SBR Vault - Conversations with Stephanie McMahon a

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can treat yourself and your family with styles, accessories and products they really want all up to 60% off other retailers prices every day. Burlington, love the deals, prices and selection vary by store. Sports Business Radio launched in 2004. Brian Berger has interviewed the biggest names in sports and business. Let's step into the sports business radio vault and look back on some of our favorite conversations. This

week we featured two interviews with Stephanie McMahon, former WWE Co-CEO and Brendan Hunt, co-creator and actor on Ted Lasso. Now, enter the sports business radio vault. Now, here's Brian's interview with Stephanie McMahon from August 20th. 2021. My guest is Stephanie McMahon. She is the chief brand officer for WWE. You can follow her on Twitter at staff McMahon or on Instagram at Stephanie McMahon. Stephanie, thanks for

joining me on sports business radio. How are you? I am wonderful. Thank you for having me Brian. It's really pleasure to be here. Yeah, I've looked forward to this conversation for a long time. I want to start at the beginning with you. You've got such an interesting life. I know it's been WWE's been part of your life since you were born. I've heard you talk about

Andre the Giant. What's your good friend? You had a whole Cogan and Mr. T coming over for dinner. Take me into the McMahon house growing up. What was it like growing up in a home where showbiz was the family business? Oh gosh, it's a great question. It's just the only life I've ever known. To me, I really grew up with my parents building our business. So

they were working long hours and my older brother Shane, who's seven years older than me, pretty much tormented me as most older brothers do. And I do think he may have tried every wrestling holds that there ever has been on me, but I am all the better for it. Oh my gosh, that's so funny. At what point did you say, you know what? I think I'm

going to be a part of the family business. Or was it not even a choice for you? Definitely a choice. It's something that I've always wanted to do. I've watched since I can remember. I've never seen it before. When I was growing up, I used to think my dad was just the commentator on the show. And then obviously started to learn more behind the scenes to

sit in on his meetings. When they were at the house, he used to what's called in our business book, the creative, which is really writing the storylines and quote unquote booking the matches. And I fell in love with the business and always have. And I had the opportunity to meet all of you. These larger than life characters and get to know the real people behind the

characters. And it's just always been this sort of storybook come to life. You know, that's this world that I grew up in. I couldn't imagine doing anything different. When you grow up with parents like yours, sometimes it's hard to chart your own path. You are now one of the leading executives of WWE. How have you charted your own path and kind of made your own imprint?

Well, I think it's important that my mom was the CEO. And I don't want to gloss over that because for me as a woman growing up, a girl growing up and then becoming a woman, I never saw my gender as a barrier. I always thought that CEO was just the way it should be. Right? Not that it was unusual, especially at that time. So I do

think that that's very important. My parents have definitely provided me opportunities that I may not have otherwise. But being here at WWE is a privilege. It's not a right. And you have to earn respect every single day. So I try to do just that. I try to work as hard as I possibly can. I try to leave by example. I try to make the best decisions

that I can and always use my voice and believe in myself. I think it's important to have the confidence to stand up in a room and not be afraid. I want to go back to something you said a few minutes ago. I don't care if we're talking movies, TV shows, whatever. WWE has the best storylines of any venture I've ever seen in my life. And you've

done it over decades. So here's my question. What makes for a good storyline? Oh, it's a great question. Well, you have to have all of the fundamental foundational elements. And like you said, it's really no different than a great movie place. It got a lot of things to do. Even ballet, it's really protagonist versus antagonist with conflict resolution. It's that simple. Only our conflicts are settled

inside a 20 by 20 frame. Some of the greatest live action you could be in sports or a team. But I will say the relatability is so important. And we have, you know, so many different types of characters and storylines. But, you know, my Anselu, I quote her often. She said people will never remember what you said. They'll never remember what you did. But they will

always remember how you made them feel. And that's what storytelling does when it's done right. It makes you feel something. It generates an emotional connection. And that's what we try to do every single day. Yeah, you guys do an amazing job at it. Some of the biggest names that have been in WWE, Hulk Hogan, the rock, John Cena, Andre the giant Rick Flair. What? Don't forget

about him. Yeah, I do. But he's Dave Peece. Yes, of course. What are the elements that make for a superstar? Because, you know, I'm seeing, again, like Hulk Hogan, the rock, John Cena, they've transferred into the movies too. And are some of the biggest names in Hollywood now. What are the elements that make for a superstar? First and foremost, charisma. You know, again, you have to

have that ability to connect with an audience. And WWE is unique in the fact that we are in front of a live audience, you know, almost every single night. So not only is it televised, you know, to available in over 900 million homes all over the world. But we're also in front of an audience of 5 to 10,000 people, you know, at a minimum, when we're

doing our programming and for our non-televised life event. So you have to have that connectivity with the audience. You have to have them, you know, give them a reason to make you care. And that's sort of the factor. That's hard to describe. Right? It's intangible. Why is one actor a movie star over another? Why does the rock resonate, you know, over somebody else? Is that charisma,

that X factor? Of course, you have to have the physical chops and the verbal chops to be able to make it to the top of the business. But charisma is really that one key, that that's the star quality. Without giving away any trade secrets, I've always wanted to ask this question. So, you know, if you're in a movie or if you're in a TV show, you're

rehearsing, you're doing various cuts, you know, take two, take three, take four. How many takes in how much rehearsing goes into something? Let's say like Summerslam coming up this weekend. Well, it depends. It depends on what you're talking about. If there's a stunt involved. If there's, you know, for example, my match, you know, again, to Bribella at Summerslam a long time ago, required a little bit

more rehearsal. Then probably Bri would have needed because, you know, I'm not a full time performer. Right. You know, so when we bring in celebrities outside celebrities, there might be more rehearsal involved just to make sure everyone is, you know, knows what they're doing and feels good about it. Backstage, there can be scenes that are shot, you know, a few different times though rarely does it

take too long. You know, we tend to move quickly. We are live and, you know, Vince taught me and I do call him Vince and businesses. He's dead at home. Nothing can go wrong if it's live. So thank God I play a bad guy because when I've tripped on my way to the ring or I've stumbled or fumpered or whatever it is, it's like it was

supposed to happen and the audience eats it up. What's that like for you playing a villain a bad guy? Because I've seen you on things like undercover boss and you're just wonderful on there. And, you know, anytime I've heard you interviewed, you're such a nice person. But then, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're scripted character is a villain. What's that like for you? It is the

most fun to be a villain. I hate being a good guy. I just, just by that. I love being a bad guy. I get to play out all of the stereotypes that people have against me. I get to draw on so many different experiences in my life and, and the people that I know around me and, you know, I get to play the person that everybody

hates and be condescending to the audience and get them all riled up. I'm mean, it's just so much fun. There's, there's nothing like it. What a life. All right. Ultimately, I have to eat my own words. Like when Rhonda Rousey broke my arm at the end of WrestleMania. So there's a payoff for our fans too. Don't get me wrong. But it's, uh, it's the most out.

All right. I want to talk to you about some, uh, some business topics here. So the WWE through COVID never missed a week of TV production. That's amazing. What are some lessons learned from WWE? That are going to be part of the new normal moving forward. Everyone I've had on the show in the last year, you know, CEO's owners of teams. Everyone's learned lessons because we've

never been through anything like this before. What are some of the lessons learned that might be part of the new normal for WWE? Absolutely. Um, you know, we have the opportunity to move all of our production into our performance center, uh, which is on a done, which is essentially our warehouse. So one of the first key learnings was the importance of having your own facility. Yeah.

Uh, we did hope that by the fall last year, we'd be back, you know, in arenas with live events, but it wasn't meant to be. So we doubled down and we invested in this virtual technology partnering with the famous group. We brought in nearly 1000 virtual fans every night. We've had nearly a million fans from all around the world during that time period sign up for

what we called the Thunderdome experience. We experimented with drone cameras, augmented reality, virtual reality. And we never have before. And now we're taking all of those key learnings and applying them back to our live event. We began turning again on July 16th from the Toyota Center in Houston. And we had a lot of fun in front of that capacity crowd. And we've seen our audience, you

know, returning to our live events, enjoying, you know, the upgraded live event app experience, such with at merch pickup, those kind of things that we didn't have before. And also now the production techniques that have been implemented with, you know, larger, the largest screens that we've ever used for entrances with this, um, utilizing the Unreal engine, which I believe is epic games Unreal engine to bring

to life this augmented reality, creating almost like a video game type experience, you know, in an effort to bring our superstars to life in ways that we never have before. Yes. Yeah, you guys do an amazing job. And WWE's always been ahead of the curve through the years, whether it was pay per view, OTT, you've got your deal with peacock now that we'll talk about in

a moment. You just talked about the Thunderdome. Where does that vision come from to stay ahead of the curve? To stay. Well, it's actually one of Vincent's key learning for all of us is you always want to be slightly ahead of the curve. You never want to be so far ahead that people don't understand what you're doing. Certainly never want to be behind you always want

to be slightly ahead. But like you said, WrestleMania one has been credited with pioneering the entire pay per view industry. You know, when digital and social media launched, we saw it as an opportunity to go direct to consumer. It was like grassroots marketing. I think it you will always stay slightly ahead of the curve if you always have your audience in mind first and you're always

paying attention to what they're doing where they are, how they're consuming content and what they're asking of you because your audience will tell you. And if you always have the goal of super serving your audience the way they want to be served, that's how you can stay slightly ahead. I want to go back to WrestleMania one. I've heard a story that your parents basically like mortgage

everything they had to pay for WrestleMania one. Is that true? That's true. Why? So bad for many reasons that it pays off. No kidding, but like you know, you talk about entrepreneurs and you've got to be all in on things and that's being all in but look at how that paid off. Oh, it's just incredible, but that also goes along the lines of taking calculated risks,

right? And betting on yourself. I mean, that's the ultimate entrepreneur playbook and my parents, you know, if they didn't write it, they followed it to be. Wow. And you know, the other thing about WrestleMania that is so amazing and part of pop culture, it's not just about sports. You brought in, you know, Cindy Loper and Mr. T and you know, these people from the world of

entertainment, Muhammad Ali, I think, was part of WrestleMania one or one of the early WrestleMania, it was more than just sports. Absolutely. And when you think about that, going all the way back to WrestleMania one, you know, it was my father's vision of how could we put WWE on the map? Because back then there was no such thing as social media. Right. So how were you

going to get people talking across all different kinds of water coolers? So like you said, Liberazine, the Rockets, Open the Show, Cindy Loper was a part of the Rock and Wrestling connection. Mr. T competed in the main event. Muhammad Ali was a special guest referee. You know, and then you look back to this past year's WrestleMania and we had bad money, you know, was was a

huge part of a storyline that started in January and WrestleMania. And bad money actually trained to be able to compete in the ring and blew everybody away and was designated by ESPN, I think, as the greatest celebrity in ring performer thus far. Logan Paul brought his YouTube influencers and was a part of another storyline for us. You know, we had various musical acts. So it is

a combination of pop culture entertainment and what we call the fourth entertainment for WrestleMania every year. And let me just say summer slam this Saturday from Allegiance Stadium, you said it airing on or streaming rather on P-Cock should be no different. Well, and this is the first time that summer slam is going to take place at an NFL venue. It's the home of the Raiders in

Las Vegas. You've got John Cena and Roman Reigns headlining. That's going to be amazing 65,000 fans or so there, right? Well, we will see where we ultimately net out, but it's looking good towards the capacity and where we've set it. So with P-Cock, let's go back to that because again, this is another groundbreaking deal. You know, you've been ahead of the curve with things like OTT.

How did that deal come together and, you know, tell our listeners about the deal between WWE and P-Cock? Certainly. Well, WWE Network. Like you said, was our OTT, our director consumer service that launched over seven and a half years ago. So at the time, it was really Netflix, Hulu, and WWE Network. Wow. A lot of key learnings there, but also a lot of opportunity to make

mistakes. And I think that's something that we all do in this space and in this day and age. And I think we had a little leeway to make a few more mistakes given the landscape wasn't nearly as cluttered. And when I say this, I think it's going to be a lot more fun. And the stakes, for example, at first we required a six month sign-up, you

know, a minimum of six months that you would sign up. And that's something our fans weren't interested in. So we changed it and we made it monthly. You know, the price point was $9.99 per month. We started experimenting with free tiers and all of these different things. And what we found is our fans, first and foremost, we had had a linear deal almost in place that

had been being negotiated. And we realized that the last minute we wanted to own our own destiny. So we did some more research. We found that our fans were five times more likely to consume online video content than the norm. And we realized we had an opportunity, which is when we launched WWE Network. And what we found, you know, six years later, probably because, you know,

we started looking for a streaming partner prior to COVID. Again, we found that we had a lot of fun. And being slightly ahead of the curve, we recognized how cluttered the space was starting to get. How the tech and streaming giants were really doubling down and investing in their products. And we realized, you know, we're really not set up to be competitive as a tech company.

You know, we're a storytelling company, we're content production company, we're a media company, we're not a tech company. And we recognize the opportunity to really partner with a best-in-class streamer. That's how we chose Peacock working with NBCU, our partner, over 30 years, with best-in-class teams, you know, across all different functions. And it's been really great for us thus far. Well, and far listeners, Wall Street General

Report to multi-year agreement between WWE and Peacock valued at more than a billion dollars. So that's a pretty good deal for WWE, I would think. It has been a great deal. I'm not confirming or denying your numbers, but I will say, you know, our, it is exactly accomplished all of the things we wanted it to in terms of awareness and growing our audience. You know, Peacock

has, gosh, now I think, north of, of 45 million sign-ups, you know, which is significantly more than WWE Network had. We have the opportunity to reach so many different people. Again, really have that best-in-class experience with our team. And also bring to light new sponsors and sales opportunities that we didn't previously have, you know, again, working with NBCU who, on a regular basis, sells the Olympics,

the Super Bowl, you know, you name it. It's all of the biggest events in the world. And now WrestleMania is a part of it. Right, a few more minutes before I know I need to let you go. The daily habit, I have heard that you have a daily habit, three things that make you happy from the day before we go. Before you go to bed, how

do you come up with this? Are you talking about me personally? Yeah. In general. No, I've heard that's like one of your pet peeves is that, you know, you try and have a daily habit. You try and think of three things that make you happy from the day before you go to bed. I think that's really a good habit to have. I think a lot of

us kind of skip over that in our daily lives. Well, you know, it's funny. I don't, I may have said that at one point in time when I was trying that out. Maybe I should try again. But, you know, Jimmy Volvano and I don't want to misquote him, but he said, you need to think, cry and laugh every day. And if you do those three things,

then you've had a full day. And I think if there's one thing that COVID has taught us this whole time period is that tomorrow. I mean, I think more than ever is that tomorrow is not a guarantee. You have to truly be grateful. And I think you have to live, you know, live as big and as bold as you possibly can because we only have this

one life. So if you think you cry, you laugh, and I would add love every day, I think that's when you've had a full day. And maybe it's a good idea to think about those things before you fall asleep at night. Yeah, that's great advice. I know you're also mom to three daughters, right? I am very proud. My mind now have two teenage daughters. I can't

even believe I'm able to say that. Okay. So wait a minute here. I've got a 16 and a half. I'm a 20 year old. So I've got a teen daughter too. Let's talk teen daughters for a moment here. I mean, the pandemic has been really crazy. You know, on my end, my daughter was playing sports. She was going to school in person. She was seeing friends

and teachers and coaches. And then boom, that all ends and you're doing everything virtually. And I've seen the impact that it's had on her. And it hasn't been great. Things are returning to somewhat of normal. But, you know, is someone who has three daughters. How have things been on your end? What do you have for parents like me who are trying to navigate through this? Oh

my gosh. I mean, I think we're all in the same boat, right? I'm not sure that I have any goals and advice. Except to just cherish the time that you do have with them. I do think life will go back to normal at some point. And it'll be as if, you know, well, who knows what's going to happen. I can't predict the future. But I think

you just have to be there for your kids. You know, and I think this time really forces us all to parent more than, you know, more than maybe we have in the past. And, you know, listen to them and do things with them. I mean, I think that, you know, that's the silver lining in all of this. Is it hard? Yeah. Do you have time to

do it? Maybe not, especially as a working mother when you're trying to juggle so many different aspects of this? Ambient at home teacher and everything else. So there's no, there's no golden rule. But just prioritize the best you can and make sure you cherish the time you have. Yeah, that's the best family in your kids because he just never know fast is gonna go. I mean,

do you think 16 and 10 here? Will it go so fast? No. I mean, it's been a blur. And, and, and yeah. I try to enjoy it every day and not taken any day for graded. But it still gone by quickly. It just does. And I feel like they grow before your eyes. And I look into my 15 year old face and I still see that

little two year old baby. And it's just a marvel to me. But of course, now I'm looking up because she's taller than me, which is something she absolutely love. My daughter just got her driving permits. So we've been driving lately. Wait till that happens. That's, that's an interesting. That's a test in patience as a parent, right? The bigger the kids, the bigger the problems isn't that

the expression? Oh my gosh. All right. Let you go. Another thing I heard about you, you can tell me if this is true or not. You train at midnight. Is this true? Yes. I used to train at midnight. And I've now switched to more. But yeah, it every, I used to train almost every night at midnight. And it was very challenging, but it was the only

time I had. And there's also when I was more of an on screen performer. So it was, you know, a requirement really to get my workouts in and stay in shape. But, um, yeah, it wasn't easy. I'm a night person anyway. And you're married to Triple H. Is he like saying, Hey, come on, we got to do this. Or are you kind of dragging him along?

Are you dragging each other? How's that going? I am married to a professional athlete. I just try to keep up. You know, that's basically it. What's he like as a co-parent? You were talking about you as a mom. I mean, I'm imagining you guys co-parenting your daughters together. What's that like? I mean, the most wonderful father. I am so blessed in so many ways. And that's

one of them. You know, when they were growing up, he'd play dolls with them and create characters that were just, you know, awesome. He's quite creative himself. He's just a hands-on dad who truly loves his kids. And my husband and I were so lucky because both of our parents were still together. And we were really raised with the same value system. And I think, you know,

the key to any real successful relationship, partnership, business or professional or personal is it is shared value. And I'm really lucky that we have each other. I know your girls aren't at the age yet where they're dating, but I can only imagine how terrified someone would be if they're coming to take one of your daughters out and they encounter triple age. I'll have to pick up.

I mean, that's gotta be terrifying. It must be or will be. And he has a t-shirt to boot that says anything you do to my daughter, I do to you. Oh. Wow. Oh my gosh. That is amazing. Stephanie McMahon, Chief Brand Officer of WWE, follow her on Twitter at Staff McMahon or on Instagram at Staff and E. McMahon, a reminder, Summer Slam is gonna stream live

on Saturday, August 21st at 8 p.m. Eastern time, 5 p.m. Pacific time on Peacock. Stephanie, I've been looking forward to this for a long time. Thank you so much for joining me on Sports Business Radio. Well, thank you so much for having me, Brian. I look forward to the next time. Thank you. You're listening to Sports Business Radio. We'll be right back. When it comes to

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time, you can get 20% off the entire end of your workout. Now, here's Brian's interview with Brendan Hunt from September 2020. My guest is Brendan Hunt. He plays Coach Beard on one of my favorite TV shows, Ted Lazo. He's the co-creator of the show. You can find season one and season two on Apple TV. Plus follow Brendan on Twitter at Brendan Hunting. Brendan, thanks so much

for joining me on Sports Business Radio. How are you? I'm great. Things are heavy. How are you? I'm doing great. I really want to hear the premise for this show and how you guys came up with it because I walked a lot of TV. I walked a lot of movies. There's so many reboots. There's so much that's recycled right now. And this is truly clever and

unique and original. Jason Sudekas who plays Ted Lazo, small-time college football coach from Kansas, Wendell Division II national championship. Then he's hired to coach a professional soccer team in England despite having no coaching experience. So I'm giving that out in case our audience hasn't watched Ted Lazo before. But how do you guys come up with this idea because it's really original? Well, it was commercials first

that we made for NBC Sports. We were at the time they were trying to promote their new coverage of the English Premier League. And they saw a pathway into it as trying to not fight the fact that Americans typically don't know that much about soccer but to lean into it. So we did that the one year and it went really, really well. And they had us

come back the next year. And at that point we started finding out that even though these videos were made for an American audience, they're being watched as much in the UK as they were at home. And that's when we started to think like, okay, this might have more legs to become something else. So those videos were originally made in what 2012, right? 2013 and 2014, yeah.

Okay. So I mean, you had a few years to kind of come up with the idea. When did you and Jason, who I understand have known each other for a long time? When did you guys start talking about, hey, maybe we take this from commercials to TV show? Pretty quickly. It was me and Jason and Joe Kelly is a sort of third member of our triad

there. Before Bill Lawrence came along later to make it a proper show. But after that second one, we pretty quickly got to work. We spent a week at Jason's place mapping out like a six episode season and some character arcs and stuff. A lot of which got kept eventually. But we were feeling pretty, pretty energized by it. But then Jason kept having babies. And that's those

things down. So it took a while for, you know, now all those kids can speak and walk. And so I guess that meant he was clear to carry this thing further. So when did you guys actually film this? What was it 2018, 2019? We filmed it last year between August and November of last year. And it looks like you're in London, right? Like that's where you

want to go. Yeah. Yeah. Every frame is shot in London. That's great. How did you pick the locations? I mean, I'm really intrigued by everything from the locker room to the pubs to the apartments. It seems like you guys did a really nice job of scouting some great locations. Yeah. First of all, just a lot of really good designers and crew people, you know, top to

bottom. No Bill Lawrence, who's the show and the show. He, at one point, he looked like an advanced trip to London. The figure out what would be the best area. And he came back just full of beautiful pictures of Richmond. And we were all, yep, that's the spot. Okay. Good. And then once we had that, you know, then Jason and I went there and like we

walked around Richmond. We had a couple drinks with some of the producers and at that point, our favorite bar, our production designer, we had it to physically reproduce our favorite bar in Richmond. So it's an exact copy that we have. So we had two versions of that bar to go to. One at work and one at play. But yeah, Richmond is, I mean, London's fantastic in

general, but Richmond's really, really pretty. And it was really, really fun shooting there. I love the depth of the characters on the show. You know, when I, when I saw, I've had Apple plus TV for a while now. And when I saw some of the previews, I was like, okay, this is going to be funny. I mean, you know, comedic and I like Jason and, but

I've been really surprised by the depth of the characters and the storylines. And kind of the emotional bond that I've created with you and with Ted Lasso and some of the other characters is I've, what are we on? I think we're on episode eight right now, almost episode nine. Seven comes out tonight. Yeah. Yeah. At time of the interview. Well, I'm really glad to hear that.

Thank you. Yeah. One thing we had, I identified pretty early on was that the commercials, well, super fun. There were two broad, you know, in terms of their comedic tone and in terms of the character and kind of a, you know, almost slapstick nature. The second one was a little bit less broad and is a little more the tone that we're doing now. But we knew

that if we were going to try to make an actual series out of this, these would have to be real people with, with real characters, especially because the premise itself is kind of silly. So, you know, once we get, once we get past that though, then it's got to be, we got to play it as a whole. It's as real as possible. And as we say

in the improv world to the height of our intelligence. And, yeah. So I think that's what you're feeling there. And hopefully that don't carry on. Yeah. I mean, you feel like Ted Lasso and your character coach beard a little bit fish out of water. I mean, you're on the flight. You're coming over to London. But then when you get there. And I've been in a lot

of locker rooms. I've worked for pro sports franchises here in America. Some of the psychology of coaching and how you relate to players. And I really like that as each episode goes on. Because I think that's what makes players coachable, right? Like, you've got to have the psychology of relating to your players and having them respect and relate to you. Because, you know, the first thing

you think of is the players look at this coach and go, wait a minute. He's coached American football. He's never coached soccer before. How does this guy relate to us? But you quickly see Ted Lasso and coach beard start to relate to the players on another level. Yeah. That's something that we're going for. And that, you know, Jason has a lot of role models in this.

He's got, you know, he's a big fan of John Wooden. That's why we have John Wooden's pyramid of success hanging on our wall in our office in the show. You know, he's met Bill Selphan a number of times. He's a huge Kansas fan. So let's Bill Selphan. But he also was an athlete, at least as far as high school. And maybe community college. You ought to

ask him about that. But he, he has coaches that he loved that meant a lot to him. And he's drawing specials. I was literally from his experience of that. Now I was a phenomenally terrible athlete. I was, I was incredibly bad as a little league. I was so bad at little league that I thought that Charlie Brown strips about the misery of baseball were essentially documentaries.

Like it was just supposed to be like that. That's how it was. I was terrible. But I kept going back for some horrible reason. So I do not have the positive coach examples to draw from. But Jason certainly does. As does Bill. And yeah, I think that's one of the things that I'm going to do. That helps make the character a little more realistic than you

think it's going to be. One of my favorite moments of the show so far. I'm a big Allen Iverson fan. So, and I think the practice press conference is maybe one of the most memorable sports press conferences of the last 30 years. And this scene in the show where Ted Lasso is talking to one of the players about practice. And you know, you can hear Allen

Iverson in your ear. How did that come about? Because I thought it was brilliant. How did you guys come up with that? And it's actually thinking about this. I can't quite remember exactly. I think it was one of those days where, you know, the writers from kind of bounces things around. And then like someone says something and then it just kind of builds. And it's organic.

And suddenly it's already happened. Either that or there's 100% Jason. One of those two things. There's really no middle ground. But we're coming at it from a place of great affection for Allen Iverson. I mean, I was a member of Sixers fan. I'm from Chicago and love the bulls. But every one's got everyone's got respect for Allen Iverson. And you know, that speech, you know, is,

I mean, it gets funny because it is funny. But it's, you know, there's a lot of different things going on in Allen Iverson's like personal life. When that happens. And I wasn't even aware of before we started looking at that speech a lot. But anyway, the key into the notion of Ted taking those words. But in viewing them with, you know, opposite meaning essentially. It was

just sounded really, really fun and sounded like something that Ted would be about. And. Yeah, we haven't quite figured out like the meta of it. Like did does Allen Iverson exist in the Tedlas? The universe has never seen the speech before he just happens to have done it. He's certainly not turned and quoted. I don't know. That's too much of a rabbit hole. But yeah, much

love to AI. Well, one of the things that I love about Twitter is that. There's a lot of creative people out there and sure enough, someone took the scene from Ted Lasso and they interlaced it with Allen Iverson's press conference. So you can see it. And in real time, like here's how Ted Lasso delivers it. Here's how Allen Iverson delivers it. And it was beautiful. Yeah.

We're getting some really cool fan content come back at us right now. There's that. There's a guy who made a website called aFCrichman.com, which, you know, I guess we're the morons who should have bought that address earlier. And he's making like athletic dot the athletic dot com level breakdowns of our matches as if they were real. And like our. And so that's what I'm talking about.

I think his name is David Stoffer. I can quite remember. Yeah. Yeah. The fan content coming back at us is kind of overwhelming. It's really cold. See. I loved it. I got to check out. Is it aFCrichman.com? You said. Yeah. Okay. I got to check that out. How many takes for the Allen Iverson? I'm talking about practice from Jason. Oh, a lot. It was a lot

of takes. He's got to run that whole scene basically. He has no dialogue to rely on coming back at him to help Q and. You know, he had the speech, the full text of the speech on a sheet of paper back in his office. And I'm like back there with him between takes. Okay, you said this wrong. And this word should be over here. And the

emphasis wasn't to do it exactly word for word. But we wanted to honor the tone of it as much as possible. So we spent a lot of time getting it right. And then in the edit. And then in the editing, that had to be very meticulous as well. You know, like I remember one time at one edit was like, okay, the first time you say not

a game, we need to see your face. Not a game. We can't be on Jamie here. We got to. That's when the penny is going to drop her people. So it was a real, you know, jigsaw puzzle to put together. But we, we are, we are tickled by the result and that people are so tickled by it as well. I'm really interested in process. So it's

my understanding that you and Jason Matt doing stand up comedy. And when you improv, improv. So when you do improv, you are improving, but I'm wondering how you go from that to memorizing lines as an actor. Because to me, that would be really hard. I mean, in my business, like I'm improving right now, but sometimes you're reading a teleprompter. And as an actor, you don't have

a teleprompter there. You've got to memorize your lines. And like you said, you've got to figure out how am I going to deliver these in the proper cadence. And things like that. How hard has that been for you to go from improv to scripted lines? Well, now I think this is true for Jason too. There's really been no time where we were adjusting improv. That just

happens to be where we met. And certainly we were both in school plays. So you're learning how to get your lines together from that point on. And then once you start doing it, eventually just becomes a habit. And you know, actors who've been acting long enough, you just learn them. You just learn them quick because you have to, you know, there's a. You're starting going up

or there's a camera turning on and you've got to be ready. So yeah, it's kind of just the necessity of the gig. So you just do it. And in terms of going from improv to acting. Yeah, I don't know. I was always doing both like from a very young age. Like when I was a kid, I literally wanted to be in both the Royal Shakespeare Company

and Second City, which would be a tough gig just for the, you know, the frequent flyer miles. But yeah, I've always kind of been split between those two fields myself. So I was in the Second City and what a brilliant place. So many amazing people like yourself have started there. When were you there? Oh, I just took classes there and what I wanted to be there

is kid. I never. Okay. I went there. Okay. I went to Amsterdam and I did this thing called Blue Chicago. Not that I necessarily would have ever done Second City anyway, but you know, which is to say, not that they would have ever thought me good enough to be on their save, which is a great place. But the years that I would have been there. Instead,

I was an Amsterdam with Jason and with Joe Kelly, the other, you know, we're a triad member of the show's creators. And yeah, I ended up doing that instead. And that's where we all got into soccer. Okay. So staying with process. You guys. Come up with the idea for this. Now you've got to take it and you've got to pitch it to someone. Was Apple Plus

TV, were they the ones that you targeted all along? Or, you know, do you have conversation with several different platforms before you, you wind up there? Well, that's all a little above my pay grade, but I think what happened was. Yeah, as is common. I think at any time you're ever pitching anything, you don't want to target one spot. Right. You want to go. You want

to go as many places as possible and hope for the best. And so we, I believe we went to all the streaming places from the beginning, because we knew we wanted to be a streaming show and not another network show. Yeah, and Apple just kind of won the bid, frankly. And we're pretty fortunate about that. I really, I really love watching, you know, kind of what

they're putting together product wise. There's just some great shows in this stable and it's fun to be part of. Well, they've done a nice job promoting you guys, I think, you know, on their other programming. You know, there's a few f-bombs and things like that dropped in here. So this wouldn't been a network TV show. It wouldn't have had the same feel if it was on

network TV versus streaming. Yeah, I mean, we're a little, we're a little bit clean outside of the language, but there's no way you can show a locker room and sports life and not have cursing, it just would have been ridiculous to try. So they've always been very allowing of that. And so that's been great. I love how Ted laughs. So, was bringing the owner of the

team biscuits. And then we find out, I guess, I hope spoiler alert, spoiler alert, we find out that Ted Lassa was making the biscuits at home. And I thought that was so charming. How did you come up with that idea? Because that's one of those things I'm talking about where there's that relatability with the character here. Yeah, I can't remember how that idea came about specifically,

but I think we knew early on that here's another spoiler for the people. The wound who hires Ted Lassa hires him because she wants a team to do badly. She's using him. And it just seemed pretty clear dramatically. And for her plan to be, for her to regret her plan more and more, he had to be as kind as possible, which he naturally is already. So

that became like, oh, you bring an apple to teach every day. Oh, he goes biscuits with bus. So yeah, it just came out of trying to create the dramatic tension of him being kind and her wanting to never actually have feelings for him because she doesn't want him humanized in any way, shape or form. Yeah. I think that's a fun relationship to watch as the episodes

have been. Her grasp because she has her struggles too in her life. And you know, I think the fact that Ted is so nice, she's like, maybe I can be a nicer person too. That's that's why I kind of see this, this going so season two, I've read in several of the trades that there is a season two of Ted Lassa. Has that been officially announced?

Yeah, sure has. And those very trades. Yeah, we're writing it right now. In fact, we've been writing it for most of the summer. And I think that's a lot of things that I've been doing. Theoretically, you know, international issues being what they are. But if everything goes smoothly enough, we'll be out there again. The beginning of next year, filming season two. And 10 episodes, is that

kind of the goal plan? Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Isn't it weird like thinking during a pandemic? How do you film? How do you return to quote unquote life is normal? Have you done anything during the pandemic or have have all of your projects been on hold? I had a play that was supposed to open at the Kirk Douglass Theater that had played. I was in and

that I wrote. And we were all very, very excited about it. And it was scheduled to open the Wednesday after the Thursday that was the shutdown. And that was that was a bummer. But then we started writing this pretty shortly after that. So I've been very fortunate to have a job during this whole time. But yeah, I mean, the lives I don't want to drag down

too much. But the lives of that world is really, really suffering. In the same way the sports rule has to agree. But, you know, at least sports have been able to go on for the most part just without an audience. But, you know, theater and other, you know, concerts and stuff. Really, really tough going right now. Yeah, it is very tough going. I hope that it

returns to whatever the new normal looks like. I know a lot of people are out of work. And this is their livelihood. So I hope that returns to normal. So we're writing an episode of Ted Lasso, like you are right now. Typically, how long does it take to write one episode? Well, it's all a bit of a mishmash because, you know, the idea is, you know,

there's 11 writers and the staff. And we all, you know, work together. We would be around a conference table normally. But now it's just over zoom. And, you know, at first we talk about, you know, the arc of the whole season, basically. And everyone's pitching in and everyone has ideas. What largely conducted by Bill. And then eventually it starts to get a little more specific. And

we're, you know, dividing things into what the episodes are. And then eventually someone gets assigned an episode. And they go away. And they go away usually for a week. And then they come back with a draft and we give notes on that and we go from there. So, you know, the nuts and bolts takes a week. But the, you know, the, I mean, it makes my

metaphor is the planting of the seeds happens much earlier. And you have more time right now because production isn't going on. But typically, are you writing the entire season? Or are you writing episode by episode? I mean, both, I guess. But, you know, in order. Yeah. But yeah, we get, we get, you know, writers are hired for 18 weeks, which is pretty standard. And, you know,

hopefully be able to get that done in that time. But, you know, sometimes these things get extended. Which is like a lot of, you know, you can get a lot of time. So you can get your guy out there. And then you can, you know, I guess. And we're working on it. But yeah. Luckily, no one has a lot else to do. So it looks like

we're, we're going to make it. Before I let you go. Your character coach beard is, I love, you're like the. The straight guy. You know. You just kind of your kind of stoic at times. You know, you chime in now and again. Is that your natural personality? Because just by talking to you. Now it doesn't seem like that's your natural It is not my natural personality.

I am a little quaces bladder mouth as matter of fact. But, but you know, it's not my job. And this my job here is to, you know, serve the scene and beards job is to is to serve Ted, you know, by doing such things like learning the rules of soccer and whatever else Ted can't quite find time for. So it's super fun actually to play straight

man and just to be more economical and surgical with my. You know, moments of impact, so to speak. You know, much as Jordan changed his game late in his career. Oh, no, no, I won't make that comparison. But yeah, mixing it up. It's kind of fun. So have you been a bull span all your life? The very first basketball game I ever watched was the Michael

Jordan 63 point game against the Celtics. And I knew the bulls had existed before then, but I was never was a basketball guy. I knew that there was so many and Reggie Fiest and so many Marters Gilmore and Orlando Woolridge. But then that game, I mean, I just couldn't believe it because also somehow even though I'd never watched a basketball game, I knew to hate the

Celtics. It was just something that I, you know, found natural. But from then on, just hardcore bulls fan to this day. And I did the day Derek Rose got injured is still a real, real real sad day in my life. Yeah. No, that was really that totally changed the arc of that franchise for, yeah, till now really. Did you watch last dance? Oh, yeah, every second

of it. Was it amazing? What did you like the most about it? It's a great question because there's all, there wasn't that much of it that was new, you know, like we kind of seen all of this before either from being a bull fan or like watching the dream team documentary, for example. But just, you know, watching it play out, you know, finding out just how

much of a distraction Dennis Rodman actually was. You know, and like hearing some of the the words and all come out because like a lot of this stuff is also in Samson this book, the Jordan rules, which I read while I was in high school. But, you know, getting out there about all the guys that, you know, Jordan punched in practice and that sort of thing.

It was just great to see it again and to relive it because that was, that was really an incredible time that I associate, as I'm sure all, all bull fans do like you associate that period with a specific period of your life and the friends you hung out with then, you know, who you gather around the TV to watch with. And you couldn't, you know, you're

not DVRing those games. You're watching them as they happen. You're experiencing those emotions without interruption. And yeah, this is good to relive that again. Last dance was chef's kiss. So I used to work in the NBA and have friends that are still there. So I'll tell you this. Maybe you don't know this. Only 5% of all of the footage that they shot was used in that

documentary. So 95% of the footage they shot wasn't even used. So imagine like you could do another couple of last dances. When I heard that, I was like, my God, that's, that's a lot of footage they still have. I will say there was a real, real shortage of Luke Longley in that thing. I will happily watch 10 episodes of the Luke Longley story. And I think

I speak for America when I say that. So let's make that. That's right. Soccer team, do you have a favorite soccer club? Who are they? Yes, Arsenal. Arsenal. OK. So is that helped you by being a fan? For being part of the AFC Richmond club? That's where you've brushed up on all of your soccer knowledge? Yeah. So we all lived in Amsterdam for different periods. Me

and Joe and Jason doing comedy out there with a theater called Boom Chicago. And yeah, again, there was no streaming. There was no DVR. So I couldn't watch the bulls or the bears. And so I had a sports shaped hole in my life. And I slowly gravitated towards soccer in Holland. In particular, is a great team. I was a great champion in Jammichypsen World Cups. And

when we had parties to watch these games, the sightlines would be good for everybody. Because you couldn't just bring anybody. You had to sign up to bring friends because they had calculated like the wake distribution. And how much would be too much for it all to collapse. So we had a projector and actual bleachers for the entire month of this tournament. And that among other things

got me hooked forever. Like, you know, I've been told all my life that soccer was lame or boring or what have you. And like I've been like to I've been like to it's one thing you don't like sports. But if you don't like sports and you don't like soccer, then you confuse me. I don't understand because soccer is fantastic. What an amazing time in your life.

And it sounds like the bleachers across from Rigglyfield doesn't it kind of sounds like same kind of setup. Yeah. Yeah. Except I think it really feel they were getting less drunk than we were getting watching home. That's great. Well, I appreciate your time. Brendan Hunt. You can follow him on Twitter at Brendan hunting. You can watch him on Ted Lasso on Apple plus TV co creator

of the show coach beard. You guys do a phenomenal job. I tip my cap to you and keep up the great work. Thanks. I appreciate it. I think for having me. This episode of Sports Business Radio is brought to you by Underdog Fantasy. The fastest growing fantasy app ever released and the official gaming partner of sports business radio. And with early investors like Mark Cuban, Kevin

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