Why San Diego FC Treats Its Academy Like a Capital Investment

Most of the other clubs are, are hesitant to spend on the academy. They feel like they've spent two million bucks to get nothing. We view it as almost catbacks, as like an investment in the future of our club and the business. And ultimately, the ability, those players will be less expensive for us than going out and buying a top player from the global market, which we're doing now as we, we fill the gap. Welcome to NextLeagues, weekly Know What is Next Podcast featuring conversations with sports industry executives about what's next in sports. I'm your host Dave Nugent. Today is St. Patrick's Day, Tuesday, March 17th. Today on the NextLeague Know What is Next Podcast, we were fortunate to be joined by Bill Miles, the CEO of San Diego FC. We covered Bill's background in entrepreneurship and law prior to getting into the soccer business, the unique ownership structure at San Diego FC. The broader soccer environment and how San Diego is taking advantage of that for World Cup. The fact that San Diego FC is a club that's two years old and thoughts around how they built a fan base from scratch. Hello Bill, good to see you again. Morning Dave, good to see you as well. I'm excited we could do this. We have a lot of good ground to cover, I think. We are in a year, a seminal year in the football, international football or soccer business in the US as we call it. So there's a lot of ground to cover. I'd love to start with your career background and that eventual transition into the international football slash soccer business. If we could, could you provide sort of how you got here? Sure, yeah, no problem. Group in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and I went to school out in Pennsylvania and then to law school. Practice law for a little bit, which is a good background for lots of things, in particularly sports. There's a lot of lawyers in and around sports management. I then turned to kind of entrepreneur and started to build businesses and small to mid-sized businesses. One of them went public, others crashed and burned, others were sold along the way. So lots of learnings. It's kind of my business degree was working through 25, 30 years of building businesses against small to mid-sized. Usually technology lived out in Silicon Valley and then back east. I feel like you're not really an entrepreneur unless you've crashed and burned at least one. Oh yeah, yeah, you're a good, good smattering of all of them, right? To learn all sides of it. I'll tell you that the unwinding of businesses that don't work is one of the most painful processes out there. I still actually have a business. I'm in the process of winding down and head offices in both Canada and the US. And this, the Canadian side is proving very difficult to, we sold the business, all the assets, but kept the entity. Just winding the entity down is brutal. Through it all, I always had an interest. I played soccer in college and always had an interest in the game and in sports in general. For a time, I represented players in global soccer, helping them find teams both here in the US as well as in Europe. I represented a few clubs and did some tournaments and friendly matches in the US. This was really a side business that I just did out of my own interest and passion. I never made a foot living from it. And then ultimately, I was really building lifestyle businesses, smaller businesses back in Hanover, New Hampshire, where I was and received a call from Dan Dickinson from Right to Dream. He's the CEO of Right to Dream. Works for ManCap, Mr. Montsour's private equity firm. They were interested in bringing in someone who had business experience. My skills are really the combination of financial management, CFO type work as well as people management. And they thought it was a good fit and partnership with our CEO, Tom Penn, who is more external focused, experienced in the MLS in particular. And felt that we would be good teammates and turns out we are and we're and have had a really good first season last year and up and running here for the second season. So that's how it all kind of happened. So maybe talk about the way you divide up those responsibilities as chief operating officer versus the CFO. Yeah, I think, you know, it's a combination of making sure the work charts clear. People understand what we do as well as taking advantage of our various strengths. Tom has a lot of experience in sports, NBA and then most recently, LFC and building sports franchises, particularly the MLS. And there's a lot of quirky rules and interesting dynamics to the MLS itself. So Tom really focuses mostly on the external side, which is a broad range of things. If ever you've been a CEO, I've been a CEO a couple times. I would say more than half of your time is managing your external stakeholders. So board members, ownership, you know, other big partners, right? So our key partners and then the league or entity in which you're kind of involved in. So he spends a lot of time there. I really try to spend time in the office and in meetings and working with the team. So I have reporting to me the operations team, so running games and all the facilities that we have. The chief revenue officer who has both ticketing and partnership revenue and the services there, the servicing of those clients. All of marketing, business intelligence, I work with the academy, I have the academy, our academy, which we'll think we'll talk about a little bit reporting to me as well. And then anything financial going on in the business, work with the budgets, work with our CFO and all the budgeting and forecasting as well. You mentioned that on the ownership side, can you talk about that ownership structure, what that looks like for you guys? Because I think that is a really interesting aspect of the way that you've started to build this out. Yeah, it's really been fascinating to work with these, I've never worked with owners in this kind of dynamic before. We're 50% owned by ManCap, right to dream. ManCap is essentially a private equity firm or operates like a private equity firm based in London, which is the Sir Mohammed Montensoor's business, family business, and his son, Lutfi, he and his son run the business. Mr. Montensoor is the chairman of the club. And then it's 50% owned by the Sequan Native American tribe here in San Diego. And I think it's the first time that Native American tribe has owned a professional franchise in the US and globally, I would think. And so that's been a really interesting thing. They're out there their own country, right? their own nation. So we work with the tribal council there, their elected officials. We go to get approvals from, you know, whether it's, you know, giveaways and the partnership we have, as well as budgets and things like that to the tribal council. We were at a meeting about a month ago in front of the entire tribe. It's about 125, 130 adults giving them an update. And so I think from the very beginning, the MLS had a hard time understanding how they were going to work with. Essentially a nation of elected officials, right? It would be like the state of, you know, Nevada owning the Raiders or something. Along with an Egyptian, you know, billionaire and super successful businessman based in London. So those are our two main entities. And there's a number of, you know, I would call them local partners and more well-recognized partners like Mani Machado, Issa Ra, Thames, like I mean, award singer, Jacco, you know, famous kind of author and business author, former military person. And then a lot of local owners as well who have an interest in the club. So as I mentioned, you know, Tom and my division of responsibilities, Tom spends a lot of time managing and talking and working with that group to keep them happy. And even just on where they're going to sit at the games, you know, it's as simple as that. But they're a wonderful group to work with. There's a lot of complexity and dynamic there. And it's been a real learning experience for me. It sounds like it's got to be a one-of-one, right? Yeah. Countries of private equity and a sovereign Native American or Indigenous people owning professional sports organization. I'm not aware of that anywhere else. I don't think so. Yeah, I know what's fun as they say that I think the Native American sequand try traces their family back 12,000 years. And Mr. Montsour can trace their family back 7,000 years in Alexandria, Egypt. Mr. Montsour will always say, we have 19,000 years of experience, you know, to bring to this club. So it's interesting because they have areas where they're very aligned and they have a very shared history, like the history of their families and the connection to the land that they're on. And a deep respect for kind of long-term commitment and investment and, you know, long horizons and all of that. Because they have an amazing perspective from that angle. But on the other hand, they operate very differently. And the Montsour is a very high-end, sophisticated kind of golden sacks, like kind of business folks. And I think Cody, Chairman Martinez and Vice Chairman Mews, they're just growing up and building the business. They're a bit more entrepreneurial. They're built a casino business. Now they have a lot of other investments here in San Diego. They're not as global or even national. And they're much more, I would say, entrepreneurial hustlers, you know, they feel their way through the situation and have a really good sense of the community here in San Diego and how a business kind of works, kind of grassroots level. So yeah, it's a really crazy, fun combination. And they really enjoy each other as well, which is great. And, you know, it's so far, it's been, you know, when you're winning and producing good financial results, it's always good to see you know pretty well. Right. So yeah, we'll see we'll see on the other side, even winning alone tends to solve a lot of problems. Yeah, it's it's releasing masks them at the very least, but Ken ultimately solve a lot of problems when it comes to things like ticket sales. You touched on the Academy earlier. When we met in person, I was fascinated by the way that the sort of structure of the organization has set up talking about that a little bit. Yeah. I think this is also unique and global football. We just won Academy of the Year award FIFA award in Dubai. Mr. Monser was out there about two months ago. So we're starting to kind of get recognized globally as a very unique setup. We call it an Academy first model. So we start with our academies and we start with kids that are 10, 11 years old in Ghana, in Cairo, in Denmark, and now in San Diego. And it's fully residential, fully paid for. So we will recruit. I think we saw 45,000 boys in Egypt last year and chose, you know, 15 we see three or 4,000 here in the San Diego in the US and chose, you know, 14 or 15. But once we commit, there's no cuts. We're in it for good with them. Right. So we are fully committed to the families and the boys at that point, which requires us to do a lot of diligence on the scouting side. And then they come and they live with us. They live. It's a res fully residential, fully paid for. There's no tuition. There's, you can't kind of pay your way, like an IMG or another Academy and just join. And our goal is to develop them into both great football players, great young men and women. We have women in three of the locations and great students. And we recognize that most of the kids will follow an academic pathway and hopefully play high level college soccer, you know, preschool soccer. But a few, maybe two out of every 20 will become top top players. We've begun to show a real track record of being able to do that. We had 50 million euros of transfer revenue out of our Danish club last year of primarily Canadians and Danes playing there for a season or two and then transferring on a big number. And well, well, out as well above what our cost for our academies are. So this is, it is a business as well, Dave, you know, it's not just a nice thing to do and and all of that, but it's a business and we hear and send your response for producing what we call a plus players as well as some A's and B's that would play in the middle level professional leagues. Over time. I think one of the things that we talked about previously was I was curious about your perspective on the United States is ability to develop that top tier of international football players. Yeah. And I think you added some color there that was really interesting. Can you talk about that a little bit? I think maybe that feeds into your model as well. I think there's one thing that's holding us back in the US we certainly have the resources, the fields and the talent. There's no doubt about it. Look at it. Look at every other sport. We're the best sports, you know, country in the world and in multiple sports. And there's no reason we shouldn't be in soccer, but there's a few things I think that are holding us back. One is we're not really accessing all of our talent because US soccer is primarily paid a play, meaning that you need to pay. To play. So you would join a soccer club and these clubs provide excellent, you know, services to their customers. Right. I mean, my kids paid play to play. I'm sure yours and others. And you know, and they have a great family experience. And it's a great time for the kids and and there's a proper value exchange there. I have no issue with that. But it's not the ideal way to develop the top top talent because often you miss those kids that can't afford can't get to games have single moms to working parents who are really not only athletically gifted, but also hungry and really desire and need that opportunity. And you see that in our other sports. You see that football and basketball. Some extent in baseball with a lot of Latin American, you know, folks coming through. And we just don't have that vibe. It's more of a middle class upper class sport in the US. And I think we're missing a lot of talent. So that's one piece. The next piece is that in around the world, the development of the players from age 10 to 16, kind of the critical time is primarily residential or at least, you know, full time and focused and high level coaching. All the mental coaching, the human performance aspects, the development of their skills, their physical body development, et cetera, nutrition. And we haven't developed that in the US. It's still we're still kind of behind on that. Our model is that we are built to develop young players and give them an opportunity. So from 10 to 16 at 16, we'll make what we call a pathway decision. So at that point, we'll say, Hey, this young man or young woman is going to make it to the top level and they should immediately go to one of our first teams. And you really need to be able to give between then 16 and 18, a top player first team, meaning professional experience. Our top players tend to go to college. And college is not an ideal environment, either for developing top talent. It's just ones half a year season. You know, they're doing other other priorities there. It's not set up as a really competitive environment. We, you know, there's not relegation and promotion and top teams, you know, best against best, right? You want best against best in these sports as much as you can. You don't see get that in college. We're really in our pay to play model. So we are, you know, bringing in a bit of a European model and the model that we've seen work around the globe for us here to the US and committing to these kids between 10 and 16 to develop them, you know, as football players. And that will be unique in the US. And we'll see when we do our podcast in five years, Dave, whether we're starting to produce some top talent. But I think we're well on the way. Despite the commercials you just outlined, it sounds like the commercial side of that business is actually healthy. You're unique in a way to be able to invest the way you're investing in something like that. It's not like every MLS club can set something like this. So right. It's it requires a not only a commitment in money, but in in a real future looking perspective on your business, right? I think that's the hardest thing. I think that's what holds us back even more than anything is that it's a leap of faith at our Fortunately, our investors two things one they've seen it working in is her God is 25 years on right. So we've been doing this for a while and God I Egypt Denmark's probably 10 years or so and Egypt's three or four years. They've seen it working so they have a little bit more stick to it of this right. And then they're they're long term investors. They're very long term oriented. And so it's not a problem for them to think about investing, you know, some million dollars here now for a payoff in six, seven years. That's that doesn't bother them at all. And in fact, they they prefer those kind of opportunities. So I think it's hard. The other in the other MLS situations, the most of the other clubs are hasn't to spend on the Academy. It's more of a paid-of-play style model. They're picking up kind of top players at 15, 16 and trying to get them to pro by 18. That's a very, very hard thing to do. You really need to start younger. And so they do that. They turn not know the kids make it. They're viewing it as a cost center. The other clubs we viewed as almost cat backs as like investment in the future of our club and the business. And ultimately the ability that those players will be less expensive for us than going out and buying a top player from the global market, which we're doing now as we we feel the gap. But to your point, it does require a longer term investment in order to realize. Absolutely. Yeah. You mentioned during your second season in San Diego, maybe talk about the environment in San Diego, the importance of soccer to the city and the surrounding area. I know the investors looked at it very closely and they were expecting San Diego to be a strong soccer market and indeed it is. There's a couple reasons why the obvious reason is it's close to the border. It's very Latin influence. I'd say maybe 50% of our fans in any given game will be Mexican American Latin, you know, kind of heritage. They love the game, you know, legal max just south of us as it has a huge following down in Mexico. They are passionate about the game. They play the game. They follow the game. It's a it's kind of in the family DNA, right. They went with their family, their parents to the games, you know, then their grandparents were there. Now they're bringing their kids kind of thing. The other reason is that we have two large very large pay to play clubs here in surf soccer and Albion as well as a number of other significant pay to play clubs. No, mad is the old traditional one. There's city to the Vista. There are a lot of kids playing soccer here and a lot of families playing soccer. We have huge areas for tournaments. There's, you know, huge tournaments here every weekend. So San Diego is lives in breeze soccer. There's been recruiting out of San Diego for years by the other molot's clubs. A lot of our national team players came from the region as well. So the long history of proud soccer families in history and players. So it's been great. The fans have been incredibly responsive to our product and our offering. And I think we averaged about 27,500 fans last year, you know, fourth or fifth in the league in our first year. And they've been incredibly supportive. We kind of open talking a little bit about the importance of the sport, especially in the US in a World Cup year, I think we're 100 days or so. Yeah. From, you guys are going to be hosting some watch parties. I don't think there's an actual match in San Diego proper, but you're going to be hosting watch parties. What does that do for the sport, do you think? Having us as a host? I know it's spread out all kind of all over the place, but maybe talk about what you think that impact is for your program and then more broadly for soccer in the US. There's a few angles to that. You know, the MLS, it's an interesting, you know, league. It's still in the kind of second tier of leagues globally, but it's in the US, the biggest market and who really can be the best league in the world, you know, over time. It's, it feels a stretch to say that now, but it can be and it needs to think of itself and continue to grow up. It's 25 years now and Don Garber's done an incredible job to get us from here to there, but it can continue to grow and it can be the best league in the world. To be the best league in the world, you know, the product has to be top notch. And if you're watching this primarily or or La Liga and you watch Arleague, you know, there's a difference still. There's a gap in talent and it's like watching maybe the European basketball league. Some very good teams in Spain, but it's not like watching the NBA, you know, and you can see that. So having the biggest tournament in the best players here and showing the consumers what it can be and also challenging the MLS, all of us to step up and get to that level. I think it's kind of like throwing down on the gauntlet and say, hey, look, we can be the best team best league in the world. This is it can be very entertaining for everybody to watch. I think it brings a group of consumers and fans out of the market out into the market that wouldn't otherwise be there. I say to you, FC, we've got our fan base. We've got, you know, 20,000 that come to everything and then another five or 10,000 that, you know, are here and there. Maybe this can grow us to a new new group. And that's why we're going in residency on the beach in San Diego for these games. I'm sure you'll see it on TV because it's going to be kind of an iconic shot. It's at this location called Fitzsocial right on the beach and Mission Beach. And we're going to have a TV for the big games out onto the beach. And it'll be pretty iconic. But we expect there to be a whole different set of fans than our number ones at these games. And fans, we hope can stay with us for a long time. So it's kind of a fan engagement and fan growth strategy. I mean, you may as well leverage some of the best assets that you have in San Diego. Exactly. Right. You got to palm trees and some sand, right? Well, here, it's all good short. At Next League, we believe sports have the power to transform communities worldwide. Alongside the LPGA, Next League has committed funds to the LPGA foundation, the association's nonprofit charity that focuses on both equal opportunity and youth participation in golf. Visit LPGAFoundation.org to learn more or donate today. You mentioned that the MLS could be the best league in the world. I think most people presuppose that that means that you've got a different model. But most people presuppose that that means you just have to start ponying up more money to attract the best players in the world, right? I mean, yeah, your model aside, which isn't necessarily that, isn't that sort of true? I mean, for most of MLS, wouldn't it, would you need to get to a point where you've got the operating capital to spend on those players because they don't come cheap? I think it's going to be a balance today. It's going to continue to be a balance. I'm not a full believer in that, Dave. I think that we have to do a good job of developing top players here in the US. I think US fans, we won't be what we want to be unless we've got US players at the very top level playing in the US league. You know, so we do have to do that part of it. And that's what we're doing. Yes, you can, can you sprinkle it any, think of the NBA, right? The NBA has Luca Doncic and you know, the other center for Utah, I forget his name now, but you know, they have some really big European stars, but it's primarily American talent, right? And you look at our other sports like that, you know, baseball probably is a little bit more international, but the big stars are from the US. I think to be what we want to be, we need to develop our own talent. We're leading on that, right? You see how Miami's building their roster and some of the big DPs, right? It's much more star based. I think underneath that, I'm sure they have some local talent, but a lot of it's coming from Argentina and elsewhere. So I think you need both things to happen. You do need to go get the talent, but it's a little bit more to me. Have a marketing play and a short term play. The long term play is to develop American talent that's at the elite, elite level and keep them in the US playing and have our leagues, you know, full of that, but that's the commitment. That's that long term commitment we talked about before, right? That's not easy, right? Easy way to spend a billionaires money to go get a top player, right? To build talent over time is a lot harder. We haven't committed to that as a country yet, and I think if we can do that, we can be the best league in the world. And there was a little bit of controversy over one or more of the top La Liga teams coming and playing an actual sanction match in the US and Miami. They thought that that, you know, from a competitive bounce standpoint, they didn't love that idea, but I'm curious what you think about, you know, the international's come and play friendly is on a pretty regular basis. In some ways that highlights the difference in the level of talent, when you bring it Chelsea or Barcelona or whoever over, but on the other hand, bringing that level of talent to the US audience can build interest in the sport. How do you sort of think about that? For me, it's mostly marketing. When I look to market in San Diego, our club, the group of folks that are dedicated and following European soccer are not the top of the list. You know, they're kind of a little bit of European snobs, right? They're like, oh, I follow the Premier League. I don't, you know, that molasses like below me, right? So they're not the top of the list. So those fans coming out following Real Madrid and Chelsea and Manu are not really in our target. We're looking for a combination of different types of fans to fill our stadium. So I don't see them as that helpful. I like that they come over from a child like the World Cup, like I was saying. I liked it. They're challenging us to say, hey, be the top league. Who's what it looks like? You need to go model this. Like it's a little bit more of a challenge to me for our league and our teams to be at their level and be the ones like, we don't need them to come over. Watch your friendly of, you know, CND, I go over to LAFC. That's just as good, right? Or maybe we are going over to Europe and getting paid $10 million to tour Europe and have them watch us, right? So it's a little bit like to me a challenge for where we want to be in the future than it is super helpful on the marketing side. One of the things that you're faced with as a relatively new organization right a couple of years in is you had to build a fan base from scratch, right? Like this. In the sports business, what most of us are concerned with in real time is it's revenue as a as a byproduct of this, but it's building fandom, right? Like how do you get people interested in a sports team? And when it's brand new, you're starting from scratch. Maybe talk about the journey, the time leading up to that. How do you guys sort of manage that? Yeah, I mean, the two folks that were early on in this Tom Pan in Sebastian, more of that they they really were the kind of architects of our approach to the market. There's a couple really interesting and big factors. One is the commitment to the community to the idea that this is a club for the community. It's not the owners, it's not the management, it's not the coaches, it's really owned in a way by the community. And we're doing this, we're building a civic asset, right? It's going to be here for a long time. And just the way you might build a university or a library or something like that. So you really need to embed it deeply in the community and listen and be present and consistent in the community. And we did an awesome job. I came in halfway through the build and we've continued to, but you need to make it feel like the community. So we did things like a chrome ball tour. We toured all through the 18 cities in the county of San Diego. And our logo here is 18 threads woven into one, right? 18 cities woven into one. And what we did is we did a tour, took a chrome ball, and we toured it around and had big soccer parties and festivals in each town. And as you cruise around San Diego, you realize how incredibly diverse it is because to the south, it's sub-order town. It's very, very akin to Tijuana, right? And it's mostly Spanish and all that. To the north, you've got some of the fanciest, nicest communities in the country in Carlsbad and Rancho Santa Fe and Del Mar and these places, right? To the east, you've got Alcajón, and it's a, I think it's a number one refugee resettlement location for 15 years. You've got Syrians and Arabic and Vietnamese and all kinds of diversity out there. It's 12% of the populations from the military. It's a big military town. So to try to weave that into one group and present back to them and experience at our stadium that resonates with all parts of the community is a real challenge, a special challenge for us. know, I don't know of a place I live that's more diverse economically, socially, language, you know, everything here. And our games and then Dave, when you come to our game here soon, I'll ask you to sit there and I'll say Dave, are you seeing every part of San Diego? Do you see the military? Do you see the border town? Do you see the refugee community? Do you see North County? Right? Do you see that in what we're doing? And that's what we're trying to do? By the way, I'm going to take you up on that on that. Having lived through yet probably the most brutal winter in the Northeast that I can remember in maybe in my lifetime, I am ready for San Diego. So I'm certainly going to take you up on it. And then the 22nd of March, right? Real Salt Lake. Yeah, please, please come for a game. But I, you know, when I arrived in San Diego, the idea that I ask everybody that I meet, what does San Diego go to you? How would you describe it in two or three words, right? And you get such diverse answers. And when you're here, I'll ask you the same thing. How do you describe this? Well, what are you seeing here? What are you feeling? And that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to weave San Diego into one club where everyone feels, you know, a part of it. They can find their place and be excited about it. That's great. The world that we live in here at next league is a world of technology. I'm sure that you've had to give a very broad view of tech from acquiring new fans to tickets, et cetera. Maybe talk about the way you guys as an organization, think about technology inside the organization. Yeah, I'm pretty deeply involved in this here at the club because of a little bit of my background and it's just a little bit of a gap that we had here. So I've jumped in with two feet. I'll talk about maybe a couple areas. You know, the first thing we, you have to have a centralized database and build towards a golden record. I think if you're not doing that as a club or almost any business, you know, markets, consumers, you're going to really miss a lot of opportunities and find yourself behind. If you have isolated pockets of data, you know, a little bit of customer data over here and some other customer data over here, you're going to miss that the benefits of bringing it together. So we use Google Cloud, you know, Bit Query and started to bring our data into one location. We're in towards the end of phase two of that. So ticket master Shopify, Fangeenome, which is a more demographic geographic, you know, kind of database and soon more of our tradable bits, more of our data going in there. So if it's in there, then the two layers on top are going to be your traditional kind of tableau. You know, so dashboard reporting access to the data. So you're looking into all of our data there. And then the other would be nowadays is an AI layer. So you're going to want to build a layer of additional context, maybe from PowerPoints and spreadsheets and meeting notes, the recording of this podcast or you know, you can add all that in there and then create tools or let's say you want to lead risk score your season ticket members on the risk of them to renew. You know, you can have a risk scoring system there and suggestions on how to retain them. Right. So you kind of I kind of think of it as data warehouse, all of our data coming in, a traditional reporting dashboard layer and then a more of an AI layer here on top. Hopefully, I'm looking in and working kind of in both areas to provide business intelligence for the team to be more efficient to get them out of the grind of cutting and pasting spreadsheets and more into the strategy more time doing the human things is, you know, a big topic here on AI, but I tell the team all the time, we want you doing the human, we want you to talk into our customers, right? You know, AI can't do that, but we don't need you copying and pasting spreadsheets for six hours, right? Try to figure out who to talk to. Hey, I can tell you to talk to now go talk to them, right? So that's one big project for us were like I said, let's say phase two out of four phases before we really have all of that humming, but we have bits and pieces of all that working now and I think doing some exciting things. The other part of it to me is where ticketing is going and how consumers are going to purchase tickets, right? I think it's still too focused on a season ticket of certain number of games. And I think consumers are more the direction I would take it would be they're looking for experiences. And I see this with some of our consumers where we have like an autograph session with our players. And they're way more excited about coming to that than they are a particular game. You know, and right now we sell 21 season tickets and then there's these appendages of autograph session or this event or a community thing or meet the coaches. Why aren't they all just experiences? And then you can kind of choose what you'd like to do, right? If you're a very community oriented, maybe you come to our community match, our kids night, and then you go do a service project with the team, right? Or or something else. If you're a hometown hero, you're going to focus on some different experiences plus some of other games that resonate with you. So kind of breaking away maybe from the traditional model, making it a bit more personalized and think of us as more of a broader entertainment company, providing experiences and a soccer club with just these certain matches. So that's a little bit out there, but I think that that's I'd like to begin to think about that and take the club in that direction where we open up, you know, revenue sources and things like that. I couldn't be an advantage of not having a legacy of culture that goes back, you know, for your organization. It doesn't go back 30 years of everything being based on, hey, we got to do a season ticket renewal. You can you're coming to the table with a much more Silicon Valley sort of should we reimagine the way we think about this? I think it's interesting. Yeah, even away games, Dave, right? Like we're going to play and ask tech stadium against Club America in Leagues Cup in August. Right. That's an incredible experience for someone as tech stadiums, a hundred and I don't know, 6000 people, Mexico City, clomericas, the Dallas Cowboys of you know, they have more fans than any professional sports team in North America, including the Cowboys and everybody else like clomeric as massive. We're going to play away at Miami as well this year, right? At their new stadium. So maybe the two most desirable things we have to offer are two away game packages, right? Yeah. You know, but we're not even selling those, right? So I could see a world where away games and trips and experiences kind of blend with the traditional season ticket package. You know, so it's just trying to understand where the value is for our customers and what they're really resonating with. And I'm always kind of got my ears of the ground about that trying to learn and figure out what's going on. It's interesting. Whatever I am lucky enough to have somebody with an entrepreneurial background on I have to ask a question. We sort of opened with this general idea that, you know, some of that comes with failure, right? But you do, I think you were references like I often refer to my business, sliding, going to business school. My business school was riding a couple of companies up and down. Yeah, exactly. That's a good way to learn. Absolutely. That way obviously, but it is a good way to learn about, you know, how to run a business. As you think about the next generation, you've got kids, right? Like you think about the next generation of entrepreneurs. What kind of advice would you give? Has the world changed maybe at all or are the primary tenants of entrepreneurship sort of? Will they never change? It's a big question. Big question. Yeah. I mean, you know, I guess you know, our career day, right? The internet email, right? I didn't have email in college, right? We got an email. I got an email maybe in law school. We thought that would change a lot of the internet, right? Came along the web as we know it today. There's been other big disruptors. I tend to think AI is going to be as big or bigger than those. So I'm not sure what the future holds. You know, on that topic, I think that we, my advice would be to really get good at and focus on the things that humans are uniquely good at. Like I was saying before, you know, so the people management, the service, the connecting in a human way, I think some of the strategy and the creativity is going to be at a premium because, you know, the AI is really looking for patterns in the existing data, right? The existing information. So if you can truly think out of the box, now it's going to be harder to think out of the box because I think AI is probably pretty good at this. But if you can really start to push yourself out further, like we're just talking about on the ticketing side, I'm not sure if you ask AI about that if you get that idea because it just doesn't exist yet. So it's going to be a premium on really pushing yourself out beyond the boundaries of what's done before. But, you know, much pranarism is, you know, and the skills I think that we had are still going to apply the idea of, you know, risk taking and following your belief that it may be counter to what's out there, you know, the ability to execute, right? There's a lot of ideas out there and good execution still is a premium. And then just the perseverance, how many times have, you know, been an opportunity to give up and you just keep trucking along and something turns your way, the economy changes, a new partner comes and all of a sudden the business starts to blossom, right? And you could have given up, you know, so many times before and all of a sudden you have something of value, right? So, yeah, I think those things are all still present, but it is. I think about and read about what's going on in the economy and with AI. I'm not certain, but does seem like there's going to be some shifts here coming up. Yeah, without question. Before I let you go, this is another super broad question. But maybe the sports business story, there's a whole bunch of disruption. I was having a conversation with someone yesterday where we were talking about the changes in the golf industry and a lot of leadership changes and model changes and the changes in motorsports and the changes that, you know, there are fan behaviors that are changing a lot of things. There's obviously artificial intelligence and it's influence on the way we do what we do. When you think we're at war as we're recording, you know, I don't think. I did one of these just a couple of weeks ago and that wasn't the case. So as you think about the, ideally, the sports business stories that are out there, college is another one, right? Women's sports. There's lots of different things that people are talking about in real time. You think of a storyline that you're sort of following closely because it's either important to you personally or it's important to the business that you're running. I mean, I think the top of my head becomes is the border. You know, because of where we're located on the border, a lot of our fans, we have a very strong supporter section. So we have 3,000 folks that come to every game, seeing chance from an hour before to an hour after bringing the energy and atmosphere of this stadium. When you're here, Dave, you'll be watching them more than you will in the game. You'll be like, Bill, what is going on over there, right? But I know I know many of them and I know some of their stories and there's already some heartbreak regarding, you know, eyes and the border and what's happening there. And on and off, we have interacted with, you know, that storyline and tried to find the right place for the club to land and to be, you know, neutral and non-political, which is what we should be. But we have people that are, you know, hurting and in bad situations there. And they want to make, you know, statements. And so how do we balance that? And, you know, how do we follow the MLS and the stadium rules, but also respect, you know, free speech and support our fans and our community here. So it's a fine line. It's a tricky line to tow for us. That's an important story for us here in San Diego in particular that I'd be following. Yeah, look, there are certain stories that transcend sport. But sports can influence, you know, the importance of these things. So that's a really interesting one that, you know, not just you folks in MLS in San Diego, but that, you know, the whole country is obviously very much focused on, I think that's a great perspective. Bill Miles, I have kept you long enough. I very much appreciate this. I cannot wait to get on a plane and get to Southern California. Please. We will try to figure that out. Thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it. Of course. Yeah. I hear there are plans every day, Dave. So you know, that's what I hear. Although I don't always take off from where I am. That's true. That's true. Or they always get back. But yes. Well, today, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Best of luck with everything. And let me know how I can help with anything going forward. Love it. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Know It Is Next. We're appreciative of Bill Miles, COO, and San Diego FC for joining us today. We've had a few weeks ago and a new heat make an excellent podcast guest. Hope he found this conversation as fun as I did. See you back here next week for another episode of Next Leagues, Know It Is Next Series.