What SportsBiz Data Is Saying: Neil Schwartz, President of SBRNet

Artwork for podcast Sports Business Conversations

Bonus Episode • 10th February 2026 • Sports Business Conversations • ADC Partners

01:26

Dave Almy

Neil, you've been in and around this intersection between sports business data and analytics for much of your professional life. And as you and I were just talking about before I hit the record button, sports has been behind the curve on those topics for a long time. So I'm wondering if you can just, from your perspective, someone who's been thinking about these issues for a long time.

01:48

Neil Schwartz

Sure.

01:49

Dave Almy

Before we start diving into the issues of the day, can you offer a little bit of perspective on what you've seen and how sports businesses are finally really trying to catch up to the use of data and analytics in their everyday operations?

02:02

Neil Schwartz

Yeah, David, you know, you're, you're pretty on point here with what you just said. The sports business, and I've been in it over 25 years, by the way, so I've seen a lot of change in that time. And I've seen, you know, I've seen a business that did not rely on analytics and data for a long time now really kind of dive in. You really don't have to parse it out into kind of two separate areas. Number one, analytics used for on field performance and tracking, you know, that kind of stuff. That, that is really, you know, something that is going on in a big way. I mean, you're seeing more and more hockey teams, as an example, pull their goalie at three and a half minutes now and hoping to be able to score a goal to tie a game up.

02:40

Neil Schwartz

You know, you're seeing more and more decisions being made based on analytics. That's not what I do. Right.

02:46

Dave Almy

Yeah. So the performance side, you get the coaches who are like, they. He's. An analytics coach. He's not analytics coach. Right. So from like how gaming out situations. But that's not how you approach this.

02:56

Neil Schwartz

No, I'm more on the business side. So we're focused more on revenue generation, sponsorship generation, selling more tickets, growing fans, really all of the things that go into the business side of sports. What's interesting is that what you see on the field and what you watch on TV in a lot of ways is kind of like an iceberg. That's really only like a third of really what goes into a sports team, sports franchise, sports league. The rest of it is under the ground. And that's, you know, the stuff that really we provide data for. You know, whether it's helping a team grow their fan base, whether it's helping a team grow sponsorship revenue. You know, really, data, as I like to say, is kind of like the GPS for all of that.

03:34

Neil Schwartz

It kind of paves the way when you start a presentation with data are paving the road towards better decisions rather than based on, let's say, anecdotal or, you know, I can't tell you how many meetings I've walked to and the CEO of a company says, my gut tells me this. And I'm like, okay, my data tells me this. I'll be happy to put my data up against your gut any day of the week.

03:57

Dave Almy

Well, I mean, particularly in this day and age in all of business, it's so metrics driven and sports, like, why do you think sports followed that lead?

04:08

Neil Schwartz

I don't think the average fan really thinks about what goes on in terms of the business side of the sports business. I think all they care about is what they see on TV or what they see when they go to an arena. You know, I think, you know, I think I read, you know, about 90% of what we perceive comes in through our eyes. So, you know, I think when people look at statistics or, you know, I don't think they care as much. Look, they do care a lot about, you know, on field statistics. I mean, you know, they keep developing brand new KPIs for baseball.

04:39

Neil Schwartz

I mean, you know, the OPS thing is a kind of a recent development when it comes to measuring the efficiency or the success of a batter in terms of his on field, you know, getting on base and things like that. But, you know, the average fan I don't think pays a whole lot of attention to, hey, you know, why did Coca Cola sponsor this particular team versus Pepsi? Or why is Budweiser, you know, involved? Although Budweiser seems to be involved in everything sports. But again, I don't think the average fan really thinks that along that way.

05:09

Dave Almy

Yeah, and I think like, look, it's sports has also become an investment. Now the numbers that, with the numbers we are looking at for team franchise valuations and the meteorites holding, I suppose that's part of it too, right? If you're going to be putting big Bs, as in billions behind these teams, you want them to operate. And so data and analytics has to become a competitive advantage, not just on the performance side, but on the business side as well.

05:35

Neil Schwartz

Well, I mean, if you look at some of the deals that are being done right now, the NFL is allowing private equity to buy into franchises at 10%. By the way. I think this is a horrible idea, but.

05:45

Dave Almy

Really?

05:46

Neil Schwartz

Oh, yeah. I mean, just think about Jerry Jones for a minute and the Dallas Cowboys example, you know, their franchise is valued at about $10 billion. But now Jerry also owns the stadium. So that, you know, that changes the metrics a bit. But, you know, if he's allowed to buy, you know, somebody's allowed to buy in for 10%. Like I'm no math genius, but 10% of a, of 10 billion is a billion dollars.

06:09

Dave Almy

Let me check. Hold on, I'm going to check you. Okay. I just did my math on my end. You are correct.

06:13

Neil Schwartz

Thank you very much.

06:14

Dave Almy

That's why you're the data and analytics guy, right.

06:16

Neil Schwartz

I know I'm getting old and I know I don't do math as well in my head as I used to. I used to be able to stand in front of a group of people and we'd be quoting numbers and I would be calculating, you know, percentages in my head. People say, how the hell do you do that? Yeah, like, you know what? It's not.

06:29

Dave Almy

I've never been that guy, so.

06:32

Neil Schwartz

But you know, look, if he's getting a billion dollars from private equity and you know, he wants to use it to maybe make some enhancements to the stadium, he wants to be able to maybe use it for, attract some new free agents. He wants to put some money in his pocket. So now it's 10%. That can't be too far from 20%.

06:49

Dave Almy

Yeah, I know it's what's going to.

06:51

Neil Schwartz

Happen when that private equity guy is sitting up in the luxury box and the Dallas Cowboys are down by 14 points against, I don't know, Philadelphia Eagles. And you know, all of a sudden the private equity guy calls down to Jerry or the, you know, how come we're not throwing screen passes. How come we're not doing this? How come we're not doing that? And Jerry Jones will probably have a heart attack right there in the stadium, or actually his son will because his son's really running the day to day operations at this point. Joe's getting kind of old. But again, I do think the interjection of outside money is not a good thing for sports. You know, I think it's horrible for college sports and it's happening. Yeah, you know, college sports is buying into, I guess what's now the Big Ten, Big 12.

07:36

Neil Schwartz

And you know, they're buying it, they're going to buy their way into the sec. The Saudi PIF is buying its way into a number of sports. You know, I just don't think this is a good thing for sports. I mean, it's a good thing for the owners because let's face it, they're going to put a lot of that money in their pockets.

07:53

Dave Almy

Well, yeah, and we talked about it too, right? These franchise valuations mean that people want in. People want in. They see nothing but growth. I was talking to a sports owner as a previous podcast to this one and he says, look, every sports owner knows that you don't make money while you're operating the team. You make the money when you sell the franchise for the valuation increase. And so I mean, when you see.

08:16

Neil Schwartz

What some of these people have bought these franchises for and then how much they have gone ahead and sold them for. Somebody told me that Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys for like some ridiculous number of like $300 million. Many, many, many moons ago. Texture and, but, you know, now the team's worth again, 10 billion. Granted, he owns a $3 billion stadium and you know, and all this, and granted, you know, the TV rights are just going out of sight and the merch rights have gone out of sight and everything is really gone up. But you know, spending 300 million and then being worth, you know, 10 billion. Now that math I can't calculate in my head. Yeah, but again it's, you know, I saw earlier this year also the Boston Celtics a good example.

08:58

Neil Schwartz

You know, here's a team, amazing history, won bunches of championships. You know, they play at they play in the arena that's owned by the city, the td arena, whatever.

09:10

Dave Almy

The hell they call td, North Bank Garden.

09:12

Neil Schwartz

They don't own, they do not own their own stadium, but yet they still have a, a franchise valuation of $6 billion. Now, I don't know what the original owners Paid for the Celtics. My, my guess is that it was nothing like that.

09:26

Dave Almy

Not that.

09:27

Neil Schwartz

Yeah. No. So, I mean, these valuations have just gone out of sight. But again, Dave, the reason is that sports owners know one, you know, it may not be. It may not be that way in the very beginning, but they're going to get there. It's just like real estate, you know, was, I guess, although real estate's kind of not that way anymore. But the traditional thing is, though, these owners know that sports are fun and that companies want to get involved not just because they feel it's going to be a great return on investment, but because they want to get in on.

10:00

Dave Almy

The fun as an emotional.

10:02

Neil Schwartz

They want to get in on the luxury seats. They want to get in on the entertainment value of, you know, taking clients to a football game and, you know, being able and sit there and watch a game and, you know, feed them, talk to them, engage with them create relationships with them. In a lot of cases, you can't put a dollar value on that.

10:18

Dave Almy

So let's talk about this. I want to make a transition because as we discussed, I want to talk about the issues of the day and what the data and analytics that you're looking at on a regular basis at SBRnet are telling you. And so I think the first stop we have to do is let's take a look at this changing nature of sports fandom. Because these valuations, like, yeah, okay, fans don't really care about that. You know, it's the sign of zomba scene. Maybe they see something in the newspaper every once in a while. But there is a carom effect. The sports do become more expensive. It does cost more now to take a family to a game. So with that in mind, our first topic that we're going to talk about is that changing nature of sports fandom.

10:54

Dave Almy

What do you see and what is the data telling you about what's going on with attendance? How is that changing?

11:00

Neil Schwartz

everything really changed in: 2020

11:43

Neil Schwartz

But we've also seen a big move towards streaming, and that's really been the wild card in this entire process. We're seeing, you know, fans moving away from watching sports via traditional video. So they're moving away from cable, moving away from satellite. Obviously over the air, they moved away from a long time.

12:04

Dave Almy

Yeah.

12:05

Neil Schwartz

But they are moving to streaming. And believe me, there are both good sides and bad sides to that. You know, number one is sometimes I can't figure out where to find a game that I want to watch because, you know, Peacock, is it on Paramount, is it on. I don't know where the hell some of these games are on Amazon. You know, Apple TV is going to get into the, you know, going to get into the, you know, fragmentation. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of that. But the biggest thing is that, you know, we are seeing this increase in streaming and by the way, that feeding into a number of other fandom habits and behaviors that go along with it.

12:39

Dave Almy

Okay.

12:39

Neil Schwartz

You know, one of the things also is that I like to talk about is, and this is kind of an interesting concept, you've got what they call fans who are actively engaged versus those who are passively engaged.

12:50

Dave Almy

Okay. And how do you define between the two? Yeah.

12:53

Neil Schwartz

And then being able to take that passive fan and make them an active fan or, you know, you don't want to go the other way. No, but, you know, but like, I, I use an example of myself and although I know to not use myself generally as an example, because let's face it, I'm. I'm not, you know, I'm not a representative sample of anything more.

13:09

Dave Almy

Than my house for the audience. That is your house, the Schwartz household. Yes.

13:14

Neil Schwartz

And. And for a guy that's kind of pretty much embedded with science when it comes to data, you know, I'm going off the rails here big time. But you know, as I talk about this, I'm a fan of the Miami Dolphins and I'm a long suffering Miami Dolphins fan.

13:27

Dave Almy

Yeah, sure.

13:27

Neil Schwartz

And I'm still a long suffering Miami Dolphins fan. But here's the question. Am I worth more to the team? I just watch from the confines of my couch. I stream, I watch, you know, I just watch the games. I don't go to games live. I don't buy license merch. I don't travel to support the team. I don't, you know, I don't do any of those things. I mean, and so, you know, I don't even give to their charities, for God's sakes. Right. Am I worth more or less or the same as that fan who travels to support the team, who attends games live, who interacts or engages with teams, with the players, with the team on social media, who gambles on the Dolphins, who maybe, you know, buys a lot of their license merch?

14:12

Neil Schwartz

No, I mean, it's kind of an easy question to answer, but are you.

14:16

Dave Almy

Talking about the difference essentially between an. Not to like, coin a phrase, but like analog fand a digital fan with the analog fan being in present, buying the soda, like all the traditional monetary things that people think about in terms of sports versus the streamer, who has a more digital relationship with the team?

14:36

Neil Schwartz

The problem is with that kind of characterization, I think, is that when you talk about digitalization or, you know, you're also kind of assuming that I'm, you know, utilizing social media, doing a number of other digital type activities, you know, either while I'm watching the game or. But I'm not. Yeah, I like to look at it as engagement versus lack of engagement. And when I come up with a better word than passive versus active, I'll let you know.

15:01

Dave Almy

Okay.

15:01

Neil Schwartz

But point is that I think the teams can use this passive fandom, that is myself, as a way to try to grow their active fandom. You know, you get me off my couch to come to one game a year, you know, get me to buy some licensed merchants, get me to support the same, you know, the charities that are supported by the Miami Dolphins. I'm not saying they want to encourage gambling because that's a whole other issue altogether, which I'm talking about, you bet, you know, but there are a number of things that they can talk about or they can do to make me a more actively engaged fan.

15:35

Dave Almy

So you kick this off talking about fandom. You said that attendance is flattening, but streaming is increasing. So are those correlated?

15:44

Neil Schwartz

Yes.

15:45

Dave Almy

Okay, so as you become a grave, as you become more attuned to streaming and consuming sports, that way, your attendance to actual physical games decreases for the most part.

15:56

Neil Schwartz

Most of the sports, not all. Football growing, WNBA growing, Formula one growing. But a lot of the sports are playing what I like to call zero sum game, you know, as, let's say their attendance grows, their, you know, their streaming, you know, goes down or Vice versa. But what we're seeing is an increase in streaming and a decrease in attendance.

16:19

Dave Almy

All right, so. So Neil, you just mentioned the NFL. You mentioned Formula One. You mentioned women's sports. They're all growing fans. What other sports are you seeing that are becoming more popular with fans? It's like there's so many emerging sports coming out there too right now. So what are you seeing? What's the data telling you about where people's eyeballs are starting to gravitate towards?

16:40

Neil Schwartz

So let me just tell you where this data is coming from so you'll know that I'm just not talking out of my butt. Every year we do a large study of sports fandom. I interviewed this year over 7,000 sports fans and we use, I'm not going to get too sciency here, but we use what they call a nationally representative panel and we gather a nationally representative sample so that, you know, what we're doing is we are trying our best to capture the habits and behaviors of all American sports fans or all Americans actually, ages 13 years and older.

17:09

Dave Almy

Yeah.

17:10

Neil Schwartz

So, you know, my data reflects, you know, a lot of what's going on. The interesting thing we see is that most of the sports, you know, are either up a little bit in some cases flat. You know, the sports that are up, you know, a good deal right now, women's sports are just killing it. The wnba, you know, if I look at their year over year numbers and their three year trends, they are just knocking it down. And you know, look, the NFL is growing. College football is growing. You know, sports that aren't growing, though, interestingly enough, the Major League Soccer has kind of stopped. It was growing for a while and it kind of hit the. Hit the wall. Yeah.

17:44

Dave Almy

Particularly with the international Messi effect thing there for a bit.

17:47

Neil Schwartz

The interesting thing is international soccer is down. However, we're going to see a lot of that change next year with the World cup coming here to the United States. That's going to be a big. That would be a big deal. And you and I will tell you, the last time we had a World cup here in the United States or even the last time the US Team was in the World Cup, I saw something happen that I don't generally see. One, we saw soccer participation go up, more kids playing soccer. Two, we obviously saw television ratings go way up for soccer. You know, ESPN carrying so many games. Also, the USA being in the final 16 did not hurt.

18:23

Dave Almy

Yeah.

18:24

Neil Schwartz

But the thing is, we also saw licensed merch sales go up. We saw soccer cleat sales go up. We saw jerseys go up, we saw everything go up.

18:33

Dave Almy

We saw the creation of the Major League Soccer as an extension.

18:36

Neil Schwartz

Of that and Major League Soccer. Then, you know, kind of, you know, kind of went off the draft. You know, when I use draft, I'm talking about like, you know, like car racing, but they use that kind of that trend that was starting to be created and they worked it. Now, you know, I don't think that, you know, necessarily it's been all that sustainable. I mean, you know, let two years ago Messi came here to the United States to play for Inter Miami. Look, Inter Miami just saw a huge jump in fans. They probably gained 50% more fans when Messi joined. But I interviewed someone that works for Inter Miami in their season ticket kind of customer service area.

19:12

Neil Schwartz

And I asked him during his interview, I said, what was it like when you walked in the office Monday morning and your owner or your general manager told me, hey, we now have Lionel Messi. We got messy get in front of those phones because we're going to be getting swamped. And guess what? They, they did. And it was just good for everybody.

19:29

Dave Almy

Do you have data that supports the why people become fans of different sports? Is it is, it's just, this is just following the trends as they exist.

19:39

Neil Schwartz

The why question, David, is the single most difficult question to answer in any type of research. You know, I can answer who, what, when, where, but the why how pretty easily. Yeah, the why question usually involves a qualitative aspect.

19:55

Dave Almy

Yeah. Really qualitative.

19:56

Neil Schwartz

Yeah, it does. And it can be a little difficult. Simon Sinek, who's a well known author, business author and all that, he wrote a book, I think his first book in fact was called First Ask why. And you know, I, I don't say I necessarily live by that, but I think that business people should take the time after they understand the who, what, the when, the where and the how. Understand the why. Why do people do what they do?

20:21

Dave Almy

Let's do a quick pivot from professional sports to youth sports. Right. Should we talk to, we just talked about what's becoming. What professional sports are growing in popularity but wonder if like from a participation standpoint.

20:32

Neil Schwartz

Yeah.

20:33

Dave Almy

Which youth sports are experiencing growth and we'll get into the larger trends as far as participation goes, but I'm wondering what sports stand out to you as far as where their trajectory goes.

20:42

Neil Schwartz

Look, unfortunately we're not seeing a big gain in youth sports in this country. I mean, this country, you know, the fact is we do have an obesity crisis. And one of the aspects or one of the elements in that equation of course, is activity. And unfortunately in this country, basically casual activity has all but gone away. I mean, I don't know how old you are, but I remember when I came home from school when I was a kid, you know, I couldn't wait to pick up, you know, my baseball glove and go across the street to the playground or I couldn't wait to, you know, we used to play street hockey in the street where I lived.

21:15

Dave Almy

There are organic forms of youth sports participation.

21:17

Neil Schwartz

It's just not happening. Things have really changed a lot. The other thing is that the situation with tackle football now, tackle football is still maintaining, you know, decent numbers at the high school level. But what's happening is we're starting to see those numbers decline below the high school level. Unfortunately, what that's going to do is create a long term pipeline problem for tackle football. Yeah, mothers just don't want to put their kids in, you know, play tackle football right now on, you know, and I think football would be hard to try to convince. I know, look, I have a daughter, she has my two grandchildren. The 11 year old wants to play football.

21:54

Dave Almy

Yeah.

21:55

Neil Schwartz

And there's no way they're going to let him play tackle football. They will probably let him play flag football, but you know, I will tell you it's going to take a little bit of convincing even for that.

22:05

Dave Almy

Is flag football growing? I mean, I know it's becoming more popular, particularly for women. It's like one of the, probably one of the fastest growing high school sports.

22:12

Neil Schwartz

Well, as you know, I don't know if you know, this flag football is going to be in the Olympics. That's going to be a big deal. Yeah, I think that will be a big deal. I think that will be good for the sport in general. Look, I think USA Football, the national governing body for football, I think will leverage it well. I think the NFL is fully behind it. And when the NFL's behind it, you're talking about a lot of money. And there is a lot of money that's being put on the table to support. But you know, a couple things are, number one, we're seeing pickleball grow in unprecedented numbers. Now the numbers, if anyone who lives.

22:47

Dave Almy

Near a park, then they hear that tick, tock, tick tock, going back and forth. I'll let you know that it's growing.

22:51

Neil Schwartz

I live, I live actually I live on a country club and there's a bunch of pickleball courts and we're trying to build more. And the people that live across the street from it are really just up in arms because, you know, they hear that sweat, you know, like 9 o' clock at night. That's not really what they want to hear, but relaxing. But I will say pickleball did a double. Double. They grew by double. They doubled from 22 to 23. No, I'm sorry. They grew from 21 to 22. Double from 22 to 23. Now it has slowed down, but it is still growing by incredible numbers. And, you know, when pickleball grows, that means the pickleball manufacturers shoes, apparel, equipment. Because as I like to say, if people don't play, they don't need to buy. Yeah. In that case, they're playing and buying.

23:36

Dave Almy

So, okay, so pickleball continues to grow, but that's probably with everybody. Right. I'm assuming that's with. With youth. But getting back to the idea of youth sports participation. Yes. Football, flat. Right. The concussion issues, injury issues, long term.

23:48

Neil Schwartz

Yes.

23:48

Dave Almy

You know, the issues regarding brain health and things like that. You can see why people are steering away from that. Are those athletes just not playing things or are they getting redirected into other sports? Like, are they now playing soccer instead of football?

24:01

Neil Schwartz

Like, they're playing soccer a little bit. They're playing lacrosse a little bit. They're actually playing ice hockey a little bit, which is kind of interesting.

24:08

Dave Almy

Lacrosse, concussions in. In lacrosse or ice hockey.

24:12

Neil Schwartz

Yeah, well, apparently, actually, the interesting thing is, and forget about concussions for a second, but what sport is. A little quiz here. What sport do you think is the source of most sports injuries?

24:25

Dave Almy

I would say it would be soccer only because the number of people who are participating in the lack of padding. But go.

24:30

Neil Schwartz

It's actually basketball. Turn. And. And it's mostly soft tissue injuries.

24:35

Dave Almy

Yeah.

24:35

Neil Schwartz

You know, sprained ankles, jam fingers sprained, you know, things like that. It's mostly soft tissue injuries.

24:41

Dave Almy

Yeah.

24:42

Neil Schwartz

But, you know, it's interesting because, you know, look, I think you're seeing a lot of the companies doing a better job with protective gear to support these sports. I think you're seeing, again, a lot, you know, what you're seeing a lot of kids doing, though. A lot of kids, you know, moving into sports like swimming, which is great, by the way.

24:57

Dave Almy

Yeah.

24:58

Neil Schwartz

And especially what you see is when the, during the Olympics, you know, coming out of the Olympics, you always see swimming, you know, increase in, you know, people participating, but then it kind of dives back down to, you know, where it was. So I mean, holding on to those fans. You know, golf was an interesting situation during the pandemic. We saw golf go up, fans go up, players go up, viewership went up, everything went up. Problem is golf couldn't hold onto it.

25:24

Dave Almy

Yeah. And you start finding alternative ways like the topgolfs and the putt shacks.

25:28

Neil Schwartz

Topgolf just got sold. I don't know if you saw that by Callaway.

25:31

Dave Almy

I did not see that.

25:32

Neil Schwartz

It's going to be an interesting situation. Private equity again.

25:35

Dave Almy

Well, so, okay, so this is a, this is what's known in the biz as a segue. So, you know, private equity is leaking into sports at all forms, including youth sports.

25:47

Neil Schwartz

Yes.

25:48

Dave Almy

And honest to God, I just read an article the other day about a private equity company that's buying up youth sports ice hockey rinks and are preventing parents from taking videos of their kids because they own all the internal recording of that. So they're like, you know, it's one of these stories. You kind of roll your eyes and think like that. But I guess what it means is like, look, if private equity is getting involved in these things, they are going to make a profit from it. That is private. What private equity does, that's their motive is that one of the things like this and that's going to lead to increased costs is that is the increase in cost. Another one of these things is flattening out youth sports participation. Just people.

26:24

Neil Schwartz

It's not just flattening that. It's actually, it's actually driving the decline. I mean, a lot of sports now have gone to a pay for play model. And I hate to say it, you know, there are a number, you know, people just don't have the income or they don't have the disposable income. You know, if it costs 2, $300 to put your kid in basketball or football or whatever it might be, you may not have that money, you know, available, you know, for your kid. And then, and it's not just that money, it's a lot of other money. And you know, one of the things also is that there's been a big movement towards elite sports.

26:55

Neil Schwartz

And by the way, that's where I think private equity thinks they're going to be able to generate, you know, revenue from because you see more and more parents putting their kids in elite sports travel teams, you know, in hope of being able to generate a college scholarship. Sad thing is the numbers are so small of an athlete getting money for college that it's, you might be better off getting hit trying to get hit by lightning.

27:18

Dave Almy

Well, ironically, I did the math with a buddy of mine who works for Merrill lynch, and we looked at the costs associated with a typical youth sports trajectory versus if you just took that money that you spent in sports, put it in like a. Like a, you know, an index fund, and you actually, like, put that against college, you actually come out ahead on the index fund and more likely to obviously to have that kind of eventual success than you would if you're doing a sports scholarship. So, yeah, this. That downward pressure from the expectation of scholarship is increasing this cost associated with youth sports. Because as I've heard several people say, there's nothing a parent won't do for their kid who if that kid has the dream. And sometimes that dream is also the parent's dream. I'm not denying that.

27:57

Neil Schwartz

What's interesting, though, is I'm seeing a lot of parents put their kids in a lot of. I'm seeing a lot of parents putting their kids in golf or trying to get their kids in. Why? Because golf scholarships, especially for women right now, are a little bit more plentiful. I'm seeing more and more and more parents trying to get their dirty girls, especially into softball now because again, you know, these sports are growing.

28:19

Dave Almy

Water polo.

28:20

Neil Schwartz

And what's growing also is the money that's available for scholarships.

28:24

Dave Almy

Yeah.

28:24

Neil Schwartz

And you know, I think, look, a lot of parents, you know, want to, you know, obviously they want to send their kids to college.

28:29

Dave Almy

Yeah.

28:30

Neil Schwartz

It's not cheap. And they hopefully get some money.

28:33

Dave Almy

It's a.

28:34

Neil Schwartz

Thing is, though.

28:35

Dave Almy

Yeah.

28:35

Neil Schwartz

The chances of you getting money for getting $1 for college are like infantills less, you know, 100th of 1%. It's ridiculous.

28:45

Dave Almy

So let's take one form of gambling. And Neil, this is just another segue here. Even really teen these up spectacularly.

28:52

Neil Schwartz

Okay. What can I tell you?

28:54

Dave Almy

Let's. Let's turn our eyes towards sports gambling.

28:57

Neil Schwartz

That's one of my favorite subjects.

28:58

Dave Almy

All right, good. Sorry, let's. Let's dive into this one because obviously now legalized sports gambling is the law of the land. Took place. I think it was 20, 22. 21. 22 when the supreme court struck it down.

29:09

Neil Schwartz

Well, I think 21 or something like that. You know, right now, though, it's online gambling is operational in about 30 states out of the 50. I think in the next three or four years, we'll have probably 48 of the 50 states. All have on, you know, legalized online gambling. So I Think that's going to be an issue. There probably are two states that will never, Utah being one of them. The biggest states that were still Texas and California that do not allow online sports gambling. However, you know, recently, one of the things I do is I sell a lot of data into colleges and universities to give students a chance to, you know, work with real data. And I recently did a presentation for a gr. A group of grad students out in California. And the presentation was around gambling.

29:52

Neil Schwartz

And basically the question that I asked was, or sort of a statement then a question, was sports gambling good for fan engagement? Is it good for sport in general? And, you know, and we talked about, you know, number one, There are approximately 32 million people this country who regularly gamble on sports.

30:13

Dave Almy

And define regularly.

30:15

Neil Schwartz

At least one. I don't even, you know, what, how do I define it? It's a good question. Is that one like once a week maybe? I think it's at least once a year.

30:25

Dave Almy

Okay, once a year. Okay. Once a. Not.

30:27

Neil Schwartz

Yeah, yeah. It's not a. It's you self define in a lot of ways.

30:30

Dave Almy

Very good.

30:31

Neil Schwartz

But. Okay, so, you know, we're seeing, number one, you see people gambling online. You're seeing people gambling brick and mortar casinos. You know, the local bookie is all but dead. Yeah, it's just all but dead.

30:43

Dave Almy

Sorry. Mob.

30:44

Neil Schwartz

Yeah, well, you know, the mob found another way to make money, as you know. I don't know if you follow along with the news, but we'll get to that.

30:50

Dave Almy

We'll get to that.

30:51

Neil Schwartz

Well, we are going to get to that because I'm concerned about a few things.

30:54

Dave Almy

Yeah, okay.

30:54

Neil Schwartz

Number one is that about 3% of all online sports betting is done by underaged people.

31:00

Dave Almy

3%.

31:01

Neil Schwartz

3%. Now you might say, oh, that's only 3%.

31:04

Dave Almy

That's bigger than I would have thought.

31:06

Neil Schwartz

3% of, you know, 30 million is million. Almost a million people.

31:10

Dave Almy

18 and under.

31:11

Neil Schwartz

18. 18 and under. It's not even 21 and under, it's 18.

31:16

Dave Almy

Yeah.

31:16

Neil Schwartz

And the interesting thing is that I did a presentation a couple of months ago for one of the state gambling commissions, and one of the things that, you know, we talked about was. So there's a lot of research. I am not a neurologist, I'm not an epidemiologist, I'm not anything that has the word ologist at the end. But it's common knowledge that the average adult brain doesn't really form or doesn't really, you know, become an adult brain until it's between the ages of 24 and 25.

31:43

Dave Almy

God, I'm 57, man. I'm still open for it.

31:46

Neil Schwartz

I'm a little older than that, but we'll just leave it hang there. But the thing is this the way to gambling Companies advertise. Put $5 in an account and if you win, we'll give you $300 back. Now you're a 19 year old college student. You see that? What are you thinking? Hey, I'm gonna, I have five bucks, you know, I got my parents debit card or my own debit card. I have a fake driver's license. I'll go ahead, I'll sign up for an online gambling account, I'll put my $5 in and hope for the best. And if I win, I'm going to get $300 back. But guess what? You can't take that $300 back. They think they're going to get free money. It doesn't work that way. You know, there is no such thing as free money.

32:34

Neil Schwartz

And the gambling companies know this and what happens is they hook them in with that kind of loss leader or that offer and then you know, here, then all of a sudden they're hooked and all of a sudden, you know, they're into, you know, one of the online gambling companies for thousands of dollars and mom or dad has to come and bail them out. That's a real problem.

32:55

Dave Almy

So gamble, underage gambling is absolutely a problem. I'm a little surprised that it's definitely. Well then again like you know, if there's anything that youth are good at is figuring out ways around barriers that are supposed to be there to beat the system. Yeah, beating the system. But what about it for people who are of age for legal sports gambling?

33:13

Neil Schwartz

Sure.

33:13

Dave Almy

What does it do to their level of engagement? I mean. Well there are, I mean I think we all kind of laugh about it now. Like the whole draftkings and you know, daily gambling ads during football were just like every other ad was for daily gamblings. But what is it doing for fan engagement? How is it putting people and making them absorb their games and consume the games differently?

33:33

Neil Schwartz

So the good news of sports gambling is this. And who gamble are much more engaged. They, they go to more games live, they spend more money on license merch. They, you know, they'll travel to support their teams, you know, they most likely they play fantasy in a lot of ways because fantasy in a lot of ways was the gateway to sports gambling. So they did fantasy first and then jumped up into sports gambling. So there's no question, Dave, no question. My Data supports this 100% that fans who gamble are much more engaged. That's what a team wants. They want an engaged fan because an engaged fan spends more money, and that's what they're in business for.

34:19

Dave Almy

And you just alluded, though, to some of the news that's been coming down of late, and I'm thinking most specifically of the cheating scandal that's been in the papers about the NBA with the Trailblazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier, Heat player, being accused of gambling on games. So, yes, I see how an engaged fan is much more, you know, a gambling fan is a much more engaged fan. But how tenuous is that relationship when you have those kinds of credibility issues, does that present like a cliff. Opportunity?

34:52

Neil Schwartz

You just used the key word that began with a C, and that is credibility. I think, unfortunately, all of these various scandals are not doing sports any favors because sports, when sports loses its credibility, you might as well be the WWE embedding on wrestling, for God's sakes, because it's entertainment value. But, you know, if you have to worry that, you know, a referee has been bought by the mob or that a player, I mean, they're. They're now players that were pitchers that were accused of signaling pitch, you know, what kind of pitches they're going to throw, you know, to a particular batter. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's gotten ridiculous. And unfortunately, I don't know why anybody didn't think this was going to happen. You know, seems like it's pretty normal.

35:39

Neil Schwartz

Well, unfortunately, it's probably been happening under our nose a lot longer than we think. And because we didn't see it or we didn't want to see it, we didn't really. But, you know, recently with this NBA situation, you know, what's unique about this is that they mentioned the mob in the indictment. They don't usually do that. You know, unnamed gamblers or unnamed, you know. No, well, they, like, they mentioned specific, you know, crime families. Yeah, you don't see that too often.

36:05

Dave Almy

You know, sports has always billed itself as unscripted drama and like that, like not knowing what the outcome is going to be. And I think from a gambling perspective, everybody is engaged in sports gambling because they think that they've got a equal opportunity to win because no one knows exactly what's going to happen. And so again, going back to that credibility issue, if people begin to believe that the outcome is prearranged or Fixed, yes. Or fixed that is going to strike at. I think that's going to strike at the heart or people more forget because we've had referee gambling scandals, we've had price point shaving scandals, and the sports have always continued.

36:42

Neil Schwartz

We've had a lot of that over the years. But remember one thing, we didn't have that on, you know, the Internet. The Internet, Dave, has changed everything. Things used to move at the speed of sound. Now they're moving at the speed of light.

36:55

Dave Almy

You know, quantum.

36:56

Neil Schwartz

I mean, you know, when they had sports gambling, it appeared maybe in the New York Times and then it got picked up by, you know, a lot of local newspapers. But who reads the newspapers anymore?

37:04

Dave Almy

So was that word you just used, newspaper? I think I've heard of that.

37:08

Neil Schwartz

You know, the thing is, you know, paper with print on it. But again, you know, because of social media, you know, and the conspiracy nuts that are out there and, you know, literally, you know, if I had my way, I would basically turn the Internet off, except for email, because I think email is the only really good thing the Internet is accounted for. Although I shouldn't say that because there's usually one or two Amazon packages sitting by my door every day. My wife is addicted to Amazon. I have to say, I.

37:37

Dave Almy

We're getting to that season where boxes show up and I'm like, what? I have no idea. What.

37:42

Neil Schwartz

Fast and furious and Fast and furious.

37:43

Dave Almy

Exactly. All right, so sports gambling, I think real, certainly some red flags, good and bad, associated with. Right. It creates engagement. But clearly there is a very tenuous moment between trust. So, you know, I think that's a challenging one. So. But I want to finish one that I think everybody's pretty excited about, which is the rise of women's sports.

38:02

Neil Schwartz

Sure.

38:02

Dave Almy

So, you know, obviously you can't, you know, you open up any sports related business publication, and a lot of it is about the rise of women's sports. We see franchise valuations starting to accelerate at very high levels.

38:16

Neil Schwartz

How can you.

38:18

Dave Almy

What do the data tell you? I'm interested specifically. And how is it, how is a fan who classifies themselves as a woman's sports fan.

38:27

Neil Schwartz

Sure.

38:28

Dave Almy

Manifestly different from someone who I guess we just call a quote unquote, typical sports fan. Is there a delta between the two?

38:34

Neil Schwartz

A little bit, yeah. You know, the typical sports fan is mostly male. About. Well, in our most recent study, in fact, we just did a kind of a report on this that, you know, typically sports fans are 55, 57% male. And the rest, of course Female. Now we're starting to see those numbers change a little bit. We're starting to see, you know, more female fans. Now, you said something earlier that was very important. The cost to go to a game live has gone up considerably. Well, the NBA as an example, as well as other women's sports are a chance for families to be able to go to a live sporting event, see professional athletes at a much lower cost. The tickets are less money. The concessions are less money. It costs less to park.

39:21

Neil Schwartz

They're generally paying it playing in many cases, smaller arenas where it's not as hard to get. It's not as hard. You know, they're not going in the middle of the city, so it's not as difficult to get around. So women's sports has a lot going for it right now. And the biggest thing is that the appeal it has to families. Yeah, and really, I think that's one of the things. I mean, you know, and also, look, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have done a lot for women's sports. There's no question about it. And, you know, we're starting to see, you know, women's professional soccer, you know, kind of get in on the action. I know women's professional hockey would like to get in on the action. I'm not quite seeing that one catch on quite as well. But, you know, we are seeing.

40:01

Neil Schwartz

And you know, the interesting thing is that when you go to a women's. Let me go to a WNBA game, I actually had this argument with a marketing director, added WNBA game. I was at an event and I said, you know, actually the WNBA actually has more male fans than it does female fans. And he said, that is absolutely not right. And I said, you want to bet? I said. Because first of all, he was in.

40:26

Dave Almy

Data and analytics on a statement like that. I don't know.

40:29

Neil Schwartz

This guy was not having it, number one.

40:33

Dave Almy

Am I right, Neil?

40:34

Neil Schwartz

There are just more male fans. It's just. In fact. It's a fact. But when you go to a game and you look in the stands, you still see more men than you do see women. And because number one is that men are latching on to gambling on women's sports. Why that is, I do not know. I don't know if there's been any sort of. When, you know, if there's any sort of ratio that has been done. Because I don't. I don't really track that part. Yeah, but it's just there are more male fans in general and. But that's a law. Large WNBA does a Great job with families. You know, they encourage families to bring their kids, come out to the game. You know, they do a lot of deals with food, you know, which is a big part of going to the game.

41:13

Neil Schwartz

And just, I think they, overall, they have removed a lot of the barriers.

41:18

Dave Almy

If you were looking to take your family to a professional sporting event and an NBA game is. And your kids are younger.

41:26

Neil Schwartz

Yes.

41:27

Dave Almy

And you're looking for a great night out. Yes. And an exciting night out. And you want to go see a sports thing. NBA game is, I'm assuming, over $1,000 to bring a family of four.

41:35

Neil Schwartz

NBI. I think NBA might be a little bit south of that much. The NFL is really NFL far surpassing. Way north of that much.

41:43

Dave Almy

Way north of that. But let's call it $800 if I'm looking to do that. And my kids were really just looking for the excitement. The WNBA provides a great opportunity to be able to do that in a way that, as we talked about, with all the money pouring into sports and consumers becoming squeezed for every nickel that they got that they want to put against sports and entertainment. It's a, It's a powerful and exciting opportunity to do that.

42:06

Neil Schwartz

I mean, you know, before the advent of streaming, I mean, if you wanted to see a lot of these sports and you had, you know, you just didn't have, you know, the money or you just couldn't afford it, I mean, what happens? You go sit up in the nosebleeds and, you know, I think a lot of. A lot of people. You know what? I don't have to go sit up in the nosebleeds. I can sit on my couch. I can sit right on my couch and watch the game via streaming. And guess what? You know, it's. It's nice. It's cozy. I get all the food I want.

42:27

Dave Almy

I know the bathroom's clean.

42:30

Neil Schwartz

Bathroom's clean. Yeah. I can get to it easy. Yeah. So, I mean, the only thing is, I mean, I am. Look, I am a sports fan. Make no mistake about it. I am a Florida Panther season ticket holder. I love hockey. I love the Florida Panthers. But, you know, I do see, you know, good seats, lower bowl and all that can get quite expensive. I mean, you're looking at anywhere from 80 to $100 a ticket. So let's just say you're taking a family of four. So there's, you know, let's just call that $100 times four is $400. Costs $30 to park.

42:59

Dave Almy

Yeah.

42:59

Neil Schwartz

You know, you go to the concession stand. I I mean, literally, I go with one of my friends, we'll get a pretzel, two pretzels and two sodas. And it's like another $25.

43:08

Dave Almy

And I'm like, damn, that's damn good pretzel right there. I bet.

43:11

Neil Schwartz

Better better. Last a long time.

43:14

Dave Almy

I'm with Neil Schwartz. He is the president of sbrnet and the Sports Marketing Analytics. Neil, thanks for spending the time. I feel like this is one we should probably try to do on like a quarterly or in for checking in the latest thing, see what's changing and what the data is telling us. So Neil, appreciate the time.

43:30

Neil Schwartz

You're welcome. I mean, you know, just in case it didn't come through. I love sports. It's what motivates me every day to get out of bed. Sports are fun. So if you want to learn a little bit more about what I do, you know, head over to sbrnet.com we've got a lot of things that are in front of our paywall. You're not going to be able to get at the data that I've been quoting, but you'll be able to get at a lot of other things. Number two is that I am on Instagram, it's sbrnet@sbrnetdata and then I'm also on LinkedIn @sbrnet. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways that you can catch up with us. You know, feel free to reach out to me. I do answer my emails. Neilbrnet.com like I guess I'm a dinosaur that way.

44:09

Dave Almy

Wow, really? No kidding, Dave. I use the AOL.

44:12

Neil Schwartz

I know but you know, Dave, we talked about 30 minutes or so. We're about 50 minutes deep and you know, there's a lot to talk sports.

44:21

Dave Almy

They really are. And look at if you are in sports business, SBR Net in particular is a great resource to be able to check out and sort of get a good sense of data, trends, things that you can use to build cases for what you're doing and support some of the other research you're doing. So Neil, appreciate the time.

44:36

Neil Schwartz

Dave, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on today.

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