David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…No way. Because retroactively, I watched an interview with Letterman and he’s making jokes about he was never good enough. Like he’s fulfilling a childhood dream, he was never good enough to play cricket, so he may as well own a team. That’s totally retcon. All post facto retcon. Yes, yes, yes. Here’s the real story. This is amazing. We should say, all the quotes from Lalit and the direct firsthand information from Lalit comes from a great series of interviews that he did on the Sports Entrepreneurs Podcast that we’ll link to in the sources. Lalit obviously knows Shah Rukh. This is the perfect get him in on the ownership group. He’s the brightest star in India. Have him at the matches. I could tune into a soap opera at night. Instead, I could go watch the biggest star in India there dancing on the field with all this incredible going on at the matches. But the problem is he’s not into cricket. So Lalit tells the story. Shah Rukh said, Lalit, I don’t know how to do this. My passion is football. I have no idea how to run a team or do anything. Lalit being Lalit, said, Charu, let me handle it. I’ll put a consortium for you together. You just need to write a check. He says, You’re going to take my life savings. It was his life savings in those days. I said, just write the check and we’ll talk about it if you end up winning the team at the auction. This is the most incredible gangster-type stuff. Here’s what Lalit did. Because he is friends with Shah Rukh, he knows that Nokia, the big handset manufacturer at the time, remember we’re still slightly pre-smartphone era here; we’re in 2007. Yup, and definitely pre-smartphone in India.…

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