00:00There's no secret that before Josh Harris's time, the commanders, the value of the commanders had decreased over time due
00:05to a multitude of situations.
00:07But since then, I believe there was a report last year that came out from The Athletic and ESPN that
00:11said the commanders' sponsorship revenue was in the top third of the league.
00:15What has your conversations or what have your conversations been like with these sponsors who are now once again excited
00:22and being welcomed back into the stadium?
00:24Well, not that we're competitive or anything, but we are actually in the top 10 now.
00:29Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.
00:31We've come a long way from where we were.
00:32No, we're – I think, you know, again, I approach this through a couple different lenses.
00:39The first is recognizing that building trust with our partners was really important.
00:45And so spending time better understanding, you know, what their concerns were, what their opportunities were, was a big part
00:53of our outreach.
00:54There's no question that improved performance on the football field helps.
00:58Those things are certainly part of the, you know, kind of the algorithm.
01:02But we want to also be able to control the variables that we can control.
01:07And so, you know, part of what's helped me a little bit is I sat on the other side of
01:12that table for many, many years in the food business as a client.
01:16And so what we've tried to do is adapt our model on sponsorship from what used to be, and it
01:23drove me crazy, are these very pedestrian conversations on how many signs do I get my name on or –
01:29no.
01:30Well, what we want to understand is what a business's goals and challenges are.
01:35We want to establish a strategy where we're able to address those goals or those KPIs.
01:45And then we want to hold ourselves accountable.
01:47So I'll sit down with our top sponsors and, you know, we'll reflect on the past year.
01:53What were the goals we agreed upon?
01:55Did we deliver upon that?
01:57Yes, great.
01:57Or no, what did we need to do differently to adjust?
02:01And so what we're trying to do is differentiate ourselves at the same time we're recovering from a period where
02:09we weren't performing at the levels that we want.
02:12And, you know, I fully anticipate being in the geography we're in, the team we have, and the vision that
02:18we've got going forward that, you know, being in the top ten is a great, you know, measuring stick.
02:23But, you know, we want to chase that number one, those guys down in Dallas.
02:31We want to go after them.
02:32And they've set a great bar for us, but I think we have the ability to compete in almost every
02:38aspect of the business with the best-in-class teams.
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