-12 kicked it away.

This thing was a golden ticket, a life preserver. And they said, no, we don't need it. We've got an alliance or we're too strong, complete disaster of a move. Right now, the playoff will be whatever the ACC and the Big 10 determinants do. They can keep it at four, and every year they will get three to four of the spots. They could go to eight and just have at-large bids. They'll get six or seven. They could go to 12. They could each have their own four-team playoff, Big 10 14 playoff, SEC 14 playoff, meet in the Super Bowl.

You could do that. Everybody's out. Giving up access to that postseason doomed the Big East back in the day, it doomed the Big 12 the last time they did negotiations, and it's likely to doom the Pac-12 and ACC this time. Absolute disaster.

If at very least you were sitting there today saying, hey, the next dozen years through like 2038, we've got a guaranteed spot in the postseason and a cut of a billion-dollar postseason. Instead, they said, no, thank you. We don't want it. We're a little concerned about literally nothing, and now they have no access and no guaranteed cut of a billion-dollar-plus thing, and they have zero power going forward.

Absolute disaster. I think it was from the movie Animal House. Was it Otter who said you blanked up, you trusted us?

Because here's the thing that I always fall back on. The autonomy five conferences got together at the beginning of the pandemic, and they had decided to not play. They decided they were going to wait, and then the Big 10 came out and said, nope, we're shutting it down, figuring that they were going to be the lead dog in all this. ACC, Big 12, and SEC waited it out. They decided to play, and from that point on, the trust was gone.

Nobody trusted anybody. So why the three leagues? And maybe Kevin Warren played this right, like, they'll go with whatever we want, so let's just do this, and as soon as we can make a move, we will. So my question is, what is the ACC's move? Beg Notre Dame to join full-time. Right. Why Notre Dame to do that, I don't know. Right? Notre Dame's dumb?

I don't know. You've lost the negotiation at the playoff. You've lost the money war. All you have right now is a relatively low-paying television contract. The only positive is they've signed away their media rights to 2036.

So they're not really poachable without, but, you know, contracts are a negotiation. I mean, it would take a massive thing. So that's all you've got is strength, is we basically can hostage our best programs for as long as possible. But in terms of a play to go strong, you know, ask, you know, you could try to go out and say, hey, Oregon, Washington, Stanford, and Cal, you want to join the ACC? You know, I mean, hysterical, it's called the Atlantic coast, but I don't know at this point. Well, I mean, there's going to be 20 teams in the big 10. I'm calling it a big 10, big 10, like Little Caesars. I'll take two big 10 now at 20. So two big 10s. I'll take two big 10s to go and an Atlantic coast conference in Seattle. I don't know.

It's totally nuts, right? So there's no good route. I think you have to think aggressively and say, look, Notre Dame, here's the deal.

Come with us. Okay, we're still the best mix of academics and athletics, we could get Stanford, you could be, you know, if you want to nerd out, you can hang out with Stanford and Duke. And, but we still got all the, I mean, I don't know, that's about it. They've lost any seat at the table for the playoff. They've lost any seat at the table for almost anything. And they are prone to being picked apart at some point in the future. And again, if they, you know, the playoff wouldn't have stopped probably USC and UCLA leaving, but put it this way, if you're like Oregon right now and you have an automatic playoff spot in the Pac-12, you sit there and go, you know what?

This is terrible. We've got a lot of money, right? Nike can make up the bridge. Let's add San Diego State and Boise. We've got an automatic spot. We have a path to the playoff like Gonzaga has in basketball, right?

We're going every year. And look at access to the playoff, it's everything. Why can a small Jesuit school in Spokane, Washington in the West Coast Conference sign lottery picks every year? Because they can go, hey, it doesn't matter where you play, we can go to Final Four. And as long as you have that, you have relevance and you can make up the other stuff. But once you don't have relevance, you are the AAC.

You are the Sunbelt. And at this point, you are now at the mercy of these other leagues saying we no longer have that easy route. So for the ACC, I don't know what the plan is, but there are not a lot of attractive options unless they try to open up the ACC Pacific Northwest. That Charlotte deal for the ACC headquarters, put it on hold. I want to go to San Francisco. Real estate's terrible in San Francisco. The Pac-12 just gave up their offices because it costs too much, which I actually think is the right move.

I've been saying this for days. The ACC offices could be in an RV and just go from school to school. Wherever Jim Phillips wakes up, that's where ACC headquarters is. What we're headed for, I think, Dan, is like a Super League where you've got, if the Premier League and La Liga were the only spots in European soccer, that's where we're headed. And I think we're talking about 20 teams in each, maybe more, maybe 24 teams in each.

Who knows? But it's no longer going to be what we are used to. Yeah, and it's terrible, but this is where we're at. And yeah, so if you go NFL, the AFC holds its own playoff, and then it puts its champion, right? They actually have a trophy, into the Super Bowl.

The NFC does the same. Why wouldn't the Big Ten and SEC do the same thing? Maybe you put, you've got 20 teams, however you set it up, top four, we have semifinals, finals, that's our championship game, boom. We have three rounds of playoff, and we own the Super Bowl, and we have absolutely choked out everybody else. That's where you're at by botching this playoff deal.

And they botched it. And what, like, if you're sitting there at the Big Ten now, other than out of the goodness of your heart, why the heck would you do anything other than that? 100%. The AFC isn't sitting there saying, you know, we should make sure the USFL champion is represented, or we should see if the Canadians want to play.

No. They're like, no, this is good, Patriots versus Chiefs, we're good, we're going to get 50 million people to watch. This is so mismanaged. There's a lot of stuff they couldn't do anything about. The Pac-12 just can't have the fan passion that you're going to get in the Midwest and the South.

But there were things they could have done to slow this, and I just don't understand why they looked at that life preserver and just threw it back. And now, I guarantee you, if they re-voted on that playoff right now, as opposed to five and a half months ago, it would be everybody voting for it. Somebody needs to check on Bill Walton. That's all I need to know, the Conference of Champions.

I bet, yeah. It is a sad day in the Bill Walton household. Check out the College Football Enquirer on wherever you get your podcast. I will do that on my ride home tonight. Dan Wetzel. I appreciate your time, at Dan Wetzel on Twitter. You're the best, man. I appreciate it. Thanks, Adam.

Talk to you soon. You could just tell in Dan Wetzel's voice. I mean, he says nobody's happy about this. I think there are people who are happy about this. Yeah, USC and UCLA. Well, I mean, I think there are also people who are in the Big Ten offices. Well, them too. And the 14 other Big Ten schools.

They're happy about it. Maryland. Look, I know Maryland is not kicking it well in Big Ten football. But, you know, at the 15th and the 31st.

Hey, check clears, man. Oh, my gosh. The balance sheet looks awesome in College Park.

Absolutely awesome in College Park. It was a terrible move for the culture of their athletics, but, man, the finances sure are working out. It's because they put themselves in a financial foothold. They desperately needed the money, so that's why they did it.

I mean, look, I'm not casting any aspersions. I think Debbie Yau did a great job at the University of Maryland, but they were in a financial problem. And some of that is due to decisions that Debbie Yau made that just didn't work out.

Not Yau's fault. I think it was the fact that the football program stuck after they made all of these moves to make Ralph Regen happy. The football program went the other way. They sunk a lot of money into Bird Stadium. The naming rights thing on their basketball arena, too. They weren't even making money and Comcast still had the naming rights. A whole lot. Maryland needed the money. They ditched 60, whatever that was, years of culture and relationships and blew it up. But they're going to make about $100 million in shared revenue.

It did work out for them. Marshawn and RN Sports Media Podcast is a regular stop for me, not only because we get great information there, but it's also a time where Andrew takes shots at my friend John Oran from the Sports Business Journal, and he joins us on the Adam Gold Show. Why do you put up with Andrew Marshawn's constant barbs at your expense? I don't even give them back. I just take them.

You do. If people are interested, especially now in an era of changing rights fees and the landscape with streaming services, you guys do an amazing job and I think you also have a lot of fun. I've wanted to talk to you about a bunch of things that have nothing at all to do with college football, but here we are. Let's start with college football because that's what this is about. How do you look at what's coming next for the Big Ten now that USC and UCLA have left the Pac-12?

Well, everybody I talk to says that this is not going to be the end of things. You can expect more schools to come out. I know that there have been schools that have been, even before this announcement, been sort of talking with the Big Ten about doing that. I know the ACC has a grant of rights, but now all of the schools are doing the math and determining whether or not the grant of rights is enough to actually keep them or whether they want to go to what's really becoming a power to between the SEC and the Big Ten. And so there's a whole sense right now that musical chairs have started up again. And if you're in the Pac-12 or ACC or Big 12, you're looking around and you're starting to panic.

I don't know, panic is too strong a word, but you're certainly looking around to decide whether or not you want to engage. I mean, I think the Pac-12 is essentially dead. I mean, I just don't know how they, the two biggest pieces, much like the Big 12, and I've argued that the Big 12 is dead.

Look, Houston's a big city and it's in Texas and Orlando is a big city and it's in Florida and Cincinnati is a city in Ohio and that's all great. But none of it adds up to Texas and then you throw in Oklahoma. I think the Big 12 is ultimately going to die too. But I think the Pac-12, because they're not done, they don't have the grant of rights to worry about. So what's keeping Oregon or Washington or the Arizona schools, what's keeping them there? Or if you want to look at it from the other side, if the Big 10 has already reached into Los Angeles, why would the Big 10 want to sort of dilute what it has for schools that are already in the Big 10 by reaching out to get an Arizona? What does Arizona provide for the Big 10 or Oregon?

So those are, I'm not saying they don't provide anything, I'm just saying that everybody's sort of at the drawing board to sort of figure out how that would work. Yeah, I just think the Pac-12 is ultimately going to die. Certainly, they paid out around roughly $35 million per school. It's hard to see that number staying where it is. Actually, it might stay where it is because the Big 12's number didn't really move with their new conference affiliation.

But if it stays the same, it's really going down. And I've been saying this about the Big 10 anyway because they're the next league that is going to the negotiating table. Are they headed for nine-figure payouts per school?

You know, I haven't been able to break it down per school, but I can tell you that even before USC and UCLA were coming on board, the Big 10 was poised to become the very first college conference to make more than a billion dollars per year in media rights. And so that was, they were already sitting pretty. Now they're sitting prettier because they're adding the LA market. They're adding two high-quality teams with big brands. I mean, this is not Rutgers that's joining. This is UCLA and USC.

And they're devaluing one of their big competitors. The networks were going into the Big 10 negotiations where they wanted the Big 10. If you're ESPN, you wanted the Big 10, right?

But if you didn't get them, you knew that you had the Pac-12 that you could actually go and they had big brands in there like Stanford, Cal, UCLA, and USC. Now all of a sudden they're looking at Pac-12 and they're like, wow, that's not what we thought it was. Now we really do need the Big 10 and that can help bid up the rights for the Big 10 as well.

Yeah, especially since you said this at the beginning, and this is what I've heard too, we're not done. The Big 10 isn't done at 16. The way this is headed, we're probably getting closer to 20 and we'll talk about what the ACC, but I do appreciate John Allrand, you saying this isn't Rutgers. You could have said this isn't Maryland, but that would have taken a shot at our school.

So I appreciate you leaving the Terrapins out of it. Do you know, since Maryland has joined the Big 10, the number of schools that have won Big 10 titles in all sports, Maryland ranks number three in it. Maryland is officially in the Big 10.

Rutgers, I don't know. I was talking about this yesterday because the news broke in the back half of the show, and somebody was asking me about, well, what about this? What about that? I'm like, man, it's only about money. It's only about money, it's only about TV eyeballs, and it's only about football.

I think also it is only about money, but it's also about control. I think what you want to see, what you're seeing here is that the SEC and the Big 10 are going to, at least with their football programs, are going to operate just on their own. There's not going to be sort of an NCAA that's monitoring things, and so they're able to get control over their officials, their scheduling, just pretty much everything.

Money, of course, is one, two, and three if you're going to rank everything, but there's also that aspect that's a pretty big part of this as well. Jon Arand, Sports Business Journal, is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. What is the ceiling for the ACC in terms of meteorites if they can convince Notre Dame to stay with the league and join for football, and then add some other schools as well? The ACC has tied its fortunes to ESPN, and those rights aren't coming up anytime soon.

I don't know off the top of my head when they're coming up there. It's the middle of the 2030s, but Notre Dame as a full-time football member would give them the right to go back to the negotiating table. Yeah, and there is no media contract that's ever written with a college conference that doesn't visualize that, so it's going to be a mathematical formula where if you bring in Notre Dame full-time, then you're going to get prorated whatever, and it probably doesn't even specify Notre Dame as a brand Notre Dame. It's saying if you lose two schools, then we pay you less. If you get two schools, then we'll pay you more, and there's a mathematical formula.

They'll have to get that done. This is nothing new. It feels like the whole college athletics is blowing up, but we've been through these periods before, so it's really nothing new for media companies or conferences, and this is how they structure all their deals. Is this move, which if we're headed towards two super conferences, and I'm here to agree with that idea that it's going to be the SEC or whatever it will be called, and the Big Ten or whatever it will be called going forward with maybe 20 or so schools each, if we're headed that way, does it damage in any way the overall value of the college football playoffs since we're so far limited to the number of schools that we would really have? I guess it really doesn't matter because we're limited to the schools anyway, but if we're really concentrating it in just 40 colleges around the country, does it damage the value at all?

I don't think so. I think that there's some really passionate college fans that will dislike this a lot, that you're not going to see a run by Cincinnati or Boise State from 15 years ago, but you're going to have the biggest brands. We'll see what happens with Clemson, but the champions come from the SEC primarily, not even the Big Ten. I don't see that hurting.

I see it helping. I think that if you just look at this from a television standpoint, if you get the biggest brands and you get them playing each other regularly, that's what gets casual fans, that's what builds audiences, and that's what works, even if it's not typical. How many Maryland fans did you know that hated losing the ACC because of the long-time traditions and rivals that they had? It's going to take a little while, but they're building new rivals in the Big Ten, and there have been probably eight classes of students that have gone through Maryland that know nothing about the ACC and the battles that we had down on tobacco road.

Somebody asked me if Maryland would think about going back to the ACC, and I'm like, why? They left for money. They left for money. They're not going back for even less money now.

The real thing I wanted to talk to you about a couple of weeks ago, I'll just ask you here as we close up. Major League Soccer going to Apple, and I'm curious, I know you like the deal for Major League Soccer, but my wonder is that is this almost like a trial balloon for Apple to get involved in a lot of other sports? They're already in baseball. I haven't checked out a baseball game on Apple yet, but is this kind of the first foray into Apple really being a major player, and will we see more of it? Well, we saw them do the Major League Baseball deal as well. I think that this is a big deal for Apple.

I think that this is a little more than a test. I mean, it's a $250 million deal, so it's definitely a little more than a test, but they're going to have all of the rights to Major League Soccer. They're going to figure out how to sell it. If you want to watch your local team, you have to go through Apple, but there are going to be no more local RSNs that are carrying those games. If you're in Major League Soccer, Major League Soccer was not able over 20 years to really increase the viewership on linear television.

So this is a way just for them, just saying, okay, we can't do it on linear television. If you listen to anybody in Major League Soccer, they say they have a young, tech-savvy audience. Let's see if streaming it via Apple results in more hardcore fans. I think it's a pretty good risk to take for Major League Soccer. They certainly are going to get a lot of money out of it, and I'm dying to see whether or not Apple sees that kind of engagement that it gets from this and decides to go all in on the NBA, all in on the Big Ten, all in on Sunday tickets, or whether they see the engagement and say, you know what, sports doesn't really translate to streaming.

I don't know the answer to that, and that's one of the big questions that I'll be following over the next five years or so. They can go all in on live golf as well. What Major League Soccer needs are more guys like Christian Bale willing to come over to MLS. Jon Orand, Sports Business Journal, the Marchand and Orand Sports Media Podcast is a must. I appreciate your time, sir. Good July 4th weekend to you. And you know what, I'm going to give Marchand some grief next time I talk. Give it back a little bit. Exactly.

Thank you. I mean, seriously, it's a great podcast. And I think just about everything they discuss, I think are things that people would care about if you're a sports fan. It's how games are covered and all of that. It's not just dollars and cents, but we're interested in media and it's a very good podcast. And yeah, Andrew Marchand gives it to Jon Orand every single show. This is The Adam Gold Show.