Steve Feuerstein (00:01.127)
Yeah, we're already, Patrick, we're already recording. So, okay, thank you. So, Andy, again, this is an informal interview and you can start off with that. We're gonna cut this, you know, we'll cut it. It's used for social media. So if you wanna start with your intro, that would be.

Andy (00:21.138)
Hello, my name is Andy Zimbalist. I'm an economist at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and you're listening to the Transaction Report.

Steve Feuerstein (00:30.087)
Andy, it's great pleasure to be with you today. And, you know, having watched this for probably 40 years of my adult life, it seems like Groundhog Day. In come the Olympics, winter or summer, and you are without a question the most renowned expert in the business of sport when it comes to assessing the viability and the consequences of Olympic Games.

Is there anything new under the sun at this point? We're going to Paris in about a month and a half. Anything new under the sun that you see as to what considerations there should be as to hosting games, sponsoring games, broadcasting games? What has changed for 2024?

Andy (01:12.882)
So, yes, I think that there has been incremental change. Basically, in my view, what's going on is that since the beginning of the century, the cost of hosting the games has escalated remarkably. More information has become available about the net cost, which is enormous and in the billions of dollars, the net cost for hosting the games.

And the IOC has had a lot of experience and a lot of evidence that's telling it that fewer and fewer cities are interested in hosting the games. If you go back and look at the bidding for the games in 2004, 2008, what you see is there are three, four, five, six cities that are competing against each other to host. But then when you start looking at the games from 2010 forward,

You see fewer and fewer cities are willing to host. And indeed, in some of the competitions, many or most of the cities dropped out before the final decision was made. It finally escalated to the point when the bidding was being done for the two thousand and twenty four games coming next next month or a month and a half in Paris, that only two cities were left for the IOC to choose between. And those were Los Angeles and

and Paris. Los Angeles also made it known to the IOC back in 2017 that if they were not selected, that they would not be interested in hosting in the future. The IOC did something it's never done before, which is it selected the hosts both for 2024 and for 2028 at the same time. It was very clear that the IOC was concerned that they might throw their party and nobody would show up.

the party to ask cities around the world to bid against each other. So there's been a very steady progression that the IOC has experienced of disinterest in hosting the games. This is supposed to be in the IOC's imagination. This is supposed to be a wonderful competition where everybody in the world wants to be selected as the host. And the IOC finally gets to choose the grand winner. But that that whole model.

Steve Feuerstein (03:35.015)
You know, I'm gonna interject one thing. You said that, by the way, about the 84 games. You were interviewed on the Council for Foreign Relations. You talked about the 84 games. And as we all recall, those of us who were of age at the time, that was a game that after three successive monstrous losses economically, that Los Angeles stood out as an opportunity that was really uncontested. So is this really novel or are we in a cyclical realm?

Andy (04:01.81)
Yeah, so I didn't know how far back historically you wanted to go, but you're absolutely correct. There is a cyclical pattern here. I think it's manifesting itself differently now than it did back then. But, yeah, what had happened back at the point where they were calling for bids to host the Summer Olympics in 1984, and this was in 1978. They did it with a six year lag back then, not seven years. What happened was that

as a result of very problematic games in Mexico City in 1968, which were accompanied by very severe political repression, accompanied by bad air, which made it difficult for the athletes to exert themselves. After those games, also, you know, a very intense set of protests from the African Americans on the US team about

about how they were being treated on the US team. And then you had Munich in 1972, which of course had the terrorism at the Israeli dormitories in the Olympic Village, resulting in I think it was 15 people were killed. And then you had 76 in Montreal, which...

had a cost explosion that was completely off the charts. The final bill was something like nine and a half times the initial budget. So there were bad experiences then for three consecutive Olympic games. And then there was also the IOC had another terribly embarrassing situation happen, which they had awarded the 1976 Winter Games to Colorado, to Denver.

And the citizens of Denver thought that the games, as they learned more about them, were going to be too costly and environmentally disruptive. And they voted to not. They had a plebiscite and they voted not to host even after the games had been awarded. That had never happened to the IOC before. And so the games were not looking in very good shape. In 1980, the games were held in Moscow and there was a massive boycott of those games for political reasons.

Andy (06:20.914)
And along come the 84 games where the Olympics is skidding downhill. But Peter Yuberoff and the natural situation in Los Angeles, which was basically as the entertainment capital of the world, the second largest city in the United States, they essentially had all the venues they needed and had dormitories at UCLA and USC to use for the Olympic Village and the media village.

They pulled off the games very, very successfully and they even had a modest surplus. So the games in 84 in Los Angeles kind of flipped the script. And after the success in Los Angeles, the popularity of the games and the demand for hosting the games weren't higher and higher until, as I say, until about 15 years or so ago when the flip, the script flip once again. And so.

You know, you asked me about what's what's what's new and different in in 2024 in the Paris games. Well, fundamentally, what the IOC under Thomas Bach realized that there was a major problem. The games have become too large and too expensive and too complicated, and people didn't or cities didn't want to host anymore. And the IOC said, OK, well, either we're going to be embarrassed and embarrassed and embarrassed year after year.

Or we need to make some changes and they did make some changes. They introduced something called Agenda 2020 back in 2014. Then something called the New Norm in 2016 and then a whole new model was introduced in 2019. And what Agenda 2020 and the New Norm essentially were doing was making a statement that they're going to be much more conscious about environmental impacts, much more conscious about cost and economic impacts.

And the way they were going to do that is by encouraging LED building, by encouraging less building and the use of older buildings rather than always building new stadiums and new arenas, and being more flexible about where the arenas could be placed. Now, even though the IOC was saying that this was a new consciousness and a new beginning, they actually had started to do all those things back in the 1990s. They just hadn't done them very concertedly or forcefully.

Andy (08:41.938)
And so what happened with. Agenda 2020 and with the new norm and then with a reform in 2019 that I'll say more about in a moment, what happened is you started getting incremental improvements so that the IOC was now able to save one or two or even three billion dollars for the whole city. But that's in the context of a hosting hosting cost that could be anywhere from from 15 to 40 billion dollars.

So yes, it's significant if you can say one billion or two billion or three billion dollars, but no, it doesn't change the underlying reality, which is that there's still going to be a massive loss involved with hosting the games. So what the IOC did in 2019 was say, OK, this old model where we have open bidding and everybody gets to see how exciting it is to have a fight for who's going to host the game. We're throwing that model out because we're afraid that.

The more we make this public, the more embarrassing it's going to be because no city is going to be hosting or bidding to host, and no city is going to stay in the competition long enough. And so what we're going to do now is put it all behind closed doors. And we're going to make our selections privately and secretly. And that was the 2019 reform. So what we see in Paris, I think, is a reflection of

of most of those changes, that the IOC has encouraged Paris to be flexible and to use existing facilities where possible and use existing infrastructure. And so the Paris budget is probably, you never fully know, but the Paris budget is probably going to be a little bit lower than it's been in the recent past. One of the reasons for that.

Steve Feuerstein (10:25.959)
So let's go to those, let's go to, I'm just gonna jump in for one second, because I want our listeners to understand when you forecast and you've talked a lot about.

why so many overruns occur because your forecasting is so far in the past that by the time the events come around, there could be a lot of escalation in cost for the local real estate community. I want to talk about changes in 2024 games and the deployment of your use and specifically your expertise. We're very interested in data, technology and analytics. And when you assess historical data, when you look at the economic impact on a local country and the motivation to host

to game and of course when you're looking at feasibility studies have you personally first and foremost in your change of your behavior as again the leading expert in assessing the viability of Olympic Games and their consequences have you deployed different technologies different analytic models and today's world obviously artificial intelligence to assess you in determining the viability of games and their projections.

Andy (11:32.786)
No, I'm not using a different model. Look, what's the case here, first of all, is that all the games have cost overruns. The cost overruns can be anywhere from 150 % to 250 % or in the case of Montreal, it was a tenfold increase. But the reason there are cost overruns is because you have to convince politicians to in a city, in a county, in a country,

politicians to say, we're behind this, we want it to happen and we'll finance any deficits that might occur. And the IOC requires that to happen. And so in order to get politicians to buy in, you almost invariably at the beginning, you have a bare bones plan. You don't include the bells and whistles. Once the politicians approve, then yes, then along come the bells and whistles once the city is committed. So there's that factor. There's also the factor,

that there's or there used to be a seven year headway before before the games actually happened. So, you know, you get you get awarded the game 2017 and the games don't start till 2024. Well, there's seven years for inflation to creep in and raise the initial numbers. There's also the fact that you're doing billions and billions and billions of dollars worth of construction projects when you host the games. And when you have so much.

being done and so many contracts being handed out by a small number of people on the organizing committee, it's inevitable. It has been inevitable. I guess in theory it's not inevitable, but in practice it's been inevitable that people get paid off. Construction companies are usually very wealthy and very active actors in a typical urban political economy. And they lean on the politicians. They lean on the politicians by

greasing their palms and giving them contributions of one sort or another or giving them free trips of one sort or another. So there's a lot of corruption and the corruption raises the cost. And there's a bunch of other factors as well that come in and games always end up costing two, three, four times as much as they were supposed to cost when the initial.

Steve Feuerstein (13:50.887)
In your projections, do you identify that for the host in advance? Are you capable? Let's just be, if we could look at your own work, do you at times, forgive me for not recalling who your clients are, if you have clients externally, but have you had countries ask you to assess the viability and in doing so, are you traditionally spot on or slight deviation?

in saying to that host country Paris or Los Angeles, you've said these are our costs, but in reality I can almost assure you, you're looking at, you know, in the case of Sochi, 50 plus billion dollars and not what you originally said.

Andy (14:33.186)
Yes, I don't want to talk a great deal about my individual role in these cases. I have consulted for a variety of cities. I don't believe that I've ever said to them, your bill won't be 10 .4 billion, it will be 12 .3 billion. I don't think that I've ever been asked to provide that kind of a number. And indeed, I'm not sure that I could. You know, I've spoken with Casey Wasserman, who is the...

the head of the LA 28 organizing committee and a very prominent figure in the world of sports agency. And I think a brilliant and highly competent individual. I've talked to him two or three times a year over the last seven or eight years about Los Angeles hosting, potentially hosting and then actually getting awarded the games. And here's somebody who in Casey, somebody who's enormously qualified and experienced.

And it seems like every week he gets surprised by something new that nobody had predicted, complications that hadn't been anticipated. And so thankfully, nobody's asked me to make an exact prediction. But what's interesting is that sometimes the governments have commissioned very serious reports.

And they've taught, they've learned themselves that the kind of figures that were being thrown around were just not realistic. In the case of Japan and Tokyo 2020, 2021, both years because of the COVID delay, the IOC was putting out, the Tokyo Organizing Committee was putting out,

a budget that said the costs were going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of, well, initially they were saying six, seven billion, but eventually they got up to the $12 billion range. And then the governor of Tokyo commissioned a report and she said in the report that said that it looks like the figures are going to be up close to $30 billion, not six, not 12, but 30. And what was that discrepancy about? In large measure,

Andy (16:45.01)
What it was about while there were some cost overruns, but in larger measure, what it was about is that the Olympic budget itself is concerned with 17 days of operating costs. So when you see Paris, I don't remember what the last figures are, but it's going to be somewhere around six or seven billion dollars. You see a Paris budget of six or seven billion dollars. That's not the cost of Paris to host in the games, because on top of that, there's all sorts of infrastructural stuff that they're doing. For instance, they're expanding.

the Metro from center of Paris out to the Saint Denis area, a little north of the center of Paris. They're expanding it. They're building a new line so that they can service the athletes and the fans and the executives who will be attending and participating in the games. That cost, I'm pretty sure, is well over a billion dollars. In the case of Rio in 2016, they built a Metro.

from the downtown beach area near Ipanema beach all the way down to the suburb of Abaja Dati Juca where the main Olympic village was and most of it was the largest Olympic cluster. That cost a reported $3 billion, probably cost even more than that. The point being that the actual cost of hosting games is not just the operating costs for 17 days. There are permanent sports facilities that are built. Those are outside the budget. There are...

infrastructural facilities. It could be roads, it could be hospitality infrastructure, security infrastructure, also outside the budget. So it's kind of a fool's errand to say the actual number is not 5 .1, it's 6 .7 or whatever those numbers might be. Because you first have to have a full delineation of all of the related costs. And those figures are generally not available.

and not knowable until the very end because they're always changing. In the case of Paris, one very interesting and I think problematic and for me troubling element is the security budget and security itself. I haven't seen a specific security budget and I don't know if all of it or part of it is being included in the operating budget. But we have a situation.

Andy (19:11.154)
where because of world politics, because of what's going on in Ukraine, because of what's going on in the Middle East, because of all of the instability in the world, and because of Paris itself having been a target recently of a few different terrorist actions, this is a very scary moment. They were initially going to have hundreds of thousands of people invited to watch the opening ceremony along the Seine River.

And they decided several months ago that that was a fool's errand to do that. It was going to be impossible to secure. So then they started reducing the number of people who could come to the event by decimating the numbers, not just cutting them a little bit, but drastically reducing the numbers. And now more recently, they're talking about, well, maybe perhaps we can't even have the opening event along the Seine River at all. Maybe we'll have to have it in the Stade de France, the Olympic Stadium.

It's a very frightening situation. They've mobilized almost the entire military in France. They've mobilized, obviously, the Parisian police force and also police forces of surrounding communities. They have hired tens of thousands of private security firm agents. They have trained tens of thousands of new security personnel in just the course of a couple of months of training.

And it's still something that is changing every day. The parameters and the size of the effort that will be needed is something that grows day by day. So that's very scary. It's scary in terms of the outcome. It's scary in terms of the image that it's going to project. It's scary in terms of the cost that it's going to incur. So it's just another example of why...

It's very, very difficult, if not impossible, and certainly not something that I would ever endeavor to do or accept employment to do. Tell the country what, I'm sorry, go ahead, Steve.

Steve Feuerstein (21:12.359)
You know, you make a very interesting point that's been, I'm sorry, I was just gonna say you make such an interesting point that's very top of mind for those brands in the world who put their name behind the games. We know that approximately 35 to 40 % of the revenues generated traditionally by a host city will come from the top partners.

the Olympic partners of the elites among, let's say for example in Tokyo, where you had approximately 60 major sponsors. When you look as a sponsor, if I could ask you to put on your thinking hat as a corporate brand. We know Coca -Cola has been at this since approximately 1928, if I recall. When you look back at brands who take this so seriously as traditionally global sponsors, whether they're could be national sponsors.

Let's take that one event and then we're gonna unpack it and see if you would, if you were the brand global manager or global brand manager for any of these companies, if you would actually encourage your chairman, your CEO to put its money, put his or her money and your stockholders money behind the games. So first and foremost, that was actually a question I wanted to ask you.

What happens if you are a sponsor? It doesn't seem to be that sponsors get turned off from political turmoil, whether it be Beijing 2022, whether it was the Qatar World Cup, whether it's Russia and Sochi. We see brands traditionally follow the consumer. And if there's consumer interest, the brands will put their money there most of the time.

So here we see a diminished offer to what companies have been planning for years, and that is an opening ceremony that is now going to be curtailed. So if we could briefly take a look as a sponsor and say to yourself, we know you're putting up, again, 35 % to 40 % of all revenues generated, obviously broadcasters being another walloping amount of money coming in for the host, for the IOC.

Steve Feuerstein (23:24.711)
How would you as a sponsor, how would you recommend as a sponsor to react to these uncertainties? And you just brought up a very real one that's six, seven weeks out, and that is Paris 2024 Summer Games.

Andy (23:38.45)
Right. So first of all, with regard to broadcasting, the host city doesn't get very much of that. The IOC keeps about 80 % of all of the international broadcasting money. With regard to sponsorships, if you're a large city in a rich country like Paris or like Los Angeles, and this was true in Tokyo as well, most of the sponsorship money that goes to the host city is domestic sponsorships. It's not the international top.

sponsorships. The top sponsorships are shared almost equally between the IOC and the host. Just this last week Toyota announced that after decades of sponsoring the Olympics, they're dropping out. They don't find it in their interest anymore. This is not.

Steve Feuerstein (24:27.239)
probably the harshest experience one could have COVID Tokyo games were actually Mr. Toyo didn't even show up at the opening ceremony, which led about another local partner, eight of them not to even show up.

Andy (24:37.17)
You know, unfortunately, they didn't allow international visitors because of the pandemic.

Steve Feuerstein (24:42.471)
They didn't, by the way, I'm sure you know this Andrew, they actually, it's a fascinating brand experience. They actually recalled all advertising on national television because the response from the local Japanese Republic was so harsh to the game. They didn't want them during COVID, that actually Toyota actually withdrew all its advertising on national television. I'm not surprised to hear what you just shared.

Andy (24:58.094)
Yes. Right.

Andy (25:04.434)
Yeah, so if you're a company or if you're an individual advising a company, you care enormously about the image that the Olympics is generating. And you care enormously about the potential for security incidents. And so I would simply say, look, the devil is going to be in the details. Some companies,

have a potentially larger impact because of the stage of their development that they're at and because of the nature of the product that they produce. Some countries have potentially greater advantage than others. And then of course, the other issue is what's happening politically and what's happening in public relations and images. So I would tend to be very skeptical about the value, but I wouldn't write it off as something that isn't beneficial for any company.

Steve Feuerstein (25:57.127)
What is that value, by the way, in your assessment? Sure, please.

Andy (25:58.45)
Just one other thing, let me just say one other thing, which is that the other thing that companies are concerned about and they've had litigations around this is ambush marketing, where you as a company might be paying tens of millions of dollars to the IOC to be called a top or a leading sponsor. But then another company comes along and they don't pay the IOC, but they put up signs around, not at the venues, but around the venues.

and they announced that they're going to be in Paris and doing different activities to promote their company. So then there's a question of what's the extra value by being an official sponsor rather than being an ambush marketer. So this is something also that companies are concerned about.

Steve Feuerstein (26:43.463)
I was living in Asia at the time, but when you look back at the Seoul games, Nike after the games, the local Korean public, South Korean public was asked who was the official footwear of the games and everyone said Nike. It was something like 85 to 90 % had said Nike. It was actually Reebok was the official because of the guerrilla marketing that took place all throughout the city and notoriously throughout the marathon. If you were a major brand,

Andy (27:04.85)
There you go.

Steve Feuerstein (27:12.135)
And we've seen recently obviously due to what happened during COVID with particularly Japan, Airbnb not having the ability actually having to compensate host owners in Japan because there were no sit no foreign visitors led into the city into the country and actually no mobility to go into Tokyo, one of the primary locations. It was a real financial disaster for a brand like that.

Today, as you've seen the games decades and decades out, seen the sponsors front and center, if you were a global brand manager, would you tell your shareholders, this is the type of event I want to associate our brand? Is that something you would endorse wholeheartedly?

Andy (27:58.642)
Well, as I said, I would start with a lot of cynicism and a lot of skepticism, thinking that it's not likely to be a worthwhile investment. But I wouldn't write it off, because again, I think depending on what stage of the product cycle you're in, and depending on what your products are, and depending on what the status and the image of the IOC is, and politics in the country is, I...

I'd be skeptical that I would recommend such a sponsorship, but I wouldn't write it off. I think very often in these things, the devil is in the details and you simply have to look carefully at it.

Steve Feuerstein (28:37.319)
Is there a sponsorship that you've seen throughout your career that enamored you that you felt this was done very well, caught your attention? You're watching this for so long.

Andy (28:48.082)
You know, personally, I have developed my psyche in a way that when I'm watching a sporting event or I'm watching other entertainment events, I find a way of completely ignoring all of the advertising connected to it. So I'm not in a personal position to pass judgment on that.

Steve Feuerstein (29:13.575)
There's an old saying, just because there's an impression there does not mean it makes an impression in advertising. And welcome to the club. It's almost the Times Square scene. Yeah.

Andy (29:21.81)
Well, you know, there's the problem. It might make an impression, but it might be a bad impression rather than a good impression. And so they often say this about the Olympics. You know, if you if you host the Olympic Games, you'll put your city on the world stage, which, of course, is absurd in 99 percent of the cases because Paris is on the world stage, Los Angeles, etc, etc. But the other thing about being on the world stage is if you host the Olympics and there's bad weather, you host the Olympics and there's a lot of traffic that the reporters are complaining about.

You host the Olympics and God forbid there's terrorism. Any of those things happen and yeah, there'll be impressions, but they're not going to be good impressions. The city itself will, instead of burnishing its reputation, can tarnish its reputation and the same thing would hold for sponsorship companies.

Steve Feuerstein (30:10.279)
Let me ask you a question in the context of you're the sole decision maker. It comes down to Andy Zimbla's. Do you, and someone asks you literally, and you've got the button, the red button. Do we host winter and summer games or should we terminate these games?

Andy (30:30.134)
So.

Andy (30:34.93)
I happen to be still a little bit of a romantic and I happen to believe that it's first of all, it's fun to watch the world's best athletes compete against each other. Secondly, I think it's it's gratifying to see fit in the case of the summer games, 11 ,500 of the world's best athletes from 205 different countries living together and playing and consorting together at the Olympic Village.

that this is, for me, it's useful, helpful symbolism to remind us that we can live together in peace and it doesn't matter what our ethnicities are, the colors of our skin or whatever. The big boys, the politicians can't get along with each other, but the rank and file can. And I like that about the Olympics. And I don't want to see it go away for those two reasons. Competition is fun, people enjoy it. And I think it's...

really nice symbolism every two years alternating the winter and the summer games to have that.

Steve Feuerstein (31:41.447)
you stimulated a thought, whereas under the former two administrations going to the United States, globalism was front and center. Do you think one day that there's a structure for the United, for almost the United Nations of the Olympics, if you will, where you have some form of central global structure for which it is just hosted to satisfy what.

I believe most people would respond as you did. We enjoy the game, we enjoy the athleticism. We like the Cinderella stories. We don't like the politics, we don't like the corruption for which Paris also has been embroiled and is still embroiled almost like every other host country in the history of both the World Cup and the Olympic games. Is there a future structure that could work better for these games that you see?

Andy (32:32.466)
Well, the structure I would like to see, and I'm not sure it will address exactly the globalism questions that you're asking, but the structure I would like to see is there to be one permanent host of the summer games, one permanent host of the winter games. I think that even though the IOC is being a little bit more environmentally and cost conscious than it was in the past, there's a tremendous amount of waste.

to rebuild the entire Olympic Shangri -La and dedicate over 1 ,000 acres of scarce urban real estate to putting these venues in one area. It makes no sense economically or environmentally to redo that in a new city every four years. When the existing model was created back in 1896,

We didn't have international jet travel. We didn't have international telecommunications. And to get the world to enjoy and participate, be involved in the Olympics, you simply had to move the games around. And back in the old days, of course, the amount of infrastructure that you had to build was was de minimis relative to what's going on today. But I'm somebody who's concerned about, very concerned about climate change. I think we have to start taking much more

committed measures to avoid duplication and avoid waste. And this is a good place to do it. If you could have one city, could be potentially Los Angeles, could be another city for the summer games, or could be a newly constructed area somewhere between Athens and Olympia and Greece, have the facilities that are already there so you don't have to rebuild them every year in between.

the four years of the games, you can have this facility used for smaller competitions. You can have them used as practice facilities for the Olympic athletes. I think that's the structure that environmentally and economically by far and away makes the most sense. Unfortunately, there are political impediments to that lying within the structure and the composition of the IOC. But.

Andy (34:51.986)
I think the more we talk about it and suggest it, the more currency that idea will have and more pressure will build up to move to a more rational model.

Steve Feuerstein (35:02.151)
You know, as a romantic as you said you are, I get the Greece and the Athens and Olympia and Los Angeles is interesting. As we come to a close, winter games, if you gave us two cities as to where those games might be hosted permanently.

Andy (35:15.602)
Well, the problem is with climate change, there are fewer and fewer places. But it strikes me that there are a number of venues in the European Alps that are plausible here. And I haven't studied the various areas in the Alps closely enough to be able to feel comfortable selecting one over the other.

Steve Feuerstein (35:19.175)
Artica.

Andy (35:42.834)
Presumably, Salt Lake City could enter into that picture of possible future permanent host. The problem with Salt Lake City, and of course, Park City, which is just a half an hour outside of Salt Lake City, is that the climate is getting warmer. And it's not as easy as it was in the past to assure yourself that you're going to get the snow and the proper temperatures.

You know, in Sochi, you mentioned the Sochi Games 2014. In the mountains outside of Sochi, they were having 60 and 65 degree Fahrenheit temperatures during the snow events. So you have to make artificial snow and the quality of the artificial snow is problematic and on and on. So I think the winter games is going to be a more difficult host to find because of climate change. But.

It's still an available choice.

Steve Feuerstein (36:43.623)
Just in our final question, to go back to what we spoke about the sponsorship, I want to leave those who are in the marketing world, brand world, who are watching this program, with you said you are a cynic.

If you could give them a blueprint of how you would make that decision in sponsorship and to part to them what you would say would be the most sound way to make decision as a brand and you were being presented with the option to sponsor those games eight, 12, 16 years out, considering that as an option in your marketing strategy, what would be the process that that analytic thinking that you would recommend they go through to make that assessment, please?

Andy (37:25.298)
I'm going to pass on that question.

Steve Feuerstein (37:27.815)
You know what? That's probably the best and most accurate answer we could give him. So thank you. Andy, what a pleasure. I know that Patrick wanted us to hold on the close and what a, you know, I've obviously known you my entire career and you're a good man and it's a real pleasure meeting you. I hope we'll do this again sometime outside of the game's construct as well. But Pat, I know you wanted to just make sure we had a moment to upload Andy's.

as this Riverside platform works, you need to, okay?

Steve Feuerstein (38:11.079)
Actually Andy did that at the beginning. Do you need him to do that again?

Steve Feuerstein (38:17.447)
Okay, sure, you got it.

Andy (38:19.346)
Can I also respond to Steve's nice last comment?

Steve Feuerstein (38:25.671)
Sure.

Andy (38:28.338)
Steve, thanks so much. It's a pleasure to talk to you. All right. Andy Zimbalist, economics department at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.

No tengo nada más que decir.

Steve Feuerstein (38:42.727)
That's okay. So you can do it again in the transaction report with Steve Foyerstein.

Andy (38:49.298)
and you're listening to the Transaction Report with Steve Foyerstein.

Steve Feuerstein (38:54.439)
Patrick, I think we can do mine as a, we'll do mine as a separate take afterwards, okay?

Steve Feuerstein (39:05.639)
Yeah, it was great. What a pleasure.

Andy (39:06.646)
It's good to talk to you. Take care of yourself in Israel, all right?

Steve Feuerstein (39:10.503)
I appreciate it very much. I approve. We'll stay in.