David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…That’s my analysis of why all of these arenas have such freaking uninspiring names. All right, power. Why is the NBA a good business? Specifically, why is it so freaking profitable and why will it continue to get more profitable as time goes on? David, give me your stat here. This is interesting. There are a few dimensions to look at this. One, this is actually outside of power itself and it’s more just like being a first or a best mover—execution wise—on a market with international expansion. A huge amount of the value creation in the NBA has been international expansion over the past decade plus. They’ve just executed on that way better than the other American sports leagues. But I don’t think that in and of itself is power in Hamilton sense. If you think about power, you can think of it in two dimensions. The less interesting one is power versus other forms of basketball, of which there is the NCAA, the Chinese Basketball Association and plenty others. I think the power there is a cornered resource where they have the best players that play in the league. If you want to see the premiere marquee players, you got to watch the NBA. That’s my number one, but I have it on a much more fundamental level. There exists an asset called professional basketball or called the game of basketball. It’s a product with product/market fit with fans because it’s a thing that’s fun to watch. They seem to have a monopoly on it. They have cornered that resource in America. They are the only people who can deliver that product at a professional level to consumers.…

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