Everybody, thank you for joining us for the eleventh Annual MoffettNathanson Media and Communications Conference. And I don't know if this is the-
How many years has it been MoffettNathanson versus another name? Does this count the years when you changed the names?
Well, oh, yeah, that's true. There's a lot of different names.
Yeah.
It was, it was Moffett Research initially, but I think it was MoffettNathanson by the time-
Okay.
’Cause people probably know that Michael was still under contract, and so we had to pretend that.
He was on extended garden leave.
I didn't know he was coming yet.
Okay.
But then, yes, we've had a few detours of other names along the way, and now it's like the return of the original formula of Coke. It's, we're back. So look, I don't know if... I don't think you've been with us all 11 years.
No.
But you've been with us for a lot of them. And so I am delighted to welcome back my friend, Greg Maffei, President and CEO of all things Liberty, I guess.
Thank you.
Greg, I wanna start with a question about John. Because, you know, as John has been gradually stepping back from his everyday role, I just wanted to kind of get a sense of what his current level of involvement is. I imagine he's, no matter what it is, he's still never gonna be shy about making his opinions known.
No, I think, Liberty is largely run on the Socratic method, where, you know, a lot of debates with-
You're on the receiving end of that.
Yeah, a lot of debates with John. No, John is, as you rightly point out, he's not, day-to-day, but obviously, no major decision gets made without John's approval. And frankly, you know, even well before that, John's input is invaluable. John is... One of my prior general counsels, who has since retired, used to call it the frictionless mind. John is somebody who continually weighs the opportunities and possibilities and, you know, sometimes that may lead you to, nothing, but other times, that question could be, " Wow , that, hadn't thought of it that way." And, John is a huge asset, a huge resource, and, I absolutely value his counsel.
And I hope I'm not tipping anything I'm not supposed to say, but I heard from a little birdie that he may have a memoir coming out before too much longer.
Well, he's had one, Cable Cowboy, and I think Mark Robichaux is working on a second one. I don't know what the-
I heard that from Mark, who happened to-
Yeah
... call me the other day, so that's really exciting.
He's been working on that for, like, three years, I think, at least.
'Cause I remember getting interviewed for it a while ago, so.
Well, I can probably speak for everybody in the room saying that there's gonna be some excitement when it comes out. I can't wait to read it. Okay, let's talk about tracking stocks for a second because I think you've made some reasonably big moves. Back in December, there was the split-off in combination with SiriusXM. So you're effectively eliminating that tracking stock. I think that's supposed to close in about, what? 3, another 4 months or something like that.
We said early third quarter, yes.
So, and then, you've also completed the split-off of the Atlanta Braves from Liberty Media. You created the Liberty Live Group tracking stock. Talk about what ties all those things together and the rationale, and then, the one that, as you can imagine, is always top of my mind. You've talked about doing something to eliminate the discount with Liberty Broadband and Charter. Where's your thinking on that one?
So let's go back and say, you know, we find tracking stocks very valuable, because of the ability to optimize for taxes in some cases, the ability to move assets, something we don't, do not do lightly, but it gives us the flexibility to do it. But we've always said that, tracking stocks are somewhat transitory, meaning, you know, ultimately, we recognize that pure plays, asset-backed stocks are likely to trade better in the long term. So we have, in our history, used these things in one way or another, either through tracking stocks or holding companies that got merged up. We've done DIRECTV, we've done Liberty and Expedia, you know, now done Sirius, and there's multiples more on the way otherwise. So on the way on Sirius, we spun off the Braves.
You know, I think over time, a lot of these become their own stories and are better done on their own. But for some cases, like Liberty Live, I think there's an opportunity for us to do more ahead. And so we'll keep it. It's—I don't anticipate that in the near term. Obviously, we have no plan or intent; we would announce that. But I'm just looking at it; there are things I think we can do, and that one's probably more complicated in solving out how to get ourselves out of that in a most tax-efficient manner. You mentioned Liberty Broadband and what we're gonna do there.
We've had basically a model which has been pretty good of, in terms of, you know, capturing the discount by using the cash provided by Charter, as they repurchase and keep us at the 26% level. Our tax leakage is less than the discount, and we've recycled that in to repurchase shares of Liberty Broadband at a more attractive price than they repurchased shares of Charter from us. That slowed a little, because of the pace, as they've found alternative things to do with their capital, which we endorse. They've done attractive things. That slowed a little. I think that will resume. I said on our earnings call, I expect over the long term, the vast majority of our cash flow will be devoted to share repurchase of Liberty Broadband.
In the near term, we might use some of it to reduce debt and maintain more flexibility. I think over the long term, that's share repurchase, and then much the way we've done with some of the other stocks, it seems likely that at some point, Broadband and Charter will be combined or something along those lines.
All right, I'll come back to the Atlanta Braves, but one of the questions I always get is, do you want to do something with the Atlanta Braves and sell it? You know, is there a market timing issue of this is as good as it gets?
You know, that's a great question. There are certainly reasons why, you know, baseball's got issues to figuring out local sports broadcasting, though the Atlanta Braves have a very unique situation there. Over 14 million broadband households, a very popular team with great ratings in the largest territory in the United States. So there are reasons to offset that. You know, there are always issues about, is this the right time or that, but you've seen the value of sports teams continue to rise. That having been said, the one-year anniversary comes up in a couple of months, and we'll see what... You know, we're always trying to be good stewards of the shareholder value, and we'll see what gets presented or not.
All right. Let's, let's, let's segue to my favorite topic, cable. In the past, on this stage, we've talked about fixed wireless and fiber overbuilds, and, you've always expressed confidence that those pressures are gonna lessen at least a little bit, and that, Charter's broadband net adds will grow. So that was the conversation I had with Chris this morning, was that we saw FWA slow down a little bit.
Yep.
We saw fiber slow down a little bit.
Yep.
We've seen FTTH builds get pushed out a little bit.
Yep.
And yet, Charter's net adds got worse instead of better.
Well, I think, if you look at the overall market, it was a very slow quarter for everybody. You know, we all have our reasons to speculate, and that certainly some of it has to be, high interest rates and just lack of move activity. I'm on the Zillow board, so I'm very familiar with what's happened in the market for residential homes. And, you know, 97% of all Americans would have a higher rate if they would move to a new house than they currently sit in, or something along those lines. Just means that there's very little move activity, which makes it harder to try and sell, whether you're selling mobile or you're selling broadband or any other kind of, business out there. Just don't have the opportunities, they're not coming in the stores, you're not getting sales opportunities.
That clearly is some part of it. So I think it was slower for everybody for the reasons we've done. Now, we've talked about. I think overbuilders, and particularly fiber builders, are more impacted than most because they are, in many cases, had high financing needs and expectations. That market has slowed, the cost of building has gone up, so there are a lot of reasons why I think they have slowed. And FWA, we'll see whether they've reached capacity in some markets, or whether the saturation of customers who want that product, which is clearly a, you know, just good enough, would be the argument. Whether that's improved sufficiently or that market is tapped out, but we'll see.
Yeah, you may have seen, to your point about overbuilders, you may have seen that, Apollo and Brightspeed... That Brightspeed was the spin-out from Lumen, have brought in PJT to look at strategic alternatives about the debt stack, I think. So, it doesn't sound like it's a sign of pulling back, but it does sort of signal that with the cost of capital where it is, you can't make money.
Yeah, and I think that one is, you know... I'm not absolutely familiar with, but I think, you know, they're levered, like, about 10x. It's a very high leverage rate for this interest rate environment, for what's going on in their opportunity. Most of these were written with business cases. They were all gonna get 40% shares of the market, and I think that's proving to be more difficult. And it's proving to be more difficult, particularly in a market where you're seeing things like Spectrum One and other competitive products, where people are offering not only a broadband solution, but a wireless solution as well. And I suspect that doesn't make it easier for the fiber overbuilders.
Well, John, John has probably lived through more fiber cycles than anybody-
Yeah
... and seen it from every angle. What's your and John's view about, is this a bubble? Because I've called it a bubble that I think is gonna pop.
I think John would say we go through fiber builders, you know, back to Ameritech, how many fiber overbuilders he's seen, and none of them make any money. Now, they can screw up your business, you know, sufficiently.
That, that Ameritech, by the way, turned into WideOpenWest,
WOW , which is just getting redone.
At 4.7x.
Right. I mean, these and, you know, these things go through cycles of hot and cold. They are, they are a detriment, there's no doubt. We would be better off as an opportunity with less fiber overbuilders, but they run the cycle, and this probably is on the tail end of the cycle, just in terms of, again, what the market financing opportunities has been, what, what the cost of labor has been, the shortage and supply as we do things like, do our high split upgrade. As there are, you know, X amount under BEAD, X amount under, under the, you know, the Trump programs, all of those still coming to pass. There's just competition for capacity that's available in terms of who can do these fiber things. That's all just making their business more difficult.
Similar vein, what's your view, your latest view on the threat from fixed wireless?
Clearly, fixed wireless has proven to be larger than Charter or than Comcast probably anticipated, and we anticipated. How long that cycle runs, how much capacity they have, they've both taken share at the low end and probably expanded the market too. But it has... You know, how far the, the T-Mo says they'll do 7-8 million, how far along we are in that process, how much more they really have to go? Will they increase their capacity? We'll see. The, the math is pretty clear. They get something like 40-50 times per bit on the mobile side, compared to what they get on the FWA side, so this is clearly their second choice of products, not their first choice. We'll see how well they can fill the pipe with the, the first stuff.
I think having T-Mobile gain share in mobile is probably a good thing for us, because it means they're diverting less of their capital to things like FWA.
So bottom line, how confident are you that Charter starts to at least stabilize and hopefully grow its unit broadband growth again?
You know, I think we're confident that they will be have a good financial year, and that they will be stable on growing their their subs, largely driven certainly by the tailwind and BEAD, and those kind of programs. What we do in the core, look, I hope by the back half of the year we're certainly stable, but a little bit TBD.
The other side of that conversation is about ARPU. So even in a world where facilities-based competition does become more intense, it's not like broadband unit growth is gonna be the major driver again, it's about broadband ARPU growth. So as you think about broadband ARPU growth, there's this one narrative that says that-
Here come my friends. They're my PETA friends.
You're doing much better than last year, Craig, don't you?
Yes. Yeah, I got it. I did think about bringing a picture of me with my dog, because when you say our names, it sounded like they were talking about me, and so I just wanted to remind everybody that-
I thought I heard him in the background. It was, I have to say, a little distracting.
I, I, I-
I've seen the movie, so...
But for, for the record, I'm-- my dog and I are really close. So, as I think about ARPU growth, I mean, there is this one narrative that says, at the bottom end of the market, there's pressure from fixed wireless, the top end of the market from fiber. How do you think about growing ARPU in that environment? Are you confident that Charter can grow 3%-4% ARPU growth?
Yeah. So far, I don't think we've seen anything in the market that suggests it's been based on price competition, and as you've written about, there's not only been stability on broadband pricing, there's been stability on mobile pricing. Actually, I think they're okay. I think that the, you know, mobile pricing has been stable, and our ability to price the Spectrum One bundle has looked very attractive and continues well, so.
All right, we will-
I think they can pronounce Liberty Media better than my name. Maybe that's why they keep using that one.
You have long talked about fixed wireless convergence and had a ringside seat in Europe-
Yep
... where, with Liberty Global and Vodafone, and you've been talking about this at least ten years longer than the U.S. market.
Look, I don't have a role at Liberty Global. I'm a bystander, but I get some of the visibility, obviously, through John. Yeah.
So, what's your view about convergence coming to the U.S.? Do you think convergence comes to the U.S. in the way it has in Europe?
Yeah, I think it's already happening, right? If you look at the 8 million subs we have in mobile, continuing growth, I mean, you know, adding, you know, nearly 500,000 a quarter or more, depending on the quarter, that's just gonna go on and on, and I think Comcast the same. We have a very attractively priced proposition, and I think that's just gonna roll forward. And I think you see it the other way, you've seen, to some degree, the mobile players feeling the need to build out their own facilities and extend, you know, potential for a combination, which is what occurred in Europe. I think that's certainly also down the road, maybe not under this regulatory administration, but that's also a potential.
All right. So wrap up with Charter on two questions.
Yep.
First, you mentioned before the capital allocation approach, and that you like what they're doing in rural. But they have scaled back share repurchases at a time when their stock is the lowest it's been in a decade.
Yep.
If anybody has shown an affinity for buying back stock opportunistically, it's you and John. So how do you think about that trade-off, and is there at least some remorse that, "Boy, I wish we were able to buy back a ton of stock right now?
I wish we'd bought back less at higher prices, we'll stipulate to that. That's called math. Look, you wish you had capital for everything. We're in a capital environment, which is dear. By the way, that's one of the reasons why you're seeing, I think, the fiber overbuilders be less aggressive, and there are other things in the market, so there's always a trade-off on this. There is a unique rural opportunity around BEAD, in particular, that is, you know, once in a generation, so we'll try and take advantage of that. And, you know, these don't turn off in a minute, but they are attractively priced opportunities.
Look, if the stock price stays low, you know, Comcast is gonna generate cash, we're gonna generate cash, and I suspect both of us will be share purchasers, even, you know, along the way.
I guess the flip side of the coin is, it's not just you and Comcast that have low valuations, it's the whole sector.
Yep.
So do you see... you know, we've made the point that cable is now trading below replacement cost. Do you see that-
Well, below the mobile operators, which feels like a-
Yes. Well, well, but below the mobile operators, which may seem strange, but below replacement cost, which is really hard to reconcile with-
Fiber overbuilders
... the fact that there's a ton of capital-
Right
... looking for private. Does that-
Well, you know what I always say about a lot of the capital that was in the fiber overbuilders are these infrastructure funds. Infrastructure funds is code for, "We don't need big returns.
... Well, they, they're all predicated, the investment is always predicated on the exit multiple, right? And when-
Well, and, and also gaining big share, right? They're all underwritten on a case of X amount of financing cost, Y amount of construction cost, X amount of share, and multiple expansion. And not, you know, I think those variables do not look as attractive today as they once did.
Does it create the opportunity to be an acquirer, and say, there are assets here that are now cheap enough that we should be looking at adding scale?
Yeah, I think there's, you know, on a case-by-case basis, that might be the case, that Charter would do that, but they're relatively fewer. We don't already have overlap, and, you know, we're frankly better off on these greenfield ones, where we're not, we don't have any competitive issues.
All right, let's talk quickly about GCI before we go to SiriusXM.
Yep.
And that's, you know, if I think of the current proposals for Alaska, GCI is gonna be maybe the best-positioned recipient of BEAD money anywhere.
It is well-positioned to get BEAD money, though there are other programs that are not necessarily as favorable because it's, you know, funding native corporations or other entities in Alaska, that some of it's competitive. The environment is different in Alaska for a bunch of reasons. We don't have a lot of FWA competition, we're not an MVNO, we are a true MNO, so the business is different. We are a massive beneficiary to building out, as you rightly pointed out, in some of these places. Our competition is not, as I said, FWA, but in some of the remote places, Starlink and things like that. So it's a different, it's a different market for a bunch of reasons. Very stable, very high ARPU, very high cost of construction, very high cost of service.
It's just the nature of the breadth of the place and, you know, weather conditions.
Would you do fixed wireless yourself, or if you're gonna participate, would it be through a wired infrastructure?
I think it'll be through these federal programs funding infrastructure, rather than us doing FWA.
Got it. All right. Let's, let's talk about SiriusXM. Self-pay net adds were down 359 this quarter.
Yeah.
Self-paid, self-paid churn ticked higher by 10 basis points. This time last year, you had net adds about the same, but you improved over the course of the year. It was still negative 445 for the year. How do I think about those trends? And both near term and longer term, as to where that business is going.
Yeah, look, I think the shape of the year will be the same. It... The quarters will get better as we go out through the year. I think the financial results will still be very strong because in the face of a slow environment, and a bunch of issues around mix and how many new vehicles there are, we have reset the cost base attractively there. We do have some CapEx for both satellites and other technology programs, which will decline over the next several years, and I do think we'll be able to get back on track for self-pay net adds growing, partly through the launch of our new app, partly through the greater take-up on 360L, our two-way capabilities in the car.
So I think there are a bunch of trends that we're gonna work through over the next year or so that are positive.
So, as somebody who, admittedly, I don't spend a huge amount of time looking at that business, but when I look at the numbers, how much of it is your new pricing? How much of it is the macroeconomy and the auto market? And how much of it is just a fundamental change in consumer behavior and the way that they're consuming media in the car?
So I'll try and unpack that. I think there are a bunch of factors. First, you know, we have seen over time a decline in the conversions of our free trials, and that's expected, you know, as we go deeper into the number of cars. When we got involved 14 years ago, we were in 67% of cars, now we're in 82% or 83% of cars. And as you get deeper into the car, you would expect you convert better on high-end cars than you do on lower-end cars. But clearly, there's more competition, and we need to continue to show our relevance to a younger demo as they move into that car market. This was originally built for 40-year-old males. Those 40-year-old males are now 60-year-old males.
We need to make sure that the new 40-year-olds are finding our stuff attractive, and we do. There's also clearly more competition, new services, and new ways to connect in the car. What we're doing around 360L, as I mentioned, our two-way capability, is very powerful, and what we're doing on our own app, the new launch we had, is very powerful. All of those, I think, will help us curtail some of the conversion issues. You mentioned pricing, that's clearly one of the impacts. We do not have a problem passing along price increases to a big hunk of our audience, but we have somewhat of a barbell, where we have people who are relatively price indifferent. You know, Craig, hopefully you have in your car, and you don't really notice if we raise $0.50.
Hopefully, you have it in multiple cars, is what I'd like to hear. But we also have a very cost-conscious group at the bottom, who are very sensitive. Our ability to change the model for them and make it not only a pay service, but perhaps an ad-supported service, and bring some of the capabilities we have now to them, creates an interesting pricing opportunity, where you're not necessarily saying, "I'm gonna raise your price, but I'm gonna give you some ads to offset some of the fact you have that low price." That's one of the interesting ways we can combat and look at maintaining a better ARPU without really pressing up prices quite as much.
Does the $9.99 streaming service potentially cannibalize the premium in-car service?
I don't think so. I really do think that's more separate. I think the bigger issue is what's cannibalized as pricing or ARPU rather is, you know, people getting in the habit of saying: "No, I don't wanna, I'm not gonna subscribe. I'm not gonna renew." And we say, "Okay," you know, they get a discounted program to try and hold them back. I think that's been more of the issue.
Has the used car market tracked the way you would've thought and hoped? Is that-
Used car market has been great. I mean, look, we have not added new cars in the United States. Again, when we got involved in 2009, I think the new car market was 8 or 9 million in the middle of the Great Recession. It peaked at about 17, and now we're sort of 14, 15 over the last couple of years. What's changed and what's been the big driver of growth in the last few years, has been... And what was really, when we underwrote the business case, was the used car market, where, you know, we now are installed in, I don't know, 125 million cars. We only have 35 million subscriptions-ish.
So you look and say, all these cars, the opportunity to resell them for no installation cost, just light them back up, that's been the huge opportunity. And we continue to gain share in the used car market. That's one of the interesting opportunities.
So as I just think about where it's trading today, I think it's down 43% or something since the beginning of the year. It less relative to a year ago, 'cause it, it's sort of been up and down, but-
Right.
But what part of the story is underappreciated by investors?
Well, one of the questions I would have that I don't think we know the answer to, how much of this has been market-driven by, you know, collapsing the discount? They've come down more to our price than we going up to theirs, in terms of LSXM versus SXM. How much of that is market movements around the, around the deal and less fundamentals? Unclear. But I think we need to show that we can grow, we need to show that we can start SPNA, and the self -pay net adds growing again. That's gonna be the, a little like the broadband story at Charter. That's the, that's what the market is looking for. It's serious.
Let's talk Live Nation.
Yeah.
So Live Nation is arguably a victim of its own success, just with the reports that the DOJ is preparing an antitrust lawsuit. What's your current understanding of the situation, and what do you think investors should take away as the regulatory risk here?
Well, I think, you know, this has been an ongoing saga where the, you know, about every time we're about ready to announce earnings, there's another release that the coming—a leak, that they're pending antitrust action. Clearly, they have been looking at Live Nation, Ticketmaster, for a long time. I would remind all of you, we've had a monitor in place, which is a DOJ-appointed monitor for 14 years. And there's basically a phone line, a 1-800 line, an internet line, internet address, where you can send your complaints to why, how Live Nation, Ticketmaster is acting inappropriately. So for 14 years, that's existed. The DOJ has, you know, preliminarily had some meetings with us and told us some of their potential complaints, not necessarily, their final list.
You know, I don't think any of those rise up to the level of some of the remedies that have been publicly proposed, but we'll see. Is it possible that, you know, just the way that the DOJ has brought action against other companies, that'll be brought against Live Nation, Ticketmaster? Remains to be seen, but we believe our, the behaviors we've exhibited are within the law, and that we will continue to operate the business successfully going forward, regardless of the DOJ's proposed restrictions.
Yeah, so if I skip over the antitrust issues, I mean, revenue was up 36% year-over-year, and I get the sense that this kind of rebound from COVID was not sort of one and done.
No.
We're still rebounding.
You know, the benefit of this business is you can see, a little like Formula 1, you can see a long way out. You know, we know what the demand is for all the 2024 concerts, and we're really getting all the demand for the 2025 concerts already. So you can see how that's sold out, and we continue to see strong demand. A lot of tailwinds around things like the Platinum Program, which is basically exposing a higher percentage of the ticket base to market pricing, and letting the artists get the benefit of that, rather than scalpers. That really got rolled out in the U.S., and then Europe, and now potential to continue to roll out in bigger numbers in Latin America.
All of those have given tailwind, tailwind around per caps, meaning what people are willing to spend at an event, tailwind around what the average ticket price is, part of that around the Platinum, as I suggested. But demand, most importantly, remains strong, and people wanna go and see their favorite artist.
And how much international-
I think, you know, just one more thing I'd say, Mike Rapino's shown a great, you know. At our Investor Day, showed a great funnel about how much Bad Bunny has, how many people follow Bad Bunny, and then, you know, what percentage of them have to show that, "I wanna go buy a Bad Bunny ticket," and it's not an enormous percentage.
Pretty small.
Yeah.
And how much growth comes from international, you think, as you look out?
Very positive. One of the things I'd note about the Live Nation business, which is you—very different than a lot of other sort of U.S.-based, you know, IP businesses. You know, Spotify can't charge in India or in Argentina what they charge for in the U.S. But you know, Taylor Swift gets her price in every one of those countries, and it doesn't get discounted. So that's a very different kind of orientation. The globalization of these kind of artists, both ways, international artists coming to the U.S., but U.S. artists going overseas, all at good pricing, is very attractive for Live Nation.
And by the way, it does seem like the—at least this is my segment-of-one self-research—the getting tickets relatively, as opposed to everything getting sold to the scalpers, seems to be getting better. It seems like the efforts that you've made have actually worked.
I think they have. I mean, there is more that clearly could be done here, but the scalping lobby is a very effective lobby in ensuring there isn't electronic tickets and some of the things that can be done that would absolutely reduce the amount of scalping. But artists have been willing to take back that and say, "I'll take that price," and, you know, that percentage that they're willing to sell. Historically, artists felt very uncomfortable charging what could have arguably been the market price. Those restrictions, that self-imposed restriction, has gone away in a lot of cases, and they're willing to sell more of that at market prices. And guess what? The market is therefore more efficient.
Let's talk about Formula 1. I wish my son was here, the big Formula 1 fan that I talk about every year as he brings his friends, and they watch 3:00 A.M. races in Dubai, in bars in New York, and-
Thank God!
There's been such success in growing the U.S. fan base. But has it reached a plateau? You know, what inning are we in, in U.S. interest in Formula 1?
Look, hard, hard to know, you know, projecting that. But I'll give you, you know, all the statistics we can show around reach continue to grow, and, people have questioned, you know, growth in linear television. We had the largest, weekend we ever had of a U.S. race in this Miami race, 3.1 million. I think the first year we did 2.5, and last year we did 1.9 or something. We did 3.1 in the U.S., for this, the race, in Miami. New excitement, obviously, having Lando win and create new excitement is good. But we continue to see, you know, excellent demand on all sorts of measures around reach and how much fans are engaged.
So, I think competitive racing can only help, but there doesn't appear to be a cessation of interest.
How has the relationship with the teams evolved over time as, you know, as you get ready to head into the next Concorde Agreement?
So, you know, it's really funny, when the teams' prior management before Liberty went out of their way to basically have the teams kind of screw each other, that was the whole attitude. And we've tried to take more of the full credit to Roger Goodell, the, you know, fight on Sunday, but on Monday we're all together. This is one league, and we do better if we rise together. And I really do think there's much more of that attitude. That doesn't mean there's less in competition, but I think the teams have appreciated that Liberty is playing the long game and trying to grow the sport because that's how we all profit. So in general, the sentiment around the teams towards Formula 1 management is very good, and very positive.
We have just sent out the new draft of our proposed Concorde Agreement. There's been some discussion with some teams about it and where it'll go, and so we have reason to think it should be relatively easier. I'm sure there are teams who will want more money than we want to give them. There's always that tension. But I do believe the goodwill that we've created and the general fact that they're all not only making more money, remember, off of Formula 1, but on their own sponsorship deals, have been tremendously stronger. Go look at the success of sponsorship at Red Bull, McLaren, even Ferrari now with their new HP deal. The teams are doing very well to where they were before we got involved, so I think that hopefully that goodwill carries forward.
You just announced the MotoGP acquisition last month.
Yeah.
What are the synergies there? And, you know, for example, is it the same sponsors? Is it a different, will you be able to do sponsorships across both and that sort of thing, or is it different track requirements and things? So, talk about how synergistic it is.
First, let's be clear, they'll be run as separate businesses, and regulatorily, we will not try and combine them, so there won't be package deals. Not only for regulatory-
Even for advertisers.
Even for advertisers. Not only regulatorily, but the nature of it is, remember, the teams are our partners in Formula 1. There's a different relationship with the teams in MotoGP. The teams would rightly question, you know, if we had a broad deal across both, how did it get allocated?
Allocated, yeah.
Was it fairly allocated enough to F1, where they're 50/50 partners or whatever it is on... You know, it's more like 60/40, but on the margin, who knows? And over to, versus MotoGP, where we have more of a fixed relationship with the teams, are we treating them fairly? So both for regulatory reasons and for the structure of the business, that is not gonna happen. What I think we saw was really pattern recognition, which is, this is incredible racing. I don't know if any of you watched it, but you know, the average difference, the average time of the winner over the second place rider is 1 second. There are 9 teams that are within 10 points of each other or something, or 25 points of each other, excuse me, 9 riders within 25 points of each other. Incredibly competitive racing.
You see things like Maverick Viñales in Austin, the most recent race in the U.S., start first, fall to ninth, and then get back to first. I only wish we had that amount of overtaking in Formula 1.
Yeah, I would say in Formula 1, is there a competitive parity problem in Formula 1 right now?
Thank Lando. No, that was a good win. But there is a lot of variety of racers and a lot of overtaking and very exciting racing. I think frankly, this is a sport which is thrilling but has not really been exposed in the U.S. The strength has been in Southern Europe, particularly Spain, Italy, and France. The U.S. numbers, one race in the U.S., which has a fraction of the audience of a U.S. race, both in terms of who attends and in terms of what they get paid. The opportunity to grow in the U.S., I think, is interesting. You rightly note that because of the safety issues, you will not have street races. You cannot race motorcycles at over 200 miles an hour on streets. You need run outs. These people, these riders wear kangaroo suits, and...
When they crash, they skid literally 100 or 200 yards in a kangaroo suit. That's not, you know, you can't let them skid into a side of a building. That doesn't work, so they need runouts. But there are places already, like Austin, where they both race. There are, I think we currently have 5 locations where we have overlap, and you could imagine optimization around some of those, and you could imagine us also bringing in new races at other tracks. We're not gonna be able to pull off a Vegas, but we could pull off other locations.
So I think some of the pattern, growing the storytelling, increasing the breadth, and recognition across broadcasters, increasing the audience by, continually upgrading the experience at races, perhaps trying to find ways to be synergistic around letting the promoters leverage their facilities, all of those are interesting. So we looked at this and said: "This looks a lot like what we found with Formula 1. We think there's a great opportunity. This doesn't need to be changed, this needs to be exposed to the world.
I'm gonna skip over whether there's a Drive to Survive analogy.
Ride to Survive, you heard it here.
Ride to Survive. We talked about the Braves before, but-
Yep
... Bally Sports has got, is blacked out with Comcast right now, and it seems like that is now so normal in the course of business with RSNs, to have blackouts everywhere. One part of it is, and part of that is about the perennial issue of moving it to a premium tier-
Right
... sports tier, and that sort of thing. I know we talk about this every year, but what's the future of RSNs, and is there a future of RSNs? Because it would seem like it's so fundamental to the value of sports franchises.
Look, I think you'll... You know, we'll see whether how Diamond is able to get out of its bankruptcy, whether they're able to exit successfully. I think that's an open question. You know, the projections they put forward have assumptions about both linear and direct DTC kind of capabilities that are. We'll see if that's successful. I don't. I'm not sure that's clear that that gets out. Longer term, I think you're right to ask how this works. I look at the Braves in particular, and I feel pretty good about our position. The Braves have 14.5 million broadband households, the largest territory in the United States, more homes and more states than any other franchise or territory in any major U.S. sport.
We have high, high, high participation at our facility, running 94%, the highest in baseball, probably. We certainly were the highest last year, and I think we'll probably be the highest again this year. We have great ratings and a high degree of fan interest. If we had to replace the RSN deal we have, I think the management team is confident that they could replace that. And, you know, the team is profitable, quite profitable, so our risk, it's certainly not like we're gonna go to a non-profitable status based on that. So we are perhaps unique in being, you know, with that big a territory and the opportunity to monetize it in other ways.
While it may not be a direct portfolio question, I always love to get your perspective on the media landscape, and in particular, on streaming.
Yep.
I ask you every year, do you and John think streaming is a good business? You've got a pretty interesting perch to see it from.
I think 5 years ago or 7 years ago, whenever it was, in our Investor Day, we went and described it as a circular firing squad, you were probably there. I think that's been right. You know, one guy has reached apogee, Netflix, and exploded into a profitable business. Is there room for a couple more? Probably, but the bloodbath to get there has been brutal, and there are clearly too many players, and they're not of a sufficient scale. So somewhere down the road, will this be a good business for somebody? Yes, but the carnage to get there was one we certainly couldn't stomach. And, you know, with the smallest position we have, you need to have scale, and you need to have great intellectual property.
Now I'm gonna wrap up by asking what I always ask, which is, because you and John get to look across sort of everything, whether it's every business, every geography, where do you see opportunity today that makes you think, "Wow, we should be doing more of that?" Is it country? Is it an asset class? Is it-
Look, I think we outlined at our Investor Day, and I still hold to it, where we've done well recently is around these premium IP, differentiated things like the Braves, like Live Nation, like Formula One, and now like MotoGP, where you have a unique asset and a unique ability to bring fans and make them your customers, find new ways to monetize that, find new ways to expose that to the world. That feels a lot more protected and a lot more where we can leverage the strengths we've had than it, than being in some of the traditional media classes. Around that, we've also been able to look at sort of ancillary businesses, example being Quint, where you're really bringing high-end hospitality, bringing high-end experiences.
So if you've got a Formula One wheel or a Live Nation wheel spinning at this, you put the little wheel next to it, it spins faster because you get the leverage off of it. And I think those are the kind of places where we have demonstrated strength, and we can tell a story which is very good to potential partners and are potential acquiring or businesses we wish to acquire.
It's not lost on anybody that if you think about the very long-term trajectory of your company, there's been a general migration toward live experiences. We just had a great conversation with Ben Thompson upstairs of Stratechery about AI. As you think about AI across the landscape, does it change your view of saying: "I want to make sure I stay away from these businesses or invest in these businesses?" Or how do you think about what AI is gonna do to the asset classes that you play in?
Well, I think, I don't know if we're protected, but there's a limitation on how much you're gonna be able to have AI replicate the experience that, you know, a live event is. It's still gonna be the case that, you know, you wanna see a Formula One car, you wanna see, you know, a live concert. I think those are hard-to-replicate experiences. AI might enhance them, may create new ways to reach your customers, may create new ways for the customers to understand the product and reach it, but I don't think it's gonna replicate it, and I think it is, if not totally protected, it has a more interesting perch from which to look at them.
We could go on for a long time. I always love these conversations. It's a great way to end the day here for me. I think we've got another great session coming up next with Doug Shapiro, but can't thank you enough for being here.
Thank you.
So thank you, and-