Searching for a "Good" Sports Billionaire, with Henry Abbott
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
This is like Joe Lacob taking the trophy into his bed. Did that actually happen? He bragged about it, yeah.
Right after this.
Henry Abbott, thank you for doing this. What a straight ahead introduction. No, no, just no small talk. How can I remind people of our prehistory here? Because you're kind of responsible for me.
I remember we had a talk about you going to interview the head of the PA. Michelle Roberts. Yeah.
I feel like that was the first like meaningful back and forth we had. I had a big sit-down interview with Michelle Roberts, then the new executive director of the NBPA. Yeah. And I remember the headline was like, the woman who is going to change sports. Yeah. And I regret to inform everybody. That did not quite happen. Nobody changes sports. Labor did not defeat management. I don't think labor really got much of anything, actually, as a consequence of that regime. And then the one to two regimes that came after, at least track sometimes of the succession. It's been a couple of... regime since. Now we have a de facto hard cap and team valuations through the roof. It's going great for the billionaires. Well, this is bringing us to the fact that we are talking on Thursday.
This is the day after we published our latest sequel in our Clippers, Kawhi Leonard, Aspiration, but now Beyond Aspiration saga. as the NBA's investigation into that stuff has expanded into other sponsorship, parenthesis S, deal, parenthesis S. And I want to know what you thought of what me and Amin and David Sampson did on that episode, because I think it was complicated to the level of maybe needing to explain like why this stuff happened. either demanded our time, 10 months of investigation, or felt like a vanity project to some people.
And does any of it matter, even? You pulled on a thread of Kawhi and how he got to the Clippers and all this money that went through Aspiration, and it's fascinating stuff. But then it ends up with this other very strange thing, which is Kawhi and his former agent now, I guess, and his uncle owning LLCs that seemed to have something to do with a soccer club in Rhode Island, right? So... A, people are curious, so we just have to understand it. But B, I do think it now becomes a very common sports story, which is shady stuff is happening, hard to follow stuff is happening, and a bunch of taxpayer money goes in, and a stadium is part of it, but so is a bunch of other stuff. And it's hard to know who's winning and who's losing in that, but we're probably not getting affordable housing out of it, I guess is the kind
where we land. Yeah, I should say, I want everybody to watch it as the chefs, our production staff, have intended, but it ends with the reveal that there have been zero units of affordable housing that have been built as everybody involved is claiming that this is the real reason why your public taxpayer money in the state of Rhode Island, which has a the German housing crisis, why that was needed.
Which to me, there's so much going on here. One of them is, you know, Aspiration guy was like the tree planting guy, but did they actually plant trees?
Not to the degree that they advertised it, nowhere close.
Right, just as this is now being led by this guy, Brett Johnson.
The head of Fortuitous Partners, which was running the RIFC stadium deal in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Yeah. And Benevolent Capital is his other entity. private equity real estate company that all sort of adds to this aspiration feeling sense that I'm a good guy doing good guy stuff. I'm here to save people. And all I need is your support.
So Joe Sandberg turned out to be an appropriate red flag that aspiration was a little too, somehow it was like Silicon Valley and it was trees and it was huge ROI. Like it all fell apart, right? I'm not saying that this is true of Brad Johnson, too. I'm saying that he emerges as a similar type character. 100% investment returns is the promise. 100%. You know how investments work?
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:57
2
What is the Aspiration–Kawhi Leonard controversy and why does it matter?
5:57–17:50
3
How did Rhode Island’s RIFC stadium deal link to Aspiration and secret LLCs?
17:50–36:49
4
What tactics do developers use to convert small public investments into big real-estate returns?
36:49–39:31
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Pablo Torre Finds Out
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Steve Ballmer's Sword, the DOJ's Probe and a "Road to Jail Time": Kawhi-Gate, Part XVI
The Revolution of Stavros Halkias Will Be Vindicated
The Sporting Class: Private Equity, Salary Caps and Whether Players Should Want a Piece
Inside the Billionaire Shadow League Funding American Tennis
Washing Up the Clippers' Punishment, with Henry Abbott