Brandon Schneider - Golden State Warriors Presiden

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one cent to three cents per one thousand dollars a principle. Fidelity brokerage services LLC member NYSE SIPC. This is the sports business radio road show from Chase Center in San Francisco, presented by Boingo Wireless with special guest Golden State Warriors president and COO Brandon Schneider. If you don't have a culture where everybody feels comfortable speaking up and everyone's voice is heard, the diversity doesn't do a

lot of good. And so, you know, we talk about like if I'm making all the decisions weren't a lot of trouble. If our leadership teams making all the decisions, that's a little bit better, but I wouldn't even say that like every one has the opportunity to weigh in and share ideas. I think that's part of your job. Now the sports business radio road show presented by

Boingo Wireless. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome. What a fantastic place to be. Hope you had a chance to look around. Welcome to the sports business radio road show recording here live at the Golden State Warriors Chase Center. I'm Mike Finley CEO of Boingo Wireless. We're proud sponsor of today's event and the conversation between sports business radio Brian burger. And Golden State Warriors president Brandon Schneider. The Chase

Center is obviously a spectacular venue, state of the art and certainly fitting for a championship team like the Warriors. And we see the ring over there. It's just spectacular. And there's there's a few of those here, which is fantastic. Congratulations. So Brandon has been driving force behind many of the aspects of Golden State's operations. Just like all of you. I'm looking forward to hearing more from

him and about what's going on with the Warriors, this state of the art facility as well as the NBA and what's happening there. And at Boingo, we're driving and all about making ultimate fan experiences. We're creating a complex converged connectivity venues. Many are around the sports leagues. The NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball to name a few. We have the Padres at Pet Gopark, the

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cashless concessions and obviously digital ticket and entry. So it's my great pleasure to be here today and welcome Brian burger. The host of sports business. Radio. Right. How's everyone doing? Very excited to be here. It's great when we get to take our show on the road and come to championship venues like this. I've been hosting sports business radio since 2004. Today, if you feel like tweeting,

we're at SB radio on Twitter. We're at sports business radio on Instagram. You can find our podcast on iTunes and Spotify. You know, we talked to a lot of the leaders in the state. I was in Tampa Bay last week with Jeff Vinnick, the owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning. And I'm really excited to welcome. Brandon Schneider, the president and COO of the Warriors to the

stage. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. So for our listening audience, I'll say that right off the bat, I'm I'm blinded by Brandon's ring. His championship ring. That is, that's quite the ring. Congratulations on get another championship for the Warriors. Thank you. Yeah. One note on the ring, I fun to wear. Don't wear it normally walking down the street. You might you might know why. But you know,

you mentioned seeing a couple of other in the room. And that's one nice thing with Joe Lake, a Peter Gruber leading the way. Every single one of our employees actually got one of these. That's amazing. That's I mean, how would you not want to work for an organization when that's how they take care of the employees. That's fantastic. Let's start with your background. So I know

you're a Bay Area native. And you came to Golden State Warrior games. I'm a kid. How did you first fall in love with the NBA and the Warriors? That's going back a long time. So I look, I as you said, grew up in the Bay Area and just been a die-hard sports fan. So as a kid got it was fortunate to go to a lot of

San Francisco Giants baseball games. Gold State Warriors basketball was a big 49ers fan. So, you know, I have three younger brothers. My parents were always big sports fans. So love going. You know, funny story. My first Warriors game. I still remember the 86 87 season. I think the date someone looked at I was a little bit more like a 3rd of 2007 if I remember correctly.

And we beat the the then New Jersey Nets in quadruple overtime. Oh, wow. Of course, my I think I was so I would have been seven at the time. My dad would not let did not want to stay until the end. I had school the next day. I think it was a Sunday night. So we won the game. I think we left in the second overtime.

Oh, you probably were not happy about that. I'm guessing I was not happy about that. So wait, were you you went to the run TMC games to right? So when I was a kid and you know, Mitch was actually only on the team a couple years. But when I was a kid, I got to watch. Yeah, Tim Mitch, Chris, Shruneus, Marshall, Onus at the tail end

of that. That was the team. Okay. And then you went to UCLA for college. Correct. I did. Yeah. Okay. What was that experience like? We've been to UCLA with our roadshow. We sat down with Baron Davis, former warrior and UCLA alum there. But it seems like a great school. It is a great school. I would note that most college basketball championships of any school with 11,

by the way, but who's counting. So you mentioned Baron Davis. Baron and I are the same age. So when when I was a freshman at UCLA, he and Earl Watson were the were the freshman back court. But no, I loved UCLA. I was a business economics major accounting minor. You know, I'm a huge UCLA sports fan. Both my parents also went to UCLA. So I grew

up watching like the Don McLean Trevor Murray Gerald Mattkins Mitchell Butler days from the 80s. But had been a UCL UCLA fan my whole life. But yeah, I mean, love going to school. They're great academics and great sports, great basketball in particular. So at what point when you were growing up, were you like, you know what? I want to work in sports. Well, when I was

young, people ask, what do you want to do? And I used to say that I wanted to be a lawyer. And then I met David Kelly. No, I'm just kidding. That's our attorney. I did not know David back then. So I and then I when I and then I found out you have to go to school for three more years. And I found out that you

have to read a lot. And and and that and this is, you know, I'm 10 12 14 years old. So I started changing my mind. What when people you used to ask me my dream job, the answer I used to give was that I want to be the manager of the San Francisco Giants. Interestingly enough. And again, this is when I'm 14 15 years old. As

I got older and went to college, like I assumed that I would be, you know, being a busy con major, I would I assumed that I would get into investment banking or venture capital or something like that. But when I graduated in 2000, 2001, some some listeners will remember this, but the stock market had just crashed. So the economy was not a good worse than it

is today, actually. Yeah. And so I had great interviews, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, companies like that. And they're like, look, we love to to hire you, but we're actually firing people. And then I fell into this. I at that time, you know, sports teams were a lot smaller than they are now. We've got 550 employees today back that I think we had about 75. And so

I was at a Giants came, I keep talking about the Giants along with the orders. I was at a Giants game with a guy named Jeff Krolek, who is the who's a well known guy in the media industry was the GM of Fox Sports net at the time. And so he offered to in his words put in a word with the Giants and the Warriors. And

I go through the whole story how I'm but that I mean that's that really is how I how I got started. So you're in year 21, I think with the Warriors, right? Yeah, that's right. So I mean, you've been around for a long time. You've seen a lot of changes. Like you said, 75 employees to now, you know, 500 plus. I know you have 4,000 part

time employees that, you know, work when you factor in the arena and all of the other businesses that you have. But I would imagine in 21 years that you're learning a lot about the industry and specifically the Warriors. Yeah, it's been a it's yeah. Learning is a good word. And look, I mean, I think you learn you're hopefully learning every day. And that's that is one

thing I love about this this industry, this job. And I kind of break my career into two parts. You know, we had a 18 year period where we made the playoffs one time, which is hard to do, right? You're in a league where 16 out of 30 teams make the playoffs. Right. But everything changed for the Warriors. I would say on November 12 of 2010. That's

when Joe Lake of impeter Goober about the team. So my my first, you know, eight plus years were with the older GM and not to say anything negative about the older GM. I mean, Robert Rale was the president who offered me the job. But initially, Chris cohan was always really good to me. And I enjoyed working here. But when Joe and Peter bought the team, everything

changed. And you know, that first year, they kind of came in and assessed everything. The second year was the was actually a lockout year 11 12. So their first full season was 12 13. And if you go from then until until now, we've made the playoffs every single year except for two, which was the two kind of coven years. So, you know, so if you think

about in terms of learning, I think, you know, I had the chance to to to grow jobs and have more responsibility at an early age. Became a man. I think I was like 23 or 24 years old. If you look on on LinkedIn, you see, I have 10 I've had 10 job titles in in 20 plus years. I think in the early days, they they figured

if they gave me promotion, they wouldn't have to give me more money. Just keep them happy. Give me another title. But, but you know, having that opportunity to be able to manage teams and things like that early in my career was great. And then when Joe and Peter bought the team, I think the learning is really accelerated. You know, one of the first things they did

was bring in Rick Welts. He has our president who's been an incredible mentor for me. For those that don't know who Rick Welts is, look him up. But he's, you know, he's a he's in the basketball Hall of Fame, even though he never played in the NBA. So figure that out. Worked in a league office for 18 years was top two or three people there was

president, Phoenix, sons for 10 years before coming here. So I got to work with him for 10 years. And so, you know, I give him a lot of credit just for not only teaching me, but for everyone that works for the Warriors. But I think we were really fortunate. I was really fortunate to have a mentor like him to really be able to learn from. Yeah,

quick plug 2019 go back in the sports business radio archives and you can listen to my conversation with Rick Welts. And, you know, like you said, just an amazing person. You know, did some wonderful things in Seattle as well and in Phoenix. So, and worked in the NBA league office for a long time was kind of one of David Stern's original confidence and employees there. What

makes for good owners? Because I think six years of success with sports really does start at the top and the commitment of owners and the people they hire. What makes for good owners in your opinion? Yeah. So first of all, I 100% agree with that comment. I'll talk about Rick a little bit more. He's one of the lines that he liked to use that I steal

now is there's three things that you need to be a successful sports organization. Ownership ownership and ownership. And then he would usually follow it by saying that we hit the power ball, which which I would agree in terms of what makes it great ownership. I mean, I think there's probably different attributes. But as I think about Joe and Peter, what Joe talks about all the time

is higher great people and let them do their job. And he really does that. You know, he's very involved. He and Peter both are very involved. But, you know, when we're making decisions, you know, he looks at what he wants to hear whatever else thinks and 95 times out of 198 times out of 100. He's going to go with what with what we suggest. Now, you

know, he wants to understand the thought process. He wants to see the data behind the decision, right? He really understands how we arrived where we arrived. But I think we've all learned that and do the right due diligence. So I think that's a big piece of it. Another one that Joe would say that I really agree with is having the owner be in market, which isn't

always the case. But, you know, like what I tell fans sometimes when they ask me about Joe is I say, like watch him at a game. And you'll see all you need to know because if you're a fan of the Golden State Warriors and you look down and you see that the biggest fan in the arena happens to own the team. That makes you pretty feel

pretty good that you have an owner that's going to do whatever it takes to win, which at the end of the day, I think, you know, what more could you ask for in the owner of a sports team? So I look at the valuation of the Warriors. Since the time they bought the team to now, I read sport a code this week. I think it was

7.5 billion only behind the Dallas Cowboys and all of US sports. So you see the franchise value increase. I know a lot of it has to do with the Chase Center. And, you know, this is all privately funded. Which is again, another rarity in sports that an ownership group makes that kind of a commitment doesn't go to the taxpayers. But, you know, again, really committed owners

because this, what, $2.1 billion for the Chase Center, that's a lot of money to put up of your own money. Yeah. So 2.1 billions right. So it's 2.1 billion dollar privately finance. This is the first privately financed arena privately purchased land since 1991. That was the Utah Jazz. They're building a cost about $90 million. So it was a different era. So you sometimes you see sport

on occasion, spilled stadiums or arenas privately financed, but they get the land. We bought the land, built the arena. So, you know, we're fortunate to have that commitment. And, you know, it's been a great partnership with the city, County and the state, quite frankly, in terms of getting everything done. They're obviously appreciative of the privately financed piece of it. But it's been great working collaboratively to

create the right experience for our fans. A big piece of these new arenas or stadiums is the development around the arena or the stadium. You're doing a great job developing around here. You've got Thrive City. Maybe you can tell our listeners a little bit about Thrive City. And even what's coming up, I know this isn't like completely built and developed around here yet. Yeah. So it's

really important because when we think about the experience, it's, it's every aspect. So for the time you think about buying a ticket to getting on Munir Bar, or driving to the game to everything with the basketball, but everything else besides the basketball, the food and beverage, and then getting home afterwards. And part of that experience is having something to do before, after the event. And we

learned a lot from, you know, from our older arena in Oakland, Oracle Arena in terms of what was good about the experience, certain things like sight lines and things like that. And certain things that fans wanted and didn't have, like things to do before and after the game. There was not, there was really nothing to do. So we learned a lot there. We learned a lot

from, traveling around the country, seeing almost every arena, other stadiums, other low cows, just to get ideas on things that maybe we would want to replicate or things in some cases that we wouldn't. And so we've got 11 acres here. In addition to the arena, obviously, is the centerpiece, but we've got 580,000 square feet of office. So Uber has built the World Headquarters here in Mission

Bay. Two of those buildings are on our site, and then they've two buildings basically across the street. And then we have 125,000 square feet of retail. So when all is said and done, you'll have 20 or 20 25 mostly restaurants. There's some other retail, like our team stores in Thrive City, Warrior Shop, which is incredible, 10,000 square foot store out there, everything you could think of

Warriors wise. So we think that that's really important for a number of reasons. But, but most pointy at Lee and the other thing by the way that I should talk about, not on our site, but there's a 5.4 acre public park that's getting built right across the street. So which is right on the waterfront. So that's a city park. It's not, it's not on our land.

But we really think from an activity standpoint and activation standpoint, we think of that quite a bit as part of the experience. So, you know, we're sitting here right now in December. By the start of next season, we expect the park to be done. And almost every one of our restaurants to be open, then you'll really get to see the full force of what this is.

But, you know, we're hosting, you know, things go well 50 something Warriors Games a year with deep plough runs, which is only a half or a third of our total events at Chase Center. And those are publicly ticket events. We have a ton of different private events as well. So companies can book different things. We have above the rim, which is a 300 seat venue with

views of the water. That's awesome. But, so, you know, it's making sure that when fans come here, they can extend that experience and get a bite to eat or get a drink or do something before or after the game in one place. Like they come here and everything's here within walking distance. You spent years preparing to build the Chase Center and the surrounding area and who

knew in 2020 what a curveball the pandemic. How did you find your way through that? Because I'm sure that was a huge challenge. You couldn't have fans in the arena for a while. You couldn't activate this fully with all the, you know, the Thrive City and the surrounding areas and restaurants. How do you get through that? Not very well. No, I mean, I'm mostly kidding. Although

it's tough. I mean, we had, you know, over 400 days where we couldn't, you know, we're location based entertainment as our as our prime business. And for four over 400 days, we couldn't do that. So that was tough. But, so we, I would say that we took a couple of tax. The first was we went to work right away and decided, and by the way, it

helps. I should bring this up that Joe Lake have has a master's degree in epidemiology. So which, you know, in most cases, you're like, yeah, that's great. And you kind of see that on someone's resume. You think it's one of those like degrees that they'll, that they're probably not using given what Joe Lake of does now that changed in March of 2020. So he was, he

was really involved personally with all of us in terms of thinking about how this thing was going to progress. Like he was talking about herd of community and vaccines and all these things long before, like you saw them in the public sphere. So we, right away, decided we wanted to make chase center the safest building in the country. And we knew just, just with the way

things were going with COVID that it was, you know, if we were waiting for things to open up, it was going to be last. We were going to be last in terms of what area of the country. So we went to work right away. And we put together a plan to be able to test this before vaccines to be able to test every fan before every

game. So we were working really collaboratively with the city and to figure out a safe way to be open. So there was a lot of that going on, you know, a lot of different things with air circulation. You know, we can, that we, the air in the bowl, we could change out completely four times an hour. Oh, yeah, which is, which is like unheard of in

a venue like this. Yeah, no kidding. I mean, if you put it this way, if you're going to, to any sort of a event in COVID era in the air of a pandemic, you want to be at Chase Center. We used to tell people like, short of staying home by your self, this is like the safest place in the world that you could be. So that

was one way we looked at it. The other way we looked at it is like, you know, how do we sort of reimagine our business in different ways, right? And, and we wanted to think about things that that could, you know, could help us grow and keep our business going during that period, but also be things that that were ever green that could be opportunities moving

forward. So, you know, things like TV visible signage. There was a lot of things that that teams looked at and leagues looked at when he didn't have fans and seats. We wanted to try and figure out ways to have things that would work when fans were back. So we spent a lot of time thinking about that and diversifying our business, our revenue streams, which I think

has paid dividends as we've now, you know, gotten back to full attendance over the last year plus. I want to stop really quick and just say, uh, towards the end, we're going to allow the audience to ask a few questions. So if you have a question, prepare your best question for for Brandon. Sometimes the audience asked harder questions than than I do to see you know,

yeah, I was looking out at this bunch. I don't know. I didn't, I didn't know that I agreed to that. I think you're safe. Um, all right. So technology. Here we are in Silicon Valley. And, you know, this is the cutting edge of technology in the world. Um, you know, you just talked about how some things were reset during the pandemic, whether it's contactless. But maybe

you could talk about some of the things that you guys are doing here, technology wise, um, at the Chase Center. And with the warriors, you know, as you discussed, I know like literally from the time someone buys their ticket until they come here to the arena, there's, there's so many great technological advances and benefits to help the customer experience when you're coming to a warrior's game

or a concert or any other event here. Uh, yeah. So how long do you have? Uh, we could talk a lot. So I mean, I think when we were building Chase Center, it's an interesting thing because you're, you're, look, you're thinking about, um, you know, you want to make this a technology, um, forward kind of building. Like, especially being in the area, but you're, you're setting

up for the next 30 years, right? So you're, you're, you're not just thinking about what, what you want today, but what you're going to want in 5, 10, 15 plus years. Um, we're fortunate here to have a ton of partners in the technology space to help us figure that out. Right. So, um, Chase is big on technology. By the way, Raketin is a technology company. But

you have Google, you have Oracle, you have a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Verizon Accenture has been a big part of, of helping us think about all these things. Um, so we, we have a ton of, of technology partners. So, we're calling for, we're calling for customer feelings. Um, that's just really amazing to do some of the tools we want to live with. Uh, I think that's why

you said 24 months ago. Uh, we're trusting in terms of does speaker three and ask you, um, you know, you and our families. Uh, I was like, AAA theirs. There's been data at for just a minute. Um, we're joining gos tactical department. Uh, the infrastructure has to be there. And so we're really proud of, of the investment that that Joe and Peter have made, you know,

in J center. Um, you know, and then you start thinking about things like our app. We built an app from scratch, which, which most teams don't do. There's different template apps that teams use, which work fine. Um, but we worked with Accenture and made a significant investment to build a custom app that we kind of think, you know, helps, um, really take people through that game

day experience. I mean, by the way, the app is great. Uh, for people that aren't coming to the arena. And so, um, I think that's why we're doing this as well. Uh, game mode, you know, there's, there's a lot of different aspects and, and interactive, um, pieces within the app. But that custom piece and, and, you know, I don't know, I'm looking at people in the

crowd. They could probably answer this better than me. But I think we've done something like 60 app updates, uh, since we launched two or three years ago. Where, where these template apps are probably updating once or twice a year. So it just, you're able to kind of keep things up to date and be responsive to what, to what you want to put in there, what fans

want. Um, and then beyond that, um, you know, there's, I mean, we have the, you know, our scoreboard, our stats package, um, we could go on and on one interesting thing we did, um, at the start of the season, in partnership with Chase and, and through the app also in person was an augmented reality experience, which, you know, you talked about my ring when we started,

um, enabling people to take photos as if they've got, uh, one of not just the new ring, but any one of our four, uh, recent rings on. So that was a really cool, uh, kind of technology piece that I think got a lot of attention and, and fans are really excited about. You're listening to the sports business radio road show presented by Boingo Wireless, more after

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business radio. Now back to the sports business radio road show presented by Boingo Wireless. I want to ask you about your social media. I used to work for the Portland Trailblazers, and I talk to teams every week on sports business radio. I think you guys have maybe the best social media team in all of sports. I mean, I love what you guys do. Even if it's

just like the content of staff and his warm-ups and the crazy shots he does, and obviously that video that just went viral recently, he came clean and said that he only made two of the five full-court shots. A lot of teams and leagues don't make the commitment to social media. They see it as almost an afterthought. You guys have really made a commitment to it. Your

leaders in sports when it comes to social media, maybe you can talk about that commitment a little bit. Well, first of all, thank you. I think our social media team would be appreciative. We're all appreciative to hear you say that. It's helped. We've got about 63, 64 million followers across all different channels. There's a lot of responsibility there in terms of the size of the audience

that we have. But we are obsessed with creating world-class experiences. This is something you've heard me talk about experience several times. We talk about it every day. And what we say that, I think people, their first thought is at Chase Center. What are we doing for fans? And that is a big part of it. But we also know that 99% of our fans will never come

to a game at Chase Center for a lot of different reasons, the biggest of which being they don't live in this country. We think it's so important in terms of using social media as an important tool to be able to keep all those people engaged and give them a taste to Warriors basketball. So we feel like that investment is really important in terms of growing our

global fan base and letting them be a part of everything there is. In terms of our strategy, you've got all these different platforms. We don't use the same content on each platform. So I think that's one of the big things is customizing YouTube would be longer form content. And we show pre and post game press conferences. I'm not going to make things like that, which wouldn't

work as well on Instagram or Twitter. TikTok is quick. And by the way, I may not be the target demographic for TikTok. But let me do my best. But quick, cellphone, images, and videos you'll find on TikTok. And then things on Instagram, which is so cluttered so many things. So you're looking for images and content that will catch people's eyes as they're scrolling. Twitter, we tend

to live-tweet the games and breaking news. So we could go on and on. But the point is, yeah, I'm going to do a video about it. Having people dedicated to each of these platforms and creating different content. And by the way, different content from what you see during games. So everything's customized for that specific platform to engage people and really meet people where they are. And

then the other piece I would give is we just launched a Japanese Twitter handle. This is probably three or four months ago. I think we've got about 120,000 followers there. So a growing fan base. Before our trip to Japan, we were there for pre-season this year with the Wizards. One of every six basketball fans in Japan was a Warriors fan. That was before our trip. So

I think it's probably even better than that. And then being on Weibo and other platforms in China as well. So customizing content for our fans around the world. Yeah, I want to talk to you about being a global brand, especially in Asia Pacific. But I think what you just said is so key. And I say this to people in sports all the time. It's not one

size fits all with social media. So many teams. So even brands take the same content and they just put it across all of their different platforms. And as you said, it's different demographics, different lengths. So I think that's really an important point to make there. Yeah, no 100% agree. All right, Asia Pacific, as you said, you guys were in Tokyo. You've got a big fan base

there. This is a global brand. I mean, if I look at the Warriors, maybe 25 years ago. I don't know that it was a global brand today. Absolutely. It is. So what are you doing? There are some of the efforts other than going in plain games in Tokyo and other than having the Twitter for the Japanese fans. What are also you're doing to kind of like

get that gateway going between San Francisco and Asia Pacific? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a number of things. I mean, first, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about our players. Right. Yeah, we kind of has a lot to do with it. Yeah, I mean, if you compare us, our global fan base, I think you compared to 25 years ago, you know, the winning that

we've done. Having six finals, appearances in four championships in the last eight years, having global superstars, like Stefan Curry, like Clay Tom, what China Clay, right? Clay Thompson, Drey Munger, and Andre Gidala, Sean Livingston, we could go on. And now the younger guys, Jordan Poole, Andrew Wiggins, coming up, Kivon Looney. So having the players and the success on the court is a big part of that.

And by the way, like just making the investment to have that successful team. I don't know if fans realize this nor care. And by the way, as a fan, I don't care either. But we've had, we had the largest payroll in the history of the NBA last year. We spent about $200 million more than what the luxury tax line is. These are numbers that like, there's

other teams that have got rid of players when they were really good because they couldn't afford or didn't want to make that investment. And we're going to break our own record this year. So combination of great play on the court and having ownership's commitment, always investing on and off the court. We talked about Chase Center and all the investments already. So that's a big piece of

it. Making the commitment to go. And it was such a special trip for us to get to go and play the two preseason games in Tokyo in Japan is big. You talked about the social media platforms. And then partners. When you look at Rakuten, we wear a Rakuten badge over our hearts. We look at it as a badge of honor. They're based in Japan. And so

when we say partners, we mean that word. The word that some teams use or I've seen used a sponsor, we don't look it that way. We work together to grow our collective businesses. And so being able to have the authenticity when you're in Tokyo to be doing things with Rakuten, I think is really important in terms of engaging fans and getting in front of them. So

working with partners in some of these other countries, I think it's been a big piece of growing our brand. I mean, you just brought up a great point. And it's been a big story. The fact that your payroll is so big. And the commitment of ownership to take on that luxury tax. But I would imagine playing in Chase Center and the additional revenue streams that you

didn't have over at Oracle Arena, make it a little bit easier. Would that be true? I think that's the goal. Right. We, you know, we talk about. We always talk about creating creating great experiences. And then, you know, the revenue that comes with that over time is always reinvested. So that's one thing that Joe and Peter are really proud of. Is our ownership group has never

taken any sort of distribution. Over all these years, go into the finals. Yeah, it's so it's every, every dime has always been reinvested, whether that's again into building Chase Center investments off the court and also in the basketball team. And because at the end of the day, you know, we're business like anyone else. But, but really if you talk to Joe and Peter and you talked

to all of us, we want to win championships, which we've had some success doing, although we're far from done. And we want to do great things in the community. And then we want to work on, on, on, on making, you know, creating memorable experiences for fans around the world and doing like, it's kind of what sports is all about, right? Like you watch sporting events and

you see what, what all these things mean. And I'll, you know, we talked about being in Japan. One of the lasting images for me, we did a court unveiling in a town called Seticaya about an hour outside of Tokyo. And the mayor was there, city council people. And a few of our players are there. So we go through and their speeches and there's kids that are

like, okay, can we get on with it? So we can play some basketball. And they bring one kid up. We brought one kid up to hold the ribbon as we're cutting the ribbon. And he's standing and he walks up next to Steph and Curry and he starts crying. And you're watching this and you're like, this is, this is pretty amazing. Like, you know, he has that

effect on people domestically. But, you know, when your kid growing up in Japan, you, you probably never dream of the opportunity to meet Steph and Curry, you know, and Steph, you know, then takes the ribbon and signs and gets all the other guys to sign it has around the kids neck. So, you know, when you think about when you see things like that, like it, it,

cooperative with the other things that you want to do with your partners has to make your job a little bit easier. Steph is, he is the best. I actually said this, we were, we had a, all company meeting at Town Hall yesterday. And we were talking about, you know, sports illustrated just named him sports person of the year. Yeah. And had an event here in San

Francisco last week that was, that was pretty special. But one of the lines are, our head of communications Raymond Ritter likes to say who works with stuff a lot is that he's actually a better human being than he is a basketball player. Now, when you sit back and think about that for example, he's one of the best basketball players of all time. And to say he's

an even better human being is quite a state of a human being. And I think, you know, people that know him, everyone that knows him would agree. And, and you know, there's, there's things that you see in the public like, you know, what he's done for the Howard University golf team or what he's done with his foundation, eat, learn, play, you know, Christmas with the curries

that that just happened for the 10th year in a row. There's a million things that he does that people hear about. But he almost every single game home and road is is meeting with kids, whether it's pregame or postgame behind the scenes like out back by the locker room. Nobody sees this. There's no cameras back there. That's not why he's doing it. And these are two

things that he's doing. Kids that, you know, have ailments, some of them are dying, you know, all kinds of different situations that, that, you know, people reach out and he wants to use his time to do those things. That's just, you know, that's not normal. I mean, not most people wouldn't do that. You can imagine what being like stuff curries like every time you go out

to dinner with your family, you're getting bebarred for, you know, autographs and photos. But for him to want to do that and have that understanding the effect he could have on people. It's pretty amazing to watch him do those things. I think that's well said. I mean, when you think about the culture of our team, look, we talked about it starts with ownership and you have,

you know, Bob Myers, our president of basketball and Steve Kerr and all of our coaches are incredible leaders and deserve a lot of credit for what we built. But you're right. When your star player is a sellout player, you know, we talked about the story of some of the people who are playing basketball. The influences he is on and off the court and play Thompson. I

mean, you could talk about a lot of our top guys, Dremong Green and Andre. All these guys, it does set the tone. And when young guys come to our team, it changes their outlook. It changes the way you have a guy like Andrew Wiggins who was in Minnesota and you know, had certain reputations basketball wise and has come here and is now two way wigs. Right?

I mean, and is having the time of his life playing basketball has always had the talent but now being in the right environment to showcase his skills. And I think the same, you could, you could tell some of the same stories which is guys off the court and even young guys you're drafting coming up and learning the ropes from, from vets and stars like Steph and

Curry. Well, and I look at coach Curr to right. I mean, a championship player when he played and I, you know, I loved his podcast that he did with Pete Carroll where it was like the flying coaches. I think what's the name of the podcast is pretty active on Twitter. He sets a tone to not just on the court with championships, but in the community and

just being a good human being. Yes, Steve is, is just that is a good human being. By the way, I'll, one story and then I'll go back to your question. This is one of my favorite things. I hope Steve's okay with me telling this. So what we're on stage in Boston after game six. So we win the championship and, you know, the players with trophies speeches

were done. We're taking photos and a bunch of people had were putting four fingers up to show four championships. And I have Joe Lake up to my right and Steve was to my left and Steve's like, should I put up nine fingers? Yeah, yes, you probably, you probably should. But no, he's in terms of his leadership off the court. I mean, I think he, he's been

a bit advocate for all of our players getting registered to vote as one thing that comes to mind. And something that he talks quite a bit about is having your voice heard, which is critical on something we talk about as an organization. The other one that comes to mind for me is, you know, because of of his fan family experiences, gun safety is really hits home

with him. So, you know, he, we were in Dallas for the Western Conference Finals when the, the school shooting happened in, in Uvalde, Uvalde, Texas. And, and he made some really poignant and eloquent remarks pregame that I think a lot of people saw. And I think, you know, that, you know, that's important for, for people to use the platform that they have to speak intelligently about

issues that that are important to them as we try and make change. And, you know, we, as an organization, do our best to lean in and support our players and our coaches. And, you know, I mean, gun safety, something that I think everyone can agree, like those sorts of things need to stop. Right. And so having a coach who, who's a leader like that, you know,

is, is one of the unique things that makes us who we are. Yeah. A couple more questions before we open it up for a couple questions from the, the audience. What lies ahead, you know, for you and for the organization, you know, I know we talked about some of the development still to be done here. But when you're, you know, looking at your to-do list, what's

on that list? Well, I think, you know, creating the experiences that we've talked about will never ends. Right. So we are, we're constantly, I mean, look, Chase Center Open in 2019, we talked about COVID. So we just finished our first year open. So we have a lot of work to do in terms of optimizing the experience and continuing to evolve, you know, when you talk about

technology, what you're doing today will be old news in a year or two. Right. So, so that's a, that's a constant thing that we're all focusing on. So, I think, you know, we're all focused on creating that experience. And I think, you know, continuing to build on the basketball team, we want to always be good. And, and so, you know, like, you know, and if we

talk to Joe, like, if Joe was here, and we talked about the team evolving and having the peaks and valleys, he would argue with that because he does think we're always going to be good. So, so I think finalizing that experience. And then I think the other thing, like we talk a lot about establishing Chase Center and Thrive City as a global world class entertainment destination.

I think, you know, when you watch the finals run, you know, exhibition here and you saw everyone out in Thrive City, I think the basketball aspect of it, people that have been here, you know, were fortunate to really have enjoyed the experience. So I think, we kind of have that reputation. But I think, you know, as you think about the top venues in the world like

a Madison Square Garden. They've hosted so many iconic events. And so, you know, we're working hard to, to, to have the diversity of content to get all the different shows here at Chase Center. We, we had NCAA tournament in March. We just had the League of Legends World Finals sports event in the world. I saw the video of that. That was incredible. It was unbelievable. I

saw the board they brought in for that. Yeah, which is funny because we've got the biggest board in the NBA. But, you know, they've got they have their own specific setup that they that they use. And then all the concerts, you know, we'd be jelly the other night, Metallica and you have, I mean, you go on and on and on. Carol G was a big one

recently. So, so I think, you know, having that that diversity of content and just becoming that global concert entertainment destination is a big deal for us. And then as you look farther out, like, because we're always thinking about what's next, you know, Peter Goober's famous line is and it's become probably a little bit cliched within our walls. But he always likes to say this is just

the beginning of the beginning. And, and, and you think about that, like, it's a pretty cool way to think about things because, you know, like, some people would say, okay, we did all this work. We won the championship. We opened up Chase Center, like, we did it. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. This is just the beginning of the beginning. We now have this

incredible venue that opens up so much more opportunity so that people like to joke. Peter, when do we get to the middle of the beginning or the beginning of the middle? The answer is, I don't think we ever will. But so what we, what we talk about is, you know, leveraging the strength of the brand that we built to expand to get into other different kinds

of businesses. So I'll give you a couple of examples of things we're working on. We're early in this in this quest. But we built our own sweet resale platform. So people know to go online and hopefully with us, they go to, to take a master of orders.com to buy their tickets. But resale tickets has been a thing for a long time. But for sweet customers that

want to resell or in our case that want to buy sweets, because we're pretty sold out, we built a platform called Sweet Exchange. So you go to sweet exchange.com and our sweetholders can resell sweet. So we're starting to talk to other venues about using that platform. So that's one. We launched a content entertainment business called Golden State Entertainment. So think of things like the last dance.

So we're working on documentaries, scripted, unscripted content. And just thinking like we have all this incredible content, we've got a huge in-house studio team capturing content. So many different stories we can tell. Let's do that ourselves. So we've started doing that. And then the other thing we've started doing is we work, we've talked about technology. And being in the barrier, we have a ton of new

startups that come to us wanting us to use the product because they see opportunities to partner and get the word out and kind of proof of concept. So we've started to actually make some investments in technology companies. Our Joe Lake, I've been several of our owners have a venture capital background. So for a lot of reasons, we think we're uniquely positioned to make a difference there.

And you know, there's potential financial returns from doing something like that. But that's not the main impetus. We think that it gives us the opportunity to continue to be on the cutting edge and see technology before anybody else as we continue to layer into the fan experience here. Last question for you. You're a really good leader. And you've been with this organization for 21 years. And

we've been with the president and COO for two years. We have a lot of people who listen to this show who are leaders of their organization. What makes for a good leader? I think, I mean, there's a lot of different leadership styles that people have success with. I mean, one of the things I always think about is helping people be the very best that they can

be. Right. How do you, how do you set everybody up for success? Right. So everyone can fulfill their full potential. I think that's a big one. For me, I always try and be a consensus builder. Just like anyone else, I have my own opinions. And there's some people in the audience that would probably talk to you about the ferocity of those opinions at times. But, but,

but, you know, understanding that, that, you know, everybody has good ideas and wanting to hear what everyone thinks. And so we can make decisions together. I think it's a big deal. And then the other one, I think for us, culturally, you know, people over the last couple years in particular talk about diversity, equity and inclusion a lot. And by the way, I'm proud to say we've

had a, used to be D and I and now D. I counsel for several years. So it's something that it's been that we've been committed to for a long time. I think, you know, when people think about that, they, they look at demographics and they think about, you know, what, what, what, what's your male female demographic? What is your race and ethnicity? And those things are

important. We look at those things and actually share demographics with organizations. So they know, you know, what we're hitting the goals that we want to hit and making progress, which we are. But, but the other half of that is the inclusive inclusion piece. If you don't have a culture where everybody feels comfortable speaking up and, and everyone's voice is heard, the diversity doesn't do you a

lot of good. You're at, because what you're really after is that diversity of thought. And so, you know, we talk about like, you know, if, if I'm making all the decisions, we're in a lot of trouble. If our leadership teams making all the decisions, that's a little bit better. But I wouldn't even say that like everyone has the opportunity to weigh in and share ideas. I

think that's part of your job. Like we expect everyone that works for the Warriors to use the experience that they have in their current job, but just everything that they've had in their life to weigh in and bring things to the table that may help us continue to work. So I think culturally that's, that's a big one for me is, is, you know, making sure everyone

understands how important their job is, how important they are to our success and understanding the importance of, of, of making their voice heard. You know, as we're, as we're trying to make things better for the greater good. Well, you're doing an amazing job. Congratulations on all your success at our road shows. We allow for just a couple of questions. We've got some students from universities here.

Francisco here. We've got a few Warriors employees in the audience. Driggs has the microphone raise your hand. If you've got a question, don't be, don't be shy. Okay, we've got one right here. Hi, long time listener. First time caller, I guess. So Brandon, you've achieved a lot as an individual. The organization has achieved a lot altogether. But we all get better and learn the most from

mistakes or overcoming challenges. Is there one, you know, mistake or challenge that you're willing to talk about that helped you become, you know, better on the other side. I feel like I'm on a job interview with that one. Kim with the hard-hitting questions. I like it. You know, I can't think, as I'm listening to you talk, I can't think of like one in particular. The way

I like to think about it, like, is, is you almost do a post mortem on everything that you do. And, and, you know, some of you have probably heard some of the people here have probably heard me say this. I mean, I, I tend to be pretty introspective. So almost every conversation or meeting that I have, if it doesn't go perfectly or as well as I

had hoped, I walk out and sort of think about what I could have done differently. Like I might walk out of this. I'd say, I'd like to, you know, I think I'd be a little bit of a person like I could be a person like this room today and say, I Brian hit me with that. I should have said, I shouldn't have said that. I should

have said this. No, but, but honestly, like, I personally, you know, tend to think about I mean, I, you know, I talk to ticket sales folks, which was, you know, where I started my career. And, and you know, back then, we actually made phone calls, I know the world's changed. People use their, their phone for different things now. But, but back then, like, I would get

off the phone. And if the person didn't buy tickets, I wouldn't think, oh, they didn't want to buy tickets. I'd think like, what should I have done differently? You know, what should I have said differently that would have changed? And I, you know, realistically, not everyone was going to buy tickets. But I just think it's, you know, if you, if you go through life, not thinking

that you can affect these things, that, that's kind of a bummer of a way. So I always think about put the onus on myself. Like, what could I have done differently? And I think, you know, came back to your question, like culturally for me, you know, and not just me, Joe and Peter, Peter always says like, if you're not failing, you're not trying, right? So he

wants to make sure we have a culture where we're taking risks because you can't innovate if you're afraid to fail. So we have to be able to, okay, with that, we want to make calculated, calculated risks, of course. But then when things don't go as well as we thought, or even when they do go well, thinking about what, you know, how could we do it differently,

or how could we do it better next time? I think is, is, is an important part of that kind of continuum. Great question, great answer. I wanted to more questions. And maybe stay your name and, and, you know, so Brandon knows who you are. Sure. Thank you. Michael Goldman. I'm the professor at the USF Sport Management Program. You spoke about values, about the team and about

the NBA. Operating internationally means that you have to think about other people's values. And we've seen in China, for example, the NBA has come up against some, some, some challenges. We're thinking about reconciling US values with Chinese values and, and understanding of the political economy in that place. The NBA thinking about working in Rwanda with the BAL, for example. How do you and the team think

about the values of the NBA, the values of the organiser, as you take the business and take the brand internationally? Yeah, I think it's a good question. I mean, look, our staying true to, to who we are and to our values and the leagues values are, is always going to be critical. And, and I think, you know, when we, when we're out, whether it's, it could

be international, but it could be domestically, making sure that we're aligning with the right, the right companies, the right partners. So you're looking at the values and, and, and what their track record is. And at the end of the day, it's relationships and it's people, right? So you're getting to know the people that you're doing business with and, and figuring out who it is. That you

want to stand armed arm and work with. So that's, you know, I think that's simply put. I mean, I think that's, that's really how we think about it is, you know, when you look at a partner like Rakuten, you know, we are part, our, our organizations are so intertwined. And we know all their people. I mean, I was in their suite the other night and you're

there with Amit Patel and Adrian down Colson and Dana Marano and Kristen Gaul and, and, and we can go down the list and, and, and having that relationship top to bottom. So I think, you know, that's the, that's the authentic kind of integration that we have with our partners. I think, you know, when you get to know the people and get to know the values of

the companies that you're aligning with, you know, that's, that's, that's the best way to go there. One last question. I think this gentleman had a question over here. And then we'll, we'll wrap it up. Hi, RJPcock, ticket sales group sales. Well, my question as a UCLA alum and a legacy, as a big 10 boy myself, what are your thoughts about UCLA joining the big 10? Good

one. I like that one. All right, finishing with the hard hitting question. I'm, I'm kind of a traditionalist. To be honest with you, RJ, I, I so, I told you my parents went to UCLA. I graduated back in 2001. So I just started realizing it was pack 12 as opposed to pack 10. I think everyone's laughing. They're like, I, was there a pack 10 at one

point? Yes. There was, it was the pack 10 guys. So, you know, it's, it's hard. I mean, I think college sports and this, this is another would be a, a much longer conversation, are changing quite a bit. And so you see, you know, teams moving conferences, conference realignment. And so, you know, at the end of the day, you see a, you see, you see, saw an

opportunity with moving to the big 10. So I'm really curious to see how that all evolves. You know, I've got several friends within UCLA, but also at the pack 12. And so I've gotten, you know, gotten views on, on how, how these things are going to go. At the end of the day, whatever gives us the best chance to raise banner number 12, I think I'm

all for awesome. All right. This concludes our conversation. A few thank yous. First, Mike Finley and Walt Shaw with Boyngo. Thanks for powering the sports business radio road show. Great partner for us. I want to thank Kimberly and Lily and Allison with the Warriors and the Chase Center for all their help with making this possible. Today, I know we've got some students from the University of

San Francisco here and some employees from the Warriors. Thank you for being here today. And last bit, not least, Brandon Schneider. Let's give him a big hand. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. For having me. I appreciate it. All right, everyone. Thank you so much. Again, you can subscribe to the Sports Business Radio podcast on iTunes and on Spotify. Follow us on Twitter at SB radio and on

Instagram at Sports Business Radio. Thanks everyone for having us. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Sports Business Radio Road Show presented by Boyngo Wireless from Chase Center in San Francisco. Thanks also to our team at Sports Business Radio. Brian Griggs, Josh Blank, Ryan Nakajima, and our friends at CG Sports who power Sports Business Radio. CG Young, Matt Amarlin, Nicole Wardle and Calvin Wertz. This and

every SBR podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and your favorite listening app. Follow Sports Business Radio on Facebook, Twitter at SB Radio, Instagram at Sports Business Radio and online at SportsBusinessRadio.com. SportsBusiness Radio is produced by GriggsProductions.com.