Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Chair, Ending Six-Decade Run
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- 0:24Speaker 1: Paul, you mentioned the big news over at Berkshire Hathaway.
- 0:27Speaker 1: Warren Buffett stepping down as the chairman. He had already
- 0:29Speaker 1: stepped down as CEO. So this was kind of the
- 0:32Speaker 1: last senior role he held before he really moves into
- 0:35Speaker 1: retirement at this point. Matthew Palazzola covers insurance companies. He's
- 0:39Speaker 1: our senior analyst on PNC insurance here at Bloomberg Intelligence. Matthew,
- 0:44Speaker 1: this is more symbolic than practical. I mean, does this
- 0:47Speaker 1: change anything for Berkshire Hathaway?
- 0:48Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's a good read on it. I think-
- 0:52Speaker 5: But Buffett had said this a couple of years ago.
- 0:55Speaker 5: He said, I care more about the Berkshire after I'm
- 0:57Speaker 5: gone than the Berkshire while I'm here. So I think
- 1:00Speaker 5: you're seeing a lot of what he's doing in that vein.
- 1:04Speaker 2: Right.
- 1:11Speaker 5: He's been blunt about his mortality. I don't think he
- 1:14Speaker 5: wanted to die in the chair as chairman for what
- 1:18Speaker 5: that would mean for the company. He's 96. He's walking
- 1:23Speaker 5: with a cane. I think he just said, it's the
- 1:25Speaker 5: time for me to move away, and the plan has
- 1:28Speaker 5: already been in place, so let's implement it.
- 1:31Speaker 3: How much is investable cash on the balance sheet now?
- 1:34Speaker 5: A little north of $ 320 billion, I believe.
- 1:36Speaker 3: That's what I was going to go with, north of $ 300.
- 1:38Speaker 3: I don't know what you do with that kind of money.
- 1:43Speaker 3: The day after Mr. Buffett passes away, Greg Abel, will
- 1:47Speaker 3: he change, I don't know, how they think about deploying
- 1:51Speaker 3: that capital, whether it's being more aggressive, strategic acquisitions? Returning
- 1:55Speaker 3: to shareholders, some kind of plan to do that. How
- 1:59Speaker 3: do you see that happening?
- 2:00Speaker 5: Yeah, I think so. Buffett's son is going to be
- 2:05Speaker 5: the chairman.
- 2:05Speaker 6: Right.
- 2:06Speaker 5: So I think part of that is keeping the ethos
- 2:10Speaker 5: of Berkshire in place. So you mentioned returning to shareholders.
- 2:14Speaker 5: I think that's probably not in the cards anytime soon,
- 2:17Speaker 5: even after Buffett would be gone. Abel has come out
- 2:22Speaker 5: and said he's not really a big fan of Berkshire
- 2:24Speaker 5: paying a dividend. I think over the long term, they
- 2:30Speaker 5: may decide to do something. Abel's been fairly aggressive deploying capital.
- 2:34Speaker 5: It's just they have so much of it that it
- 2:36Speaker 5: doesn't make that much of a dent.
- 2:37Speaker 3: I just kind of did the bio on Howard Buffett.
- 2:40Speaker 3: The gentleman's 71 years old.
- 2:42Speaker 2: Right.
- 2:43Speaker 1: He's not going to be there forever. Yeah, it's interesting.
- 2:48Speaker 3: And because Warren's 96, there you go.
- 2:50Speaker 5: So Howard's been on the board for 33 years, so
- 2:53Speaker 5: it's not like he hasn't been part of this company.
- 2:55Speaker 5: It's been on other boards. He was on the board
- 2:57Speaker 5: of Coke. Buffett did say, bluntly again— And Howard's number
- 3:02Speaker 5: one criteria for being the chairman was being Warren's son.
- 3:08Speaker 5: So he didn't kind of mince words with that. And
- 3:11Speaker 5: I think all of that is keeping with the spirit
- 3:14Speaker 5: of Berkshire. Greg Abel's going to run the company. Howard
- 3:16Speaker 5: Buffett's not going to make operational decisions. But Greg Abel
- 3:20Speaker 5: will be in charge.
- 3:21Speaker 1: Greg Abel, 64 years old, so younger than the son.
- 3:25Speaker 1: But I'm looking at the age of the board, and
- 3:28Speaker 1: they're all in their 70s, it looks like. I mean,
- 3:30Speaker 1: you've got a couple of people in their 60s. Chris
- 3:32Speaker 1: Davis is 61 years old. He looks like he's the
- 3:34Speaker 1: youngest guy. Do you expect any kind of change in
- 3:37Speaker 1: the board makeup at some point? Because as we're saying,
- 3:41Speaker 1: Warren Buffett's son- Howard is kind of getting up there
- 3:45Speaker 1: and Greg Gable, if he wants to be able to
- 3:47Speaker 1: kind of have some room to do stuff, you know,
- 3:49Speaker 1: he needs the blessing of the board.
- 3:50Speaker 5: I think so. I think perhaps over time, I mean,
- 3:52Speaker 5: to be, to be totally honest, I don't have a
- 3:54Speaker 5: ton of visibility into the bench of the board.
- 3:57Speaker 1: That's fair.
- 3:57Speaker 5: But yeah, I would see, you know, everyone getting on
- 4:01Speaker 5: in age. You see a G. Jane who is in
- 4:03Speaker 5: charge of the insurance operations selling a lot of his shares.
- 4:05Speaker 1: 75.
- 4:06Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 4:07Speaker 5: So he's been he's been selling down shares. So there
- 4:10Speaker 5: will be a change of the guard. I would expect, though,
- 4:14Speaker 5: everything to be gradual as it's been.
- 4:17Speaker 3: And the lead director is Sue Decker, who I know.
- 4:20Speaker 3: She was a sell-side research analyst at DLJ, and we
- 4:23Speaker 3: acquired DLJ at Credit Suisse. Super talented woman and has
- 4:27Speaker 3: had a great career. So she's the lead director there.
- 4:31Speaker 3: All right, let's, enough, because every time we bring him
- 4:33Speaker 3: in here, we talk about Warren Buffett. Let's talk about
- 4:36Speaker 3: property and casualty stocks. What's the number one theme for
- 4:39Speaker 3: you and your investors in insurance stocks?
- 4:41Speaker 5: Yeah, I think so. Going into the year, I was
- 4:45Speaker 5: more negative on the stocks. ROEs looked like they were
- 4:48Speaker 5: on a downward trajectory. The underwriting results have been better
- 4:52Speaker 5: than expected. And potentially interest rates being higher for longer
- 4:56Speaker 5: are good things for property casualty insurance stocks, particularly within financials.
- 5:00Speaker 5: So they don't have, it's not spread business. They kind
- 5:02Speaker 5: of just do better from higher interest rates. So moderately
- 5:05Speaker 5: more positive on the group through the year.
- 5:09Speaker 1: So it's just a better operating and investing environment for them.
- 5:11Speaker 5: Better investing environment and the operating environment not gotten as
- 5:16Speaker 5: bad as I thought it would get. And we've also
- 5:18Speaker 5: had a very mild hurricane season.
- 5:20Speaker 1: How much pricing power do they have going forward, given
- 5:23Speaker 1: where inflation is and how stretched consumers feel right now?
- 5:26Speaker 5: So on the primary insurance side, prices go up, down. 10%
- 5:32Speaker 5: is probably the most. I mean, it's an inelastic business.
- 5:35Speaker 5: People have to buy the product. So they have pricing power,
- 5:39Speaker 5: but it's also a cyclical business. So prices have been
- 5:43Speaker 5: going down, and we expect them kind of maybe to
- 5:46Speaker 5: flatten over time.
- 5:48Speaker 1: How much switching around between different insurance carriers is there actually?
- 5:51Speaker 1: I mean, people talk about it like they want to
- 5:53Speaker 1: do it, but it takes a lot of effort.
- 5:55Speaker 5: On the personal line side, so in home and auto,
- 5:58Speaker 5: there's a lot more, and those companies are seeing that.
- 6:00Speaker 5: On the commercial line side, which would be like Chubb
- 6:04Speaker 5: and Travels, they have big commercial businesses, probably not as
- 6:07Speaker 5: much shopping. But on the personal lines, I'm sure you're
- 6:09Speaker 5: seeing your rates go up, and that leads to people
- 6:11Speaker 5: shopping their insurance.
- 6:13Speaker 3: Stay with us.
- 6:13Speaker 4: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this. You're listening
- 6:20Speaker 4: to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at
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- 6:34Speaker 1: This is one of the most read stories on the
- 6:36Speaker 1: Bloomberg terminal today. And I knew that she was working
- 6:38Speaker 1: on this for a couple of weeks because she told
- 6:40Speaker 1: me about it. Janet Lauren is our Bloomberg higher ed
- 6:43Speaker 1: finance reporter here at Bloomberg. And Janet, you write about
- 6:47Speaker 1: football suites in Kansas for $ 860, 000 and how the food
- 6:55Speaker 1: that's available, crab cakes, smoked ribs, Cobb salad, macaroons, there's beer,
- 6:59Speaker 1: there's wine, there's all kinds of fancy alcohol.
- 7:01Speaker 3: Can we just get a hot dog and a beer? No?
- 7:03Speaker 1: Probably. This is college football. These are college football stadiums.
- 7:06Speaker 1: These are not professional football stadiums.
- 7:08Speaker 5: Yep.
- 7:09Speaker 3: Professional.
- 7:09Speaker 1: They look pretty professional, though. And this all has to
- 7:12Speaker 1: do with the new era of college sports and the
- 7:14Speaker 1: fact that we now have college players getting paid like professionals.
- 7:19Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit more about your reporting.
- 7:21Speaker 6: So there.
- 7:22Speaker 3: Yes.
- 7:23Speaker 6: Colleges are now paying players, and because of that, they're
- 7:26Speaker 6: looking for revenue everywhere they can get it. And one
- 7:30Speaker 6: way they see revenue is through stadiums. They're taking a
- 7:34Speaker 6: page from professional sports, and they see that people are
- 7:39Speaker 6: willing to pay a lot of money for these tickets, experiences,
- 7:42Speaker 6: fancy food, fancy sweets, fancy everything.
- 7:47Speaker 3: And your story is... It's not you didn't go to
- 7:49Speaker 3: like University of Alabama or Penn State or Ohio State
- 7:52Speaker 3: with the Kansas. Kansas is hoops. They're not football. But
- 7:56Speaker 3: even Kansas to stay competitive is making huge upgrades to fund,
- 8:01Speaker 3: as you said, the new economics of big time college sports,
- 8:04Speaker 3: which is you got to pay for these players now.
- 8:06Speaker 1: Exactly.
- 8:07Speaker 6: And Kansas had somebody to lean on, a really prominent
- 8:12Speaker 6: alumnus named David Booth, who was here a couple weeks ago.
- 8:16Speaker 6: He worked in the stadium as a teenager. And he
- 8:21Speaker 6: had also spent a lot of money to help basketball.
- 8:25Speaker 6: He bought something related to Naismith or Kansas. And they
- 8:31Speaker 6: asked him, can you help us with this stadium? And
- 8:34Speaker 6: he said, look, we can build more suites. We can
- 8:39Speaker 6: help the team.
- 8:39Speaker 3: And he said it.
- 8:40Speaker 6: Wasn't really a hard sell. And he's 79, probably thinking
- 8:44Speaker 6: about what to do with all of his money. And
- 8:47Speaker 6: there you go.
- 8:48Speaker 3: And he gave money to the University of Chicago Business School,
- 8:50Speaker 3: which is now the Booth School of Business.
- 8:51Speaker 1: That's right. So that Booth name is pretty prominent among
- 8:54Speaker 1: Wall Street folks. There's also some legislation, Janet, you say,
- 8:58Speaker 1: that could also supercharge this kind of spending. Tell us
- 9:02Speaker 1: a little bit more about this Protect College Sports Act.
- 9:05Speaker 6: So the Protect College Sports Act is moving its way
- 9:08Speaker 6: through the Senate. It had cleared some hurdles this week.
- 9:13Speaker 6: The main sponsor is Ted Cruz, and he has a
- 9:16Speaker 6: bipartisan co-sponsor, Maria Cantwell. And the bill would put some
- 9:21Speaker 6: guardrails on college sports. Most notably, people are most upset
- 9:27Speaker 6: about the transfer portal. Because students are leaving after one year,
- 9:32Speaker 6: and they're basically free agents. They could go to the
- 9:35Speaker 6: next college for a bigger NIL deal. So if you
- 9:40Speaker 6: look at Indiana, the team was constructed with transfer students.
- 9:46Speaker 6: They won football for the first time ever.
- 9:49Speaker 3: Michigan.
- 9:50Speaker 6: Entire team in basketball constructed with transfers and they won.
- 9:55Speaker 6: And their coach left to go to the pros because
- 9:58Speaker 6: what a headache.
- 9:59Speaker 2: To have to struggle.
- 10:00Speaker 3: Over all again.
- 10:01Speaker 1: Yeah, from scratch.
- 10:02Speaker 6: So this bill would put some guardrails limiting transfers and
- 10:07Speaker 6: then also create a retention fund. to help pay players,
- 10:13Speaker 6: you know, to sort of give them an incentive to stay.
- 10:16Speaker 1: So that's one of the biggest. Not surprisingly, the players
- 10:20Speaker 1: don't love.
- 10:21Speaker 6: That idea because they would like to do whatever they want. But,
- 10:25Speaker 6: you know, very different from professional sports where you have
- 10:27Speaker 6: a contract.
- 10:29Speaker 3: So what's happened?
- 10:31Speaker 6: I mean.
- 10:32Speaker 3: The sport's gotten way ahead of any kind of legislation,
- 10:34Speaker 3: any kind of controls, and so we're just trying to
- 10:36Speaker 3: catch up here. And this bill sounds like it might
- 10:38Speaker 3: be a good first step, but the reality is just
- 10:40Speaker 3: even in the Big Ten football, schools like Rutgers, University
- 10:43Speaker 3: of Maryland, they can't compete even remotely with Ohio State,
- 10:48Speaker 3: Penn State, Michigan, just from a budget perspective. It's simple money.
- 10:53Speaker 3: And even in these big power conferences— There's two or
- 10:57Speaker 3: three schools that dominate.
- 10:59Speaker 1: Kind of like the L.A.
- 10:59Speaker 2: Dodgers.
- 11:00Speaker 3: And everybody else. And so the question I think the NCAA, well,
- 11:05Speaker 3: the NCAA should be asking is, is this the structure
- 11:07Speaker 3: we want?
- 11:08Speaker 1: Well, that's the other question. Where is the NCAA in this?
- 11:10Speaker 1: Do they even play a role or are their hands
- 11:13Speaker 1: kind of up in the air because now we're in
- 11:14Speaker 1: the era of paying players?
- 11:15Speaker 6: Yeah, they don't really have an official role, but they
- 11:19Speaker 6: have done some things.
- 11:20Speaker 1: Like approved a jersey patch.
- 11:22Speaker 3: They did that earlier this year.
- 11:24Speaker 6: So now schools could sell a jersey patch, but not
- 11:27Speaker 6: during the March Madness.
- 11:28Speaker 1: Those are such small dollar signs.
- 11:30Speaker 6: No, but some of these deals are not insignificant. Like
- 11:34Speaker 6: JPM signed a deal with Ohio State for like $ 17
- 11:38Speaker 6: million a year. And when you're trying to add in
- 11:41Speaker 6: a lot of deals to get to that $ 50 million,
- 11:46Speaker 6: they're thrilled for everything. Lots of logos on the courts,
- 11:50Speaker 6: on the fields now.
- 11:52Speaker 3: It's like a European football club. Yeah, it's the Wild
- 11:55Speaker 3: West out there, and it's really bad. And I think
- 11:58Speaker 3: for those people that appreciate what's special about college athletics,
- 12:02Speaker 3: it's really bad.
- 12:03Speaker 1: Do we need a national sports star in this country?
- 12:05Speaker 2: No.
- 12:06Speaker 3: I just say, Coach Saban, let's just get him in here.
- 12:09Speaker 3: Coach K, I don't know, somebody get in there and
- 12:10Speaker 3: just kind of put some reasonableness into it.
- 12:13Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 12:20Speaker 4: This is Bloomberg Intelligence with Scarlett Fu and Paul Sweeney
- 12:25Speaker 4: on Bloomberg Radio.
- 12:27Speaker 1: OK, it is Friday, which means it's time to bring
- 12:29Speaker 1: in Randall Williams. He's our business of sports senior reporter.
- 12:33Speaker 1: And there's so many stories to follow here today and
- 12:35Speaker 1: this week. I want to start with the one that's
- 12:37Speaker 1: on our top worldwide page, which is Kylian Mbappe, the
- 12:41Speaker 1: French soccer star, football star. has decided on a brand,
- 12:45Speaker 1: and he is going with on the Swiss sneaker maker.
- 12:48Speaker 1: Not Nike. This is kind of huge.
- 12:50Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 12:51Speaker 2: The biggest takeaway that I have is that you normally
- 12:53Speaker 2: don't see athletes in their prime leave Nike. Sometimes they
- 12:57Speaker 2: leave it in their post-career. But, of course, there have
- 12:58Speaker 2: been some examples. Simone Biles, Roger Federer, Steph Curry in 2013,
- 13:02Speaker 2: I believe. Alison Felix, of course. But this is like Mbappe.
- 13:06Speaker 2: I think Mbappe and I are the same age. And
- 13:09Speaker 2: he still has a lot of playing days left. So
- 13:11Speaker 2: do you. He has at least two more world cups
- 13:18Speaker 2: left on the center stage. And so with that in mind,
- 13:21Speaker 2: I think it's a big blow to Nike, um, in
- 13:23Speaker 2: their soccer business. Now they have tons of athletes, but
- 13:27Speaker 2: in soccer, it's huge.
- 13:28Speaker 3: What's it. It's just economics, right? Whoever writes me the
- 13:31Speaker 3: biggest check, that's basically what it is.
- 13:32Speaker 2: Well, he's getting equity in Ahn, and that's part of it.
- 13:35Speaker 2: I think that it's a big bet for Mbappe because
- 13:38Speaker 2: whenever an athlete accepts equity, you assume that the company
- 13:40Speaker 2: is going to do well. And Ahn has done well.
- 13:43Speaker 2: Of course, their first big bet was with Roger Federer.
- 13:45Speaker 2: That's paid off, and now they've made a second splash.
- 13:48Speaker 1: Is he going to be super involved the way that
- 13:50Speaker 1: Steph Curry was involved at Under Armour?
- 13:53Speaker 2: Also, I believe their director of football is Thierry Henry,
- 13:57Speaker 2: who was Mbappe before Mbappe, a French superstar.
- 14:00Speaker 1: Wasn't he a commentator? He is.
- 14:02Speaker 2: He's hilarious. And I think that level of trust of
- 14:06Speaker 2: having somebody that you know that's from your country will
- 14:08Speaker 2: certainly help things. His involvement, I think we'll see. I
- 14:11Speaker 2: think we'll find out more as he sports the apparel
- 14:14Speaker 2: and how much you see an athlete. Because normally, if
- 14:16Speaker 2: an athlete is super excited about something, then they won't
- 14:19Speaker 2: stop talking about it. They'll do as many advertisements as needed.
- 14:22Speaker 2: And social.
- 14:23Speaker 1: It's all about the social.
- 14:24Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes.
- 14:25Speaker 3: All right.
- 14:25Speaker 2: The king of New York.
- 14:27Speaker 3: And of course, I refer to New York Knicks all-star
- 14:28Speaker 3: Jalen Brunson. He's in the news this week. I guess
- 14:31Speaker 3: he and his family are... Starting up some type of
- 14:33Speaker 3: brand agency?
- 14:34Speaker 2: Yes, it is called 33rd Management Group because Jalen Brunson
- 14:38Speaker 2: was drafted 33rd, I believe, by the Dallas Mavericks.
- 14:41Speaker 1: I thought it was because.
- 14:42Speaker 3: The garden's at 33rd Street.
- 14:45Speaker 2: And he's the owner of the garden.
- 14:48Speaker 1: It's a good theory.
- 14:49Speaker 2: It's a good theory. I hadn't thought of that one.
- 14:51Speaker 2: But he, his mother and his sister are launching this firm.
- 14:55Speaker 2: And the first clients, of course, are himself and his wife.
- 14:58Speaker 2: And they're also looking into philanthropies and to brands and
- 15:02Speaker 2: to college athletes and women in sports. And so I
- 15:05Speaker 2: think it'll be really interesting to see how they how
- 15:07Speaker 2: they attack this.
- 15:09Speaker 1: I mean, he is the man of the hour, of
- 15:11Speaker 1: the month, of the year.
- 15:13Speaker 3: He'll never buy a drink in this town again.
- 15:14Speaker 1: Totally. Well, it's interesting.
- 15:16Speaker 2: When I spoke with his mom, I asked her, you know,
- 15:20Speaker 2: how many clients do you want? Because whenever these businesses start,
- 15:23Speaker 2: like especially for someone like the Brunson family who are
- 15:26Speaker 2: gold and platinum in New York right now, there might
- 15:28Speaker 2: be a lot of brands who are like, yeah, advise us.
- 15:31Speaker 2: And she was not shocked. She was like, we'll take
- 15:34Speaker 2: as many as we can handle. At this current moment,
- 15:36Speaker 2: then I think, you know, she didn't rule out a
- 15:38Speaker 2: capital raise at some point. I don't think they're there yet.
- 15:41Speaker 2: But at some point, you know, I think that this
- 15:43Speaker 2: could be very successful.
- 15:44Speaker 1: So for now, it's all in the family, but it
- 15:46Speaker 1: could expand very quickly. And certainly they have pretty big ambitions, too.
- 15:50Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 15:50Speaker 2: And she said on the record that they're having conversations
- 15:53Speaker 2: with some people or some brands and could have some
- 15:55Speaker 2: signees fairly quickly.
- 15:57Speaker 1: Okay, we got to get to what's going on with Chelsea.
- 16:00Speaker 6: The British- The fire sale that's not a fire sale.
- 16:03Speaker 1: Yeah, the fire sale. Todd Boley is one of the
- 16:06Speaker 1: owners of Chelsea. He and Mark Walter, who is in
- 16:12Speaker 1: a bit of, I don't want to say trouble, but
- 16:14Speaker 1: has to figure out what to do with his various
- 16:17Speaker 1: sports assets.
- 16:17Speaker 2: In a rock and a hard place.
- 16:18Speaker 5: Yes, there you go.
- 16:19Speaker 1: Okay, so Todd Boley is selling his stake in Chelsea.
- 16:23Speaker 1: This is under duress, or is he getting ahead of duress?
- 16:26Speaker 2: I think it's getting ahead is the better way to
- 16:28Speaker 2: put it. Now, look, his tenure at Chelsea has not
- 16:31Speaker 2: been smooth. They spent a ton of money. They haven't won.
- 16:33Speaker 2: Fans have been unhappy. He's got into it with fans
- 16:36Speaker 2: in the stadium before. And so this is, you know,
- 16:39Speaker 2: a long buildup.
- 16:41Speaker 1: Of course.
- 16:41Speaker 2: And I think that, you know, with everything going on
- 16:43Speaker 2: with Mark Walter, with With the feds looking into the
- 16:47Speaker 2: potential insurance fraud and allegations there, Mark Walter and Todd
- 16:51Speaker 2: Boley are partners in just about everything, whether that be
- 16:53Speaker 2: the Lakers and Chelsea. And so I think that this
- 16:56Speaker 2: is the right time for them to get out. And
- 16:58Speaker 2: they might go back into another club within the English
- 17:01Speaker 2: Premier League.
- 17:02Speaker 3: And there's no— I haven't seen much report, any reporting that
- 17:05Speaker 3: they would consider selling the Dodgers.
- 17:07Speaker 2: No. The Dodgers president came out and said that this
- 17:10Speaker 2: is not a fire sale. We're not getting rid of
- 17:13Speaker 2: all of our sports properties. Meaning, while they got rid
- 17:16Speaker 2: of the Lakers and Chelsea is gone now, Cadillac F1,
- 17:20Speaker 2: the Dodgers, the Professional Women's Hockey League... I believe the
- 17:23Speaker 2: Los Angeles Sparks are all not for sale. All right.
- 17:25Speaker 3: But will they spend the way they've been spending at
- 17:27Speaker 3: the Dodgers? Instructing their contracts like the way they've been structuring?
- 17:30Speaker 3: Because they have huge long-term liabilities.
- 17:32Speaker 2: Well, they continue to spend earlier this year when they
- 17:34Speaker 2: made some trades to try to bolster their roster. I
- 17:36Speaker 2: think we'll see. It will obviously depend on what happens
- 17:40Speaker 2: with the baseball potential lockout. Because all spending is going
- 17:43Speaker 2: to stop come March next year.
- 17:45Speaker 5: That's fair.
- 17:45Speaker 1: That's fair.
- 17:46Speaker 3: And what are the odds? I'm sorry.
- 17:47Speaker 1: What are the odds of that now?
- 17:48Speaker 2: No.
- 17:49Speaker 3: It feels like it's high.
- 17:50Speaker 2: I don't think you would win any money if you
- 17:52Speaker 2: were betting on a baseball lockout.
- 17:54Speaker 4: Okay.
- 17:55Speaker 1: That's a good way to put it. Todd Foley, he's
- 17:57Speaker 1: just one of a number of U.S. billionaires who have
- 17:59Speaker 1: invested in European football.
- 18:01Speaker 6: Sure.
- 18:01Speaker 1: Have they made it better?
- 18:03Speaker 2: It depends on who you ask, really. I think if
- 18:05Speaker 2: you ask fans, there's always a thought amongst fans. It
- 18:10Speaker 2: really depends on the type of fan and the culture
- 18:12Speaker 2: that they exist in on owners. And I think Todd
- 18:15Speaker 2: Boley enraged Chelsea fans. There were times where, you know,
- 18:18Speaker 2: the sea settled and things were cool. But when tensions
- 18:22Speaker 2: were highest, it was really something with him and the fans.
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