Michael Rubin, CEO of Fanatics

Alrighty, our number three of our radio program.

That's right, it is the Zach Gelb Show coast to coast on the Infinity Sports Network. And Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin is here in studio with us. And obviously it's year two of the Fanatics Fest in New York City 2025 which will take place at the Javits Center from June 20th to June 22nd. And a man who I just feel like does not sleep because it's Fanatics Fest, Fanatics Fest, Fanatics Fest is Michael Rubin and he's in with us in studio right now. Michael, appreciate it. How you been?

Doing great, man. Well, first of all, I definitely don't sleep enough. And it's Fanatics Fest right now. But if it's not Fanatics Fest, it will be something else because, you know, I feel like sleep is overrated. So give me a day in the life of Michael Rubin with your schedule.

I know it's untraditional. I'm generally I move around a lot. I'm generally up by five, six o'clock in the morning. I generally work till ten, eleven o'clock in the night. And then I go to bed exhausted, wake up excited to do it again. And at my old age, I got to go to the bathroom a few times in the middle of the night, too. So now I'm trying not to look at my phone now, which is the new habit I'm trying to develop because I used to always look at my phone.

And then it would wake up for 45 minutes now, try actually stay asleep during those four or five hours. So it's funny. We were just talking about this before you got in. What age do you look at? And do you say, OK, that's considered officially old now? Oh, I'm old for sure. OK, I said 65. I would not consider you old.

No, no, I'm 52 and I'm old. But here's the thing. I have the greatest like I have the greatest job in the world. I work with the greatest, you know, sports fan. We have one hundred and twenty million plus sports fans that I'm honored to work with. You know, people who run sports, the best athletes, celebrities, artists I learn from people every day. So it's like it's incredible.

It's like what I get to do is amazing. So last year was year one of the Fanatics Fest. Did it meet your expectations?

Did it exceed them? Look back at year one. I think going into Fanatics Fest year one, if I'm being really real about it, I want to cancel it. Yeah, I'm like, this is too hard. Like it's this.

This is for us. This is about building a connectivity with sports fans. Really give back. I mean, the event lost a lot of money the first year.

It'll still lose money this year. It's really about just like bringing together every sports property, all the top, you know, athletes, celebrities, artists and, you know, one hundred thousand plus sports fans together. And for me, that's that's it's a privilege and honor to do that. But it's really hard. You know, like I used to think maybe we do 20 of these.

It's like doing one of these is so hard. It's harder than running any of our other businesses because, you know, you you're bringing 300 athletes. Look, we have LeBron James, KD, Victor Minyama, Kat. James Harden, all the current NFL players, people like Jayden Daniels, C.J. Stroud, Caleb Williams, Russell Wilson, Bryce Young. You know, Michael Parsons.

We were just talking about C.D. Lamb, Tarik Hill. Bring all these players together. You know, Kevin Hart, Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Tom Brady, bring all these people together. So like like people have to know that I really care. And so that takes a lot of handholding to pull it all together. We have an incredible team doing it.

It's a it's a hard thing to pull together. And let's be real. Any name that you just mentioned? You know, if someone met them, they'd be buzzing.

Oh, my goodness gracious. I can't believe I just met that person. This is almost me asking you who who's your favorite child. But last year, who was the person that it was the most buzz around that fanatics festival that person showed up? There's so many people there's buzz about. I mean, look, I mean, obviously Tom Brady. There's only one of him. He's amazing. You know, Eli Manning, Peyton Manning, you know, especially Eli in New York City.

K.D. and Ant with the gold medals from the Olympics last year. Jay-Z, people love seeing Jay. Travis Scott decided he took a we were doing a Q&A with Michael Strange. He started performing. It was insane.

I never seen anything like it before. So there's just so many incredible. I mean, some of the WWE superstars, I mean, watching CM Punk pick up a, you know, a baby in the air, someone's baby was was insane.

I mean, you know, Cody Rhodes just a fan favorite. So I mean, there's so many incredible things that happen at Fanatics Fest. And to your point, I think we're going to have three times the amount of athletes, celebrities, artists this year versus last year.

And last year, you think like, how do you top that? So that's what makes us so great. In addition, last year we had the NFL, the NBA, baseball, hockey, WWE and UFC. This year we've added to those six.

We've added Premier League, FIFA, F1, USDA, Nike, Dick's Sporting Goods. On top of that, it's like no one else could convene all these people together. They do incredible activations. And then you bring all the athletes together, all the fans. It's just like so many amazing moments happening. The funnest thing for me, the most rewarding thing is just to watch these incredible moments happen.

Michael Rubin here in studio with us Fanatics Fest back in New York City for year two coming up the Javits Center June 20th to June 22nd. I'm sure you get 9000 kids that reach out to you, you know, per day. And I've heard you say how much you like to give back before. Can you teach networking? Because when I think of people that have just networked to perfection, you've got to be right near the top of that list.

Yeah, look, I think everyone has to build to what they're good at. OK, it's well known that I was a terrible student, barely made it to high school, didn't go to college. I was a terrible athlete. When did you do a semester at Villanova? Partial semester.

1.87 average. So that's like a partial semester is pretty bad. So, you know, the reality is you've got to gravitate to what you're good at.

I always had like, you know, a relatively good communication skills. So I think like in business, people don't realize like relationships are everything. And, you know, when times are good, they don't really matter. When times are bad, relationships are everything. And so nothing goes straight up. Things go wrong. Like the last year we did our first Fanatics Fest and like we had tons of problems with the lines for autographs and for pictures. And like, you know, we take that and put me say, how do we be better than we communicate?

Hey, we screwed that up. It's like you build relationship skills. So it's like so I think can you teach that? I think you got to realize it's important.

Some people just don't have it. I don't have athletic skills. I don't have scholastic skills. I have relationship skills.

And you know what? Obviously, you want to someone buys a product. You want to get it to them correct the first time.

But mistakes happen in all lines of work. You know, a few years ago, my buddy was turning 30 and we got him a customized jersey, Michigan jersey for his 30th birthday through Fanatics. And I guess something happened in the shipping where the jersey was a little bit damaged. Now, custom stuff, you usually know that it's one and done and that's it. You guys instantly. No questions asked. You returned it right away and you sent us a new one.

It was great. Yeah. Well, thank you for telling me. I'll tell you, we get, you know, 99 plus percent of the orders, right? But if you ship 40 or 50 million orders in our merchandise business and you get 99 percent, right?

You got four or five hundred thousand problems. For us, the key is how do you deal with each one of those problems? I think we've really got good at that of late. I don't think we were always great. I think it's something we realized, like, look, we want to be beloved by our customers. We are lucky to do what we do. And, you know, if we ever let a customer down, it's our responsibility to make it right.

And so I think, you know, I took over as the CEO of the company in spring of 2021. And it's now our brand purpose to relentlessly enhance the fan experience in everything we do. And, you know, that's our brand purpose.

We take it really seriously. So, you know, why do we do Fanatics Fest? To put a relationship with fans. Why do we like sweat every detail? Why do we work so hard? Because we're honored to do what we do. And we realize we screw things up, we make mistakes, but how you deal with those things is really important.

I always say to people with me, like, you're going to make mistakes all the time is how you deal with those mistakes. So your story is well known. And obviously everyone knows who Michael Rubin is today. But the beginnings of the story, I think, is fascinating with the ski shop business. Tell the listening audience that may not know that story about the ski shop business.

Yeah. Well, you go back to saying I was a terrible student. I was terrible at sports. Like, I love business.

I love working. So for me, I started a ski tuning shop in my parents' space. I grew up, like, very middle class. The house that we grew up in today would be like a $450,000 house. So, you know, it wasn't like my family is today, but it wasn't like I wasn't underprivileged.

We were, you know, middle class, upper middle class. And, you know, I was lucky. We had space at the base where I started a little ski tuning shop. And that allowed me to build a real business tuning people's skis. And then a year later, I met somebody who had a bunch of excess ski shop and a bunch of excess equipment.

They lent it to me. I did $25,000 at 13 and made 15 grand. And then I opened my first ski shop when I was 14. But the thing with me is, like, I was never afraid to fail. And so I was 16. I almost went out of business.

I almost went bankrupt. Like, I've seen death in its eyes so many times. And, like, to me, I actually enjoy the journey. I enjoy learning. I enjoy growing.

Like, I don't like nothing. Like, I've been the furthest from straight up. I've had so many trials and tribulations.

But every one of those is a grown and learning experience. When did you first realize that life was really changing for Michael Rubin? Not only like, oh, you're just making a little money, but you went from being successful to now the mega star that's in here with us today.

I don't think I haven't because I'm hugely paranoid. And I think our company, you know, today, you know, we're approaching $12 billion in revenue next year and we have 22,000 people. I run it like a startup. Like, I want to have that startup mentality. I want to make sure that we have the paranoia that, you know, if we don't get better ourselves and everything we do, somebody else can get better and take us out.

And so, you know, things can change very quickly in business. You need to stay humble, you need to stay paranoid. And so I don't ever celebrate things. I'm like, the second Finax fest is over.

We're going to have a Zoom that next morning. Say, OK, what's all the things we got wrong? How do we make this better? And so I think when you work 17 hours a day, you do it, you know, 350 days a year. You know, you're either grinding, you know, to like rise and grind or you're, you know, the 10, 15 days a year that I, you know, aren't working like that. Then, you know, I think I'm actually trying to like just relax with my friends, my family, et cetera. And if you ask someone like me who's an outsider to your life, I don't know what Michael Rubens like when he's home or Michael Ruben, who he is, you know, from from a personal standpoint.

But I work is the same. I think of you with fanatics, right? I think of Fanatics Fest and then also this this white party, which I've been following on Instagram for years. Now, I won't ask you for an invite because I know I'm not in that group and media is not allowed at the white party. But how did this white party all come about where it's got to where it is right now?

Very naturally, you know, I bought a place in the Hamptons in 2000 and I bought it in Christmas of 20, holidays 20, early 21. And a friend of mine just said, hey, you should do a fun party here. So then we just said, how do we theme it?

And, you know, we just figured it was like summertime as the Hamptons do white. And, you know, like, look, I'm pretty good at curating events. And I think the great thing curating event is how do you bring people from different backgrounds together and then, you know, make sure you keep it super tight. So that's really special. And so the first party was pretty incredible in year one.

I think it just took a life of its own. You know, we're we're now going every other year because this year, you know, I started the Reform Alliance with Jay-Z, Meek Mill, Robert Kraft. And so we do this casino night, which is this September. And so when I did the white party in twenty three and also did the casino night because we did it for the first time in twenty three. I'm like, oh my God, I cannot do two parties like three. It's crazy.

It's going to break me. That's when we said we do white party twenty four, Reform twenty five, White Party twenty six. It's funny, the amount of people have told me I've screwed the summer up. Like they don't know what to do without the white party, but it's coming back July 4th, twenty twenty six. And it will be I mean, it's pretty special. I actually I like like you can have too much of a good thing. It's like going every other year for me is a is a great thing.

Well, the craziest thing. Right. It's your party. You're you're hosting the party.

It's at your your your house. Right. One year. Didn't your wife fall off the stage and had to get rushed to the hospital?

Yeah, she did. You're having this. How do the heck do you have to be a husband? How do you how do you handle that? Well, to start with, I didn't believe I was turning 50 a couple of weeks later. So like Joel Embiid ran up and said, hey, you got to go upstairs. You know, Camille got hurt. I'm like, it's a joke. Right. Like, I'm not I'm not falling for that. So I was on edge because like I like look, I'm like, let's go to do is turn 50.

So it's like I wasn't trying to celebrate that if I'm keeping it real. So I was surprised something was happening. So I thought everyone was up to no good. And then I like after three or four times, I realized, OK, like I really got to go. This this is not like a scary area. Yeah.

Yeah. And like, look, we're built a little differently. Like if I fall down like that, I'm just like, give me a shot. Let me get back up and go. If I could stand up like this is my personality, like if I'm not knocked out, unconscious. You know, she was obviously she really hurt her neck and she was obviously really worried about it. So I'm like, it was the most complicated mental conversation myself.

Like I have all my friends here and I want to stay so bad, but it's like it's my girl. I got to go. Yeah, you got to go to hospital. So I went to the hospital. And once they said, like, she's fine, she's good. She just has a concussion.

Like, babe, I love you. Party's still going. I'm out. I went back to the house. I went to line the shots up and let's go. I remember I remember walking back in and it was shot o'clock, baby.

I mean, I lost from like midnight till like two thirty, two thirty till five. I put on a good performance. Were you in the dog house the next day? It was all good. No, she understood. Now, she'll tell me her side of the story.

It's still debated hotly. Her side of the story is that we just had our daughter, Romi. It was actually sorry. It was it was our second daughter. We just she just had our second daughter, Gemma.

And, you know, she'd passed out and fainted. My side of the story, she she's she hates alcohol. She doesn't drink. She tried like once a year. She tries to be cool and hang with the boys. And so she had a couple shots and I think she drank too much.

So I'm going with you drink too much and fell over. She's going with you passed up and having a baby a few weeks ago. I'm staying strong. She's staying strong. We're never going to agree on this. We still bicker about it. You got it.

Michael Rubin here with us. Is there one person that you've not been able to get to the white party that you really wanted to get? No, because the party is really about my friends coming together.

It's not about getting anyone to the party. I mean, we say no to so many incredible people because we want to keep it special. We want to be small. Like last year was the biggest year ever.

We had two thousand twenty four with 380 people. And I don't want to be any bigger than that. So people get you know, the thing about the white part, it's complicated. You hurt people's feelings. And that's not something I want to do. But like you like the amount of people like, hey, I want to come. I want to bring this person. I bring that person. But it's you know, it started as a 300 person party and it is a 380 person party in twenty four. And when you're twenty six, I want to be less than 380 people. So it's there's no one we're trying to get there. It's really just like our friends coming together and having a great time. I think it's about a lot of people that generally are, you know, have to be on edge and to be able to let loose and have a great time. It's a 13 hour party.

It starts at 5 p.m. and goes till 6 a.m. For you. And I've always wondered this because when I was in Philly, right, you were a part owner of the Sixers. Was that tough to walk away from that? No, it was easy.

And the reason it was easy as well. Like, look, I love Josh Harris. I love Joel Embiid. I love James Harden when I was there.

All family to me. The reality is like it was in the way fanatics growth. We'd started the fanatics sports book. We got in the trading card collectibles business. We had deals with individual athletes.

All these things are prohibited against league rules. And so it was either keep a small business, small, small on a relative basis or really go all into Bill Finax. I think we can make Finax the most important company in sports. And so for me, I'm a business person at my core and I love business. I'm a student of business.

And so I love building. And so, look, I obviously the thing was disappointed about is like, when you want a sports team, you have one responsibility to win a championship. When you don't win the championship, you failed your community. And I was involved from 2011 to 2022 and we never won a championship.

We were a perennial second round expert of the playoffs. And so we failed. And so for me, that hurt me that I didn't get that, you know, like you would have loved to go out on top. I did not. But it was a great experience. I learned a lot.

You know, I appreciate all the times I want to focus my energy on Finax. And obviously, right. I know you still pull for the Sixers, right?

Because, you know, so many people and beat and Josh Harris. Are they closer? Is this let me say I do pull for the Sixers, but also like this is a business. And you say this like, you know, if if one day James Harden wasn't six or anymore, I don't care about the Sixers. Sure.

Here's what the Clippers. OK, you care about the team you're on. So for me, I care about my friends who own teams, my friends who play for teams, the people that were most invested in. So I root for my friends. There are a lot of times you'll see me. I skip a lot of games that I might want to go to because I don't want the awkward of like there's two people that were supporting both sides and they're playing against each other. So, you know, it's more complicated than it used to be.

So I would say I have the same emotion that I used to have. How about Meek Mill? Because unintentionally, the night where Meek went to the basketball game after getting out of prison. Yeah, I'm in the Wells Fargo Center at the game. That was a crazy night where the media is.

When he went on to the court and rang the bell, it was it was wild and showed up and all that. But I'm in the elevator like, hold the elevator. And here I am.

Right. A kid that went to Temple, you know, new Meek Mill, obviously, just in terms of his music. And he would sometimes drive by our frat house and like stand on the corner outside of our frat house and just take like some photos. And it was you and Meek Mill walking into the elevator. And I told my friends, I go, you're not going to believe I was in an elevator with Michael Rubin and Meek Mill. How about that night? That was, I think, the two most surreal moments in my life was that and sitting next to Robert and Jonathan Crap. And they came back from twenty three and no one thought it was possible.

And, you know, watch getting. Look, we spent, you know, Desiree Prez is the CEO of Roc Nation, Jay-Z, you know, myself. We spent a tremendous amount of time, energy, resources, because it was so unfair. He went to he went to jail for two to four years for popping and wheeling on a motorcycle and breaking up a fight in the airport.

It was just wrong. And, you know, he got released by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania five and a half months into a two to two to four year term. And Meek kept telling me he was having dreams about me picking him up in the helicopter, landing in the prison. And so when they called to tell me that the Supreme Court ordered his release, I was going to drive up to pick him up right away. Said, you got to bring the hell you got to pick up the hell.

I never thought about the circus we're going to create. So I remember we take. So I. So randomly, Josh Harris owned the casino next door. OK, we landed the parking lot at the casino. He gets out. We get in the helicopter.

This helicopter is chasing the helicopter. It was like the craziest, most real thing. Then we land. He's in the full jail out of the full prison outfit. He comes in, barbershaves his face. He changes his whole outfit, gets cleaned up and we win.

We knock Miami Heat out to advance to the next round of the playoffs. It was absolutely crazy. I mean, it was a I'll never forget that. Meek and I sometimes talk about it.

Sometimes we're like send the video back to each other. We're still watching. That was the number one most surreal moment in my life.

Number two being the city next to Robert Jonathan. The twenty three come back to the Patriots game. What was that? I was in the building for twenty eight to three. I'm a Patriot fan. I I couldn't believe it. But sitting next to the team owners, the moods in that must.

I mean, at halftime, you know, half the box left. Everyone thought they left. I remember saying, like, we're not out of this. Let's go.

You got Tom Brady as a quarterback. Twenty three. I'm like, yeah, this is the same. Very good.

I think they're out of it. Just like once he scored, got to twenty one twelve. You're like, maybe then we got to twenty one twenty. I was it's the most nervous I ever was in my life because you're thinking easy.

All I saw was a twenty twenty six them losing because I'm so superstitious. I mean, he's going to score another touchdown, not get the two point conversion. And then once he scored, I'm like, we're winning this game.

But it was it was the craziest thing you'd ever see. I mean, it was absolutely like I'll remember that. And those two things that most of the things I mean, look, I'm supposed to say it was my kids being born. But like, you know what to expect when your kids being born. OK, there's going to be babies, little cute things that come out. Like you don't expect, you know, to pick me up in a helicopter and take him to the Sixers and him walking in a prison.

Alpha gets shaved up and that's us win and go to the next round of playoffs. You don't expect to have, you know, helicopters chasing you. I didn't think that really happened other than the movies. We were in a movie.

You know, you don't think that the Tom Brady's going to come back from twenty three and have to stay in his left already. That's just wild. All right. I know Fanatics Fest is right around the corner. You've got to get back to work. You have four hours of work after this to plan for Fanatics Fest.

Minimal. What time is it? Five twenty. Yeah, I'll go to bed eleven. I got I got I got five hours and forty minutes of work left. So last thing for people listening out on the fence, like why should I go to Fanatics Fest?

What would you say to them? If you're a sports fan, you got to come. I mean, every sport is there.

They've crazy activations, hundreds of athletes walking around the halls. It's just if you love sports, you're going to love this. Now, by the way, you have to come dressed as a super fan. So we do this thing. It's it's cost nothing to get 60 bucks to get in.

It's a very inexpensive ticket. But if you come dressed as a super fan, so like full team uniform, head to toes of whatever your favorite athlete is. We're just like a crazy super fan outfit. The best parts of the weekend. We're going to send him to the Super Bowl with Fanatics Super Bowl tickets, go to the Fanatics Super Bowl party.

Impossible to get into. We're going to send him to WrestleMania ringside. We're going to send him to the World Cup final in New York.

That's for the number one person. And then every hour on the hour, we're picking the best dressed person that hour. We're going to have them go meet one of their favorite athletes that are there. We love creating these experiences. So like if you're a sports fan, you can't not love this.

Come out, get a ticket, try it. I mean, everyone loved it last year, other than if you waited in some of our screwed up picture and and autograph lines. But we got that right this year.

I think it's going to be so much better because we learn from our mistakes. And once again, it's taken place at the Javits Center from June 20th to June 22nd. It's Fanatics Fest, New York City, 2025. Michael Rubin, thanks so much for coming on in. Hey, thanks for having me, man. All right. This is Zach Gelb show right here on the Infinity Sports Network. We'll take a time out and come on back after these short messages.